New Blog on the block

I just discovered Desktop Tales, a blog (in Italian) where marco publishes, among other things, the comic strip with the same name, featuring a Mac and PC commenting current news from the computer world and not.

I loved it, so I thought you may want to have a look too.

Thanks to [Emo] for spreading the news.

Daphne has a blog!!!

Full of pretty sketches!!! Go and check it out!!!

http://daphne-daphn3.blogspot.com/

New Books

Carl Zimmer let us know that he’s just finished editing the concise edition of “The Descent of Man” by Charles Darwin. So, I went off to amazon to buy a copy together with “Fish with fingers, Whales with legs”, and… “Pearls Before Swine: Blts Taste So Darn Good”…

Here’s the proof:

Open Orders

Order Date: 8 Sep 2007 Order #: 202-4890542-7183528 Recipient: Luca A. Fenu

Items not yet dispatched: Delivery estimate: 28 Nov 2007 – 30 Nov 2007 1 of: The Descent of Man Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L. 1 of: Pearls Before Swine: Blts Taste So Darn Good Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L. 1 of: At the Water’s Edge: Fish with Fingers, Whales with Legs… Sold by: Amazon EU S.a.r.L.

The only prob is that I’ll have to wait to get the others too, since Amazon does make you pay for delivery (differently from Play.com, where I usually buy my stuff). So the stuff will not come through before end of November!!!

Narrativium rules!

I loved Good Omens, from Gaiman and Pratchett. The Discworld I could not bear, Pratchett’s humour needs to be tempered by someone else hand, otherwise it’s just too much.

RTight now I am reading “The Science of Discworld”, and I’m too lazy to translate from Italian what I posted in a private forum: here it is. The final part is about Stardust, the gaiman-inspired movie which is getting very good reviews from both critics and audience.

Proprio ora sto leggendo “The science of Discworld”, che e’ parte racconto fantasy, con i maghi della Unseen University che creano x accidente il ‘nostro’ universo e ne osservano gli eventi, parte divulgazione con articoli di Ian Stewart e Jack Cohen (e Pratchett ovviamente) che trattano degli stessi argomenti in maniera leggera e molto originale. Son a meta’ del primo e me lo sto godendo davvero, non vedo l’ora di attaccare il secondo e il terzo che ho comprato insieme.

riguardo Stardust, ecco un altro paio di reviews:

Da un sito amatoriale.

Dal sito di Sci-Fi Channel

NY Times

sembra OK.

su IMDB si e’ beccato un gran bel 8.3.

here’s the trailer:

(whenever youtube wakes up)

Knights of the Order of Hello Kitty

(image from http://www.anime.com/Hello_Kitty/images/circle-01.jpg removed to avoid google-bombing)
The NY Times let us know that to authorities have decided to expose to public humiliation thai police officers who disobey the rules themselves by awarding them a compulsory Hello Kitty arm band. they hope that the threat of shame in front of others will work better than more formal warnings.

New Bloggies

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blogroll.

I am inserting today one more link to a friend’s blog: Emiliano is a guy from my birth-city, and he was my pusher for many years, when his bookshop was the only reliable source of comic book in the whole city. Of course you could get them elsewhere, but only there you had your pigeon-hole where he’d carefully slot the latest copy of DragonBall or Ranma 1/2. I still come around the bookshop every time I’m around there, although I rarely if ever get the time to read the stuff. Comics have bored me, sort of. The latest manga look boy-ish, Bonelli’s are monotonous and badly told. Most likely, exposure to the broader stream of english literature opened my eyes on the real (lack of) quality of (some, most) comic books. Only the old glories I can keep reading, but it’ most likely due to the emotions they re-awake in me than anything else.

this statement wouldn’t be funny, if it weren’t for irony

thanks to XKCD

and one more comic to laugh your brain out (if you have no brain, you won’t catch it)

Calda e’ / fredda e’ / differenza c’e’.

Remember Ranma 1/2? During my university year it was one of my favorite comic books. here’s the italian version of the anime opening theme.

So, why is this post tagged as science? Well, cause I was listening to Nature Podcast from 07/06/07 and heard that some scientist elucidated the reason why menthol tastes ‘cold’. Long story short, it (presumably binds and) activates a Na/Ca ion channel, present in our tongue but also in other sensory terminations (see menthol shower-gels), which is normally active only at temperatures below 28 degrees. Hence, the ‘cold’ sensation. Cool, ain’t it?

Why Ranma as title holder? well, cause for this character those termination were pretty important, since a bucket of cold water would transform him into a her (just like the song says). Now imagine if he had known this. May be now we would be able to cure his/her curse?

PS: the title says: Is it warm? Is it cold? It makes a difference! (from the italian theme song)

PPS: Incidentally, I’ve also worked on ion channels, during my previous year (expressed in the heart, though, not in the tongue) and will present my in silico models at Lille, France, this first week of july. See you there may be

Ouch! Fantastic Four: The rise of Silver Surfer sucks, too…

The NY Times reviewer says so.

Well, I guess that I’ll have to check it out as usual. Although since the move I haven’t been very active in downloading movies. Miracles of commuting, I’d say.
(In the picture, the Silver Surfer leaves the cinema in a rush after the movie, to avoid furious spectators)

My movie time goes wasted on the motorway, now. Together with the hydrocarboms laboriously
accumulated by mother Earth during the last 500 million years. Ouch!

Spiderman 3 Sucks.

Spiderman 3 Sucks. I am not the only one who thinks so.

here’s the reasons why:

Peter & Mary spent time in the park.
Meteor w/ the black symbiote crashes nearby.
Harry prepares to be “New Goblin”.
Flint escapes jail, becomes Sandman.
Peter finds out Flint killed Ben.
Symbiote attaches to Spider-Man.
Spider-Man almost kills Sandman.
Peter becomes emo.
Eddie hates Peter and Spider-Man.
Peter starts up with Gwen.
Harry tries to trap Peter.
Peter burns Harry (who had amnesia).
After Mary incident, Peter plans to get rid of symbiote.
Eddie becomes Venom.
Venom sort of looks like Carnage and Spider-Man
Venom teams with the NOT-dead Sandman.
They kidnap Mary.
Spider-Man & “New Goblin” team up.
Venom kills Harry.
Spider-Man throws a pumpkin bomb.
Venom dies.
Sandman blows away (maybe dead, maybe not).
Peter and Mary go to Harry’s funeral.
They re-establish their relationship.
The movie ends.
People go home and punch things in frustration.

yes I am a counter whore… just posting about spiderman ’cause makes the counter tick…

more meaningful posts later on, now I’ve got to rush to my second dutch lesson. (plin!)