Many of my friends have photographed the contents of their bags or that of strangers bags. Thus, this Identity Kit Series completely blew me away – they are images of the bags and belongings of homeless people.

Google announced a new endeavor today – Google Print. The goal is to make all texts searchable, even if they started out on paper.

I’m quite excited by this prospect, but i’m not quite sure how it works. I went through a handful of class papers i’ve written recently and thrown quotes from authors – Geertz, Levi-Strauss, Marx, Adam Smith, Malinowski, Nietzsche – into Google with no reference to a book. [I did find lots of other class papers citing these exact quotes though.]

If you sent me mail between noon yesterday and noon today, i didn’t get it. I don’t know why. 🙁 Resend please.

Ev’s leaving. ::sigh:: I will very much miss him, but i’m soooo glad he’s going. No, no, nothing like that. When i first met Ev, i instantly adored him. He has that passionate scattered attention that i very much recognize. He’s hyper-curious and in love with his work, with his life. His baby grew up and things became stable, procedural, functional. He needs to be out exploring. He needs to chase down a new adventure. And i’m sooo in awe that he realized this and decided to go, even though it meant walking away from his baby.

I wish you the very best, Ev!

On 9/11, Ani unveiled a new song called House of Fashion. I just put the lyrics up for Ani fans. It’s a beautiful song.

[warning: personal blog entry]

I’m often whimpering to my poor roommate about my lack of dating. His response is typically a reminder that i don’t have time. I’m usually stubborn to this response, arguing that i’ve dated plenty when i’m in more stressful times than this and ones where i’ve slept a lot less and done a lot more. He’s always quite weary of this response.

To spite him, i got this bright idea to start responding to online personals. But then his statement finally hit home. I don’t actually have time to date people that i don’t know. In truth, i’ve never actually “dated” anyone. I’ve had friends or colleagues that became partners through some odd set of circumstances or a foolish idea. I don’t actually know how to meet people and i certainly don’t have time to go through the rigamarole of dating – meeting people you don’t know, seeing if things might work, trying out chemistry, etc. I don’t actually have time to get to know new friend groups or scenes. And i’m not even sure i have interest.

What i want is that magical miracle where someone just instantly fits into my life and i fit into their life and everything just works out. My roommate is definitely right in that i have impossible standards. Yet, i didn’t really realize how unrealistic they were. ::sigh:: So impossible. Gah.

In June 2002, the police say, members of a high-status tribe sexually abused one of Ms. Mukhtaran’s brothers and then covered up their crime by falsely accusing him of having an affair with a high-status woman. The village’s tribal council determined that the suitable punishment for the supposed affair was for high-status men to rape one of the boy’s sisters, so the council sentenced Ms. Mukhtaran to be gang-raped.

….

But instead of killing herself, Ms. Mukhtaran testified against her attackers and propounded the shocking idea that the shame lies in raping, rather than in being raped. The rapists are now on death row, and President Pervez Musharraf presented Ms. Mukhtaran with the equivalent of $8,300 and ordered round-the-clock police protection for her.

from Sentenced to Be Raped

Ethan Zuckerman has some interesting data on the topical coverage of blogs.

There is often a fantasy that blogs will cover more diverse topics than the mainstream media, that they will force the media to cover different topics. Ethan is bothered by the fact that neither mainstream media nor bloggers cover news from less developed regions of the world. So, a research question emerges: in what ways are bloggers expanding the scope of the mainstream media and in what ways are they duplicating it?

One morning in the fall of 2000, i woke up to a message from my ugrad advisor Andy van Dam with the subject “I love you.” I remember scratching my head and wondering if Andy had fallen off of his rocker. [Mind you, Andy is not one to profess his love to anything or anyone, and certainly not in email. His typical message reads: “Pls c me. Tx avd”]

The message appeared blank, with only the subject line (gotta love pine on Solaris boxes) and so i slowly crafted an email to Andy asking if he was OK and if there was anything i needed to do. His response email was a collection of foul words, only making me more concerned about his state of well-being.

As i was crafting a response of confusion, i received four more “I love you” emails. I quickly figured out that a virus was on the loose and i rolled onto the floor laughing imagining everyone in Andy’s addressbook receiving a message that was so-not-Andy. Executives at Microsoft, former students, heads of companies. Apparently, he was apologizing for that one months later. Still, it brought me great joy to get at least one emotional message from him, virus or not.

Given all of this, it brings me great joy to hear of a new exhibit at my Alma Mater entitled I love you [rev.eng]. [Review]

The story seems to go… “Jordan” finds a camera in a NY taxi full of images from the last year. He creates a blogspot blog where he puts photos with commentary. Blog spreads rapidly through blogosphere. Rumor has it that he was threatened with lawsuits, although not from the camera owner. Blog disappears.

This is a fascinating situation because it’s very reminiscent of Sophie Calle’s project (documented in Double Game). She found a black book on the streets of Paris and she decided to interview all of the people in the book about the owner of the book. Every Sunday, she wrote up her interview in a Paris newspaper… until the owner of the book sued her.

I’m curious if anyone knows anything more about Jordan’s experiment… or who Jordan is and how he can be contacted. I’d love to hear the full story.