People From Italy

"The mid-life crisis is when we think that work is what gives meaning to our lives."

"When it broke down, I would break down. I had to wean myself from it just to survive. I had to have interventions. People would say, ‘You’ve got to do something else.’ So that was part of it—being too dependent on this thing I couldn’t count on."

"Now my ears are awakening again, just because I’m part of the zeitgeist of contemporary whatever. Even though I’m in this remote place, I get it."

"And if it made it one trip, it wouldn’t make the other. Then somebody stole half of it. I found out about that 20 years later, when someone sent me a photograph and said, ‘Does this look familiar to you?’ I nearly fainted."

"It had to go all the way out to the west coast and come all the way back to the east coast every time it needed to be fixed."

"The frustration was with the philosophy of the instrument."

"[W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind."

"An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people."

"Luciano often gets asked whether he's Italian when traveling overseas with the team and someone hears his accent."No," he will reply. "We are from Rome!""

"These people were of all races, colors, and creeds. French were in the north and in the Carolinas. Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State. Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia. Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia. Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures. Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves. Also they were intermarried with the American Indians."

"Italians play a certain way, because that’s how they are."

"Brits look to provoke. The Italians occasionally imagine conversations, though not maliciously. The Germans veer from confrontational to nationalistic."

"A structure made up of fine threads, so many and so fine that even the strongest magnification of the microscope was hardly sufficient to allow all of them to be seen clearly. Some of the threads ran together in bundles and in layers in specific directions; others lay seemingly randomly distributed every which way through the tissue. Embedded in this felted mass of fibers, it was possible to discern spherical structures, the nuclei of the nerve cells..."

"His life’s work and his extraordinary personality were inextricably interwoven... The focus of his research was the functional interpretation of brain structures. When electronic computers emerged in the 1950s, it was clear to Braitenberg that they presented conceptual models for brain function. Thus, his neuroanatomical studies aimed at identifying the typical network structure of individual brain areas."

"In Vehicles, Valentino Braitenberg (1984) proposed a series of 14 different thought experiments. Each of these experiments involved conceptualizing a fairly simple machine, and considering how that machine might behave in different environments. Some of these machines are reminiscent of Elmer and Elsie. As Braitenberg's book progresses, the hypothetical machines become more sophisticated, as does their consequent behavior."

"Not it is different with type 14 vehicles. They move through their world with consistent determination, always clearly after something that very often we cannot guess at the outset - something that may not even be there when the vehicle reaches the place it wants to get to. But it seems to be a good strategy, this running after a dream. Most of the time the chain of optimistic predicitions that seems to guide the vehicles's behaviour proves to be correct, and Vehicle 14 achieves goals that Vehicle 13 and its predecessors "couldn't not even dream of." The point is that while the vehicle goes through its optimistic predicitions, the succession of internal states implies movements and actions of the vehicle itself. While dreaming and sleepwalking, the vehicle transforms the world (and its own position in the world) in such a way that ultimately the state of the world is a more favorable one."

"[The final chapter of the book] sketch a few facts about animal brains that have inspired some of the properties of our vehicles, and their behavior will then seem less gratuitous than it may have seemed up to this poin.t"

"We must be careful, however, not to let the process of acquiring new ideas interfere with the detailed knowledge that our vehicle has assiduously collected and carefully stored in many associative connections during its lifetime. We know that this may happen in humans who are overly dedicated to the development of ideas. They tend to connect many individual cases into general categories ad then use the categories as if they were things, losing the potential for categorizing in other ways by remembering each instance."

"You may regret this, but you will soon notice that is a good idea to give chance a chance in the further creation of new brands of vehicles. This will make available a source of intelligence that is much more powerful than any engineering mind."

"A psychological consequence of this is the following: when we analyze a mechanism we tend to over estimate its complexity."

"It is actually impossible in theory to determine exactly what the hidden mechanism is without opening the box, since there are always many different mechanisms with identical behavior. Quite apart from this, analysis is more difficult than invention in the sense in which, generally, induction takes more time to perform than deduction: in induction one has to search for the way, whereas in deduction one follows a straightforward path."

"We will talk only about machines with very simple internal structures, too simple in fact to be interesting from the point of view of mechanical or electrical engineering. Interest arises, rather, when we look at these machines or vehicles as if they were animals, in a natural environment. We will be tempted, then, to use psychological language in describing their behavior. And yet we know very well that there is nothing in these vehicles that we have not put there ourselves."

"This is an exercise in fictional science, or science fiction, if you like that better. Not for amusement: science fiction in the service of science. Or just science, if you agree that fiction is a part of it, always was, and always will be as long as our brains are only miniscule fragments of the universe, much too small to hold all the facts of the world but not too idle to speculate about them."

"Imagine the inside of St. Peter’s in Rome filled with a huge quantity of fibers around a millimeter in diameter that crisscross the building in every direction creating a firm mat – then you have an idea of what the brain looks like when magnified a thousand times."

"Ad Aertsen succeeds in allowing his sense of humour to shine through the deep seriousness of his scientific ethos. He also has a very balanced attitude to the question of "theory or experiment"."

"The brain is encased in the head, the part of the body which in most walking, flying or swimming animals is the leading end of the moving body (with few exceptions: starfish, cuttlefish, humans, penguins when they are not swimming). The obvious risks which this localization entails are apparently compensated by the advantage of direct short connections with the sense organs localized in or on top of the head (olfaction, taste, vision, audition, vestibular sense), which together with the brain could be seen as something like the cockpit of the animal, or the pilot if one prefers."

"Non vi ha cosa che rechi maggior ornamento al Prencipe, che l'haver buoni officiali."

"(Secondo i Fisionomi) il mostro nel corpo è mostro nell'anima."

"Fatto il voto, gabbano il Santo."

"Chi non guarda dinanzi rimane di dietro."

"Il Re senza lettere era come un Asino coronato."

"La bocca dell'Inferno e piena di buone volontà."

"Acqua lontana non spegne fuoco vicino."

"Il far beneficio ad un tristo è seminar nel mare, è far atto d'ingiustizia."

"Ve ne sono molti che scrivono i beneficii nella polvere, e l'ingiurie nel marmo."

"Molti giudici et consiglieri temono di nominar al principe quella buona madre che partorisce il cattivo figliuolo, dico la Verità."

"Corvi con corvi non si cavano gli occhi."

"Tutti gli altri vitii nel vecchio s'invecchiano, ma la sola avaritia ingiovanisce."

"L'huomo, in somma, è un picciol mondo, et è perfettissima e compiutissima opera di Dio."

"È meglio essere capo di Lucerta che coda di Dracone."

"È meglio donar la lana che la pecora."

"Più tosto can vivo che leone morto."

"Chiamo principio della morte tutto il corso della vita cominciando al nostro nascimento, dal quale cominciamo a morire, e per momenti di tempo andiamo ogni giorno al nostro fine."

"Quella guerra è giusta ch’ è necessaria : e quelle armi sono pie, nelle quali non resta altra speranza che nelle dette armi."

"Non hanno gli huomini maggior nimico che la troppa prosperità, perchè gli fa impotenti di se medesimi, licentiosi et arditi al male, e cupidi di turbare il ben proprio con cose nuove."

"Gli Ambasciadori sono gli occhi e gli orecchi de gli stati."

"L’anima dell’ uomo apprendendo si nutrisce, siccome il corpo per lo cibo."

"Lo certo amico si manifesta alla dubbiosa cosa."

"L’amico lungamente si chiede, appena si trova è malagevolmente si guarda."

"Coll’ amico ogni cosa è maggiore e più dilettevole, è ogni male minore e meno annojoso."