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 "I was born deaf and 8 weeks ago I received a hearing implant. This is the video of them turning it on and me hearing myself for the first time :)"

Brought tears to my eyes.

I want to work for these people: Counterpoint

As I'm beginning to look for a job in London, I literally searched "culture think tank london" and up came a bunch of boring organizations and then...these people, Counterpoint.  Sigh.  I'm in love.  Unfortunately, they are clear across town (and it's a big town) from where J and I are looking at living.  What to do.

In the mean time, I want to read up as much as I can on what these people do.  Their organization has produced papers on two of my favorite topics: cloud computing and the inner workings of cultures.  Lovely.  Honestly, if I could make a perfect organization, this would be it.  They research cultures in order to advise companies and organizations on trends, the impact of policies, and social movements of countries in which they are/will be working.  My favorite!

For me: links to read the articles later. (available for download onto a kindle!)
Cloud Culture
The Inner Lives of Cultures

Other organizations to check out:
Commonwealth Foundation
Chatham House
Demos
Centre for European Reform

The Day Has Come!

I'm sooo pumped that (I have found out that) Kindle can now support library loans.  This very well might have been available for ages.  The last I heard about it was an article from April saying that Kindle was going to make it happen before the year was out.  Sooo glad.

My first check-outs?  The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis (ebook) and Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (audio book for the ipod).

I'm especially excited about the latter, actually, because I've been burning through Planet Money, To the Best of Our Knowledge, and This American Life like it was my job.

For those in the St. Louis region, hop on over to http://overdrive.slcl.org/  Enjoy!

I feel like Amazon did a poor job at PR on this one - the top hit for articles is from E-Week.com?  Also, the article tells me, Amazon announced this on Sept. 21st.

Helpful Amazon page on the rules of lending (here).

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I love this picture of calm in a crazy urban context.

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 Coldplay went up a couple points in my opinion. I was about to leave them behind. Also, this person had FANTASTIC seats and hand-held technology is AMAZING!  This is a great cover.

The Black Keys - "Everlasting Light"

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On my former blog I asked the question if anyone had heard of when Russians used to wallpaper their bathrooms with their currency because it was cheaper than actually buying wallpaper.  Well.  Not only did the blogosphere let me down but I was wrong about a couple things.  Thankfully my ignorance was corrected by NPR's Planet Money podcast "The Economic Catastrophe that Germany can't Forget" - and surprise!  It was actually Germany in the 1920s where inflation was so high that people wallpapered their bathrooms with currency.  Mystery solved!  And sympathy for Germany, of course.