“Regional carrier Air Nostrum has become the second Spanish airline after Volotea to support electric aircraft developer Dante Aeronautical. Dante says the three companies have made a joint presentation to Spain’s transport ministry in a bid to receive financial support from the European Recovery Fund for the development of fully electric regional air transport links in the country. The partners submitted a proposal for a €42 million ($50 million) budget to convert in-service aircraft for 9-19 passengers to ‘100% electric’ operation, Dante says. Noting that electrification of existing aircraft promises to be faster than the ‘long and costly development’ of an all-new design, Dante says certification of the first aircraft is scheduled for 2024, while ‘versions of various aircraft’ are to be become operational by 2026.” [. . .] –Cirium, FlightGlobal, March 24, 2021.
Dante at the Roma Termini Train Station (2015)
Dante at the Roma Termini Train Station
Italian Commuting
“Mr. Parks lives in Milan, where he runs a postgraduate translation program at Istituto Universitario di Lingue Moderne. Living here saves him from the hellish predawn 100-mile commute from Verona, a Dante-esque daily journey that he writes about at the outset of Italian Ways.” –Rachel Donadio, The New York Times, June 7, 2013
See Tim Parks’ book, Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo (NY: W. W. Norton, 2013)
Dante in Times Square – 42nd St. Subway Station
Contributed by Steven Bartus (Bowdoin, ’08)
Mark Lilla, “Filippic” (2011)
A poem for the Brooklyn Book Festival
The F train
Is the brain train.
iPad lasciate,
Voi ch’intrate,
Eve’s backlit apple,
Gold ‘n delicious,
Tempts us not.
We have spines to break,
Penguins to tame.
Thou user!
Thou blue of tooth!
Thou faceless face,
That hath no book!
@ us, towns talk & captions contest
While black-rimmed dandies
Wink at the straphangers
Who grin at the infinite jest.
But banished shalt thou be
Back into space,
No means of return,
No options, commands, or escape,
While we, the Brooklyn d’élite,
Knuckles bared, planted feet,
Bend dead trees at will
And inspect our kill.
Recycle that, battery boy.
I got your charger right here.
— Mark Lilla, The New York Review of Books, September 16, 2011