Month: July 2011

PJTwenty

To celebrate the 20 years of the Pearl Jam career, a documentary is being produced, together with a book.

I’ve got (two copies) of “Immagine in Cornice”, a documentary produced when the band made a tour in Italy (and I went to one of the concert!) It is awesome.

Immortality version from there

Therefore I can’t wait for this one!

This is the trailer!

Pearl Jam rocks!

And comes to a final stop

atlantis

Atlantis

The shuttle Atlantis has landed safely seven hours ago. The mission sts-135 was the last for the shuttle program. I have already wrote more about the closing down of the shuttle program on the last ride, therefore here I’ll just post this awesome video which Nature has put together, with all the shuttle missions.

after serving the world for 30 years, the space shuttle has found its place in History, and comes to a final stop.

sts-135 final mission, last words.

Est-ce que tu parles Français ?

Europe

Did you get it? Well if you speak French yes, otherwise it reads like “Do you speak French?”… Ok, big disclaimer, I don’t (yet) speak French! Please don’t reply in French, otherwise I’ll have either to harass my French labmates, or become a very close friend with Google translate.

My Citizenship is Italian, but first of all I feel European. Now, what a European citizen should do to make Europe a better connected place and more integrated?

I think, first is to understand each other. An more strong European idea among her citizen would be a good idea, and although these are tough times, I think its worth to re-raise, and try to re-state that is what we want (or at least, I want) as european citizen.

But “every big journey start with a single step”, and I embrace the “think global, act local” (put any other relevant favourite quote here), therefore I have decided to learn French.

Why? Well as I said it’s all about better understand each other and it’s time to give a little help and do something on this side.

Obviously everybody should start with what is possible for him/her. Consequently, for me, would be to try to learn a new European language, to increase the number of people which I could natively talk to, and understand better one more culture as well.

We really need to approach Europe as whole resource, using the strength of different cultures as resources and minimise the weaknesses.

First step is knowledge.

Change is what we need

Ikea paint brush

This blog started as an experiment in 2006. A lot of different contents, spawning from politics to environmental, to campaign, to tips and all the other things I thought/wanted to write are here. Now, I’ve decided it was time to change.

First, and my ‘affecionados’ reader would have notice, the visually appearance has been changed, using a new theme Matala. It was made available today also for the worpress.com hosted blog, I saw it, I liked and I’ve switched to it.

This was the old theme

old YANNB

old theme

Second change, I’ve decided to write from now on only in English on this blog. You can find all the Italian posts still hosted here using the category ‘Italian’ and only the English with ‘English’, however in the future only English will be used. This is to give the possibility to the people that follows to have a consistent feed, in one language only.

However, I like to write also in italian, and sometimes the topics apply only to italian speaking community, therefore I removed the dust from an old blog started even before this one, called Alago-Rets, where I will write exclusively in Italian. That one is a collaborative blog, so you will find my posts, but also posts from other authors.

The return to writing there was explained in this post (in italian).

BTW, thanks for stumbling upon these pages. Comments are open, as usual, if you have any

Enviromental accountability

I’ve just discovered the ICECoaltion,

A Coalition dedicated to creating the International Court for the Environment.

ICE Coalition gathers environmental, legal, business, academic and NGO representatives who believe the need to establish the rule of law and a new, workable global institution in the environmental field is urgent. Support is also sought from the general public, funding institutions and politicians. Public and private meetings throughout the world are to be convened by ICE Coalition, to inform the UN, governments and media worldwide.

and I think it’s a great idea.

We have one planet, and people should feel responsible for it, and it is possible only if a sense of ownership is instilled. On the other hand, accountability is a good start to make people understand that any action has consequences and therefore a clear judgement should be made.

The environment is a global issue, therefore we need a global coalition, and a global law, able to address the problem at super international scale.

Let’s see how it evolves, but at the moment I’m in complete agreement with the proposed solution.

via paul.

The last ride

atlantis take off

The shuttle Atlantis is in the space. Today for the first and last time, I just followed the launch in streaming from the NASA tv. Before I saw only movies with the shuttles, like the sci-fi Armageddon.

But today I was able to follow the whole launch, just streamed directly from the NASAHDTV channel.
I’ve followed the lift-off’s procedures and I saw it live. It was emotional.

Thinking that after 1 min and 40 seconds the Atlantis was already up in space. It was possible to see our planet just down below. These guys were up in space. And yes I know there is the ISS floating up there (BTW it’s exactly where the shuttle is going) with people inside all the time, but seeing the stream and thinking that in so small amount of time the shuttle was flying so high it’s something big.

Now the shuttle program will be shut down and NASA is looking for something new. Let’s see what they come up with, if funding holds. ESA and other players are still up and running, and also the NASA has some plans for the future.

For the time being, Soyuz spacecraft will be used to continue servicing the ISS.

The shuttle will be up there for another 10-12 days, will dock to the ISS and then come back home. Best of luck!

Anyway, I’m kind of sad. The shuttle was cool.

Last lift off, Enjoy the last ride.