July 2004

A Visit to the Ferrari Museum

July 31, 2004

We visited the Galleria Ferrari in July, 2004. The museum is not large, but crammed full of fascinating Ferrari memorabilia and, of course, dozens of beautiful cars. This is a very popular page on my site, so I’d be curious to know: how did you get here and why do you like these photos?

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Ceramics, Embroidery – and a Nice Chianti

July 30, 2004

Shopping in Greve del Chianti ^ This is the only place I’ve seen in Italy with its own logo. End your shopping day at the wine center, where you can taste “Super Tuscans” and all the other wonderful wines of Chianti.

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Summer Fun, Italian Family Style

July 27, 2004

video shot July 27, 2004 – 3.2 MB Roseto degli Abruzzi Most Italians spend at least part of their summer vacation at a beach somewhere. Many have vacation homes, others stay in hotels. The cheapest option is camping, but Italian campgrounds have little in common with the KOA campgrounds I remember from some American parts of [...]

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Lecco Gospel

July 20, 2004

I borrowed a digital video camera from the office yesterday so I could experiment with video as a means of communication. I have had a video camera for years, but haven’t used it much because it’s analog, so everything I shot had to be painstakingly converted to digital before I could do much with it, [...]

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First Steps in Putting Video on a Website

July 19, 2004

I’m experimenting with ways to publish video on the web. To view the video, you need to have installed the Macromedia Flash Player.] This first effort was labor-intensive: I started from a video clip I recorded from TV to VCR years ago, and digitized some time later to MPEG 1, using Adaptec’s then-current VideOh! device. [...]

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Where’s the Music?

July 17, 2004

I’m old enough to remember the late 60s/early 70s and the protests against the Vietnam war. I grew up singing protest songs, both rock and folk. So here we are, protesting again – but where’s the music? Michael Moore reportedly was upset because he couldn’t use The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again in “Fahrenheit 9/11,” [...]

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The Great Global Conspiracy

July 17, 2004

“There are, of course, conspiracies in American life: Watergate was one; Enron seems to be another. And conspiracy theories have oozed through the history of the republic from the days of anti-Masonry onward. But it was Kennedy’s murder, coupled with Oswald’s, that left our era more inclined to reach for conspiracy as the explanation for [...]

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Integration of Muslim Students in Italian Schools

July 17, 2004

The integration of Islamic immigrants into Italian society raises thorny problems. A Milan high school has announced that this fall it will have a first-year class composed only of Muslim students, at the request of their parents. These students have completed eight years at a private Islamic school in Milan. (This school is not accredited [...]

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Italian Restaurants: Osteria del Viaggiatore

July 15, 2004

I had driven past this place in Lecco many times, but it’s easily overlooked – the outside of the building is unprepossessing unpainted cement, though the large sign with a mysterious painting on it is intriguing, and we heard that it was good. So we finally went last night. The menu is fixed-price, 30 euros [...]

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Keeping Cool, Italian Style

July 5, 2004

My two weeks with the lawyers reminded me of one way in which I have become very unAmerican: I hate air conditioning. Actually, I don’t really mind A/C as such, but the way Americans overdo it. The law and support team from Florida was baffled by the relative lack of air conditioning in Milan’s hot, [...]

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In the Company of Lawyers

July 5, 2004

I’ve spent the last two weeks interpreting (English to Italian and back again) for depositions in an arbitration between a Venezuelan and an Italian company – work that I was offered via a colleague on the board of Democrats Abroad-Milan. It was arranged at the last minute, so the hirers didn’t insist on any special qualifications [...]

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War is Virtual Hell

July 5, 2004

I’ve seen Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11. Very disturbing in so many ways that I won’t go into – whether you agree with Moore or you don’t, this film is not likely to change your mind. But one thing in particular, peripheral to Moore’s arguments, jumped out at me. The film shows an American TV ad recruiting [...]

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