conjuro:

1783: The Montgolfier brothers sent aloft a balloon with a rooster, a duck, and a sheep aboard, rapidly advancing French aeronautics. French aeronautics: Made possible by rooster, duck and sheep!

Today, I received a "Not read" message: After more than four years sitting in somebody's mailbox! I do not mind this person nit reading the message as much as not deleting it sooner. This one is a keeper!

We arrived 30 minutes late at JFK, where I had the first surprise waiting: I ordered a limo service to pick us up and drive to the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan. The Grand Hyatt at Grand Central Terminal is a great place to start exploring Manhattan. The Chrysler Building is right next to it, so it's pretty easy to find your way back. We then went to Bobby Van's Steakhouse nearby and I had a Porterhouse Steak for two (not alone, of course).

Yesterday I went to the opening night of Klaus Littmanns new art intervention: Move for live. Six different artists designed trucks that will travel 250'000 km around Europe - catching more than 25 million visitors each year. The topics are poverty, AIDS, racism, violence and environmental damage. I liked the idea of art being present on our streets (and not just art galleries and museums) as well as the pictures on the trucks. What you see here is a piece by Basel artist Xia Zheng. More trucks will be launched in Frankfurt, Vienna, Paris, Madrid and Milan for up to 46 different trucks.

Pretty scary article about how new SSL-evading trojans work. I'm going to use a live Linux CD to do my online banking from now on - and I'm going to tell my girlfriend how to do that too. A good start for live Linux is Knoppix and here is a list of other compilations. Simply boot from CD or DVD, start the browser and do your online banking. Since the CD or DVD is read-only you can't easily catch a virus. Another possibility would be to run the free VMware Player with the browser appliance virtual machine - but this requires installation of software.

To prevent wild game from crossing the street when cars are approaching, CDs are hung at the streetside. Maybe this is a wise reuse of old AOL-CDs? Apparently, this actually reduces the number of accidents due to game crossing the street in front of cars. Seen here: map.search.ch map.google.com

The art project Book for Bush is seeking the unfiltered input of people on the current US president - an idea I like, since George Bush actions influence people all over the world. The social networking part, where the best article (by votes) is published on the first page is a great idea. However, I don't like the paying part for an article (2$ for 200 characters - without spaces and then 1 cent for every 5 additional characters). And I fear that the book could be misused. I'll be watching. Here a link to a blog with pictures of the book. (Image credit: Baslerstab )