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Feanor

Blogging since the First Age

Posts tagged with "life"

You Can't Get What You Want

Sunday, 11. October 2009, 10:54:05

,

This is a famous song from Joe Jackson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GasFKkVkgSI

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But, on a side note, Joe Jackson was famous for another song from the end of '70s that tells a life story we all know pretty well.

Ma Joe Jackson era famoso per un'altra canzone della fine degli anni '70 che racconta una storia di vita che tutti noi conosciamo bene:
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Pretty women out walking with gorillas down my street
From my window I'm staring while my coffee grows cold
Look over there! (Where?)
There's a lady that I used to know
She's married now, or engaged, or something, so I am told

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here

Tonight's the night when I go to all the parties down my street.
I wash my hair and I kid myself I look ***really*** smooth
Look over there! (Where?)
Here comes Jeanie with her new boyfriend
They say that looks don't count for much
If so, there goes your proof

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me,
There's something going wrong around here

But if looks could kill
There's a man there who's marked down as dead.
Cause I've had my fill
Listen you, take your hands off her head
I get so mean around this scene

Is she really going out with him?
Is she really gonna take him home tonight?
Is she really going out with him?
'Cause if my eyes don't deceive me
There's something going wrong around here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5BaurXMmMU

Edit: I just edited this very old post to change the Youtube link and nice MyOpera has changed the post date like I have written it right now. Note to myself: editing post changes the post date. Second note to myself: bomb MyOpera. I hate them.

7 comments

Big brother

Wednesday, 7. October 2009, 16:26:45

,

I am reading on the news today that from 2001 to 2008 all the Web traffic passing through three major italian Internet providers has been recorded. It means all the URL visisted, all the usernames and passwords, all the other sensitive personal data. Nobody knows how many data have been archived, what the providers did with the data and then if and when the data have been destroyed after January 2008 when the authorities ordered the providers to stop.
The good news is probably the encrypted connections couldn't be sniffed (not sure of it, I suspect common encryption like HTTPS can be decrypted with the right tools.).
The bad news is, given that is was the Internet provider sniffing the connection, using an anonymous proxy was useless.
So at any given day somebody can call and blackmail you using those data.

2 comments

War

Thursday, 17. September 2009, 10:05:10

Six italian soldiers have died and four others seriously wounded in Kabul, Afghanistan, when two armored vehicles have been struck by a car packed with explosives and driven by suicide attackers. There isn't any working defense against this suicide bombers who mix with the local population in crowded places.
Now the usual debate in the Parliament about war in Afghanistan as "peace mission" versus "open war", given that in the Italian Constitution, written right after WWII, there is an article that says "Italy refuses war".

15 comments

Thieves of solar panels

Wednesday, 16. September 2009, 11:48:35

The price of raw materials has increased a lot during years and then things like stealing wires from the rail roads for retrieving copper has become relatively common here.
Now there is a new trend for more professional thieves, stealing solar panels.
While photovoltaic solar panels are getting increasingly popular on italian buildings, it seems some people are organizing crews to get over the roof at night and take down the expensive panels.
Then the stolen panels are sold in other countries, probably north Africa, for about 1/3 of the original price. I am reading the new solar panels get an unique ID the first time they get online in the national power grid so they can't be reused in Italy but I don't know if this is true.

4 comments

Hidden costs of life

Thursday, 3. September 2009, 07:42:36

Besides taxes, we have got many "hidden" expenses. Right now I am waiting for the technician to come for the annual revision of the house heater. It is mandatory by law every year and it costs 90 euros.

8 comments

About Italy again

Tuesday, 11. August 2009, 09:43:14

Some interesting data:
1. International tests performed on the italian school system showed that students from the south get the poorest grades (while Italy itself is pretty low in the list). Also, universities from the south on average don't meet the (low) quality standards established by the Ministry of Education (which are probably made with south America in mind).
2. This summer, like every year, there were the school state exams. You know, those exams to move from elementary to intermediate, from intermediate to high school, etc. The statistics show students from south Italy got the better grades.
How is it possible? Easy, teachers in the south "help" the students in cheating at the exams and/or use different/easier criteria when evaluating the tests. This is a well known mechanism, in fact even the current Minister of Education, Mariastella Gelmini, got an university degree in Law in the city of Brescia (that is the extreme north) but then went to Reggio Calabria (that is in the extreme south) to (easily) pass the State exam to become a lawyer.
3. There is an additional problem. The statistics include the grades got by kids that come from families of immigrants. Their grades are usually VERY low, due to a difficult integration. Now, the fact is that in north Italy schools there are SIX times more immigrants than in the south.
4. Of course, in this "common cheating" environment most of the public employees come from south Italy, that means Post Office, Teachers, Judges, Police, University Professors, Medical Doctors, etc, and finally politicians. You think about undergoing a surgery with the surgeon who passed exams cheating all his life, or be in a Court in front of a Judge who did the same...

There are many other issues but this helps a little in case somebody still wonders why there is the political movement that aims to separate north Italy from the south...

1 comment

Salaries in Italy

Sunday, 19. July 2009, 05:48:48

Following the previous post, it seems among the 30 countries of the OECD, Italians come at the 23rd place with an average net salary of 21.374 USD (15.1574 EUR). Taxes (not included) are from 46,5% to 36% depending if you are single or you have a family.
Italians earn -17% of the OCSE average, compared to other european countries:
British workers earn 44% more.
Irish 32% more.
Germans 28% more.
French 18% more.

Now you tell me how you can buy a flat with a small dining room and two bedrooms for 400.000 euros (
564,055.56 USD), not only if you earn the above average but lets say the double. Another consequence of it is Italy has got a negative demographics, there aren't babies. It is not much evident only because we got million immigrants in few years. You may wonder how do the immigrants deal with the life cost. As usual, they come from places where life is probably harder and they accept living conditions not suitable for today Italians, like renting a poor flat in 20 people and take turns or living in almost abandoned buildings, over the railroads, etc. There are of course some side effects of this wave of immigrants, among which there is the fact that they fill all the worse jobs (cleaning, construction, small factories, farming) and then they lower the minimum wage. Plus of course they are often employed without the official/legal contract and then without insurance, pension, taxes, etc.

9 comments

The house problem

Wednesday, 15. July 2009, 05:00:51

There is something very wrong here. Yesterday I went with my brother to see some apartments. Now, an apartment in a new three floors building, 90 squared meters (that means 3 rooms, small kitchen, 2 toilets) costs 400.000 euros. And it is not on the lake side or any beautiful place, it is surrounded by other similar buildings in the suburbs of a town near Milano, that means there are about 10m from each building on all sides. Now, it seems half Italians declare to earn less than 15.000 euros per year.
Isn't the price of houses nonsense? Your only chance is to count on two good salaries and ask for a mortgage then pay the house in 30 years.

There are side effects, like:
Few new houses are built and instead old ones are patched with bad consequences on energy saving and safety on the long term. It is difficult to make a family for young people, without support from parents. "Social mobility" in Italy is greatly reduced, people can't change place, jobs, careers, etc. You can't take risks or even changes.

16 comments

Bad news again

Tuesday, 30. June 2009, 08:53:57


Last night around midnight a train carrying huge gas tanks derailed while passing the station in the town of Viareggio, Tuscany. It seems one of the tank carriages had a structural failure. There was a big fire that destroyed the houses in the surroundings. Right now there are 15 people dead and 30 are missing.

The carriages did not belong to the italian train company but to an international private firm based in Austria and they were registered in the polish rail. Question: in theory the owner of the carriages should certify they are safe to operate on the railroads but, given that everything is "interconnected" now, who is actually responsible for control and safety?

On a side note, the italian train company is investing big money in high speed trains and their new lines to connect major cities as fast as airplanes but the regular network and old trains are falling apart.

1 comment

Time travel sucks

Tuesday, 2. June 2009, 16:59:06

I was watching the new Star Trek movie. Why there must be the time travel in all the recent ST TV series and movies? It is nonsense because you either introduce an impossible loop (you come back, change the future so you could not come back) or you create an alternate reality each time you change something the past (so there isn't a single timeline but infinite ones and this vanify the point of changing the past). Plus, there is another obvious nonsense, the Romulan ship that is taken back several centuries before the destruction of Romulus (besides, there should be also the twin planet Remus) has got no reason to go destroying the Federation, with a good chance to get destroyed in the process, when it should instead go secretly to Romulus and tell them about the danger in the distant future, plus all the information of the future events. Then, they could even bring their technology. Their coming back with all that knowledge would give the Romulans a incredibly huge andvantage over their opponents. Then, one should ask if in the future of the Federation they travel in time with time ships (see the Voyager series and Enterprise) what do they do about these catastrophic events and about the timeline conservation. In short, time travel is an huge pile of nonsense.

15 comments

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