Archive for the 'Literature' Category

Nell’ambito delle iniziative per celebrare il 60° Anniversario della costituzione della Cisl, l’Unione Sindacale Territoriale di Brindisi, con la collaborazione dell’Archivio di Stato, mercoledì 30 giugno prossimo, alle ore 18, presso il cortile dell’Archivio di Stato in piazza Santa Teresa, sarà presentato il libro/ricerca di Donato Peccerillo “Fuori dalle Gabbie” (Hobos Edizioni, € 14), nei prossimi giorni in distribuzione nelle librerie.

Quando si parla  del biennio 1968 – 1969, è senso comune considerare il ‘68 l’anno degli studenti o meglio ancora della “contestazione studentesca”, mentre il ’69, è ritenuto l’anno degli operai, anche più noto come l’anno “dell’autunno caldo”, e dell’inizio della strategia della tensione (da piazza Fontana in poi).

Ma ad osservare i fatti e le relative cronache locali, questo schema generale di distinzione tra l’anno degli studenti e l’anno degli operai, pare non funzionare, e non tanto perchè il ’68 non abbia visto mobilitati, in città, gli studenti, ma a Brindisi è anche e sopratutto l’anno di grandi lotte operaie. A ottobre del 1968, con oltre un anno di anticipo rispetto al glorioso “autunno caldo”, i lavoratori dell’industria operanti nel “polo chimico” della Montecatini entrarono in lotta per l’abolizione delle “gabbie salariali” e per rivendicare l’applicazione del punto unico di contingenza. Una iniziativa che identica a quelle attuate in molte parti del Sud e che coinvolgeva tutta la giovane classe operaia dei vari “poli di sviluppo” meridionali.

Read the rest of this entry »

An update to the Golden Feather Pentacle post.

Read the rest of this entry »

A basic double-fold symmetrical design.

Read the rest of this entry »

Read the rest of this entry »

The case was serious, the problem interesting, and one that must be solved as soon as possible. Thus, highly excited, Barbicane’s moral energy triumphed over physical weakness, and he rose to his feet. He listened. Outside was perfect silence; but the thick padding was enough to intercept all sounds coming from the earth. But one circumstance struck Barbicane, viz., that the temperature inside the projectile was singularly high. The president drew a thermometer from its case and consulted it. The instrument showed 81@ Fahr.

Read the rest of this entry »

A Mandala pupil gazing at the cosmos.

See it also on Flickr – See it also on deviantART

Read the rest of this entry »

See it also on Flickr.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’re all driven into the same cosmic motion!

Read the rest of this entry »

intervista sulla città
le promesse, le illusioni, le occasioni perdute
le sfide per il futuro
di Marcello Orlandini e Carmine Dipietrangelo

“Intervista sulla città”,  dell’editore Hobos Edizioni, un libro dedicato alle sfide che attendono la sinistra riformista nei prossimi mesi e nei prossimi anni a Brindisi, ma che offre anche un ricostruzione essenziale degli anni tra il 1997 ed il 2003 basata per la prima volta non sulle carte processuali, ma sui verbali dei consigli comunali e su tutto ciò che le cronache politiche hanno prodotto nei passaggi più importanti di quel periodo.

Read the rest of this entry »

Three designs set.

Read the rest of this entry »

The long chains of simple and easy reasonings by means of which geometers are accustomed to reach the conclusions of their most difficult demonstrations, had led me to imagine that all things, to the knowledge of which man is competent, are mutually connected in the same way, Read the rest of this entry »

The single design to strip one’s self of all past beliefs is one that ought not to be taken by every one. The majority of men is composed of two classes, for neither of which would this be at all a befitting resolution: in the first place, of those who with more than a due confidence in their own powers, are precipitate in their judgments and want the patience requisite for orderly and circumspect thinking; whence it happens, that if men of this class once take the liberty to doubt of their accustomed opinions, and quit the beaten highway, they will never be able to thread the byway that would lead them by a shorter course, and will lose themselves and continue to wander for life; in the second place, of those who, possessed of sufficient sense or modesty to determine that there are others who excel them in the power of discriminating between truth and error, and by whom they may be instructed, ought rather to content themselves with the opinions of such than trust for more correct to their own reason.

For my own part, I should doubtless have belonged to the latter class, had I received instruction from but one master, or had I never known the diversities of opinion that from time immemorial have prevailed among men of the greatest learning. But I had become aware, even so early as during my college life, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been maintained by some on of the philosophers; and afterwards in the course of my travels I remarked that all those whose opinions are decidedly repugnant to ours are not in that account barbarians and savages, but on the contrary that many of these nations make an equally good, if not better, use of their reason than we do.
Rene Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences, PART II

La sola decisione di disfarsi di tutte le opinioni accettate in precedenza non è un esempio che tutti debbono seguire; e si può dire che nel mondo ci sono soltanto due specie d’ingegni, a cui ciò non si conviene in nessun modo. In primo luogo coloro che, ritenendosi più capaci di quanto non sono, non possono trattenersi dal precipitare il loro giudizio, né hanno abbastanza pazienza per condurre ordinatamente tutti i loro pensieri; una volta che si fossero presa la libertà di dubitare dei princìpi ricevuti e di allontanarsi dalla strada comune, questi non potrebbero mai tornare sulla via più diritta e vagherebbero per tutta la vita, smarriti. In secondo luogo coloro che, avendo abbastanza giudizio o modestia per stimare di essere meno capaci di distinguere il vero dal falso che non altri, dai quali possono essere istruiti, debbono contentarsi di seguire le opinioni di questi ultimi piuttosto che cercarsene da sé di migliori.

Quanto a me, sarei stato senza dubbio tra i secondi, se non avessi avuto che un solo maestro, e avessi ignorato le differenze che vi sono state da sempre tra le opinioni dei più dotti. Ma avevo appreso, fin dal collegio, che non si può immaginare nulla di così strano e poco credibile che non sia stato detto da qualche filosofo; e mi ero poi accorto, viaggiando, che tutti quelli che la pensano in modo affatto diverso da noi non sono per questo né barbari né selvaggi, e che molti usano la ragione quanto o più di noi.
Rene Descartes, Discorso sul metodo, PARTE II

And, to speak of human affairs, I believe that the pre-eminence of Sparta was due not to the goodness of each of its laws in particular, for many of these were very strange, and even opposed to good morals, but to the circumstance that, originated by a single individual, they all tended to a single end. In the same way I thought that the sciences contained in books (such of them at least as are made up of probable reasonings, without demonstrations), composed as they are of the opinions of many different individuals massed together, are farther removed from truth than the simple inferences which a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgment draws respecting the matters of his experience. And because we have all to pass through a state of infancy to manhood, and have been of necessity, for a length of time, governed by our desires and preceptors (whose dictates were frequently conflicting, while neither perhaps always counseled us for the best), I farther concluded that it is almost impossible that our judgments can be so correct or solid as they would have been, had our reason been mature from the moment of our birth, and had we always been guided by it alone.
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One’s Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences, PART II

Read the rest of this entry »

By ‘quality’ I mean that in virtue of which people are said to be such and such.

Quality is a term that is used in many senses. One sort of quality let us call ‘habit’ or ‘disposition’. Habit differs from disposition in being more lasting and more firmly established. The various kinds of knowledge and of virtue are habits, for knowledge, even when acquired only in a moderate degree, is, it is agreed, abiding in its character and difficult to displace, unless some great mental upheaval takes place, through disease or any such cause. The virtues, also, such as justice, self-restraint, and so on, are not easily dislodged or dismissed, so as to give place to vice.

By a disposition, on the other hand, we mean a condition that is easily changed and quickly gives place to its opposite. Thus, heat, cold, disease, health, and so on are dispositions. For a man is disposed in one way or another with reference to these, but quickly changes, becoming cold instead of warm, ill instead of well. So it is with all other dispositions also, unless through lapse of time a disposition has itself become inveterate and almost impossible to dislodge: in which case we should perhaps go so far as to call it a habit.

It is evident that men incline to call those conditions habits which are of a more or less permanent type and difficult to displace; for those who are not retentive of knowledge, but volatile, are not said to have such and such a ‘habit’ as regards knowledge, yet they are disposed, we may say, either better or worse, towards knowledge. Thus habit differs from disposition in this, that while the latter in ephemeral, the former is permanent and difficult to alter.
Aristotle, The Categories, Section 2, Part 8