(photo: Carnevale in Reggio Calabria, thanks to Demetrio Bruno for the photo) Carnevale, which means “farewell to meat”, is celebrated throughout the world including in the United States (known as Mardi Gras) and Italy.  Carnevale usually takes place 40 days prior to Easter and in Italy the celebration includes food, parties, music, various entertainment, masquerade balls, and wild pranks!  This […]

Tucked neatly in the upper left hand corner of the above photo is the Sfalassa Bridge in Bagnara Calabra, Calabria.  The Sfalassa Bridge crosses both the Lucanian and Calabrian Apennines mountain range in southern Italy and is part of the the Autostrada Napoli-Reggio Calabria or A3 highway. As HighestBridges.com writes: With dozens of tunnels and towering bridges, it is a showcase of Italian […]

 I woke up this morning and had a revelation! Well, it wasn’t exactly a revelation of grand proportion like when Einstein told Newton he was all wrong about the physical world back in the early twentieth century rather my revelation was epicurean and it concerned my favorite food on the planet; namely, Pasta!Like Julie Powell’s idea of cooking through all the […]

Thanks to my cousin Mike for pointing out this article/commencement speech by the late writer David Foster Wallace.  Wallace hits on a few themes in the article, but he’s mostly focused on biological preservation via putting one self first, worship (not just the religious or spiritual kind), and awareness/consciousness.  In sum, though, I think Wallace is making a simple point: […]

Just how is time perceived and has the concept of time changed across human history?  Phillip Zimbardo aims to answer the above questions in his new book, The Time Paradox. Zimbardo touches on a few “fun facts” surrounding human perception, attitudes, and facts towards time, for example: Individuals living near the equator tend to be less “future oriented” and more concerned […]

Business Week ran an article on Emotiv Systems’ new Epoc headset which apparently can communicate wirelessly with a PC and allow a users to play a game or arrange photos on a screen without any other input device!  

OK, so I just updated my Facebook status to read, “Vincent is feeling Old World” and I need to explain the thinking behind the status: I just finished watching Emanuele’s Crialese’s The Golden Door and it was truly magnificent.  Crialese tells the story of a Sicilian’s family voyage to the US in the early 20th century.  The film is simplistic […]

The writer Chrisopher Hitchins participated in a water boarding session to truly understand the techniques used by the American government at Guantánamo and elsewhere.  You can view the video here, courtesy of Vanity Fair magazine. If you’ve spent any time in New York City then you’re probably well aware of the NY / NJ Port Authority; they run the Hudson […]

The New York Times ran a front page article this morning with the title, “Monkeys Think, Move Artifical Arm as Own.” and my first thought was how are we defining “think?”  For example, there are certain bees that engage in very organized flight patterns that convey, “danger”, “food”, etc. to other bees, but the academic community hasn’t come out and declared that bees have language!  The […]

There is a moving article in the New York Times this morning about a couple (Wang Zhijun and Li Wanzhi) that survived last Monday’s earthquake in China.  The article reminded me of the book, The Long Walk the story of a group of Siberian prisoners who escaped and trekked 4,000 miles to their freedom in India.