I think Alfas have always been my favorite cars, at least after I realized that the twelve cylinder Ferrari I lusted over was out of reach. I mean, I should have able to buy an Alfa, but people grow and change and it never happened.
Right now I could buy one, but I don't really have any time to spend on it. I'm busy blogging and anytime I need to go anywhere, I want a modern car suitable for the rugby scrum that is modern traffic. Don't worry, some people have the time:
The California Mille is open to any car that could have participated in the original Mille Miglia. We are seeking a variety of makes and types. Foreign and domestic manufacturers are welcome, but all cars must have been made prior to January 1, 1958.
The event is limited to approximately 65-70 cars based on the availability of hotel reservations. To maintain the spirit of the Mille Miglia, we carefully choose cars that fit our requirements and specifications from each year’s group of applicants.
The California Mille is an annual historic and classic car tour inspired by the Mille Miglia, a former Italian open-road endurance race covering roughly 1000 miles from Brescia-to-Rome-to-Brescia and ran twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957.
Entry fee is $17 grand. Yeah, no thanks, I'm good.
Reggiane Re.2000 Falco I was a minor player in WW2. It was designed and initially built in Italy. Italy made almost 200 of these airplanes. Hungary made 200 more under license. Performance was good in 1940 - speed of 300 MPH and altitude of 30,000 feet, but it was soon outclassed.
Hungarian Air Force Reggiane Re.2000 Heja of 1/1 'Dongo' squadron
Zoran Petek
During World War II, the South African Air Force (SAAF) operated five squadrons of Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers in the Mediterranean Theater. Flying predominantly from temporary steel-plate airfields in Italy, the SAAF flew crucial missions targeting Axis infrastructure and supporting Allied campaigns.
The Law According to Lidia Poët 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Season 2 is basically an extension of Season 1. Season 1 post repeated here:
Lidia was a real person:
Lidia Poët (1855 – 1949) was the first modern female Italian lawyer. Her disbarring led to a movement to allow women to practice law and hold public office in Italy. - Wikipedia
In the show she is a cute, bright pixie, member of a wealthy family. I mean we don't really care about the peasants do we? She's basically a 19th century Nancy Drew, using her wits to solve a murder in each episode, and or course exonerating the falsely charged fool who has gotten arrested.
19th century technology is in evidence: she has a typewriter, she trades a priceless Ming vase for a bicycle, the concept of using fingerprints to identify a person is known, though not commonly accepted. And the prosecutor's office has a volumetric glove, which is basically a mechanical lie detector.
The first scientific lie detector test was invented by Cesare Lombrosso in 1895. This was known as the Volumetric Glove. The subject's hand was placed in a container of water. The amount of water displaced as the subject was asked questions indicated peripheral vasoconstriction, and thus the amount of stress present. - Polygraph Solutions
Cesare Lombroso, a famed criminologist, described a primitive lie detector called a volumetric glove in his 1876 book Criminal Man: "The glove is filled with air, and the greater or smaller the pressure exercised on the air by the pulsation of the blood in the veins of the hand acts on an aerial column. . . . [T]his chamber supports a lever carrying an indicator which rises and falls with the greater or slighter flow of blood in the hand." - Chegg
Mosso was encouraged in his studies of the emotions by Lombroso, his tutor and contemporary. His work is of unusual interest to the student of deception, particularly his studies of fear and of its influence on the heart and respiration. As early as 1875 Mosso demonstrated, by means of a "plethysmograph" (an instrument for measuring blood pressure and pulse changes) periodic undulations in man's blood pressure caused by the respiration cycle; " and his ingenuous studies of the circulation of the blood in the brain opened up new avenues for the study of the influences of fear. In 1895 he described a new device for measuring blood pressure, giving credit to Vierordt for first measuring man's blood pressure, from the outside, in 1855. - Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology
The device in the show is a mechanical device that holds the subject's wrist and records the changes in pressure on a black tape that also runs through the device
Somewhere along in here, Lidia's brother Enrico declares himself to be a Waldensian. And what is that, I asked and Google answered:
The Waldensians are a 12th-century Christian movement originating in France, often considered pre-reformers for prioritizing biblical authority, poverty, and preaching over Catholic doctrines. Founded by Peter Waldo, they faced severe persecution but survived in the Italian Alps, officially joining the Protestant Reformation in 1532. Today, they form a united church with Methodists in Italy and have communities in South America
Giant Italian float plane. First flew in 1936 and promptly set numerous world records. Retired from service in 1959. This one in the Palm Springs Air Museum might be sole survivor. Wikipedia
Third pick is a little obscure, but I like it because it gathered up a bunch of ideas, made them work well and glorified them with success. It’s the Benelli 250, which put together an aluminum dohc top end for cooler operation, cam drive by gears and (eventually) an oil cooler. It brought distinction to its makers and to engineer Giuseppe Benelli through the 1930s and ‘40s. When, after World War II, engineer Alfredo Drusiani suggested to Mondial that a “real” four-stroke would whip all the yapping 125cc two-strokes of the late 1940s, he was thinking of this Benelli. Subsequently, Mondial was 125cc World Champion in 1949, ‘50 and ‘51. When MV needed to up their 125′s performance, they bought a Mondial, and Soichiro Honda took one back to Japan for study. That’s quite a chain of creative disturbance for a little old 25-horsepower Benelli from the early 1930s.
The Virgo interferometer is a large-scale scientific instrument near Pisa, Italy, for detecting gravitational waves. The detector is a Michelson interferometer, which can detect the minuscule length variations in its two 3 km (1.9 mi) arms induced by the passage of gravitational waves. The required precision is achieved using many systems to isolate it from the outside world, including keeping its mirrors and instrumentation in an ultra-high vacuum and suspending them using complex systems of pendula.
Between its periodic observations, the detector is upgraded to increase its sensitivity. The observation runs are performed in collaboration with other similar detectors, including the two Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatories (LIGO) in the United States and the Japanese Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector (KAGRA), because cooperation between several detectors is crucial for detecting gravitational waves and pinpointing their origin.
Virgo was conceived and built when gravitational waves were only a prediction of general relativity. The project, named after the Virgo galaxy cluster, was approved in 1992 and construction was completed in 2003. After several years without detection, Virgo was shut down in 2011 for the "Advanced Virgo" upgrades. In 2015, the first observation of gravitational waves was made by the two LIGO detectors, while Virgo was still being upgraded. Virgo resumed observations in early August 2017, making its first detection on 14 August (together with the LIGO detectors); this was quickly followed by the detection of the GW170817 gravitational wave, the only one also observed with classical methods (optical, gamma-ray, X-ray and radio telescopes) as of 2024.
Russian Be-200 and Italian Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft
Not something you see everyday. From Wikipedia: The Beriev Be-200 Altair is a jet-powered amphibious flying boat. It has a capacity of 3,200 US gallons of water, or up to 72 passengers.
The Empress: Season 2 | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
We watched part 1 two years ago. On the political side, Italy is in ferment. Right now it's cut up into half a dozen pieces and Garibaldi wants to make them all one country. The old guard wants to quash the rebels, the new kids want to change things.
The bigger portion of the show is about having kids and the risks that come from being alive. i.e. sometimes people, including kids, die.
The cast is German and includes no one I have heard of. I took the data from Wikipedia and put it in a spreadsheet. It's complicated. We've got names, nicknames, titles, relations, affiliations and former roles.
The Monster of Florence | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Tru-ish story about a serial killer in Italy. Full of very unpleasant people mired in the old ways. Show starts with a bride running away. Parents made some kind of deal for this wedding. There is something wrong with her new husband, he doesn't seem to be a real person, he has all the character of a slave, i.e. none at all. They are both brought under the thrall of another man. Both men are bisexual. Husband is convicted of his wife's 1968 murder and serves ten years in prison. After his release he makes several false accusations, all to cover for this other man, who is apparently his master. Very creepy.
I don't understand why I watch some videos and some I quit after a couple of minutes. It's kind of like reading books. Sometimes I'll pick up a book and start reading it and it will just grab me and I can't put it down. More often I will read a bit and get bored and set it down.
I suppose this one sucked me in because we're on the track of a mystery. Near as I can make out, it was running on dirty oil that caused some minor damage that started the bearings down the slippery slope to failure. I wonder if analysis of the old oil might have revealed impending doom. But even if you were alerted, what a pain to pull the engine out of this car. He must have pulled a zillion bolts before he was able to examine the rod bearings.
Remind me never to buy a car with a turbocharger. Nice, fancy jet-age power, but stuffing one under the hood of most any car is going to make any repairs twice as difficult and twice as expensive.
There might be another reason I watched this video and that is I was reading about Ferrari's merchandising business, how they make more off of Ferrari branded T-shirts and jackets than they do from selling cars, which prompted me to go look on E-bay where I typed in Ferrari and I got back a bunch of Ferrari automobiles. I was expecting the usual kind of E-Bay crap like coffee mugs and planters, but no, there were a bunch of Ferraris on there, and there was a very nice looking one in South Carolina for $20K which got me to thinking about buying one. That is a really stupid idea, I hope I don't fall for one of my whims.
Sara: Woman in the Shadows - Official Trailer | Netflix
MVSRS
Sara is a former member of some kind of Italian secret police. The group is charged with looking for terrorists and preventing terrorist attacks.
The story starts off with Sara's adult son getting hit & killed by a car while crossing the street. Sara has been estranged from her son since she ran off to be with her boss. Now, 20 or 30 years later, her boss is dead, she is retired, and she's curious, so she starts looking into his death. She works with an ambitious regular police detective (Prado), the woman (Teresa) who replaced her boss with the secret police and with her dead son's wife (Viola), who is eight months pregnant. The more they dig, the more odd connections they find.
Teresa has a driver who works for Tarello, a politician who is running for governor of Campania. Vigilante, a mysterious big shot, is staging street crime incidents to support Tarello, who is running a campaign of 'more security means more freedom'. Things are going well for him and then the anti-nuke campaigners start to have an impact. Vigalante doesn't like that, because, well, he's a big shot and he wants to build some nuclear power plants, and if a half dozen little people get squished, well that's no skin off his nose.
We've a got a couple of people here who are very good at picking up information in situations where any normal person would be at a complete loss.
Sara is a lip-reader extrodinaire. She can watch people having a conversation across the street and she can tell you what they are saying. It's not just lip reading though, it's more like whole-body reading, she picks up clues from the way they are standing and the way they move. It's pretty extraordinary what she is able to pick up. If I ran into someone who claimed they were able to do this, I would be very skeptical. Then again there are all kinds of people running around loose in this world who have all kinds of amazing skills. Just spend a few minutes on YouTube. Plus it's fiction, so who knows?
A guy who was working for a big shot politician is found dead alongside a dead mechanic. The mechanic called his wife just before he died and left a message. Sara asks the blind man to listen to the recording and he tells her that the dead man was driving down a road in the country and ran over a manhole, which happens to describe the place where he was found perfectly. The blind man used to work with Sara in the Italian secret service, and he really doesn't like Sara because Sara stole his crush (her boss) just as he was about to reveal his feelings for him.
Sara is staying at Hotel Garibaldi in Naples Italy. It's a real place. Sara's replacement in the Secret Service visits her there and calls the place a dump. I dunno, it had a mini-bar. Maybe all hotels, even low rent ones, have mini-bars in the rooms now?
Red herrings? There are a few, here's one:
The man who killed Sara's son is a doctor who happens to be her son's ex-girlfriend's father. The girlfriend is an officer in the Italian Air Force and is dying of cancer. The ex-girlfriend broke off with the son when she found out about the cancer. That was at least a year before the son met his wife and got married.
This particular Monster has been in the hands of Lord Drake Customs. Wikipedia tells us that Ducati has been building Monsters since 1993.
British weekly newspaper Motorcycle News commented in December 2016: "The Monster has gone down in folklore as 'the bike that saved Ducati' due to its popularity and cheap development costs", adding that approximately 300,000 had been produced.
Bonham's sold this prototype in February of this year for 16,100 Euros:
Italy's oldest surviving motorcycle manufacturer, Benelli was founded in 1911 by the six Benelli brothers. Now Chinese-owned, although still based in its home town of Pesaro [Italy], Benelli is best known for its Grand Prix successes in the 1950s and 1960s, when it secured two 250cc World Championships, and also for its outrageous six-cylinder road bikes of the 1970s.
According to our vendor, the machine offered here is a 4-valve prototype. Other notable features include gear drive to the twin overhead camshafts and an Oldani TLS front brake, while the frame has clearly been influenced by Norton's 'Featherbed'. No Documents.
Gear driven, dual over head camshafts on a single cylinder engine. Crazy, man.
Lake Como is a lake of glacial origin situated in northern Italy. It is the third-largest lake in Italy, depth exceeds 1,300 feet and it is the deepest European lake outside of Norway. Lake Como's beauty has long attracted the affluent, serving as a favored summer retreat for aristocrats and wealthy individuals since Roman times. - extracted from Wikipedia
The ALn 668 (Automotrice Leggera a nafta, Light Diesel motor car) series is a family of diesel railcars built by Fiat Ferroviaria between the 1950s and the 1980s. The trains were built for the Italian public railway company Ferrovie dello Stato (FS), now Trenitalia as well as many Italian private railway operators. - Wikipedia
Public Disorder | Official Trailer | Netflix
Netflix
Close up of a squad of riot police in Turin, Italy, watching them at work busting heads and at home dealing with the vicissitudes* modern life. We watched the first three episodes (roughly 45 minutes each) last night and they were pretty good.
Don't know if this squad ever does any regular police work, all we see is them going to war against violent protesters. First there's the protest against a new high-speed train, and then there's the football (soccer) hooligans. Doesn't seem to be a shortage of mayhem that needs to be contained, so there is plenty of work for these guys.
Besides riot control, the squad has plenty of internal problems, the first of which is the bureaucracy. During the first riot, their squad leader and a protester are severally injured. The squad leader is rendered paraplegic by an explosive thrown by a protester, and a protester falls into a coma after being beaten. The media blow up the story about the injured protester, and the bureaucrats predictably try to find someone to blame, but so far the cops are sticking to their story. Are the bureaucrats looking for the one who threw the bomb? No, they aren't, because that would make them enemies of the mob, and the mob is what put them in power.
Meanwhile, because of some undisclosed history, the replacement leader is treated with suspicion by the squad. Their first outing under the new leader is against the football hooligans and that is pretty much a disaster, although it's a little hard to tell who's to blame. The bureaucrats and the hooligans, from my point of view.
Then there are the squad's families and their problems. One woman is still fighting her ex-husband. He was a violent, abusive drunk, and ten years later she still hates him. He might have reformed, but he has not been forgiven. The replacement leader's daughter gets raped and boy-oh-boy, what a nightmare for that family.
Their third outing is the apparent simple job of escorting an immigrant and her two kids back to her state supplied apartment. Only problem is there is a crowd of 200 people between her and her front door. They manage to get her through the crowd and into her apartment, but the crowd is still there. She is reasonably afraid that once the police leave, they mob will attack and kill her. The bureaucrats maintain that the police have done their job and can now go home. The new squad leader refuses. Eventually, someone finds her a different place to live and the police escort her out. I think the new leader makes some points with the squad for this. We shall see.
I don't understand the attraction of mobs. I've been a few places where there were large numbers of people and the only time it was pleasant was when I was in a theater and everyone was sitting quietly. But then, there are a lot of things I don't understand. Like tattoos.
* vicissitudes of modern life. Heard that phrase somewhere and it stuck with me. Seemed like a good place to use it.
300 piece jigsaw puzzle. I started with the edges and the blue areas and that went together pretty well. The skyline and the left portion of the building was next. After that it was 'try one piece at a time'. In the first pass less than half of pieces found their place, so then we go around again. After that it's kind of like Euler's disk, more and more pieces are finding a home until you are down to half a dozen pieces and half a dozen holes and then, boom, you're done. The purple flowers weren't much help, scattered as they are all over the right hand side.
Kind of cool looking building, so I go looking around for information. Found this on the Anatara Hotel website:
The site was given to Cistercian monks from Fossanova in 1214 with the promise of forthcoming funds from the Pope to build on the foundations After nearly 10 years. it became an Abbey under Emperor Federico II of Palermo.
For his many-sided activities and dynamic personality Frederick II has been called the greatest of all the German emperors, perhaps even of all medieval rulers. In the Kingdom of Sicily and much of Italy, Frederick built upon the work of his Norman predecessors and forged an early absolutist state bound together by an efficient secular bureaucracy. He was known by the appellation Stupor mundi (Wonder of the World), enjoying a reputation as a brilliant Renaissance man avant la lettre and polymath even today: a visionary statesman, an inspired naturalist, scholar, mathematician, architect, poet and composer. Frederick also reportedly spoke six languages: Latin, Sicilian, Middle High German, Old French, Greek, and Arabic. As an avid patron of science and the arts, he played a major role in promoting literature through the Sicilian School of poetry. His magnificent Sicilian imperial-royal court in Palermo and Foggia, beginning around 1220, saw the first use of a literary form of an Italo-Romance language, Sicilian. The poetry that emanated from the school had a significant influence on literature and on what was to become the modern Italian language. He was also the first monarch to formally outlaw trial by ordeal, which had come to be viewed as superstitious.
Amalfi is just south of Naples, Italy. Fossanova Abbey is about halfway between Naples and Rome.
Fossanova Abbey and the hotel in Amalfi are about one hundred miles apart, as the crow flies. Probably take two weeks of walking to get from one to the other, unless you could catch a boat.
Head of a black man holding up the tomb of Doge Giovanni Pesaro, designed by Baldassare Longhena, 1665-69. In the defence of Candia (modern Herakleion), the Venetians defeated the Ottomans at sea and African galley slaves were among their prisoners. Basilica of the Frari
Part of the problem is that most of what the characters do doesn't make any sense. Nobody trusts anybody else, and for good reason, they can't be trusted. Alliances are formed and reformed so quickly that it's hard to tell if they are for real or fake. Even if they are heart felt at the moment, the heart is fickle so they may change at any moment.
Then you realize this is war-torn Sicily where we have bands of criminals roaming the countryside and it's the 19th Century so the drink of choice is red, red wine, so they're basically all drunk all the time, so it's actually pretty realistic. But that's not what we want. We want a nice story with honest heroes and brave damsals, but what we've got is reality TV.
This castle shows up as a prison. It is actually Castello Alfonsino in Brindisi, Italy, which is in the boot heel of Italy a couple hundred miles from Sicily.
