Carlo Mollino (May 6, 1905 – August 27, 1973) was an Italian architect and designer.

Sexy furniture, cars, architecture and naked women.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Carlo+Mollino&qpvt=Carlo+Mollino&FORM=Z7FD

An oak and glass table made by Italian designer Carlo Mollino in 1949 sold Thursday for $3.8 million – double the previous auction record for a piece of 20th-century furniture, Christie’s auction house said.

Book- ISBN-10: 8837048572, ISBN-13: 978-8837048570
Arabesques is a celebration of the life and achievements of Carlo Mollino (1905-1973)–architect, designer, author and photographer, and one of Italy’s most extraordinary cultural innovators. In a 100 color and 80 black and white illustrations, and with commentary by an array of contemporary Mollino scholars, it examines his famously elegant furniture designs, a selection of his most iconic buildings, his wonderfully futuristic aeroplane and automobile designs and a portfolio of his photographic portraits of women. It reveals a man almost impossible to grasp in his entirety, with a ravenous intellect and a temperament both friendly and proud, whose work requires the attentions of several scholars–among them Lisa Ponti, Carmen Guererro and Fulvio Ferrari–to assess here. Yet Mollino’s approach was itself often synthetic; his interiors (which were almost always commissioned) integrated his furniture, interior design and architecture towards a unified aesthetic environment, expressing a coherent aesthetic of elegance and energetic sinuousness. Arabesques makes sense of this rare instance of a true Renaissance man, and will sweep the reader up in Mollino’s infectious energy and polymorphous genius.

New Medieval Castle

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/europe/10440300.stm
Deep in the forests of central France, an unusual architectural experiment is half-way to completion, as a team of masons replicates in painstaking detail the construction of an entire medieval castle.

The ­Chateau de Guedelon was started in 1998, after local landowner Michel Guyot wondered whether it would be possible to build a castle from scratch, using only contemporary tools and materials.

‘Beyond the Killing Fields’: On the Language of War by Sydney Schanberg

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/06/22/author-sydney-schanberg-on-the-language-of-war/

“This is probably a good moment to raise the question of whether the United States is more bestial in war than other nations. From my years of covering wars close-up, the answer is no. Ours is one of the world’s more disciplined military forces. It’s war that by definition is bestial and insane. That’s why presidents and politicians always say they consider war only as a last resort — even when there is no evidence that they had considered any other options first.”

bob’s movie list

Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037
Crazy Heart
An Education
Up in the Air
Herb & Dorothy
Seven Days in May
Objectified
Gran Torino
We Live in Public
Commune
Lewis and Clark: The Journey
La Vie en Rose
Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon.

Doomsayers Beware, a Bright Future Beckons By JOHN TIERNEY in NYT

“Empires bought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the expense of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers.”

What made Homo sapiens so special? Dr. Ridley argues that it wasn’t our big brain, because Neanderthals had a big brain, too. Nor was it our willingness to help one another, because apes and other social animals also had an instinct for reciprocity.
“At some point,” Dr. Ridley writes, “after millions of years of indulging in reciprocal back-scratching of gradually increasing intensity, one species, and one alone, stumbled upon an entirely different trick. Adam gave Oz an object in exchange for a different object.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/science/18tier.html?ref=science