Another interesting Casino in Vegas is “The Venetian”. As you can imagine it has been inspired by Venice. I have been to the real Venice many times and a copy of it is just a bit weird at first. However I have to say that the atmosphere in this Casino is not bad at all. The ceiling (as you can see in the third pic) is kind of cool too. And think about it, the guys/girls driving the Gondolas are singing Italian song like “O sole mio”.

The Venetian Casino - Las Vegas (Click to enlarge)

As I have been to the real Venice recently, I wanted to compare the “Palazzo Ducale” in Vegas with the one in Venice. Take a look of the following pictures. They did a great job.

Vegas	Venice

Have a look of the “Rialto Bridge”… water makes a big difference in here…

Vegas	Venice

This year, for my birthday, I have been to Vegas (or Las Vegas for people that are not familiar with it). Vegas is the world capital of gambling, commonly known as the The Entertainment Capital of the World. Landing at the airport, the fist thing I noticed was an impressive collection of gigantic hotels. That is called the “Las Vegas Strip“. It is basically the street where you can find most of the new Casinos. Each of them is built according to a different style. Each of them is a hotel too (and this was a surprise for me). The most famous Casino is probably the Bellagio. Interestingly, it was inspired by the Lake Como resort of Bellagio in Italy which is not far away from my hometown. The Bellagio is amazing, really elegant and relaxing. In between the hotel and the strip, there is an artificial lake offering beautiful water shows every half a hour (among the others, I appreciated the show on the notes of Viva Las Vegas by Elvis Presley).

The Bellagio Casino - Las Vegas (Click to enlarge)

Recently I’ve been in Harvard to listen to an Edward Tufte’s talk. Edward Tufte is Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Statistics, and Computer Science, and Senior Critic in the School of Art at Yale (do you think it is enough?). I am writing here some quotes from the speech:

• I spent many years of my life willing to be a professor but I was wondering what the hell of professor I wanted to be
• every time I had the feeling that in the place I was working in I wasn’t able anymore to learn I moved
• probably I took more from other people than what I gave them
• if you want to play you have to play with the big guys, to play small doesn’t make any sense

All this made me thoughtful…

Ehm, I am not really sure on what to write about the movie Babel. It is interesting, well done but maybe I found it a bit too much. I mean, the story is complex enough to keep the mind always awake but they put together a bunch of really sad/crude stories. The mexican, the japanise girl, the african people. Small, almost insignificant, things that turned out in terrible consequences. And it’s like the poor people are always paying more.

Friday, on David’s suggestion, we went to the theatre to watch the movie Children of men. In the movie, it is presented the world in 2027 and in particular London and the south of England. A future in which humans can no longer procreate. A future without future. A future in which soldiers are deporting all not legal citizens. Something that remainded me what happened in the Second World War.

Besides many small signals and connections with our present, the interesting thing about this movie is that, even if it is in the future, it is not focusing on hi tech special effect but on something that sadly could be considered a realistic scenario (even if probably for different reasons). Well, let’s hope not that much.

I am not really into business management but I found this book really interesting, deep and a bit funny too. It is amazing how the author (John Kotter) has described the typical real life situations through a simple penguins tale. I found myself laughing several times while thinking at my real life experiences, often similar to the ones described in the book. People are not always ready for big changes but, unfortunately or luckily, this is common in every real life context, starting from personal affairs down to the work projects.

One of the things I thought, while reading the book, is that doing my job (I am a sort of trait d’union between the IT and the Healthcare environment) I often noticed the resistence of the establishment in introducing news in the people way of working. But, in the same time, I’ve always been lucky in finding somebody (as the penguin Fred) willing to move the world to a better direction. And I am not talking about critical decisions, as the one arisen in the penguins community of the book. I am talking about work optimization and quality of services. And I have to thank all those “Fred”s that everyday are surprising me and teaching me how poor is IT without a deep understanding of the real life processes. Observing users, and listening to them, is often the way to transform a gray IT project (cool as you want but still a bunch of lines of code) in a colorful reality which will be able to support people evolution.

Of course sometimes it is also necessary to push ideas coming from other domains (even in the book, the solution of penguins problem came from the seagull scout), without waiting for an explicit users’ request… but this is another tale… with another Fred

This evening I’ve been to watch an interesting movie proposed by the MIT Lectures Series Committee: “An Inconvenient Truth”. The former vice-president Al Gore presented in a really effective way some data and information regarding, mainly, the global warming phenomenon and effects. I should report here many interesting things I saw in that documentary but I rather suggest you to watch it… besides Al Gore personal story (which is a bit out of topic) it is a really good contribuition. Here’s the website where you can find many info.

By the way, in the documentary, it has been presented among the others, an interesting survay. In summary, it seems that scientists do agree on the existence of the global effect problem but looking at the media it not really clear if global warming exists or not. Now, I can’t say that what Gore is saying is truth or not and honestly, I have to say that I don’t care that much if it is the truth… the point is… do we really need to know we are killing the planet before starting to change our behaviour? If there are ways to reduce carbon dioxide generation now… it is really a good idea to wait until the day they will tell us “too late man… it’s over”. Even if that day will never come, why don’t we start with some simple actions in our micro-environment? Why don’t we pay more attention NOW? It is pointless, from the planet point of view, to discuss about what was right or what was wrong in the movie. We should do something in any case.

Looking at the movie’s website there is a list of actions that can help in respecting our planet a it more. For instance in the house:

• Replace a regular incandescent light bulb with a compact fluorescent light bulb
• Move your thermostat down 2° in winter and up 2° in summer
• Use a clothesline instead of a dryer whenever possible
• Turn off electronic devices you’re not using
• Unplug electronics from the wall when you’re not using them
• ……
  

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