Onlife

Few weeks, the countdown has already started and the shops in the street know it too well: Xmas is coming. Plenty of gadgets that people with no ideas and too much money might be inclined to give you as a present. A house cluttered with visible, intruding IT... no thanks. Where is the mythical transparency? I fear the worst, so, dear reader, we need to join forces. Let me know which IT gadget you do not want for Xmas, and it might end up in this blog. Send an email . Subject: Gaxets. Let me start with my first Gaxet: " The chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows — nonstop — what's online that matters to you." At least it takes no battery, so when you will bin it the environment will suffer less.

When, in the previous post, I wrote that I was hoping to do a crash course on issues relevant to understanding what life is, I definitely did not have in mind my visits to the Buddhist temples in Kyoto. This is an experience that stays with you. It's like the Pantheon, Agia Sophia, St. Peter or the Parthenon. Surprisingly, the crowd of tourists was mainly "local", if huge. And, even more surprisingly, I found myself able to get "far from the madden crowd", the shops and the souvenirs. It required only a few steps at every temple and shrine I visited. People are unable to resist, here as everywhere, the powerful attractors of popular spots and large gatherings. I visited, among many other places, Kiyomizu-dera . Sometimes being alone, detached and with the game of life on halt, helps to think. You walk and kneel down in gigantic temples, which wood should not make possible. Strange, suggestive sounds; intentional noises that remain unexplained; prayers in la