"I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything..." (Richard Feynman)
During my flight back from Philadephia to Rome I read Rebecca Goldstein's Book "Betraying Spinoza". The book is not only an introduction into the affascinating (and completely unconvincing for me) Philosophy of Spinoza, but it is also an account of the man Baruch Spinoza and the history of the sephardic Jews. Some excerpts:
Sarkozy has called into his cabinet Bernard Kouchner and Rachida Dati (see attached article from the Spiegel on Ms Dati). Why did no government of the left or centre/left in Europa in the last years had the courage to call personalities like them into the government? Yes, there is Emma Bonino with Prodi, but..........
If you want to confirm all your prejudices adverse to the USA, you can do so travelling the rural part of the country and the peripherical areas of bigger towns: oversized cars, bodies, cups, shopping malls...... proposal of food intake from the morning to the evening, hotels directly at the side of the highway- USA today as breakfast companion. But there is no need to stop at such observations. One might also register the 250 million Dollars, Cornell University raised from private donors or the new zero energy building of the Cornell Administration.
I had today a meeting with the group of the Gramene research project at Cornell University. The head of the group Panka Jaiswal is from India. The other group members I met were from Taiwan, China and Eritrea, no US American.
I know, there are many people who take this as a weakness of the US American System. The research is based on the presence of PhD Students and Postdocs especially from Asian countries. You can see this also as an expression of the strenghts of the American system. It has still enough softpower to attract the talented people from all over the world.
From June 13-16 I visited Mann Library at Cornell University in Ithaca to speak about common projects.
Following an invitation of the Metadata Working Group, (https://metadata-wg.mannlib.cornell.edu/forum/) I gave a talk on the "AOS - Initiative". My presentation is attached.
From June 11-13 I participated in the meeting of the GFIS Implementation group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, USA. GFIS is the Global Forestry Information Service (https://www.gfis.net), a partnership operation of IUFRO, CIFOR (CGIAR), NBII (US-Gov), FAO and other partners.
In these weeks an electronic discussion conference about AGROVOC takes place. More than 150 practitioners from all over the world subscribed to the conference and more than 50 are activiely participating. Topics are the coverage of AGROVOC, governance, language versions, institutional collaboration and others. The last phase, which just started will discuss the AGROVOC concept server.
In the occasion of George Ws visit to Rome the entire left went to the streets to demonstrate against the America President. Obviously neither a visit of Mr. Putin nor of Mr. Ahmadinejad nor of Mr. Omar al-Bashir would have triggered a similar reaction. The ideological status of the left is painful and embarrassing. But I felt also embarrassed by Marco Panella's idea to organize a counter demonstration to support the USA. Couldn't we get a free, indipendent, not subaltern but admiring position regarding the European offspring on the other side of the Atlantic?
Quando ho visto oggi sul tappeto rollante in palestra gli impressioni dal family day sulla TV non sapevo se piangere o ridere. Questo accumulo di ipocrisia e bigotteria era veramente insopportabile. Tornato a casa ho ripreso la bicicletta e sono andato a Piazza Navona per partecipare alla manifestazione dell'orgoglio laico. Comincio a dire: meglio insieme con falce e martello e i communisti rifondati per difendere le libertà individuali che con questi come Rutelli, che ha detto di non participare al "family day - che ridicolo in inglese- " perchè ero vice presidente del consiglio.
