The Wizard Language and the haphazard words

The Wizard Language and the haphazard words

Once upon a time there was a planet called Earth. Its name was so, although to tell the truth, there was more sea than earth.
The inhabitants of the Earth, in fact, used the words in an odd way. For example, consider the fishes. When they all swim together they call it school. But fishes don't go to school like kids. Wouldn't it be more logical to call it swimming-team?
Also the important things were often very confusing. They always spoke about "rights": the right of education, for example, meant that all the children could (and should!) go to school.
The right of health, then, should have meant that everybody, hurt, or sick, should have had the possibility to go to the hospital.
But who lived in a country without any school, or that, because of the war, could not leave home, or who didn't have enough money to pay the hospital (and this, in the poor countries, is more a rule than an exception), these rights were actually some lefts: they didn't worth a flying fig.
Since they were not true for everybody but only for who could afford it, those things were not rights: they become privileges, or special benefits reserved to few people...
Some times, even, the powerful of the Earth used to call "peace operation" the one that, in reality, was an operation of war: they used to say exactly the opposite of what they actually meant.
And then, on the Earth, there wasn't agreement between men about the meanings anymore: for some people wealth meant having ten thousand billion, for others it meant having at least one potato to eat.
What a mess! So much confusion that one day the Wizard Language could not stand it anymore.
Language was a very powerful wizard, that a long time ago had invented the words and had given them to man.
At first there had been some confusion because people did not know how to use them, and if one said artichoke, the other thought of a kangaroo, and if one said spaghetti the other meant gorilla, and at the restaurant they did never understand each other.
Then the Wizard Language stuck to every word a precise meaning, so that the words always meant the same thing, and for everybody.
Then the artichoke has always been a vegetable and the gorilla a furry animal, and there was no more the risk to find for a mistake a big furry animal in the dish, with its large head covered with tomato sauce.
This job to give a precise meaning to words, had cost a lot of effort to the Wizard Language.
Now, seeing that men did not care about his work, and that they continued to use the words haphazardly, he decided to teach them a lesson.
"Words are important - he liked to say - if you change the words you also change the world, and then you do not understand anything anymore."
One night, therefore, he started to mess things up a little, moving a syllable here, one there, combining vowels and consonants, making anagrams with nouns. In the morning, in fact, nobody could understand each other anymore.
To all of the hotels in a big town he attached the letter B to the rooms, which became brooms. The people lodging in those hotels woke up the next morning, and instead of laying in their beds, they were riding brooms like a bunch of witches.
He changed the c of car with an f, and it became far, and who was looking for his car he could find it only very far away.
To the cakes, instead, he changed the c to l, and they became all... lakes, so that the kids couldn't eat them anymore. And they were not good to be thrown in somebody's face either.
In the schools he had fun, at the time of the roll call, to make an anagram with the word present, and if before a student was present now he was serpent, and the teacher ran away terrified.
Then satisfied a personal whim: he completely removed the word war, which he invented by accident, and didn't like it.
So a great leader of the Earth, which at that time was about to declare war, had to stop in mid-sentence, and they didn't do anything about it.
He had also turned the cannons into cannolos, Sicilian cannolos, of course, and who was fighting found himself all covered with ricotta cheese and candied fruit.
This went on for several days, with dishes that became fishes and swam away, bricks that became cricks and buildings start complaining for the pain, rice that became mice and the cat wanted to chase them.
What a mess! Too much confusion and the men could not stand it anymore.
Then they sent a delegation to ask him to reset the words, and with them the world.
"All right - said Language - but only on one condition: that you begin to use the words with their correct meaning.
The rights of men must be for all men, really all of them, otherwise just call

them privileges. Equality must mean that everyone is truly equal, and not that someone is more equal than someone else. And about the war...".
"About the war - interrupted the men - we've thought... you keep it, it's a word we can do without."

Cecilia Strada

English translation of mine, with help by Rowena.

Cecilia Strada is the daughter of Gino Strada and Teresa Sarti, founders of the organization Emergency that has the main task of giving medical assistance in the countries mangled by wars.
You can find the original story, in Italian, over here. As you can imagine the translation was a difficult task, because the puns cannot be literally given in English. I hope Cecilia doesn't mind if i had to make significant changes to try to preserve the general meaning.

Primaries of PD

This coming sunday there will be the primaries for the election of PD's leader. I will vote for Ignazio Marino, for the reasons i described some times ago in this post.
I share all the points listed by Artemisia on on her blog.

Good election day to everybody.

Two!

10/10/2007

Take that, Berlusconi!

I stole this photo from my friend Silvano's blog.

The rejection of the law "lodo Alfano" [the judical immunity for the four highest offices of State - Berlusconi included], deserves deep and complex political discussion.
In the mean time this panda bear, endangered animal just like endangered is democracy in Italy, enjoys a good fart in spite of Berlusconi.

Valle d'Aosta and the cow

Teteun

The cow is almost a symbol of the mountain region Valle d'Aosta. Over there, in fact, cow breeding is a good business, and bovine products are particularily valuable. Cow milk, cheeses, bovine meat are very good.
In that region we tasted for the first time a particular product obtained by bovine udder: the "Teteun" [pronounced teh-TEHN, where the 'eh' sounds like the vowels in the english word "bird" or the french "beuf" or the german "Köln"].
During the past August holidays we attended a festival of that product in the little town of Gignod, "la Fëta di Teteun" and we ate it in three different recipes: plain boiled, stewed with tomato sauce and sliced thin as a cooked ham. I expected to taste something tough. Instead the meat is very tender, a little spongey, very similar to cooked ham. As it often happens with Italian traditional cooking, this kind of food was originated by the need not to waste any edible part of the animal.

Bataille des Reines

Speaking of cows, we also attended to another traditional event. The "Batailles de Reines" [the battles of the queens]. As the host of our bed and breakfast explained to us, the cows of a herd, lacking a dominant bull, naturally fight each other to establish a hierarchy, at the top of which there is the Queen. Those fight usually are symbolic and don't involve any blood. They terminate when one of the two contenders submits to the other, escaping from the push of her head.
The "Batailles de Reines" event is the fights between queens of different herds and they are organized like a knockout competition. We went to one of the preliminary where about 100 cows of different producers were divided in pairs. Three fights taking place contemporarily in a big rounded space. A lot of spectators were intensely involved. The strange thing was the language spoken by the speaker: the local dialect, which sounds like a mixture of italian and french. Obviously the show is played for the locals.
Unfortunately we couldn't attend to the final match that was going to be fought October 11th in Aosta. We were told that this annual appointment is usually a big event that is faithfully attended to by Aosta citizens.

More informations about these events on Rubbah Slippahs in Italy, here and here.

San Marco - Valcava

View

This excursion was quite obvious to find - for us. In fact it is enough to go out from the house and start walking uphill.
To reach the small village of Valcava at the top of the mountain, you can walk on the asphalted road, but this way is not that beautiful in the weekends because it is invaded by hordes of Milanesi cars.
There are several other hiking paths that reach the same destination, cutting across the hairpin bends or ascending next to them.

The first time we tried (August 17th), after a long time without any exercise, we and the dogs decided to turn back half way, tired for the lack of exercise and for the heat of the day. We walked on the paved road and it was easy enough, apart from the last kilometer where the slope is very steep (18%).

After a couple of weeks (September 5), back from the holidays, we tried the second part, parking the car exactly at the end of the previous time. This time we tried to avoid the paved road, in fact we found a nice hiking trail. This part was much more interesting, walking in the fields and the woods and

Stone wash-tub

checking out some views impossible to see driving a car. At a certain point, we found a crossing connecting some different paths where there is a stone wash-tub still in use.
At the top of this excursion we arrived to Valcava village, without reconnecting to the main road.

Last sunday (September 13) we tried the whole distance. To climb the mountain we walked exactly the same paths of both the previous excursions. To return back we tried to stay on the hiking trail. If the middle section is really steep on the road, it is even more on the path, and that, actually, is the only hard part of the whole excursion.
Unfortunately during the descent the battery of my GPS died. That's why we took a lot of time to notice that at a certain point we took the wrong way. The detour was about a couple of kilometers, but fortunately it was enough flat.

First hike
Outward:

Time: 1:03

Distance: 3.95km [2.45mi]

Difference of level: 285m [935'] (302m [991'] uphill and 17m [56'] downhill)

Altitude: between 681m [2234'] and 1008m [3307']

Backward (on the same path)

Time: 1:01

Second hike
Outward:

Time: 0:52

Distance: 2.73km [1.7mi]

Difference of level: 256m [840'] (266m [873'] uphill and 10m [33'] downhill)

Altitude: between 1000m [3281'] and 1266m [4154']

Backward (on the same path)

Time: 0:42

Third hike
Outward:

Time: 1:59

Distance: 7.14km [4.44mi]

Difference of level: 585m [1919'] (612m [2008'] uphill and 27m [89'] downhill)

Altitude: between 681m [2234'] and 1266m [4154']

Backward (on the alternative path, about the same length and altitude)

Time: 2:00

GPS track of the excursions.
A: start at San Marco; B: stone wash-tub; Z: end at Valcava
In red the first excursion, in green the second. In blue the shortcuts on the hiking paths we made during the descent of the third excursion. In yellow the unwanted detour (the yellow and blue tracks were not recorded by the GPS but built on GoogleMap)

Cumulative statistics from the beginning of this year

Total time: 26:33

Distance: 101.29km [62.94mi]

Difference of level: 5522m [18117']

Minimum altitude: 343m [1125']

Maximum altitude: 1550m [5085']

Why to vote for Ignazio Marino at the primary elections of Partito Democratico

I consider myself "leftish" from since when i was old enough to understand, but i am also very critical towards the Partito Democratico since its foundation a few years ago.
My aversion to PD is in its roots. Its founding fathers, through Veltroni's "Corro da solo" ["i run by myself" - a tactic in which he refused any alliance with other minor parties], have managed to build a big party plundering the votes of the Left. They did it riding an electoral system considered by everyone a terribly unjust thing (so much that its creator Roberto Calderoli himself named it "Porcellum" ["pig thing"]). And they took advantage of the "voto utile" ["useful vote"], that is, the leftists realization of the need to stem the fascist tendency towards which the country was already going. The leftists, therefore, preferred to address the strength of their votes to PD instead of wasting them on a minor party. In fact, votes to parties that obtained less than 4%, for the perverse mechanism of the "Porcellum", ended up enforcing the most voted party (the Berlusconi's and his fascist mates' one).
To tell the truth, for PD, the use of this perverted mechanism would neither be such a bad thing if, other than taking advantage of the votes of those electors, it would also take in charge the task to represent their values.
But no. PD did never assume the responsability to give a voice to the values of the Left. To most people, like me, PD became more like a big set of seats that allowed a soft support to the fat butts of who was already well seated in the parties that originated it. PD has never taken any firm position against Berlusconi's extra-power, just when the Country really needed it and waited till now, in the guilty incapability of giving any alternative to Berlusconi's fascism.

So, it's clear for everyone that the old leadership doesn't represent the Left anymore, and for this reason, even without considering the reasonable suspicion of collusion with the "enemy", it should resign allowing new entries to take their place. But it looks like for those old leaders it is more important to preserve their warm ass on the soft throne than the good for Italians.

Ignazio Marino

In the beloved American democracy, anyway, they do exactly that: respectful goodbyes to the losers. Personally, i liked Al Gore a lot. He lost by a few votes in some elections which results were suspicious. But if he didnt give up America wouldn't ever had Obama - and i doubt that Gore, in his pants, running as a loser, would ever been able to win against McCain.

Ignazio Marino is running for the leadership of PD. I'm not comparing him to Barack Obama here, but it is clear that, while Franceschini and Bersani [the other candidates of PD leadership] have already clearly lost against Berlusconi (which suggests that they will loose again), Marino is the New Way. And this statement is valid without even giving a look to his program.
Reading the program one will be astonished by the strength of his positions, an absolute novelty in the context of PD, even before evaluating the contents, which, incidentally, looks to me reasonable and agreeable for anyone naming himself "leftist".

In fact, the Italian media, totally subservient to Berlusconi, publicizes the PD primary elections as a duel between Franceschini and Bersani, giving no visibility to Marino. Obviously because Berlusconi would prefer an opponent who agrees not to contradict him, in exchange for a peaceful coexistence in the puppet theater.

In short, I believe that the staunch Democrats should support Marino, hoping that upon winning the primary elections, he will be able to defeat Berlusconi at the Political Elections, where the rest of the leadership of PD always failed in the past.
Those like me who flow into PD for the "useful vote", should prefer Marino in the hope that finally some conditions will be created to reconcile the values of the whole Left in one only political force. In this way PD could represent their values, the very same values that the old leadership had failed.
I would also say that the supporters of Italia del Valori [another political party, allied to PD] should like Marino leading PD. This party, in fact, can hardly aspire to govern Italy alone or to find allies other than PD. And it is certainly better to relate to a force that has clear goals rather than a rabble of selfish people like Berlusconi's flunkies.

Dario Franceschini and
Pier Luigi Bersani

Obviously, the leadership of the Right would prefer a "subservient" opposition as the one leaded by Franceschini or Bersani: the weakness of the opposition goes hand in hand with the strength of the majority.
But if I were an elector of the Right, I think i would prefer a minority but viable opposition, which tends to make the Good for the citizens, although with different methods. And pressing the Right to always do the best for the Italians (after all this is the proper task of the opposition, isn't it?).

In short, shouldn't it be in the interest of any voter to have loyal and honest opponents?
At the end I think that Marino, as leader of the new PD, would be good for all Italians, except for some politicians and any kind of corrupted persons.

My contribution to this will be to vote for him at the primary elections October the 25th. Also non-members are allowed to vote, at a cost of 2 euros as a contribution for the expenses.
The mechanism for the election of the Secretary, however, is rather complicated. Here are the rules.
What I understand is that voting is permitted to any Italian citizen, EU or with a valid residence permit. But it looks like these elections are decisive only if one candidate obtains more than 50% of the votes, a result that is not realistic for Marino. Otherwise, the secretary shall be chosen among most voted via secret ballot restricted to the National Assembly. So Marino will likely lose, in which case I think PD will have to manage without my vote.

But a relative majority or even a good success of Marino may be a sign of change and an indication of the will of the electorate - that this time, the usual dinosaurs can not ignore.

I believe that the corrupt and fascist regime in which Italy is falling into is primarily a serious responsibility of the Left, which was unable or unwilling to offer a decent alternative. I think Ignazio Marino is an opportunity to fix the problem.