Monthly Archive for May, 2009

Mon
May
25
2009

Dear Donna: letters from service members 0 cmts

Donna Reed saved hundreds of letters from star-struck World War II servicemen. Her children discovered them in a shoebox.

Tue
May
19
2009

Credit Card Industry Aims to Profit From Sterling Payers 2 cmts

Yesterday the cashier at Shaw’s was confused and dismayed when I paid for my groceries in cash, and she wasn’t afraid to show it. I’ve been getting more of that recently. But she’s going to need to change her attitude if credit card companies go through with their threats to bring back annual fees, charge interest immediately on purchases, and raise the transaction fees charged to merchants, who will then pass them on to customers. Something tells me cash might be coming back into vogue…

Fri
May
15
2009

Pictures from the swine flu hysteria 0 cmts

From the Boston Globe’s Big Picture blog. The images from Mexico are particularly interesting.

Tue
May
05
2009

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable 0 cmts

Clay Shirky’s thoughtful and important exploration of the death of the newspaper industry (and by extension, all publishing operations) at the hands of the internet. He says we are entering a time of upheaval and chaos similar to the 1500s after the invention of the printing press.

Sat
May
02
2009

Triplog: Italy (Part 1: Paris & Rome) 4 cmts

This holiday is a family affair, a two week journey beginning in Paris, continuing in Rome, and then meandering up through a few highlights in the Italian north. I don’t have much to say about Paris, which I explored with my sisters Jessica and Shaina. We saw some of the major tourist sights, and documented them in this slideshow.

Specifically, we toured Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Tour Eiffel, and the Catacombs. We also walked a good bit, wandering through side streets and the Latin Quarter, seeing the Seine, traveling down the Champs Elise from our starting point at the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre, and then across the river to the Musee d’Orsay, where we spent a couple of hours before closing time. We never quite made it to the Pompadou Center, an inside-out museum. In the end, thanks to a few morning mix-ups, we got to the airport a mere six minutes after the check-in window closed for our Vueling “discount” flight to Rome, and, even though the airplane was delayed for over an hour, we were not allowed to get our tickets and enter the terminal. We were forced to rebook for the later flight, which itself was delayed by almost two hours since, after all, it was the same plane that had to go to Rome and back. Ninety euros poorer for no apparent reason, we arrived in Rome.

Map of ItalyRome! The capital of unified Italy, Rome is a large metropolitan located in the center-west of the country, in the province of Lazio. Rome’s rich history goes back a good 2,500 years or so, with the highlights being the rise and fall of the Roman empire and the ascendence of the Catholic Church. It all started, as these things do, with a creation myth involving two brothers, Romulus and Remus, who had a bit of a fight. Romulus was victorious and so the hillside became known as Rome, and over some time it got bigger, peaking around a million inhabitants.

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I'm Danny Silverman, a guy in Cambridge, MA with an interest in law, culture, media, and using technology to bring people together even as we work ever harder to push ourselves apart.

My day job is maintaining computer systems. I like exploring the outdoors. I catch and throw flying discs for sport. My cat is fuzzy.

To contact me: zeno@ this site.

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