Peter’s Blog

The IHT profiles Brussels’ EU stagiaires. It almost makes me miss the place!

Artifacts from the Future: Bumper Stickers of 2018

Had a great time at Picnic today. Met tons of great people, including the head of a top ad agency in Russia, a cinematographer for Survivor and just about the whole Dopplr team. Awesome! Tomorrow I’m part of the Hot100 program.

As the saying goes, God made the world but the Dutch made the Netherlands. Of course, no landscape is untouched: walk through the British countryside and what seems to be untouched forests and hills turn out be forests planted several centuries ago and hills continuously molded over the past millenia by human activity. On the road from Haarlem to Schipol I once saw a grass-covered ziggurat-shaped hill with an incredibly straight alley of trees running by it. Rather than pretending that their environment isn’t man-made – the British aren’t the only offenders at maintaining such an illusion though I think they’re some of the worst – the Dutch celebrate the artificialness of their landscape. Building on that thought, there’s a great piece in the Herald Tribune about an MIT professor encouraging a polluted region in Italy to embrace man-made nature.

From Geen Stijl.

Another classic from R Stevens.

I never made it to Jimmy’s (I was 20 when I graduated from the UofC) but, all the same, it’s fun to see a NY Times profile on Jimmy’s this weekend.

Frank Mundus, 82, Dies; Inspired ‘Jaws’ - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

On just such a venture in August 2007, the tail of a nine-foot thresher shark splashing off the stern of his 42-foot boat, the Cricket II, slapped Mr. Mundus and sent him reeling. He struck right back, planting his gaff — a giant fish hook on a pole — in the shark’s back and hauling it aboard.

It’s incredible enough to do that to a shark. It’s fucking awesome to do that when you’re 81!

“Local wars ahead “ is a really interesting interview on Sign and Sight with a Russian reporter who covered the war in Georgia. I found this quote very interesting:

The whole world fights with Russian weapons but Russia fights with its boys.

sevensixfive: Dettifoss

“I have to stay interested in something here! Because I am not interested in ships and containers!”

Says the captain of a container ship.