coffee break

aaaand by break i mean i never started. i'm attempting to finish this huge paper i have due on tuesday so i can start my next one. i had to refrain from going on a longer walk after grabbing my dark roast because it's finally spring and that is very exciting to me. but no, i had to come home and "work". aka, look for new blogs to follow.

on a completely unrelated note, there's one thing i find hilarious about living in a city where there are comparatively few well-dressed people. when you spot each other on the street, you give each other the mutual once-over - just appreciating the other's outfit. oh, non-verbal communication.

obama's online town hall meeting

i am all for this. transparency in government is very important. however, considering that many people in the united states either do not have regular access to the internet and/or do not possess the knowledge to use the technology, this is not a very representative sample of the population. isn't this a democracy? why, then, are we not hearing from all sides? how are they accomodating those affected by the various digital divides? i'd like to hear a story about that.

growing list of people i want to befriend

1) howard rheingold
i first read his work after being assigned some articles in a class entitled "social uses of new media". i now follow him on twitter after citing said work in a paper on microblogging. this man is so intelligent and witty. i want to take his class at stanford university, discuss the theoretical aspects of communities with him, and have dinner parties with him and his wife.

girl, you are amazing

little bit of a heterosexual crush on susie bubble.

books, books, and more books

library card in hand and buzzing off caffeine, i went on a book-borrowing binge today. i emerged from campus with several new treasures, including a collection of short stories by kurt vonnegut, a massive beast of a 700-page novel by thomas pynchon (not gravity's rainbow, sadly), and a lecture series entitled prisons we choose to live in by doris lessing. pretty excited to start reading them, although i'm not sure where i'll find the time. school will be owning my life as of tomorrow. reading week included irregular sleeping patterns, eating candy for breakfast, and general laziness of epic proportions. enough is enough!
also, in the midst of some serious life decisions. graduating, moving, traveling, oh my! i will be turning down a quote unquote "great opportunity" tomorrow morning. however, i feel others will come along and i can't just compromise other plans that are important to me for the practical path. which, by the by, i have been on steadily for my entire life. i feel it might be time to throw caution to the wind and stray a bit.

is google making us STOOPID?

read on:

what the internet is doing to our brains

narcissism is all the rage

i'm one of the few people who expresses herself better in writing than with words. that's why when i discovered vlogging, and, better yet, 12seconds, i bemoaned the impending demise of the written word in our society. it's not enough that you can post your thoughts for the internet world to read with the click of a button, but now it's easier than ever to post yourself speaking. oh look, i can see you talking, it's almost like we're in the midst of a riveting dialogue. but wait... that would require us to actually have a deliberation.

wasn't the original point of all this freedom to get away from the intermediary journalists broadcasting the news to us? what's with the sudden onslaught of one-to-many communication again?