Archive for June, 2004

I’ve seen the future and it is something like Abito. Smart little apartments in the city center. Well designed, small, and with a concierge.

George W. Bush speaks with Irish television reporter Carole Coleman on the eve of his European visit. The next day the White House canceled an exclusive interview that had been arranged for RTE with first lady Laura Bush.

In recent days, someone has been smashing statues around Venice, Italy landmarks. Statues at the Church of the Redeemer, Church of San Pietro di Castello, and at the Doge’s Palace in the Piazza San Marco have all been bashed. Eyewitnesses in St Mark’s Square said they saw a man of about 30 with a hammer smash the hands of God and Moses, on a motif depicting the handover of the Ten Commandments, reports the BBC.

12 domestic and foreign airline employees have been identified by the Department of Homeland Security as high risks and would be denied entrance to the United States, reports LA Times writer Kathleen Hennessey. Nine of the 12 were flagged because they were believed to have a connection to terrorist organizations, two were in possession of fraudulent passports and one had been charged with assault against a U.S. law enforcement officer.

Just in case, Phillip Torrone of Seattle has mapped all the wireless internet access spots available from his kayak.

Sombody’s using freeway overpasses for political messages in Southern California. And it seems to be catching on elsewhere.

Fahrenheit 9/11 grossed $24 million its opening weekend. That makes it the highest grossing documentary of all time already and it’s the biggest opening ever for a movie playing in less than 1,000 theaters.

Ronald P. Reagan turned out pretty different from his dad.

A 15th century Italian fresco was found behind a pigeon hole in a false ceiling above the Cathedral of Valencia. The fresco, which depicts four angels against a starry blue background, was painted by two Italians, Francesco Pagano and Paolo de San Leocadio, in the late 1400, reports the BBC.

The Onion is providing a helpful guide to celebrity blogs. Highlights include Al Roker, Lisa “Facts of Life” Whelchel and Melanie “Plastic Lips” Griffith.

Browse through Nationmaster’s Mortality Statistics and you’ll find that it is none other than Estonia which leads the world in death by human stampede.

1,000 linguists agree, Ilunga is the world’s most untranslatable word. The word, from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo, means a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time.

It’s that time of year again, when men of steel (and those that are, well, less than steel) gather in Metropolis, Illinois for the Superman Festival. Grown men gather in Superman costumes wander around town looking for crime to fight.

Hungry in NYC? Got an iPod? The NYC pizza blog Slice has come up with PiPod, an ipod-based field guide to the best pizzerias in New York City.

A man and four children attending a Baptist convention in Texas drowned in the Fort Worth Water Gardens fountain. Apparently, the man’s 8 year-old daughter fell into the fountain and was pulled under by the suction of a 440-horsepower pump used to circulate water. He and several people at the fountain went in after her. The $7 million Water Gardens project, designed and built by Philip Johnson in 1974, was also the site of a toppled 80-foot-tall light standard that struck and killed two IRS employees attending a Fort Worth conference in 1991.

Is the best new American bridge in, um, Redding, California? The new Sundial Bridge is a pedestrian span over the Sacramento River connecting sections of the Turtle Bay Exploration Park. Designed by famed Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, The Sundial Bridge is paved with a translucent, non-skid glass decking and has anchorages which carry its 700-foot span without touch the water.

Check out Eurobad ‘74, an exhibition of Europe’s worst interiors of 1974.

Need something for off-roading, carrying big loads or for solid footing on mountain passes? Might want to try the Liebherr T 282 B. It’s got 3650-horsepower under the hood, can carry loads of 400 tons and is a bargain at $3million. The driver started to drive away and actually ran into the back of a service truck. It seems we mashed it down to the ground. I saw someone yelling, but we didn’t feel a thing, said the truck’s developer, Francis Bartley, on his first time in the truck.

There’s a bad-assed collection of movie stills available for you to browse at Badassmovieimages.com.

Browse through classic rejection letters at Rejection Collection.