Reading is primarily a love, no rain. Love stories, love of words. Love of books. It may also be many other things of course. An escape, of course. Escape from reality, re-course. E 'but a specific reality that I think about. When the bus (or train) begin to fly, "my lady", or we have enough foresight to bring with us a book or inevitably begin to develop ingenious methods of murder (or suicide, depending on inclinations personal). Be prepared, in short, be with you the readings appropriate to the task. I mean not suitable for the points, if all those who choose them, but just right for the location and conditions of reading. Whatever our biases, it becomes difficult to take the bus to read Stephen King's It or Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace: best left for the train. On the bus you may be forced to close the book quickly because he arrived at the bus stop without knowing it. And then the routes - in general - are shorter. The dimensions do not count only for short Rocco Siffredi.
Here I throw down a first strip of small tips needs. And since I spoke of ingenuity in the development of methods to get rid of molesters, the best way to start is definitely with ...
Crimes specimens. Max Aub. Aub is most famous for his novel Jusepe Campalans Torres, a brilliant "fictional biography" of a painter ever. But at least this small book is no less genius. I imagined and imaginary crimes that populate its pages are narrated with a little joy this release, with cheerful innocence and cruel as to be admired. In a few lines every time Aub describes a character, a person, a human story with lightning precision. And the joy ... the joy of giving everyone what they deserve! ;-)
The Procurator of Judea . Anatole France. The story is not just that. A senior Pilate discusses with his friend, Lamia, an outer box a strong anti-Jewish resentment. And Christ? Vague memories. Beyond reflections on the history of France and the significance of this and of historical studies, as well as on anti-Semitism (as old as modern), the interest in this story is primarily literary. Written with elegance and sobriety that leave admired over the reader a human portrait of the most fascinating and successful.
The sea and its shores . Elizabeth Bishop. In this tiny little book, there are two more short stories of this great American poet. And the visionary, the rigorous style, the strict and precise choice of narrative images and figures are undoubtedly those of poetic language. The one other story, the one on the sea beach and the man who thrills to be locked up in prison, talk about books and stories. And fantasy. The great power that our creative imagination and creative.
A panel of female . Susan Glaspell. Yellow pure classical canon, too. The elements of the yellow we are all - the crime, investigation, psychology of motive, the termination of the case. In addition, there is much more: the eternal dichotomy / antithesis Law / Justice vi trova una rappresentazione esemplare e compiutamente esplicativa. E questa storia di donne che commettono e coprono delitti – nella beata ignoranza e insipienza degli uomini – spinge a interrogarsi sul senso della locuzione “giuria di propri pari”. Forse ha ragione proprio Susan Glaspell…
Capitalismo totale . Di Jean Peyrelevade. Non di sola letteratura dovrebbe vivere il lettore sano. Questo breve libretto non è freschissimo visto che il suo autore l’ha scritto ormai nel 2005, ma sulla crisi economica in atto dice molto e meglio di tante analisi che ancora now be read. Jean Peyrelevade was president and chief executive of Credit Lyonnais, then was one of the great bankers of Europe. It is a short kommune angry, even in the vaguest form (unless you're the survivors of Chicago monetarists with calcified brain for too many years of finance and gay crap sauce Friedmanites ;-)). E 'for this, that this admirable synthesis of the economic structure of global financial capitalism that has formed in recent decades is particularly illuminating and despairing.
[...] then approved by the executive function of the project to upgrade facilities at Villa Dante, for an amount of € 817 thousand and that affects the tanks, the arena, the community center and tennis locker rooms, swimming pool, public toilets, footpaths, irrigation, lighting, bowling greens, furnishings and video surveillance con 8 telecamere, dell'intera area di 58 mila metriquadrati.[...] Questa volta non ci sono inchieste, ma solo una piccola storia di ordinaria, e cattiva, amministrazione. Provinciale è un quartiere popolare della città di Messina. Si trova a ridosso del centro, ma è lontano, socialmente, dal centro. A Provinciale la cosa più importante è il cibo. Sfilano i panifici, le macellerie, i supermercati, le rosticcerie, i bar, i laboratori pasticceri, le pescherie, i mercati, uno accanto all'altro, ammassati in un rettangolo minuscolo della città, con la missione impossibile di sfamarne gli abitanti. A Provinciale non ci sono i delinquenti seri, che quelli se ne stanno a Santa Lucia, sul Viale Carousel, or at most St. Paul Bordonaro, but the robbers, which is a different thing, especially muggings and thefts housewares, vintage addition to threats of sending an elusive cousin, currently locked up in prison Gazzi, in the case of a lite, for a discussion. to divide this district (only to name, Provincial, bursting with people, fish, and a melancholy smile screams "troisesco") with the center, there is Villa Dante, the green lung of the city, 60 thousand square, an auditorium, tennis courts, a social center for the elderly, swimming pools, swimming pools, lots of swimming pools. When I was a teenager at Villa Dante c'andavo every day, kicking the ball. Everything depended on the vigilance of the moment, because there were bad ones that you did not play on grass (especially one with the mustache) and then there were the good guys, you saw, of course, but they turned away. We believed that the Villa was beautiful, not that we liked, for heaven's sake, but in the end, looking back, the summer was filled with people, and we were going to get some fresh air, and without you noticing it envelops you with its alienating charm and decadent. Then, as always happens, someone has wanted to restore, rehabilitate, equip, renovate, all terms in Sicily, if pronounced by the institutions, they mean to destroy, destroy, destroy. By the end, only one, of stealing the money. Back to the top so of this post, and a press release now four years ago in which the junta lobbyists friend Francantonio Genovese Mafia announced the start of work, for which delivery was scheduled for December 2008. Things have not changed even after the unfortunate return to the chair of Mayor Messina, the other friend of other mobsters Joseph Buzzanca of years and so, instead of two, four have passed. La Villa, after being closed for an eternity, is now reduced to an ugly mess, literally annihilated by a redevelopment project that actually has so far only reached the goal of spending more than € 5 million to eradicate thirty trees and break through the soil game of tennis courts to build, below, an unlikely parking. of millions of euro, it seems, there will take another 2. Of years, probably a few more. But do not worry, this time not about the Mafia, not to blame. How could it? The Mafia, you know, does not exist. (and sorry if this time I have not gone into detailed reconstructions in infinitesimal, is that sometimes comes out well as the heart, in addition to mind ...)
That is the Majorana a fascinating figure in the history of our culture. It was without doubt one of the most brilliant scientific minds of the last century, the only possible comparison with what I think Albert Einstein, but a character peculiar to say the least and the early death consigned to the wealth of specific knowledge of the physical if not for the way of the early death that made it almost a media star.
Leonardo Sciascia, his countryman, devoted to "Case Majorana" a wonderful book, widely and rightly quoted by Magueijo. But the great physicist was much more of his mysterious departure from the scene: that he committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea or withdrawn from the world by turning in a convent, or has been kidnapped by a mysterious phantom emissaries of foreign power, what is important to him is a scientific work that was limited to the vagaries of his character and the shortness of its season, however, continues to be a source of potential developments theoretical and practical knowledge to more than seven decades since his traces are lost. And what is really fascinating about him again is his death: man and scientist Ettore Majorana was tormented and complex.
The author, physicist and cosmologist João Magueijo
Madness is a term that is often used inappropriately, when you are not able to interpret the complexity that goes beyond compliance with the norms in which our thoughts and behaviors are programmed (by relatives, by schools, institutions, and today, alas, by a plethora of aggressive media and surface). Majorana is sometimes described as crazy, why is it so difficult to grasp the reasons for his discomfort, his inability to relate to those patterns of behavior and thought-coded - and madness is a term so easy and convenient, perfect for patterns of thought incapable of slightest effort to understand the complexity. L 'idea of \u200b\u200ba man totally absorbed from his studies and so far from common sense, even deranged is devoid of any validity.
It is difficult to understand in depth the causes and ramifications of behavior that asocial was: in the strict sense of inability to comply with the proper conventions of its environment and society in general, and the consequent discomfort that led him to isolate himself socially but also intellectually. Neither, however, the complexity of Majorana is exhausted in its shadows: How Magueijo stubbornly and skillfully reveals he was equipped with an ingenious humor and subtle (perhaps too subtle for those around him), and in the right company and with a few chosen friends was far from closed. The shy man, unwilling to publish his work, however, had a very strong sense of theatricality, he liked to impress - even dazzle - the other with his intellect. The unresolved relationship with female sex (with sex in general: he does not know any report) does not complete the picture, makes it even more nebulous for the inability to determine its final weight in the personality and life of this man of genius. Majorana across the political climate, but above all social, fascism, shut. What is apparent is that he was acutely aware of the ridiculous and grotesque aspects of a rogue regime and that wiped out the few good results obtained with the Risorgimento, but it was not remotely interested in politics. It may seem strange in the exponent of a family, even if affirmed recently in the generations immediately prior to the Hector had given prominent politicians to Italy, but in this the great physicist seems to me to till the indignation of some Sicilian aristocracy, if not deeply ammanicato, he just throws it highly. And seeking what helped to shape this man so multifaceted and difficult, so elusive to the definitions and investigations (not mundane ones on his death) inevitably comes to a family as a whole emerges as no less than kaleidoscopic, difficult to frame, contradictory and not reducible to simplicity of its most illustrious. A material - human, intellectual, cultural - that is seen only as a great and very talented storyteller from portato per il dettaglio fine e le architetture letterarie complesse avrebbe potuto immaginare. E che invece fu un uomo vivo e arduo da accostare e interpretare. Riportato amorevolmente in vita in questo libro, seppure nei limiti di un tale accidentato attingimento.
Credo che per scrivere una buona biografia di un uomo di scienza ne serva un altro, per poter comprendere a fondo quell’aspetto così determinante che è la creatività scientifica nei suoi risvolti tecnici e psicologici; e a sua volta Magueijo è brillante uomo di scienza, capace di costruzioni intellettuali coraggiose e non conformistiche (il fisico portoghese è stato tra coloro che hanno sviluppato l’ipotesi della variabilità della velocità della luce, tra l’altro negli istanti iniziali dell’universo quando, secondo tale teoria, essa sarebbe stata superiore per decine di ordini di grandezza). Si dimostra anche un divulgatore affascinante e limpido, aspetto importante per il lettore non tecnico, visto che le parti in cui ci si addentra nell’illustrazione di argomenti di fisica non esattamente elementare (specie i risvolti più recenti) sono numerosi.
Da buon fisico teorico, Magueijo non si sottrae alle seduzioni delle ipotesi e delle speculazioni, but in tracing the human story of Majorana also adheres scrupulously to the facts for us to be reconstructed. And the rest of his story emerges from these facts that are a few, with urgency and clarity. It 'just exploring, investigating, almost dissected after the fact that the Majorana leads Magueijo to appear on the pages of his book. He dispassionately analyzes the relationship with a family that lived together and stiffness closures and intellectual recklessness, without forcing psychological interpretations that are not obtainable for the reader to what he offers to his reading, showing the unique function of stimulus that it had, and the struggle of abnormal personality like that of Ettore Majorana within its meshes. Of extraordinary vividness is the reconstruction of the relationship with the Majorana "Panisperna Street Boys", the talented group of physics in the late '20s and early '30s were coming together at the Institute of Physics, University of Rome under the wing of its director, Orso Mario Corbino: various Enrico Fermi, Franco Rasetti, Edoardo Amaldi, Emilio Segre, Bruno Pontecorvo and others. A report, which is well beyond the hagiographies and heroic mythologies that have shaped the saint of the Italic group of heroes, was, for Majorana, even before the rivalry, substantial alienation. Fact antithetical to the personality of Majorana and Fermi, che dei “Ragazzi” era il perno oltre che il capo, perché vi potesse essere una minima sintonia. Antitetiche per preparazione culturale e per spirito (perfino per intelligenza e creatività scientifiche – ma chiunque rischiava la magra figura a confronto di Majorana). E se Fermi sviluppò questa contrapposizione in termini di competitività e risentimento, la reazione di Majorana fu – prevedibilmente – più complessa. Egli tese a marcare nei fatti la sua estraneità, rifiutando una vera incardinazione nel sistema universitario e dell’Istituto romano (essa avverrà solo pochi mesi prima della sua scomparsa e all’università di Napoli), e appare aver sempre calato dall’alto i frutti of his intellect in the non-linear association with the "boys", not to mention that the display of his talent in the face of other physicists often was done tastefully mischievous.
Boys Via Panisperna. From left: chemist Oscar D'Agostino, Emilio Segre, Edoardo Aamaldi, Enrico Fermi and Franco Rasetti
Majorana seems to have always shown a paradoxical attitude toward the fruits of his genius which I said, and which did not seem to care at all: there are a lot of feedback - and there is no reason per altro per non credere alle affermazioni di uomini che non avevano ragione per essere teneri o benevolenti con lui – sul fatto che egli abbia anticipato molti risultati della fisica nucleare degli anni ’30, ma che buttasse, alla lettera, i suoi studi nella carta straccia. A tutto questo si aggiunge il “buco nero” degli anni dal 1933 al 1937, durante i quali visse e lavorò rinchiuso in casa: la produzione scientifica di quel periodo andò perduta completamente dopo la sua scomparsa, apparentemente più che altro per incuria.
Sotto il profilo letterario Magueijo risulta assai convincente nell’applicazione di uno stile colloquiale and directed to effectively and promptly, and showing a real talent as a story-telling that's not lacking even in the early sections where it dwells in the details of the scientific work of Majorana, and others.
Orso Mario Corbino, the mind behind many of the organizational successes of the Italian physics of the '20s and '30s
course Magueijo does not escape nothing in the call of the Majorana cause celebre, his evaporate into thin air at the end of March 1938. How could it? Not only is it an integral part of the personality the Italian physicist, but is inevitably one of the big reasons that arouse interest in his figure, not least in the same author of the biography. The Portuguese scientist, however, while not eluding even to speculation on the substance of what actually happened (what he does with elegance and simplicity) has the ability to insert the end of each Majorana in the mosaic of his life as an integrated piece.
That is a shame that a title, at once sublime and rigorous as A Brilliant Darkness: The Extraordinary Life and Disappearance of Ettore Majorana The Troubled Genius of the Nuclear Age should become the sensational, the most banal and inaccurate The Missing Particle - Life and Mystery of Ettore Majorana, a genius of physics . Publishers and translators tend to particular taste Italians seem trivial solutions.
Four stories by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro): Tobermory / The Unrest-cure / Sredni Vashtar / The Story-teller
generally considered as a writer, "child", perhaps for the almost exclusive tendency to write stories short or very short, Saki ci ha però consegnato un ritratto della società britannica del suo tempo di rare incisività e cattiveria.
Con la sua penna avvelenata, questo fecondo maestro della short story ha tratteggiato in rilievo una galleria completa di tipi umani: le persone dabbene della società edoardiana, quella varia umanità post-vittoriana erede diretta dei riti, le fobie, le inibizioni che hanno caratterizzato un’epoca assurta a simbolo dell’ipocrisia borghese con le sue piccinerie e censure spirituali. Saki unisce nei suoi racconti una grande abilità nella costruzione di trame efficaci, il gusto quasi sadico per una satira di costume tanto efferata quanto without appeal, and the mocking and thrilling for the grisly details. I hold the finesse with which sweep in a few words the characters and the skill with which makes use of linguistic resources at his disposal. In the space of short stories may not be possible to provide in-depth psychological analysis, yet concise description of Saki are so sharp to get too in depth and give the reader, completely helpless and naked, the targets of his barbs. The English language, with those leaders of formalism rare among European languages \u200b\u200band the richness and plasticity of his vocabulary, accuracy allowed him to aesthetic detail and precision in the hyper-realistic caricature, both decisive for abrasive instant Edwardian life that he composed. And, it must be said, for not less abrasive satire of behaviors, habits, thought patterns that are not limited by historical periods or geographic locations, but have rather universal character. Irregular literature and society, complex and problematic character, the tormented spirit of adventure that perhaps the birth recorded in the colonies, Burma, and frustration over a failed return to those places during early adulthood, Hector Hugh Munro developed under the nom de plume of Saki the detached observation of his fellows who translated the ferocity with which he put them to shame and that leaves almost entirely out of momentum humanistic redemption.
Saki wrote almost all of his stories over a period of little more than a decade, from 1902 to the outbreak of World War I for which he volunteered although there were more than first coat. He died in 1916 on the French front.
Tobermory , The Unrest-cure , Sredni Vashtar and The Story-teller are among the most popular stories of the author and were recently reprinted under the editorial of Short Stories Espresso, which has long been attached to the weekly books that have, in the original text and translation in Italian in front, short stories or short stories from the rich heritage of the short fiction of Anglo-Saxon literature.
Tobermory depicts the dynamics that are established in a large group of those members of English high society of the time. Saki puts them together in a large country house, guests of wealthy landlords. I'm certainly bored, gossipy, dull, dry, focused on the futility of their lives and obligations imposed by masking hypocrisy that is deep habit of mind even more and before that lifestyle. The friendly and oiled rituals of the group are shattered when the author delivers the 'trick a diversion into the surreal introducing the bizarre character of Cornelius Appin, halfway between the charlatan and the scientist genialoide. They announced that it has finally crowned the purpose of his whole life, managing to teach about the family cat, Tobermory. A beautiful thing, except that Tobermory, promptly summoned before the assembly of idlers gathered, Sports the reprehensible habit of telling the truth started to blurt out the altars of the human mind: who said what to who else, who sees what; habits more or less shameful, petty purposes more or less hidden. Fortunately for many, the cat stops after the first revelations of the huge run-up to throw the neighbor's cat. The performance was more than enough, however, to cast the group in full bustle and come to a cold sweat at all. This was the beginning, while you look at askance and ill will emerges, the debate about how to run for cover - or how to kill the cat tongue (and a little thought is also dedicated to his teacher ...). From pungent, Saki you mocking and cruel. Macabre. Perhaps even evil. A thousand fears, the thrills of these beautiful human specimens, their breath to ask the servants if the cat came back and ate from his bowl of food that is supplied in the end decided to poison as a simple solution: Saki is nothing short of Demon in giving all the black coloring of the case to the dialogues and actions, and three-dimensional thick atmosphere of resentment and suspicion created. Tobermory will free the company from embassies to find the next day making body in the garden, butchered from the neighbors' cat. But it is precisely the relief and the recomposition of the rituals to represent an additional lash of Saki, who then assigns the closure, on a note of very black humor, in Clovis, recurring character of his stories and that is often delegated to deal with some wood conformists. Those commenting on the news that Cornelius Appin had died trampled by elephants at the zoo in Dresden, Germany, will be expressed by saying that "If He Was Trying German irregular verbs on the poor beasts, he deserved all he got. .
Clovis back in The Unrest-Cure, which is indeed the protagonist. Reflected in that of a rich couple of brother and sister, Saki puts to shame the most frequent bans on human behavior, che qui sfocia nel ridicolo del disagio spirituale provato da una coppia di fratello e sorella perché un tordo – forse un tordo diverso da quello che loro conoscono da anni – ha fatto il nido in un punto del giardino diverso dal solito. La miseria e la monotonia di esistenze che hanno giorni e orarii programmati per avere mal di testa. Clovis ascolta in treno i discorsi del fratello, J.P.Huddle, il tedio infinito per una vita senza accadimenti eppure terrorizzata da ogni possibile imprevisto. Decide perciò di offrire ai due una speciale Unrest-cure : una cura dell’Antiriposo . Il modo in cui gliela procurerà non è importante (lascia però ammirati il funambolismo verbale e scenico messo in atto da Saki to do so). What is important is the psychological and domestic storm, described in a masterly way, that the hoax concocted by Clovis with bewilders evil unleashed in the unfortunate brother and sister. The two come out in pieces, as broken out from the description of the relationship of psychological subjection of the upper class toward the Church. Once again, the black humor triumphs of Saki, and the reader feels a perverse pleasure in assisting the anguish of Huddle who think their house to accommodate the archbishop, who had decided to exterminate the Jews of the district, using to also need a bunch of wild boy scouts. Shock and awe , it seems oggi. Ma forse è solo che gli Huddle sono così terribilmente formali e dabbene. Insomma ottusi.
Sredni Vashtar , tra i quattro racconti, è forse quello dove il macabro e la crudeltà raggiungono il culmine. L’aspetto satirico si stempera e lascia maggiore spazio agli aspetti psicologici della vicenda e ai dettagli grotteschi. Sredni Vashtar è un grosso furetto. L’animale è segretamente custodito in una rimessa da Conradin, il bambino protagonista del racconto. Di Conradin sappiamo che è ammalato, e probabilmente non vivrà a lungo, e che odia la cugina, Mrs. De Ropp , which will NEVER be aware of Sredni Vashtar. Cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp is the incarnation of all that is respectable, normal, hard and unimaginative. Fantasy is instead the only weapon with which Conradin occasionally escapes to his guardian. Conradin did his Ferret a deity, offer prayers to him and beg you for mercy: levargli than half that of her cousin, for example, is first. Nothing too weird, all of us happen to wish each other more or less peaceful passing of someone very annoying. Maybe not through the good offices of a private god with the appearance of a mustelid. But a lonely child, sick and sore and fertile imagination can certainly get there. At mustelid. Saki studiously prepare the psychology and behavior of the child, and the opposing reactions of women. Since they could not stand each other, especially in the case of adult ill-concealed, and then shines a watermark is growing evidence of the pathogenic power of the conventions that dot unwelcome family ties, and the sadism that often resulting in interpersonal relationships among those who hold and those who suffer the power, and the resentment that is stratified in time and then explode apparently a surprise. This is exactly what we see: small and large sadism, resentment that mounts. And prayers to Vashtar Sredni. It 'obvious that with joy at the end of a real treasure hunt, Mrs. De Ropp , suspicious of the frequency and duration of visits to the garage Conradin, takes from the cage of the mysterious key that keeps the child. Saki is exceeded in the description of psychodrama that lightning follows: the child attends the kitchen window to the triumphal entry of women in the shed, in a tumult of emotion is directed to the ferret for a final, desperate prayer. A miracle. The woman has already removed the chicken which was playing well, now is the time of his god? Increasingly disturbed, Conradin not see the woman going out with the passage of time. Until to sneak out is Vashtar Sredni. Jumping, the animal moves away, the fur on the muzzle and fangs dripping a dark liquid: Conradin butters are plenty of toast, an action that Mrs. De Ropp not approve. When the servants will look for the lady, and finally bursts the screams, the house staff will try to find out who had the courage to break the news to the feral child. And while They debate the matter Conradin made Himself Among Themselves Another piece of toast . Be ', chapeau! And rest in peace , Mrs De Ropp.
The Story-teller presenta una vicenda molto simile, ma con la fondamentale differenza che essa accade nel racconto che un uomo fa per intrattenere tre ragazzini. Il contastorie del titolo è un povero diavolo, un giovane che si ritrova nello scompartimento del treno una zia con tre ragazzini, due femmine e un maschio. Tre pestiferi elementi, mai zitti, in continuo movimento, indisciplinati, rumorosi, petulanti. Tre corifei dell’eterna inesausta domanda: perché ? Il viaggio sarà ancora lungo. La situazione porge il destro a Saki per esporre in modo tanto succinto quanto completo la sua poetica e forse il senso stesso literature. In fact, when her aunt, failed miserably in the attempt to take the three good little wild tells them the story of a little girl very good, diligent, most perfect - and rewarded by the events for that - will speak criticizing the young talent of storytellers. Challenged by his aunt to do better, in turn, will tell the story of a girl very good, diligent, most perfect - and rewarded for it with three medals. But this girl is horribly good . And to hear the adverb very young audience's attention is aroused and ears stands on end. Bertha, the baby horribly good, you will receive the just reward of his goodness horrible : the untimely ringing of medals pinned on the door vestina will be devoured by a wolf in the garden of the Prince (which, for the joy of three boys, among other things allows the Prince to save the pigs from the wolf). The aunt is shocked due to a history where goodness is rewarded (and the kids are very welcome: the story Began badly, But It Had A beautiful ending says the smallest of the girls). But the young man respond I Kept Them quiet for ten minutes, Which Was More Than You Were Able To Do . Perhaps history has not been very educational, it is true, but the fable fulminant Saki hits the key point: to teach must be based on involvement of the learner. As the only mortal sin of literature is to be boring.
A poco più di un anno dalla strage di Bagua (5 Giugno 2009) perpetrata ai danni della popolazione nativa peruviana da parte del governo aprista di Alan Garcìa pubblichiamo di seguito un breve documentario sulla resistenza indigena al neoliberismo selvaggio e al saccheggio dei territori ancestrali indigeni in Amazzonia.
The dinner party. A history of nutrition in eleven Banquet - Martin Jones
The dinner party is even a title frivolous, and the subtitle - A history of nutrition in eleven Banquet - seems almost to underline this lightly. As often happens, the original title is more modest and focused: Feast. Why humans share food . The subject is difficult and complex. No less, however, of how fascinating and rewarding once you are immersed in the pages of the book.
Martin Jones is a British archaeologist, is particularly concerned with the findings related to the consumption and production of food and nutrition effects on humans and their social organization.
For most of us Western food production is an activity that now appears remote, and its consummation is a daily ritual that we take for granted. Therefore tend to underestimate the very real fact that food is the base from which can not ignore our existence, individual and species. Even we (more) aware of the fact that the procurement of food was the worry heavier along almost the whole twist in the history of our race and those from which we evolved.
Jones's book does more than merely remind us that these aspects in our western, casual and grease gobbling omit often.
Jones performs a thorough and careful analysis of all data in our possession: archaeological, climatological, biological. Principle by the meticulous reconstruction of the dynamics of pre-human access and consumption of food at a community of chimpanzees, and then by the man from the archaeological reconstruction of a site of 500,000 years ago where a group of Homo heidelbergensis slaughtered and partially consumed a wild horse, will land on our civilization of the fast-food . Eleven stages, archaeological or otherwise, of a path through which the author leads us, unraveling a story that he pauses and points of wires that appear to the contrary and are uninterrupted. E 'consideration trivial, but again is something that we tend to forget too easily: the food - its availability, procurement, its consummation - the man has changed during the course of his whole existence as a species. Changed on the biological, social, psychological. In turn, the man has for food constantly, constantly changing the natural environment where it obtains its food sources and methods used to obtain it. Even today, the most critical technology - and the decisive break - introduced by man and the farm, which has completely revolutionized the conduct of our species: the economic, social, psychological, religious, physiological. And 'that come with farming capital accumulation and social hierarchy, then the interconnected global society in which we live. So also the war as a paradigm of the relationship between nations in order to control the sources of supply. No technology, finally, has changed more and more deeply the physical face of the planet. That was an innovation is therefore far from happy talk.
If man has shaped his food through agriculture, the food, in turn, has shaped the man. Its availability, durability, reproducibility determined the reproductive success of our species. On the food, which is essentially the grain, man has re-built his company and its beliefs. In turn, these memes have influenced the most powerful man in our psyche to mimic the supposed natural farming and psychosocial development that it caused. Up to affect the natural choice for example is certainly food for thought why our Western civilization has come to take the wheat as a staple food (indeed, some of its varieties) and not a grain in almost every way superior quality and barley . In Asia can bring the same thought exchanging wheat with rice. Agriculture and its ideals and social superstructures not only have had any negative impact on human physiology, but have introduced a certain cultural conservatism in this case, slowing the ability to respond to external events.
Although the technical rigor with which Jones procedure makes sometimes not easy to understand and use the subject matter, however, the same rigor, and the tenacity of a scientist, dissects the topic so completely and deep to allow the reader willing to commit to reaching a full knowledge of a subject so complex and infinite ramifications in many different disciplines. From a purely literary point of view just mentioned the irony of which Jones knows how to use this process easier.
This rigor and tenacity that are no less important for explaining the working methods applied, and in general the progress of scientific investigation, the formation of hypotheses, the search for confirmation, the job analysis and exegesis of the sources.
The dinner party examination is not only a clear, comprehensive and full of reflections side appearance most central of human history to the state of current knowledge, is no less powerful narration of this story. Jones draws from all the information that a subject is alive. The archaeological sites at which transports the reader literally comes to life, showing us the humanity that lived there and who fought tirelessly to survive, then grow and multiply.
It is common to find books that can do everything. To enable us to know ourselves, to understand how and why we got where we are now. And makes it charming. Books that give meaning to the activity of reading.
Patrie impure is a title of rugged beauty. There is the nobility of the "homelands" to begin. Which is indeed very different from the "homeland" fuzzy, that reminds us of the difficult journey towards a shared identity and shared the inevitable differences that remain between the ideas, the mental representations of each of us. And there are the sincerity and the roughness of that 'impure "because it is not never good to close your eyes: that these are our homelands Italian or bastardized bastard is just under the eyes of everyone. Provided you want them open and keep open. The truth is rough, uncomfortable, unclean in his sincerity is not bothering to take a purified form of bumps and designed not to cause disturbances in dormant soul. But recognizing that we live in the belly of homelands is impure but the necessary step to love them and want a change in cultural and civic life, the construction of a building shared and finally free.
A massive anthology of short stories "committed" is a big risk. Meanwhile, why, and then engaged the militants. And then in opposition to that hallway just as militant - and much easier to accept - which is the instrument through which ethical and aesthetic and applied the rule appecoronando. Because there is in fact a refusal to close his eyes and the courage to choose. In 2003, when the anthology is, society, politics, the Italian economy still seems to have reached that degree of decomposition to which we have now reached, but enough to make local and mind we must surrender to the reality that it was an illusion .
Another risk is that one runs into the sea of \u200b\u200bbloated libraries and flow of books, mostly useless, which surrounds the reader: invisibility. I confess that seven years ago, I realized not just in this book. Then a few weeks ago I returned the generosity of a Roman market stall. Strike me that title, so essential elegance of the cover of Mattotti Lorenzo (also inside, where two of the stories are comic, for his designs of course). What strikes me is the promise of the chorus of voices, the stories of more than forty different writers. The hiring of a program so difficult groped a portrait of contemporary Italy.
How often do with books I love this kind of attack in bulk, with the intention of reading when and how it happens.
Pigs is the second story in the book. Divided into two sharply. In the opening pages Antonio Moresco abandons the hardness without discounts dell'invettiva. With bitterness and even anger, never separated from the lucidity, he tells us that we still see an Italy now, at every moment of our days. Small and big business greed and the various rulers of the state machine. The servility that erode the civil sense (if we ever had). Ignorance, species is proud of himself, who informs the spiritual life. The erosion, the loss of the promises - not only in Italy, of course - the path of democracy that began more than two centuries ago and now seems destined to fade in the crystallization of its rituals (elections) emptied of any real substance.
The lament for times past belongs to every time, but not limited Moresco and not limited to nostalgic lament, which is quasi-human genetic and lay literature. Walt Whitman quotes when describing the United States of his time there would be enough to replace them Italy today to have a true picture of our reality. Yet Moresco goes beyond moralistic posing, spread across historical periods, and encourages us to grasp the core of this successful practice that is often sterile: the function of memory. E 'own memory, the most rare commodity as we look around him, to put the distinction between sterile and fertile. Memory, as it is in Whitman cited by Moresco, is the only tool in our critical thinking that is necessary and in any other higher-level, because it is through that we can make comparisons, distinctions, free and informed choices. If the invective of the moralist is resolved in the thought that everything goes wrong, however, that human nature is immutable, has been sterile. If, however, allows us and encourages us even if - or even better if we force with violence - to reflect on the times that we live on the differences and similarities with other, future prospects and those of history - in short, if it forces us to exercise critical function of memory - then he will have made sense. Then we can notice how the reduction to an eternal present of our history and our life was and is still the cardinal instrument of political power, media and culture of the last thirty years. If yesterday is no longer distinguishable from now indistinguishable but not because it removed, then it is possible the Orwellian endless repetition the promises and betrayals, the fungibility of opposites, the demonization of the critical function, the debasement and trivialization of the main instrument of thought, which is the word or its use in terrorist verbal constructs without real sense. The scapegoating of historical memory which was the refusal of a rancorous civil reconstruction removes our past and to reconstruct this prevents an understanding of and connection with the past thus allowing to conduct the national herd grazing chosen. And then the slaughter.
This Moresco, not surprisingly, it suggests, it shows, sometimes it screams, just through the memory. Telling himself that he remembers. The elegance of his writing has nothing to aseptic value, but is direct and stony, is rough and energetic. The clarity has none of the transparency of a fragile glass, but if ever a colorless diamond.
The second part of the story opens on the pig of the title. Real at first, then come even metaphorical ones.
Moresco expands the function of memory. Switch from personal to shared memory, identifies a moment in our history where the sStoring media information has its strongest roots. A seminal event for a show on TV of life and death for the creation of an imaginary in which opposites are fungible, this is total, the pain is reduced to a function circus, and the public (not only) in TV wetsuit audience blurred the faces of fans on television. A few years later, in the voluminous novel Dies Irae , Giuseppe Genna also present in this anthology with its own story, will long live in the well which had fallen as the small Alfredo Rampi of contemporary cultural divide.
Thus we see pigs of the genus Sus scrofa assembled on the edge of the pit, and subsequently replaced by different pigs, stationed in erect posture. Moresco 1981 and the event leaves the real to imagine what would happen if it is repeated today (ie in 2003). To show the run of the theater el'accalcarsi television - they are political matters or information or entertainment, or even the obligatory priest - around the fact striking once more chance to show off, to exploit and to surrender to reality television and necessity of the eternal present in which Italy has been transformed. To show them in their hamper relief efforts. To show us our reality of emotional parasites.
Then, with a final leap of the imagination, it translates into a pure imaginary Moresco, where the allegory, however, is completed and fulfilled, through the interpretation and representation of design reality. Let the child inside the well to speak with what is at the top (pretone the inevitable, the inevitable politicone) and what the bottom (a God that shows chthonic). To all of them urged him to come out well from the child asks why it should, "because here is more beautiful" is the answer, which has no further explanation. But the claims of notorious forgers apparently did not convince the child. Nature, in the form of an ant and a worm does not hide the fact and point out that there under the earth, is cold. Yet the child does not intend to go. Refuse to leave the womb of the earth, refuse to be born. It 's a conclusion apparently bitter and desperate. But should also shake. That child there under the earth, Italy is in the womb, and is alive. It 's a future that rejects the reality of a present under all civil expectation. It 's a future that tells us Moresco, is believed to be born with the rejection of this memory that has abdicated.
