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A relaxing weekend in San Casciano dei Bagni, tuscany, Italy
I’ve spent two wonderful and relaxing days in San Casciano dei Bagni, tuscany, Italy, where they offer warm thermal baths. Aaahhh.
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Twitter daily Updates for 2008-05-09
- SEO is dead? hmmm… quite agree… http://tinyurl.com/5z2rxs #
- dinner with good friends at Lorenzo’s, and then Calendimaggio in Assisi. Great! #
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Masdar City: ecology, hype, or middle way?
Today I found the existence of an interesting project: Masdar City (the official website, and Masdar City on wikipedia), an eco-city near Abu-Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) for some 50,000 people, which will be built in the next few years, and the first available residences will be sold in late 2009.
The project will cost about 22 billion dollars, and tries to be very eco-friendly, using renewable energies and eco-buildings.
This introductory video (both in english and arabic) can give you more details, even if it’s quite an advertisement, rather than a documentary.
First, it’s remarkable that an arab nation goes in this direction. I’d like to point out, though, that “artificial” cities (cities planned from scratch) are always difficult to “grow”, because their citizens are not “natural” as in normal cities, but must have an incentive to go there. Think of Brasilia, which has been a moderate success for the great urban plans, but also because Brazilians were poor, and they were a lot and needed shelter. Will Masdar be successful as well?
In any case, I’d love, in the future, to live in an eco-friendly, not-so-small and not-too-big city, like Vancouver, for example, which ranks among the top ones regarding ecology, life and economy.
From this topic, I also stumbled upon the wikipedia page of Enrico Mattei, a great italian leader and entrepreneur of the mid-decades of 20th century, who led ENI (the national energy company), made tough decisions, and was killed probably by the seven sisters of energy and/or CIA because he endangered their interests.
I sometimes think of doing something lasting and meaningful for mankind, but people that tried that often share such bitter ends.
It seems that the only way to win the inertia of an overriding economic power is to find a way to soften the change, otherwise bad people will kill you.
If you think about it, it’s (sadly) perfectly normal in a human society (I mean, to preserve the position you earned), in which a single person can’t really stand the power of huge corporations.
I don’t have a solution, I’m just observing.
And you?
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Al Gore in Rome: a success for the launch of italian Current_TV
I’m just back from Rome, where I witnessed the launch of the italian Current_TV, the first non-english-speaking version of it.
I was invited at Jovinelli theatre together with about four hundred of other bloggers, technologists, journalists, students and such. It was a great idea (thank to friendly and hyper-energic Marco Montemagno and others), and a great occasion to meet some bloggers that I read, but never met in real life (Paolo Valdemarin, Massimo Mantellini…).
Al Gore, founder of Current_TV, was the main guest.
Enjoy some pictures I’ve taken with my modest Canon EOS 400D (you find these, and other, creative commons Attribution-only photos on my flickr account) :-)
Outside Jovinelli Theatre in Rome, just before the event.
Inside the theatre.
Luca Conti, a.k.a. Pandemìa, a famous italian blogger and latin lover.
Me (Simone Brunozzi) with Daniela Cerrato (Virgilio.it).
Marco Montemagno, italian technologist and journalist for SKY.
Who’s this guy? Can’t remember his name… hmmm…
Well, if he dyes his hair with black, he could resemble Al Gore… :-)
Luca Conti and Marco Montemagno, while Luca is asking a question to Al Gore.
People.
The thing that everybody loved about Al Gore? His boots!
Final word: a great event, and I wish Good Luck to the italian Current_TV!
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Twitter daily Updates for 2008-05-08
- Tra poco parto per Roma (Current_TV e Al Gore), chi mi tiene un posto, dato che arrivo tardino? #
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Current_TV: Rome, Italy, with Al Gore
Today I’ll be in Rome, for the presentation of the italian branch of Current_TV; Al Gore (founder, together with Joel Hyatt) will be there, and I will ask him this question.
