I don't know if anyone else is doing a web-based project for this class that we could all see, but I just thought I'd post a link to mine in case anyone was interested... If anyone else did anything we could see on the web, you should post it!

I just came across this article on Arts & Letters Daily (a really great site, by the way) that has a little bit of discussion about how changing technology is contributing to growing civil unrest in China. Though it's not the main focus on the article, I found it interesting so I thought I'd post it a link: China in Revolt.

I was just thinking today about the tripod.com Nirvana website I made when I was in 7th grade and decided to set out to look for it. When I found it I was startled-- when was I in 7th grade, 1998? And its still around? I explored a little bit-- of course I had no webspace of my own back then, so all of the linked photographs were gone, but a lot of the content still remained: guitar tabs for all of Nirvana's albums are still up, as are the lyrics for a couple of them, and the text from Kurt's suicide note. The most interesting thing I re-discovered was the guestbook. The latest entry was from July of 2006-- WHAT??

Today, for a Worlds of Buddhism class project, a few friends and I visited Tzu Chi in San Dimas, the state headquarters for the international Tzu Chi Buddhist movement. Since our project is focusing on Buddhism & Ecology (or ecoBuddhism), we went expecting to pick up some pamphlets about how environmental concerns factored into the monastery’s every day practices and buildings

Upon our arrival, Trisha (who is maybe the temple’s PR person, we were unsure) ushered us into a room, presented us with maybe the best tea we’ve ever had, and sat us down to watch a Discovery Channel documentary about the Tzu Chi, or Buddhist Compassion Relief, Foundation.

I know this is a rather rudimentary realization, but technology has really raised the stakes for celebrities and performers in terms of exposure, and (also a rather rudimentary realization) not always in a good way.

A week or two ago, Michael ‘Kramer’ Richards was doing stand-up at the Laugh Factory in Los Angeles when a guy in the audience started heckling him. Eventually Richards completely lost it and started screaming back at this guy, using the N-word a total of over 20 times, while everyone in the audience walked out on him before his show was over-- all of which was caught on camera and immediately uploaded to YouTube.

OK seriously, I can’t believe I keep blogging about magazines—this is the last one, I swear.

Sooo maybe I never made it all the way through Time magazine—you know, things to do, places to go, people to see, whatever, so I moved on to Budget Travel.

No sooner than I open up the magazine do I find something to blog about!

In the first few pages of Budget Travel from November is a two-page ad for various vacations in Italy from “the Globus family of vacations” (four different travel package programs catering to independent, luxury, budget and… I don’t know, one more kind of traveler). For some reason, all of their photographs of “real Italy” are totally ridiculous. I mean, it shouldn’t be possible to completely caricaturize, in so many different ways, a whole place in so few pictures. These photographs feature all of the essentials: the backs of two pensive American travelers, stopped at an otherwise empty sidewalk café in front of two empty cups of espresso (“A Monograms independent vacation gives you all the time you need ot sip espresso and soak up local culture”); a vineyard snaking over rolling Tuscan hills (“Globus travelers enjoy a private wine tasting and lunch at the splendid Verrazzano Castle”—as do Syracuse University study abroad students, incidentally); and photographs of a Venetian bridge, a few gondolas, and the Roman Coleseum. What strikes me as strange about all of these pictures is the total lack (except for the espresso shot) of people; neither tourists nor Italians show up in any of these photographs. Perhaps the purpose of this is to create a sense of intimacy with the sites that Globus is insinuating it is capable of delivering, but it’s almost disconcerting, implying that the impetus of travel lies in the confrontation between the self and the site, not the confrontation of the self and, well, the whole package.

I thought, since it's rather pertinent to what we're all doing here, that this would be interesting to share...

As I mentioned in my earlier post, being home is one of those glorious times that I get to catch up on the magazine reading I missed. Now that I'm here, I've decided to start with the most recent issue of Time Magazine (as opposed to, say, Budget Travel, Sunset or, the guiltiest pleasure of them all, Coastal Living--Lord how I love reading about sea-side homes and the accessories that accompany them!) to maintain at least some semblance of intellectual integrity...

One of my favorite Time features is the Numbers bar, where two figures on one issue are presented side-by-side in such a way as to lead one to a certain realization of said subject. Take this one on energy: "53%: Estimated increase in global demand for energy--mostly fossil fuels--by 2003. Developing nations, primarily China and India, are responsible for that growth. 2010: Year China is projected to overtake hte US as the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide."

My family has gotten Budget Travel magazine for a few years, and I've always looked forward to reading it while being home on vacations from school. This semester, however, my mom included an old issue in a box of brownies she sent me (I know, I know, you're jealous, but there are leftovers, so come over!) and I just got finished reading it cover to cover (something which I obviously don't have time to be doing). I noticed something interesting: apart from a worker at La Super-Rica Taqueria (a recommended stop on driving the Pacific Coast Highway, in case you were wondering), there were absolutely no people of color featured in the editorial content of the magazine. None.

I thought since all of the latest blog entries I've made have only been working towards revealing my inner nerdiness, I would continue this trend by making a list of my OS X programs I've found outside of Apple's offerings.

Adium is a chat client that aims to compete with Apple's iChat. What has always bothered me about iChat is the inability to control the order of displayed contacts; I believe the only two options iChat offers are alphabetical and an organization based on who is available, idle, away, offline, etc. Adium allows you to organize contacts however you want, and allows you to access your AIM, ICQ, .MacIM, Jabber, Yahoo!, and GTalk buddy lists in the same place. You can control how chats are displayed (color schemes, styles [thankfully no chat bubbles!] etc), and you can have all of your chats displayed in one tabbed Safari-like browser that you can just tab through. The program also keeps automatically saves chat transcripts, something that has been really useful for me when I've lost phone numbers or meeting times/dates...

After thinking yesterday and for a while today about my last.fm music taste exposure, I decided to visit the site and actually spend some time there for the first time since freshman year. last.fm, formally AudioScrobbler, is basically a plug-in that you install on your computer that tracks every single audio track that you play, and uploads the information to your personal "Dashboard". Here, when you visit, you can find not only a list of what songs you've been listening to lately, but also a ridiculous amount of statistical data, providing you with your top albums, tracks and artists on a weekly, monthly, yearly, or all-time basis. For example, during the week of June 12, 2006, my top three artists were The Velvet Teen, Kaki King, and Stereolab. So it's crazy.