"Goat on a Cow"

A spell-binding story from the radio show RadioLab, called "Goat on a Cow", is given a new form through dance and performance.

GOAT ON A COW from andrew palermo on Vimeo.

How Twitter helps me filter and connect

I like this picture of the Ebro River rising in Zaragoza this winter, near the Basílica del Pilar.
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There is so much information to manage: what's the best way to do it? as usual, the answer is a question of individual needs and style. I found that Facebook overloaded me with information updates I didn't want, so I deleted my account, but other friends are delighted with how it helps them keep in touch with people.

For following blogs or news outlets, I have experimented with using RSS feeds in a number of ways: as part of the My Blogs Lists over on the right of this sight, on my iGoogle page, through Bloglines, on my browser toolbar. But I often feel as if I'm drowning in numbers if I look at a feed agregator; it triggers the somewhat obsessive-compulsive reader in me in a way that feels unpleasant.

I am finding that Twitter is working well for me as a kind of feed + filter, and so has enhanced my ability to pick up on stories that interest me. I'm following some really funny and generous people, who post tweets with links to stories, songs, images, or websites that entertain or teach me something new. I'm also trying to limit the number of tweeters I'm following so I'm not overdoing it. A tweet can be an end in itself, but also a door opening up on a blog post or a news story that leads me in unexpected and rewarding directions.

Here's a sampling of what I found today through tweets from people I'm following. I'm leaving out the personal greetings, jokes and academic musings, which deserve a separate post. I could have found some of these through an RSS feed to each of the relevant blogs, but the Twitter feed allows me to respond directly as well as leave comments on the news stories (which I do) or the posts.

via @VisitLakeStreet, a neighborhood news feed, I discovered the brand new "Living Green Twin Cities" website went live this week-looks great, and connects me to local events and writers about sustainability.

via @blogdiva and @nezalicious (aka Liza Sabater of Culture Kitchen and Nezua at The Unapologetic Mexican) Nancy Pelosi decides to use her powers for good, as reported in the SF Chronicle: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined hundreds of families Saturday evening at a church in San Francisco's Mission District demanding an end to the immigration raids and deportations that separate parents from children across the United States." As usual, I'll be following the extended stories on immigration politics at Nezua's site The Unapologetic Mexican. boohoo, blogdiva's server is down, but I'll keep looking for her tweets.

via @kottkedotorg and @sashafrerejones, my favorite mashup of the week: kutiman has taken tracks from YouTube videos and created some Thru-You jukebox that is awesome, whether you watch it or just listen to it in the backround, as I'm doing now.

by way of @torresburiel in Zaragoza, I found a post on International Women's day, which is today, March 8, on a blog called marilink: "ninguna lista de chicas geek". Although he highlighted the part of her post that seemed to suggest that we don't need special days (she says she reads people for the quality of what they say, not because of gender), she also points out why we still need to think about women's place in the world and why we still need an International Women's Day. A link at her post (to an article posted at the Women's Media Center) pointed out that women are now half of all bloggers, but that the media still doesn't make this visible.

@UMN News links to a profile of a colleague in Anthropology whose book on the ethnography of Wall Street trades has just been published. I've heard her talk about her research, and I'm going to buy her book, because it's the inside scoop on the culture of the traders that has been a major contributing factor to this iteration of the boom/bust cycle. I have noticed that I get much more news about the U through my Twitter account than through other sources, and I work there. I went to the U's Media pages and discovered that they do not have a link or widget allowing readers to know they are using Twitter, so I wrote and suggested that they add that feature. Let's see if they respond.

@jojeda --Julio Ojeda-Zapata is a reporter for the Pioneer Press who covers all kinds of tech stuff at YourTechWeblog. He has a round-up of the PiPress coverage of Amazon's new ebook reader Kindle. I was interested in checking out this new device, an he does an excellent pro/con story. Then I started following his links to other bloggers and got pleasantly distracted. I love serendipity!

Update: edited for spelling because I'm sloppy.

Going from a point-and-shoot to a digital SLR camera

Serendipity is great stuff. Our neighborhood is having its annual collective garage sale. We wandered out and I immediately found a great blue and white vase I'll use for tulips across the street. We also met a neighbor, Peggy, whose relatives had driven up from Iowa with stuff for the sale!

We followed a sign that said "sale in alley" and found a table full of old cameras of every kind, none of them working, but all of them very cool-looking. As we were chatting with the seller, a professional photographer who also collects old cameras, I mentioned that I wanted to get a camera that worked for my daughter, who was gazing with enchantment at the table. Twenty minutes later, we left with a kit that includes a leather carrying case, an Olympus EVOLT e500 SLR camera with two different zooms, extra batteries and memory cards (two kinds) all the cables, lens filters, rechargers, manuals and the original box. Because I'd been looking around for something like this to give my daughter as a graduation present and because she has such a great eye when she takes pictures, much better than mine, I recognized that the price he was asking was an incredible deal, (thank you, Steve!) and after he showed us some of the controls and explained some basic concepts, I could see this would be a comfortable camera for a novice to learn with. Like a lot of pro photographers, he had upgraded to a much fancier set-up, and I know from another friend who is married to a photographer that it can often be tough to resell when you upgrade. And I was dreading going to the stores and being bombarded with specs, or trying to find out online what I should get. So he got a garage sale windfall, and we got a fabulous deal on a complete kit for my artistic child. And we met another neighbor.

Happy, happy graduation, dear! Now it's time to play and learn. There are lots of lessons online, but we also have a dear friend who is a photographer, and we will join her for a camera safari at the end of the month.