Amarcord

In realta' non me lo ricordo, perche' ero appena nato, ma quella qui sotto e' Miss March 1970 ovvero la playmate di Playboy di quando nasceva il sottoscritto. Se vi interessa trovare la vostra di playmate cliccate qui.

Tomcat!

Link alla scansione very, very hires di uno dei disegni preliminari del Grumman F14 Tomcat. Mitico! [LINK]

Call sign "Two Bags"

Da Sports Illustrated, l'autore e' Rick Reilly.

"Now this message is for America's most famous athletes: Someday you may be invited to fly in the back-seat of one of your country's most powerful fighter jets. Many of you already have ...John Elway, John Stockton, Tiger Woods to name a few. If you get this opportunity, let me urge you, with the greatest sincerity... Move to Guam. Change your name. Fake your own death! Whatever you do ... Do Not Go!!! I know. The U.S. Navy invited me to try it. I was thrilled. I was pumped. I was toast! I should've known when they told me my pilot would be Chip (Biff) King of Fighter Squadron 213 at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach. Whatever you're thinking a Top Gun named Chip (Biff) King looks like, triple it. He's about six-foot, tan, ice-blue eyes, wavy surfer hair, finger-crippling handshake -- the kind of man who wrestles dyspeptic alligators in his leisure time. If you see this man, run the other way. Fast. Biff King was born to fly. His father, Jack King, was for years the voice of NASA missions. ("T-minus 15 seconds and counting ..." Remember?) Chip would charge neighborhood kids a quarter each to hear his dad. Jack would wake up from naps surrounded by nine-year-olds waiting for him to say, "We have a liftoff." Biff was to fly me in an F-14D Tomcat, a ridiculously powerful $60 million weapon with nearly as much thrust as weight, not unlike Colin Montgomerie. I was worried about getting airsick, so the night before the flight I asked Biff if there was something I should eat the next morning. "Bananas," he said. "For the potassium?" I asked. "No," Biff said, "because they taste about the same coming up as they do going down." The next morning, out on the tarmac, I had on my flight suit with my name sewn over the left breast. (No call sign -- like Crash or Sticky or Leadfoot ... but, still, very cool.) I carried my helmet in the crook of my arm, as Biff had instructed. If ever in my life I had a chance to nail Nicole Kidman, this was it. A fighter pilot named Psycho gave me a safety briefing and then fastened me into my ejection seat, which, when employed, would "egress" me out of the plane at such a velocity that I would be immediately knocked unconscious. Just as I was thinking about aborting the flight, the canopy closed over me, and Biff gave the ground crew a thumbs-up. In minutes we were firing nose up at 600 mph. We leveled out and then canopy-rolled over another F-14. Those 20 minutes were the rush of my life. Unfortunately, the ride lasted 80. It was like being on the roller coaster at Six Flags Over Hell. Only without rails. We did barrel rolls, sap rolls, loops, yanks and banks. We dived, rose and dived again, sometimes with a vertical velocity of 10,000 feet per minute. We chased another F-14, and it chased us. We broke the speed of sound. Sea was sky and sky was sea. Flying at 200 feet we did 90-degree turns at 550 mph, creating a G force of 6.5, which is to say I felt as if 6.5 times my body weight was smashing against me, thereby approximating life as Mrs. Colin Montgomerie. And I egressed the bananas. I egressed the pizza from the night before. And the lunch before that. I egressed a box of Milk Duds from the sixth grade. I made Linda Blair look polite. Because of the G's, I was egressing stuff that did not even want to be egressed. I went through not one airsick bag, but two. Biff said I passed out. Twice. I was coated in sweat. At one point, as we were coming in upside down in a banked curve on a mock bombing target and the G's were flattening me like a tortilla and I was in and out of consciousness, I realized I was the first person in history to throw down. I used to know cool. Cool was Elway throwing a touchdown pass, or Norman making a five-iron bite. But now I really know cool. Cool is guys like Biff, men with cast-iron stomachs and freon nerves. I wouldn't go up there again for Derek Jeter's black book, but I'm glad Biff does every day, and for less a year than a rookie reliever makes in a home stand. A week later, when the spins finally stopped, Biff called. He said he and the fighters had the perfect call sign for me. Said he'd send it on a patch for my flight suit. What is it? I asked. "Two Bags."

HALO e la psicologia del kamikaze

C'e' chi dice che giocare ai videogames rincoglionisce, ma evidentemente e' falso. Basta leggersi su Wired come Clive Thompson (New York Times, Wired, New York Magazine) abbia compreso la psicologia del suicide bomber e del kamikaze (sono cose diverse) giocando online ad HALO. [LINK]

Amici Famosi

Il baritono, Mario Cassi quello in piedi nella foto, e' parecchio amico mio. C'ero a cena insieme stasera. [LINK]

Editoriali disegnati

I migliori commenti sull'omicidio Reggiani e seguito li ho trovati su Il Foglio di oggi a firma di Vincino. Eccoli:

Meriggiare

Calvados, caffe' triplo, Hoyo du Roi, un bel film militarista. Non male, non male.

Terraformazione

Fortezze

Mordor


Luna


Marte

Eventi fallici nella taiga

Diritti individuali vs Diritti della Comunita'

Premesso che IMHO i cosiddetti "diritti della comunità" a mio giudizio non esistono, ovvero esistono solo come portato di quelli degli individui, il mio amico Eugenio scrive magistralmente su questo conflitto. [LINK]

La Festa del Cinema e' una cagata pazzesca!

O meglio un costosissimo baraccone inutile e malgestito. Cosi' pare dal resoconto di una fonte interna all'organizzazione pubblicato da Paniscus. Ovviamente per la stampa, e per Uolter, e' stato un grande successo. [LINK]

Blackwater's New Logo

La famigerata PMC yanqui Blackwater si sta rifacendo l'immagine aziendale. Aiutali tramite Wired! La mia proposta è quella sottostante. [LINK]

Mappa della vera Africa

Salvo l'Etiopia e con la parziale eccezione della Liberia, gli attuali stati africani ed i loro confini hanno 40 50 anni o meno. Questi stati a guardarli superficialmente hanno tutte le caratteristiche degli stati nazionali, salvo che la nazione non c'e'. L'Africa non e' divisa in nazioni, e' divisa in tribu', e nella tribu' si riconoscono la maggioranza degli africani. Una normale mappa dell'Africa come questa, quindi, manca di molte informazioni rilevanti. Questa mappa, splendida ai miei occhi di mappofilo sfegatato, mostra il complicatissimo mosaico delle tribu' africane. Ha solo un difetto: manca una tribu', chi indovina quale?

Ska!

La Exit Stategy nella coscienza collettiva yankee

Negli ultimi tempi sto lavorando assiduamente in collaborazione con una multinazionale yankee prima produttrice mondiale di CPU (ci siamo capiti...) riguardo alla definizione di uno standard aperto (forse) per un settore un po' particolare. Non ci crederete, ma non fanno che chiedere qual'e' la Exit Strategy. Che Vietnam e Iraq siano penetrati profondamente nell'animo yanqui?

Se la mi nonna avesse le rote sarebbe un carretto

"...Se Jeanson mi avesse chiesto di portar dispacci o offrire rifugio a militanti algerini, e io avessi potuto farlo senza rischio per essi, avrei acconsentito senza esitazione..." Jean Paul Sartre durante il processo a Francis Jeanson, da " La Guerra d'Algeria" di Alistair Horne.

Ebrei nel ghiaccio

Parlo dell'ottimo romanzo "Il Sindacato dei Poliziotti Yddish" di Michale Chabon, ovvero della narrazione delle peripezie del detective - ubriacone e divorziato come da tradizione - Meyer Landsman del Dipartimento di Polizia del Distretto Federale di Sitka, casa di cinque milioni di profughi delle persecuzioni naziste, della Shoa' e del crollo del neonato stato di Israele. Questa ambientazione artico/ebraica m'ha ricordato questo .

Allora, e' crollato il mondo

Lo scorso Weekend la Francia ha cacciato gli All Blacks dalla RWC, e l'Inghilterra ha cacciato i Wallabies. Ah, e i Pumas sopravanzano gli inglesi nel ranking IRB.

Hasta siempre Comandante

Santa Clara, Cuba, 2006. Baracche dietro al monumento/sacrario ad Ernesto Guevara.