Here’s the year-long summary that WordPress makes for all its users! I thought this was cool enough to share!
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
According to Google, there will be some state-of-the-art, semi sci-fi-futuristic way of viewing Santa as he travels around the world today!
It’s called NORAD Tracks Santa.
Here’s a video reviewing last year’s Christmas Eve.
There’s currently a countdown at noradsanta.org that’ll start at 1AM Central Time Zone. What time zone is North Pole in, anyways?
I saw Santa this year outside the Miraflores mall in Guatemala City, Guatemala, sporting some stellar product placement.
photo courtesy of Heidi Snoek
Despite the fact that I lived with Santa this Spring, and having seen Santa in Guatemala, I am still looking forward to following him on NORAD Tracks Santa.
I’m not sure what this assistant will look like, but since it’s used with Google Earth, I’m sure it’ll be cool.
Enjoy this on your Christmas Eve.
Yes, I did invite Valerie home for Christmas. But, I had brought other female friends home before, without any hidden motives.
The only motive I had was to complete her bucket list.
She has this list of three-hundred tasks she wants to complete and I took it as a personal goal to complete as many of these tasks as possible. After helping her check off things she’d always wanted to do like going to a zoo, ice skating, dropping objects off of large buildings, learning a song on piano, being introduced as a fiance, learning how to knit, using valet parking, visiting Woodstock, and drinking horchata in December, we both felt the relationship forming.
After almost a week straight together we had not only seen each other in a new way, but we felt compelled to pursue something greater. We realized that we loved being around each other and delighted in each other’s company. I laughed at all of Valerie’s clever jokes and she laughed at my terrible puns.
We had started falling in love. Or maybe it was just limerence. Whatever it was, it was wonderful.
One morning I squeezed some fresh oranges into juice and made Valerie breakfast. We had talked the night before about the past few days and how we both felt and were excited to learn that we felt the same way. I went to the living room and presented Valerie with the breakfast and told her what I was thankful for and why I appreciated her. We didn’t realize this would become a tradition.
We are continuing this process daily. We tell each other something that we appreciate every day and something we are thankful for, cherishing each and every day.
We spent almost 100 days with each other for 24 hours a day bicycling across the country and yes, we still like each other. After that we spent 100 days apart while I studied in Guatemala and Valerie lived on campus at Spring Arbor University.
Today I leave Guatemala for Michigan, to be smitten by the mitten.
Guatemala - Detroit
Here is an article I wrote in the Spring Arbor University student publication, The Pulse, about leaving Guatemala. I’ve called the article, “Guat’s Up?”
I’m looking forward to flying today, to rapid climate change, to see Valerie Sartor, and of course, to spend time with friends and family during Christmas Break.
I watched The Corporation for free on YouTube yesterday. I wanted to know what all the hype about this film was.
I found a provocative documentary reminding me of Zeitgeist, but with facts.
For those of us living in a corporate world, this is a must-see, just as The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man is a must read.
These both outline corporate globalization. The documentary is easy to watch, and the book reads like a story, making it significantly more interesting than many evaluations on macro-economics and the effects on the world.
These evaluate problems with the system, how these problems are affecting all individuals and communities around the world, and some concepts for positive change.
These raise provocative questions like:
Is there anything not affected by globalization?
Is corporate capitalism working?
Was I branded as a child?
Photo from Charting the Course, a parenting organization. Click image for more.
I’d argue that branding a child with hours in front of TV has worse long-term effects than spanking does. That’s just a hypothesis.
Also mentioned in The Corporation is that naggy children are more likely to get what they want. Can you grow out of that?
Read it. Watch it. Then, let’s talk. Let’s do something about this.
Here’s a favorite section of John Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
“Today, we still have slave traders. They no longer find it necessary to march into the forests of Africa looking for prime specimens who will bring top dollar on the auction blocks of Charleston, Cartagena, and Havana. They simply recruit desperate people and build a factory to produce the jackets, blue jeans, tennis shoes, automobile parts, computer components, and thousands of other items they can sell in the markets of their choosing. Or they may elect not even to own the factory themselves; instead they hire a local businessman to do all the dirty work for them.
These men and women think of themselves as upright. They return to their homes with photographs of quaint sites and ancient ruins, to show their children. They attend seminars where they pat each other on the back and exchange tidbits of advice about dealing with the eccentricities of customs in far-off lands. Their bosses hire lawers who assure them that what they are doing is perfectly legal. They have a cadre of psychotherapists and other human resource experts at their disposal to convince them that they are helping those desperate people.
The old-fashioned slave trader told himself that he was dealing with a species that was not entirely human, and that he was offering them the opportunity to become Christianized. He also understood that slaves were fundamental to the survival of his own society, that they were the foundation of his economy. The modern slave trader assures herself (or himself) that the desperate people are better off earning one dollar a day than no dollars at all, and that they are receiving the opportunity to become integrated into the larger world community. She also understands that these desperate people are fundamental to the survival of her company, that they are the foundation for her own lifestyle. She never stops to think about the larger implications of what she, her lifestyle, and the economic system behind them are doing to the world – or of how they may ultimately impact her children’s future.” -John Perkins, p.212-213, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
[Here's a link to order this book to your local library with WorldCat]
Thoughts? Questions?
