2008 February | Words & Tricks

World’s greatest people make wishes, blow out candles at TED conference

February 29th, 2008 | 4 Comments | Posted in News by Chris Pommier

The breathtakingly self-aggrandizing and expensive TED Conference is going on right now in Monterey, California. Owned by The Sapling Foundation, a private 501(c)3 nonprofit organization established by Chris Anderson in 1996, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. With a moniker like that, is it any wonder that it looms large online? It began as a conference to bring together individuals from those three industries. Now, it’s staff members devote themselves to “spreading ideas.” According to the TED website, “the conference brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers.”

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Minneapolis Star Tribune wins multimedia journalism award

February 26th, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Minnesota, News by Chris Pommier

The Newspaper Association of America gave the Minneapolis Star Tribune a Digital Edge award for Most Innovative Multimedia Storytelling in 2007 for the paper’s piece A People Torn. The story explores the experience of Liberian immigrants in their home country and in Minnesota.

This is particularly interesting to me, because I’m currently working in my free time as an Editorial Intern for the Minnesota Literacy Council. There are three of us who volunteer our time to put together this year’s book, which compiles entries from the various literacy programs in the state. Many of the adult learners are immigrants, and many of those are Liberian.

I’ve been incredibly moved by the stories that many of these adult learners share. They are often strikingly honest about their experience as refugees. Stay tuned to this blog and I’ll let you know when we publish the 2008 book. It’s worth a read. Perhaps I can get permission to post some of their stories here, as well.

An Ode to Sue Boyer

February 23rd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Opinion by Lauren Ciechanowski

Years ago, when my father was cleaning out his parents’ house, he came across his childhood Boy Scouts of America handbook. When I found the book myself, I relished it as an artifact of the days when Scouting meant adventure. My own Girl Scout experiences didn’t look at all like cooking over an open flame, tying slipknots and devising outdoor showers with pails and sticks. Mine looked like Sue and Jean, our homely Scout leaders, cutting ice cream into equal rectangles we could enjoy while the other girls made fun of me in the elementary school cafeteria.

And it is with the same childlike reverence that I recently finished reading Abbie Hoffman’s 1971 classic, Steal This Book. Though the good old days were not as they seemed, the book still possesses a kinetic energy and a presence of irony that seems missing from activism today. In an age when my peers rebel by riding bikes and caucusing, a how-to guide to hitchhiking, crafting Molotov cocktails, and rolling joints is certainly a throwback to something. The political climate Hoffman was confronting was not unlike the climate of today: a stupid incumbent president setting records for low approval ratings, fronting an administration rife with scandal, entrenching the country in a war in we had no business fighting. So why is it that Washington has not been overrun with protests? Where are the troublemakers? Where are the Merry Pranksters?

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Thinking Outside the Bottle…

February 22nd, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in Environment, Minnesota, politics by Amber Collett

Today I’m posting about the Think Outside the Bottle campaign, run by Corporate Accountability International.

Many people are unaware of the environmental and social justice issues associated with bottled water. The manufacture, bottling, and transport of water bottles consumed 17 million barrels of oil in the US last year, enough to fuel 1 million cars for one year. Up to 40% of all bottled water on the market comes from public water systems, sold back to consumers at 1000x the price of tap.

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Last night’s eclipse: An artistic interpretation

February 21st, 2008 | No Comments | Posted in arts by Chris Pommier

Last night some friends and I took a chilly (-5.1 °F / -20.6 °C) trip to the top of a nearby golf course at about 9 pm to see what all the lunar eclipse hubbub was about. Well, with the naked eye it was a bit lackluster, I thought. However, Amber brought her incredibly awesome camera and, sans tripod, snapped several very cool photos.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.