the story about joshua bell playing as a street performer is washington dc really grabbed my attention.  the whole story i was waiting and wondering for when someone makes a break through and reconizes him for who he is, a world famous violinist.  I was very surprised that no croud gathered, i have seen large crouds in boston when people were doing similar performances.  maybe the reason barely any of the professionals that passed by josh did not stop to listen or even notice him is because of the high stress levels of governmental work.  this may say that these professionals are deprived of certain possible entertainment because of their work.  is government work to much for some people to handle?  do these people relax and enjoy themselves when not in a working situation?  most of these people were busy and going to work and that may be a reason for ignoring joshua bell but im sure that if i was in that situation i would have found some time to enjoy his great musical work.  after i finished reading i brought up youtube to search for a video of this guy playing, and he really is amazing at what he does.

Myspace Outage

This article written by The Onion is my favorite article of the book yet.  I remember when i first left myspace to join facebook, it was a big deal.  I lost all my friends and i was scared of having to make new ones on facebook.  But on a serious note, i think the article was especially funny when it came to the made up quotations.  People worried about having to make new friends in person and not knowing what to do without their online personality is just too close to becoming true.  I think social media has destroyed face to face interaction and has also ruined the word "friend".

community reading

The reading about communities provides for a general outline or idea or community life.  It gives three assumptions of how communities help the people that are apart of them.  The first assumption the book gives is that communities provide us with a sense of stability.  I agree with this because with the example of a community of people living near each other  your neighbors are generally helpful.  If you leave your house for vacation or something, your neighbors can watch it for you and call the police in case anything bad happens while you are on vacation.  The second assumption is another one i agree with, it says that communities serve our needs.  This can also prove true in the living community example because people that live around you are there for you.  If you lose power or get in a fight with your roommate, generally one of the neighbors will be nice enough to let you stay at their house.  The third assumption is the only assumption i do not agree with.  It says that communities accept us for who we are.  I do not think this is true because even though there may be nice helpful people in the community, they will still judge you at first.  It is a human behavior to judge people as soon as we see them.  This is why i do not think a community will accept you for who you are.

collage after thoughts

I was very happy with the way my collage came out as a final project.  At first i wanted to focus on the outdoors but that was to broad and i narrowed the topic down to my Maine lake house.  The collage was centered around all aspects of my lake house  the daily activities and the closest tourist attraction.  I did mine with Microsoft power point because i thought i would have more control over the final design.  The only flaw of doing the collage this way is that it was limited in size, it had to be the square space allowed for a power point slide.