Courts Against Liberty

From the current news:

A 13-year-old girl who hopes to become the youngest person to sail solo around the world has had her record attempt blocked by a Dutch court.

The most scary part is this tho:

Laura Dekker will be placed under the care of social services for two months and a child psychologist will assess whether she is ready to undertake the risky voyage.

Now, I happen to think that not 14 yet is indeed a too young age for sailing solo around the world* (solo except radio, phone, internet and the like of course), but her parents should make the decision; that ought to be their right and duty. Certainly not business of a court, an emanation of the government.

The more the government and their emantions can interfere with our lives, the less free we are. It does not matter if it is For Our Own Safety or anything else; it is a reduction of liberty.

I am reading just in these days the tales of the far north by Jack London, and I smile grimly thinking that such adventures would be impossible today - at the very least, illegal in a thousand of different ways from child protection violations to health & safety issues. And so merrily we go down the slippery slope to enslavement.

* On the other hand, many years ago a young Mongol of about that age murdered his half-brother so that he could become head of the family. Later, that man became known to the world as Genghis Khan.

Solidarietà Europea

Se il Corriera riporta le dichiarazioni fedelmente (cosa sulla quale non scommetterei di certo la mia virilità), l'Unione Europea tende verso una maggiore unità ed uniformità... tranne che quando ci sono da togliere le castagne dal fuoco. A quel punto, ogni stato deve arrangiarsi da solo.

Alfano: Le carceri italiane sono «idonee» a ospitare soltanto «i detenuti italiani», altrimenti «si supera la capienza regolamentare e quella tollerabile» é l'allarme che il ministro della Giustizia ha lanciato rivolgendosi all’Unione europea: «Deve farsi promotrice di trattati» e «dare risorse economiche agli Stati per costruire nuove carceri»

Dennis Abbot: [...] uno dei portavoce della Commissione europea, ha anche sottolineato che «la gestione quotidiana della giustizia spetta agli stati membri».

Hooch Success

The experimented I started a little while ago has finally produced fruit.

Yes, not exactly 2 weeks have passed, but who cares.

The drink I produced is fizzy and has a taste that I cannot honestly define excellent, but is bearable. It is not too sweet and it can improve with time.

Even more important, the hooch is definitely alcoholic. I'd put its strength a little above 10 ABV, which is satisfactory.

Onje last thing tho, how do I get rid of that yeast taste?

Update 26/08: After pondering more attently a big glass of my homebrew, I realized the alcohol content is much lower - around the same of a lager beer, 5% or so. A bit of a delusion, yes, but the buzz is here still.

Blog Agostano

Non riesco a mettere insieme un bel pensiero lungo e fluente.

Sarà questa calura senza tregua che mi fiacca corpo e mente, sarà che preferirei essere spaparanzato al bordo della piscina del mio amico... ma il mio cervello è apatico.

Anche peggio, mi sento come Casco Nero nel mitico Balle Spaziali: "Sono circondato da un branco di stronzi!".

Tipo la discussione sull'opportunità di proibire i rave party o meno. Siccome in una paese "libero" come l'Italia serve una fila di licenze che non finisce più per fare una festa del genere, ne consegue che il 99% dei rave sono già illegali. A cosa servirebbe renderli doppiamente illegali, non lo so - per inciso, come si definisce esattamente un rave party? Se si lascia scrivere la legge od ordinanza al burocrate medio, finisce che anche la grigliata di Ferragosto con la famiglia ha bisogno di licenza.

Meritato Riposo

Dai primi di giugno che lavoro 8-10 ore al giorno (si, ci sono stati giorni con poca attività, ma rari) ed anche quasi tutti i sabati mattina; ho preso 2-3 mezze giornate libere ma solo se necessario per fare una pratica o l'altra...

Ora una decina di giorni di vacanza senza alcuna preoccupazione me li merito?

And So It Came

What, Charles Johnson's ban hammer...

I'm so crushed, really, about being banned by a whiny, petulant, passive-aggressive and intellectually dishonest little blog tyrant.

More later, if I feel like it. Now I'll get ready to cure my sorrows at a babrbecue with my family.

More Homebrewing Adventures

After the fiasco of last year's fermentation experiments, I am at it again. Because only wussies give up at the first failure.

This time, being a hot summer and me being working quite a lot, I decided for a simple and inexpensive approach, following the truism that in a simple system there are less variables to control and complexity can be added later.

And what is more simple than the fermentation of sucrose - common sugar?

But sugar alone will have no taste to speak of, and I keep reading that yeast likes tannin and an acidic environment. Thus, two more ingredients were added to the concoction.

I prepared an infusion of two bags of ceylon tea and a chopped half-lime in one liter of water, then dissolved around 275 grams of sugar in it and brought the syrup to the boil before adding the juice of the half-lime.

I allowed the wort to cool down to room temperature and, using sanitized* funnel and tools I transferred most of it to a sanitized 1.5 liter glass bottle which worked as fermentation tank.

One quarter of bread yeast was dissolved in the remaining wort, and that also transferred to the fermentation tank. I gave it a good shake and capped the bottle with a piece of aluminium foil.

That was around midnight. By next evening, fermentation was vigorous but smooth. I kept the process going for eight days, keeping the bottle as cool as possible - not so easy to do when temperature indoors is around 30 °C; at night I placed my experiment on a windowsill to enjoy cooler air.

Finally, using a sanitized colander and funnel I filtered the mixture into two sanitized plastic bottles of half a liter, for the final fermentation at low temperature (in and out the fridge, in fact).

I tasted some of the liquid and it wasn't so bad. Not as sour as vinegar for sure; it has a strong but not overwhelming sweet aftertaste and some more complex notes from the lime and tea. And quite a strong taste of live yeast, of course.

Alcohol content? I was not able to feel any buzz, but I had a small amount of hooch on a full stomach. Anyway, it is known that wine takes quite some time to develop a respectable strength: I am not despairing.

Developments will be available in no less than a couple of weeks.

*For sanitization I used the easiest way: a dash of bleach in a big bowl of water. Let it act for half a hour and then rinse well all items immediately before use.

Ingegneria Etanolica

Vedo segni preoccupanti in Italia. Vedo il presentarsi di quei problemi visti già in Gran Bretagna - ed una classe politica insipiente e statalista, ed un popolo ignorante e pecora, adottare gli stessi provvedimenti fallimentari nel tentativo di contenere questi problemi.

Caso del momento, il problema (o presunto tale) dell'eccessivo consumo di alcol fra i giovani.

Che sembra che i giovani si siano messi a bere solo negli ultimi dieci anni, mentre prima non scorreva una goccia di alcol nelle virginali gole dei minorenni.

Andate a raccontare queste cose ad un altro, non a me che ho avuto un nonno campagnolo ed un altro toscano.

Insomma, in Italia per molto tempo si è usato servire alcolici a chiunque li chiedesse, sempre e dovunque - fatta salva la discrezione dell'oste.

Ora a colpi di ordinanze comunali* eccetera questa usanza, questo aspetto della nostra cultura italica sta venendo distrutto in pochi mesi e senza chiedere un parere al popolo (che dovrebbe essere sovrano).

Da una parte vedo l'atteggiamento schizofrenico di comuni che da una parte incoraggiano la vita notturna in mezzo alle città, dall'altro si stracciano le vesti per gli inevitabili effetti collaterali.

Ma più che altro vedo la mentalità puritana, paternalista e proibizionista e pure farlocca di tantissimi amministratori di ogni colore. Per loro i giovani sono essere implumi ed indifesi, incapaci di controllarsi e limitarsi fino allo scattare del magico giorno della maggiore età.

E per loro non sono le persone da punire se violano le regole del vivere civile, ma gli oggetti inanimati da proibire nel caso che qualcuno possa abusarne.

Ci sono già leggi ed ordinanze contro schiamazzi e vandalismo, sia commessi da sobri che da ubriachi. Perchè non si lavora per farle rispettare, invece che aggiungere un cervellotico divieto dopo l'altro. Un motivo può essere che si possono facilmente mungere migliaia di euro in multe da un bar colto a peccare violare ordinanze.

E quanto all'efficacia... bé, guardate quanto bene se la passano a Londra con criminalità e teppismo, dove restrizioni del genere sono in vigore da tempo.

* Un ragazzo in coma etilico o qualcosa del genere che diventa notizia di portata nazionale? Davvero, questo è scegliere solo le notizie che supportano una narrativa ben precisa.

The Other Italy

My workload looks more like a fuckload, and there's still a household to run here. Still, tonight I got some time for blogging.

Many people from foreign countries know the Italian cities - Milan, Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples - but those cities are now heavily cosmopolitan, less Italian and more god-knows-what. I suspect that in a few years of those cities will remain only the buildings, but the culture and the people will be gone - not evolved; erased.

There's another Italy, that few foreigners know. The Italy of the miriad of villages and hamlets scattered around the lowlands of the north, and the mountains and valleys.

Only a few of those villages miss more than one of these things: a church, a bar and a post office.

The church these days is often empty, yet almost never abandoned: the people still care about the campanile - belltower, symbol of the place and land visible from afar - enough to keep it in good conditions.

The bar is the centre of the social life. Much like a pub in the english countryside, it is where anyone can be seen sooner or later. Only seldom those bars are new and shiny and cool; most of the time they are watering holes for the locals, old and worn and barely meeting the stringent regulations of these days. In one case, far up in the mountains, I saw the owner ironing clothes in a corner while some customers were having a breakfast of pancetta, bread and white wine.

The post office works as public service and another aggregation point - it's where the elderly (because these days the majority of citizens of villages are elderly) can get their pension check and discuss of the latest news of the place. While repairing printers or other devices I've heard talking of cows and barns and fields, and births and deaths - and maybe I've seen a slight increase in births. And people just seeing each other, enjoying the chance of leaving home for a while.

Not all is so nice in villages; the main problem is a state of mind so conservative to become backward and closed to anything different. And yet... racist violence seems to be more an urban than rural problem. Countryside people may be closed and diffident towards strangers, but once one is accepted as a member of the community, there are little problems. Or that's what I have observed.

And when the choice is between urbanites and hillbillies... I know where I stand.