You know it's not democracy when you smell something funny

Somehow it was clear that external influences were being used to wrap the whole thing as fast as possible. Yet, the fact that internet is a valuable tool was proved again, when officials channels are not giving us facts, but fiction. When the case of Pirate Bay came out we stood upon the beginning of understanding who is who and which is which.

For ages the media outlet painted a dark and sinister image of the underground internet to push the masses towards the hate. It all goes down to following the everlasting thought "I don't know it, therefore I must despise it!". There is more to it than what you might think.

It's all happening in Sweden where the biggest torrent server Pirate Bay was under attack from the Swedish authorities to shut down operations, under the false accusation that they were facilitating the worldwide industry of movie/game piracy.

What merged was an intricate game of cat ad mouse where foreign pressures were applied directly by the US, from the RIAA ( Record Industry Association of America). Someone was upset that a bunch of kids from Europe were upsetting the cash flow in Hollywood. It also looks like that the interests of few people are far more important than geo-political issues happening on this planet, and before you can say the word "Lawsuit" a search warrant was issued against the operating location of the Pirate Bay. The rest is well known, but now we are seeing the aftermath piece by piece all over the internet.

Browsing Reddit I found this interesting article about how the US forced Sweden to crackdown on the Pirate Bay and on file sharing. It is upsetting that two countries so far away and culturally apart are magically summoned by the attention of piracy that is only allegedly hurting a very small minority in USA. What is also disturbing is that if Sweden denied cooperation it would have faced trading sanction directly by the US.

There a feeling of being at gun point jumps into my mind: if Sweden does not do what America wants, shit will hit the fan. There's democracy taking place where the movie and the recording industry is desperately trying all it can to grant survivability for the next five years, maybe.

What followed after is a huge chunk of information given from many blogs, torrent and technology website over how really the situation is unfolding. But the impoverished RIAA would suffer the synergy of the internet users when the events of the Wikileaks and the secret cables followed suit after the Pirate Bay shut down and became a political party. What remained is a trail of news and facts that put together are becoming a clear mosaic that represents the private and shady deals that American corporations are orchestrating on a global scale. It's clear that whenever there is the will and the power anything can be done in no-time, and this highlight the arrogant behavior of US politicians whenever their shady interests are touched. 

I wish USA cold be that quick in eradicating real-life threats like starvation and famine, things that matter more than a few less dollars that the RIAA doesn't get. But it also shows a failed American foreign diplomacy that acts only upon the needs of the few in an aggressive way that casts shadow over the creation of a fair bill over net neutrality.

INDIE!

It has the meaning of some sort of underground musical trend that you heard somewhere, but you weren't sure what it's made of. Indie is the underground, it's the label of the creation that comes from outside the mainstream.
Some will say it's the underdog and it sounds like it because someone managed to become big.
When I started playing Minecraft I thought I was getting into another easy-catch game that would fill the empty hours for a week or two. I way wrong and on top of that I was amazed by the success that Machinarium had last year.

Machinarium presents its original art

The majority of these indie games are based one principle which is to have a product that works and it's fun. Creators are game-veterans that treasured the big-developer mistake and spawned something with an amazing game play. Graphics are, off course, not the top-notch quality because of limited materials and budget. What you have in your hands is a truly amazing creation that has the possibility to influence the rest of the player-base.

Minecraft met Hollywood

There's a whole new galaxy of games that are packed wit more content and more fun than your latest action game. The price tag comes simple because you won't spend a fortune for these games. Many indie developers create functional products that are awarded for their creativity because they don't go through a marketing screening that can influence the final product.

Indie is also those who create mods to perfect games that are already an establishment. Take for  instance Half Life 2 with its mod community that crafted many original products like the Minerva, a successful modifications still played today.

Happy holidays from...

The socialization process

It took just about a decade, the first decade of this millennium, to change the way socialization is done. Why did it take only ten years? That's the time that people developed a deeper relationship with their computer and internet, a morbid way of becoming transparent to to stranger with anonymousness and estranged with those who were closer to us. 

Socializing was easier because there wasn't other way and people alway felt the importance of letting other know of they felt through their thoughts and voices. It is a very overrated communication method and because of that it's becoming every day a weaker tool. There is a sort of difficulty in approaching others and engaging in conversation, especially in those countries that are proud to be included in the western world.

There are places where you go and many eyes will lay upon you scrutinizing how you look and how you fit in the context. Others won't even come near you, afraid they'll be judged by others for approaching someone that is not one-of-their-kind. Many will in-fact alienate you because if your different lifestyle that does not match their, with all the stereotypes included.

A lack of physical contact is what's happening lately, also on the job, where the connections are made with quick emails avoiding any possible contact and relationship. Communicating is a hard job for those who like to express them self and those who don't are enjoying their reclusive status-quo believing they are the social elite.

There are now groups of people who are small numbers of friends that become smaller and smaller each year, chipping away those who don't fit the picture anymore. It is a self collapsing social structure. The lack of morality among the people who compose these groups is an interesting example of how the future generations will develop: farther away from culture and reality.

It's the bubble people live in that when popped it will destroy their fictional reality and throw them onto the real world. There  we can see the survival of the fittest, the aftermath of living in a world post bubble.

But I remember the bars and pubs I went across Europe and their noticeable difference in crowd. From Spain to Lithuania I saw how people interact with others and in other languages. Many countries are subject to their own past that reflects upon their today's society. In Ireland you would start talking with a stranger in a pub while drinking a Jameson or a Guinness, in Lithuania you would meet only beautiful girls that are really curious abuot your life and are very sociable.

Maybe there are countries that are not touched by the internet bliss and still enjoy meeting for a coffee and chat without mentioning even once Facebook or without even knowing what's Twitter.

The lamb in the wolf's den

A conspiracy is when you find clean and renewable energy and oil companies want to sink you. It's just that easy to be declared public enemy n1. This is pretty much what happened to Julian Assange after releasing information that many powerful people did not want.

You can become the new Bin Laden in less you can say Wikileaks. I guess the terms in which logic is used to become such wanted person are now as volatile as a skyzophrenia. But this is how reality is now becoming an option and this is how fast it's happening.

In a recent news a group of scientists invented the first water-free washing machine to be put on the market for sale. Guess what? Big home-appliances names started offering big money to shut down the project and to buy the patent. Looks like a forced merging with little or no synergy but from those who came out with good deeds. These scientists are risking to be left in the shadow for inventing something rivolutionary.

Imagine the amount of water we will be saving along with the water bill at the end of the month. Think that there won't need any piping where you put this washing machine.

To be honest I believe that the home appliance industry is a bit of a jerk when acting in such a terrible way. They proposed large sums to buy this idea so they can lock it far away where the eye can see, rather than purchasing  or leasing the drawings to switch from an obsolete design towards a much more efficient one. This tells you how screwed up corporations are. They do not listen to people, but to market researches. Yes, a market research is far more credible than the reality spoken from those who buy their products.

It is a world-wide symptom of illness from the industry world and from the market place considering not to change direction when it's needed. The symptom turns to be a sickness and it has the face of a virtual cartel over the intellectual design of a washing machine. 

The corporate hive mind is thinking for us, it's deciding for us and it's acting upon our not-so-best interests.

Now this is just an example of how reality can be deceived and warped. The problem subsists when it's the entire world industries that collectively acts together like a drug cartel that s ready to strike anyone who dares to change the status-quo.

How sad and real this is. Greed is becoming top priority on a scale that we never thought it could exists among people. 

You can blame it on TV and the rest of the media, but in the end you very well know that we are not doing anything about it because our species is not adapting correctly through this change. It feels as if we are sitting in the car arguing who should sit shotgun while the driver is sleeping drunk at the wheel. Time is running out, but hope springs eternal. 

Not a girl, but a skeleton

She is the winner, Ann Ward, of the 2010 tv show America's Next Top Model, a program about under-weight girls who struggle under the constant watch of the cameras to win a contest and to be forgotten a few years later. It is the trend of a nation [USA] that idolizes not the real beauty, but the one that can be faked. You have the image of a girl that shows her bones  in a photo shoot that wants to be sexy, but it's just creepy.

The haunted face and her cold eyes are the status of the modelling world where true beauty is to be on the brink of anorexia.

But nobody cares because the drama pivoting around the temporary existence of a bunch of girls fighting each other is priceless: ratings go up, fake-beauty is created, fashion is idolized, profits. You then realize, for a moment, that the fashion world is nothing but a very thin facade that covers everything that needs to be covered. The second picture of Ann shows her true identity with very little make up on. It's a still-frame from her casting video that shows how she's just a normal girl, nothing super, no perfect smile, no perfect eyebrows, no perfect eyes. 

Some people...

Even Barbie gets an update

Just when we had enough of bad stereotypes here's another one that comes to haunt us all...

And now she has the body of a 20 years old girl!

Minecraft is taking over!

First time I saw images of Minecraft I thought it was about an overhyped game that was meant to bring nostalgia among hipsters: the pixel graphis was a big clue. Time goes by and more and more posts are apearing on Reddit.  Photos, articles and eventually videos of what you can do in Minecraft. I decided not to jump into it immediatly even though I was curious, because the Reddit gaming community is a reality check on past and present titles. 

I slowly understood watching all the posts of what Minecraft is made of. Then I decided to check the website which actually look it's from 1998, but that was ok. I tried the free browser version and did not understand wtf I could do, nor the purpose of the game. Few days later Minecraft's server is down and it's free to play. This time I was going to play the right way.

Here an account of what happened...

day 1

I click the empty button and a fresh world generates for me. Trees, green and clouds are everywhere. I'm well aware of the day/night cycle and what the consequences might be. Watching some tutorial videos I learnt that zombies, spider and cock-shaped-jumping-green thing are fatal, especially the last one, as few of them exploded in my face, but never died.

day 2

I'm roaming my world in search of some place I can settle, but what does settle mean in Minecraft? Video tutorials shows how some players built castles, mansions carefully furnishing the interiors. My first safe place is a hole in a hill 4x3 in dimension. It's cozy (I tell my self) while staring outside my hole waiting for sunrise.

day 3

I left my hole in search of elements that might be useful. I'm full of dirt blocks, sand, and got some wood parts. Yet I don't know what to do with all those thing. They don't match in the inventory and can't create anything. Meanwhile night was upon me again and those dirt blocks in my inventory were helpsl to build three walls and aroof over a rocky mountain side. I poked the dirt to create a hole so I coul monitor the nightlife, but no enemies so far.

day 4

Off I go towards new lands crossing mountains and exploring caves that have nothing for me. Curious about mining I seek help of the internet to find what I can craft, at least the minimum for survival. Randomly I managed to create sticks from wood and eventually a shovel. That's it, nothing else.

The tutorial videos game me a boost creating a serious mine pick, torches and creating the crafting box.

day 5

With torches and a pick in my inventory mining becomes easier and I'm headed to explore many caves. More coal for more torches and a new element that I thought was copper (due to its colour), but that actually was iron.

day 6

Curiosity pushed me to swim across the sea towards an island that looked suitable, but everything looks suitable and repetitive in Minecraft. The only problem is that I'm down to five hearths due to jumping and falling to explore caves. Night comes and a new shelter must be built. Still, no dangerous wildlife in sight.

day 7

I took one more peek at the tutorials because I couldn't understand how to prepare food after killing manypigs and collecting pok chops out of them (pigs are so cute when they oink). Torches make the difference as I'm able to shape a bunker from my safe-hole. I started mining through different layers of dirt and stone making more rooms. It's a bunker. That's what it is.

day 8

Only one heart left and no meaning to restore my health bar after trying many combo in the inventory with ingredients. collected. After saving again the game I discovered that the reason of no enemies if the difficulty setting on Pacific. There's no chalenge so I go to Easy as the first step to learn what to do with monsters.

day 9

A bloody skeleton almost kills me with his arch leaving me with half hearth. Finally I find the brown mushroom to combine with the crafted bowl and the red mushroom. My health bar rises to full ater two portion of stew. I'm happy and continue to roam for a better place.

day 10

roaming again in search of what? I have a huge set of stone picks so I can mine faster.

day 11

I don't know how many kilometers I did. I wish there was a map to get some references, but it's old school with navigation skills and must keep an eye on the thedirection and motion.

day 12

I venture on another island full of animals where I managed to gather food, feathers and whool. I continue to explore the area.

day 13

I arrive at a spot with low lands, sands, trees and lots of animals. The place looks like a series of islands close to eachother. I can see three so far being close to mine. It looks like a nice spot to settle and water will give me protection as I start carving with my tool a safe shelter into the hill.

day 14

The morning looks promising and I gather more material building a fournace where I can smelt the iron. I carve deeper into the hill to gain more space and I put side to side the crafting box with the furnace. I manage to create a box to put stuff from my inventory. I wonder where other precious materials can be. There's ore to be dug, but iron is the only thing I can find beside coal

day 15

I expand my new bunker and decide to dig downward to see if I'm sitting on something of value. Fuck that! I opened a sealed cave with zombies in it. I only loose one hearth, but I jumped on my seat for the scare!

I build a bridge to connect to the other island.

day 16 

Fire! Finally I manage to properly have a tool to create fire. Trees are burning all around me. They don't get consumed and are actually killing the night assholes.

day 17

My crib is nicer ad I discover doors and plant it out a litle bit better with a new room that leads to a balcony.

day 18

I build another bridge to the second island. I put torches everywhere as  I set more trees on fire. It seems that the combination of the two keeps the monsters away. I also built a trench and a castle-like wall in front of my house.

day 19 

With the many stone blocks I have decided to I build a defence tower on the closer island. The whole area is well lit. I can easily recognize it in case I have to travel further and want to come back.

day 20

I feel alone. There's nothing around me. I always hope I can find another one like me, but it's just Single Player.

day 21

Skeletons leave arrows around and I collect them in the morning. I crafted more stuff and expanded my place.

day 22

Two new bridges made ot of stone are set and connecting the other island with proper lighting around. I noticed that the more torches I lay around the lesser the mobs I find. 

day 23

I decide to upgrade again my palace and place new doors to make the thing safe. Maybe I'll collect enough stone to create a mighty fortress, something colossal. I wish I could share my home with others.

day 24

I have now an iron axe, shovel, few picks, bricks, roasted pork chops. I spent he whole day withthe fournace. Still not enough to make anything fancy.

day 25

I'm thinkng of building a think wall and finally to mark my territory having a perimeter that can protect my assets. The water around me is plenty enough to create a new river, but the daylight time isn't enough for me to work properly.

The need for more quality sci-fi movies

If you recently went to the movie and watched Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio you might find yourself a little bit dazed by what just happened. It's the result of your brain working to understand a good plot. Yes, it was a good story and even though not entirely original, it's surely worth your bucks.

When was the last time you sat with your popcorn basket and a cold soda to watch a movie that squeezed your brain? Maybe when you went watching The Matrix in 1999? I guess yes. Science fiction is good material and especially if it comes out of directly from the director.

When the The Matrix came out I watched it three times the same weekend it opened. After that Hollywood rediscovered Phillip K. Dick and his works translating into major flicks some of his novels and short stories like Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly, Paycheck and upcoming The Adjustment Bureau; and in the recent past two major titles like Blade Runner (1982) and Total Recall (1990). Another example of a successful book-to-screen is Dune. The 1984 adaptation from the Frank Herbert's book was praised for it's accuracy, acting and special effects in a period where no CGI was available. It worked and the result was striking.

I believe that more can be done and I'm talking about quality. But Hollywood I don't think that Hollywood will have the monopoly on the good sci-fi chapter. Movies like 28 Days Later, District 9 and Cube were huge success from outside production who pointed on making stories where people would talk about for years. 

On the other side there I felt cheated when I watched I-Robot, especially after reading the book by Asimov. 

Do I expect too much? Yes, if we are talking about novels that are milestones and helped shape science fiction throughout the years. 

There is the need to oversee a better quality in sci-fi movies because there is a huge crowd out there of passionate people who are avid reader of books, comic books and meticulousness attend conventions dressed as their favorite character in movies and TV shows. Those are men and women who treasure details and want their experience to go beyond the silver screen because they can appreciate a good work of art, rather than buying a ticket to waste their weekends watching poor films like Doomsday or Outlander.

But at the same time we have to be careful when dealing with remakes such as The Day Earth Stood Still because there's a risk to ruin the original, or forcing to extend the saga making Terminator 5, 6, 7, etc.

Those who saw changes

Transitions allow you to better understand how the world changes and how things happen. We live in comfort times where people struggle way less than the generation before. But what does that mean? There was a time where people did not have the luxury that surround us today: cellphones, emails, social websites, etc.

There was a time where people actually interacted face to face to know you, to understand you, to debate you and to oppose you. Now it seems it's all gone. Yes, all gone...

I remember when I took my bike and visited my friend's house so we would gather and pedal around our neighbor blocks. We would stop to buy sodas to drink, chips or chocolate bars for our rogue snacks away from out parent's watch. Then we grew up to ride cars and start exploring the night life meeting at 9 pm and coming home at one in the morning.

We took those weekend nights riding our cars or stopping at our meeting place to talk about anything we felt without taboos. That was ten years ago, that was the year 2000 and not some post World War 2 scenario.

Some of us had cellphones that would only place calls and nothing else. That was an advantage to look cool among us and not hide behind anything else. If we had to meet t our usual spot we were there without any lame text-message excuse not to show up.

My generation who grew up i the 80s saw the transition into an age of comfort and laziness at the same time. We understood that the technological achievements were something short of a miracle and never took it from granted, unlike too many people do today. 

There is a huge gap between us and the kids of today who couldn't see life change, especially in a post 9/11 world. Lots of things did change and if you missed them you also missed history in the making. If you did not pay serious attention what happened from 2001 and on you missed an page-turning in life.

When you base the majority of your social activity through a website that might be Facebook or Myspace you just decided to avoid reality and what's really going around you.

I've witnessed the birth of MMOs, the dawn of chats and virtual social spaces, the way Google shaped the web and how it shaped your life. I saw changes that many other didn't. I was there to see when the web went from 1.0 to 2.0 and the advent of how Youtube changed things.

Once you saw those things you start appreciating every single application on your phone because back then you had to take the Yellow Pages to find anything that wasn't yet on the internet.

My parents saw eve more things changing than I did: TV, VHS, CD, the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the political turmoils in '68, the birth of the PC, and the list goes on and on.

What will the generation after me witness? Not so many changes as they will grow up and live in an environment where socializing will be more difficult and where interacting will only happen only through the HTTP and their dreams will be prepackaged by PR agencies in their next campaign ad..

Real ID over the internet is for suicidals

There is a reason why you do not have a tag with our name on your chest when you walk around. There is a reason why you hate telemarketers for having your name and last name. There's also a reason why you don't give your home or cellphone number to everyone. It's called privacy and it shouldn't be questionable at all. Unfortunately there are some who think otherwise and sometimes they sound like they spent too much time in the Sun. 

Google CEO Eric Schmidt talked on August 4th at Lake Tahoe Techonomy conference about the current status of the internet and its future. At one point he stated:

"The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it."

The need for a verified ID over the internet is just a bad idea and everyone knows why. Having your name and face available to the whole world is something that will have more side effects than positive ones. Here's a small list why it's a bad ides:

1. business will collect all your infos sending you more unwanted advertisement that most likely will be tailor-made for you through email, cellphone, snail mail, telephone, fax, gaming console, etc.
2. telemarketers will have a field trip knowing where you live and when to call you according to your work schedule;
3. door-to-door salesmen will return in grand style knocking at your door as soon as you get back from work.
4. divorcing parents are do not end their relationship in nice way. Crazy mom or dad might want to kidnap Junior;
5. religious solicitors doing the same job as telemarketers and door-to-door salesmen;
6. unwanted and not-well-intentioned people.

The list can go on and on, but I think you understood where it's headed. But there is a great example of personal information that went online that happened not too long ago. In the World Of Warcraft forum a post by an administrator stated that the company planned to implement Real ID for players, as part of the Blizzard's Battlenet strategy. What followed is that the real information of this administrator popped in the forum and soon enough his whole life was available to anyone: name, last name, girlfriend name, Facebook profile and a blog about his upcoming wedding with further details o family and friends.

The forum drama went on for hundreds of pages having people disgusted and shocked by this decision and eventually Blizzard dropped the project. This shows us how some corporate strategies are bad from the start because they do not reflect what costumers want.

Transparency is one thing, but not when we are talking about the real life of people who can have their life in jeopardy by silly strategies that will only work on paper. There are already ways to be identified on the internet, for example when you do online purchasing your credit card and address informations are already stored and I think it's enough. We don't want to give more than that to people who we don't know or we barely trust.

Giving up privacy over the internet is like having no walls in your bathroom. There is a limit to when and what your name should be available, the rest is none of your business.

Be careful how you handle neutrality

Net neutrality isn't about who owns the internet or who decides to turn it off. It's about fairness in it's quality and distribution, I say. Important political and financial figures are start to becoming afraid of the internet. How? People now are informed on things that matter the most that before were kept local or secret.

The information age is defined so by having people sharing and creating contents on a world-wide scale, but consequences are hurting lawmakers and corporations.

Since internet is a domain of the United State, politicians in Washington are feeling the heat and their personal agendas is crumbling. What happens is that laws are being created to limit the content of the net along with the freedom to information.

It is scary how influential are providers such AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, for example. Their work at lobbying senators is somehow successful into turning the web into a filtered content media apparatus. Remember what happened in Australia? Government wanted to apply a huge censorship system cut and edit information on the ground of protecting people using the terrorism/child pornography scapegoat. Those two items are easy to pressure through all the news channels making citizens believe they are being protected when in fact there is more to it.

Another clear example is the latest case for Wikileaks and the publishing of the 92,000 documents coming from military intelligence. It came out that big governments did wrong and are afraid this will translate into a domino effect where the truth can be exposed. Allegation of a wrong war in Iraq are the tip of the iceberg where many high profile politicians can loose more than their job, and all this because information is being made public.

Restricting contents is a move where only few will benefit and where many won't. But there are aspects of the net neutrality that many people do not know because they are being kept away from it. According to an article from the New York Times there are talks between Google and phone carrier Verizon to charge costumer for the search engine's traffic and it's associated website like Youtube. Also the Business Journal reports something similar.

This issue was born upon the problematic that some ISP are having with the increasing demand for a faster internet. Youtube streams million of videos on a daily basis around the world and ISP are having hard times keeping up with the bandwidth request. We don't live anymore in a web system made of just text pages and HTML documents. It's the web 2.0 and we have been for quite sometime. Servie providers are in a state of denial over the expansion of the internet and do not want to invest in better infrastructures not for a lack of money, but because they are stingy.

Some providers in north America set caps over data stream to your house and if you want more internet speed you must pay and get a new contract and pay more to increase the capacity.

However Google officially denied that any talk is taking place and wants accessibility for everyone, but there is a fear that a tier-system will take place eventually in a near future.

What is a tear-system? It would work like TV cable where you pay for packages according to what content you want to access. For example you will pay a basic package for websites like Yahoo, Hotmail, Reddit or Gmail. Then, if you want to use Facebook, Flickr or Ebay on top of the basic you will be charged more. Finally, if you want to add Youtube, Vimeo, Skype and online gaming your bill will be way heavier than what you're paying now on a monthly basis. 

Is net neutrality important? Yes, because ISP are just providers and not content-filters tools that can ask you money whenever they feel like. Europe and north America are behind updating their broadband access and coverage compared to countries like Japan and South Korea where DSL speed is 5-10 times faster and optic fiber is somewhat 30 times faster.

US senator Al Franken stated in a CNN interview that net neutrality is essential like free speech and it should be considered to in order to grant a free flow of the information. It's also essential that we do not fall for dirty tricks from politicians. Many of them are too old and stubborn to adapt to new technologies and are afraid that change will dethrone them. Imagine the post office charging you money when you subscribe to one or more newspaper-magazine at your address. How silly would that be? Would an international currier stop working because they are delivering too much? Most likely no and they would probably expand their fleet to keep up with the demand. So why can't ISP build more or better infrastructures? Many of them pocketed money from the US government promising a wider and faster network, but that never happened.

It's important to keep both eyes on matter that are very close to us before someone else makes important decision where we should have a say.

Religion matter less here

I have been watching news, blogs, reports and documentaries about how religious is north America. It was a surprise to me how much people were fundamentalist compared to other countries. 

In my opinion I always thought that north America was a religious country, but moderated enough not to suffocate their intellectual and secular side. I was wrong. Wrong like nothing I could ever imagine. 

There is a wild side of the US (especially) that is concentrated to religion in a matter how Soviets were about their secrecy and power. Something is quite shocking and we are in the year 2010. We suppose to be less and less superstitious about old tales that stigmatized in the wrong way innocent people. Time as gone by, but people did not understand their spiritual mistakes.

Writing from the country where the Pope and the Vatican live, I feel like I'm in the one of the most atheist country in the world.

Yes, right here in Italy we have so many people who are allegedly Christians, but do everything everyday to disprove it. Beside not following the bible nor the commandments, the Italian people can openly declare their atheism without any persecution from the church or other institutions.

In this country people are aware that the Catholic church has a bed in Rome and also how powerful it is, but there is no witch-hunt for those who do not believe in god or Jesus. Actually, it seems like people like more the way Jesus acted towards poor people rather than the whole bible story.

Atheists for Jesus? Maybe.

It's all about realizing how much Italy has been living with the Vatican manipulating the way Italy lives. Yes, I'm afraid to say so, but there is a deep belief in me that the progression of this country has been deeply halted by the Pope and his agenda.

Do I get expelled or burnt to death in a public square for my thought? Simply no! But why?

The answer can be given showing how much attention the Pope has been given to other countries while spreading the word, but Italy.

What has the Pope been doing to make Italy a better place? Nothing at all!

Faith based families are growing and developing other priorities that are not spiritual mostly because the financial crisis is striking with great vengeance upon the middle class. So, there is little or no time to turn for religious help because people are realizing it's not working! There is nothing about a church and an idol that can feed those families and help them pay their bills.

There is no outcasting for your different religious or no religious believes. Nobody cares actually. People lost that intellect for the spiritual side in order to improve their actual social condition.

On social site's pages there are no "Thank you Jesus" or "I love god" or "Prayers for the white brothers". Nothing like that. So far we have been considering the spiritual side as something very personal that does not belong to the public eye. Not even for the internet age and it's surrogates.

Donald Sutherland look-a-like French genius found after three years

French genius disappears for 3 years
Found in a hospital in Pescara

The mathematician was forgetful in psychiatric hospital, speaks four languages and is expressed through complex formulas

MILAN - Michel Doumesche is a genius in amnesiac 61 years, speaks four languages and is expressed through complex mathematical formulas. Of him had gone missing in France, his country of origin, in 2007. The mathematician has now been found in a hospital in Pescara. Doumesche suffer from disorders of memory and, until 2007, had disappeared several seized. Three years ago, however, its removal from home seemed definitive: most had not been tracked.

He wondered for three years - from 2007 to present, man has wandered to Europe and the case also dealt with the transmission Raitre Chi l'ha visto?. In 2008 he was spotted near Taranto, Foggia and had landed in an institution of nuns. From about two months he was hospitalized in the psychiatric hospital in Pescara. Communication between the police headquarters in Rome and Pescara has only now allowed to police the Division of Police Crime Capitoline that connect information acquired by the French and the description of man and his physique quite similar to that of a patient hospitalized in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Pescara. After the necessary evidence and detailed findings, police in Rome has verified the identity of the man by giving notice to the French authorities and his family.

CREDIT: Corriere Della Sera  www.corriere.it, direct link (translated via Google)