As the US watches coverage of the assassination of former female Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in indignation (during a return engineered in part by the US), let us also ask ourselves how a woman, from 1988 to 1990, led a nation as far behind the US as we perceive Pakistan to be, while we still elect our male-dominated governments smug in the knowledge that we are far more civilized that most nations in the 21st century.

Member of the 80's "Antwerp Six" Ann Demeulemeester is apparently as much of an architectural enthusiast as ever. Owner of the only Le Corbusier house in Belgium (in Antwerp of course -- always another discovery to be made in Antwerp), she's now selling her line in a remarkable new building by Mass Studies in Seoul. Reading an NYT article about her in 2006, I'm flustered at how typically Belgian her attitude is (and how uncomprehendingly the reporter capitalizes on it), and yet how delectably different this makes her as a fashion designer.

To bookmark this entry with another death, Carlos Sousa Jr. left his parents on Christmas Day and didn't come home for Christmas dinner. He was never to come home -- his parents watched the coverage splashed across dinnertime Christmas news about an escaped tiger mauling three people at the San Francisco Zoo with no clue until the next morning, when they were called in to identify the corpse in a body bag, that the victim was their own son. The Siberian tiger Tatiana was shot by police as it mauled on of his two friends -- friends who may have been taunting the tiger to provoke it as the zoo emptied out towards closing time on Christmas Day.

Potentially aggressive young men attacked by a Siberian tiger in California on Christmas Day splashed across the media -- another day in our globalized, violent, voyeuristic society.