Linkology: The Best of the Internet for 10/21/11
Stories from Italy, Vol. 2
I had a chance to spend a day in Cortona, which aside from being medieval and kinda scary at night, I found to be insanely awesome. I could write an entire travel guide (where by entire I mean ‘laughably incomplete’) about the city, but instead I will just riff on some stuff I found very cool.
Parking outside of Cortona is a must, because (a) it’s a walled city and entrance is precarious, and (b) the roads are narrow and on brutal grades, so you have to be crazy, very skilled or very Italian to attempt it. So, after I parked outside of this landmark city, I strolled up to the city gates only to see this black Ferrari F430 sitting there waiting for me.
Like a dumb American tourist, the first thing I did was not coolly walk by the car, realizing it was nothing horribly special in Italy, but instead drop to my knees, paw around for my iPhone, and sweatily take about a dozen pictures of the beast. People were staring at me. I’m pretty sure I was moments away from being arrested. I was surprised I wasn’t spit on. Regardless, look at this piece of art:
One thing I was told about Italy is, “Don’t be a dummy and spend a lot on wine. Their table wine is cheap and way better than many bottles. I am telling you this because you are a dummy.”
They weren’t lying. Whenever I got wine, I asked for their house table wine in either super-slow English or horribly slaughtered Italian. And every time, I was brought this, and it was absolutely fantastic.
Doesn’t look like much, does it? Yeah, that’s what I thought too. This is a jug of pure Italian awesome, which I believe they call Chianti or Montepulciano or Brunello or something, and it blows away nearly every fancy-pants bottle of wine you ever considered buying from SkyMall. So get that look off your face, mister.
Speaking of wine, the Italians have not only figured out how to incorporate wine into dessert, but they’ve also figured out a way to dip cookies into it and have it not taste like roofing tar. What you see below is a traditional Italian dessert called vinsanto al biscotti, which translates roughly into ‘holy wine with biscuits’. What’s floating around is what’s left of the biscuits after I devoured them like a wild dog, all the while proclaiming how this might be the best dessert I’ve ever had. The best part was watching an entire table watch me take a picture of a nearly-empty glass with crumbs floating around in it. You guys can thank me later for being such an obnoxious representative of American culture. I did our stereotype proud.
Finally, walking back to my car, I came across a used battery bucket in a nondescript Cortona street corner. Why? Don’t you mean WHY NOT? They have cookies you dip in sweet wine, for crying out loud! Why wouldn’t they have a used battery bucket?
I know you’re plowing through this post to get to the links, so here you go, you patient warrior, you:
Apple predicted Siri 24 years ago, showcasing a concept they then called Knowledge Navigator. The crazy thing? In 24-year-old, they predicted 2011 would be the year it became reality. Two weeks ago, Apple announced Siri. How’s that for vision?
Apple has created a page to share all of the stories and comments they received in the wake of Steve Jobs’ passing. You can view it here.
The world’s first malaria vaccine works in major trial.
Everything has been done, so give up now.
Have a good weekend, everyone.
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More links:
MIPRO Consulting main website.
MIPRO on Twitter and Facebook.
