Blogs & Ecology

In Iranian.com we can watch beautiful clips of Iran made by an Italian traveler.

Id:sawabonroma, a Japanese writer living in Rome, describes her everyday life in the Italian capital at Roma no Heijitsu (ローマの平日). In a post on October 30th, she writes about a students demo against the education reform proposed by Minister of Education Gelmini. Millions of high school and university students, professors, researchers and school employees protested in the streets of Rome against the demolition of the public educational system, paralyzing the city center. Blaming the Japanese media, Sawabonroma points out how they gave more importance to the resulting traffic problems than to reasons for the demo.

We’ve given kudos to the Bicycle Film Festival for years, for spreading the word about this most miraculous of vehicles, so why should we stop now. Although, admittedly, we have arrived less than early to the party. But the annual festival still has four gigs before it slams on the brakes for yet another year.

photo: Maury Landsman

While I’m not sure that the claims by the owners of Castello Monte Vibiano Vecchio olive oil farm that they will be the first farm anywhere to reduce their net carbon emissions to zero, without using offsite carbon offsetting projects, are be entirely true—I’d be surprised that some small farm hasn’t tried to do the same thing, just not publicized it as well—the efforts by the owners of this Umbrian farm are pretty interesting: ...

As people migrate to smaller spaces, good design helps a lot. This is something they figured out in Europe long ago, that if you don't have a lot of horizontal room you can go vertical. Tumidei in Italy makes some of the nicest stuff, like this unit with lots of storage under.

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As we search and scour the vast realms of the inter-tubes, we often find real photographic gems like this one. Entitled “Air Traffic Control” this incredible image was taken by Flickr user Pensiero. As far as we know the statue stands in Rome, however, we’re not exactly sure where. If you have any further information about it, please drop it in the comments section.

Since we have not had any silly examples of rampant green consumerism of late, we offer the £139.99 Ovetto differenziato, or recycling egg.

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photo: Karel Hladky

As I had mentioned back in August, YouTube and The Pulitzer Center have launched Project: Report, a contest for aspiring journalists and now the full rules and instructions are up. The contest and awards are limited to participants who are legal residents of countries where YouTube is officially launched: Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Korea, New Zealand, Spain, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales), and the fifty United States and District of Columbia.

Luca Bartoletti

Having been adequately convinced since childhood that the devil was safely locked away in the cracks of the footpath – or wherever – imagine our shock and horror when we discovered the horny beast has been hiding out in Italy the whole time.

We have shown rotating houses before, but this one predates them by decades- Angelo Invernizzi's house has an upper section that rests on a circular track and follows the sun, 1,500 tons powered by two motors with a total of three horsepower. ...

Looking at the image above, you probably recognise the vase named after Finnish designer Alvar Aalto himself. The design classic was released in 1937 at the World Fair in Paris. Since then the vase is in production by Iittala, whose designers change the size and colours to please today’s market. The vase in the image above however, is called Droog Aalto. It is the work of Czech designer Jan Ctvrtnik who expresses the effects of global warming, based on the famous Aalto vase. More images after the jump....

Clearspring Ltd. is doing something remarkable - making traditional, organic Japanese foods available in Europe and other parts of the world. High quality rice, miso (fermented soybeans) and tofu are treasures that everyone who cares about the environment is probably already eating. But unless the foods are produced locally, without chemicals and no fossile fuel-guzzling fertilizers (and no Genetically Modified Organisms are currently grown in Japan), you may wonder what it is you are stuffing yourself with.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's new right wing Cabinet recently launched plans to carry out a national registration of all Roma people in Italy [it], including fingerprints of all children. Italy is home to an estimated 150,000 Roma and Sinti people (often referred to as Gypsies) who live in around 700 camps across the country. Although many Roma people are born in Italy, they are increasingly becoming scapegoats of a more complex immigration issue.