The Last Cato

It seems that Dan Brown wasn't original even with his plot idea: following an ancient church secret by taking your characters in a quest around Europe. The Last Cato by Matilde Asensi, which was written before "The DaVinci Code", takes the reader into a quest to discover the "earthly paradise" as described by Dante in his "Divine Comedy". This is the initiation process to become a member of a secret society that is the keeper of the True Cross. The book is full of historical references, but the style is better than Dan's Brown as all these details are better integrated in the overall story. The ending was not very good, as the description of the "earthly paradise" is not credible, but since no such thing could ever exist it's hard to imagine it in a convincing way, especially that it is setup in middle age technological era.

An education, but which one?

An education is the social movie of this year. It tells the story of a girl who is seduced out of school and into the easy life of her playboy lover. In the end she returns to the school kind of education. Nevertheless, it is worth questioning the traditional education ans seeking ways of improving it. Probably the worst part about going to school is when it is not fun. Well, the breaks might be fun, but if you sit for an hour and the teacher is boring and you don't understand why do you have to study that subject it can become very annoying.
Here is an alternative view about what the education system should be about:

Earth Hour - 2010

This year even more cities, countries and ordinary people participated at the Earth Hour event. Year after year we become more and more dependent on electricity. This year I turned off everything in the house except for the fridge. I also didn't cheated by using the laptop or mobile phone which run on batteries. A counter movement called Edison Hour (see details here) was started in order to stress that electricity is good and we shouldn't go back to the dark ages, but instead we should try to solve the environmental problems by discovering some new technology. I think these guys are missing the point of the Earth Hour campaign. It is about waste, consumerism and selfishness. And I also see it as a reality check: how dependent are we on all these tools powered by electricity? What happens if someday an accident will leave us with no electricity for a day or a week? Are we even going to survive?

If There's a Rocket Tie Me To It

... and send me far, far away...