Soldier Ant 

Miss Wurzel Todd describes the catacombe dei cappuccini:

Today more than eight thousand mummified bodies line the walls of the Catacombe dei Cappuccini in Palermo in one of the most macabre human "libraries" in the world.

The halls of the catacombs are divided into categories: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks, and Professors (incl. the corpse of the famous painter Velasquez). The corpses are dressed in fine fabrics and occupy their own individual niches according to their social status.

I'm in Burlington, MA for the better part of this week, to attend orientation for my new job: I've recently accepted a position with Sun Microsystems as an interface designer and I'm pleased as hell about it.

Oh, and did I mention what a fantastic week it is to be in the Boston area? On Sunday I caught Game 2 at the pub downstairs at the Marriot (eating a late dinner after a horrific set of airport delays coming into Boston Logan airport.) There was a decent crowd gathered at the bar -- from the heavily accented cheers that went up intermittently, I'm guessing most of my fellow barflies were local Bostonians.

I have this weird talent for visiting cities at the exact time that they win sports championships. June of 96? Stopping for one night in Denver on a cross-country drive with my friend Mark. Just happened to be the one night that the Avalanche (a brand new team) won the Stanley Cup (Denver's first-ever professional sports championship.) Much mayhem ensued, including Mark and I yelling 'Avalanche!!!' at the top of our lungs downtown. (Under threat of beating from a roving band of toughs in the back of a jacked-up pickup truck.)

Or October 28, 1995 -- the very night that I moved into my new apartment near midtown Atlanta? The Braves beat the Indians to (finally) clinch a World Series victory. People were shooting off guns in my apartment complex. I thought they were celebrating the Series. Turns out that people in Atlanta just like to shoot guns every once in a while.

Mind you, I'm not saying the Sox have this tied up. Anything could happen. All's I'm sayin' is that I fly out of here tomorrow night, so they'd really better consider a sweep if they're looking for my help in clinching it.

I'm back in Columbus from Boston, and glad to be so. Some pleasant surprises from my trip:

Ben carved out an evening for me, and took me for some fantastic sushi at Blue Fin. We met his friends Josh and Amanda, who are lovely people.

I discovered that Sun has an local (probably a sales) office in Columbus! Not more than a mile from my house! With ~20 floating loaner-offices for use by remote workers! I'm going over there tomorrow to scope the space out.

Excellent.

Kottke points to this Beeb article on a (possibly) extinct race of 1m tall people, who used tools and must've mastered sea travel at some point. Most intriguing is the possibility that they're still around today:

The myths say Ebu Gogo were alive when Dutch explorers arrived a few hundred years ago and the very last legend featuring the mythical creatures dates to 100 years ago.

But Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature magazine, goes further. He speculates that species like H.floresiensis might still exist, somewhere in the unexplored tropical forest of Indonesia.

I'd like to spend some time with this the next time I'm in San Francisco:

As you may know, Chris Ware, one of the world’s great artists, designed this mural specifically for 826 Valencia. It depicts the parallel development of humans and their efforts at and motivations for communication, spoken and written. It’s a very complex mural, and requires its most devoted viewers to study it for about an hour, from the middle of Valenica Street, by far the best vantage point.

Oh, and here's someone's higher-res capture of the mural.

Business Logs looks like an interesting business resource for all things blog-, wiki- and writing-related. (And it's nicely designed, too.)