Room to Think

Cinque Terre! NOT the Amalfi Coast! Whoops! I've never posted here about the Amalfi Coast (Costiera Amalfitana), but it's one of my favorite places to post on my Italy Tumblr . I love the colors of this place...granted, this particular picture is edited to increase vibrance, but I'd love to take a picture like this for myself one day. The Amalfi Coast is in Southern Italy, actually at the Southern tip of the Sorrentine Peninsula. It's actually listed on the UNESCO World Heritage Site . Most of their commerce is related to tourism, since there's only one road in and out of the area. Because they're listed on a coastal cliff there isn't much room for agriculture, unlike the rolling vineyards of Florence's Tuscany. However, they are known for their limoncello liqueur--because they can grow lemons, known as "sfusato amalfitano" in terraced gardens along the coast. More exciting than booze, though, I found out that the Amalfi people ...

I love cookies. But Cookie Monster is a traitor. They switched him over to veggies.  =( Today is Sunday, and I'm frantically searching around for a scanner that's not being used so I can scan some of the things I drew this week for today's Sunday Scribbles.  I dread using mine at home, but 90% of campus is closed today! =/ How am I supposed to be a good student if my favorite haunt in the library is locked?! On another note, my sister has painted her nails since I last posted about her. She painted them several  times.  And she gets more creative every time.   Kae, have you run out of nail polish yet? For Valentine's Day. She's using Crackle nail polish, there. On kinda the same note, The Hunger Games movie is coming out in March, and I"m super excited. Those books were my only friends last spring, and there's a certain catch in my voice, and ache just above my stomach that I attribute to the magic of those books. M...

Good morning! Today's TEDtalk Tuesday is by that hipster man up there, Joe Sabia.  He's known for things like videos like " Tupac in Kazakhastan " and " A History of Lyrics that Aren't Lyrics ". He's a technological storyteller...which means that he tells a story about the evolution of stories in under 4 minutes . And, he uses his iPad. So I'll keep my summary short so you can actually watch the video. He begins with the book. "The book was the king of storytelling. It was venerable. It was ubiquitous. But it was a little bit boring...In its 400 years of existence, storytellers never evolved the book as a storytelling device."  (about 10 secs in) Then he shows how a man named Lothar Meggendorfer   started the revolution that led to the evolution of how we tell a story. "But the way that humans tell a story has always evolved with pure, consistent, novelty." (3:15) And that's what I'm going to ...

Sorry guys. I know it's not Tuesday.  It's not even Thursday anymore, as far as many of you are concerned. Most of my excuses pertain to the recent PNW snowfall, and an onset of recklessness, laziness, procrastination, and a simple willingness to just be outside. What was I saying about general recklessness? I DID mean to post on Tuesday.  In fact, I watched several TEDtalks that day; videos ranging from a cool statistics program  with a speaker who is like a sports commentator, to a pair of hilarious jugglers , a man who nearly died from healthy living, and a slew of videos about the brain and how it works , and how that will change computing . So...I've been busy.  I just haven't blogged. I gave you a bunch of links to my recent escapades through TEDland, and since I know 99% of you DIDN'T watch my last TED video, I figure I'll just skip to my thoughts and let you explore as you want this week. The reason I watched so many TEDtalks on ...

"It was more as if she had brought them up—perhaps through indifference or through laziness or even through some kind of possessive cruelty—with an imperfect sense of right and wrong . It was as if they could never know when they were being good or when they were being bad." -on a young Sir Gawaine and his brothers  in T.H.White's The Once and Future King, pg 214  This quote comes from one of my favorite pieces of literature--one of the few books on the "classics" list that I've picked up and really, really enjoyed reading.  I'm more of a reader of contemporary young adult novels of the fantasy/sci-fi realm ( The Hunger Games , The Ender Universe, His Dark Materials , The Lost Years of Merlin ...and, Twilight , unfortunately.  But it was a necessary part of growing up.)  So The Once and Future King sorta fits that fantasy/coming of age novel feel, minus the "contemporary" bit.   I read this book when I was a freshman in high school...