How people in academia see each other

Big up on Matushiq for creating the picture below. Brilliant and true.

D.

Farewell Sergio Bonelli

A sad headline in the Italian news today: Sergio Bonelli is dead.

I reckon for most non Italians (and even for most Italians) this name doesn't say much. He was a comic book author and eponymous owner of the most important Italian comic book house, publishing series such as Tex, Dylan Dog, Mister No, Zagor and countless others. He created, directly or indirectly, many of my childhood heroes, plain and simple. As a kid I didn't care much about him...the credits was not what caught my attention, when a new - much longed for - comic book was in my hands. Yet I was so immersed in that world that he had created through his comics, and how many times that world got into me.

As I grew older, I started enjoying his editorials and learning a bit more about his figure. He was very cultivated man, who took comics book to narrative and literary peaks that were, at times, truly extraordinary. The quality of the stories and the extreme longevity of Bonelli's characters (Tex Willer is over 60 years old!) witness that.

Questioned about one of Bonelli's most known characters, Umberto Eco once said:

I can read the Bible, Homer, or Dylan Dog for several days without being bored.

Perhaps the best epitaph for Sergio Bonelli.

D.

Conclusive remarks

The Pangborn conference just finished, leaving me inspired, excited, enriched (and exhausted, with a bit of luck I'm gonna sleep through my over cross-Atlantic trip).

Anyway...great experience, it was absolutely fabulous to see the diverse people and approaches that come together in the sensory and consumer world and I learned a great deal from the industry part as well.

But of course people were the best part. It felt really good to meet and finally put a face with the names of so many people whose work I read all year long (but also the many who I had never heard before).

I got to meet some the field hotshots as well, all of whom turned out to be extremely nice people :)

A few trip highlights:

1) Toronto: wonderful city, I absolutely loved the ethnic diversity, the variety of neighborhoods and Toronto's positive vibe...I don't think I ever felt so good in large metropolitan area as I did here.

2) Restaurant Spuntini on Avenue Road (one of the best sea bass in my life, and mark my words: this comes from a Sicilian!) and Beer Bistro (amazing selection of beer and food. The waiters' knowledge and level of competence matched the level you would expect from a wine sommelier, which is very hard to come by with beer)

3) The owners of Bar Italia in Little Italy: a living history book about the local Italian community, thanks for sharing so many stories with me.

D.

Toronto, here I come

At last it came, I'm about to get off for a week-long conference trip to Toronto, Canada. It's gonna be my first major conference attendance, and with a talk and two posters to present I'm gonna have to be a very fast starter...I just can't wait to be there!

By the way, having to talking about beer in Canada the following video couldn't help but coming to mind...

Summer readings

Food, sociology, anthropology, consumer culture, post-socialist countries: good ingredients make almost always good food, and this certainly is the case of the book I just finished: "Food and Everyday Life is the Post-socialist World", edited by Melissa Caldwell (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

The title says it all: each chapter of the book is dedicated to explore how communities in several post-socialist countries experience changes in their food markets due to the globalization and Europeanization - the focus is on foodstuff, eating occasions and settings, new and old food processes and regulations etc - and how these changes affect their habits and culture (among other things, triggering an increasing consumerism).

I enjoyed this book enormously, as I think it made several splendid examples of how social and political phenomena can be looked at through the lenses of food consumption.

My personal favorites were the two "Lithuanian" chapters (on Soviet vs European sausages and informal dairy markets respectively), but also the chapter on gender differences wrt vodka drinking in Russia was top-notch.

D.

The reason is simple

The following is a commentary to the article: International researchers leave Denmark after PhD, University Post 19/05/2011

The huge mistake of the Danish government in the last year has been to invest too much on PhD positions, neglecting completely intermediate positions (such as Post Doc).

This imbalance has been really unfortunate, mainly because the job market did not have such a demand for people with a PhD (of course the market needs high educated people, but if a person at the end of the PhD gets the same kind of job as a person with a Master degree, then the state has just wasted money on his/her PhD education).

So, the situation is bad for those who genuinely aim at a career in the industry, and it is also bad for those who would like to stay in academia (continuous struggle to get post doc positions, very remote or no perspective of permanent employment).

The solution would improve if the government finally stopped to blindly fund so many PhDs and concentrated on intermediate positions instead.

Concerning the claim that we should spend more in the humanities and social sciences...that's plain bullshit...those areas are already strongly overfunded for the societal needs, especially because in general their ability to interact with and attract funding from the private sector is very limited at best.

Make no mistake: all areas are important and deserve (basic) funding, but in general the main focus should be to what areas (or department, or research groups) actually reach out to and make a difference for companies or the society as whole: not for ideological reasons and/or not just to those with the best lobbying group.

D.