DICO SI… with reservations

Finally an acronym that has a sense to it. DICO (short for dichiarazione di convivenza, or ‘declaration of cohabitation’) looks set to replace PACS as the shorthand for civil unions in Italy.

The word’s particularly appropriate because it means ‘I say’, and not as an expression of polite surprise. It’s in-your-face enough to work in manifestos, it lends itself wonderfully to banners, as in IO DICO SI! (I say yes!). Or, even better, IO DICO NO… A CARDINALE RUINI!. (I offer this merely as a suggestion – each to his own ferret noire.)

Its very pugnacity means that it will be used as effectively against its supporters, alas, as by them. But indifference to their use is in the nature of all arms worth respecting.

Now all we have to do is print the t-shirts. I’ll be coming to the reservations later.

"And the Day After That"

Carolyn Steele Agosta has posted the first chapter of her novel “And the Day After That” here. It’s entered in an American Idol style competition for fiction. If you’d like any more information about how it works, visit her site. And vote!

Shades of Alan Turing (2)

Well, he has replied, and I’m flattered.

Mr. Lambert,

Yes, the story is on the web site. As part of my computer security class, I teach different methods of encryption. My current programming assignment asks students to build a program that automatically decrypts texts written in English. You can see the statement of the problem at http://www.csee.wvu.edu/~cukic/Security. Your text is one of the seven students use to evaluate the decryption performance.

I must have downloaded your story several years ago, but I am not sure where from (it may have been NYT literary section). It is rather a coincidence that I use it for a “geeky” computer science class assignment. I hope you don’t mind.

Regards,

Bojan

Shades of Alan Turing

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but unacknowledged plagiarism can leave a slightly bitter taste in the first begetter’s mouth. In mine, at least. A story I wrote some years ago, called SOAP, has popped up in a number of places after being published by the online magazine East of the Web.

Generally they’re student crib sites where for every 1,000 words you copy you have to provide a 1,000 words of new material. I suspect this is true of this site, which doesn’t seem to open any longer, though I may be wrong. The story obviously has no value in terms of student assignment, so it’s both a random and an innocuous sort of intellectual theft, and not worth bothering about.

But I’m more intrigued by this site, owned by Doctor Bojan Cukic of West Virginia University. As professor of computer science and electrical engineering, he seems to have used my story to develop some kind of code based on sequences of six letters. I’ve written to ask him what he’s up to.

I’ll let you know if he replies.

Fasten your seatbelts…

Well, it’s better than nothing. The proposed new bill to regulate civil unions isn’t perfect, but compromise isn’t intended to produce perfection – what compromise is intended to produce is the illusion of perfectibility. The only people whose noses are seriously out of joint are the non possumus brigade, whose episcopal hissy-fitting has influenced the form of the bill (and some of its substance), but not, if the metaphor isn’t too inappropriate, induced its abortion.

It remains to be seen whether further trans-Tiber dealings will prevent the bill from becoming law. The neo-theo-dem-cons on the centre left (and God only knows what they’re doing there) can sigh with relief that the bill doesn’t institute a separate register for civil unions, alongside – and in competition with – that for married couples. But it’s unlikely that their spiritual mentors will settle for such an Italian solution.

I see a bumpy ride ahead.

Blair yes, Zapatero no

It’s odd that whenever people want to attack the idea of ‘gay marriage’ the stick they use to beat it with bears the smiling Bambi head of Zapatero. The fact that civil partnerships have also been introduced to England under Tony Blair is rarely, if ever, mentioned.

Maybe Blair’s work in other fields, such as warmongering, has exonerated him.

Big foot, big mouth…

Berlusconi does it again. Not content with upsetting his long-suffering wife, he’s managed to alienate a fair slice of the Forza Italia vote by announcing that all gays vote left.

If only this were true.

Towards the watershed…

The latest news is that a Cabinet meeting this afternoon may reach a decision on the civil union bill. Let’s hope it isn’t in Latin.

God’s ferret strikes again

Cardinal Ruini appears to have made use of L’Avvenire, the Vatican newspaper, in his latest offensive against civil unions. An unsigned editorial (but undoubtedly the ferret’s work) threatens that the kind of legal recognition of unmarried couples likely to be proposed by the government would be a “watershed that will inevitably weigh on the future of Italian politics”.

The editorial declares “Non possumus”, a formula apparently last used in 1860 by Pius IX to reject the unification of Italy and the usurpation of the church’s authority. If this isn’t interference in the internal political affairs of a neighbouring state I don’t know what is. Rosy Bindi, Minister of Families and co-drafter of the bill, said, “I don’t speak Latin.” Unfortunately, a lot of other people in parliament do.

In the meantime, Cardinal Poletto of Turin claims that the new law is the devil’s work, announcing that “there is no doubt the devil exists.” One of the ways in which he works, apparently, is to induce people to sin by means of legislation decided to “tear the family apart.”

Blimey.

Women in wartime

If you happen to be in Amsterdam in March, don’t miss this exhibition of photographs by Patrizia Casamirra. They’re powerful, necessary works, moving yet unrhetorical. They deserve a wider audience.