16-year old Girl Tries to Poison Her Family

Normally, I wouldn't find this funny, but this story is hilarious. The sad part of the story is that a 16-year old girl tried to poison her family. She poured cleaning products into the a dessert, and fed it to them.

The HILARIOUS part of the story is that the father was able to identify, by taste, the BRAND of the cleaning product, and continued to eat the pie anyways . . . .

Read the story

Palais Versaille

The Palais Versaille is quite phenomenal. The grounds are enormous. There are literally miles and miles of gardens. The buildings are ostentations. Everything about it reeks with history.

You can walk through the antechambers and the King's bedroom, the Hall of Mirrors (where the Treaty of Versaille was signed), and see the Dauphin's personal study.

This is something that you simply need to see for yourself.

Police test Porsche patrol car

You have to see this. I would almost be honored to get a speeding ticket from this officer . . . .

See the car

Pat Robertson has been *converted* on Global Warming

Interesting little article about Pat Robertson being "converted" (his own term) on the Global Warming Issue.

Perhpas the Religious Right might get behind the "Save the Earth" movement and not TRY to make armageddon happen any sooner.

Read the Article

I love Russian Literature, but not THAT much!

In an article today, "Club Gulag: tourists are offered prison camp experience," published in The Independent Online Edition, there are details about a the Mayor of a small town in Russia who is actively seeking investors for an alternative project.

The Mayor wants to RE-OPEN the Russian Stalin-era prisons known as "gulags" for tourists who want to experience them first-hand. He thinks that the experience is worth $120 - $150 per day.

Before you sign the waver, and as part of the Terms and Conditions, "The Gulag Archipelago," by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn should be required reading . . . .

Read the full story.

The Beauty of Public Transportation

I am acutely aware of how the American ideal always appears somewhat better from behind the wheel of your own car, but Public Transportation is going to save the world. It is faster than driving. You can save your attention for a good book, reading your mail, or talking on the phone. You can eat and drink. And, it is much more reliable that traffic. If the schedule says that it will be there at 6:15pm, it will most likely be there at 6:15pm.

Sure, there are a few trade-offs. You do not have the freedom to run errands on the way home. You have to stick to your own schedule--you forfeit the flexibility to change your mind. And, there are other people aboard.

The positive sides, however, dramatically outweigh the bad. It is MUCH less expensive for you to ride public transportation than to own, insure, operate and feed gas to a car. There are minimal or zero emissions from public transportation--in a long, convoluted chain of logical events, it will actually reduce green-house gases and help fight against global warming. It is much safer than driving your car or riding your bike (certainly NOT as much fun as riding the bike). And, you can do something productive with the time that would normally be spent driving--even if that means simply looking out the window to decompress from your day.

There is strength in numbers. If more of us ride and use public transportation more often, more resources will get devoted to public transportation. There will be more trains. They will run more often. And, so on and so on . . . .

Where are the People in your Life?

Life is simply more interesting with people in it. People are the seasoning to your recipe. They have a great influence on your day and your moods--both good and bad. And, biologically, humans are social creatures (I hope the Anthropologists would support this assertion). We need interaction with others humans to survive and be emotionally healthy.

As a photographer, I have always struggled with creating Landscape images. Even my images with the best composition and lighting left me feeling empty--as if there was something missing. That element has always been people. According to my tastes, a person, or people, would make this image more interesting. A silhouette or someone sitting on the rocks. Perhaps a couple holding hands. Children playing in the tidepools.

As much as I love this image of Monterey Bay at sunset, the photograph is a bit deceptive. There WERE people present when I pressed the shutter release. There were boats returning to harbor. People were walking on the sandy portion of the beach. A couple stood behind me in an embrace. His arms were warmly wrapped around her--sharing warmth as they watched the sun descend for the day.

Where are the people in your life? Keep your favorite people close to you, and allow new people into your life. There is a risk that they may make things worse, but most likely, they will add an unexpected dimension to your life--something you cannot achieve on your own.

Inspiring Architecture

I am dredging up more pictures from my Paris trip. Part of this re-visit is plainly for nostalgia. The other component, however, is to surround myself with really energizing things.

The image is of the Georges Pompidou Centre--located in the Marais district--and, I love the lines of the building. It is architecturally interesting with all of the plumbing, heating/cooling, wiring, and exhaust pipes built on the OUTSIDE of the building rather than being nested within the walls.

The Marais, where the Pompidou Center is located, was a fashionable neighborhood where the French Bourgeoisie lived until the French Revolution--when they were beheaded by the peasants. The neighborhood was left alone, for the most part, until the 1970's (about 200 years later) when it was rediscovered because of the low property prices and historic buildings. The properties were mostly undisturbed, and close to historic sites--Place de Nation, and the ruins of the Bastille Prison (which the peasants burned to the ground after their successful revolution).

The Georges Pompidou Center, the Picasso Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of History and Science were all built in the Marais within the timespan of about 15 years.

Citizen Journalism

This, apparently, is the new buzzword for a brand of new, non-corporate journalism that has blossomed over the last several years.

To quote Nicholas Lemann, in his recent article "AMATEUR HOUR: Journalism without journalists" (The New Yorker), "Citizen journalists are supposedly inspired amateurs who find out what’s going on in the places where they live and work, and who bring us a fuller, richer picture of the world than we get from familiar news organizations, while sparing us the pomposity and preening that journalists often display."

ohmynews.com

What do you think?

Isn't Life Bittersweet at times . . . .

In bold letters, the headlines read: Blair and Schwarzenegger Sign Global Warming Agreement. And, while I think this is a great story, I also feel a bit of sadness about it all. The largest state of the Union (economically, at least), is making their own agreements with foreign countries to try to save and repair the environment. In many books, including my own, this is an absolute victory.

The bitter part about this message is that the reason why individual states are negotiating with foreign countries about saving the environment--you know, the place where we live and the air that we breathe--is because our own Federal Government is NOT LISTENING to us. Or, perhaps a bit more sinister, is the scenario where they are listening and simply do not care . . . .

The leader of the free world wants us to burn oil. The leader of the free world removed Carbon Dioxide from the watched gasses list in a nice Orwellian piece of legislation called, "The Clean Air Act." In this ostrich approach, we bury our heads in the sand and stop tracking carbon dioxide--the greatest cause of Global Warming. By not monitoring that gas, our country immediately *ON PAPER* vaulted to the position of being a non-polluter. In reality, however, we gave free license to industry to make money irresponsibly--with our Federal goverment's blessings.

Convergence/Divergence at McSweeney's

There is a really interesting Convergence/Divergence article about the Middle East at McSweeney's today. It was written by Lawrence Weschler, and compares the situation in Beirut with the situation of Warsaw, Poland as portrayed in Roman Polanski's "The Pianist."

It is worth the time.

Samuel Beckett's Grave

So, I was having a little bout with insomnia. And, rather than lay there in bed and try all of my usual tricks again, I decided to get up and work on some of the projects that are keeping me awake at night. For a brief reprieve, I found myself wandering through my images of Paris from last year, and in particular, this image of Samuel Beckett's grave.

I loved how the old and the new co-mingle in French culture. This cememtary was in the middle of a well-to-do neighborhood, was a couple of hundred years old, housed a great number of famous artists (Cesar, Rodin, Simone de Beuvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Balzac, etc.), and was overshadowed by the tallest building in continental Europe. The old and the new.

Many of the graves had flowers, or some other tribute paid to the artist or the dead. And, because of the number of famous people, many of these tributes exceeded your typical flower arrangement. Out of all the graves, however, Samuel Beckett's had the most attention. Perhaps it was not the most ostentatious, but it was definitely the most.

Scattered on the ground around his grave were hundreds of the little purple tickets. They were the very tickets that those hundreds of visitors purchased to ride the Metro across Paris to see the grave of the famous playwrite--Samuel Beckett.

Human Values

Now, more than ever, our civilization is in dire need of a dialog about human values. We need to talk about what we are doing, and why we are doing it. If we continue down our current path without even talking about it, our doom is certain.

The Tanner Lectures on Human Values is a phenomenal collection of essays, presentations, and writings about (go ahead, take a guess) Human Values. The lectures have been delivered by some of the greatest minds to have existed.

Try it out: find something that interests you, and download a lecture or two . . . .

Here's the link: Tanner Lectures on Human Values

Ahh, the Inky Goodness . . . .

Doesn't that just warm your little heart? It certainly makes mine palpitate a bit . . . .

As a lifelong coffeeshop junky, this is an image that resonates for me.