Archive for June, 2008

The water purifier.

Monday, June 30th, 2008

 
Did you ever wake up in the morning walked on the bathroom, opened the tap only to find a brown sandy substance to come out of it? At those times you would wish to have your own water treatment plant. Now you can have it. Although it probably looks different than you would expect: a [...]

Bill & Tony

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

William S. Burroughs and Anthony Balch collaborate for this slice of weirdness. See the video here.

- Rudy Carrera.

A Hearty Welcome!

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Hello Folks!

Rudy here. I am gob-smacked to see how many new posts we have going these days! It’s making for some stunning reading, and each contribution has been wonderful.

I wanted to bring up a couple of small points for you all, however:

Please sign your name at the bottom of each post so we [...]

A Monroeville Memoir

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Although I can hear the squawk of literaii, I condider TRUMAN CAPOTE the greatest American writer–ever.

I discovered Capote in my teens and spent many happy hours devouring his every published word.
The omnibus A Capote Reader remains my favorite volume to pursue on rainy days.
On December 13, 2004 my father and I toured Monroeville, Alabama where [...]

Paris is 3,000 Years Older Than Previously Thought

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

“An archaeological dig … moves back Paris’s first known human occupation to about 7600BC, in the Mesolithic period between the two stone ages.”

An area about the size of a football field on the south-western edge of the city, close to the banks of the river Seine, has yielded thousands of flint arrowheads and fragments of [...]

9. Fa frickin’ caldo!*

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Siena’s biggest event, Il Palio, is happening this Wednesday. The festivities have begun, and today horses were raced for contrada assignment. There are 17 contradas, or neighborhoods, in Siena that compete twice a year, every year on July 2nd and August 16, in a horse race in Piazza del Campo. Due to [...]

Name That Color

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Online tools for browsing colors. Useful, elegant, and fun.

* Name That Color

* Color Name & Hue

Via Color + Design Blog.

~ Karl Jones

Mongolian Cashmere

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

Ulzii has sold two yurts already–real, whole room, boiled wool felt yurts–for only 3000 Euros each.  The full sized yurts are advertized by a much smaller table-top model that looks like an interesting child’s toy.

Ulzii, who is Mongolian and was trained as a water engineer, has the most lovely cashmere shop–which is the most dangerous [...]

“There will be Gouda”

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

Alvilda was a little concerned that Ivana, her friend from her studies at Fletcher over a decade ago who now also lives in Brussels, and I might be two too many alpha females to get along well, but that worry proved unfounded. Ivana is Croatian, and like Alvilda, is interested in international social justice [...]

Jolie Cocktail

Saturday, June 28th, 2008

Growing up in San Francisco, and having (collectively) traveled to Thailand, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Sudan, etc. my best friend, Alvilda, and I have both seen a LOT of ethnic stuff. So, normally, seeing a shop displaying more of the same doesn’t excite us in the least. However, we’d been walking all day, and it thus being [...]