My friend Reeves responds to the item below: “What’s most shocking is that no one in the man’s family seemed to notice THE ENTIRELY NEW WALL IN THEIR HOUSE.”
Ha. I assume he lived alone. And the new wall was in the cellar, after all, so it might’ve been easy to overlook.
Here’s an incredible story. 44 years ago, an Italian man was diagnosed with a terminal disease. He didn’t want to worry his family with news of his impending death, so he told them he was moving to America. Then he packed a couple suitcases, built a wall around himself in his home, and shot himself. And now his remains, along with a suicide note, have been found by a woman who bought the house and is doing renovations. This is straight out of Stephen King. Or, rather, straight out of Edgar Allan Poe.
Frontline’s “The Merchants of Cool” is a documentary about the creation and marketing of teen pop culture. I haven’t seen it, but I want to. On the show’s site, Robert McChesney, a media critic, discusses an argument I’d love to read more about: teenagers in non-commercial societies are happier than those in hyper-commercial ones, like ours.
Did “a race of long and narrow-headed humans”–Asians–populate the Americas before Native Americans?
What a brilliant idea. The Varieties of the Balloon Hat Experience Web site: two guys travel around the world taking pictures of people laughing and wearing silly balloon hats.
My friend Christina, who was in the group I motorcycled through Vietnam with last Spring, has posted some beautiful photos of her recent trip to Egypt.
Project Dole: two crazy Swedish guys decorate their buddy Sverker’s apartment with banana box furniture.
“The Changing ‘Times’: A hard-charging editor’s crusading style is coloring the Gray Lady’s reputation.” Interesting look at how The New York Times, under the leadership of Howell Raines, is becoming edgier–and, some say, more liberally activist, pushing a left-wing policy agenda.