Tag Italy

Maytime by the lagoon

I’m going to make this photograph the first in a series provisionally entitled Uncharacteristic photos from well-known or touristy places. Here’s an old shot taken in one of the busiest tourist locations on Earth, slightly photoshopped – fotoxx-ed, to be…

Good news from Rome, at last

I did not expect Italy’s supreme court (Cassazione) to acquit both Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito outright: I was, in fact, rather skeptical that Knox’s conviction would be reversed at all, and did not hope for a straight acquittal “for…

At the mercy of a self-governing judicial mafia

From Edward Luttwak’s interview with Il Giornale, February 2013. Available; on the paper’s website; a pdf of the original available here;.  Previously quoted in this post. All translation errors are mine. Title: “Italy? A country where liberty is limited by…

When a judge is more dangerous than a mafioso

Diego Gambetta, a professor of sociology at Oxford and the author of Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate, explains his findings: An unexpected result of my research on the mafia was to find out that mafiosi are quite incompetent at doing anything… Mafiosi…

A minor victory in Italy

I’ve blogged about the l’Aquila earthquake trial but neglected to mention that all but one of the scientists convicted by the first-level court were acquitted by an appeals court in November 2014. David Wolman and Lorenzo Mannella reported: Today, after a surprisingly swift-by-Italian-standards appeals…

A blog on L’Aquila

Via David Wolman‘s Twitter feed, I have found Earthquakes and Great Risks, a blog on the Aquila earthquake trial maintained by a group of Italians. I have written about the earthquake trial here and here but I’m no authority on the case – I’ve learned…

When science has no chance

An enlightening piece on the 2012 conviction of Italian seismologists by David Wolman. The prosecutor offered, and the judge accepted, the theory that Italy’s leading seismologists had conspired with the mayor’s office in l’Aquila to send a falsely reassuring message to the…