That way is definitely quicker. I usually still have last year's jar so soaking for a month or so is not a problem, plus I wait for my freshly pressed olive oil from a friend who has olive trees to do this -- the taste is amazing

No need to, the name "olio santo" is Italian and a tradition in most of Southern Italy (especially in the Calabia region).

Depending on the dish it could be:
- fresh or dried chili homegrown and added to the pot
- a mix of different chilies soaked in olive oil for 40 days.

The oil is good for adding heat to a dish after it is cooked, while fresh/dried chilies are best added while cooking.
Oh, and all my chilies are home grown (2 o 3 different varieties).

Dante's Inferno.

I'm not aware of this practice in Europe... but give it some time and some some pointy-hair boss will think it's a great idea.

Wait!!! I'm not sure i read that correctly....

I don't read as much as my partner and with a kid I have less time to read these days but it is possible to read 30-40 books in a year without trying. I read during train rides to visit grandparents, before going to sleep and in my ... ahem... personal reading room... (toilet). As some already pointed out, if you're a fast reader you can read 2-300 pages in a day, I know I have. You can also read two books at once, I usually go with different genres, say science-fiction before going to sleep and fantasy on the toilet. Now my partner, SHE is an avid reader and the owner of 70% of the 1000 or so books in the house and she easily reads 60+ books a year: that's a little more than one a week. Just this December she read the 5 books of Games of Thrones + a couple others and some fan-fiction off the interner (which she doesn't count in her total read). We've both been reading since our pre-teens and we are 39 and 38 now. I work while she stay in the house, does normal house keeping and cooks; our kid does go to preschool for most of the day.

A properly pulled espresso in Naples, Italy costs 0.80 Euros, if you're paying anything more than a dollar or so for an untrained person to give you an espresso in a paper cup you ARE getting ripped off.
Note: current exchange rate is 1 U.S. dollar = 0.74 Euros

I never got this working consistently (XP, Vista or Win7) so if I need to order files by date I name the files something like filename_YYYYMMDD and then globally sort by name (which works).
The strange thing is that on my boss' computer (Win7) with sort and group by date everything just works... never understood how or why.

Damm between Berlusconi's shenanigans, the terrible state of Italian politics and now this I'm starting to be ashamed to be Italian.

Anyhow, most of the people voted into the EU are unknown to the voters because most people just vote the Party (Motti is part of the Christian Democrat Union -- UDC). Now you can express one or more preferences (up to 3 I think) for a single person and the vote goes to the political party and to the person(s). Total votes to the political party determine the number of seats, and total personal votes determine who gets elected. In case of a tie, the position in an internal list determines who goes so, in the extreme case where votes are only given to the party and no candidates receive a personal vote, the people that get elected are the first ones on the list... the list is obviously determined by the Party.
Now not many voters in Italy know that they can express a personal preference in the EU elections (because in the national elections you cannot express a preference for a candidate -- you vote the party and the party chooses who gets elected according to the list) the above situation is not far-fetched. Add to this that most people in Italy honestly don't give a fuck about who is elected and tend to vote by "habit" (as in "I'm a Christian so I have to vote the Christian Party...") and you can see how a bunch of fascist, racist, close-minded cunts; some shady persons and even showgirls can get elected to the EU.