Unblocked

Via Slashdot: Escher, in LEGOs. Balcony, Belvedere and Ascending and Descending.

Via Wired Magazine: Oliblocks.

U.S. Firm Healthwatch

The National Law Journal has a series of sobering articles today about slow growth in the legal field and merger strife, in connection with release of the NLJ 250.

Thank You, DuPont!

For slingbacks, that is. At least according to the Department of Podiatry at the Curtin University of Technology, which credits "seamless stockings without heel reinforcement" for bringing the slingback into vogue. (See also StockingGirl.com's History Of Stockings, on the role nylon played in this turning point.)

Serenity, Now

Cathy Guisewite, on the high irony of yoga fashion. Proof she's right: Gaiam; Athleta; Nuala (Christy Turlington's line for PUMA); Vickerey.

(My personal pick is somewhat gentler on the pocketbook: the Mossimo line at Target.)

Rooting Around

Have you visited Ellis Island On-Line? Very cool interactive resource which helps locate individuals who came through Ellis Island. The records then can be augmented with the stories of the immigrants' lives in the U.S., by adding text, photos, documents, etc. The online database covers 1892-1924, which turns out to be too late to capture my great-grandparents' journeys, but it's wild to see the steady trickle of people with the same names from the same towns who followed suit. Registration is required for some parts of the site.

Picked this up from Big Thinkers, featuring Ed Schlossberg. Schlossberg has wide-ranging insights about the Web, language, knowledge and learning; this is well worth watching. Among other things, he mentions an interesting bit of trivia concerning the Ellis Island site he helped develop. Sigmund Freud's record is in the database. When you view the full manifest for the George Washington, arriving Ellis Island August 29, 1909 from Bremen, Germany, Freud is passenger 27. Carl Jung is passenger 26.

[Happy birthday to my grandfather Johnny Urzi, who would have been 96 today.]