An easy one today. Twenty-eight notable Italian men — Accorso, Dante Alighieri, Sant Antonino, Leon Battista Alberti, Guido Aretino, Giovanni Boccaccio, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Pier Capponi, Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea Cesalpino, Andrea di Cione, Donatello, Francesco Ferrucci, Galileo Galilei, Giotto, Francesco Guicciardini,… Continue Reading
Last night, President Obama signed the bill passed by Congress, at the eleventh hour, to extend significant portions of the USA PATRIOT Act by another four years. The President was in France at the time, so he “signed” the bill… Continue Reading
I play with Google Earth a lot. I thought it would be interesting to compare the landscape it generates with a photograph taken from the same place. Here is the hinterland of San Marino and the northern reaches of the… Continue Reading
San Francisco, and possibly soon, Santa Monica, are going to have initiatives for upcoming municipal elections concerning whether or not those cities will adopt bans on the circumcision of males under the age of 18. Meanwhile, Oregon is likely to… Continue Reading
Examining the way our prisons operate is morally challenging for us because it requires us to separate our revulsion of the underlying behavior of the criminals in question from the moral standards to which we hold ourselves. Our collective failure… Continue Reading
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, in some ways, might be the best candidate the Republicans have to challenge Barack Obama in 2012. Well, potentially, anyway, citing “family reasons,” Daniels has decided not to challenge Obama. The conventional wisdom is that when… Continue Reading
Since I could not blog while on vacation, I purchased a small book from the Galleria delgi Uffizi bookstore emblazoned with the image of Da Vinci’s Uomo Vitruviano, and recorded my thoughts there. This provided me with an outlet for… Continue Reading
It’s been two weeks since I have had access to much media other than RAI 1, which my great-aunt has on at all times she is awake. Nothing big enough to make it to Italian TV news happened, it looks… Continue Reading
My litigation calendar is now nearly cleared. My bags are almost completely packed. My reservations are made, my boarding passes printed. Contrary to what seems to be the conventionial wisdom, I think that since 9/11 there has never been a… Continue Reading
They just had elections. The Conservatives won big, actually getting a majority with 166 seats, eleven more than they needed. The third time’s a charm, Tories! Perhaps the most interesting news, though, is what happened with the minority parties. The… Continue Reading