A question for you, though ~ why do some schools still issue Quarter Hours? Do you know how nutso that is? We went through this several times right down to using google translate and pulling up all the alternatives.
There are articles on the net about university degree titles in Italy that conform to what you see in any of the documents Rossi has displayed.
Give you a clue about "Master" when it comes to degree titles, I have one that says I am a Master Planner. It was issued by a well known School of Architecture in Virginia. The credit hour requirement is about double that of a Masters issued by the College of Arts and Sciences. Add in the project work and it's just this side of the sort of degree of difficulty you expect for a doctorate in many other fields.
You can't take A&S standards in the US and lay them down as a hard and fast guide for Engineering, Architecture, or Religion (the other traditional medieval fields of study).
In Italy it's worse because they invented a lot of this stuff centuries ago and then changed it.
For most of their degrees issued 35 years ago you'd ask for a letter of verification ~ rather like asking for a copy of a transcript here.
Now, your questions:
You tell me why: There are changes in font size throughout the letter.
Well, it's typed/printed on a letter head, so that gives you two different fonts right off the bat. The font selected looks like a proportional spaced Helvetica ~ which matches the letterhead font (but not exactly the same).
A non-right justified letter has variable spacing.
You are looking for a QUAD LEFT/QUAD RIGHT situation typically found in advertising or newspaper columns ~ where you have both proportional spacing and right and left justification. Variable spacing is commonly found in that sort of setup. I don't see anything unusual about that other than it can look tacky if you're used to the sort of columns you find in magazines and newspapers.
The date format changes throughout the letter.
The date following "Milano" spells out the month. This document was passed on to someone to sign who preferred to do it that way. It got dated in his office. Then he signed it. The other two dates were done at the same time albeit in slightly different size ~ and that may be an artifact of the scanner used to copy Rossi's original.
And why Rossi doesn't actually have a certificate of graduation instead of a fishy letter to show off.
Now, for the last question ~ the university would need to answer that. My brother and his wife didn't get their certificate of graduation (diploma) from Indiana University since their ceremony was bumped off the schedule by Communist sponsored antiwar riots. They got them more than 20 years later ~ and were still POd at the rioters.
If you know anybody who knows anyone who interfered in that graduation I know they would pay good money to watch that person skinned alive.
A question for you, though ~ why do some schools still issue Quarter Hours? Do you know how nutso that is? We went through this several times right down to using google translate and pulling up all the alternatives.
That "letter" was printed almost exactly a year ago. Regardless of how things were done on his supposed graduation date in 1975, I expect the letter format to match that of a modern computer generated letter. I also would expect a graduation certificate--I'm fairly certain those have ALWAYS been issued upon graduation.
I fail to see the relevance of U.S. university semester/quarter differences in a discussion of Italian universities.
There are articles on the net about university degree titles in Italy that conform to what you see in any of the documents Rossi has displayed.
Give you a clue about "Master" when it comes to degree titles, I have one that says I am a Master Planner. It was issued by a well known School of Architecture in Virginia. The credit hour requirement is about double that of a Masters issued by the College of Arts and Sciences. Add in the project work and it's just this side of the sort of degree of difficulty you expect for a doctorate in many other fields.
I've read many of those articles, and they pretty much confirm: a Master's degree in Italy is still a Master's degree. Hmm.
From my experience getting a Ph.D., I have NEVER seen a Master's program where the work was as rigorous as that of a Doctoral program. Furthermore, Rossi's alleged Master's degree isn't even in a science--it's in philosophy. There is no way I would consider a master's in philosophy as even remotely resembling a doctorate in physics. And that's the kind of degree Rossi would have to have if he had genuinely done the kind of research he would have us believe he had done to develop the eCat.
You can't take A&S standards in the US and lay them down as a hard and fast guide for Engineering, Architecture, or Religion (the other traditional medieval fields of study).
In Italy it's worse because they invented a lot of this stuff centuries ago and then changed it.
For most of their degrees issued 35 years ago you'd ask for a letter of verification ~ rather like asking for a copy of a transcript here.
Physics 35 years ago was still physics. The principles of engineering may have been refined since then, but the basic techniques probably haven't changed much at all. As for philosophy--it was all existentialist mumbo-jumbo 35 years ago, and it remains existentialist mumbo-jumbo today. Amazing. Even if all Rossi wanted to show is a letter of verification (and not a certificate or transcript), that letter *still* has too many discrepancies to be taken as genuine.
Now, your questions:
You tell me why: There are changes in font size throughout the letter.
Well, it's typed/printed on a letter head, so that gives you two different fonts right off the bat. The font selected looks like a proportional spaced Helvetica ~ which matches the letterhead font (but not exactly the same).
Look carefully at the letter. I'm not referring to the letter-head, which may have been pre-printed, or may have been supplied as an image that the person generating the letter would have pasted at the top of their document. Specifically, look at the body of the letter, where it changes from a 10 point font to a 12 point font about 1/3 of the way into the second line. There really isn't a reason for that (unless, as I suspect, lines were cut and pasted from two or three different letters, à la Photoshop).
A non-right justified letter has variable spacing.
You are looking for a QUAD LEFT/QUAD RIGHT situation typically found in advertising or newspaper columns ~ where you have both proportional spacing and right and left justification. Variable spacing is commonly found in that sort of setup. I don't see anything unusual about that other than it can look tacky if you're used to the sort of columns you find in magazines and newspapers.
I expect variable spacing when a document is right justified. I expect single spacing when a document is NOT right justified. What I'm seeing in that letter is a document that is NOT right justified, but has variable spacing. That makes no sense.
The date format changes throughout the letter.
The date following "Milano" spells out the month. This document was passed on to someone to sign who preferred to do it that way. It got dated in his office. Then he signed it. The other two dates were done at the same time albeit in slightly different size ~ and that may be an artifact of the scanner used to copy Rossi's original.
Nice try, but no. Since the entire letter was generated on 14 February 2011, the dates should be consistent throughout. The person signing it would have received it already dated. There is no scanned copy of a letter from 1975. Had that been a copy of an actual 1975 document, I'd expect the background to have the little black spots and so forth that are present on copies. Also, on a copy, the person signing the letter would have probably stamped a signature block, then signed it. The only stamp on that letter is the blue university seal below the text.
I'll add here that I tried to verify that Filomena Cicora is the U of Milan humanities office secretary; unfortunately, I could not find that information. The university does not list administrative staff names where the public can access them.
And why Rossi doesn't actually have a certificate of graduation instead of a fishy letter to show off.
Now, for the last question ~ the university would need to answer that. My brother and his wife didn't get their certificate of graduation (diploma) from Indiana University since their ceremony was bumped off the schedule by Communist sponsored antiwar riots. They got them more than 20 years later ~ and were still POd at the rioters.
The simple answer here is that Rossi never got one because he never actually graduated from U of Milan (or any other university). Had he graduated (from anywhere), he'd treat that certificate just like all university graduates do: it would be framed and protected as a prize possession. He'd show *it* off instead of a bogus letter. Heck, he doesn't even show off his diploma mill certificate--could it be that he didn't even manage to get a diploma mill degree, either?
I notice you didn't come up with an explanation of my other criticism: that Rossi seems to be using the score of an entrance exam as the vote of a jury convened to decide if students have met graduation requirements.
If you know anybody who knows anyone who interfered in that graduation I know they would pay good money to watch that person skinned alive.
No, sorry, I don't know anyone in Indiana.