Inarea The way food has been depicted in images has always mirrored human cravings. Starting, for example, with the late Renaissance paintings of butchers and meats hanging on hooks, as well as of tables laid out for feasts (which were really allusions to memento mori). Nowadays, there’s always a rich panoply of dishes on our mobile … Read more
What colour is chemistry? Anyone who’s seen “Breaking Bad” will reply that it’s blue, rock crystal blue rock. Anyone who’s thinking about the plastic that surrounds us everywhere will say that there’s too much of it and that it’s too colourful. Anyone who’s thinking about burning oil wells will have only black in mind. But … Read more
At the start of each academic year at Athena College, Professor Coleman Silk would explain to his students that “All of European literature springs from a fight.” A quarrel over a woman. Then he would pick up his copy of ‘The Iliad’ and read to the class the opening lines: “Divine Muse, sing of the … Read more
Do you remember Elliott, the little boy in “ET”? Towards the end of the story, he and the eponymous extraterrestrial are being chased by the police and take flight… on board a bicycle… That moment became the film poster’s iconic image. The pram depicted above ideally belongs to a baby who was born two years … Read more
Here’s a record that – luckily – hasn’t yet been broken: that of the longest recorded survival alone on a raft. During World War II, a British merchant ship, SS Benlomond, was torpedoed by a German U-boat in the Atlantic. A young Chinese steward was the only member of the crew to survive: he dived … Read more
An inscription on the façade of a well-known building in Rome proclaims that the Italians are a nation of saints, poets and explorers. Similarly, we find the statues of Vasco da Gama and Bartolomeu Dias standing proud on the Monument of Discoveries in Lisbon. But what about the poets? The category is represented by a … Read more
The Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein left us a dictum which should be distilled generously: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent” . If by “speaking” we mean “explaining”, point-by-point, would anyone be able to explain what Amazon is today? Yesterday it sold books, today it’s a shopping basket overflowing with everything under the … Read more
20 November 1959 is the date when the UN General Assembly adopted the “Declaration of the Rights of the Child” which was later enshrined in the “Convention” signed by 196 countries. Fifty-four articles from which four fundamental principles stand out: the right to non-discrimination (art.2), the respect of the best interests of the child (art.3), … Read more
The inauguration of a museum doesn’t just bespeak paintings, sculptures and prints; it’s always a political event that tells us something about the times. Today, the Louvre brand exports its artefacts in excess to whoever can afford to rent them (see the homonymous museum in Abu Dhabi). In 1819, the Prado was being inaugurated during … Read more
The Teddy Bear is the toy of toys, the one that sits under the Christmas Tree and with which children cuddle up for comfort when the lights are switched off. It gets its name, however, from an inveterate hunter: former United States President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt. The story goes that during a hunting trip in … Read more
