My Internet Alphabet Book: The Web Page I Visit Most for Each Letter of the Alphabet
Alphabet books never get old. So I’ve put together one based off of the web pages I visit most frequently for every letter of the alphabet.
This project was made possible in part by Google Chrome’s lovely autocomplete function, which bases its suggestions off of the websites where I most frequently visit. It was also made possible by my high school art teacher, though I can guarantee the drawing skills I demonstrate below would get me a C out of her class.
My Internet Alphabet Book
A is for Amazon, a company I willingly give money, primarily because I love my Kindle.
B is for Blackboard, the classroom management system I used for teaching last semester, despite the fact that I despise its closed system, constant problems and shutdowns, and large, take-over-the-universe feel.
C is for CNN, and for “C-N” (seein’) only US news, without an international perspective. Yet obviously I turn here for news.
D is for Days of Film, the daily video blog I am writing (filming) this year.
E is for ESPN, because we all know I’m a sports buff. (Now I know what my husband does when he borrows my computer.)
F is for Facebook, my social media site of choice.
G is for Gmail, which I have been lucky enough to be using since September 2004, when invitations were still hard to come by. (Being an early Gmail user may be my only technological claim to fame, so I might as well milk it.)
H is for Hotmail, my high school email account that I now spam anytime I need to give a website/organization an email address that I know they will use to send me things I don’t want.
I is for IMDB, the Internet Movie Database. What can I say? I love movies.
J is for JoAnn’s, one of my local craft store sources for yarn, fabric, and hours of DIY fun and self-fulfillment.
K is for KSL, a good source for local news and weather. (Apparently it snowed last night! Perhaps I could have opened the curtains.)
L is for Library, a never-ending source of entertainment, insight, research, and perspective.
M is for my husband’s email (and for conclusive proof that he borrows my computer).
N is for NaNoWriMo, and my successful completion of a 50,000 word novel draft during the 30 day month of November 2010.
O is for Open Source Sonnets, a website that features newly written sonnets by Gideon Burton. These sonnets are “open source” because you are free to remix and repost as you might like–something I did in a sonnet titled “My Grandmother’s Crossing.” Interesting side note: this is one of the only “small,” non-corporate websites in my alphabet book. (This is in-line with recent research, for example, Matthew Hindman’s book The Myth of Digital Democracy, which demonstrates that most web users visit primarily popular, corporate-sponsored websites–the main influencers of politics and culture online.)
P is for Pandora, my primary source of Internet radio.
Q is for Questar Gas and a bill that I pay every month.
R is for Ride UTA, the local public transit website.
S is for Sporcle, an ever-replenishing site filled with addictive trivia quizzes that both me and my husband enjoy.
T is for Twitter, a social media site where everything is short and sweet, including the limited amounts of time I spend here. (My husband owns a Twitter bird stuffed animal. It’s blue and fuzzy. Yes, now you’re jealous.)
U is for Upload.youtube.com. I am not just a consumer of media. Like you, I am an empowered creator.
V is for Vote.utah.gov. I am a firm believer that local politics deserve our attention and participation, and that if we enjoy living in a democracy, we have the responsibility to actively engage in neighborhood and community democratic processes. (And now I will step off my soapbox–after all, it’s someone else’s turn.)
W is for Wikipedia. I love the quote by founder Jimmy Wales: “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”
X is for X96. Apparently it’s a local radio station, but I’ve never listened to it. And apparently Google Chrome comes up with its own ideas if you don’t have sites you’ve visited for certain letters of the alphabet.
Y is for YouTube. Visual typography of terrible user-generated reviews? Clips of old films? Educational movies? Music videos? Scary remixes of Mary Poppins? You want it, you can find it.
Z is for Zion’s Bank. I do visit my credit union”s website frequently, but I admit that I have never kept my money at Zion’s Bank.
And so that’s my Internet Alphabet book. If you use Chrome, do any of the autocomplete websites that come up when you type in a letter surprise you?
(Note: this alphabet book is current as of January 2011… but the websites I visit do change over time. A few of my most visited sites changed in the month it took me to draw pictures for this post.)
Another title for our pretty cool blog
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Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.
The Steady Spread of the Deadly Atom: JFK’s Inaugural Address in the context of the Cold War
“The steady spread of the deadly atom” was a term coined by John F. Kennedy in his inaugural address. It evokes the fear of the Cold War, and the uncontrollable elements of the atomic weapons that we (and our Soviet neighbors) theoretically controlled.
Unluckily, “the steady spread of the deadly atom” was not a phrase I had ever heard before today. Because I admit, prior to seeing today’s Google’s Event Logo, I had never read or viewed JFK’s inaugural address, delivered 50 years ago, on January 20, 1961.
Like most Americans, my education about his address consisted of 3 or 4 quotable lines, most notably, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Memorable? Yes. Timeless? Yes. Overused? Most certainly.
Contrast that phrase, which somehow manages to simultaneously be both trite and inspiring, with the following sentence from the speech, which reveals a rational voice piercing through the terror of the times:
But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course — both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war.
No longer is it simply atomic weapons that frighten us. The apocalyptic imagery of “mankind’s final war” is brought about by “the deadly atom,” a presumably small force that somehow wields parasitic, deathly power. An ordinary atom–like the atoms in you and me, in our schools and in our homes–is elevated to being deadly, to being a nuclear force. This language implies that the threat is among us. It is everywhere. And it may just very well destroy us.
This parasitic, destructive imagery is reminiscent of the pop culture of the 1950s. Take the 1958 genre film The Blob as an example. Some sort of tiny red thing (or, for lack of a better word, blob) lands in a small town in a missile-like container. Are aliens responsible? Or the Soviets? We never find out. This blob slowly starts taking over the town, eating pets and then people, growing at an unstoppable rate.
Yet while The Blob can be rather laughable (though it’s well worth watching), the deadly atom of JFK’s speech is anything but funny. It weightiness is more along the lines of the inevitably dark 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly, in which a mysterious Pandora’s box (that inevitably must be opened) contains a deadly atomic force strong enough to destroy the world.
Today the phrase “the deadly atom” does not seem to have the same weight. After all, we do not live in the shadow of a Cold War. Yet the risk of our weapons, the power of our everyday tools to destroy, is much the same today as it was in 1961. So perhaps we should follow the invitation John F. Kennedy gave directly following his description of atomic fears:
So let us begin anew — remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
In the face of deathly physical force, language may be the only solution.
My Favorite Screenshots, Edition 1
One of my favorite computer programs is Jing, because I can quickly capture anything I see on the web, from a fleeting error to an absurd commonplace. And, as desired, I can add things like arrows to the image.
Here’s a few of the best screenshots I’ve captured lately:
1. Perfect English
I do hope that my “perfect english” meets your high standards.
2. Facebook Non Sequitur
I’m still waiting for a transition of any sort that will help me understand how I got from thinking about charitable rhetoric to European test drives. Any enlightenment would be appreciated.
3. You’ve Got It Enough
I see the phrase “You’ve got it enough” really catching on. I think it would make a great title to a provocative song.
4. Eliminating Time
Well, there would be no day or night, which means there would be no sun or moon. There’d also be no seasons. Following this line of reasoning, the world would quickly cease to exist.
Perhaps I’ve over analyzed this one. I think they were looking for answers like, “Life would be less stressful” and “I’d be able to focus on the things that really matter.”
5. When Appeals to Emotion Backfire
I think I was supposed to donate. Unluckily, I was too busy feeling sick.
This is a test
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus.
Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem.
The Nineveh Syndrome: Why Snowpocalypse, H1N1, and Other Disasters Disappoint
Yesterday evening and this morning I experienced the Utah 2010 Blizzard, lovingly labeled by many the Snowpocalypse. At least, I think I experienced the blizzard.
Honestly, my experience of this blizzard was limited to looking out my window. About 4 inches of snow fell. The temperature dropped rapidly, and it is still frigidly cold today. But what I mostly experienced is people complaining that Snowpocalypse was not, in fact, the Snowpocalypse they had hoped for.
After all, we did get an official blizzard warning from the National Weather Service. Schools and businesses were closed, people told to stay off the roads if they possibly could. So shouldn’t our blizzard feel more like a disaster? And while we’re on the subject, wasn’t the H1N1 pandemic a little…boring? And Y2K… anticlimactic, to say the least?
The cause is what I will call the Nineveh Syndrome, which consists of two parts: disasters should create a cinematic experience, and preventative action makes disasters less exciting.
1. Disasters Should Create a Cinematic Experience
When we think of Jonah, we think of the man who was swallowed by a whale for disobeying God. But that’s not the whole story. After Jonah gets spit out on the beach, he obeys God and tells the people of Nineveh that if they don’t repent, the entire city will be destroyed.
Then Jonah goes and sits on top of a hill above the city, ready to watch his prophesied disaster unfold from the (nearly) God’s-eye view of the hilltop.
Like Jonah, we want front row seats. We want to be there for it, to experience the disaster first hand. And unlike Jonah, we have the advantage of expectations built on a life-time of cinematic spectacle–if there’s going to be disaster, it better be big, filled with awesome visuals, great sound effects, and, if possible, a score by Harald Kloser (after The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, our soundtrack should be easy).
In regards to last night’s visuals, apparently the over 300 storm-related accidents across the state were not enough. Perhaps it would’ve been more cinematic if half a dozen people had died.
And it would have been better if the entire state was blanketed by two to three feet of snow. Yes, some areas got their share of snow, but for most Utahns, safe inside their homes, it looked like a normal snow storm. What’s the point of having a blizzard if you only have to scrape 4 inches of snow off your car the next morning?
At the very least, it would’ve been nice to lose power like the 3,400 lucky homes that got to experience the cold of the blizzard first-hand.
Even with a handful of deaths, a few feet of snow, and a power outage, we’d still be disappointed. Because in disaster films the main characters always get to see every last bit of action. Now if we’d been in a helicopter flying south from the Idaho border just ahead of the blizzard last night, that would have been cool. Then our helicopter could have crashed right at the scene of the two jackknifed semis on I-84. After watching people moan in agony, we would’ve hitchhiked South across Utah, going into the eye of the storm, seeing dozens of accidents. And that my friends, would have been a cool blizzard.
Like Jonah, if there’s going to be a disaster, we demand a cinematic, front-row seat.
2. Preventative Action Makes Disasters Less Exciting
Jonah, sitting up on the hill in the bitter sunlight, starts complaining to God, who explains that he’s not going to destroy the city after all–the people repented. Why destroy a newly-worshipful city?
Jonah is, to put it mildly, put out. If Nineveh really was such a wicked city, surely their repentance shouldn’t be enough to save it? (In his mind may have been the fact that his punishment for simply ignoring God was being swallowed by a whale.)
The second problem we have with disasters is when disasters are predicted, we prepare for them. And when we prepare for disasters, they tend to either not arrive (as occurred in Nineveh) or to not be nearly as disastrous as predicted.
Y2K? Pretty boring. And while it’s debatable, it might have been more exciting had everyone not freaked out and done stuff to prepare for it beforehand.
The H1N1 Pandemic? I remember hearing reports that if H1N1 hadn’t been declared a pandemic, people would’ve gone on with their normal germ-spreading ways, and then it truly could’ve been disastrous. As it was we all got our flu shots, stayed home at the slightest cough, glared at anyone who sneezed, and compulsively used soap and hand sanitizer. And not too many people died.
In regards to Snowpocalypse, we really did get a blizzard. Official definitions of a blizzard require low temperatures (check), high wind (check), heavy snow (check), and limited visibility over a period of time (check). Ice melt wasn’t working, black ice was everywhere, and it truly was dangerous to be on the roads. Even with most people off the roads, there were still 300 accidents in just a few hours. If we hadn’t received the blizzard warnings, a lot more people would have been out and about on the roads. And chances are, there would’ve been a lot more accidents and a lot more injuries–perhaps some of them fatal.
The hype about the blizzard encouraged us all to prepare, but because we all prepared, the blizzard did not live up to its hype.
As it was for Jonah, looking forward to disasters is never as fulfilling as we hope it will be. So pull out your hot chocolate (or iced tea) and wait for the next disaster. While you’re at it, I can always give you a list of disaster films to add to your Netflix queue.
Credits:
- Blizzard photo by paul+photos=moody
- Photo of a stain glass window in the city of Chartres by Tomasz1950