Special place in hell

A lively, insightful and fun conversation with former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. Had no idea she was so funny!

 

 

Magic #9 and other stuff

Two stories converge in a snowy wood …

Story #1 — About a week ago, I was in Salt Lake City, Utah for the very first time, with a friend I met back in my Boston days and his friend from Messiah College. Oddly enough, this other friend and I have other mutual friends but never actually met each other before. Anyway, this guy is one of the most open and genuine people I’ve ever encountered, he’s super talented and smart and an all-around joy to be around. He’s also a bit quirky, but in the kind of way that I adore. He got us all tickets for a concert in SLC for a band he loves, called Toubab Krewe, and another band that none of us had heard of called The Infamous Stringdusters. The musicians were all incredibly talented but what I remember most is the astonishingly large collection of bearded men with ponytails or braids and the vastest array of plaid shirts I’ve ever encountered.

Story #2 — Back in DC, I lived with A, a girl who drew some of the prettiest doodles I’ve ever seen. I keep telling her to start selling her stuff on etsy, they’re that good. As a going-to-Lesotho present, she made me a doodle collage with some of my favorite pictures of us three roommates and it was one of the few personal, non-clothing items that I brought to Maseru. Somehow, last night, while I was surfing the internet and taking a break from job hunting, I came across a woman called Sunni Brown, who is the Sharpie Expert Doodle (yup, that is actually a job title) and  wants to see The Doodle Revolution sweep across the world. Her stuff is really interesting and she makes a strong case for why doodlers retain more information than non-doodlers. Of course, I sent it immediately to my old roommate who loves both Sharpies and doodling. She then wrote back, gushing about the Sharpie blog, which made me head on over to take a look.

And now our stories converge — the Sharpie blog posted a cute stop-animation film that one of their fans sent them. And that fan was Chris Pandolfini, one of the musicians for … guess who … The Infamous Stringdusters.

I wonder if there will ever be a point in my life when such weird connections and convergences cease to amaze and amuse me … I hope not.

By the way, turns out the Dusters are nominated for a Grammy! Check out their music if you’re a bluegrass or country fan – they really are talented and that’s coming from someone who doesn’t have any bluegrass in her iTunes library. Oh, and if they ever post the full video from the Salt Lake City concert, there’s a good chance you can hear me talking at the beginning since we were sitting right in front of the recording equipment for the first 15 minutes of the show before we moved because we were too self-conscious about having all our conversations taped.

Gung hay fat choy! It’s the year of the rabbit – may you have a year of happiness and all the carrots you can eat.

 

Turn up the lights in here

Nearly 16 years after my family signed up for our very first AOL account and internet connection, my mother has finally agreed to let me teach her how to use the internet. We spent 2.5 hours today, going over the basics — what is a URL, what is a browser, what is a website, how to Google/search, etc. I now understand why my mom has hated email so much; she can barely find her way around a browser, let alone an email inbox or the world wide web. Despite the many mistakes I made, assuming what I find intuitive would also be intuitive for her, my mom made huge progress today! She’s been culling through all her books and wanted to find a shelter for domestic abuse victims that might accept donated books — so after the lesson, she tried (successfully and on her own!) to Google for a nearby shelter, find the phone number and address, and pull up directions on Google maps. Hurray!

On a related note – I came across this video on one of my favorite blogs …. seems that even Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel didn’t know what the internet was back in 1994. What can you recall about those pre-internet days? I remember having hours long phone conversations as a teenager, trying to write letters to friends in perfect handwriting, collecting stamps, perusing the card catalogue and microfiche and heavy encyclopedias to conduct research in the library, rubbing the black ink off my fingers as I delicately flipped the thin pages of the phonebook, and being serenaded by the rotary dial of the old beige telephone with the gigantic receiver. And I’m only 31!!

 

The Page Won’t Turn Itself

Magic Bus – India, Savita Badelal Chouhan, 15: “One of the biggest challenges we face in our community is shortage of water. People go to the shore to take or even steal water from the pipelines that lay by the shore."

One of my favorite Washington DC spots is the Newseum, a museum that focuses on how the freedoms of the first amendment to the US Constitution — particularly freedom of the press — are crucial to a well-functioning democracy. Every American should know the freedoms by heart: freedom of religion, freedom from the establishment of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and petition, and freedom of association.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the first amendment quite a bit recently, in light of the freedom of the media turmoil happening in South Africa. The Protection of Information Bill is currently being discussed and the usual arguments have surfaced – the right to know vs the protection of the country and its people. And, of course, that juxtaposition alone begs the question of a false dichotomy. From what I’ve read, the government says this bill is meant to protect certain information from destruction, loss, or unlawful disclosure and to regulate how information may be protected. And, it’s only the beginning. There are also many proposals within the ANC to create media tribunals to regulate the conduct of the media.

As a former journalist, I’m worried about these developments. The people have a right to know if their elected cabinet members are living lavishly while millions go without the new homes they were promised, for example. Democracy can’t live without a free press — as Nelson Mandela said in 1994 to the International Press Institute Congress: “A critical, independent and investigative press is the lifeblood of any democracy. The press must be free from state interference.”

As an MBA and a general believer in free market economics, I’m worried about these developments. At the moment, rumors about the mining industry aren’t worrying sovereign rating agencies about South Africa. But the Protection of Information Bill is raising concerns. Why? Because it allows the government to be less transparent, according to Moody’s in this BusinessDay article, and less transparency means a riskier business environment.

Yes, every government has its secrets. And sometimes, it needs to protect those secrets (although I also might argue that you’re generally only hiding something when you’ve done something bad). But, anyway, the fewer secrets you have, the easier it is to protect them well. This is a dangerous slope upon which the ANC is teetering,  a slope that, by the way, worked quite in its favor internationally during apartheid and the fight to free Mandela. You can’t have it both ways.

A friend of mine has been working on a project through Football For Hope, the FIFA campaign from the 2010 World Cup. It’s called the Siyakhona Project, which means “we can” in Zulu and Xhosa. The idea is to train teenagers around the world to use digital cameras and video cameras to tell their story, to show them what it means to be a journalist. If a free press is the lifeblood to a democracy, then raising up a generation of critically thinking journalists is a pretty good use of time and money. Check out the videos and photos on the Siyakhona site and some below (yes, they were really taken by teenagers). And remember that the freedom to produce and share these works is something that needs to be protected and not taken for granted.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

—————-
Now playing: Deas Vail – Tell Me
via FoxyTunes

 

Dodge, no balls

Turns out, 45% of Superbowl watchers were women this year. Too bad that was lost on some of the deep pocketed Superbowl advertisers.

Looks like Dodge earns a place next to Barnes & Noble in a special circle in The Lady V’s consumer products hell. Watch the original Dodge commercial — and a fantastic response here:

More at: Woman’s Last Stand – Osocio, Social Advertising and Non-profit Campaigns.

 

Wish I could play the banjo

This post is presented to you, courtesy of Boltbus — the internet/leather seat/powerplug-providing bus service that runs routes between DC, NY and PA. Gotta love it!

I’m currently on my way to NYC o visit some old college friends and then to spend Christmas Day with my aunt and uncle in New Jersey. And as I was preparing to write something sweet and sentimental about spending the holidays with family and old friends, a gentleman walked by and nearly gave me a buzz from the mere whiff of alcohol emanating from his body, the kid behind me began blaring his music at an unholy volume whilst using earphones, and the woman in the awful animal print shirt next to me must have just lost a lung in her last coughing bout. So, the mood is gone. And I really really wish I had brought some chocolate along for the bus ride…

But! Regardless of the bus odors and my odd food cravings, I can still provide you with entertainment. Check out David Holt on the banjo  

 

New Advention!

May your soul be stirred.

Hat tip: The Lincolns

 

The Fourth Screen

I think this video has been out for awhile but I just saw it and thought it was fabulous. Enjoy!

 

 

Aude Sapere: All evil starts with 15 volts

Y’all. 

It has been a mind-blowing week of classes for me. I won’t even begin to tell you about my Conflict Resolution class and how it has completely revolutionized the way I think about peace and violence. I need to focus right now on my history class, one that, admittedly, I complained about at first because it only addresses the uses of history in the Soviet Union and Russia. But I tell you, this is the kind of class that STICKS with you all week. I admit, my knowledge on USSR history was … a bit … thin. Kinda sorta knew about the October Revolution, about this bad guy Stalin, that he had killed lotsa people, etc etc. But today, we watched a documentary called “Enemy of the People,” which captured firsthand testimonies of Armenians who suffered under Stalin’s purges and who were sent off to the gulag labor camps. Let me tell you, Stalin was no joke. Upwards of 20-25 million people were sent to camps and/or died under his regime. Think about that. That’s like all of Manhattan dropping dead … TWENTY. times. over.  

We heard stories of how neighbors informed on neighbors, how the Party brainwashed children to turn against parents, watched an old man take his shovel to a large spot of land in Armenia and without much trouble, dug up human bones. That was in 1992. 

And, as my mind does whenever it’s confronted with such evil, it started pestering me with questions like “how can people be capable of this” and “what switch in a person’s brain suddenly says that this behavior is okay?” The answer, I discovered, partly lies with a man by the name of Philip Zimbardo. Mr. Zimbardo is the man behind the Stanford prison that some of you may know about. And he spoke earlier this year at the TED conference about something he’s called The Lucifer Effect. You must watch his 20-minute presentation on how easy it is for nice people to turn bad. He draws upon the example of Abu Ghraib — and I warn you, the pictures are waaaay intense. 

I will also tell you that Mr. Zimbardo does end on a positive note, explaining his thoughts on how we combat the fall into evil … and I might add that despite the horrors that Stalin rained upon his people, there was amazing and incomprehensible resilience and humanity that somehow managed to survive. We all may have different ideas as to the source of the beauty of human souls, but it exists and it is just as real and as powerful as any evil that dares to overcome it.