Italian villa for sale for the first time in 500 years:

Big boats on sa(i)le

The Times and the Italian Correre della Sera both report the details of the yacht of former Iraq leader S. Hussein now on sale.

I think they are selling it too cheap and will regret it when the country is stable. It's a piece of history and some tome in the future maybe they can use the banquet area for the state affairs and diplomacy.

Going through the tons of information available on the icons of culture of the last century I stumbled upon this video which is just really funny. The actors known in Eastern and Western countries, like Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Marcello Mastroiani, Catrine Deneuve, Pierre Richard (my childhood memory) and Gerard Depardieu. I especially liked the end of the video - no translation necessary - enjoy.

A picture's worth a thousand words...

I found this picture on the site of a French magazine "Liberation" and as the French viewers can not follow the discussion in English, this picture practically summarised what the journalists were trying to convey to their readers about the last debate between Obama and McCain. I find the picture quite explicative of the atmosphere of the debate. Compliments to Obama.

Open-source effort

The following site offers access to a project on economics, that basically lists most major works on economics available at present. Economists seam to lead the pack in adopting the newest technology and applying the open-source mentality to their work. It's not just Wikipedia that provides readily available information, it's also more complicated matter of economics on offer. The beauty of the project is that you can find just about anything of the work produced by World Bank's staff to books on economics, provided you have the brains to understand what it all says. The second aspect is that it gives an example to all other disciplines (like law or medicine?) of collaborating in an open-source fashion online and networking and communicating on a high level.

Michelle Obama's style

This Chicago-based designer is who Michelle Obama "works with" for the campaign - and she looks very elegant.

Perfumes for all tastes

The article from Independent lists perfumeries worth of noting.