The Tips of Zona-M

Palm Oil Factoids of 2019, and its next battle

Sat, 24 Aug 2019 04:00:00 +0000

Just a few interesting things I’ve learned yesterday

Geopolitical take-away of the week, from UK, Italy and China

Sat, 30 Mar 2019 18:00:00 +0000

Geopolitical take-away and executive summary of the week:

Two surely unrelated primacies the USA can be proud of

Wed, 06 Feb 2019 08:30:00 +0000

because, remember, “correlation is not causation”!

First World Luxury Problems

Tue, 05 Feb 2019 08:00:00 +0000

Some problems are merely First World Problems. Other problems are at another level.

Halloween in Italy: cultural appropriation, or imposition?

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 18:00:00 +0000

(just a comment I wrote on Facebook, answering someone complaining about the “cultural appropriation” of Halloween)

The dark side of resurrecting species from extinction

Sun, 15 Jul 2018 05:00:00 +0000

Scientists hope test-tube embryos can save near-extinct white rhino. Is it right? Is it a smart?

Big vs Little Ideas, or what we should call innovation

Thu, 29 Mar 2018 23:00:00 +0000

Here is a great passage about what real innovation should look like, or more exactly: what we should call, search for and reward, as real innovation, instead of the next gadget.

If USA really had teachers adept at firearms...

Thu, 22 Feb 2018 05:00:00 +0000

… I’m pretty sure it would also have to deal with, among many others, these three consequences.

What Starbucks addicts should know before entering an Italian bar

Sat, 13 Dec 2014 07:00:00 +0000

(this is important, please read carefully and share around this TRUE story I just heard from a friend of mine) Yesterday morning a (probably) north-american traveler made a complete, utterly ridiculous ass of himself in the Fiumicino airport, interrupting service and thus harassing everybody else around who (who would have imagined it) couldn’t risk to lose their plane for a kid’s tantrum. Why? Simply because he went to one of the bars in the airport, asked “a LATTE” and got just what he had asked for: one glass full of MILK straight out of the fridge and nothing else.

The Silmarillion, or the absurdity of eternal copyright

Fri, 12 Dec 2014 07:00:00 +0000

John Tolkien started to write the Silmarillion one hundred (one HUNDRED!) years ago and continued to work on it until he died, 41 years ago. Forty years later, an Illustration and Graphic Design student worked all by himself, for about one year, to produce a wonderful deluxe, hand-illuminated edition of the Silmarillion. But he can’t publish it. Because other people, who are NOT those who wrote those texts, haven’t given permission (synthesis from the interview):

best possible food for tought on peak car, transportation, smartphones, society...

Thu, 10 Oct 2013 07:00:00 +0000

You can think how much you want about effective ways of getting a discussion started, but sometimes reality just does all the work for you. I officially challenge EVERYBODY to find something better than this specific couple of stories, that came back to back in my RSS feed, as brain food for a wide-ranging discussion on the impact of mobile tech on society in general, not just transportation (links to the full stories below):

We pay taxes, parks don't. That's why...

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:00:00 +0000

At Boston.com there is a series of wonderful photographs about pollution, environment and society in the USA of the seventies. And…

Acknowledging the limits of Khan Academy

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Robert Talbert writes that, even if he remains convinced that “online video is an idea whose time has really come in education”, and thinks that the current videos of Khan Academy are a great resource for the niche in which they were designed to work, they have some inherent limits that should not be forgotten, namely: the Khan Academy videos are (normally good) demos on how to finish mathematics exercises, with little modeling of the higher-level thinking skills this kinds of learning objectives (learning mechanical skills) that Khan Academy videos focus on are important

Mobile phones will not save the world without radio

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0000

It is time to admit that when it comes to global development, mobile phones will not be able to achive it on their own, says Hibah Hussain of the New America Foundation. Promotion of social change and economic growth cannot dismiss established communications networks like radio, “the mass media that reaches the widest audience in the world”. Above all, says Hussain, it is radio, more than mobile phones, that reaches best the people you should think about when talking about development: poor people who, especially if they live in flood prone areas, always carry cheap radio sets along.

Permaculture, the different agriculture we need right now?

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Are old methods of agriculture nearing the peak of their productive potential? They almost certainly are. Will this leave people without enough food? Yes, if we only look at the current agricultural methods, but not necessarily. Those methods are not conceived and practiced to maximize yield per acre, only yield per unit of labor. Their rule is not “do more”, or at least “do enough”, but “do with as little people as possible”.

What changes school, technology or teachers?

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 07:00:00 +0000

Lynette Barr, a grade 6 teacher at Pentland Primary School in Bacchus Marsh, embeds games into every part of the curriculum, devoting 20% of class time to games-based learning. Since her students’ writing was not very descriptive, she turned to Super Scribblenauts on Nintendo DS. Some students work with online maths-based puzzles, others chart bowling scores in Wii Sports for a maths activity. Lately, the class has started exploring maths by running, jumping and throwing in Olympic sports on Xbox Connect.

A too general critique to local food production