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By idcrome Sorry for the absence eCoolers. We've had some IMPORTANT things to take care of here in the Compound over the past week or so and that's kept us from blogging as faithfully as we'd like. But, we're back and we're bad! So stay tuned for some Rome ultra-coolness over the course of the next few weeks. We're kicking off our Summer Coolfest with some sand sculptures from Jesolo Lido, a city near Venice on the east coast of the boot-shaped peninsula. Seems that Jesolo Lido has a thematic sand sculpture festival each year and that this summer they've asked a team of professional sand sculpture artists to illustrate Dante's Inferno (note to Compounders: possible alternative career). In particular, artists were asked to take their inspiration from verses 1-9 of Canto III of the Inferno , words that Dante reads as he stands at the edge of the world of the damned souls: Through me is the way into the woeful city; through me is the way into eterna...

BEFORE THE ATTACKS: The drama started weeks before the terrorist attacks - at a Jewish residential complex In Mumbai run by the Chabad-Lubavitch ultra-orthodox movement. From CBC News (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/11/28/mumbai-attacks.html In a telephone interview with CBC News from outside the centre, freelance journalist Arun Asthhana said there are reports that some of the militants had stayed at a guest house there for up to 15 days before the attacks. "They had a huge mass of ammunition, arms and food there," Asthhana said. That some stayed there before the attacks seem no longer in question. Later news reports state that the terrorists came to Nariman House posing as Malaysian students and were given lodging. Why Ultra-orthodox Jews would give lodging to these unknown Malaysian Muslim students is baffling; they could have been 'terrorists' . After all they did not know them. However, it is well known that those housing q...