I am facing some time-management issues since I am trying
to adapt myself into a new personal routine, and in times like these the only
good thinking comes from focusing and analyzing the big picture before
acting. I recalled, as I often do, some
good “advices” written in history by wise men and that is what I am going to do
today. Here I share some good quotes so
you might use them or not for your actual needs.
The tittle is paraphrased from H. Thoreau and it gives me a good example of the effect of hard working in life.
Have a great week – Life is short; Carpe Diem.
Albert Einstein
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it
well enough.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
(My Days)
“A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I
think.”
William of Ockham
(also known as Ockham's Razor)
“Plurality should not be assumed without necessity.”
Henry David
Thoreau ("Where I Lived and What I Lived For" Walden)
“Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify, simplify! ...
Simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.
Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say let your
affairs be as one, two, three and to a hundred or a thousand… We are happy in
proportion to the things we can do without.”
Ralph Waldo
Emerson
“Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a
good learner would not miss.”
Baruch Spinoza
“Do
not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand.”
Ken Venturi
“I
don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to
be better than you ever thought you could be.”
If you want a thing bad enough
To go out and fight for it,
Work day and night for it,
Give up your time and your peace and
your sleep for it
If only desire of it
Makes you quite mad enough
Never to tire of it,
Makes you hold all other things tawdry
and cheap for it
If life seems all empty and useless without it
And all that you scheme and you dream is about it,
If gladly you’ll sweat for it,
Fret for it, Plan for it,
Lose all your terror of God or man for it,
If you’ll simply go after that thing that you want.
With all your capacity,
Strength and sagacity,
Faith, hope and confidence, stern pertinacity,
If neither cold poverty, famished and gaunt,
Nor sickness nor pain
Of body or brain
Can turn you away from the thing that you want,
If dogged and grim you besiege and beset it,
You’ll get it!
– Berton
Braley
--------------------
Natalie du
Toit (born 29 January 1984) is a South African swimmer. She is best known
for the gold medals she won at the 2004 Summer Paralympics as well as the Commonwealth Games, and she became the first
swimmer with disability to compete in regular Olympic Games (at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.)
I
don’t know about you, but it amazes me when I see science overcoming the barriers
that nature imposes us.
Human beings are
not impressively strong animals – we are definitely not among the fastest and
our immune system has considerably deteriorated along the last millenniums –
but our brains allow us to get far beyond any other species in this planet
would ever dreamed of.
We are not only
able to create and control our personal environment and use technology to ease our lives,
but we also use it to enhance ourselves.
Science
for the blind
After
losing his right eye in a shooting accident, the film maker Rob Spencer decided
to implant a tiny camera in
his eye socket and now he’s able to film and transmit videos wireless to
screens, videos, cameras and hard drive devices. He started the EyeBorg Project what would be, at least,
a very interesting anthropological experiment.
A
new technology of bionic
eye is being developed to allow the blind to see again. A camera in a pair of glasses sends a wireless
signal to an implant behind the retina which sends a crude black & white
image data back to the brain through the optic nerve. Nowadays, people are receiving a 60 electrode
implant, but scientists of the Doheny
Institute in California are working on a 1,000 electrode version which should
even allow facial recognition. Electrical
engineers of the Monash
Vision Group have also begun trialing prototype
microchips for powering the bionic eye and the Stanford School of Medicine is working on
tiny solar-panel-like
cells to be used in those kinds of implants.
Nootropics
-- enhancing what you have and the impact on society
On
the other hand, perfectly healthy individuals are using nootropics – also referred to
as cognitive enhancers or intelligence enhancers – to boost their natural
intellect and, said, “reach their true potential.”
If
you have seen the blockbuster Limitless
starring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro you might have an idea of what I’m
talking about.
Although
these drugs are usually prescribed to treat medical conditions, many people
take the risk and buy them over the internet in an attempt to boost performance
at work, university and other social environment. You can find plenty of information online
about it – not exactly professional advices – and its popularity is increasing among
students. But what are the impacts on
the society?
Imagine
if you have to compete against a hyper focused student who wouldn’t get as
tired as you and, worse, if that becomes common practice.
"I was
able to write a 22-page paper in one day. I revised it over the next couple of
days and got an A. Normally, I wouldn't have even been able to get a rough
draft done in a week," says one student surveyed about his use of modafinil.
When asked
about their potential impact on society, people clearly have concerns beyond
safety - about how the drugs might create a two-tier education system in which
some can afford the drugs and others can't, as shown on the BBC article Do Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs
Work.
"The drugs would get stronger and stronger due to
increased demand of performance. Addictions
would ensue. People would not be able to live without them. Employers would
demand their employees to be constantly using them."
Truth
is, science allows us to get the best of ourselves. The problem is when that also brings the bad
side of human nature which is that predatory ability of exploitation and
dominance.
Ok… You can be a science lover, a businessman, a
devoted father or a party animal, but truth be said; doesn’t matter who/how you
are -- everyone needs to catch a break every once in a while and surrender to
guilty pleasures.
As a man, I fall into
the category of the man cavewishers.
Come on… you actually don’t even have to be a man to appreciate a good
man cave as I have lots of girl-friends (don’t get me wrong here; I’m a one woman
man) who I’m sure would love to be in a place where you can have limitless fun
without being bothered or having to be politically correct.
Every man has his own
man cave project and a man cave may be never done as you can always attach new
gadgets and maximize space within the area – although it is always perfect.
Some might spend just a few hundred dollars on it and other enthusiastic people
would sure invest thousands to develop the perfect place which is going to be,
sometimes, more loved than the bedroom.
Let’s take a look at my ultimate man cave project… how’s yours?
PS3 and Nintendo Wii – for those who like to
waste time arguing about which one is better, just understand one thing: both
are cool and able to coexist in harmony.
A man’s TV and Home
Theater system – because you have to do it right.
Air
Hockey Table – within a short distance to the fridge where the beers are.
Foosball
Table – it doesn’t have to be fancy to be cool…
Ping
Pong Table – here goes a hint: don’t let your beer on the table, especially
if you’re still playing.
A Pac
Man – Galaga Arcade Machine – definitely hours of entertainment.
Pinball
Machine – also within a short distance to the fridge.
A Pool
Table – because you’re also classy.
Don’t forget the cigar.
We are so
used to have technology in our daily lives, either in form of comfort
appliances or security measures. Internet is something so intrinsically
connected to our professional and personal life that it is inevitable its use
in research, monitoring and control of people - according to Mindflash.com, roughly 45% of employers now
reportedly use social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter to
screen potential employees (and, of course, keep monitoring them); The
Telegraph says that Britons spend an average
of 15 hours a week online, and the average American spent 32
hours per month in 2010 (note that by average there’s no distinction of
online activity by age group or gender).
Both the
Shetland Islands Council and Corby Borough Council - among the smallest local
authorities in the UK - have more CCTV cameras than the
San Francisco Police Department. The borough of Wandsworth has the
highest number of CCTV cameras in London, with just under four cameras per
1,000 people. Its total number
of cameras - 1,113 - is more than the police departments of Boston [USA], Johannesburg and Dublin City Council combined.
Ok; the Big
Brother is watching us, but what else?
Cities tend
to reach for progress and the use of technology is inexorable in the pace for
the future.
Vehicle-interlock
systems that disable automobiles when sensors detect an inebriated driver have been
around for some years now and, because people cheat the system (of course they
do), a face
recognition program is being developed by engineers of the University of Windsor with the use of biometrics.
In Paris, three years ago, 100 people
volunteered under the Citypulse
project to monitor ozone and noise levels of different areas in order to
gather data to prevent and solve present and future problems, making the city a
better place to live.
In U.S.A.,
a new bill (Senate Bill 1813, known as MAP-21) passed by the
U.S. Senate in March calls for “mandatory event data recorders” to be installed
in all new passenger motor vehicles sold in the U.S. from 2015 on, for
recording data before, during, or after a crash.
Everything
seems wonderful so far; what’s the matter?
As Amara Angelica eloquently
explained on her article about these black
boxes, “Maybe the black box in the future will eventually monitor
everything happening in the car, with real-time feeds to Homeland Security?” That’s
when I ask: where is the limit between security monitoring and privacy invasion?
I remember the airport full-body X-ray scanners polemic – I still travel by
plane and, every time, it is still uncomfortable.
I am a big
fan of science fiction predictions of the future, and there are two that come
to mind about that: one is Spielberg’s film Minority Report and the police
division of Pre-Crime and the other is the book 1984
by George Orwell which coined the so common term Big Brother (which I have even
used on this very article).
Am I going
too far by making a link here?
Smart
Cities will collect data of all kinds - cars, appliances, cameras,
roadways, pipelines etc - and use it to connect and control every aspect of
life with massive operating systems that will run these cities in their
entirety; now, who’s gonna provide all this apparatus and withdraw its
benefits? The market is estimated to be worth $16 billion by the end of the
decade and big companies like IBM and Cisco are already on it. Yep; the future
is going to be owned by monopolies – not breaking news in any society, either capitalist
or socialist.
So,
technology came to help us to live a better life, I agree; everyone wants some
degree of comfort and to be at ease. The problem comes when you get too dependent
on it, or when it controls you. How smart are You?
That is perhaps one of the greatest speeches of all times… Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie"
Chaplin was more than an actor; he was a great compositor, musician,
writer and director, and a human being full of passion.
In times of
change when the world of cinema turned into the period of sound films, Chaplin
delivered this masterpiece for the delight of audiences of all
generations. Let the speech motivates you if what you have rushing
through your veins is blood.
I'm sorry but I don't want
to be an Emperor, that's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer
anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible, Jew, gentile, black man,
white. We all want to help one another, human beings are like that. We all want
to live by each other's happiness, not by each other's misery. We don't want to
hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone and the
earth is rich and can provide for everyone.
The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost
the way.
Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world
with hate;
has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in:
machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.
Our knowledge has made us cynical,
our cleverness hard and unkind.
We think too much and feel too little:
More than machinery we need humanity;
More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness.
Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will
be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together.
The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries
out for universal brotherhood for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is
reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and
little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison
innocent people. To those who can hear me I say "Do not despair".
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed,
the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will
pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people, will return to
the people and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . .
Soldiers: don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise
you and enslave you, who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to
think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon
fodder.
Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men,
with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not
cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't
hate, only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers:
don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty.
In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written:
"The kingdom of God is within man"
Not one man, nor a group of men, but in all men; in you, the people.
You the people have the power, the power to create machines,
the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free
and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of
democracy let's use that power, let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world,
a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the
future and old age and security. By the promise of these things, brutes have
risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never
will. Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight
to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with
national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight
for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all
men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
. . .
Look up! Look up! The clouds are lifting, the sun is
breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are
coming into a new world. A kind new world where men will rise above their hate
and brutality.
The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is
beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow, into the light of hope, into
the future, that glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look
up. Look up.
Today I
heard someone saying: “I got an appointment to replace my left knee…” and I
thought to myself, “That’s how you know you’re in the future. Then, it occurred
to me…
You know
you're in the future when parallel parking can
occur automatically.
You know
you’re in the future when your cell
phone has more processing power than your computer, more mega pixels than
your camera and you can talk to it.
You know
you’re in the future when you can buy a high resolution plasma TV
of 59” -- which also happens to be 3D -- for $2.000, but the warranty is for
only one year, and it probably won’t last for two.
You know
you’re in the future when you read about electronics made of nanomaterials that
can rewire
themselves on the fly, when a high-school student finds a possible cure
for cancer, but you turn on the TV and they are showing “Keeping up with
the Kardashians” (sorry, I refuse to link that).
You know
you’re in the future when people want to build a space
elevator, but there are still people dying by starvation in the world.
What’s
closest to Science than Poetry? “All
other things”, you may say. I’ll tell
you may be wrong, my friend!
As the
Canadian poet Christian Bok said, there’s a long relation between science and
poetry since Newton. Alexander Pope would write “God
said let there be Newton and All was Light,” celebrating
with his generation the beauty of the new physics changing the view of the
world.
The British
poet Ruth Padel says
eloquently in her article for The Guardian, the
science of poetry, the poetry of science: “Scientia means
"knowledge:" science, it seems to me, is not about facts; it is about
thinking about facts.” As she also
clarifies, poetry and science, both, share the need of an abstract insight to
be worked though precision in order to explain the details of a particular idea
or point of view.
Poetry was
first written to express such questions as why are we here, and what is the
world that surrounds us made of? All the
modern science derivates from philosophy and the base was exactly the same –
this inherent characteristic of mankind that is the curiosity that brings us
beyond where our feet touch. Metaphors
are commonly used as a tool to scientific discovery and to lyric. Einstein himself would say that imagination
is more important than knowledge, and I have to agree that it is the main
reason for why we are still here, lingering through the average expectation of the
extinction rate of our species and, even better, evolving.
A good
scientist and a good poet have one more trace in common that, perhaps, is the
most important: both of them know that they might be proved wrong, that their suppositions are only the best explanation for what they are living at the
moment. This self knowledge allows them
to question answers and correct mistakes, and that is what takes mankind further than we
could only imagine.
Antonio Ereditato,
on his Cern presentation of how they have measured neutrinos traveling above the speed of
light – an experiment that could tumble down the pillars of modern science,
– said carefully as every scientist should do: “When you don't find anything,
then you say 'well, now I'm forced to go out and ask the community to scrutinize
this '. Despite the large significance
of this measurement that you have seen and the stability of the analysis, since
it has a potentially great impact on physics, this motivates the continuation
of our studies in order to find still-unknown systematic effects."
Everything
starts with a question, so the joy is in the journey of the search for truth –
we probably will always get very close to it, but never there; and that’s
exactly the beauty of it.
I have been talking about the future, about how we are
evolving at a fast pace, and how that implicitly boosts our ability to good and
evil et cetera; so, here is a song about a man who realizes that; it is also a
criticism of how mankind still faces so many social problems, despite all its
advances. The song is 21st Century Life by Sam Sparro, and I'm not
gonna say I agree with all of what has been suggested here, but for the
bass players, check out that bass line – Dave Wilder did a very good job of
almost forcing the audience to play air bass.
21st Century Life by Sam
Sparro
Songwriters: ROGG, JESSE / FALSON, SAM
When I was a little boy living in the last century
I thought about living in the future then it occurred to me
I turned around the future was now, the future was all around me
Nothing like I had imagined, it was totally confounding
21st century life, I got swept away
I got 21,000 things that I gotta do today
21st century life, well what can I say?
The new world's got me feeling so dirty
Think I need to get down and play
Well, now I turned on the TV just in time enough to hear
What the Pope said, the Pope said
And just a few tiny words later somebody wants the man dead
What about famine and disease, well they said it's too bad, oops
Because I'm never alone, it's not just a phone, it's a stereo
21st century life, I got swept away
I got 21,000 things that I gotta do today
21st century life, well what can I say?
The new world's got me feeling so dirty
Think I need to get down and play
Now I'm not a little boy, I'm in the 21st century
Well, you might think we've come a really long way
But there's still no equality
I watched the news on my computer screen
Talking about buying my weed out of a vending machine
If you don’t
have the habit of going to operas every once in a while, that is something
really worth doing – at least once so you see for yourself this magnificent
form of art in all its splendor and virtuosity.
Elite
singers and musicians perform at the top of their talents an amazing
combination of music and drama which was created half millennium ago and
evolved to the nearest to perfection as an art form can be.
As it is
widely known, Italy is the heart of the world in opera
matters and it’s also believed that this music tradition had its origins there,
but that does not get the importance of other countries in essentially contributing
to create unforgettable works, as Germany, France, Russia and England.
Here I will
leave you with some of my favorite operas – at least, some arias – in case
you’re curious to see something new or maybe just miss watching them; anyway, I
hope you have a good time!
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts
by Giacomo
Puccini, and
perhaps it has one of the most famous aria in the world. The first performance was held at
the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on April 25,
1926 and
conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Puccini's last opera was left unfinished at
his death, and what he had intended to be a final, transcendent love duet was
completed by a younger colleague, Franco Alfano.
In Peking's ImperialPalace, the fatally beautiful Princess
Turandot receives unlucky suitors from far and wide, who must answer three
riddles to win her hand—or die. Calaf,
son of the exiled King Timur of Tartary, is struck with Turandot's beauty, and
ignoring protests from his father and Liù, the servant girl who loves him, he
matches wits with the princess. Although
he guesses the three riddles, Calaf offers his life to Turandot if she can
discover his secret name. Searching the
city in vain, the princess finally tortures faithful Liù, driving her to
suicide. Faced with Liù's sacrifice and
Calaf's stern devotion, Turandot crumbles, and weeping in Calaf's arms, she
declares that his secret name is Love.
Tosca
Tosca is an opera in
three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an
Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa
and it premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January
1900. It is personally one of my favorites of all,
and the 2001 movie with Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu was a very good and
accessible reproduction of it.
Tosca opens
in a roman church, where the artist Cavaradossi paints a Mary Magdalen portrait
while dreaming of his lover, Tosca, a famously passionate singer. Suddenly the escaped political prisoner
Angelotti staggers in, on the run from the savage police chief Scarpia. When Tosca arrives and overhears the two men
talking, she is devoured with suspicion that Cavaradossi has another lover, but
the painter soothes her and hides Angelotti. The angry Scarpia bursts in, hot on the
escapee's heels and burning with lust for Tosca. Sizing up the situation, he
schemes to make the jealous singer betray her lover's secret. Cavaradossi is arrested and brutally
tortured, blackmailing Tosca into revealing Angelotti's whereabouts. Scarpia demands Tosca's favors as payment for
her lover's life, but the agonized Tosca meets his embrace with a fatal knife
thrust. Joyfully, she goes to free Cavaradossi, but Scarpia's final cruel
artifice leads her instead to witness her lover's execution. As the police pursue her, Tosca throws
herself from a parapet to her death.
Carmen
Carmen is an opera in four acts by the
French composer Georges
Bizet. It is,
perhaps, the opera with the most famous arias of all. The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris, on 3 March 1875, and was not at first particularly
successful; its initial run extended to 36 performances. Before this run was concluded, Bizet died
suddenly, and thus knew nothing of the opera's later celebrity.
In the kind of Spain that 19th-century French composers
dreamt of, gypsy cigarette girl Carmen taunts corporal Don José with her flamboyant
charms, and even the gentle peasant girl Micaela, who loves Don José, cannot
break Carmen's spell, and the corporal gives up everything to follow the gypsy
into the mountains. She quickly tires of
Don José and runs off with the handsome matador Escamillo, fatalistically
embracing the warning of death she has seen in the cards. As Escamillo triumphs in the bullring, Carmen
is confronted by Don José in a nearby alley, and this time, her defiance cannot
save her.
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three
acts by Giuseppe
Verdi. It
was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11,
1851. It
is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's
middle-to-late career.
Rigoletto is the bitter, hunchbacked court jester whose
treasured daughter, Gilda, has caught the eye of the womanizing Duke of
Mantua. Approaching Gilda, the duke
declares his love, and the girl discovers a passion for him. Court nobles, seeking revenge for the
jester's many insults, dupe Rigoletto into helping them kidnap Gilda, who is
delivered to the Duke and seduced by him.
Determined to show his daughter the Duke's true nature, Rigoletto takes
her to the house of the assassin Sparafucile, whose sister Maddalena offers the
duke her gypsy favors. Rigoletto has hired Sparafucile to kill the
duke, but Maddalena convinces her assassin brother to murder arandom victim instead. Knowing she will be murdered, Gilda appears
in disguise, is stabbed, stuffed in a sack and delivered to Rigoletto in place
of the duke's body. At the last minute,
the horrified hunchback opens the sack and discovers his daughter, who whispers
her last words of love for the duke and dies.
La Traviata
La traviatais an opera in
three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on La dame aux Camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas. The first performance of the opera was
on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice. It was jeered at times by the audience, who
directed some of their scorn at the casting of soprano Fanny
Salvini-Donatelli in the lead role of Violetta. Though she was an acclaimed singer, they
considered her to be too old (at 38) and too overweight to credibly play a
young woman dying of consumption.
The opera
tells the story of a Paris rich boy named Alfredo, who falls
for the consumptive prostitute Violetta.
His father isn't happy with the relationship and persuades her to
abandon him because her scandalous past threatens his son's future. She goes back to her old life, but falls
mortally ill, so Alfredo’s father relents and allows a touching deathbed
reunion.
Aida
Aida, sometimes spelled Aïda, is also an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, based on a scenario
written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. Aida was
first performed at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on 24
December 1871, conducted by Giovanni Bottesini.
On Egypt, Rhadames, a warrior, is delighted to learn that he
has been chosen to lead the army against the Ethiopian enemy, because he hopes
that he will thus be able to win Aida, a slave girl, as his prize for victory
in battle. Aida is the captured daughter
of the Ethiopian king, Amonasro, and she fears that either her lover or her father
will be killed in battle. However, the
king's daughter, Amneris, has set her mark on Rhadames, and his coldness
towards her confirms her suspicions that he loves someone else. Pharaoh and his court receive triumphant
Rhadames, who is asked to name his reward.
The crowd call for the prisoners to be killed, but Rhadames asks that,
as his reward, their lives be spared. Pharaoh agrees, and gives him the hand of
Amneris for good measure, plus naming Rhadames as his own successor as
Pharaoh. Amneris tells Rhadames that
King Amonasro has been killed, but that Aida is alive. The deal is that if
Rhadames agrees to forget about Aida, she, Amneris that is, will obtain a
pardon from the Pharaoh, but he can’t. If Amneris can't have her man, nobody
else can, and Rhadames is thus condemned to death. By being bricked up alive,
but before the vault is closed, Aida joins him to share his fate. Amneris repents
of her actions.
Pagliacci
Pagliacci, sometimes incorrectly rendered
with a definite article as I Pagliacci, is an opera consisting of a
prologue and two acts written and composed by Ruggero Leoncavallo, and it is his only opera that is still widely
staged. Leoncavallo was slapped with a
lawsuit for plagiarizing the plot for the opera Pagliacci. In his defense, Leoncavallo claimed that the
opera plot was based on a childhood experience.
Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on May 21,
1892,
conducted by Arturo Toscanini.
Tonio, a
member of an itinerant touring troupe, tells the audience of a village in Calabria that though they are seeing a play,
they should remember that actors, even clowns, are real people who suffer and
live lives of agony as well as joy. Canio
invites everyone to their performance that night, and the villagers invite him
to have a drink with them. One man makes
a crack about Tonio having a chance to seduce Nedda, Canio’s wife. Canio, instantly serious, tells him that
nothing relating to his wife is a joking matter. When he leaves, Nedda is
at first frightened that Canio might know something of her activities, but then
she finally agrees to leave Canio for her lover, a townsperson named Silvio. Tonio, who desired Nedda, smarting from her
rejection, returns and sees the lovers. He
rushes off to the village to get Canio. The
two lovers plan to elope that night, and Canio comes in just as he hears Nedda
sing that on that night she will be Silvio’s forever; she does not use his
name, and Canio screams and chases the younger man who escapes. When Canio returns, she refuses to give him
her lover’s name. She goes off to prepare for the show; Beppe tells Canio that
he must prepare as well and play the clown although his heart is breaking. The play opens with scenes of Nedda with
Tonio and their happy romance. Canio, as
the clown, enters just as Nedda sings the exact words he heard her say to her
lover an hour or so earlier, and he burst into fury. Nedda tries for a few moments to bring Canio
back to the play, but all he can do is to demand the name of her lover. She finally explodes, crying that she will
never tell him. Blind with rage, he stabs her. Silvio breaks from the crowd; Canio sees him
and stabs him. The opera ends with the immortal line, “The comedy is
over.”
There’s
nothing better for killing time in a constructive way than reading a good
book. Books expand our horizons, fill us
up with knowledge, make us laugh and cry and sharp our minds.
Here are 10
must-read books of different genres for people whose tastes are eclectic – have
fun on your journey!
As a
disclaimer, the websites chosen for describing the books are merely
illustrative, and I do not endorse, nor am I affiliated with any party.
Cleopatra
VII of Egypt was barely more than a teenager when she
inherited the richest empire in the world, fifty-one years before the birth of
Jesus Christ. Colin Falconer did a great
job telling her story.
Colin Falconer
was born in North
London. He is a former journalist and the author of
three previous historical novels, which have been published in many languages
throughout the world. He travels widely
to research his novels but now lives in a small coastal town in Western Australia.
The Bourne Identity was named the second best spy novel
of all-time, and the novel was adapted into a 1988 television
movie starring Richard Chamberlain and Jaclyn Smith,
and a 2002 movie starring Matt Damon, Franka
Potente and Chris Cooper.
Robert
Ludlum (May 25, 1927 – March 12, 2001) was
an American author of 23 thriller novels. The number of his books in print is estimated
between 290–500 million copies. They have been published in 33 languages
and 40 countries. Ludlum also published
books under the pseudonyms Jonathan Ryder and Michael Shepherd.
The masterpiece of Steinbeck's later years, East of
Eden is set in the rich farmlands of California's Salinas Valley. Follow the intertwined destinies of two
families – the Trasks and the Hamiltons – whose generations helplessly reenact
the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.
John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. (February 27, 1902 – December
20, 1968) was an American writer. He is
widely known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The
Grapes of Wrath (1939)
and East
of Eden (1952)
and the novella Of Mice and Men (1937). He was an author of twenty-seven books,
including sixteen novels, six non-fiction books and five collections of short
stories; Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
Larsson's regret of not helping a young girl named Lisbeth,
whom he saw being raped when he was 15, manifested in his character of the same
name, also a rape victim. Larsson writes
within the crime novel, in Chapter 12, "It's actually a fascinating case. What I believe is known as
a locked room mystery, on an island. And nothing in the
investigation seems to follow normal logic. Every question remains unanswered,
every clue leads to a dead end."
Karl
Stig-Erland "Stieg" (15 August 1954 – 9 November
2004) was
a Swedish journalist and writer. He is best known
for writing the "Millennium series" of crime novels,
which were published posthumously.
Larsson lived and worked much of his life in Stockholm, in the
field of journalism and as an independent researcher of right-wing extremism. He was the second best-selling author in the
world for 2008.
Sophie's World is a novel about philosophy
by Jostein Gaarder, published in 1991. It was originally written in Norwegian, but has since been translated
into English (1995) and many other languages. It sold more than 30 million copies and is one
of the most successful Norwegian novels outside of Norway. The book has been adapted into a film and a PC
game.
Jostein Gaarder is a
Norwegian intellectual and author of several novels, short
stories and children's books. Gaarder often writes from the perspective of
children, exploring their sense of wonder about the world.
Old Ralph Roberts hasn't been sleeping well lately. Every
night he wakes just a little bit earlier, and pretty soon, he thinks, he won't
get any sleep at all. It wouldn't be so bad, except for the strange
hallucinations he's been having. Or, at least, he hopes they are hallucinations.
For fans of horror books, this one is a masterpiece.
Stephen Edwin King (born September
21, 1947)
is an American author of
contemporary horror, suspense, science
fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350
million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television
movies and comic books. Many of his
stories are set in his home state of Maine.
If you are
an inquisitive person, that’s a must-read.
Hawking exceeds his teaching abilities in this book, where he explains
with mastery very difficult concepts of theoretical physics to normal-brained
people.
Stephen William Hawking (born January 8,
1942) is a
British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author. His key
scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger
Penrose, theorems regarding gravitational singularities in
the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction
that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known
as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking
radiation). He is an Honorary
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical
Academy of Sciences, and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of
Mathematics at the University of Cambridge between 1979 and 2009. Subsequently, he became research director at
the university's Centre for Theoretical Cosmology.
Bryson, who’s
best known for his travel writing (the both amazing A Walk in the woods
and Neither
Here, Nor There), entertain and enlighten us through this, sometimes funny,
but surely captivating, popular science book; a highly recommendable good read
that will sure give you smiles.
William McGuire "Bill"
Bryson, (born December
8, 1951) is
a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on
the English language and on science. Born
an American, he was a resident of Britain for most of his adult life before
returning to the US in 1995. In 2003
Bryson moved back to Britain, living in the old rectory of Wramplingham,
Norfolk, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University.
This
thriller is set in Washington, D.C. and is the follow-up of the world’s
best seller The Da
Vinci Code; and Brown did it again. He mixes history, religion, science and art in
this electrifying book that is going to keep you up for hours.
Dan Brown (born June
22, 1964)
is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for the 2003
bestselling novel, The Da Vinci Code. Brown's novels, which are treasure hunts set
in a 24-hour time period, feature the recurring themes of cryptography,
keys, symbols, codes, and conspiracy theories. His books have been translated into over 40
languages, and as of 2009, sold over 80 million copies. Two of them, The Da Vinci
Code and Angels & Demons, have been adapted into feature films.
In the
future of Ray Kuzweil’s prediction, technology will play a role in our lives
much more important than we think: it will enable us to reverse aging, boost
our cerebral power and fix DNA errors.
The next step in our evolutionary process will be the union of human and
machine in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be
combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability
of our creations.
Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil (born February
12, 1948)
is an American author, scientist, inventor and futurist. Aside
from futurology, he is involved in fields such as optical character
recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology,
and electronic keyboard instruments. He is the author of several books on
health, artificial intelligence (AI), transhumanism, technological
singularity, and futurism.
