A ghostly image of Margherita Sarfatti (1880-1961), a remarkably interesting Italian intellectual, known mostly because she was the lover of the Duce, Benito Mussolini, at the beginning of his career. She might have been much more than just a lover, and she may have played an important part both in Mussolini's successes and in his eventual downfall. Margherita Sarfatti makes a cameo appearance in my novel "The Etruscan Quest" and, here, I expand my interpretation of her role in history by proposing that she may have been one of the causes, perhaps the main one, of the doom of her former ..read more

 During the siege of Florence, in 1530, Michelangelo Buonarroti was actively fighting with the Florentine army. When the city fell, he was in danger, but someone hid him in town in a secret room under the Santo Spirito Church. This hiding place was not rediscovered until the 1970s, when the drawings he made during his period there were rediscovered. It is not open to the public, but I had a chance to visit it a few years ago. It is impressive to see the trapdoor built nearly 500 years ago still perfectly functioning, hidden under a heavy cabinet. And when you walk into the ..read more

  The acrylic plexiglass dome of a modern submmersible is a technological marvel, but it is also extremely dangerous. A small crack and it is gone. It is what happene   In his "The World Until Yesterday," (2012) Jared Diamond tells how he seriously risked his life having boarded a boat managed by an incompetent crew. It is a story that resonates with that of the recent case of the wreck of the Titan submersible and its passengers. How could it be that they had accepted to embark on such a risky enterprise is hard for most of us to understand, and paying a lot of money for it, too ..read more

  And now, no more shall my prophecy peer forth from behind a veil like a new-wedded bride But it will rush upon me clear as a fresh wind  blowing against the sun's uprising so as to dash against its rays,  like a wave, a woe far mightier than mine.  No more by riddles will I instruct you.  And bear me witness, as, running close behind,  I scent the track of crimes done long ago.  For from this roof never departs a choir chanting in unison,  but singing no harmonious tune;  for it tells not of good. Aeschilus, Agamemnon ..read more

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  Ugo Bardi's latest post on "The Seneca Effect" The Hydrogen Myth: Technology and Religion in the Decline of Civilizations   I just started a new blog titled "The Hydrogen Skeptics." It is about the hydrogen economy and hydrogen as a fuel and it is a little technical as a subject. So I thought it was not appropriate to discuss it in a somewhat philosophical blog like "The Seneca Effect." Yet, there are points in common, as I am arguing in this post. Above: the nuclear-powered car "Ford Nucleon", unfortunate technological prodigy of the 1950s, that never was turned into anything p ..read more

   https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-tunnel-vision-problem-how-mineral.html   ..read more