March07 logo
March 7, 2023



February 28, 2023
Tsūtenkaku and Dai Heiwa Kinen Tō, Osaka
Something new to me, in Osaka. If we ignore that grotesque Sun Tower they erected for Expo'70 the high place everybody knows is the Tsutenkaku in the Shinsekai entertainment district. I've stood under this tower, but never been inside. Now I've learned of another, less conventional; the PL or Great Peace Prayer Tower in Tondabayashi, south Osaka, also built in 1970, by the Church of Perfect Liberty (PL). Unlike the Tower of the Sun, doesn't sound like you can go up inside this one anymore; click for bigger pic.



February 26, 2023



February 24, 2023



February 21, 2023



February 18, 2023



February 12, 2023



February 9, 2023



February 8, 2023



February 5, 2023



February 1, 2023



January 28, 2023



January 25, 2023



January 22, 2023
Cat and Rabbit
It's Lunar New Year and although in most places it's a Year of the Rabbit, in Vietnam it's The Year of the Cat.



January 21, 2023

The atmospheric river has dried up, the storms are over, and our trees remain inteact.



January 16, 2023



January 12, 2023 USSR flag
Immersed in this incredible seven-part Adanm Curtis BBC documentary, TraumaZone -‌- What it felt like to live through the collapse of Communism (and Democracy). No narration -‌- just titles, sub-titles and mostly new-to-me video. Names the oligarchs, describing how they became such, and concludes by identifying Putin as their creature.



January 10, 2023



January 7, 2023
  • A state school on Michigan's UP has compiled the Overused Expressions every year since 1976. The top of their 2023 Banished Words List is an acronym unfamiliar to me, G.O.A.T? Clearly pretentious, and since I don't want to be boring I'll have to curb my own too-frequent use of #6 (amazing) and #9 (absolutely), but the rest of these aren't part of my vocabulary. Scanning other recent years now, hoping to see 'vibe' listed -‌- and found it, in 2020.

  • Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg's Web Seer completes text strings input with their most common Google search requests.

  • At Quartz, Tea if by Sea, Cha if by Land: Why the world only has two words for Tea.

  • Dirty Laundry Comics, their recent take on 45: Bad Diet & Bad Hair Destroy Human Civilization by Aline Kominsky (RIP) and R.Crumb, published in the New York Review in mid-2020.



January 5, 2023



January 4, 2023
As I live under a couple tall trees, nervously awaiting the big storm approaching California tonight, with its prediction of high winds. Meanwhile,



December 31 - Good-bye, 2022
  • I've been listening to Christmas music and the OTR Cinnamon Bear on ICAN, the International Children Arts Network, which is carried on Portland public radio; but I'm accessing it through the Radio Garden which has this wonderful global interface with clickable green dots indicating all the radio stations. So many green dots; find your local, or another.

  • Quick slide-show at CNN Travel, ten of the world's most fascinating abandoned towns and cities.

  • And some more pics, at Vintage Everyday, Burning Man in 1963 as imagined by an AI.



December 26, 2022
  • A listicle, Nine Winter Traditions You Might Not Have Heard Of at Atlas Obscura (love to ride that holiday subway train!) and at Lifehacker, a slideshow, the 13 Worst Health and Fitness Trends of 2022. I like that one of 75 Hard's five or six non-negotiable rules is reading ten pages of non-fiction daily but I take a dim view of that 12-3-30 workout.

  • Speaking of fitness, after a two-year hiatus I resumed my almost every-other-day exercise regimen this summer: stretching, two miles running on the treadmill, then some weightlifting and finally the sauna. This means I'm back at the gym, hearing (and being æsthetically assaulted by) the popular music. One contemporary hit stands out, though, Jax's Victoria's Secret, with its "Dude!" chorus.

  • California Christmas Lights attempts compiling those locations where residents go all out. Before I evacuated the Bay Area, one of them, Christmas Tree Lane in Palo Alto became a favorite, cruising slowly through with headlights dimmed and seasonal music on the car stereo. Here in Sacramento there's a whole grid to explore, in Midtown, the Fabulous Forties, where you can even find hot chocolate stands and live music.

  • At the Smithsonian, Andrew Parker's Pure Structural Colors, like peacock feathers and butterfly wings. He's a zoologist who's figured out easy ways to reproduce them -‌- cosmically bright, they say. More at Wikipedia, Structural Coloration.



December 24, 2022
In the Washington Post, We're drowning in old books, but getting rid of them is heartbreaking. Mentions Wonder Books in Frederick, and Powell's of Portland, among others, all wonderful places but never my own local, usually used bookstore.
(archive link)

Thinking back on all my favorites, I made this chronological list of the places for which I was able to find links; depressingly, they're usually to articles about the store's closing.

  • Brentano's had a branch in my local mall, when I was young. The best part was the space in the middle which featured games and art.
  • When I lived in Hermosa Beach I visited the Either/Or bookstore at least once a week.
  • That was when I first went down to Long Beach for Ray Bradbury's favorite, Acres of Books. An amazing place, but a selection so picked over I never really bought much there. Instead, a journey further east and into Orange County led to
  • The Book Baron, which was the best used bookstore ever. Huge, with a fantastic selection.
  • When I first lived in Silicon Valley I spent a lot of time down in San Jose at the Thrush bookstore, with its rickety mezzanine level.
  • The place most frequent then was Bookbuyers in Mountain View, which I could often walk to. Great selection, open late, and they'd take almost anything for store credit.
  • Finally, a little north, just beyond Palo Alto was Feldman's Books which has moved away from his pleasant location on El Camino (with its little garden between the two halves) but is apparently still in business in Menlo Park.



December 22, 2022



December 20, 2022
  • More about those violet streetlights, noted here back in March. (They're arrays of LEDs; solid-state chips, not bulbs.) At Business Insider, The Great Purpling, explained -‌- the yellow phosphor which makes the light from blue LEDs white is delaminating. Unrealistic fears of the ultraviolet are frightening some, but an article from last year should put those fears to rest. Here's Why Purple Streetlights Are Popping Up Around North Carolina quotes Duke Energy: "There's no safety issues with the lights and they continue to work. They are just purple."

  • These are great -‌- The Night Hawk -‌- Chicago storefronts by photographer Dave Jordano.

  • At Rest Of World, many photos. This is what a tech market looks like in eight places in Asia, Africa and South America.



December 18, 2022



December 13, 2022



December 10, 2022
Just a couple videos today:



December 9, 2022



December 5, 2022
A Brief Note on the URLs to get here:
For book-marking, etc please note - this page is at
www.wunderland.com/WTS/Rash/Default.html.
There's a handy, easier-to-remember re-direct/shortcut,
wunderland.com/rash.
Although you can naturally reach the same date through the Archive page, currently indexed by season; I've just learned (via spammers!) that a February 2016 snapshot is available at
www.wunderland.com/WTS/Rash.archive -‌- seven years out-of-date now, not to confuse it with the real thing.



December 4, 2022
The New-Years trip to Vietnam for step-son's wedding is off -- mixed feelings about that. But check this pick-list for Religion: I found on one of their visa application pages. (There's more than one; and their site's navigation can be confusing; I was actually unable to find my way back to this one, glad I took the picture.) Choices for religion on Vietnam visa application




*   *   *
Rash.log Archives:
complete index of archive pages, going back to early 2000.
Please visit the muthership:
Wunderland.com banner
Wunderland.com
(and its affiliate
LooneyLabs,
purveyor of unique games)

Home | Prose | Links | Misc | Contact