The social life of geraniums
In Italy, geraniums are resilient plants that can live outside all year around. It turns out that it’s not the same in Pennsylvania. Last year, I left my geranium too long outside during the winter, and it almost completely died. After being inside for while, one of the three original plants slowly started making leaves again. That plant survived the winter, and when it was warm enough I put it outside.
The geranium really enjoyed being in the sun and made a lot of new leaves. Not a single flower, though. One day, I bought two new geranium plants from our local farmer’s market, and planted them on both sides of the old one. I joked with my husband that maybe the flowerless plant would learn by example that it was time to make new flowers. A few days later, I was out for my usual morning backyard inspection, and I looked at the geraniums. The plant that almost died last year and didn’t know how to make flowers, had a bunch of new flower buds.
Maybe geraniums have a social life, too
[Update] The First Symposium of Plant Neurobiology was held in Florence, Italy, last May. And you know what this means: Having a symposium of plant neurobiology is like admitting that plants have a brain. From the symposium’s website we can gather that plants are able to distinguish between self and no-self, have complex reactions to touch, and can remember. One entire section of the symposioum was dedicated to “Plant-to-Plant Communication and Ecophysiology.” In particular, it seems that plants send chemical signals to each other to communicate the presence of predators. The plants receiving the signal start chemical changes that will make them more resistant to injury and assault. (read more about plant neurobiology on the Christian Science Monitor)
Social Networking and
the art of self-promotion
Andrew answers to a C|Net articles on the failure of social networking sites (Molly Wood’s Five reasons social networking doesn’t work) by suggesting that the Internet doesn’t need special social networking sites: The Internet in its world wide whole is a social networking place.
Molly Wood makes an interesting point, though, when she mentions that one thing that makes social networking sites a less than ideal place to hang out is that so many of the personal profiles in these sites are, well, not that interesting. My take is that most people who spend time creating elaborate profiles on social networking sites are trying to sell themselves (whether to get a date or a job or just to be popular). And ads get boring really fast.
There are promotional tendencies in many blogs too, but you can also find much more candid expressions of people’s individuality. There is something extraordinarily relieving and endearing in things that people write when they come back from work or from the fancy party, and in the silence of their room stop being pretty and invincible, and start talking about the way they really feel. Especially when they are smart and write well.
Things I can’t get used to: “Excuse me!”
In August it will be 11 years since I moved to this Country. I think I am pretty well integrated (well, even more than I feel comfortable admitting). However, there are still a few things I cannot get used to and make me crazy. No matter what, there are things Americans do that I find really rude.
Don’t get me wrong, Italians are NOT more polite than Americans. It’s just that the boundaries between what is socially acceptable and what is not are somewhat shifted.
For example, every time somebody says “Excuse me!” I have an immediate rage reaction. It’s funny, because in Italian we use the same expression (“Mi scusi”) to make somebody know that they are in our way. And if you read the dictionary definition, it looks really innocent: “Excuse me: used to acknowledge and ask forgiveness for an action that could cause offense.” But for some reason, and in a way that I cannot change or control, I cannot stand people saying “Excuse me.”
The tone of voice and the non verbal cues that go with “Mi scusi” make it sound like “I am truly sorry and I apologize for the inconvenience, but can you please move?” to me. When an American says “Excuse me,” instead, I perceive something like: “Moron, why are you on my way? What did I do to find myself in the same physical space with you? Move out!” It just sounds really rude to me. It makes me feel like the blame is on me.
I wonder if it’s because of the emphasis on “me” that it’s often used (Excuse MEEE; as when it’s exagerated to mean “that was really rude of you”) and it makes it sound like it’s all about me. Or maybe it’s because it gives the idea that physical closeness among people is something really bad and you need to apologize, even if there are three feet between you and them. The truth is, I don’t know what it is. I just know I can’t stand it.
I never say “Excuse me” unless I am truly pissed off. It just doesn’t occur to me to use it. I say “I am sorry!” and smile really broadly. So, if you meet me and I say “Excuse me!” get out of the way really fast. I must be in a really really bad mood and ready to bite.
Hopelessly uncool
It’s been a little less than 2 months since I’ve bought my domain, found a web host, downloaded WordPress, started a blog. Every day, I read blog feeds on Bloglines, including Boingboing whose 68,000 posts a day I browse religiously. I copywrited my blog with Creative Commons, opened an account with Flickr, and I am thinking of attending BlogHer. I even tried to use upcoming.org. So, I am doing whall all the really cool kids do. And, while I zelig my way through the world of bloggers, I realize how hopelessly uncool I am.
Not sure what it is about me that makes me so utterly uncool. I managed to be moderately successful in my life without having never been cool, but I still wonder every day: What makes people uncool? What makes me uncool?
Ten reasons why I am uncool
- I try too hard. [Well, this is not really true, I just have a natural attitute to blend with the tapestry and learn from what other people are doing. But the fact remains: it looks like I am trying too hard.]
- I’m too lazy. This routine of cool activities to do everyday is hard to keep up with, and I always fall behind, which is uncool. I’m just not committed enough to coolness.
- All these cool things are kind of boring. I do love a few cool things (for example, reading Jory Des Jardins posts on Pause or waiting for the next update of PostSecret), but other things I do out of duty rather than passion (“Wow, 106 new posts at Wired News! Can’t wait to read them all”).
- I am too old. This really does not explain why I wasn’t cool when I was a teenager, but it sounds like a good excuse for my current uncoolness. [My husband took a couple of extremely unflattering pictures of me a couple of days ago. Besides looking like my father when he was 60, I noticed that my neck in certain positions shows bizarre folds in the skin I've never seen before. Very, very, very uncool]
- I hang out mostly with uncool people [Sorry, I didn't mean you. You are actually one of the few cool people I like to hang out with]. As a matter of fact, I have a strong magnetic attraction for uncool people. Cool people make me feel uncomfortable and I rather prefer to admire them from a distance.
- I don’t feel cool, I don’t behave cool, and–most importantly– I don’t believe I am cool. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Although I am not without talent, I’ve always been talented in the wrong things when it comes to cool. For example, when I was in high school in Italy, I was good in math and science, and the cool kids where good in philosophy and literature. They did enjoy copying the answers of the math tests from me, but that was pretty much all the attention I ‘ve ever gotten from them.
- I don’t live in San Francisco.
- Nobody links to me [OK, maybe two people link to me]. Note to self: investigate whether I am not cool because people don’t link to me or people don’t link to me because I am not cool.
- I am always unfashionably late. When I arrive to a new site or discover a new tool, everybody else is ready to leave for the next fashionable new thing.
Why I like losers
As I mentioned in my previous post, Scott and I went to see the show Spirit: The Seventh Fire. While we were waiting for the show to start, Scott asked me if I like Native American culture, and I answered yes. Then he asked me: “Why?” (Scott never miss out the opportunity to ask some provoking questions) and I suddenly realized that the main reason why I like Native Americans is because they are the ones who lost. Even more than their spirituality and old fashion way to perceive the connection between humans and nature, I like them because they have been so thoroughly defeated (not to mention exterminated and culturally erased).
When I arrived in the USA, I realized with some surprise that the worse insult you can inflict to an American is “loser.” Italians are really creative when it comes to insults, but we don’t even have an equivalent of “loser.” [“Perdente,” the literal translation of loser, sounds quite clinical and devoid of the emotional connotation of its American English counterpart.]
I thought about it and I concluded that it’s because Europeans actually like losers. There is some kind of epic greatness in somebody that fought and was defeated, either peoples or individuals. Besides, when you reflect on thousands of years of history (rather than just a few hundreds) you realize that nobody wins forever. The Roman Empire lasted for 900 years, but eventually crumbled and left only a large amount of (beautiful) ruins. So, there is some Old World wisdom in having some sympathy for the losers of today when are you are still the winner.
We like the romantic aura that comes with defeat and suffering even better than the heroic aura that comes with victory. It’s so more interesting.
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