The View from 106

Best of The Interwebs May Edition

2009-05-31T10:15:00.000-07:00

As I ride from D.C. to NYC...I thought I would reflect upon my online reading habits from May. I'm a huge personal believer in the social bookmarking service Delicious. You can find my favorite links from the interweb there. You know, like totally awesome things, or what I've read about text messages, or advertising, or on the current state of the dying media.

So, without any further ado. Happy end of May. (Hot damn, where did the time go?)

Here's what I found interesting on the interwebs in May:

The Longtime (Undervalued) Summer Reading List

2009-05-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

The chaotic end of the school year brings along with it deadlines, piles of paper and homework, and excitement for summer--all crumpled up into a tidy ball and hurled at teachers and students at ludicrous speed. We true reading junkies try to find time in the midst of distraction and minutiae to choose stories we can still get lost in while remaining high functioning addicts in the real world.

Alas, throughout my life--and despite my best efforts--I've never been able to grasp the same freedom and escape that I've enjoyed while reading in the summer. Summer brings with its balmy climes the promise of an elusive treasure seldom captured during a busy school season. Time. Even when keeping busy in the summer there is ample time for various literary pursuits.

Everybody needs a summer reading list. Despite the fact that summer vacation applies to a small fraction of our population, creating a summer list can give you the gumption to pick up some of those books you've "been meaning to get to". If you've been holding off on seeing the film adaptation of Revolutionary Road, (Leo and Kate together for the first time since Titanic!) because you want to read Richard Yates' novel first--check it out! It's great.

Or maybe you've been dying to expand your reading repertoire and want to tackle a classic. Here is my only recommendation of Jane Austin--Pride and Prejudice--with a twist that would make George Romero smirk.

Make a commitment--at least to a list. Ok, so maybe, despite it being summer, you still won't have time to finish a list of summer readings. But you can take the first step. So, let us hear it.

What books are on your summer reading list this year?

Ben's List

The Human Stain - Philip Roth (Currently Reading)
Driftless - David Rhodes
The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman
Outliers - Malcolm Gladwell
My Mistress's Sparrow is Dead: Great Love Stories from Chekhov to Munro - Jeffrey Eugenides

ALIENS!? (Part 1)

2009-01-06T14:43:00.000-08:00

WCBS-TV: Close Encounters of the Jersey Kind?

Paul Hurley, a pilot who works at Morristown Airport, said they weren't planes.

"I've been in aviation for 20 years and never seen anything like it," he told CBS 2.
--------------------------

This list of supposed UFO sightings continues to grow.

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Were these UFOs or were they something else? This question is almost impossible to answer conclusively. But if we're going to try, the first question we have to answer is whether there is intelligent extra-terrestrial life in the universe.

The universe is bigger than we can comprehend. The Earth and the other seven planets that orbit the Sun create the Solar System. The Sun is one of just 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way, our galaxy. And the Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies. Here is a picture taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995. Each one of those lights is a galaxy, filled with innumerable planets.

The odds are pretty good that somewhere else in the universe, intelligent life exists.

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Aliens!? (Part 2) coming soon...

Wiki-Wednesday: first and final 2008 edition

2008-12-31T11:14:00.000-08:00

In an effort to wrap up 2008 and look toward 2009, I thought I'd try to recap the year with the help of Wikipedia.

So with no further ado:

January
KUpedia
Birthright Israel

February
Twitter

March
Battle of Basra

April
NCAA Tournament

May
Phoenix lands on Mars

June
Euro 2008

July
Nadal wins Wimbledon

August
New York City
Beijing
Palin cyclone begins

September
Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy

October
Ted Stevens bribed

November
Change

December
Gaza
Auto crisis
Lawrence, KS

--

What did I forget? Let me know in the comments and I'll be sure to add.

Happy New Years, friends. May 2009 be a blessing for you and yours.

Can We Really Not Go Home Again?

2008-12-30T14:34:00.000-08:00

Admittedly, I've never read Thomas Wolfe, but as I spent a few days back in my hometown of Salina, Kansas, he kept nudging himself into my thoughts. A title of his claims that we "can't go home again". When I returned to Salina to attend a friend's wedding and celebrate Christmas with my family, I was able to reconnect with many people I seldom see or that I haven't seen at all for several years.

Initially, I thought, we can certainly go home, Wolfe. Look at all the people that are here! Two of my closest friends, high-school sweethearts, homecoming Queen and King for christsakes, were getting married. Nearly all the raucous crew was back for this spectacle.

Everyone was made aware in the reception slideshow that one night six of us, drunkenly and unabashed, peed racing stripes down the side of our friend Broc's Acura Legend. I about spit out my free drink. I turned to our victim, put my arm around him, and grinned wider than that white Acura. He laughed and kinda shook his head. Then Broc put his hand on my head and tousled my hair in a playful way. "You guys are bastards", he admitted, "but I love ya."

The feeling is certainly mutual, I decided, as we continued to reminisce and celebrate with friends, parents, and teachers from our past. Later in the night I'm sure I sat in my chair, with the spirits taking effect, staring into the back of my own mind with an oversize goofy grin on my face. I think mostly I wanted to hear a better song than the 3rd Tim McGraw country love ballad I had heard that evening, but more than that I thought this all felt like home.

The next morning brought in reality with the new sun, and a painful reminder of the amount of whiskey I had drank the night before. I thought back on the flashes of smiles and hugs that had abounded the last night, where fantastic memories from our past were able to dance above us like sugarplums in the winter air. It was time to go back. There were things to do in Kansas City. I knew that I would return for the Christmas holiday in a few days, but it would be more subdued and restricted to close, family gatherings. I was, once again, leaving this home and returning to another.

Did the fact of returning to the "real world" make my return trip home less real? It certainly was fleeting. Later, I exchanged a few text messages, well-wishes from friends I had seen, but these too are ghosts, I realize. We may see each other on certain occasions. Certainly some friends more than others. But what if the constraints of proximity, careers, relationships, and time were taken out of the equation? Would our covey of friends flourish together again, or has time moved us all on to other interests and endeavors? Could we re-capture that magic we had possessed for so many years?

Upon reflection, I am not able to reach a definitive conclusion. I cannot take a firm stand and give a confident analysis like I plead with my students to incorporate into their own writing. Maybe the idea of home is intangible. It jumps around like a bullfrog to its lily pad. One idea of home I have is the hay loft at our old farm. Another piece is the basketball hoop and adjacent court at my parents' house where my younger brother and I would rip at each other with viciousness in the name of competition. There is a bit of home in my mother's hugs and my grandma's cookies. There is more than a little in my friend Broc's good nature and fun-loving spirit. I can return to these places, if only for a brief moment. Then it's off to the next lily pad in the pond.

What I really really want is free

2008-12-26T21:07:00.000-08:00

Like most of you, I am an active consumer of online "products" and web platforms. In a discussion this weekend with my uncle, he suggested that I profile these services one by one. Here are a few broken down by category that I use on a regular basis:

Google:

Mail - jarrod [dot] morgenstern [at] gmail [dot] com
Gtalk
Reader
Analytics
Earth
Maps
Blogger
Search

Yahoo:

Flickr
Delicious

Music:

Lala (music sharing)
Pandora
Lastfm

Social:

OK. I've just listed the 18 most frequent online "products" that I use on regular basis and I pay $0 (I repeat, NADA, nilch, nothing!) for all of that value every month.

I don't think anyone knows what Cloud Computing really means, but I do know, for me, that it means I'll pay nothing.

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Coming soon: a return of Wiki Wednesdays and an introduction of this here blog.

Stay tuned.

The View from 106

Best of The Interwebs May Edition

What Makes Us Happy? - The Atlantic (June 2009) (May 12th)

Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker (May 13th)

Want to Fix New York Air Congestion? Shut Down LaGuardia - Freakonomics Blog (May 14th)

Top 10 Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs - Mashable (May 17th)

Texting May Be Taking a Toll on Teenagers - NYTimes.com (May 26th)

Top 20 YouTube and Video Memes of All Time - Mashable (May 27th)

The Longtime (Undervalued) Summer Reading List

ALIENS!? (Part 1)

Wiki-Wednesday: first and final 2008 edition

Can We Really Not Go Home Again?

What I really really want is free