Romans in general don't seem to be big on charity shops, or second hand. Of course, the Church is the charity, and there are big yellow bins on the streets that harvest used clothing for redistribution.1 For non-clothes, however, there's not much in the way of options to recycle. There is, howev...
As part of my continuing effort to make myself, rather than advertisers who covet my eyeballs and purchasing power, the customer, I took out a premium subscription to Newsblur. It's an RSS reader that claims to offer "Visual feed reading with intelligence" and I want it to replace Google Reader. Not that there's anything wrong with GReader, apart from the fact that it is from the Don't Be Evil boys themselves. I just like the idea of paying for service, which then gives me a full-on right to demand more of it. That's why I use Pinboard and Instapaper rather than alternatives.
In my yoof, I do believe I was the only person I knew who knew and liked both Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman. Not merely liked, but was extremely fond of. So I read this young man's take on what he (or a sub) called L.A. Weirdos with great pleasure, and not a little envy at his perspicaciousness....
Ever a sucker for new productivity porn that will make me effective, successful and attractive to small animals, I'm kicking the tyres of The Pomodoro Technique. In a nutshell: work at something for 25 minutes, resisting all distractions; take a 3-5 minute break; repeat. Every four sessions, take a long break.
The abundant wisteria in the neighbourhood looks much better to the eye than to the camera. No matter.
I had hoped to be able to solve a mystery for this post; why do Italians call wisteria glicine? To me, the Greek root for glycine is associated with sweetness, although the plant that springs...
