To Infinity and Beyond!

Just a day after posting a blog about Twitter. I saw an article on Yahoo! about how the first tweet from space was made.

From the article:
"Launch was awesome!!" Massimino tweeted Tuesday via his Twitter alter ego @Astro_Mike. "I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

It's amazing how far the site has gone. I wonder where it is headed next?

Tweet Tweet Twitter

Twitter is a social networking phenomenon. It takes social networking sites, like Facebook, and strips them down to their bare bones. No Pictures. No Walls. No silly quizes. Just statuses. Twitter allows people to update others on what they are doing. where they are, or what's on their mind. The genius thing about Twitter is that it limits people responses to a mere 140 characters. It forces you to boil down what you want to say to make it as concise as possible. Twitter allows you to follow others on the site. By following some you automatically recieve their updates. Twitter updates can be sent to your phone via text, acessed from different computer apps, or iPhone/iTouch apps, as well as being checked from the actual home page of twitter.

Twitter has recently gained awareness in the media due to the way information spreads on it. There are things called trending topics, which are popular keywords that people are using in their tweets. One trending topic in recent history was the Swine Flu. People following various source of news such as the CDC recieved updates about where the swine flu was and what it was. This may have been good or bad depending on how you view. It was good because people had quick access to information that could have helped them if they thought they might have swine flu or have a chance of catching it. However, much of the information on twitter got distort after several re-tweets and also contributed to the fear of swine flu, which was not a threat to most of America.

Twitter also has a very vouyeristic aspect to it. Just because you are following someone does not mean they are following you. Many celberties use the site to update their fans on their latest projects or just to give them a glimps into their life. This, while it can be entertaining, also be a bit bizzare as someone with a million followers, like Ashton Kutcher, can't possibly know all the people he is talking to vitrually. However, it is a great way to get information about things like tour dates for your favorite band, to find out when someone's new movie is coming out, etc.

Personally I like Twitter because it is so accessible. You can be updated on what your friends are doing anywhere. I also get information about sales and other deals that I would not know about otherwise. I choose to follow a few people I find funny or interesting. So who would you follow?

Interesting Twitters:
Me --- Me of course. I mostly give boring updates about what I am doing. The most basic use of twitter.
Steven --- Yeah, Sheffield uses it too.
Felica Day --- She knows a lot about geeky stuff, twitter included.
Rainn Wilson --- Dwight from the Office. Sometimes his tweets are so similar to his character it's scary.
Stephen Colbert--- "Remember kids! In order to maintain an untenable position, you have to be actively ignorant." May or may not be offensive as well as the Real Colbert.
CNN--- News. News. News. Used to be the number one twitter until unseated by Ashton Kutcher.
Barack Obama --- Yes, the President himself. He used to actually tweet but I don't think he has since the election.

Earth Hour

So I just wanted to post a small blog with some pretty cool pictures from earth hour last Saturday.
Enjoy.

Project Ideas

Clint and I are hoping to look at environmental problems in the area we live in. We were thinking about taking a closer look at the Vestavia Hills Library and the plans to build a new green building. We are thinking about attending a city council meeting and asking about the plans and whether it wold be LEED certified. We could document the whole thing on film and in an essay.
Also, We would be interested in seeing how people feel about the new sidewalks. Also Vestavia was forced to remove trees from the middle of the road on 31. We would be interested in how people think that has effected the way they view Vestavia.
We also just want to see the overall environmental outlook Vestavia has and compare it to other communities.

Fandom

So I've been reading Tina's posts about Super Junior (or Suju as she likes to call them) and I have to say I find it fascinating. The whole phenomen created by one group of pop singers is amazing. The reactions of the fans and the way there seem to be factions...just interesting. It reminds me a lot of when I was much more obessed with Harry Potter.

The way these celebrities create followings and sub cultures is fascinatng. With Harry Potter, there was a whole other language that had to be learned to understand what people in the fourms were talking about.
Here's a fake example of a convo:
Are you a shipper?
Sure, I'm all for Orange Crush.
Oh. Too bad I sail the Good Ship.

Understand it? Didn't think so. Fandom is the collective productions of fans of a specific thing, be it a celebrity, a book, a tv, or a comic. In the fandom circles, everything is almost written in code. Not only that but there are references to past events in fandom.

It's these similarities that fascinate me. While Tina may be a fan of Suju and I am a fan of HP, there are so many similarities between the fandoms. There are factions. Super Fans. Lingo. Everything.

Hamentashen and Shaloch Manos

So this week we talked about food. We talked about how food is modified. How it gets to where it needs to be. How it is marketed. But never did we even mentioned the great impacted it has on culture.

This week, more specifically, this tuesday was the Jewish holiday of Purim. Now on Purim there are a few different things you do. Dress up, get drunk(if you're over 21 of course) and eat. Food is always an important part of Jewish life. On Purim we eat hamentashen, triangular shaped cookies with fruit filling that are almost more fun to make then to eat. The shape is symbolic of course, modeled after the three side hat of the villian of the Purim story. Why do we feel the need to eat the villians hat? No clue. It's tradition.

Purim also comes with a mitzvah (good deed) centered around food. Shaloch Manos are gift you are suppose to give to at least two people (the more the merrier) containing food of two different types. One fruit, on cake. Some wine, some hamentashen. Etc. Etc.

For more info about Purim and just a generally good resource for information about Judiaism:

http://www.chabad.org/holidays/purim/default_cdo/jewish/purim.htm

One Way to Look at Things

So I may be getting ahead of myself as we have yet to even really start talking about food, but I found an interesting site. The site, called so_many_a_second illustrates different statistics by streaming pictures dow the web browser. From the site itself:

"so_many_a_second is a visualizer that shows mondial statistics on a human scale. Depicting the ongoing stream of events, this application tries to get the user in touch with the emotional actuality of these objective data."

Some of the more relevant statistic the site includes are things like how many tons of food are produced per second, how many new people have no access to water per second, and how many trees are cut down per second. I liked the way the site help give a more solid meaning to numbers we talk about all the time.

Sarah Palin and Shooting Wolves

People will remember Sarah Palin. But whether they remember her as John McCain's VP candidate or for saying things like she can see Russia from her house and that she shoots wolves from helicopters is another thing.
Recently, her wolf hunting ways have been called into question. According to a Scientific America article a site has recently been launched dedicated to stopping her.

What I find interesting about the article is not only the subject matter but the use of Logos, Pathos, and Ethos within. The article is featured in a column called "Ask the Experts" lending to its credibility. Within the article they appeal to Pathos by quoting a movie star, giving a glamorous image to Sarah Palin's opposition. They further appeal to Logos by stating such facts as:

"According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, predators kill more than 80 percent of the moose and caribou that die there in a given year. To keep predator populations in check, the state currently has five wolf-control programs covering about 9.4 percent of the state's land area."

Overall I just found the article interesting for it blended appeal. I would also suggest reading other people's comments to it. Its very interesting to see how others react and what they react to.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=palin-shooting-wolves

Ideal Living

My ideal life style would be to live in a campus like town. Groceries, Jobs, Libraries, Movies, and my friends and family within walking distance. Or at least I'd like to live in a place with a better public transportation system. I'd love to have cheap, healthy food available to me. Or even just the option of Kosher food without having to pay for it to be shipped in from Atlanta. Really I'm just looking for to college.

Saving the Planet

Over the weekend I was watching some YouTube videos with my friends. One of them was "Saving the Planet" a George Carlin skit. Its amazing how relevant his skits are. I won't link to the video as the content may not be considered PG or school friendly. However one of my favorite lines from the opening is:

"Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet."

He goes on to how environmentalist don't care about a planet they just care about a clean place to live. But I wonder if it really matters? If by making our own habitat cleaner and we help the earth does it really matter why we do it?

Maybe the planet doesn't need saving but it might not hurt to try and live a little cleaner.

This Blessed House

The differences between relativist and fundamentalist is reflected in "This Blessed House" through the characters Twinkle and Sanjeev. Twinkle is more of a relativist. She readily accepts the presence of another religion in her house. Sanjeev represents a more fundamental set of belief. He, unlike Twinkle, does not accept the Christan influence in the house left by the past owners. Because they have opposite sets of beliefs they have issues compromising through out the story. They never really come to an agreement about things like the Virgin Mary statue that Twinkle finds so beautiful and Sanjeev wants nothing to do with.

How Can Garbage be Green?

Following Mr. Reardon's link to Scientific America, I was intrigued by a headline: "Japan's Green Garbage".

Well in Tokyo, Japan it turns out there is not that much space for them to dispose of their garbage in landfills. So they came up with the brilliant idea of burning all their plastic waste!

Okay, wait...I thought that burning garbage, especially plastic was a bad thing for the environment. Doesn't it release all types of pollutants into the air? How is that green?

The Japanese have found a way to burn plastics a filter the pollutants released so there is little impact on the environment. This allows them to better use the land available to them for things other than landfills. They even use the heat produced from burning the plastic to heat a community swimming pool.

See the video here: http://www.sciam.com/video.cfm?id=9526737001