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Between destruction and construction

2021-10-23T17:18:00.002+02:00

This time Hubble takes us to admire a violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas, the remnant of a supernova explosion. Called N 63A, the object constitutes the remains of a star of great mass, which has finished its life trajectory by pouring its gaseous layers into a region, moreover, turbulent on its own.

Supernova remnant N 63A. Credits: NASA/ESA/HEIC and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The supernova remnant is part of a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, an irregular galaxy about 160,000 light-years away from the Milky Way.

Namely, the role of supernova explosions with respect to star formation mechanisms is not clear to the astronomers. Supernova remnants have long been thought to trigger episodes of new formation when their expanding layers meet and compact the gas around them. The hypothesis is suggestive: like a cycle, a passing of the baton, from the death (of a star) to life (of many others). For now, however, N 63A looks young and exuberant, so much so that its violent tremors seem to be destroying the gas clouds they encounter, rather than forcing them to collapse to form new stars.

In this indecision between destruction and construction moves N 63A and perhaps it is not alone. It may be that its now excessive exuberance will change over time into a more disciplined activity, which will give rise to the construction ideas that astronomers expect.

And we, I tell myself, are faced with similar choices: we look for a way to affirm ourselves and our presence in a way of construction, that is, in something that can be useful, for people who live in the surrounding space. Spending oneself to give birth to something is perhaps the most beautiful and artistic act, but it is always our decision. To be taken, moment by moment.

A wonderful Veil

2021-04-03T13:16:00.005+02:00

This beautiful image of the Veil Nebula was acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope some time ago. Now it has been reprocessed with new techniques, which bring to light some very fine details in the delicate ionized gas strands of the nebula.

The Veil Nebula. Credits: ESA/Hubble & NASA, Z. Levay

To obtain such a striking image, Hubble observations were taken using five different filters. Moreover, a clever method of post processing has highlighted the areas of doubly ionized oxygen (in blue), of ionized hydrogen, and of ionized nitrogen (here in red). The Veil Nebula is located about two thousand one hundred light years from Earth, relatively close in astronomical terms. Actually, this image shows just a detail. The nebula was formed by the supernova outbreak of a star about 20 times the size of the Sun, about ten thousand years ago. The remains of the exploded star created this scene of surprising beauty.

It comes to mind now, while much of the world celebrates the mysteries of death and rebirth contained in Easter (or at least reflects on them, on the wave of the tradition that however, it brings thought stimuli valid for everyone). Now I can't help but think of certain deads which bear much fruit in the cosmos. What seemed lost, from a different point of view, is a new gain. We need to broaden our vision. It is tiring, it is a real job. Yes, the star really die, but what is born of it is an unexpected flowering.

What can help us remember this? I can just suggest that beauty must have its part, beauty must enter into it, in some way. Like the beauty of this nebula. The enthusiasm of dedication is incomparable to the enthusiasm of beauty, Luigi Giussani said.

The beauty of the cosmos is for something. To be seen, we might venture. For an enthusiasm, ultimately. A crazy thought, perhaps? Who knows. But a happy thought, all things considered. Wish you a Happy Easter.

Ancient dreams, of a new future

2021-01-02T15:41:00.008+01:00

This image is truly beautiful: it preserves intact that seed of trust that perhaps we have lost, and that can be usefully taken up again in this particular age we are crossing.

Credits: NASA’s Ames Research Center

The drawing speaks of a possible future (precisely, a hypothetical toroidal structure in space, used as a human colony), but the reference to a recent, very terrestrial past is very strong. The graphic style, in fact, speaks for itself, for those who have already experienced some solar orbits. It speaks of the seventies, and in fact it was developed at that time by the NASA Ames Research Center. At the time, some will recall, there was a lot of this (pleasantly fantastic) studies focused on space colonization. Confidence in change on Earth was softly projected into the depths of the cosmos.

All this comes to me as a very tender reminder of a past which, perhaps, can teach us something about the future. Perhaps after the difficult year we have just left, we can really hope for a new era, in a redemption of the most dreamy and desiring part of ourselves. To return to work, to the daily struggle, it takes a dream, it takes a hypothesis of certainty, a glimpsed shadow of fulfillment.

Pure desire is necessary and sufficient to reach the stars, desire which constitutes the stuff of dreams. Trying, believing: this still depends on us. And the whole Universe changes, we know it, we feel it. From here to the most distant quasars, what really softens the texture of spacetime is a child’s gaze. Is the ability to amaze us, for the things that happen, in heaven and on earth.

Have a good restart, my friends.

Stars, stars everywhere

2020-12-26T19:21:00.004+01:00

Again, it’s Hubble Space Telescope that comes in help to satisfy our desire of wonder, giving us the exquisite gift of this image from the globular cluster named Messier 107.

Globular cluster Messier 107. Credit: ESA/NASA

What can I say? It resembles a crowded stadium before a show, when we was still able to gather together to take part to an event (but times will return, I’m pretty sure, in which this will be possible again).

Messier 107 is one in about one hundred and fifty globular clusters present in our Milky Way. Each of them contains hundred of thousands of stars, sometimes even millions of them. They are very old: in fact, they are listed among the oldest objects in the whole Universe.

I remember a time (in the previous century) in which astronomy was facing a real crisis, exactly because of these clusters: from accurate evaluations, their stars shown an age greater that the estimated age of the universe. Rather embarrassing, I should say! Now we has reached a nice convergence between star ages and cosmological age of the universe, and the problem can be considered solved.

Anyway, as astronomer I can say we lived a very interesting time, since researches was boosted by this problematic and by the desire to find a solution. As a matter of fact, efforts were made till ages from stellar evolution was deeply revised (clusters lost several billion of years, in this process), but also the cosmological framework was updated (as a consequence the universe as a whole gained some billion years in respect to previous estimates). Finally, as you probably know, an age of around 13.8 billion years seems to fit well both for stars that for universe itself.

Nice lesson. Science always goes forward attempting to solve problems. Each problem treasure a possibility, to learn even more, to gain new views, to revise settled believes. When science does not face problems, it’s not always a good sign: we are missing the opportunity to learn something, probably.

Granted, in real life is not always easy, to view possibilities inside problems. But who knows, maybe science can teach us something, in this case…

Science is a game!

2020-12-18T22:00:00.001+01:00

True science is a game, after all. This is something we easily forget. Playing is one of the most important activities of mankind, so that even little boys and girls, who are not used to loose time (such their parents), spend most of their time in this way, playing.

One of the most beautiful games is to discover that physical reality can be understood, in its marvelous complexity, by the human mind. To discover how the universe works, it’s probably one of the most rewarding activity, significantly contributing to build a feeling of significance in a life.

This amazing video has been interpreted by researchers of European Space Agency (ESA) in their spare time. It can help us to remember that, after all, scienze is a wonderful game.

Many can easily recognize the music, and also the guy who make a brief cameo at minute 5.41 (the two things are related, as you may discover).

You can make better science if you don’t take yourself too seriously. This is the true message of this nice video. A message to keep. Crucially important, for scientist and not scientist as well.

Podcasts (and my way home)

2019-04-01T10:57:00.002+02:00

Asa a lot of other people, I have the problem of how to spend the time while I am in the car. Well, of course, the first thing to do -as everyone says - is to drive. With all the needed attention, obviously.

But, while you're driving, you may also use your ear to listen to something.

Yes, music is the first choice. It has been my first choice for many, many years. But sometimes you want to be exposed to something that is not exactly musical, in a strict sense. There is a lot of richness, out there.

You can embrace podcasting, for example.

Podcasts are wonderful when you're driving.

They are made often by speech, and are not so loud and invasive as - say - death metal music, so you can hear the sounds outside your car. Which can be a very good thing, if you're driving (after all, the world outside claim your attention).

One thing I appreciate of Spotify (among others) is that it includes a section devoted to podcast. Which is not automatic, for a streaming service (for what I know, Google Music features no podcasting yet). Unfortunately, not all the podcast are present inside Spotify, so I must rely on a dedicated app if I want to really have access to all the richness out there. I have chosen Pocket Casts because, while it's not free, for a small amount of money it gives you an endless river of possibility and you have the real chance to configure an environment exactly as you like.

Oh, and another possibility is given by audiobooks, of course. Admittedly, I am a not so avid consumer of audiobook and, as occasional listener, I do prefer not to rely on a monthly subscription, as possible with Audible and similar services. So I take advantage of the audiobook section of Google Books, which it's perfect for anyone who likes audiobooks but do not want to add another regular channel of expense.

Granted, there are plenty of possibility to explore to make the way home (or work) less boring, in case of heavy traffic. But, to be honest, my really preferred choice, it seems not available yet...

Credits: "Star Trek"

Sunset, from the Observatory

2019-03-23T16:41:00.002+01:00

In these days, it's a particular pleasure to come out from the Observatory (Rome Astronomical Observatory, which actually it's not in the city but in the outskirt) to admire the beautiful and very suggestive sunsets, wonderful moments that only nature can produce.

I've taken some pictures, using my cell phone, a couple of days ago. The pics feature the city in the evening, and part of the beautiful park that surrounds the buildings of the observatory. In the first you can see understand how majestic can be the city in this very peculiar moment of the day...

Rome in the evening...

The second picture shows a gorgeous tree in the park, which captured my attention just before I entered in my car to return home...

A wonderful tree...

There is a true glory in each sunset, there is no feeling of loss but something, like a hidden promise, a promise to feel at home in the universe, to find a place that you truly can call home.

With stars, a lot of glimmering stars, all around you.

Open Source and Linux, in 2019

2019-01-03T14:13:00.003+01:00

From an interesting article that appeared in the middle of 2018, you could understand that the things kept moving, last year, for the Open Source ecosystem.

This is open source beyond Linux and, according to Zemlin, is indicative of one of the best years and most robust periods at The Linux Foundation itself.

That's just fine and it's also pleasant, that the Open Source movement becomes each day more robust.

But it's more interesting, in these days, to see what kind of previsions can be made about the state of one of the most successful open source project: I'm talking obviously of Linux, the free operating system.

Ok... Ready for 2019?

Speaking of that, the pages of Linux Journal hosts a very interesting conversation between "the leaders of three of the most prominent Linux distros of the day", namely Debian Project, elementary, Fedora Project.

Thinks are moving fast for Linux, as you know: they always do it. Even in 2019 we can enucleate some trends, seeking the best rising linux distros, and trying to understand the reasons behind their upcoming fortune: it's what happens in a detalied article of TechRadar. Well, you might be surprised in seeing that one of the five selected distro is really one of the most ancient one... but no more spoilers, even in I guess you already understood!

It's also worth a look the 5 Linux Prediction for 2019 from UMG!Ubuntu! website. From all listed, for me the most interesting is surely #4, about novel hardware. If Linux has really to land on common people's desktops (which is a theme almost recurrent in the last ten years or so...) it has to be easy, really easy, and fully integrated with the specific hardware.

We are in 2019 now. People wants computers and mobile devices that works out of the box. Besides all, wars of opinions like windows or linux or mac have completely loosen sense now, in the age of instant communication and social media. If it works well, it's fine. Even better, if it's cheap and work well.

From the quoted article, on Linux Journal,

I still have big printed manuals for a few early Linux versions, which, back then, were necessary for getting just about everything working (from X11 to networking and sound). Heck, sometimes simply getting a successful boot required a few trips through those heavy manuals. Ah, those were the days.

Well, those days (those glorious days) are gone.

Is exactly on this ground that linux on desktop may gain its sense.
It's a great challenge, because both macOS and Windows are very complete and polished operating system, featuring great integration with mobile devices.

It's a great challenge. Let's see what happen, during this new year.

Sun & the other stars, an astronomical playlist

2018-11-21T14:40:00.000+01:00

Nothing more than a playlist on Spotify, admittedly. No more than a funny game, if you want. A collaborative playlist, to be honest. In passing, it's a great thing, the simple possibility to collaborate, to work together on a given list of songs. It opens many intriguing prospectives. I do remember, one of the reason why I made the switch from Google Music to Spotify (not the only one, admittedly), was that in Google Music there was no possibility to cultivate a collaborative playlist. Too bad, for an excellent service, after all.

Collaborative playlist, to me, it's a great way to take advantage of Internet to build up something more social that a simple list made by a given person, no matter how musical knowledge he may have accumulated into years (since music it's always broader than your inner boundaries).

No collaborative playlist was possible in the age of vinyl...

When I was a child, when I grew up as a boy, nothing like this simply existed. I could not switch on the computer (if ever), to see what my friend are listening now, to investigate their selected playlists. Frankly speaking, the bare possibility to relate computer to music did appear rather lately, in my not-so-short history. Not to talk of the rest!

Now, coming back to present, and from an operative point of view: if you are on Spotify also, and you want to take part in this game, you simply can add your favorite songs on the list, for everybody to listen to (and hopefully, enjoy them).

Rules are quite simple, for the selection of songs to include:

it must be a song that you like ;-)
if it is an instrumental piece, it must have the word Sun or star in the title (to be accurate, any mention of an actual star name is fully allowed)
if it is a classical song (with some text inside) the keywords can also be present only in the lyrics. No condition on title is then required.

It goes without saying, that every song that does not fit in the previous rules, can be eventually deleted from the playlist: you understand, while it's nothing more than a musical game, we must preserve it's peculiarity, after all.

As a matter of fact, it's all very simple, as you may see. Anyway I am becoming addicted to this series of songs that, in a way or in another, do refer to the sky and to its bright inhabitants. First thing you realise, listening a few songs from "Sun & the other star, is how great has been the amount of musical effort that has already been spent in themes also loosely related with stars.

That's all, for now. If you want to take part in this silly little game, connect to the playlist and start adding your favorite "astronomical" songs. Do it now: the universe is just waiting, to hear this "celestial" music ;-)

Science and poetry, nearest that ever

2018-11-19T14:15:00.002+01:00

It's more that obvious, that in the imaginary of the people, disciplines as science and poetry may seems as distant as possible. More than distant, they in fact seems - in a superficial way of looking - as belonging to different universes.

How can I trust in poetry to understand the real word, one may ask.

And it may seem a fully reasonable motivation. Scienze is for the knowledge of the "objective" word, after all. Art is for the rest, for what it's connected to the "human part" of anything.

At a second glance, it turn out that things are not so simple. One may ask, first of all, if there is a objective word, out there. I mean, a word fully independent of me as observer, a word I can investigate as completely detached from me. It's not so assured, in particular after that quantum mechanics has given us the picture of a universe much more interconnected and complicated that we believed once.

We live a wonderful moment, after all. We live in a world where we can understand again that it exists different way of knowledge (a full spectrum of that, actually), and they are all necessary to be fully present in this word, as human being. Conversely, to restrict only to science make us partial, so that we cannot fully appreciate the gift that - basically - the universe around us do represent.

"Poetry and science are not opposed: they were not opposed at the beginnings of wonder" says the italian poet Davide Rondoni.

As Hawking once said, “Physicists and poets may differ in discipline, but both seek to communicate the beauty of the world around us.”

Beauty doesn't allow us to be investigated only quantitatively. In fact, beauty deserves much more. In the present age, science and poetry can regain a wonderful proximity. They can became, in fact, nearest that ever.

Play Music, or Spotify?

2018-08-30T10:10:00.000+02:00

There is a thing I like so much in Google Play Music, and it's the simple beauty of its minimalistic interface. Really much more appealing, to my eyes, in respect (just do say) to the look of Spotify. Nothing to say, Google is still the best, when dealing with style.

Notwithstanding, I find that Play Music do suffer of several limitation, in comparison with a service like Spotify. I'm not talking about the dimension of its musical archive (all these service do have huge archives nowadays), but of some annoying limitation that you can experience when you use it on a daily basis.

Play Music live in your browser, as almost all for Google...

First of all, you cannot sort your collection in any way. In other words, there is no way to alter the default order, in which all your album area listed alphabetically. Spotify (and I guess, many others) give you the freedom to order your collection in a number of different ways: for example, I find very useful to inspect my collection ordering it by the most recents additions, since it's a simply way to understand what happened recently to your albums, and to recall you something about your more recent tastes.

On Play Music, whenever you add an album, it disappears instantly inside your (huge) collection, so you have to search it patiently among a lot of albums. That's annoying, for sure. Oh, and I have told you something about searching, by the way? Why on Google it's not possible to delimitate a given search inside your collection? Sometimes, you do not have time to browse the whole musical achievements of the humankind, you simply want to recover that specific album from your collection.

Spotify interface. Why only black?

Turns out, doing it on Play Music it's not as simple as you may guess. Yes, on Spotify you can make a search inside your library, neglecting all the rest of the (musical) word. Exactly as you should do with your (ancient, outdated) collection of CDs, or (more recently) with your collection of mp3 files.

That's why the beauty of the interface, all considered, it's not enough for the adoption of one service over the other. That's why, exactly.

So I'm using Spotify right now. But I can't help but looking to the page of Play Music, from time to time. How simply beautiful it may appear!

Beauty is not all, in this word.

Oh you beautiful thing

2018-08-19T18:16:00.000+02:00

There is a certain beauty on listening the music in Spotify, for sure. One thing, is that you can discover new music, anytime. Music that you did not programmed to listen to, that you did not even expect it exists... There is far more music around, that you can hope to listen to, in all of your life!

Here it comes Spotify (or an equivalent streaming service). And here it comes the difference between the old way to listen to music (insterting a CD into the player) and the new way (connecting to a streaming service). The last method allow you to be exposed to the unexpected.

Yes, the unexpected. Since you are downloading a flux of information from an external service, potentially unlimited, and not playing a compact disk, a support with a well defined amount of information, hardcoded on the disk, once for all.

Coming back to my little story: when the streaming of an album of Nick Kershaw was finished (an album that I already knew very well), the system began automatically to select "similar songs" to the ones contained in the album, just before I became aware it was actually finished and that I had to think about what to listen to, now.

So Spotify played me this song.

I was surprised. More than surprised. What a beautiful song! And as you can expect, this led me to explore the whole album. An exploration that revealed a lot of other very interesting songs, which I would had never listened, if not casually exposed to this song.

Not all what is modern is bad, after all. Thanks to Spotify, and thanks to Nik for this gorgeous album. Now, what can I expect, next time? From what I will be surprised? Only time will tell...

Note. This post is also a test, should I return to post on Blogspot? Well, only readers will tell... ;-)

Open source, and open science

2016-08-29T14:14:00.000+02:00

As scientist, the least thing I expected, when yesterday I listened to the very interesting Linus Torvalds speech at TED, was a discussion on the way science and its results are diffused. I was pleased to hear Linus mentioning arXiv, the famous science archive of paper.

ArXiv is entirely opened, you can browse and download articles without any restriction (you don’t even have to login). It’s updated daily and it’s articulated in various disciplines. As a whole, it’s a very pragmatic way to show the benefit of free idea circulation within science.

At the moment writing, arXiv contains 1,178,149 articles. Not bad.

I do admit I did not expect Linus was aware of its existence, being into a rather different ecosystem.

Well, now I understand that there are deep links between the open source paradigm and a certain way to think about science and about the spreading of its methodologies and its results.

Something which has a deep connection with a very simple word, open. A simple word that it can disclose a whole world.

Something Linus addressed very well, in just a few words.

Jennifer, where are you?

2016-02-03T11:44:00.000+01:00

You know, sometimes it’s so hard to choose just one song, one that you truly adore over all the others, since everybody has plenty of wonderful songs inside, that are ready to be loaded in memory when the situation do require it…

Songs are, sometimes, such incredible concentrations of beauty, all packed in a easy-to-deal-with form, that it’s difficult for me to think of a more easy way to reconnect with beauty, different from reloading a song on my mind.

Here I want to come back to an old songs by Eurythmics, Jennifer. It’s a song that – after all these years (it dates back to 1983) – still fascinates me for the interplay of the voice of Annie Lennox (so sweet!) and the rich and complex electronic tapestry – almost hypnotical in a certain way.

Oh, and it features a precious sense of wonder, in its lyrics. Truly a gorgeous piece.

Pens and Pencils, tales from a distant age…

2015-03-03T11:14:00.000+01:00

Ages. I do not use pens and pencils from ages. And it’s quite clear from what happens when I am stil forced to use them: I simply write something which cannot be understood!

That’s the fact. I’m worrying that I am simply loosing the ability to write by hand. Yes, I can try to write, but the result is discouraging: I usually produce something that nobody can read. Include myself, of course. Definitively, the modern age brings new abilities and skills, but sometimes it also looses something. Being not able to write by hand is not a good thing.

We are loosing the ability of doing it by hand...

Nowadays, the occasions to adopt pens and pencils – for me – are really rare. Consider the simple action of taking notes. I use my iPad with Evernote (or something similar), and it works wonderfully. I can take notes and easily move them to my iMac, for further elaborations.

From some years, I maintain a digital diary with the (wonderful) Day One app. Recently, I’ve also started to experiment with Journal, to satisfy my (periodically awaking) Android side.

I cannot even remember the last time I wrote something substantive with a pen, apart from some unfortunate occasions where I had to take notes and I was without one of my tablets (iPad 2 or Nexus 7).

I agree that physical agendas can be truly beautiful. They have something attractive which definitively can’t be reproduced by any electronic device, no matter the software that you can load onboard. They speak about ancient ages, where you could touch the paper, evaluating its consistency, appreciate its color. Feel the subtle noise of turning page. This is something we are loosing, something that it’s going to disappear.

The most annoying thing of a written manuscript, it’s that it can’t easily be processed. This is the first reason, for me, for following the digital ruote. That’s the most important reason why I do believe that it’s impossible to return to a pre-keyboard era.

And yes, I’m losing the ability to write with a pen.

Are you (still) reading on paper?

2015-02-24T14:00:00.000+01:00

I was just a little surprised when I red the title of this article on Washington Post. Why digital native prefer reading in print… Well, I am not a “digital native” in any way (my age will prevent me to think that), so you may understand that I’m rather used to printed papers. As a matter of fact, I remember ages in which printed papers was the only way, since there was absolutely no alternatives.

With all of that, I admit that I got used to digital books quite fast. For me, their advantages are by far more intriguing in respect to their shortcomings. So that now I’m a bit annoyed when I do not find the electronic version of a text I want to read.

Is reading in print really better?

Not that I do not understand the reasons explained in the article. Online distraction, for example, is a serious issue. Reading on a computer screen, or reading on a tablet it’s the same: just to put it down simply, you can do too much things. That’s fine, when you play games. That’s not so fine, when you want to concentrate on a difficult book. In the meddle of a difficult page you’re working on, you suddendly remember that you did not check your Facebook status in the last ten minutes! Well, let me see if any notification is waiting, after all it may be important. Oh, in passing, any new email? And what about Twitter replies?

That’s hardly deniable. It’s part of our world, nowadays.

That’s why I do not like reading from a computer of from a tablet.

Anyway, I feel that there is another option, which is not clearly covered in the article. Yes, the article generally talk about “reading from a screen” as simply opposed to “reading from paper”. Actually, there is a third choice: the ebooks devices (Kindle and similar stuff). When coming to serious reading (or studying) an ebook reader has several advantages.

The bigger advantage is that a Kindle cannot show your Facebook timeline. Yes, it can post portions of text you are reading (on Facebook and/or Twitter) but that’s all. It even cannot allow you to check emails, too (until you try to use the experimental browser inside, definitively not a easy route).

That’s very good when you want to seriously concentrate. I definitively need a device that cannot deal about my presence on social network, at least at a certain point of my day. I need something that does not show how many notification I’m missing on Facebook (oh, speaking of it, let me check now…)

A Kindle is a very good alternative to paper, in my opinion. Other considerations can be done: for example, it’s easy to highlight some part of text without any worries, since it’s now a “digital operation” fully reversible. Also, it allows you to carry around hundreds of books, without much effort.

Anyway, there will always be place for printed books (art publications, etc…). But it’s not too difficult to speculate that one day, reading on print could became the exception, not the rule.

Home, soil, rain (it’s cold outside)

2015-02-06T10:54:00.000+01:00

Baby it’s cold outside. This words comes into my mind while I’m thinking about the caption of the photo I’ve just taken. I’m walking in the park and the first evidence is that it’s deep winter, all around me.

Things are now what they seems.

I think about the fact that in some secret places, under the soil, spring is patiently preparing, waiting for the right time to come. There is some secret movements I cannot detect, there are some secret worlds waiting for them to show.

At the right time.

Everything comes at the right time. I can’t hurry anything: it’s useless. I just have to wait. Even love can’t be hurried (as the Supremes declared since the glorious sixties…)

This is worth for me to be thought, again and again.

Yes, because my spontaneous attitude is to hurry, to try to force things to happen: those things I desire, those things I want. Those things I decide I’m in need of. It’s funny, but whenever I do accept this simple law – namely, that I have to wait – in this very moment I can experience a state of tranquillity, I begin entering in a wonderful realm of calm.

I can relax only if I realise that things keeps happening in my life, even if sometimes I feel as I walked in a deep winter scenario. Even in those moment in which I feel like someone running under heavy rain, striving to be at home.

Changes are preparing, opportunities will spring. At the right time.

Things do happen: and the more you let it flow, the more they happen.

So the lesson is simple (which does not means easy, you know): just relax, get rid of this crazy attempt to control everything, and let the world act for you.

Rondoni: “Poetry and science are not that distant”

2015-01-29T14:23:00.000+01:00

Some times ago, I received (and very gladly published) a piece of the poet and writer Davide Rondoni, who kindly accepted my request and spoke about the “Carnival of Physics” # 27, hosted some times ago by my italian blog GruppoLocale.it. I stumbled upon this article just yesterday, and I realized that it may be worth reading also for not italian people.. so here is it!

Davide Rondoni

Arthur Rimbaud says that science is too slow for us. In our opinion, he means that we look at the world with the typical method of poetry, which is that of analogies, shadows, glimpses of evidence in the appearance. With words that frame a life that we don’t really know but which nevertheless asks for our active participation.

Besides, long before you physicists taught us that everything is movement and energy, Dante spoke of a “love that moves the sun and the other stars” and to him that was not a metaphor, but a real matter of fact. We are dealing with a difference of speed – the truths to which the poetic method leads are those a man needs in his life, whereas science takes sometimes thousands of years in order to succeed in analyzing some phenomena. Difference in speed and method therefore, (poetry knows by synthesis, by analogy, experiencing that state of knowledge through wonder and spiritual enlightenment that in science happens only sometimes), but not in the route nor in the final purpose. In fact, the language that scientists often use to indicate the primary or last realities they are looking for – in addition to the formulas – is composed of poetic metaphors. What is the “fossil light” that the recorders of the early events of the universe are analyzing? Isn’t it a reality which we can explain using a poetic language?

And a great contemporary poet, Les Murray, in one of his poems says that Newton certainly had a huge intuition seeing the apple falling from the branch, but if he had also wondered how the hell that apple had arrived up there he would have discovered a “more used physics.” Poets are interested in the physics of the world, that is to say its movement – or sense, which is the same, since there is no real movement without sense, because it would be frenzy or excitement, or (which is the opposite and the same), it’d be boredom.

Poetry and science are not opposed: they were not opposed at the beginnings of wonder, which perceives the world as a first step, and they are not opposed now – after the long journey of both – when they are carried out as a will of knowing the mystery of reality. That is what Ungaretti called the “secret” of the world.

Davide Rondoni has founded and heads the Center of Contemporary Poetry of the University of Bologna. He has taught and teaches poetry and literature at the University of Bologna, Milan Cattolica, Genoa, Iulm and at several institutes as well as abroad at Yale University and Columbia University (USA). He is the artistic director of “DANTE09”’s festival in Ravenna. He took part in the most important poetry festivals in Italy and abroad.

He has published several volumes of poetry, including “Il bar del tempo” and “Avrebbe amato chiunque” with whom he has won, among others, the most important prizes in Italy (including Montale, Carducci, Gatto, Ovid, Camaiore, Metauro). “Amore Apocalisse”. Mondadori, June 2008. A booklet published in 2001, “Non sei morto, amore” (and republished in 2006) is read by the author together with a pianist of blues, as well as put on stage by Sandro Lombardi and David Riondino. With a company of tango are read the poems of “Danza lentamente con le tue ombre” (Tracce, 2009). He is also in the most important anthologies of Italian poetry of the late twentieth century published by Mondadori and Rizzoli and in many others. Some of his poems have been published in books or magazines in France, USA, Venezuela, Russia, England, Croatia, China and other countries.

He is one of my preferred Italian poets, so that I’m very glad he accepted to write this words for my blog. The publication of this piece in English is also intended as a tribute to his arts. Thanks Davide!

Adapted and translated from Italian, with the precious help of Claudia Castellani

Book problems...

2014-12-30T12:12:00.004+01:00

I stumbled upon this nice video, which in a few minutes shows you a couple of (very good) reasons to switch to digital also in reading books – in the case you’ve not already done it. Yes, “the smell of paper” can’t be reproduced by a common e-reader (at least, not yet) but it’s not all so amusing with books: sometimes you’d prefer to have a Kindle instead 🙂

See why….

Google Wave Drips With Ambition….

2014-09-24T14:17:00.004+02:00

Sometimes, it’s interesting to dig a bit deeper in the Net to understand that things did not go the way we all supposed… I’m still missing Wave, it has been a revolution aborted in the initial stage. But it had all the potentiality to truly innovate the super-old email standard. I’m still disappointed about its premature disappear.

No pain, no gain

2014-08-31T10:32:00.000+02:00

Yes, I think that it’s the way things are: you must work hard to obtain results.

This is true in a variety of situation. More or less, it’s true basically everywhere.

Take the case of art, for instance.

This is a field in which misunderstanding is quite common, on this topic. People are used to think that great artists are people who let flow art naturally from their hands. Naturally, i.e., without (too much) effort.

Problem is, things are different. Artists are ordinary people which a strong urge to make art: following this sort of calling they are simply determined to work hard till they obtain the desired results (avoiding the traps of perfectionism).

Of course, talent matter.

But, talent isn’t all. Work and regular practice is even more important.

I can speak only for myself, of corse. I cannot say how much talent I have in writing. But I can assure you that my best results have come in that cases where I convinced myself to spend a good amount of time on a given project. Making myself available also to write and re-write till I was not satisfied.

To listen to suggestions. Even to change the plot, in some crucial points.

I worked on each chapter of my novel Il ritorno (in italian) for a lot of time. Plenty of time, actually. One thing I can tell you, that all that works succeeded in improving considerably the manuscript.

First draft is always frightening, even if – it can contain some gems inside.

Working till the light of the gems comes out, it’s the hard part. But it’s necessary.

And, after all, it’s what each person who love writing, is willing to do. Because he know that he has no change, nothing different than take his art seriously.

And it pays. Always.

How can I save stuff on Facebook?

2014-06-21T20:38:00.011+02:00

Facebook is a great service, no doubt. You can find a lot of interesting stuff each day (together with a greater amount of not-so-interesting items, the so called waste of cyberspace). I’m pleased by the fact that you naturally build a sort of story of your posts, in the form of a diary, with easy access to past years and months.

You may already know that you can also easily integrate your diary with information from the past, such as the day of your birth (that’s fine, at that time you was not thinking about updating your timeline with smart phrases such as I was finally born or similar amenities, but more probably Facebook was not accepting messages yet, simply because it still did not exist).

That’s fine, but what about saving an interesting post? With saving, I mean here, having a way to access that post also after some hours, or days, from the original publication. You can like the post, of course. But this does not solve your problem, it only allows you to be notified for comments, from now on. What about a great post with few or no comments at all? How can you easily retrieve a list of all your liked post?

Nope. There is no way to do it (at my knowledge).

What to do, in the not-too-infrequent case in which you find interesting stuff you want to retrieve at a later time?

Have you experienced the frustration arising from your complete inability to find a given post, at a distance of just a few hours from when you red it? It disappeared from your timeline, that’s all.

You know, Twitter has its way to do it. Tumblr has its way to do it. You can simply mark the post as favorite: anytime, you have an easy way to access to your favorite posts. Facebook has no way to do it. It’s interesting that neither Google+ has its way to do it: too much shaped on Facebook style?

Anyway, I ~~think~~ am pretty sure that it would be a very welcomed feature. At the moment, when I find something that I do not want to loose, I’m forced to copy/past the text in some note taking app or website (like the excellent MomoNote). Not that I do not see the advantage of this procedure. But I also understand that it’s not comfortable, having to switch to another environment just to save an interesting piece of text, for example.

To be honest, there are workarounds already available: for example, if you use Chrome you can benefit of extensions like Facebook Favourite. Anyway, even if the idea is good, it’s still far from obtaining the real benefits of a native Facebook feature, and apart from that, while the extension basically do it’s work, there is (let me say so) great room for further improvements.

To have a Twitter style manner to save post for a later usage, will be simply great. Let’s hope Facebook just realize it.

Make more art

2014-06-10T12:47:00.005+02:00

There is only one possible answer. This diagram has the advantage of a great simplicity. You can’t escape. When I saw this on Jeff Goins Facebook page, I was immediately struck by the evidence of the answer. Yes. The only answer is make more art, no matter how you can evaluate your craft.

The other thing that prompt me to reflect is the simple fact evidence that if you make art, you’re an artist. No matter what. So it’s extremely liberating: you are immediately free from the prepotence of your inner censor, the one that always keeps saying “no, you’re not good enough, it’s better that you quit now”.

Our work as artists is not to win the internal censor, that’s probably impossible. It’s different, it’s to keep on notwithstanding the internal censor. To keep on embracing your fear.

So, let’s make more art. World is waiting for us to express our unique voice.

Thanks Jeff, I definitely needed it 🙂

OSX, a tale of complex simplicity

2014-04-13T09:26:00.015+02:00

One thing I like very much about working with a Mac, it’s not the Mac itself. It’s the software. I found several pieces of software for OSX that have a sort of intriguing personality. At first glance they seems very simple guys: they are not intimidating you, they do not bother you with a lot of possibilities to do what they are supposed to do.They do their job in a simple way and most of the time you’re fine with them. Perfectly fine.

Then it may happen; at a given point you want to search for a given feature that’s not so immediate, or you want simply to explore new possibilities of a program that it’s now quite familiar to you. And then you discover that normally you use your program (as your brain) only for a little part of its possibilities. In other worlds, the simplicity does not come at the price of reducing the possibilities and the features: I propose the terms complex simplicity to address this issue. I used linux for several years, sometimes even Windows, but only coming to OSX I found programs with this attractive peculiarity (be advised, anyway, that things may change, and my knowledge can be partial or biased).

This seems to me particularly true when I turn to writing software. Note that I am now on the point to reveal you which are my favorite programs to write down worlds in a computer (one of the things I like most, definitively). Just to start from here, I’m writing this post with MarsEdit, a program that fits wonderfully this paradigm of complex simplicity. It’s only after some time spent looking around that you discover what it really can do. At the first glance, you’re presented with a very simple interface, letting you to write down your thoughts without having to deal with an excessive amount of technology. MarsEdit can even be reduced to a simple windows, to just write (see below). There are many option but you do not need to worry about them until you actuality start searching them.

Writing this post with MarsEdit was a pleasure

At any rate, the software that surprised me most, about its complex simplicity, is definitively MacJournal. I bought this long time ago, to be adopted mainly as a daily work diary (a task which it does quite well, in passing). It’s only recently that I realized how MacJournal is good at writing. I mean, writing short stories, as well as poetry. Wonderful, for that. I’ve adopted MacJournal to manage a series of short stories I’m developing. I created a diary named Racconti (which stands for Novels in Italian) which has various folders (you can organize your diaries at your pleasure), one for each project. Each entry in such folders is a novel, at various stages of completeness. For each post, I can easily see the number of words, I can make it editable or not, see the creation or last modification date, and a number of other useful option. Of course I have a full set of options for text formatting. I can even set a word goal for a specific diary, very useful when it does contain novels. When it comes to create, writing without distraction is easily done by choosing Focused Editing Mode, which turns MacJournal as a all screen application, showing text over a customizable background. There is much more in MacJournal, of course. This is just to give you an idea of an excellent software, very good for writing. And, needless to say, for each kind of journaling!

But the first great program for writing, you guessed, is Scrivener. Admittedly, Scrivener takes some times to understand how can you use it in an intelligent way (i.e., to really take advantages of its peculiarities). It is a kind of program which ask you to live with him for a while, before starting to use it at its best, moving inside its incredible set of features. Nevertheless, even with complex piece of software as Scrivener, you can follow a gradual approach. Thanks to its complex simplicity, you can be productive almost immediately, even you’re still barely scratching the surface of the sea of possibilities. I’ll probably talk more about Scrivener in a future post.

This was intended to let you understand why I like OSX software. And why I think that a writer feels at home with a Mac (no advertise intended!).

Do bloggers have choices?

2014-04-01T14:31:00.002+02:00

Just found this interesting article that has been Fresh Pressed. These are the questions that – more or less – each blogger can find behind him. The answer may indeed be found in flexibility and in our true desire to embrace multiplicity. Good post indeed.