http://www.findingzero.com/ One man's search for enlightement on the Internet en cjjackson@mindspring.com Copyright 2008 2008-05-14T17:54:54-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/hungry_planet_what_the_world_eats/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/hungry_planet_what_the_world_eats/#When:17:54:54Z I found this all very much by accident. A friend forwarded me an email that contained photographs of families with a week’s supply of groceries. She no doubt thought that i would find this book and ‘photographic essay‘ interesting from a photographic and creative point of view—and I do. But more interesting to me, is what these families eat over the period of a week and just how incredibly different their diets are. This family from the North Carolina seems to have spent half of their weekly budget on fast food. The photo features prominently their pizzas, soft drinks and snack foods and I suspect this isn’t too far from the ‘average’ American’s diet, where convenience and fast food are common. It also shows how much it costs to pay for the convenience of fast food.  Compare this to say the photo of the family from Ecuador and the contrasts are startling. It seems obvious that as a nation we are spending more money on food that is less healthy than the food our “third world” neighbors are eating. Are we deluding ourselves when we think that America is the greatest and most advanced country in the world? Look at the photos; you be the judge. Media, Photography 2008-05-14T17:54:54-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/this_american_life_american_limbo/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/this_american_life_american_limbo/#When:13:54:44Z This morning on my drive into the office, as has become my habit, I listened to “This American Life.“ This particular episode was “American Limbo” and tells the story of the Jarvis family from West Virginia. The story begins with the Jarvis family living off the land and off-the-grid in West Virginia on 140 acres of land. The parents are children of the sixties, minimalists and raising their children to be the same. The middle of the story occurs right across the peninsula from where I was living in West River, MD—at the same time the Jarvis family was living “on the hard” (as boat folk like to say) at Backyard Boats in Shadyside, MD. This family was literally rock-throwing distance from where my office was located at Parish Creek Marina. The candid actualities with the parents and children provide some amazing insight into how their family survived and the effect it had on all of them. This may be the best individual ‘act’ I have listened to on This American Life: Act One. The Family That Flees Together, Trees Together. The Jarvis family, a group of eight, goes on the run from the law — for seven years. They live on a boat, in a treehouse in a swamp. They escape capture time after time. And how do the kids turn out, living a life outside of society, as fugitives? Surprisingly great. (22 minutes) Culture, Media 2008-05-08T13:54:44-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/this_american_life/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/this_american_life/#When:15:37:47Z Last week on my morning walk and drives into and out of Washington, DC, I found myself unimpressed with what passes for radio anymore. I tried to listen to my old standby, sports radio on the WTEM and found local hack Steve Czaban engrossed in golf naval gazing and 80’s musical mash-ups—this just days before the NFL draft. I quickly switched to the Tony Kornheiser show. As long as you are entertained by his endless yammerings on American Idol or his grossly out of touch take on the world, politics, bloggers, the environment and life in general then it’s really good listening. Otherwise, Mr. Tony’s show jumped the shark ages ago. So, I turned off my radio, turned on my computer, fired up iTunes and found some real radio programming. I fully understand that I am way behind the curve on this. Something as good as “This American Life“ cannot possibly be a secret to most people. I downloaded and have listened to three of these shows and will probably never again listen to Kornheiser or Czaban. The first thing that struck me about these programs is the quality of the program; the subject matter is often quirky but always approachable, the style of storytelling is totally engaging and the production values are really excellent. In short, they are a pleasure to listen to. The “Image Makers” program on the Michigan State library system’s re-branding effort is absolutely hysterical, clever, educational and one of the best things I’ve listened to in a long, long time. Farewell, Steve, vio con dios Tony and AMF. Do yourself a favor and check out This American Life on iTunes. For the cost of your Starbucks morning fill up, you can get some interesting, thought-provoking listening material. I can’t recommend TAL enough! Culture, Media 2008-04-28T15:37:47-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/this_mornings_playlist/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/this_mornings_playlist/#When:13:24:00Z I am not a morning person. My usual start-up is a Dietcoke, followed shortly thereafter by a ‘redeye’ (regular coffee with a shot of expresso) from my local coffee shop. Maintenance levels are sustained by prodigious quantities of Dietcoke during the day.  On some mornings—like this morning I find that in addition to caffeine I need something more. I have a variety of playlists depending on the need. This is one I created for a road trip to Charlottesville, VA a while back. Unfortunately, iTunes doesn’t have eleven additional songs on this playlist, but the core of it is pretty good nonetheless. Media, Music 2008-04-25T13:24:00-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/todays_hot_links/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/todays_hot_links/#When:14:06:00Z What’s hot on the Internet today. Web Worker Daily and John Gruber at Daring Fireball talk mobile technology: Mobile Web Browsers Have No Where To Go But Up « Daring Fireball: The Unsatisfying State of Twitter Web Clients for the iPhone Expression Engine 2.0 due out this summer: EE Sneak Preview Video Last week I twittered about the Harry Potter Lexicon hub-bub. These two posts look at big picture publishing issues: Industry Questions Raised by “Potter” Encyclopedia Suit Tim O’Reilly: Amazon Has Publishers in its Sights Infosthetics, graphically examines the relationship of high-profile mukety-mucks to each other and Lost Remote talks about the growth of web-video: muckety interactive news graphs Web video views up 66% If you happen to be in or near the D of C, Go to National Geographic Explorer’s Hall, drink Italian beer, have a dangerous encounter and pass out worrying about climate change. Sounds like my kind of day. Italian Beer Renaissance Dangerous Encounters National Geographic Reports: the Challenge of Climate Change Last but not least: The folks in Jackson Hole wave goodbye to the Griz. We just don’t have that kind of connections to the wildlife here in DC, but then, it’s hard to get attached to rats. Photogenic grizzly family Blogging, Link Love 2008-04-17T14:06:00-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/a_nice_example_of_a_civil_demonstration/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/a_nice_example_of_a_civil_demonstration/#When:20:02:03Z While I am environmentally conscious and try to tread lightly upon the planet, I do not walk in lock step with Greenpeace. I find some of their methods extreme and in the long run I think those methods alienate as many people as the inspire. However, turning the Washington Monument into a glowing reminder of the monumental incompetentence, negligence and destructive impact that President Bush and his administration have had on the environment, is a wonderful bit of theater and a public service. Frankly, this may get me back on their donor list. (Via Gristmill) Environment, Media, News 2008-01-31T20:02:03-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/twitter_on_a_t_shirt/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/twitter_on_a_t_shirt/#When:04:01:29Z The Shirt Project works on several different levels. Conceptually, the idea of ‘delivering’ news via t-shirt is clever and clearly an alternative way of thinking about current events. Using art to synopsize the ‘big ideas’ that make the story interesting and more available has to be challenging. But, the real coup de grâce idea-wise is that these shirts are available via subscription. Fucking Brilliant! Get your t-shirt, newspaper, RSS feeds and tweets delivered fresh to your doorstep. From the Shirt Project Website FAQ This project is an experiment in exploring the fringe of information dissemination. Our audience include the people who might not feel compelled to look at today’s paper, or read the top headlines online. The shabby t-shirt is uniquely suited for a project such as this—there is no other item that affords its physical size and relative low cost. We aim to inform the viewer, but we also realize that there are obvious limitations on the scope and depth of the information a t-shirt can effectively convey. We aren’t trying to replace the in-depth news article, we are interested in facilitating a texture of awareness that might incite a person to find out more. Advertising works to drive sales—we work to drive news readership. Culture, Media, Technology 2008-01-24T04:01:29-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/todays_best_links/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/todays_best_links/#When:14:47:00Z Today’s best Internet reading: Lawrence Lessig’s 367 page book ”The Future of Ideas” is available as a .pdf file under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial License. Once and future contender to the micro-blogging reigning champion Twitter, Pownce goes public tonight at midnight, ending the beta testing period. (via TechCrunch) Continuing with the micro-blogging theme, the NY Times story, ”Campaign Reporting in under 140 Taps” looks at the way Twitter is being used on the campaign trail. In my never-ending quest for personal productivity enhancers, Zotero looks like an offering with considerable merit and a learning curve to go with. Tuition? I’m not paying tuition! Why? MIT OpenCourseWare! I’m taking the ”Special Topics in Multimedia Production: Experiences in Interactive Art” class. Dude it rocks! It’s a few days old, but it’s only now surfacing in the blogsphere ‘mainstream’. The Library of Congress Blog and Flickr are colaborating on a ’crowd sourcing‘ project. The results have been pretty spectacular. via Kottke: Let’s talk Antarctica Blogs. All of the ones he links to are really very good. The Kottke site is amazing. This guy spends more time on the Internet than I do! Thus Spake Drake is one of my Internet guilty pleasures. It’s part window on pop culture, but mostly about music in the media. Dig in the archives to find the pieces he wrote on HBO’s ” Link Love 2008-01-22T14:47:00-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/off_the_grid_and_off_technology/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/off_the_grid_and_off_technology/#When:21:12:00Z Normally, I tend to think of people who avoid technology as phobic in some fashion. However, when one of my green heroes speaks, especially when it’s Yvon Chouinard a Yosemite climbing legend, serial green-entrepreneur with the Great Pacific Ironworks and Patagonia to his credit and author of “Let My People Go Surfing.“ When he talks about technology and why he doesn’t use it, you have to listen. Culture, Environment, Technology 2007-10-23T21:12:00-05:00 http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/how_cool_is_google_earth/ http://www.findingzero.com/index.php/site/how_cool_is_google_earth/#When:20:12:16Z I don’t spend nearly as much time as I would like to playing with Google Earth. This summer I used it to look at different routes from Vancouver to Jasper Park in British Columbia - using the ‘tilt view’ option is really incredibly informative when the elevation and terrain change. Lately, I’ve been using it to check out parcels of land in Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and Colorado that I find online while shopping for real estate. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that all real estate advertisements, especially for land, should include GPS coordinates. Today, two different RSS feeds provided me with two equally cool uses of Google Earth. The first is a KML (Keyhole Markup Language; Googles proprietary mark-up language for Google Earth) overlay where the World Wildlife Fund is tracking the movement of Polar Bears in Alaska. The KML file is manually updated each Monday. The second overlay is of the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails. I have to spend more time using Google Earth! Another Tuesday-TwoFer! Technology, Travel, Road Trips 2007-10-23T20:12:16-05:00