The past few months have been interesting to say the least, I’ve gone from a college senior with big dreams to a working girl with changed ideas.  Whereas I thought I had everything figured out in college, being in the real world has turned me into somewhat of a nomad, a bit unsure how to get where I should be and unaware of what my future holds,  but I’m coming to the realization (maybe a bit reluctantly) that that’s what makes it fun.

Our country has seen a lot of changes in the past few months, cutbacks, layoffs and closures, but has also welcomed a new administration with new ideas and the potential to bring a troubled nation together. And with all the unease around us, it’s important to remember that no matter who you voted for or what you believe, we, as Americans, are lucky enough to live in a place where, even during an economic downturn, we can still make plans, enjoy our lives and leave our mark.

“[A] day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here. Now is the time to act boldly and wisely — to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity.” – President Obama, February 25, 2009

Olafur Eliasson is an artist who creates indoor weather systems that are set to mimic actual weather systems. And while the creation of a waterfall isn’t exactly a “weather” system per se, it still looks like a huge feat. 

For this project, since there are no cliffs for water to pour over, metal scaffolds provide the framework for each waterfall. A system of pumps carries water up to a trough, where it will be released in a frothy cascade — about 35,000 gallons every minute for all four falls.

The falls range from 90 to 120 feet tall with the tallest being almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty (and she’s tall!).  Interestingly, all of the electricity used to make the falls fall comes from renewable energy or “green power.”

More interesting is the money it will generate for the city.  Despite its $15.5 million cost, “Waterfalls” as it is called, is expected to bring in at least $55 million in economic activity (including hotels, restaurants and retail outlets), according to Mayor Michael Bloomburg. And, with the economy across the country falling (no pun intended – okay, so it kind of was), this seems like an artistic way to keep the city and the tourism afloat.

Yesterday, at lunch, I found myself in a conversation about Seattle’s economy.  While, we haven’t been hit as hard here as other cities around the country, we are still struggling to attract tourists to Pike’s Market and to have them hop onboard for a Ride the Ducks tour.   

One reason, I learned, is because of the “staycation” or the vacation spent on the home turf, rather than in some far off location.  While the country hasn’t seen much in the way of the “staycation” since after September 11 when flying wasn’t high on people’s agendas, the recession has brought the idea back.

Tourists no longer want to spend the money flying, dining and touring when they can enjoy what is in their front yard for a whole lot cheaper. And why not? For those in the Northwest, Seattle has a ton to offer right here – and even more when the sun comes out. In fact, a short trip to Snoqualmie will set you right in the middle of an actual waterfall or if it’s the artsy part of the New York waterfalls that interest you check out the Olympic Sculpture Park - its free!

Though its true that a lot of the junk food we consume is actually junk, researchers have found that cookies (okay, certain types of cookies) can actually increase seratonin levels in the brain which in esscense help with depressing moods.

Studies by Richard Wurtman, MD, and Judith Wurtman, PhD, at MIT have shown that snacking on readily digested carbohydrates, such as those in a cookie or bagel, can raise the brain’s level of the chemical serotonin, the very same target of modern antidepressant medication…Incidentally, carb snacking may be more effective for women because they produce substantially less serotonin than men do.

If I had only had this as a response to my mother when I reached for the bag of oreo’s as a kid…

But, during the end of my time there, I was able to write a few fun pieces for the summer issue. One about a professor/researcher who was awarded the MacArthur grant money for her developments on prosthetics, the other about a musician who took his love of jazz to Iraqi civilians.

This issue is also pretty cool because it displays 100 of the University’s “Living Legends,” many of whom I had no idea went to the UW – I didn’t realize I should be thanking a husky for getting me through many of my European adventures. Thanks Rick Steves!

A smoker’s excess risk of a stroke doesn’t return to that of nonsmokers until at least five, or as long as 20, years after quitting. It is possible that Obama would have to serve a hypothetical four smoke-free terms before his stroke risk returned to normal.

So how long and how much did Obama smoke? The campaign refuses to say, but we know he smoked a lot over his life. Based on accounts of his friends, we know he was smoking by the time he was a freshman at Occidental College

three decades ago. He admits to having smoked up to ten cigarettes a day, but he said he usually smoked closer to four or five daily.

 

 

While I agree that smoking is detrimental to your health and can lead to a number of serious diseases, on the political side I guess this just goes to show that truly nothing is missed in a presidential campaign…if you ever ate play dough as a kid you might want to give up your hopes of ever living on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Tip

After battling attacks against his religious connections for the majority of his campaign, Senator Obama announced Saturday that he and his family are resigning from the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.“We had prayed on it. We had consulted with a number of friends and family members,” Obama said. “Frankly, it’s one that I made with some sadness. Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized.”

Early on, Obama was hit hard by the press surrounding statements made by Rev. Jeremiah Wright eventually leading to Obama’s distancing himself from and denouncing the reverend’s statements.  More recently, he was forced to do the same to guest Rev. Michael Pfleger, who made comments referring to Hillary Clinton as acting “entitled” because she is white.

“Rev. Moss, when Hillary was crying, and people said that was put on, I really don’t believe it was put on,” Pfleger said from the pulpit. “I really believe that she just always thought, ‘This is mine! I’m Bill’s wife, I’m white, and this is mine! I just gotta get up and step into the plate.’ And then out of nowhere came, ‘Hey, I’m Barack Obama,’ and she said, ‘Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’

Obama also cited the controversy his campaign brought to the church as one of the reasons he was leaving.

“When I go church it’s not for spectacle, it’s to pray and to find to find a stronger sense of faith, it’s not to posture politically it’s not to, you know, it’s not to hear things that violate my core beliefs,” he said. “And I certainly don’t want to provide a distraction to those who are worshipping at Trinity. “

While Obama is doing what he feels is right for his campaign and his church, it’s almost sad that he was forced to “quit” in a country where separation of church and state is supposed to be at the core of its foundation.  Is the media so desperate to find dirt on Obama that they will go against exactly what our forefathers were trying to get away from?

 Tip

To begin this argument, let’s, for a second, take a quick look at the Bill of Rights – the very document that helped to create America, to make it a place where all of its people could be free from discrimination, regardless of their religious, political or moral beliefs. To see evidence of this you don’t have to read very far, the first amendment prohibits the establishment of a specific religion and the oppression of speech. So, why, in a country so ingrained in freedom, so founded in the principles that we are all equal, would a Dunkin Donut ad be pulled from the media?

Michelle Malkin, conservative commentator and journalist, wrote a recent post about the ad on her blog

“The keffiyeh, for the clueless, is the traditional scarf of Arab men that has come to symbolize murderous Palestinian jihad. Popularized by Yasser Arafat and a regular adornment of Muslim terrorists appearing in beheading and hostage-taking videos, the apparel has been mainstreamed by both ignorant (and not so ignorant) fashion designers, celebrities and left-wing icons.”

In all of her talk about how these types of scarves have been a part of the anti-Israel movement and how they could, in a sense, portray Dunkin Donuts and Rachael Ray as being terrorist sympathizers, she seems, to me, to have missed a pretty important point.

Yes, maybe the Palestinian terrorists have worn these types of scarves, but in the same breath so have thousands of non-terrorist Palestinians in the country.

“It was so ubiquitous in the 19th century—in the Arab Peninsula, in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine and Jordan—that British and French colonists took to wearing it for its comforts and distinctive look, just as students in coldish France and England, who couldn’t care less about its political threads, these days wear it for its warmth and fashionable malleability…”

This quote then brings us back to the First Amendment. Regardless of whether Dunkin Donuts was just trying to be stylish or if they were trying to sympathize with the sort of scarf-wearers that Malkin says, in America, they have a right to do so.

Frankly, I own a scarf made of a similar material, with fringe on the end and I’m not a part of any sort of terrorist organization, but according to Malkin if I wore it, and I do–a lot–I would be. In this sense, what she attempted–and succeeded–at doing was limiting a freedom for no other reason than the possibility that maybe Dunkin Donuts was a terrorist sympathizing corporation.

But I doubt it is.

And I think that most Americans are knowledgeable enough to be aware of that. Maybe its time to focus on real news, on things that actually might be a threat to our country and our freedom rather than berating a stylist who just wanted a celebrity to appear trendy in a commercial for donuts and coffee.

The blogosphere – and the internet for that matter – is a unique space where anyone can participate, either by lurking- which is really not as creepy as it sounds- at blogs or by creating them. They are quick and easy to start and part of that reason is because there is little hassle for the individual. No one is limited an account because of what they know or what they don’t know or the information they want to write about.

As quick and easy as they are to start, blogs are even quicker and easier to edit. No longer do we have to wait days to see a retraction that few will see, the edits can be struck and changed almost immediately. The beauty of this, however, is not in the timing. The beauty is in the bloggers, the actual people who take the time to find both edits and posts that don’t quite meet up to standard.

As the so-called “fifth estate,” bloggers themselves are the best ethical and accuracy police out there and are aware of the power they hold, so why would the blogosphere even need a code of ethics? Just look at Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that was found in a recent study to be just as accurate as any encyclopedia, but not only because of the professionals.

“Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has always maintained that the service and its community are built around a self-policing and self-cleaning nature that is supposed to ensure its articles are accurate.”

With blogs, credibility is left up to the blogger and more importantly the reader who can take words at face value or disregard them all together. Okay, so this may not sound like a great idea, but when you give the reader the power, rather than the media, not only will you have more in-depth readers, you will have more discussion and analysis and that’s exactly what a blog – and traditional media for that matter – is meant to bring. Taking away the freedom of bloggers by forcing a code of ethics means a loss of freedom and therefore a loss in content, both good and bad.

Continuing on this note, it’s important to remember that blogs don’t only serve journalistic purposes – in fact, they probably serve more non-journalistic than journalistic purposes. Many people use blogs as a way to update friends or family on their lives or to just write. In this sense, forcing all bloggers to agree to an ethics code when they aren’t reporting the news seems useless and limiting to the average blogger.

Perhaps a better solution than regulating the entire blogosphere would be for those writing or reporting under certain organizations to agree to a code of ethics for that specific organization. This way, readers are even more enabled and aware of what they are reading and who they are receiving their information from. Healthcare Blogger has this sort of set up; writers must abide by a number of conditions to be eligible to write under the organization.

Forcing writers to agree to a code of ethics means they are becoming members of a group. Unfortunately, in cases where there are members, non-members tend to follow. This means a population is being left out, taking away the very core of why the blogosphere is the way it is – the freedom for anyone, code abiding member or not, to have a voice.

Fortunately, this week’s readings brought some insight into social technologies and their affect on our society. Castell in particular, posed an interesting “chicken versus the egg” question in asking whether technology is determined by society or if society collectively determines technology, more broadly stated, are we choosing how our society moves or is it technology that is moving it forward?

It’s a question, I think, that can be answered in part by analyzing the daily habits of the average person. One that is summed up fairly well with some statistics from EmailStatCenter which found that 43 percent of e-mail users check their e-mail first thing in the morning, 40 percent check it in the middle of the night and 26 percent of people admitted to checking their e-mail on their laptop while in their pajamas in bed.

On top of that, 15 percent of Americans described themselves as “addicted to e-mail,” if that isn’t a clear answer, I’m not sure what is. Technology is changing our lives, its changing our headlines, our writing, our journalism and how we interact with each other.

Social networking sites allow us to be more social than ever while never having to leave the house – something that is almost oxymoronic if you ask me. But, they are now places where you can chat, e-mail, share pictures, find out what people are doing, who they’re dating and where in the world they’ve been all in one place, the only question you have to figure out is which one or ones to use.

In this sense, technology is definitely a driving force in our society. Just in the amount of time that I personally have been exposed to and using the internet, online communities and social networking have changed immensely and continue to change on what feels like a daily basis.

Though it’s true that populations have to pick up on and start using social networking sites in order for them to function successfully, I think their very presence in our culture and the sheer numbers of them that exist mean that technology is number one and will continue to dominate until our thumbs are tired of text messaging and our eyes are too burnt out to stare at a computer screen.

Discussion Questions:

Are online social networking sites helping us interact as a society or are they hindering our experiences with interpersonal communication?

Why have social networking sites become such a phenomenon and where can they go from here?

Following an interesting class discussion on ethics and blogging; I came across an important reminder that the Blogosphere is not the only form of media trying to crack the question of what is exactly ethical. In fact, the ethical lines for newspapers are still blurry – and how long have they been around? New York Times Op-Ed columnist, Frank Rich was recently hired by HBO as a creative consultant to help with the creation and writing of its shows, which focus heavily on popular culture. But, in what is seemingly a good merger, there is one little glitch:

“He will be barred from writing in his column, which deals primarily with politics, about either HBO or its parent company, Time Warner, Mr. Rich and Times editors said.”

Is this ethical? Yes, it’s a far stretch to think that Rich’s columns on politics would be influenced by the guise of political culture and HBO, and since his are supposed to be of his own opinion, self censorship is valid in this case.

“In his column, Mr. Rich has rarely focused on any Time Warner property, and when he has, the results have not been flattering – for example, in 2006, he wrote scathingly of Time’s declaration of “You” as the person of the year, calling it an “editorial pratfall.”

But, is this statement the New York Times’ validation for barring Rich from writing about Time Warner and HBO? Slate.com blogger, Jack Schaefer tackled the question in his recent post, addressing the differences between censorship and objectivity in news reporters and opinion columnists.

“I could be persuaded that Rich needed gagging if he wrote news stories, but he’s an opinion columnist! Opinions are subjective! Their origins and justifications are messy! As long as a disclaimer accompanies any mention of HBO or Time Warner in Rich’s copy and a similar disclaimer rests at the bottom of his pieces, why not let him sound off about them?”

Aside from this thought, the actual idea of censorship in coverage and conflict of interest is adressed in the New York Times’ policy on ethics. Section A3: Protecting our neutraility, the policy says,

Staff members and those on assignment for us may not accept employment or compensation of any sort from individuals or organizations who figure in coverage they are likely to provide, prepare or supervise. The senior executive of each newsroom may authorize reasonable exceptions (for example, to let a teacher work part time as a copy editor).

I guess we will all have to watch HBO and keep reading the New York Times to see how this one unfolds.

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