Wine? Italians say spread it on

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zoomata.com staff How about laying some Brunello di Montalcino on your toast, or slathering Chianti on some cheese?
The brainchild of Italian agronomist Giordano Cal?, “spreadable wine” comes in 20 flavors of the country’s best-loved vino, including Marsala, Morellino di Scansano, Zibibbo and Nero d?Avola.The creams, which have the consistency of jam, are at their best with roast meats, cheeses or on fruit for dessert. Calo’s favorite combination? Goat cheese tempered with a rich spread of Aglianico.

Cal?, whose company motto is “little for few,” makes 10,000 jars of wine cream a year. He estimates about 20% of the sold outside the Bel Paese. Connoisseurs outside Italy have to settle for an ‘unleaded’ alcohol-free version, it seems it was the only way to keep it preserved and get it through customs.

Spreadable wine is an idea whose time has come: Italians are drinking less wine than ever, less than half of what they imbibed in the 1970s. Numerous initiatives are trying to get Italians back in the habit of drinking the gift of the grape in moderation — including one aimed at the youth market sponsored by the National Enoteca called ‘By Bacchus, Kids!”? text 1999-2005 zoomata.com
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Whales pump up the volume due to noise pollution off Italian coast

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zoomata.com staff It will be an especially loud mating season off Northern Italy’s Ligurian coast where whales have hit a new frequency to make themselves heard over noise pollution, an Italian government research group reported.

For three years researchers with ICRAM, a research group of the Italian Ministry of the Environment and Cornell University, registered the songs of fin whales, finding that because of noise pollution in these Mediterranean waters mammals have been forced to take it up a notch.

“These are some of the noisiest waters in the world,” said Fabrizio Bersani, head researcher at ICRAM. “Thanks to heavy traffic from merchant ships, the decibel levels have more than doubled since the 1980s.”

The result? New, louder sounds capable of being heard above the din. Whales normally make two kinds of infra sounds, noises lower than humans can hear, one researchers called the classic note and one lower note. A new third note, the highest ever recorded, was discovered recently.

Researchers used underwater recording devices placed from 600 to 2,000 meters under water to record some 20,000 hours of songs. Only the male of the species sing to define their territory and to attract females during mating season, from February to March.

Borsani hopes that the sheaves of data collected during the years of the study will prove that noise pollution is real and has lasting effects on marine life. “We can now provide hard scientific evidence, instead of just estimates, on the level of noise pollution,” he said.? text 1999-2005 zoomata.com
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Ciao bella? Italy’s plastic surgery magazine

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zoomata.com staff Italy is the latest country to have the quest for beauty through plastic surgery turned into a magazine.

Called “New You” in English, the title was hard to find at newsstands in its initial roll-out of 20,000 copies.
As the slogan “the culture of beauty” implies, this rag is meant to be taken more seriously than the average beauty-parlor flip through. The masthead boats a list of international experts, 15, whose qualifications take up nearly half the page.
The magazine examines a large range of beauty improvements — from spa treatments to zone diets — but the meat centers around plastic surgery. Features like “The breasts you dream of: techniques, time, cost,” and “Take back your hair” are well-balanced, realistic and seem aimed at promoting informed choices.
The ‘dream breast’ article, written by two illustrious Italian plastic surgeons, has a section on scars (‘the surgeon is not a magician, much will depend on your type of skin’) and a sidebar about yearly check-ups necessary for every type of implant.

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the advertisers — from breast suction-cup gizmo Brava to vitamin supplements promising miraculous improvements — who present an evident contradiction to the good-sense information contained in the articles.

In a country where cutting a good figure, or ‘bella figura,’ is a national obsession, the magazine is likely to be a success. Take permatanned Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for example. Berlusconi, who disappeared for a nip, tuck and hair transplant, reassured Italians in his end-of-year state address that his hair is “growing marvelously” and he would recommend that “those who can afford it have a duty to present themselves in the best possible way.”

Even the average Italian, according to judges, has a “right” to look good. Last summer, Italy’s highest court fined a husband 500 euro for not letting his wife “use make-up, do her hair and dress” in order to “express her femininity.”? text + photo 1999-2005 zoomata.com
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Italian inmates offer ‘stolen kisses’

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by Nicole Martinelli It just may be the perfect gift for star-crossed lovers: “stolen” kisses of chocolate. The idea is the brainchild of inmates in Milan’s San Vittore prison, who are selling 100 limited-edition boxes of candy.

The stolen kisses project is the latest tongue-in-cheek creative offering from the prison, where inmates have also invented a sit-com about life behind bars (called “Beautiful Inside”), penned a recipe book and regularly put out web magazine.

The idea behind stolen kisses or “baci rubati” in Italian?

“We all need love, every single day,” Emilia Patruno, a journalist and volunteer at San Vittore who helped with the project told zoomata via email. “Some of us more than others. It’s as simple as that.”

Sold on the web site or at the cafe across the street from the prison, the candy is a steal at 12 pieces for 18 euro ($22) or 35 pieces for 25 euro ($31). Though the concept and packaging is playful, the men behind bars at San Vittore have written a 100-page e-book, free to download from the site, subtitled ‘words of love from prison’ that takes a much more thorough look at the emotional state of prisoners.

Patruno says they hope to find a partner to produce the “stolen kisses” on a larger scale in the near future. ? text 1999-2005 zoomata.com, photo courtesy www.ildue.it
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Related resources:
www.ildue.it
San Vittore’s creative hub site — home to the chocolates @ e-book…

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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Them bones: is Alexander the Great buried in Venice?

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zoomata.com staff

If a British historian is right, Italians in Venice have spent the last 400 years or so praying to conqueror Alexander the Great instead of city patron St. Mark.

Both historical figures were mummified and hidden in Alexandria.
Legend has it that remains of the Macedonian king were disguised as those
of Mark the Evangelist to keep them from harm during a religious uprising, while the remains of the saint were smuggled out in a basket to become the centerpiece and namesake of the most elegant drawing room in Europe, St. Mark’s Basilica.

Historian Andrew Chugg, author of ‘The Lost Tomb of Alexander the Great’, wants the remains dug up and examined to prove his theory. Chugg may meet with less resistance from Church officals than expected.

Ettore Vio, architect and procurator of the Venetian basilica, says the foreign historian is but another voice in the chorus of local authorities who have long debated about whether the bones at the crypt in the heart of La Serenissima belong to St. Mark. And that it may be time to discover once and for all whether a skeleton switcheroo took place.

It would be the latest in a series of dramatic discoveries made by Italian scientists using modern technology on ancient remains. Poet Petrarch was recently found to have lost his head when researchers discovered after DNA testing that the skull found in his tomb most likely belongs to a woman. Over the last decade or so, figures like painter Giotto and Dante’s ‘Cannibal Count’ Ugolino della Gherardesca have made headlines and become the object of exhibits, books and documentaries following DNA testing.? text 1999-2004 zoomata.com
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Italians fight ghost towns with wi-fi

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zoomata.com staff

Italy’s remote mountain communities, ravaged by emigration and short of funds, are trying to stay alive by investing in state-of-the art communications.

In the Alta Langa in Piedmont, land of Barolo and Barbaresco wines, some 21 mountain towns are getting a wi-fi a network covering 220 sq. kilometers, the largest in Italy. It’s the expansion of a successful experiment that includes video communications, wireless internet access, video surveillance launched last year in San Benedetto Belbo, where the post office opens once weekly and there is no bus service.

Parma’s Apennine mountains got wired and have lured back native sons and their families, including the CEO of IBM Italy to Bardi, a town founded in 869 where cows now almost outnumber residents. Bardians have turned a 16th-century theater into a multimedia center with library, convention hall and community center with wi-fi access. Going hi-tech seems to be the only way keep Bardi from falling off the map, it has lost 60% of its inhabitants since the 1950s. Population since the project started seems to have levelled out.

Making remote places safe to live in and able to easily communicate with the rest of the world will probably be the only way to save them — unlike Tuscany, where there is life after agriculture thanks to tourism, they are difficult to reach and would require heavy infrastructure investments to make them visitor friendly. ? text 1999-2004 zoomata.com
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Danette St.Onge (Florence)

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First Person: Real Life In Italy

Each month we introduce you to someone who has made the dream of picking up and moving to the Bel Paese a reality. In their own words they share the good parts, the bad parts and the just plain absurd moments of day-to-day life in Italy.

Looking to move to Italy? Try the reader-recommended Survivor Package.

ID Card: Danette St.Onge, freelance web designer/translator from California, in Italy for almost two years.
Hobbies: painting, drawing, knitting, writing, cooking
My personal website: www.danettestonge.com

Currently living in: Florence

By way of: I’m from California and have also lived in Massachusetts and Bangkok, Thailand. Continue reading →