Category Archives: Travel

Something beyond perfection

I last visited Barcelona more than twenty years ago. Back then the Sagrada Família was already impressive, but also incomplete.  All that stood were the nativity façade and some small number (four? eight?) of the Sagrada’s eventual eighteen towers. I … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Awesome, Culture, Geography, Photography, Places, Travel | 3 Comments

The Holy Mountain of Montserrat

To an window-sitter accustomed to flying over the American West, Catalonia from altitude looks like Utah. On the northern horizon the Pyrenees, like the Uintahs, run east-west above a dry landscape of settled alluvium, much of it reddish as the San … Continue reading

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Found

Getting out of a Taxi in Madrid yesterday, by mistake I picked up a coat that a prior passenger had left on the seat. Here’s the label: The coat wasn’t exceptional except in respect to the apparent antiquity of that … Continue reading

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Wanted: Just-the-Facts Maps

In Google sets out future for Maps — Lays down gauntlet to Nokia with plans for personalized, context-aware and ’emotional’ maps in future, in Rethink Wireless, Caroline Gabriel begins this way: Google may be feeling the heat from an unlikely source, … Continue reading

Posted in Aviation, Business, Geography, Geology, infrastructure, Internet, Personal, Photography, Places, problems, Research, Technology, Travel | 4 Comments

Loving the Alps of Los Angeles

I orient by landmarks. When I was growing up in New Jersey, the skyline of New York raked the eastern sky. To the west were the Watchung “Mountains“: hills roughly half the height of Manhattan’s ranking skyscrapers. But they gave me … Continue reading

Posted in Art, Aviation, Awesome, Broadcasting, Family, Fun, Geography, Geology, Personal, Photography, Travel | 2 Comments

Plug your car into the rest of your life

Your late-model car knows a lot more than its dashboard tells you. It knows how fast you’ve been going on every trip, your fuel mileage, your tire pressures and much more. It even knows what your engine light really means … Continue reading

Posted in Awesome, Business, Technology, Travel | 8 Comments

On manners, privacy and evolution

In this comment and this one under my last post, Ian Falconer brings up a bunch of interesting points, some of which are summarized by these paragraphs from his first comment… Here in the UK most people over 40 will remember placing … Continue reading

Posted in Culture, Geography, history, infrastructure, Internet, Law, Life, Places, Social, Technology, Travel, VRM | 4 Comments

Getting kicks at 66

A year ago I entered the final demographic. So far, so good. @Deanland texted earlier, asking if I had a new affinity with WFAN, the New Yawk sports station that radiates at 660 on what used to be the AM … Continue reading

Posted in Broadcasting, Family, Friends, Fun, infrastructure, Internet, Life, Places, radio, Travel, VRM | 9 Comments

A good word for a good cause

@BlakeHunskicer has a kickstarter project, Fleeing the War at Home: An interactive documentary introducing the crisis in Syria through the personal histories and dreams of Syrian refugees, with a few days and a few thousand dollars left to go. Blake is … Continue reading

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Rebuilding the future

In Bubkes, Stephen Lewis has lately been blogging with depth and insight on many topics — music, architecture, culture, infrastructure and events historic and current — in two cities with which he is intimately familiar: Istanbul and Sofia. In Taksim Underpass: … Continue reading

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