Life of Pi (Yann Martel)

There is something distinctly non-American about the narrative in “Life of Pi.” A flow of story that writers here seem to have forgotten: an seemingly infinite expansion when the story becomes wide and sweeping; a narrowing speedup where the story starts rushing like a rapid. Unpredictability is hence the motto, and it serves the story well.

Life of Pi is a narrative that brought me closer to life, to nature, to humanity. It is probably the best work of fiction I have read this year, by a wide margin. Throughout the reading, I felt reminded of writers like Italo Calvino, who by force of their language evoke a world that does not exist, and make us believe in it for the split second we can give them our undivided attention.

Spanish Concert

Friend invited me to an open air concert of the San Francisco Symphony at Dolores Park, with the main theme of “Spain.”

It was a packed event, and people streamed into the venue long after it had all started. It was a wonderful day, with the heat of Saturday replaced by Sunday’s stream of cool fog air.

All in all a success. My hosts had packed great lunches, and wine to boot. I had brought some water, ice cream, and a tan-through swimsuit. And of course my bike, and my cycling clothes, as if to underline the recent ending of the Tour de France.

Cancer and Evolution?

Strolling back from my morning coffee run, I noticed a pigeon with a giant cancerous growth underneath its left wing. I didn’t know pigeons suffer from tumors, although it surely makes sense.

I was feeling pity for the poor little fella, but suddenly my thoughts turned in a different direction: what if the tumor growth had actually been something that helps the pigeon survive? What if the distinguishing features of a pigeon were actually determined not by slow mutation and selection, but by a mechanism that allows for sudden appearance of a new feature without slow motion?

Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism (J.S. Spong)

The most outstanding thing an alien from Western Europe notices when crossing the border to the United States is the degree to which Puritanism has influenced the world view of the common human in this country. Literal fundamentalism is something virtually unknown where I come from, and the Bible as a whole is read as a book illustrating the divine, not taking it for granted.

Indeed, Western Europe has spent a great many years and a great many deaths on finally convincing itself the earth is not flat, the sun does not revolve around the earth, and that God did not create the world in seven literal days. Here in America, though, people seem to genuinely believe that the Bible is the literal word of God (which it claims for itself only in special circumstances). In addition, people here seem to believe that any iniquity or inaccuracy is justified if they can find a verse in the Bible that seems to hint in their direction.
John Shelby Spong is an Episcopal bishop who tried to give the common human two things: first, a basic understanding of the message of the Bible, particularly of the New Testament; second, a series of arguments against the possibility of a literal reading of the Bible.

Time Frame of Ministries

John 8:57 has the Jews say that Jesus was not yet 50 when he came to Jerusalem. (They mock him for claiming to have seen Abraham). If that is the case, then Jesus was probably close enough, but not yet 50; maybe in his late fourties?

That is of importance, because the Gospels constantly talk about this generation as the target of the words of Jesus. And while Paul portrays himself as the apostle to the Gentiles, nothing in the Gospels mentions him; there is though a reference to a mission to the entire world, but it surely reads like a late addition.

Uploaded Pictures

Here they are! After a lot of waiting (mostly due to the fact I was too lazy to move the pictures from my laptop to the web server – it’s 260MB of them, after all!!!), here the {moszoomalbum:2005-07-02} with the pictures of the trip to Hawai’i.

A few changes to the usual format: this time I refrained from putting all pictures from one day in the same folder, and just highlighted the places we went to. In the end, the Big Island is a big rock with outstanding features, and you really don’t spend all day taking pictures.

Zucchero & Co. (CD)

There are the times when you realize you have been missing home for way too long. In nothing else do I realize it as much as when I get to hear music from Italy, one of my home countries, the one with the more distinct music tradition.

Italy has of course an extremely long tradition in music, as exemplified by the copious amounts of musical terms that are borrowed from the Italian. There is opera, of course, but also concert (from Italian in concerto, together); there is the violin, the cello (from Italian violoncello, little big viola). And there are scores of musicians that are unknown outside Italy, but once in a while reach out and become famous.

The Seven Samurai (1954)

So what’s the deal with this one? Billed as one of the Greatest Movies of All Times on IMDB (#5), it took me four days to watch it. Somehow the plot was too predictable, the scenes too repetitious, the acting unintelligible without cultural context. Didn’t get it. Sorry. Maybe in a next life.

The Tipping Point (M. Gladwell)

I had heard about this book, “The Tipping Point”, for a while and decided to give it a read. At first, I thought it was going to be something like “Built to Last” or “First, Break All the Rules”: a book with a single message that could have been written as two sentences, but is fluffed up with examples and discussions. Not the case here.

A tipping point, according to the author, is a sudden change in the state of a mass of humans according to which something that was not popular just before the tipping point is popular after. The tipping point fits in the theory of the chasm, according to which there is a strong difference between the first people that adopt a technology and the next group. This book is about what kind of things help moving across the chasm and generating a tipping point.

Back from Hawai'i

After a horrific nine hour non-stop flight (four of them spent on the ground waiting for a “battery charger”), I finally made it back in one piece from Hawai’i. A week of travel is about all I can handle right now, especially since the house didn’t close yet and I have a trillion things to do.

Takeaways from this trip? Not sure. I knew the island pretty well before I visited, so a lot of the sights were repeats. Since I had K. with me, I had new eyes to look at everything, and I could rediscover a lot of the marvels I had seen before. Pololu valley, for instance, is still magnificent. Puna road (Kapoho-Kalapana road) is still the most beatiful stretch of highway I will ever see.