zoomata staff: Saturday May 8 12:37 a.m.
Romano Prodi, currently European Union Commission President, is drumming up party support by offering bottles of mineral water.

“A sip of optimism,” promises the orange label promoting the Ulivo party, available in still or sparkling water. Gadgets are rare in Italian political campaigns — the revolving door of 59 governments put together since 1946 hasn’t allowed for much more than a few quickly printed posters and buttons.

Things have changed now that Prodi’s rival current Premier Silvio Berlusconi, with 1,060 days in office, broke the record May 5 for the longest time in office. It’s a strong statement since Prodi is merely the poster boy in June elections — he is not expected to return to the Italian political scene until October when his term is up Brussels.

It is a reassuringly quirky note in what has so far been a tame electoral season — instead of off-the-wall candidates like porn-star Cicciolina, a gaggle of TV presenters are lining up to become politicians.

This isn’t the first time that Prodi’s center-left coalition makes an appeal to health-conscious voters. In 1996 the economist campaigned by bus instead of the usual glam Italian motorcade and is known to bicycle around his native Bologna.

And the idea of water isn’t all wet — Italy is third world wide in consumption of bottled water and, according to ISTAT statistics, about half the population prefers to drink bottled water over tap for safety concerns.@1999-2007 zoomata.com

zoomata staff posted: Mon Dec. 28 11:49 am all bark no bite, Ugolino’s recontructed head

Centuries after Dante condemned him to nibble a skull for eternity in the Inferno, Ugolino della Gherardesca, the ‘Cannibal Count,’ is finally resting in peace.

He was put back into the family tomb, this time with honors, in a solemn ceremony in Pisa’s St. Francesco church presided over by local authorities, his descendants and two groups in historical costume.

Ugolino was found guilty of treason in the late 1280s. Left to die from hunger and imprisoned in a tower with two sons and two grandchildren, legend has it he staved off the inevitable by eating his offspring. He became one of the most haunting images in Dante’s Inferno, a macabre figure who wipes his lips with the hair of the skull he’s munching.

In 2002, the professor of ‘excellent cadavers,’ Francesco Mallegni discovered a box of bones in a crypt of the family chapel in Pisa and used samples from Gherardesca descendants to prove the remains belonged to the count.
DNA testing showed that Ugolino didn’t have much to bite the kin he spent his last days locked up in a tower with. The count, at an estimated 80 years of age, was nearly toothless.

Ugolino is one of the more spectacular discoveries made recently by Italian scholars and scientists who are busy digging up remains to find out more about historical figures. In November, 14th-century poet Francesco Petrarch was exhumed by a team of scientists eager to reconstruct his face and know more about his general state of health.

Anthropologist Mallegni, whose other discoveries include Giotto and verifying the corpse of Saint Ranieri, patron of Pisa, is already working on a new mystery surrounding bones found in a church in Aulla thought to be remains of St. Caprasio. ?1999-2004 zoomata.com

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