... in sao paulo

Guard in a box

26 Oct 2005 | 139 words | brazil sao paulo banking security

Did i mention that the people over here are paranoid (or to put it more mildly: security obsessed)? I have never seen so many armed security guards in my life. and then there are the (electrical) fences around apartment buildings in the better-off neighborhoods and zillions of police agents who drive around in their cars with their guns on their laps (i have been too scared to snap a picture of this particular behavior until now). Anyway i went to the bank today and there they had a security guard in a box with just his head sticking out. no idea what the purpose of this is (is he supposed to be hidden but this particular guard was too tall? or is the box bullet-proof and supposed to protect him in case of a shoot-out?):

guard in a box

More subway craziness

24 Oct 2005 | 129 words | social media public transport sao paulo

Seems that not only the people on the São Paulo Metro like strange combinations, but so do the vending machines (Vending machines for books on public transport systems have been covered elsewhere). In any case the book vending machine at the Barra Funda metro station offers an interesting combination of titles for R$ 4.99 (€2.20) each. Next to two titles by Niccolò Machiavelli (‘The Art of War’ and ‘The Prince’) there is a book about the immensely popular (at least in Brazil) social software application orkut (‘orkut – who do you know’):

This combination does of course a number of questions: who reads books about orkut? And who the fuck gets the urge to read Machiavelli on the subway? And what is the relationship between google and Machiavelli anyway?

Broken leg

24 Oct 2005 | 78 words | public transport fashion sao paulo

It is my first day in São Paulo and as it is raining (how did that happen?) i spend quite some time on the subway, which is always a good place to find out about local customs. For some reasons high heels seem to be very important here. In fact so important that people who seem to have a rather complicated fractured leg/knee combine their external steel frames that keep their bones aligned with 10cm plus high heels…

meanwhile... is the personal weblog of Paul Keller. I am currently policy director at Open Future and President of the COMMUNIA Association for the Public Domain. This weblog is largely inactive but contains an archive of posts (mixing both work and personal) going back to 2005.

I also maintain a collection of cards from African mediums (which is the reason for the domain name), a collection of photos on flickr and a website collecting my professional writings and appearances.

Other things that i have made online: