pics

sooo... yup..... uhh...yeah its a bike

pictures...

http://dreamingsofawanderersmind.blogspot.com/ 

This American Life:455(submission #3)

This American Life is a radio show that NPR has tasked with liming the "quirky facets of Americana." Broadcasted from WBEZ(in chicago), host Ira Glass takes the listener on an hour-long "journalistic non-fiction" trip through... whatever the show's writers find interesting.

I listened to episode 455, which is titled Continental Breakup. In this show, Ira Glass interviews Alex Blumberg, a writer at the blog Planet Money(another NPR affiliate), and attempts to put the credit crisis in Europe into layman's terms. And they do a pretty good job. They take you back to 100 years ago and the euro's inception and bring you through the events that lead up to today's problems. The relationship between France and Germany is perhaps the most interesting part of this episode:

Chana Joffe

Germany no longer wanted to dominate Europe. It wanted the opposite, actually. It wanted to be a team player, a peacemaker. Germany wanted to be the nicest guy at the European table.

Zoe Chace

Of course, France didn't want Germany to dominate either. Germany would always be bigger, more powerful. So France wanted to link its economy to the German economy. That way Germany's strength would be France's strength.

Chana Joffe

And also, a united Europe would be big enough and rich enough to become the world's other superpower and rival the United States, which both countries liked. All this was making a once-poetic dream much more appealing.

Surprisingly, the host and guest host kept my attention through the entirety of the program. I know that's the point, but if you have the slightest interest in economics you should give this a listen.

Spartan Reader- Post #2

           This tumblr feed, self described as a Field Guide to the Passionate Opinions of the Indifferent, gives an entertaining look into the world of the Hipster. Featuring posts such as "Why Hipsters hate Christmas Decorating", and "People Who Show Their Uncool Cousins Around the City", this tumblr allows this sub-cultural group to publicly display everything they dislike.
 http://stuffhipstershate.tumblr.com/
The question "What is a hipster?" is answered by this tumblr. Through careful consideration of and immersion in the ethos of the subculture known as "hipsterdom," the authors have gathered a collection of both observations and found documents demonstrating the disposition and character of the modern-day hipster. One notable post is called "Country Music". In this post the author describes their experience at a local bar when a country song came on. She expresses her disdain for her friend Micaela's "gettin all nostalgic" and asking if she knew this country song. The author then goes on to describe another situation in which her friend made a fool of her self by admitting she likes country music. Finishing up the post she states that bluegrass is "kinda rad" and describes the subtle differences between the two genres that make country intolerable. This tumblr has something for everyone; due to the fact that hipsters tend to hate everything everybody can get a new and interesting viewpoint on the things that they know and love.
             

Short list addition

http://stuffhipstershate.tumblr.com/


This is a really funny tumblr feed

(Book log) The Sirens of Titan

The Sirens of Titan is probably my favorite novel of Vonnegut. It contains all of the various elements that are usually associated with Vonnegut: dark humor, wry observations, a protagonist who is swept up in an adventure of galactic importance, discussions of free will and destiny, and nothing less than the revealing of the ultimate purpose of the entire human race. With a description like that you’d think the book was a thousand word treatise on philosophy (or something equally as boring). Instead, what we get is a brightly colored carnival ride through time, space and the solar system in which we meet a host of characters whose seemingly insignificant actions end up having an effect on the course of human civilization.
       Where some might see Vonnegut’s ultimate revelation of civilization’s purpose as an absurdist slap in the face to those who want to believe in humanity’s central place in the cosmos, I tend to think of the final reveal as less important to the true aim of the book, which is to poke fun at all of the things we take too seriously in our lives – whether it’s religion, money, patriotism, beauty, or even love to some extent. Similarly to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Vonnegut spends most of the time in this book poking fun at everyone and everything in ways that not only serve to make us laugh, but also to ponder why the things we hold sacred are even sacred at all.
    Although searching for meaning and order in the universe is a hobby as old as time, the rituals and stories that we come up with to make sense of it all can be as detrimental to our personal well being and spiritual evolution as the emptiness and meaninglessness that they serve to mask. Vonnegut isn’t telling us that our lives have no meaning. Instead he is trying to warn us to be skeptical about the things that we assign meaning to and the conclusions that we draw from the meanings we give them.

Short List #2

1. It would be fun to do a photo-spread on a local band or get photos of a concert. Or make profiles for homestead's "Rappers".

2. Best of Memes week 2- Basically the same thing as the first one, just different memes.

3. Top 5 gaming videos?- A collection of the five most impressive gaming videos from YouTube. Though a majority of gaming videos on are from Call of Duty,

Spartan Reader- Best of Memes- Feb 2

The Best of Memes:
The Leo Strut-

A Meme is "An element of a culture or behavior that may be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, esp. imitation." They most commonly consist of photo-shopped screen shots from movies, and pointless YouTube. They are the "inside jokes" of the internet.