PACMAN AND THE MAZE: DATA STRUCTURES AND ALGORITHMS AS LABYRINTHS, METAPHORS AS DATAGRAM PACKETS Excerpt: «Don't you remember that love, like medicine, is only the art of encouraging nature? You see how I can fight you with your own weapons. (...)     Once one becomes interested in the game, there is no knowing where one will stop. (...)     But tolerance I see as no more than dangerous frailty when it brings us to look with equal favour upon virtue and vice. (...)     You were the topic of our conversation, to which I contributed not the good opinions I have of you, but the good opinions I don't have of you (...)     I have never believed in these sweeping and irresistible passions, which seem to have been agreed upon as a convenient general excuse for our misdemeanours (...) as if a thief could be justified by a passion for gold, or a murderer by a thirst for revenge. (...)     But this chimerical perfections exist only in their imaginations. Out of their heated fancies they produce charms and virtues, with which they adorn the man of their choice according to taste, decking out what is oft... Topic: 38 Friday April 13, 2007 - 19:17:16
Visitors: 11,124 Comments: 0 UNA INIZIAZIONE AMERICANA: MELTDOWN DELLO SPIRITO: LA RISPOSTA NON HA PIU' MOLTA IMPORTANZA Excerpt: «Molti europei vengono colti da un senso di inferiorità quando entrano in contatto con l' America e con il suo ideale eroico. Di regola non lo riconoscono, e incominciano a vantare ancor più i pregi dell' Europa o a mettere in ridicolo le tante cose che in America si prestano a venire criticate come per esempio la grossolanità la violenza e la primitività. (...) Ma tutto ciò che si muove comporta un rischio. Così una nazione in divenire costituisce naturalmente un grosso pericolo sia per sè stessa che per gli altri. Non è certo mio compito assumermi il ruolo del profeta o entrare nei panni di un ridicolo consulente politico, e inoltre non esiste a questo riguardo alcun consiglio da dare. I fatti non sono nè vantaggiosi, nè infausti; al massimo possono essere interessanti. E il più interessante di tutti è che questa America così infantile, impetuosa, e "ingenua", presenta probabilmente una psicologia più complicata di qualsiasi altra nazione .   (...) Vediamo in effetti ... Topic: 37 Tuesday April 10, 2007 - 12:26:07
Visitors: 4,996 Comments: 0 Wartime Stories: The Americans In Rome. See, My Monkey: These Are The Guys We Wanted To Face Up Excerpt: There was this guy on the Italian TV, a respected anchorman, respected by all political sides too, named Corrado Augias: you know, the type of guy who is always picked to lead TV transmissions on cultural events, a dash of elegant formality, some white hair with some strange shade of sort of light blue shimmering streaks fathering light blue sparks, and a consistent amount of appreciable culture and personal education. Fine suit, traditional tie.   This TV program was on the newest books currently in the bookstores.     "Let me tell you a story before I introduce this book" Corrado Augias said.   "I want to tell you because many of you are pretty young, you lucky - but I bet what I'm going to tell you is something that, arguably, you've not been taught at school.   In Italy during the war we had really very few things. Most of the things you have now were not simply absent, they just were downright impossible even to conceive. We lacked many things, so many that the fascist government inau... Topic: 36 Monday April 9, 2007 - 12:32:40
Visitors: 6,873 Comments: 1 L' Utopia Universitaria, In Italia E Altrove: Che Ci Fanno Qui I Capaci E I Meritevoli? Excerpt: «E' curioso notare come non un solo uomo di genio sia mai uscito da una delle nostre accademie.»   (Voltaire, Il Secolo Di Luigi XIV) L'amaro si distilla dal fatto che non è una caricatura.     Frequentare gli Atenei italiani è una esperienza mistica, ineffabile e sublime negli itinerarii procedurali che propone, corroborante nella sottile atmosfera che consente di inalare, trasfigurante nelle concrezioni didattiche che cadenzano e caratterizzano lo snodarsi dell'anno accademico, transmutante nel contatto con le sue apoteosi epifaniche, cioè le sessioni d'esame, e niente di meno che commovente nella assistenza che con inesausta sollecitudine e prodiga abnegazione dispensa ai suoi frequentanti.     Sia chiaro: non si preannunzia una requisitoria qualunquista, quale l'esordio sembra irresistibilmente promettere: non si intende impugnare l'incapacità e l'inappetenza culturale degli studenti per diluirla nel gran mare eziologico di spiegazioni sociologiche dove tutti i repro... Topic: 35 Saturday April 7, 2007 - 09:18:45
Visitors: 4,268 Comments: 0 Hidden In The Open And Verbose In The Silence: The God With You, The God Within Excerpt: «It is when Jehovah has asked Cain why he is angry. Jehovah says, 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.' It was the 'thou shalt' that struck me, because it was a promise that Cain would conquer sin.     Samuel nodded. 'And his children didn't do it entirely,' he said.     Lee sipped his coffee. 'Then I got a copy of the American Standard Bible. It was very new then. And it was different in this passage. It says, 'Do thou rule over him.' Now this is very different. This is not a promise, it is an order. And I began to stew about it. I wondered what the original word of the original writer had been that these very different translations could be made ...     My elders felt that these words were very important too — 'Thou shalt' and 'Do thou.' And this was the gold from our mining: 'Thou mayest.' 'Thou mayest rule over sin.' ...     'The American Standard transla... Topic: 34 Saturday April 7, 2007 - 04:31:57
Visitors: 5,594 Comments: 0 AMERICA ALL WAYS: NAZISM, COMMUNISM, FUNDAMENTALISM: THE USA JUST BEFORE THE WAR WITH THE ESKIMOS (part 1) Excerpt: «The passage from autocracy to democracy was slower than that from democracy to autocracy; and this was because autocracy is imposed, whereas democracy has to be learnt.»   (Kurt Lewin, Resolving Social Conflicts)   «A society whose members are impotent, is in want of idols.»   (Erich Fromm)   «Nonetheless they are to become his slaves, so that they may learn the difference between serving me and serving kings of other countries.»   (Bible, Chronicles II: 12 ,8) So, you thought you live in a dictatorship, you western professional protester?   So, you thought it was just about the jews?   So, read it all now .   From Peter Calvocoressi, Second World War:   «It would also contain the other nordic races, who were only a little inferior to the Germans (...) suitably regrouped and assigned to their economic functions, would be the helots. These sub-human varieties would be kept in subjection by, among other devices, depriving them of education. As Hitler himself put it, t... Topic: 32 Friday April 6, 2007 - 13:39:44
Visitors: 9,096 Comments: 0 AMERICA ALL WAYS: NAZISM, COMMUNISM, FUNDAMENTALISM: THE USA JUST BEFORE THE WAR WITH THE ESKIMOS (part 2) Excerpt: To the first part     How many times must we hear it?     The vast majority of the population: it is invariably composed of honest, of laborious persons; the vast majority of the population is composed of persons who want peace, of persons who are not terrorists, of persons who wish they could live in a prosperous environment.   Yet either they don't really mean it, or they hope to achieve all that by means that are not conducive in the least to the alleged goal, for as I said elsewhere it happens you just can't have democracy without democracy, and if you want democracy without democracy, you simply don't want democracy: as Darhendorf once put it «"Dictatorship of the people" easily turns into dictatorship without adjectives » . And "Popular Democracies" as China, or "Islamic Republics", turned out being downright dictatorships without adjectives as well .   True democracy is without further specifications.     For when you have to justify someth... Topic: 33 Friday April 6, 2007 - 13:39:22
Visitors: 4,891 Comments: 0 Rembrandt And The Masonic Prescription For Amazement: The Cloth Merchants As Charons Awaiting Excerpt: Rembrandt's Cloth Merchants     After all we all live in a jungle, it is said.   Well, I'm under the very same impression at times: for I can smell the presence of nearby game.     This obviously doesn't provide me with any guarantee whatsoever that I'll ever lay my clutches on the pray; none the less it proves to me with an absolute certainty, a certainty that to me is beyond any reasonable doubt like what its nose suggests to the predator is beyond any dispute, that the game is there, is near, that it is close; behold: it certainly roams in the surroundings, and many a times I've just squatted in the high lawn with the same kind of desperate patience a hungry predator might arguably experience, peering the n... Topic: 31 Thursday April 5, 2007 - 10:27:33
Visitors: 4,944 Comments: 0 The fight between the private eye and the eye witness: painting and photography in Jehan Legac's Art Excerpt: IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS THE INSIGHT «The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth telling (...)   A moralized idea of truth telling, adapted from the nineteenth-century literary models and from the then new profession of independent journalism. Like the post-romantic novelist and the reporter, the photographer was supposed to unmask hipocrisy and combat ignorance. This was a task which painting was too slow and cumbersome to take on (...)   Hawthorne writes about a young photographer , Holgrave, who remarks about the daguerrotype portrait that "While we give it credit only for depicting the merest surface, it actually brings out the secret character with a truth that no painter would ever venture upon, even could he detect it."(...)   For it is in the nature of a photograph that it can never entirely transcend its subject, as a painting can .»   Susa... Topic: 30 Wednesday April 4, 2007 - 21:31:46
Visitors: 9,729 Comments: 0 LEONARD SMITH, 2821522: THE PRIVATE THAT COULDN'T BE SAVED - RESTING AT THE ANZIO BEACH HEAD COMMONWEALTH WAR CEMETERY Excerpt:   BEACH HEAD COMMONWEALTH WAR CEMETERY   ANZIO, ITALY     LORD OF THE HOSTS, HEAR US!   «THE GATES OF HELL SHALL NOT PREVAIL AGAINST IT»   IN REMEMBRANCE OF PRIVATE LEONARD SMITH,   SON OF WALTER AND ETHEL,   HUSBAND TO AGNES.     AND IN REMEMBRANCE OF ALL   THOSE WHO ENDURED THE UNENDURABLE,   TOGETHER WITH THEM.     TO SET US FREE - N... Topic: 29 Monday April 2, 2007 - 18:40:23
Visitors: 18,372 Comments: 1 Cinque pezzi facili facili: Machado, Lorca, Neruda, Ungaretti, Verlaine Excerpt: "You are like a moth to a flame:   You just never wane."   Jamelia Studio 1: Per la velocità della mano sinistra "La piazza e accesi aranci   con i loro frutti rotondi e ridenti.   Tumulto di giovani collegiali   che nell'uscire caotico dalla scuola   colmano l'aria con i clamori di una voce nuova.   Gioia infantile tra buie strade   in una città deserta...   Qualcosa del nostro ieri, che tuttavia   ci ricompare, errabondo, per desuete vie"   Antonio Machado Le poesie elegiache si fanno invise presto.   Esaurendosi tutte in effetti d'ambiente (perchè lo struggimento è una categoria della reductio: come un acido dolce, esso corrode tutte le scorze che incontra per lasciare solo un nocciolo levigato), si negano ad ogni chiarificazione esplicita delle soluzioni esistenziali che evocano o dei problemi che sottendono, affidando interamente la consegna del messagg... Topic: 25 Thursday March 29, 2007 - 00:13:18
Visitors: 8,428 Comments: 0 Fast With Fuoco: Thoughts For Any Initiation Excerpt: To the original italian version «- Captain I won't move from here!   - Captain they'll kill all of us!   - Move on!   - No Captain, there is only this water left between us and the Almighty!   - I said move on! Every grain of sand on this beach is under fire. If you stay here, you're a dead man!»   From the movie: Saving Private Ryan Often we're requested: write a foreword, but I beesech you, be short and simple.   That's like commissioning a murder in a regular spy story: be sure it's gonna be a quick and clean job.   On the other hand, wasn't Athena, the greek goddess of Wisdom and literature, a warrior goddess:? She is a Goddes who might kill, and iconographies portray Her carrying a shield, donning a helm, prying a spear. I'll do my best to be clean and quick but as far as being simple is concerned, alas a problem arises.   You can be as much simple as to get elemental, and you can get as much elemental as to be primitiv... Topic: 28 Saturday March 17, 2007 - 20:16:46
Visitors: 4,719 Comments: 0 VELOCE, CON FUOCO: PENSIERI PER OGNI INIZIAZIONE Excerpt: For English Version click here     « "Capitano io non mi muovo di qui!"   "Capitano è uno schifo, è uno schifo!! ci ammazzano tutti quanti!!"   "Spostatevi!!!"   "Capitano, rimane solo quest' acqua fra noi e l' Onnipotente!"   "Ogni granello di questa spiaggia è stato messo sotto tiro. Se resti qui, sei un uomo morto."»     da: "Salvate il Soldato Ryan" (Steven Spielberg , 1998)   Spesso ci viene chiesto: scrivi qualcosa, ma sii breve e semplice. Se mi si consente la battuta, è un po' come commissionare un delitto in un film giallo: fai un lavoro veloce e pulito.   D'altra parte Atena, la dea greca della sapienza e delle lettere , non era forse una dea guerriera , che uccide, raffigurata dalle iconografie con elmo scudo e lancia? Cercherò di essere breve, ma quanto alla semplicità sorge un problema. Si può essere semplici fino ad essere elementari, e si può essere elementari fino ad essere primitivi, ma giunti... Topic: 4 Saturday March 17, 2007 - 20:16:13
Visitors: 12,570 Comments: 0 Snapshots Of A Broken Speech: Fashion And Nature Excerpt: Fashion, it is a lame duck, it is needlessly lofty: its lavish portents are unbearably powerful to no effect, for who is to wear those clothes in actuality?   High Fashion, it is a blank carrier, whose each aircraft can never fly; it is the albatross of the poem by Baudelaire, whose wide wings stretch thus far to allow for a take off only if the bird hadn't the disadventure of hitting the ground.     Of course, fashion implies an intentionality in the messages it conveys: no piece of clothing goes unwarranted as far as expressionism is concerned. This intentionality actually implies an intensification: the message must be a blitzkrieg which seizes the eye, which conquers it. Divide et Impera becomes Ravish and Impera.     On the one hand, fashion is not just futile, it is somewhat counter-educative: in the multishaped waltzer of its colours, it fabricates fake, phony identities to sell: thereby men and women get educated to compensate with an appearance which can be bought, the inner... Topic: 27 Saturday March 17, 2007 - 20:07:37
Visitors: 7,889 Comments: 0 La Seconda Sorveglianza: L' Iniziazione Antielitaria Excerpt: La Massoneria c'est moi: e tu non avrai altra Massoneria all' infuori della mia.     Voglio chiederVi: quanti di Voi riterrebbero accettabile una dichiarazione del genere? Sono molto lontano dal vero se rispondo: nessuno?     E siete tutti Massoni.     Una Massoneria che può essere definita, non è la Massoneria: altrimenti i Suoi adepti la riconoscerebbero come tale.     Ma allora, che cosa è Massoneria, perché i Suoi discepoli condividono uno stesso ed unico tetto, e come potremo salvagurdarLa dalle deviazioni, se Essa sfugge ad ogni precisazione?     La Massoneria è una istituzione che trova nella poliedricità i connotati della sua identità e della sua ragion d'essere: ed è cruciale che la varietà di tutte le possibili Visioni di cosa sia e possa essere Massoneria, possano anche convivere sotto un medesimo cielo; è così infatti che la Massoneria è Massoneria: per la polifonia delle sue prospettive. Se invece ogni Visione dovesse auto-percepirsi come esclusiva e totali... Topic: 26 Saturday March 17, 2007 - 19:55:55
Visitors: 4,317 Comments: 0 LETTERA MAI SPEDITA PER BETTINO CRAXI - CON POST SCRIPTUM POST MORTEM Excerpt: Carissimo Bettino,     chi ti scrive è uno di quelli che ci hanno creduto: conosci?   Ma certo. O perlomeno sotto le tue insegne vi erano anche compagni che scrivevano quanto segue:       Ai compagni del direttivo regionale ***     Il sottoscritto Alberto *** si trova nella incombenza di dover dichiarare le proprie dimissioni dal presente Direttivo. Eppure prima di dichiararle, debbo parimenti allegarvi la notifica dei motivi che mi ci costringono, affinchè nessuno possa dire che ho lanciato il sasso e ritratto la mano, o che ho pronunciato certe parole senza lasciare agli atti qualcosa che mi vincola alla responsabilità ch' esse implicano.     Mi sono trovato negli ultimi due anni a svolgere la mia attività politica per il *** nel ***. In tale periodo,oltre a lavorare in *** per le elezioni *** sotto uno specifico incarico conferitomi dal Partito, ho redatto diversi documenti: uno in 18 cartelle sui problemi inerenti all' imigrazione per l'allora segretario ***, uno in 88 cartelle s... Topic: 20 Tuesday March 13, 2007 - 20:45:50
Visitors: 3,924 Comments: 0 FREEMASONRY AND EVIL: ORDER AND SUBORDER Excerpt: This is a complex essay, with no serious grammar issues (english is not my native language though). If they said even to Mozart "too many notes, Mr. Mozart!" I would not complain if you say to me: too many words.   For the original italian version (slightly less elaborated than this one): click here.   PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN One word alone, omni-potent, omni-comprehensive, all-healing thaumaturgic and resolute, which arising from the depths of a hearth of immense darkness, would impose itself beyond constraints and beyond doubts.   One word alone, invulnerable and definitive, merciless and wreathed with a halo of blasts, inhabited by the inhuman lucidity of the lightening, such that it would lacerate the skies of uncertainties and of prejudices and would warrant itself with unvanquishable evidence:   «The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by... Topic: 24 Monday March 12, 2007 - 17:59:38
Visitors: 6,717 Comments: 0 LA MASSONERIA ED IL MALE Excerpt: For English Version (improved) click here.     Ethos anthropoi daimon (Il carattere di un uomo è il suo "destino" - Eraclito ) Incipit Una parola sola, taumaturgica e risolutiva che, insorgendo in armi dal cuore di una tenebra immensa, si imponesse all' attenzione al di là dei confini e senza ulteriori indugi: una parola unica, invulnerabile definitiva e spietata che, circonfusa da un' aureola di bagliori e dal nitore inumano della folgore, dilaniasse il cielo delle incertezze e dei pregiudizii e si autocertificasse come prova invincibile! " Galilea dei pagani!   Il popolo che è nell' oscurità   Ha visto una Gran Luce;   sì, sulla gente che è nel paese e nell' ombra della morte,   una Luce si è levata!"   (Mt. 4,15) Una parola mi servirebbe, che erompendo dalla notte delle confessioni, si involasse aureolata e pura verso la diuturna luce della critica, e ivi si insediasse in modo che chiunque , guardan... Topic: 3 Monday March 12, 2007 - 17:58:27
Visitors: 4,711 Comments: 0 THE SICK MUSE AND THE GOLDEN BOWL: INTERPRETATION, OEDIPUS AND FATHERS Excerpt: We don't fight against things: we fight against our degree of identification with them.     Persuasion is the name of our own enemy, for what troubles us with whatever fact is more our interpretation of the fact than the fact itself.   Even with brutal pain in mind, the significance this pain instills in our mind, the persuasions it arises within us, are far more lasting of a legacy and of a violence, and far more actual a fact, than the fact itself.     Dostoevski and Freud taught us that you're not one, but two to say the least; and that many conclusions can be drawn within yourself without you being fully aware they have been sanctioned and endorsed by your aliases.   First comes the interpretation, the version; then the identification, the belief which precipitates our interpretation as a catalyst and solidifies it, making us feel that what we have interpreted matches a supposed truth or fact : for many a time our thoughts aren't but the catabolic byproducts of a complex.   ... Topic: 14 Sunday March 4, 2007 - 12:37:14
Visitors: 5,479 Comments: 0 A MANIFESTO FOR THE 21st CENTURY Excerpt: A few persons, whenever they read a critic of power, invariably seem to assume such a critic is implicitly meant to be addressed to, and strictly focused upon, the so called "western" model of society: this assumption has never been investigated enough but, left widely unexplored, has always been taken as granted.   To them what power is more hideous than the western one which never finds you guilty enough to be worth of being executed on the spot for what you are, for what you have done? Isn't that absolutely outrageous, a culprit let free to go away with his feeling of guilt ?     «I suffered a pang of guilt whenever they bought me books or toys. This continued later on, when (...) I developed a strong dislike of the obviously rich; not because they could afford to buy things (envy plays a much smaller part in social conflict than is generally assumed) but because they could do so without a guilty conscience . Thus I projected a personal predicament onto the structure of society a... Topic: 23 Monday February 26, 2007 - 06:51:24
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