"Berlusconi in his life had about twenty wives, two of whom were his"
Roberto Benigni
The Say of the Week
Roberto Benigni
Comments
Cheers,
T.
Tommaso Dorigo | 05/28/09 | 11:40 AM
'Honorary' is spelled wrong in the latest piece but since it is in blockquotes - meaning it is someone else's error - and it may be cultural (Cockney?) too, I am not touching it!! :)
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Hank Campbell | 05/28/09 | 11:44 AM
T.
Tommaso Dorigo | 05/28/09 | 11:55 AM
Your poor charming prime minister is an easy target for you. But you're not brave enough to say a bad word about Ansaldo, Italian mechanical crackpots who have delivered a lot of crap for the LHC, right? ;-) A typical Italian gypsy mess.
Luboš Motl (not verified) | 05/29/09 | 04:50 AM
T.
Tommaso Dorigo | 05/29/09 | 04:54 AM
Luboš Motl (not verified) | 05/29/09 | 04:57 AM
Cheers,
T.
Tommaso Dorigo | 05/29/09 | 05:38 AM
Dear Tommaso, you are fighting a straw man: I wasn't trying to suggest that there were any reasons (besides Silvio Berlusconi, Galileo Galilei, and Leonardo da Vinci) to be proud to be an Italian. ;-) Fiat, the Ziguli car template? Or the auto-erotic mad soccer players from Entropa? :-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9Q9JcKeeQ
Also, you are using incorrect terminology: "nationalist bastard" should have been a "distinguished member of the patriotic movement".
Well, I am partly joking but not quite. Your international ideology is vacuous and dull. Whenever something works, it's because it is driven by some individuals or some groups who also get the bulk of the credit when it works. In this sense, I understand the Austrian CERN attitude. Austria is an anti-technological medieval nation that is not important at CERN, that is deservedly getting almost no credit for its being there (because the individuals just can't change the bulk), and that can legitimately think about leaving things that it sucks at.
Pretty much everything that people have ever done was done in some national context.
You may not care about the producer of faulty ingredients but I think that responsible managers of CERN, or any other functioning project or corporation, should care and must care. If they don't care, they are guaranteed to be victims of slipping quality standards. So next time, similar project managers - if any - have to be careful about Ansaldo, and by a slight induction and generalization, careful about all contributors that share a sufficient number of important features with Ansaldo. The important features clearly include the nationality. These things define the identity and they encode the information about individual people and companies as well as their links in all conceivable networks.
Just for the sake of prevention: I am surely not suggesting that Czech companies would do better, and in many respects, there used to be reasons to think that just the opposite would be true. But my appraisal was totally unbiased and universal, and the old poor standards are subject to change although Germany is arguably more responsible for our improvements and motion towards good old quality standards than Italy. ;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB9Q9JcKeeQ
Also, you are using incorrect terminology: "nationalist bastard" should have been a "distinguished member of the patriotic movement".
Well, I am partly joking but not quite. Your international ideology is vacuous and dull. Whenever something works, it's because it is driven by some individuals or some groups who also get the bulk of the credit when it works. In this sense, I understand the Austrian CERN attitude. Austria is an anti-technological medieval nation that is not important at CERN, that is deservedly getting almost no credit for its being there (because the individuals just can't change the bulk), and that can legitimately think about leaving things that it sucks at.
Pretty much everything that people have ever done was done in some national context.
You may not care about the producer of faulty ingredients but I think that responsible managers of CERN, or any other functioning project or corporation, should care and must care. If they don't care, they are guaranteed to be victims of slipping quality standards. So next time, similar project managers - if any - have to be careful about Ansaldo, and by a slight induction and generalization, careful about all contributors that share a sufficient number of important features with Ansaldo. The important features clearly include the nationality. These things define the identity and they encode the information about individual people and companies as well as their links in all conceivable networks.
Just for the sake of prevention: I am surely not suggesting that Czech companies would do better, and in many respects, there used to be reasons to think that just the opposite would be true. But my appraisal was totally unbiased and universal, and the old poor standards are subject to change although Germany is arguably more responsible for our improvements and motion towards good old quality standards than Italy. ;-)
Luboš Motl (not verified) | 05/29/09 | 06:28 AM
After all, we are talking about an effect which people did not even know about, the repeatability of ramping-up quenches or their absence after a initial training. All that was asked to the contracting companies, if I am right, was that they should train the magnets to the current necessary to operate the machine at 7 TeV, and show sustained mode of operation. But I might have gotten the story wrong...
Cheers,
T.
Tommaso Dorigo | 05/29/09 | 07:29 AM
If it makes you happier, Czech conservative ex-PM and ODS leader Mirek Topolanek told Silvio yesterday:
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/lock-up-your-mouth-former-czech-pm-topo...
"Silvio, my friend, lock up your mouth."
http://www.ceskenoviny.cz/zpravy/lock-up-your-mouth-former-czech-pm-topo...
"Silvio, my friend, lock up your mouth."
Luboš Motl (not verified) | 05/30/09 | 11:42 AM
Cheers,
T.
Tommaso Dorigo | 05/30/09 | 14:31 PM
Dear Tommaso, this is a somewhat funny discussion. First, many leftwingers would surely subscribe to Berlusconi's incorrect negative words about Topolanek's presidency.
Second, Berlusconi's mouth is very narrow if compared with Topolanek himself. Topolanek would clearly win in all your disciplines.
See, for example, Topolanek smashing papparazzi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6l5Qdg4NM4
Mix: this will be screwed; oh, a triple photograph or a threesome, better a Swedish one; what did you invent, some pussy things, right?; the finger in the Parliament; last night it was good, right? - I wasn't waching you - you're cretin, you ox :-); in the lower house you have a whorehouse and you want to lecture me on ethics?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Hj_qoSAqE
Second, Berlusconi's mouth is very narrow if compared with Topolanek himself. Topolanek would clearly win in all your disciplines.
See, for example, Topolanek smashing papparazzi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6l5Qdg4NM4
Mix: this will be screwed; oh, a triple photograph or a threesome, better a Swedish one; what did you invent, some pussy things, right?; the finger in the Parliament; last night it was good, right? - I wasn't waching you - you're cretin, you ox :-); in the lower house you have a whorehouse and you want to lecture me on ethics?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3Hj_qoSAqE
Luboš Motl (not verified) | 05/30/09 | 15:45 PM
I like "say of the week" as against "saying of the week". It goes well with a fairly recent coinage "it's a big ask".
This is language evolution live, on stage. Let the id / creationist crowd read you and weep! :)
( for EFL students, the meaning of "big ask" is "a lot to ask for" )