At least it beats the tribal tramp stamps, but not by far..

…these past bursts of environmentalism waxed and waned with the rise and fall of the economy. But, perhaps more significantly, the green bubbles inflated during highly polarized periods in American society and politics, often fueled by disastrously violent episodes in foreign policy.

Photo taken in Atlanta, Georgia, via MR.

In 2003 Leonardo Notarbatolo was accused of organizing a ring of Italian thieves to break into a vault two floors beneath the Diamond Center.  Notabatolo was released from prison this week after serving some six years behind bars.

They had executed the plan perfectly: no alarms, no police, no problems. The heist wouldn’t be discovered until guards checked the vault on Monday morning. The rest of the team was already driving back to Italy with the gems. They’d rendezvous outside Milan to divvy it all up. There was no reason to worry.

Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes…the volatile result of the change of eras and the fall of empires. This fragility leads us to watch them one very last time: to be dismayed, or to admire, it makes us wonder about the permanence of things.

The naming, of course, is somewhat obscene — “gangbang” is defined as “sexual intercourse with multiple partners in turn or at the same time.” It’s illicit in more ways that one — chicken and beef most definitely make for an unnatural pairing.

WE MOVED to San Francisco and Brooklyn and Mission Hill. We jumped from job to job. Put off marriage. Never bought a place. And we never heard the end of it. We were drifters, they said. Layabouts. No respect for work and real estate or the value of a good pair of cufflinks.

You see, while Alan Greenspan and Countrywide Financial were creating a capitalism of disastrous excess, we were busy working on a more workable model. We brought you the Internet, worked on green technology, and filled the ranks of Teach for America. We crossed the color line, ate local produce, and bought secondhand clothing. We lived in smaller spaces, drove smaller cars, and took the subway to work.

As we begin to rebuild our tattered economy it may be time well spent studying how the  slacker generation managed to live within their means. Read on via Boston Globe.

Penelope Trunk’s 5 emerging trends..I’ve already begun to notice the increasing backlash against baby boomers.

This photo via TC reminded me about Ryanair, who recently introduced a coin slot on their inflight toilets.

The American public had decided it liked its beer cheap, bland, and less filling, and the industry—which, after decades of consolidation, consisted of a mere 44 breweries in 1979.

Three decades later, the U.S. boasts 1,463 breweries, including 975 brewpubs. Bud Light and its analogs still dominate the market, but even your corner market may have at least a few selections to tempt the palate of Joe Microbrew: summer ales, double bocks, black lagers, maybe even a honey orange wheat ale.

Read the article here…Way to go Jimmy.