Monthly Archives: January 2005

Thief in Italy snags Rolex thanks to smoking ban

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www.zoomata.com staff

It seems hard to believe, but Italians are taking the new no-smoking law seriously — so seriously that a jeweler is out a watch valued at 29,000 euro ($37,000).

A man strolled into a store in Milan’s famous shopping street, Via Montenapoleone, and asked to see a few Rolexes. As he perused the glittering merchandise, he told the shop owner he only had foreign currency, but he was definitely interested.
Then, according to La Repubblica newspaper, he reached for his lighter. If it was a calculated hit, it was an exercise in minimalism.

The shop owner, conscious of the Jan. 10 smoking ban in public places, invited him to go out of the shop.”Please, enjoy your cigarette outside,” the newspaper reported the 53-year-old owner saying.

It was a bad call: the jeweler, at worst, could have been fined a maximum of 2,000 euro. That is, if the five police officers in Milan assigned to the anti-cigarette patrol had happened by the shop at lunchtime. The owner preferred not to take his chances with the fine and as he phoned the bank to ask about the foreign currency, the would-be customer went outside to have his smoke — making a clean get away with the precious watch.
The new law has been seen as a major victory for the 70% of non-smoking Italians. It made for a very expensive mistake for the merchant. ? text 1999-2005 zoomata.com
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Gucci Opens Designer Café

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by Nicole Martinelli After rival fashion houses Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana have opened store cafés, Gucci is the latest in designer coffee with a new java boutique in Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II.

More pragmatic than part of a business strategy, Gucci decided to enter the realm of java after city officials agreed to allow them three display windows onto the galleria only if they added a café.

The proviso was a nod to neighboring café Il Salotto and an attempt to keep some of the galleria’s character as the center of Milan’s coffee culture despite its recent appeal for designer shops.

Gucci Cafe is a tiny alcove tucked into the front of the accessories shop where the coffee is served with a cube of dark chocolate and tiny arrow-like spoons. Gucci’s espresso-ing of itself is, all things considered, slightly chilly.
A spare design mitigated by one metal trough with tiny shrubs and only outdoor seating with mushroom heaters made for some blue-fingered fashionistas in its winter debut. Gucci joe may also be memorable for a jolt not related to caffeine: priced at €3.50 ($4.50) a cup, it’s 20% more than mosaic-adorned and well-heated Caffé Zucca just across the way.
Can Prada be far behind? text + photo 1999-2007 zoomata.com
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Memory lapses? It’s just context, Italian researchers say

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www.zoomata.com staff

If you have ever had trouble putting a name to a face or blanked out during a job interview, you’ve been a momentary victim of memory lapse from lack of context, according to recent research conducted in Italy.

“Under normal conditions, when we memorize a piece of information, a fact, a name or a formula, the context in which we learn it plays a fundamental role in how the information is recorded,” says Cestari.
Research conducted in Rome discovered that people take ‘memory snapshots,’ storing information, say a face and a name, along with emotional state and physical environment at the time.

Spatial and physiological conditions heavily condition the process of transferring the information from short-term to long-term memory.

Different conditions make the information harder to retrieve. That’s why if you run into your ex’s sister at the hardware store or your French teacher at a garage sale, you may be at a loss to place the face — and wonder, wrongly, according to this research, whether memory is seriously failing you.
Another classic memory loss is blanking out on information during stressful situations, like a job interview or an exam. Cestari says that in front of a potential employer or during tests, stress causes a short circuit in memory retrieval because of changes in setting and the emotions at play.? text 1999-2005 zoomata.com
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