Word of the Month: Vajazzle

From the selection of new words to Oxford Dictionaries Online, August 2012.

VAJAZZLE

verb [with object] (usually as noun vajazzling) informal

  adorn the pubic area of (a woman) with crystals, glitter, or other decoration.

Origin: early 21st century: probably from vagina or vajayjay and bedazzle

Quote of the day: Howard Zinn

“Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.” 

Today would have been the 90th birthday of the "proud and unabashedly radical" author of A People's History of the United States. 

I once saw him speaking at Riverside Church, in 2003, with Arundhati Roy, and I feel very lucky to have been there.

Un ristorante per cannibali

I miei studenti hanno spesso difficoltà a capire la differenza fra "tutto" aggettivo e "tutto" pronome. Per spiegarla meglio cito sempre il nome di questo locale, dicendo che sembra un ristorante per cannibali. Di solito funziona.

Quote of the day: Junot Díaz

"It is probably her son she misses, or the father. Or our whole country, which you never think of until it's gone, which you never love until you're no longer there."

Junot Díaz, Otravida, otravez

Sunset on Mars

"On May 19, 2005, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit captured this stunning view as the Sun sank below the rim of Gusev crater on Mars. This Panoramic Camera mosaic was taken around 6:07 in the evening of the rover's 489th Martian day, or sol."

Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell

More Martian pictures here.

Meet my husband/18: Jonathon Keats and the silent ringtone

 

Jonathon Keats - My Cage (Silence for Cellphone)

 

Dortmunder U | 3. Etage | 24. August 2012

Jonathon Keats
My Cage [Silence for Cellphone]

Conceptual ringtone for mobile phone, digital files (mp3, Word doc, and web links), 4:33 min., 2007 Courtesy of the artist and Modernism Gallery, San Francisco

--> Download ring tone (mp3, 1,4 MB)

Conceptual artist Jonathon Keats has digitally generated a span of silence, four minutes and thirty-three seconds in length, portable enough to be carried on a cellphone. His silent ringtone, freely distributed through special arrangement with Start Mobile, is expected to bring quiet to the lives of millions of cellphone users, as well as those close to them. ›When major artists such as 50 Cent... started making ringtones, I realized that anything was possible in this new medium,‹ says Mr. Keats. ›I also knew that another artist, John Cage, had formerly tried, and failed, to create a silent interlude.‹

My Cage (Silence for Cellphone) dispenses with performer and piano and auditorium, instead utilizing a continuous stream of silence produced on a computer, and compressed to standard ringtone format. This silence can be heard whenever a call comes through, whether out on the street, at a noisy concert, or in the quiet of home.
A remastering of Mr. Cage's classic, My Cage is also a remix, according to Mr. Keats. ›It introduces serendipity into the equation, delivering performances unpredictably, whenever calls come unexpectedly. You never know.‹

My Cage (Silence for Cellphone) is part of the exhibition SOUNDS LIKE SILENCE (25.08.2012 - 06.01.2013).

Sunset from the roof

Quote of the day: Paul McCartney

“Somebody said to me, ‘But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.’ That’s a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, ‘Now, let’s write a swimming pool.’”

– Paul McCartney

Io & Ansel

Quando l'ho fotografata non sapevo che la Saint Teresa of Avila Church di Bodega, oltre a essere la più vecchia chiesa tuttora in uso della Sonoma County (costruita nel 1861), fosse anche il soggetto di una famosa foto di Ansel Adams del 1953. 

Sono felice di avere gli stessi gusti di Ansel.

"Church and Road" by Ansel Adams

I Peanuts a Petaluma

Grazie alla collega traduttrice Ada Arduini, ho scoperto che Petaluma non è famosa solo per gli allevamenti di polli, come avevo scritto nel post di ieri. In realtà il momento di massima fama lo ha raggiunto quando è stata citata nelle strisce dei Peanuts (Charles Schultz è vissuto a Santa Rosa, lì vicino, e la città gli ha dedicato un museo).

Una gita a Bodega, con Alfred Hitchcock

Le cittadine tutte uguali mi deprimono da morire, con le loro distese di mall e casette anonime, negozi-fotocopia e giardinetti ben curati con immancabile bandiera. Per fortuna ci sono ancora sacche di resistenza, soprattutto lungo la costa. Bolinas, Point Reyes e Mendocino, per esempio.

Oggi invece abbiamo fatto una gita nella Sonoma County, fermandoci a Bodega per un tuffo tra i souvenir di Alfred Hitchcock e a Petaluma per fare shopping in una libreria che ci piace.

Ci siamo lasciati alle spalle il muro di schifida nebbia che come al solito stava piombando sulla città

e siamo entrati nell'estate. Dopo un'oretta eccoci a Bodega, il paesino dove è stato girato... quale film? 

Questa era la scuola, la riconoscete?

 Ed ecco la bottega di Bodega

Questa è la chiesa

E questo l'ufficio postale. Non c'è molto altro a Bodega.

A Petaluma invece ci sono molti allevamenti di polli, e ne vanno così fieri che li mettono anche sulla pubblicità della Coca Cola.

Ricicli d'agosto: A wonderful book

Continua la serie dei post riciclati d'agosto. Questa volta vi ripropongo un post del maggio 2011 in cui parlavo di Infinite City - A San Francisco Atlas, uno splendido libro su San Francisco curato da Rebecca Solnit.

 

While I confidently wait for my benefactor to show up, here's one of the books that have inspired my grant request. Like another wonderful book that I wrote about a few weeks ago, this one is also an atlas. This must mean something.

(Adapted from the book jacket): "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas" (University of California Press), is Rebecca Solnit's brilliant reinvention of the traditional atlas. Aided by artists, writers, cartographers, and twenty-two gorgeous color maps, each of which illuminates the city and its surroundings as experienced by different inhabitants, Solnit takes us on a tour that will forever change the way we think about the San Francisco Bay Area. She explores the area thematically--connecting, for example, Eadweard Muybridge's foundation of motion-picture technology with Alfred Hitchcock's filming of Vertigo. Across an urban grid of just seven by seven miles, she finds seemingly unlimited landmarks and treasures--butterfly habitats, queer sites, murders, World War II shipyards, blues clubs, Zen Buddhist centers. She roams the political terrain, both progressive and conservative, and details the cultural geographies of the Mission District, the culture wars of the Fillmore, the South of Market world being devoured by redevelopment, and much, much more."

From a review by Lise Funderburg in the NYT: "One well-rendered map, 'Shipyards and Sounds,' juxtaposes World War II shipyards alongside African-American political and musical landmarks and speaks wonderfully to the causes and outcomes of the Great Migration. For another inspired pairing, 'Monarchs and Queens,' the poet Aaron Shurin writes an exquisite essay on emerging gender identity, coupled with a map of 'Butterfly Habitats and Queer Public Spaces' (...). In '400 Years and 500 Evictions,' the plotted landmarks of four residents, all centenarians or near-centenarians (including the artist Add Bonn, who has been around long enough to note that the Golden Gate Bridge 'ruined the view'), are powerful counterpoints to hundreds of dots representing evictions that took place from 2000 to 2005, erasing affordable housing and presumably lowering chances that the city will supply many more of the kind of living histories offered here.

From another review, by Adam Kirsch:  "It's not often that an atlas can be described as experimental, or nostalgic, or poetic. Infinite City deserves all those adjectives; but then, despite its subtitle, this is not a book you would take with you on a San Francisco road trip. The maps in this tall, slender volume (...) are meant not as guides but as provocations. They are designed to make the reader think anew about the city of San Francisco—its history, natural habitat, economic function, political values—and, by extension, about the way we all imagine the places we live in. (...) Like poems, some of these maps are inspired by witty conceits and unlikely juxtapositions. 'Death and Beauty' plots the locations of the 99 murders that took place in San Francisco in 2008 and, on the same map, shows where to find stands of Monterey cypress—trees whose stable, silent lives,' Solnit writes, 'made them the right counterweight to violent death.' (...) The map 'Right Wing of the Dove: The Bay Area as Conservative/Military Brain Trust' plots military bases alongside conservative think tanks and the offices of Chevron and Walmart, secure in the assumption that all these things are equally detestable to the book's own contributors and readers. There is a parochialism, at times even a snobbishness, at work in Infinite City—which may be just another expression of its deep love of the place, and the past, it so ingeniously illustrates.

Argomenti di conversazione

Stati Uniti: "Che lavoro fai?"

Italia: "Dove vai in vacanza?"

Free Pussy Riot Now!

Detained members of the art group Pussy Riot (r to l):

Maria Alekhina, 24. Poet and Student at the Institute of Journalism and Creative writing. Mother of 5 year-old boy. 

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23. Visual Artist and 4th year Philosophy Student. Mother of 4 year-old girl.

Ekaterina Samucevich, 29. Visual Artist, degree from The Alexander Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia, Moscow.

They risk a 3-year sentence in a labor camp, for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred.” Their verdict is set for next Friday, August 17th.

Their crime? Performing an anti-Putin, anti-religious song at the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, Moscow, in February this year. The band stormed the altar while shouting “Mother of God, Blessed Virgin, drive out Putin!”

These women have been detained since March, without access to their families or possibility of parole.

Please, take action, sign the Amnesty International petition to save them!

La Chevron brucia a Richmond

Lunedì sera si sono verificate due esplosioni nella raffineria della Chevron di Richmond, vicino a San Francisco. Notizie in inglese qui, in italiano qui.

Oggi l'aria puzzava. 

I giornali parlavano soprattutto di quanto aumenterà il prezzo della benzina in seguito all'incidente.

Ricicli d'agosto: The Theory of Stupidity

Ecco qui un altro post agostano riciclato, questa volta del'aprile 2011. In inglese, perché l'ho scritto per diffondere nel mondo il verbo del grande Carlo M. Cipolla.

The Theory of Stupidity

Carlo M. Cipolla's Theory of Stupidity is so brilliant, so profoundly true, that deserves to be known all over the world. It is known in Italy, but maybe not so much in the English-speaking world, so I want to give my small contribution with this brief survey. In The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (The Mad Millers, 1976), later republished in Italian with the title Allegro ma non troppo (Il Mulino,1988), Carlo M. Cipolla makes a study of human stupidity which is absolutely ingenious in its simplicity. 
 

According to Cipolla, there are five fundamental laws of stupidity (the boldface is mine):

1. Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
2. The probability that a given person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person.
3. A person is stupid if they cause damage to another person or group of people without experiencing personal gain, or even worse causing damage to themselves in the process.
4. Non-stupid people always underestimate the harmful potential of stupid people; they constantly forget that at any time anywhere, and in any circumstance, dealing with or associating themselves with stupid individuals invariably constitutes a costly error.
5. A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person there is.

As is evident from the third law, Cipolla identifies two factors to consider when exploring human behaviour:

• Benefits and losses that an individual causes to him or herself.
• Benefits and losses that an individual causes to others.

By creating a graph with the first factor on the x-axis and the second on the y-axis, we obtain four groups of people:

• Intelligent people (top right)
• Helpless / Naive people (top left)
• Bandits (bottom right)
• Stupid people (bottom left)

You can read more about Carlo M. Cipolla and the Theory of Stupidity here. 

And here is the follow-up about the publication of the book in English.

Photo caption contest/4

A cosa pensa l'uomo seduto in basso a destra?

Riciclo d'agosto con lieto fine: zuppa di pinne di pescecane, addio!

Visto che tanti di voi sono in vacanza e frequentano un po' meno il blog, ho deciso che ogni tanto vi riproporrò qualche articolo vecchio e poco commentato che potrebbe esservi sfuggito.

Il primo, pubblicato nel marzo 2011, aveva per tema le pinne di pescecane, ed è aggiornato con un lieto fine. Eccolo:

Proprio ieri passeggiavo per Chinatown, ammirando l'assortimento di cibi misteriosi in vendita nei negozi, tra cui enormi cumuli di pinne di squalo essiccate, che si usano appunto per la famosa zuppa. Non ho dovuto combattere molto fra il rispetto per le tradizioni altrui e l'orrore per la morte atroce degli squali che subiscono lo "spinnamento" (73 milioni all'anno, un'ecatombe che si è portata via il 90% degli squali, minacciando seriamente anche l'equilibrio della catena alimentare), cioè la pratica di tagliare la pinna mentre lo squalo è ancora vivo e buttare il resto del corpo in mare. Gli squali "spinnati" muoiono dopo una lentissima agonia, alcuni di fame, altri divorati da altri pesci, e molti annegati, perché gli squali devono continuare a muoversi per far entrare l'acqua attraverso le branchie per l'ossigeno.

Insomma, proprio ieri pensavo: "ma non possono vietare di vendere 'sta roba?" E proprio stamattina ho trovato un articolo sul NYT che parla di questo. Dopo le Hawaii, che hanno bandito la zuppa l'anno scorso, ora anche la California ha presentato una proposta di legge analoga. La comunità cinese, soprattutto i suoi membri più anziani e legati alle tradizioni, è prevedibilmente infuriata (la vendita delle pinne di squalo è anche una grossa fonte di introiti), anche se uno dei due firmatari della proposta è proprio un deputato cinese, Paul Fong, un democratico di Silicon Valley. Invece il senatore Leland Yee, candidato a sindaco di San Francisco, si oppone al bando, dicendo che si spinge troppo in là, vietando la vendita di pinne anche da squali catturati legalmente. 

Sarà interessante vedere chi l'avrà vinta, in una disputa che vede coinvolte molte tematiche importanti per San Francisco: i diritti della comunità cinese, l'anima "foodie" della città e quella ambientalista.

Qualche mese dopo aver scritto questo post, ho letto che il governatore della California Jerry Brown ha firmato il divieto di vendere le pinne di pescecane. 
Lunga vita a Governor Moonbeam!

Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

Un film bellissimo. 

 Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

 

"Ai Weiwei is China's most famous international artist, and its most outspoken domestic critic. Against a backdrop of strict censorship and an unresponsive legal system, Ai expresses himself and organizes people through art and social media. In response, Chinese authorities have shut down his blog, beat him up, bulldozed his newly built studio, and held him in secret detention".

"Spot the Translator": an international contest for video artists

THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL "SPOT THE TRANSLATOR" CONTEST FOR VIDEO ARTISTS

Literary translators don’t exist. That’s what you’d often think looking at the press, book reviews, book covers... You’d think books are magically written in all sorts of languages at once. Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in English, but they are read all over the world in Russian, German, Swedish, Catalan... So literary translators do exist. Help make us visible.

CEATL, the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations, is calling for video artists to create sparky and clever short films reflecting the existence and importance of literary translators, their challenges, and their role in literature. Videos up to three minutes long are accepted, and a prize of 1000 Euros will be awarded for the winner on the International Translation Day, the 30th of September 2012.

Contest rules:

-Videos up to three minutes long are accepted.

-A low quality version of the films shall be submitted to the CEATL facebook page between the 27th of August and the 2nd of September 2012. Selected participants will be asked for a high quality video (H264) to be exhibited by CEATL member associations.

-CEATL secures the right to use the winning video(s) to promote literary translators. Should CEATL wish to use other videos for its purposes, the permission of the artist/artists shall be requested. CEATL will not pass the videos to any parties other than CEATL member associations. CEATL will not use the videos for economic profit.

-The CEATL jury will consider the ten most popular videos on the Facebook page (by September 16th 2012), and choose a winner from among them.
-CEATL member associations will exhibit the videos and organize press conferences promoting the winning video(s).

-The winner will be awarded 1000 Euros, and it will be announced on the Facebook page on September the 30th, International Translators’ Day.

-Offensive videos will be removed from the contest and the Facebook page.

-The jury has the right not to award the prize, or to split it between two participants in the event of a tie.

-The jury will not enter into correspondence (or any other contact with participants) about its decision.