'O Sole Mio - Il Volo (American Idol performance)

A group of Italian teenagers Piero Barone (17), Ignazio Boschetto (16) and Gianluca Ginoble (16) aka Il Volo's performance of 'O Sole Mio during the American Idol Top 3 results show. The song "It's Now Or Never" the melody of which is adapted from this original Italian song was recorded by Elvis Presley in the 1960's.

Known for their incredible (and almost unbelievable) voices, Il Volo got their start in 2009 on an Italian singing competition similar to Idol, wowing the country with their version of the classic "O Sole Mio."

Since then, the boys have traveled the world promoting their self-titled debut album, certified platinum in Italy and set for release in the US on Tuesday, May 17th.

Fans can also check them out as the featured artists on the CBS Early Show's Second Cup Cafe on Saturday, May 21st.

Judgment Day May21, 2011

Next Saturday marks the beginning of the end of days. Or at least that is what the Christian radio broadcaster Harold Camping and his many followers think. By Mr. Camping's calculations, May 21 is the day when Jesus will return to judge all of humankind and to gather up the faithful.
But what will happen the following day, when this prophecy falls short? Doomsayers almost never admit that they were wrong; they usually become even more adamant about the truth of their beliefs, using various rationalizations to spin-doctor the nonevent into a successful prediction.
Nor do religionists hold a monopoly on forecasting the end of days. There are secular versions as well, from Karl Marx's certainty about the approaching demise of capitalism to various modern doomsday scenarios involving overpopulation, resource depletion, nuclear winter, Y2K, solar flares, super volcanoes and, of course, global warming.
Why are such apocalyptic prophecies so common in human history? What are their emotional and cognitive underpinnings?

A Staten Island man is buying ads all over New York City, claiming the world is going to end on May 21st. 

In most doomsday scenarios, destruction is followed by redemption, giving us a sense of both fear and hope. The ostensible "end" is usually seen as a transition to a new beginning and a better life to come. For religionists, God destroys Satan and sinners and resurrects the virtuous. For the secular-minded, humanity atones for its sins through political, economic or ideological enlightenment.
Marxists saw communism as the liberating climax of a multistage evolutionary process. Environmentalists usually conclude their forecasts of calamity with earnest recommendations for how to save the planet. Or consider John Galt, the hero of Ayn Rand's anticollectivist novel "Atlas Shrugged" and an inspiration for many of today's tea-party activists. In the book's final apocalyptic scene, the heroine Dagny Taggart turns to Galt and pronounces, "It's the end." He corrects her: "It's the beginning."
Cognitively, there are several other processes at work, starting with the fact that our brains have evolved to be pattern-seeking belief engines. Imagine yourself as a hominid on the plains of Africa three million years ago. You hear a rustle in the grass. Is it the wind or a dangerous predator?

f you guess that it's a dangerous predator but it's just the wind, you've made a mistake—believing that something is real when it's not (a "false positive," as cognitive scientists call it)—but a rather harmless one. On the other hand, if you guess that the rustle in the grass is the wind but it turns out to be a hungry lion, your mistake is more serious: The lion was real but you thought it wasn't (a "false negative"). In this case, you're lunch, and you won't get the chance to be more cautious next time. In our ancestral environments, vigilance and rapid reactions often made the difference between life and death, so the default position was to assume that all patterns are real. It was simply safer, from the point of view of survival, to hear rustling in the grass as a warning of danger. Moreover, our ancestors saw meaning and intention ("agency") in these patterns: They took rustling in the grass to mean that a predator was intent on eating them.
What does any of this have to do with our apocalyptic tendencies? Doomsday scenarios are patterns based on our perceptions of the passage of time. We tend to make causal connections among events—A causes B, which causes C, which causes D, etc.—simply because they follow one another chronologically. These patterns are often false, of course, but they are correct often enough that, in our brains, time and causality are inseparably linked. We thus tend to infuse the passage of time with meaning and to see agency in it as well, whether it takes the form of God's supernatural agency in settling moral scores or nature knocking us off the pedestal of our technological hubris.
Apocalyptic visions help us to make sense of an often seemingly senseless world. The literal meaning of apocalypse is an "unveiling" or "revelation," and this definition of the word holds true whether we consider St. John's narrative in the book of Revelation or secular chronologies that fit the events of history into a larger cosmic design.
For human beings, it is much easier to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune when we believe that it is all part of a deeper, unfolding plan. We may feel like flotsam and jetsam on the vast rivers of history, but when the currents are directed toward a final destination, it gives us purpose and meaning. We want to feel that no matter how chaotic, oppressive or evil the world may be, all will be made right in the end.







SEE YOU  ON SUNDAY MAY  22...IF YOU PASS THE JUDMENT DAY

Louie Schwartzberg: The hidden beauty of pollination

Pollination: it's vital to life on Earth, but largely unseen by the human eye. Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg shows us the intricate world of pollen and pollinators with gorgeous high-speed images from his film "Wings of Life," inspired by the vanishing of one of nature's primary pollinators, the honeybee. Louis Schwartzberg's notable career spans feature films, television shows, commercials and documentaries. He won two Clio Awards for TV advertising, including best environmental broadcast spot, an Emmy nomination for best cinematography and the Heartland Film Festival's Truly Moving Picture Award for the feature film “America’s Heart & Soul.” Schwartzberg founded BlackLight Films to use the power of media to inspire and entertain through television programming, DVD products, and full-length motion picture and IMAX films. His new film "Wings of Life" will be released by Disneynature. "The secret lives of bats, butterflies, hummingbirds, and bumblebees come to life before our eyes as Schwartzberg and his talented team highlight how the determination and interdependence of these diminutive creatures somehow keep our chaotic world in balance." Jason Buchanan, Rovi

PROYECTO B.A.S.E. LOS ANDES.

"El proyecto B.A.S.E. Los Andes consistió en un salto al vacío en moto en plena Cordillera de los Andes (Sector la Rabona, Cerro el Plomo, Chile). El paracaidista chileno Julio Muñoz realizó esta proeza en mayo de 2011 en una moto de 450cc, cayendo luego en un acantilado de 1000 metros.
Julio Muñoz se hizo famoso en noviembre del año pasado al saltar en paracaídas desde la azotea del Costanera Center.
El proyecto implicó dos meses intensos de trabajos en su producción y la participación de un total de 25 personas durante los dos meses de preparación, de las cuales 15 estuvieron en Loma Rabona el día del evento.
contacto: proyectobaselosandes@gmail.com"

El Hotel Negresco de Niza. Un trozo de mi memoria.

Una de las cosas que primero se ven por la Promenade des Anglais es el Hotel Negresco, fundado en 1913, uno de los mejores hoteles en Niza. Un edificio rosa, negro y blanco declarado monumento histórico y que es el símbolo de la “buena vida” de la costa Azul. Fue construido por Edward Niermans y en el se han alojado un buen numero de estrellas y personajes famosos (Hemingway, Picasso, Dietrich, Montserrat Caballe, el suscrito, etc).

Poco mas allá del Hotel Negresco esta el Palais Massena, que alberga un museo con el mismo nombre con cuadros de los pintores Brea y Durandi y salas dedicadas a la cultura e historias locales: recuerdos de Napoleon, Massena y Garibaldi (que nació en Niza y a la cual intento incluir en territorio italiano).

Y justo al lado pues tenemos la Place Massena, en dirección al puerto, donde nos encontramos primero con los jardines de Albert 1º, preludio de la entrada a la plaza, que es el corazón de la parte moderna y de tiendas de la ciudad. La plaza mantiene un estilo neoclásico, con edificios sobre arcos y fachadas de color rojo, en el centro, vereis una fuente de figuras de bronce que representa el sistema solar, y desde aquí podéis empezar a soltar vuestra cartera para recorrer las calles repletas de todo tipo de tiendas que se extienden a su alrededor

Desde 1957, el hotel ha sido propiedad de Jeanne Augier, quien ha puesto toda su energía en la creación de un museo-hotel, un verdadero escaparate del arte francés.

Fue creado en 1912 por el rumano, Henri Negresco. Nacido en Bucarest en 1868 y que dejó su país a la edad de quince años para trabajar en Europa, primero en París y en Mónaco y después en Niza, donde se convirtió en el director del Casino Municipal, codeándose, así, con los reyes de las finanzas y negocios estadounidenses de la época.


Siempre se discutirá dónde empieza y dónde termina verdaderamente la Riviera francesa. Pero nadie discute el papel central en esta región privilegiada de una institución, insustituible en el universo de los grandes hoteles, que lleva el nombre de un joven y valiente soñador rumano.

Punto Pelota y Josep Pedrerol

Punto Pelota es un programa de información deportiva emitido por la cadena Intereconomía Televisión.

Dedicado principalmente a la Liga de Fútbol Profesional aborda en general los acontecimientos del fútbol internacional y otros deportes del balón.

Siendo,el programa más exitoso de la cadena y número uno en sintonia de programas deportivos de medianoche. Pedrerol ha logrado cristalizar un programa que captura la atención del tele espectador por una mezcla bien prporcionada de polemicas, tertulia acalorada y periodismo deportivo de buen nivel...es un "late night soccer show" muy novedoso y en constante busqueda de innovación y ruptura de esquemas.

Una de secciones mas nuevas del programa es "el trampolin" donde Francesco Barbera, periodista deportivo habla de jóvenes valores del fútbol mundial y sus historias

What Google Knows About You

Google may know more about you than your mother does. Got a problem with that? Google famously describes itself as on a mission “to organize all the world’s information.” That sounds impressive, but carries its share of problems. How then does Google choose its priorities, and how does it plan for the long term? It is decent question to put to any big company in these times of unprecedented technological change. It’s particularly apt at Google, though — with almost all of the company’s products based on large software projects in enormous data centers that consumers reach over the Internet, it can see and judge consumer interactions with its products in near real time. That means it can judge the success of a new feature within a couple of weeks of release, and that “long term” planning is often a year or less, with a lot of adjustments along the way.