News Archive - Part 3

Welcome to ninoricci.com 2.0

YouTube, step aside: Welcome to the new, improved Nino Ricci web site. You’ll find loads of new features, including wikis, widgets, caches, cookies, galleries, feed readers, hotlinks, applets, spiders, and MIMEs. Oh—and for the more traditional set, we’ve also included good old-fashioned content.

Ninoricci.com 2.0 brings interactive web culture to a new level. Take a few moments to look around, then send us your comments. Our smartbots are standing by to exploit them for marketing purposes.

Just so you know, this web site is running off a WordPress premium theme for authors designed by Strange Duck Media.

Vancouver Olympics make Canadian history despite naysayers

Canada will not soon forget the 2010 Winter Games, having racked up literally dozens of historic firsts. A typical day of the games saw Canada earn its first ever 15th place finish on Canadian soil by a 27-year-old Quebecker in Men’s Super Combined Alpine Skiing and its first ever 10th place finish in Men’s Ski Cross. Meanwhile it was shutout entirely, another historic first, in Women’s Mass Start Biathlon.

“Canada, it has always been a role model to us,” Dugashvilli said.

Some grumblings were heard, however, over the aggressive stance taken by the Canadian Olympic Committee in its Own The Podium program. Smället Dugashvilli, president of the group Citizens of the World Against Stupid Nationalism (CWASN), expressed dismay at the unprecedented confidence shown by Canadian athletes and Olympic organizers through much of the Games. “Canada, it has always been a role model to us,” Dugashvilli said, at a specially convened press conference. “A country with no identity. Now, of course, we are very disappointed.”

Canadian writers object to Google Book Settlement as opt-out deadline passes

As the opt-out deadline for the Google Book Settlement passed, many Canadian writers were still struggling to figure out what it all meant. Final-hour protests included a petition against the settlement circulated by the Facebook group “Canadian Writers Against Google Settlement” and by writer Sarah Sheard on her blog Writers’ Roundup. The petitition garnered hundreds of signatories, including Nino Ricci, who, like most of the signatories, chose to opt out of the Google agreement. “Did I do the right thing?” Ricci said afterwards to his wife, writer Erika de Vasconcelos, in a rare moment of candour and humility. “I haven’t got a f@%$!!#! clue.”

His sentiments echoed those of many writers around the world. Meanwhile, at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were unmoved. “What’s the big deal about books?” said Brin. “If it can be turned into digits, it’s fair game. Just because we control world knowledge doesn’t automatically make us bad guys.” Added Page, “Back in high school all the literary types called us geeks. Now we’re getting our revenge.”

U. S. publication of The Origin of Species set for April 2010

Nino Ricci’s award-winning novel The Origin of Species is on track for an April 6th publication date in the U.S., just in time for the 151st anniversary of the publication of the similarly titled volume by Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

“But mainly, of course, I just want to be loved.” – Nino Ricci

Darwin’s book revolutionized our understanding of the origins of life and remains perhaps one of history’s most influential texts. Ricci’s novel, on the other hand, despite good reviews and a handful of awards, has yet to demonstrate any appreciable impact on the course of human thought.

Asked if he thought his novel would generate a backlash in a country where Darwin’s theories are still considered controversial, Ricci said, “I certainly hope so. I mean, you have to admit that book burnings and that sort of thing can be good for sales. But mainly, of course, I just want to be loved.”

In conjunction with the U.S. publication, Ricci will be setting out on a cross-country tour that will take him to Boston, Princeton, New York, and several small religious bookstores in the American Bible Belt.