I arrive home on May 30 and am super excited to be back in socal. Italy has been good to me, which is something a little less true for year one of grad school according to my recent online stress test. This summer is going to be jam packed with exceptional adventures, experiences, and projects. The "My List of Summer Fun" is growing every day!
Can't wait to see how much I can accomplish this summer!
I was cruising around Vimeo, stopped by the White House page then wandered over to some shorts using the newest Sony HD camera that look gorgeous. Finally I stumbled upon this little gem. All one take and recorded live. Pretty sweet. Best part is when he bumps into the trombone player. Oops, sorry dude.
I am so excited for the new Phoenix album! it has been way too long since I have heard form these guys and I have been in Italy for almost 7 months now and still have not been able to see them play. wtf, man? Enjoy a free download of their new single. Album out May 25th.
This past weekend I went to the final day of Carnevale in Venezia and grabbed some photos. So much fun. All night parties, little kids running around (all dressed as Spiderman, which was strange), masks, legit spritz, traditional fritelle, it was good times.
Hugo Chavez won a victory today to lift presidential term limits originally standing at two six year terms. A similar referendum which failed in 2007 today was passed with a 54% victory. In the past ten years Chavez has not completed his grand plan of spreading his brand of government throughout Latin America and the next ten years look to be increasingly difficult. Venezuela has the highest inflation in Latin America, running at just under 30% a year and faces many social problems. We will see if his brand of democratic socialism will be able to withstand the global financial crisis and increasing modern glibalization. bbc article
Hilarious excerpts from Obama reading from Dreams From My Father where he quotes a high school friend of his who has quite a mouth. see original thread here
Shortly after the end of the war, retailing analyst Victor Lebow expressed the solution: "Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate."
President Eisenhower's Council of Economic Advisors Chairman stated: "The American economy's ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods." Not better health care, education, housing, transportation or recreation or less poverty and hunger, but providing more stuff to consumers. -The Green Pages
Around the same time the concept of Planned Obsolescence came into favor and has dominated modern capitalism ever since. See Vance Packard
"The goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy, and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power - economically equitable, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed." -William McDonough
Should catastrophe strike the rest of the globe, a repository of plant varieties should be safe, tucked away in remote, frozen Svalbard.
High above the icy fjord, the vault is almost complete. Inside a frozen mountain not far from the North Pole, workers are building three concrete chambers to withstand global warming, floods and fires, wars and nuclear holocaust.
This Arctic safe, nicknamed the "doomsday vault," will protect millions of crop seeds here on the forbidding Svalbard archipelago, the northernmost inhabited spot on the planet. The survival of Earth's agriculture is being entrusted to a land inhospitable to life, where only the toughest plants, animals and humans endure.
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