Blue Monday

Today is January 22nd. If you are reading this post on a day other than the 22nd, consider yourself fortunate. You have survived Blue Monday. If you are reading it today, well, try to hang on until tomorrow. According to an article in thisislondon.co.uk, the entertainment guide of the Evening Standard, Blue Monday is "the unhappiest day of the year."

The Standard writes,

Unpaid Christmas bills, nasty weather, and failed New Year's resolutions combine to make January 22 the gloomiest in the calendar.

January 22nd was chosen based on a formula developed by Dr. Cliff Arnall, a psychologist at Cardiff University, who came up with the following six criteria:

• weather
  
• debt
  
• time since Christmas
  
• time since failing our new year's resolutions
  
• low motivational levels, and,
• the feeling of a need to take action.

Makes sense to us. Here is the full article.

Head, Heart, and Water Buffaloes

On Dec. 26, 2006, Phillip Greenspun posted an entry on his weblog entitled "Water Buffalo: Worst Possible Christmas Present Ever?" It seems that for Christmas, a friend had had a water buffalo given to a needy family in her name through Heifer International, a charitable organization dedicated to ending world hunger. Greenspun read the fine print on Heifer International's web site, however, and was disconcerted to discover a gift of $250 didn't actually purchase a water buffalo for a needy family. Instead, Heifer International explained,

Each purchase is symbolic and represents a contribution to the entire mission of Heifer International. Donations will be used where needed most to help struggling people.

Robert Thompson, who is living in China, read Greenspun's blog entry and was moved to ask local farmers if a water buffalo would, indeed, be a useful thing for a poor Chinese farmer to have. The answer was a resounding yes, and it led to Greenspun and Thompson collaborating to purchase one water buffalo for a needy family. Thompson also made a very moving short video, 4 Generations, which documents the process of buying and giving away the buffalo.

This story was then posted on Metafilter with the title "How Much is that Water Buffalo in the Window?" What is most interesting is the discussion which follows. Is Heifer International misleading the public? Did Greenspun and Thompson demonstrate the impact a couple of people can make when you cut through the bureaucracy and touch lives directly? Or is the counterpoint correct:

If you want to make a difference in the world at large, you work with large governmental and non-governmental organizations, shift policy and create systematic change. This is the kind of stuff Heifer.org's founders do/did. If you want to change one family's life and make it more interesting, and possibly more profitable, you give one water buffalo to one family and film it and make lots of 1st world viewers cry.

The issue is not an easy one to answer.

It's a Wonderful (and sometimes odd) Life

First released in 1946, It's a Wonderful Life has become one of America's best known and most loved films. George Baily is granted a chance to see what life for those around him would have been like without his contributions. What's not to like about Frank Capra's heartwarming tribute to the ordinary man?

Well, plenty, if you worked for the FBI in 1947 and you were worried that Communist infiltration of the movie industry was sapping the moral fiber of America.

A fascinating entry entitled "FBI Considered 'It's A Wonderful Life' Communist Propaganda" in Will Chin's blog on Wise Bread presents a redacted FBI memo detailing concerns about subversive elements in Capra's film. The memo reads, in part,

With regard to the picture "It's a Wonderful Life", [redacted] stated in substance that the film represented rather obvious attempts to discredit bankers by casting Lionel Barrymore as a "scrooge-type" so that he would be the most hated man in the picture. This, according to these sources, is a common trick used by Communists.

In addition, [redacted] stated that, in his opinion, this picture deliberately maligned the upper class, attempting to show the people who had money were mean and despicable characters.

The Reel Classics entry on "It's a Wonderful Life" notes that although it was nominated for five Oscars, it didn't win any. More interesting is this observation:

After slipping quickly into obscurity, it began appearing on television occasionally in the late 1950s. But when the film's copyright lapsed in 1973, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE quickly became a staple of American TV programming between Thanksgiving and Christmas and belatedly earned its rightful place in the lexicon of American popular culture.

In other words, this classic film owes much of its place in American culture to the simple fact that it moved into the public domain. At the time "It's A Wonderful Life" was released, it was protected by copyright for 28 years, with the possibility of a 47 year extension. Recent changes in copyright law now protect such works for 90 years.

Here's an overview of the Copyright Extension Act from Wikipedia.

Miscellany

• An incredible home video clip of cars sliding out of control in the recent Portland ice storm
• Perfecting PowerPoint offers tips to improve a wretchedly used medium
• Best 50 Hacks for Your Life
  

Digital Camera Photographer of the Year 2006

Digital Camera magazine, which runs an annual online competition, has published the winners for 2006. (Pictured above, the winner of The Art of Travel category by Ly Hoang Long of Vietnam.) You can view the overall winner as well as the best photos in six categories.

Soviet Era Bus Shelters

Polar Inertia, a journal of nomadic and popular culture, has posted a feature on bus shelters built along Soviet roadsides. If you have imaged all Soviet architecture to be dull, heavy, utilitarian grey, you'll be delighted with the fanciful freedom of the roadside bus stops.

Free Phone Resource

ResourceShelf offers an interesting and useful compilation of free and hard-to-find telephone numbers and telephone services. Customer service numbers, toll free numbers, free directory services, health information, and others ranging from "Dial-A-Song to Dial a Story numbers (often from public libraries) to the Stain Removal Hotlines."

Are You Safer Now? Yes and No

The Human Security Centre concerns itself with personal security: "Human security is a relatively new concept, but one that is now widely used to describe the complex of interrelated threats associated with civil war, genocide and the displacement of populations. . . . human security is about protecting individuals and communities from any form of political violence. "

The Centre's Human Security Brief 2006 reports the following:

The new data indicate that the post-Cold War decline in armed conflicts and related fatalities reported last year has continued, with Sub-Saharan Africa seeing the greatest decrease in political violence.

Other encouraging trends include continuing declines in the number of genocides and other mass slaughters of civilians, and a drop in refugee numbers and military coups.

But some of the other findings are far from positive. Four of the world's six regions have experienced increased numbers of conflicts since 2002, the last five years have seen a huge spike in the estimated death toll from terrorism, while negotiated settlements, which are responsible for an increasing proportion of conflict terminations, have worryingly high failure rates.

Science You Need

Yes, we realize you probably are not a science geek, but even those of you choose to read a humanities weblog need a modicum of science in order to grok culture. Here are two cool ways to get it:

• Wired Science is a new television venture between Wired magazine and PBS. Watch the first episode on its website or visit online features such as Exploded View, Vaporware, or Geek Beat. This is edgy science.
• Science Café, from The University of California, San Francisco, is a "weekly conversation about the culture, conduct & community of science." Listen to podcasts on aging, stopping Parkinson's, science literacy, reinventing biology, and other topics ripped from the headlines of science .
  

Software for Starving Students

SoftwareFor.org is otherwise known as "Software for Starving Students." As their web site explains,

Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We've gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.

You can download the complete CD at http://softwarefor.org/downloads.html. You need BitTorrent software to do this, however, and software to burn it to a CD. It may be quicker to download from the web the individual programs that you want. You can find the complete list of programs on their web site. (These programs are named and linked, but not described. However, a poster on Digg.com has posted a brief discription of each program. Follow the link and scroll down.) The collection includes games and utilities as well as more academic software such as a word processor, spreadsheet, and html editor. Here is a partial listing of some of some excellent and useful software for Windows:

• audacity - audio file editor
  
• blender - 3D image creator
  
• clamwin - antivirus program
• deepburner - cd and dvd burner
• firefox - web browser (highly recommended)
  
• gimpshop - photo editor in the mold of PhotoShop
• mozbackup - easily backup firefox
• NVU - excellent html editor for building web pages
  
• OpenOffice - office suite like Microsoft Office
• pdfcreator - creates PDF files like Adobe Acrobat
• spybot s&d - spyware removal

Cooler Than a Box of Crayons

Carved crayons by Pete Goldlust

The Secret to a Long Life

The one social factor that researchers agree is consistently linked to longer lives in every country where it has been studied is education. It is more important than race; it obliterates any effects of income. . . . A few extra years of school is associated with extra years of life and vastly improved health decades later, in old age.

Yes, The New York Times reports that the correlation between education and longevity is stronger than any other factor, including money and health insurance. Of course, other factors are important, too, such as not smoking, living within a network of family and friends, and having a job that supplies autonomy. But Michael Grossman, a health economist at the City University of New York, says, "If you were to ask me what affects health and longevity, . . . I would put education at the top of my list."

Read all about it at the NYTimes: A Surprising Secret to a Long Life: Stay in School.

Switch to Firefox Now . . . I Mean It

The Washington Post's expert on computer security, Brian Krebs, has compared major browsers for their security in 2006 and reports the following:

For a total 284 days in 2006 (or more than nine months out of the year), exploit code for known, unpatched critical flaws in pre-IE7 versions of [Internet Explorer] was publicly available on the Internet. Likewise, there were at least 98 days last year in which no software fixes from Microsoft were available to fix IE flaws that criminals were actively using to steal personal and financial data from users.
. . .
In contrast, Internet Explorer's closest competitor in terms of market share -- Mozilla's Firefox browser -- experienced a single period lasting just nine days last year in which exploit code for a serious security hole was posted online before Mozilla shipped a patch to remedy the problem.

You've heard us say this before: Switch from IE to Firefox for a better and safer browser.

Inside Ben Schott's Head

People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves To Unsuspecting Bystanders and What To Do About It, by Gary Leon Hill (2005)

Ben Schott files this under the category Odd Book Titles in The Bibliognost's Handbook (PDF), which is "A gallimaufry of bibliognostic miscellany for the festive Porcus Literarum" and a fine introduction to fascinating facts and minutia that Schott collects in his lint trap of a mind.

Radar Online has an interview with Schott by Matt Haber titled The Man Who Knew Too Much. As Schott says, "I was always the student who found the footnote much more interesting than the main block of text."

We keep a copy of Schott’s Original Miscellany in the Humanities department at Northwest College and highly recommend Schott's entertaining and edifying works.

• The Year in Questions (PDF)
• The web home of Schott's Miscellanies (with plenty of samples)
  
• Schott's Almanac 2007

13 Photographs that Changed the World

Neatorama has a neat post on 13 photographs that changed the world, including the image above, "V-J Day, Times Square, 1945," by Alfred Eisenstaedt. What's especially neat about the post is that Neatorama gives the background story on each photograph and explains the impact it had on history.

When you visit the site, be sure you take a look at the comments readers have posted because they often include URLs to other photographs that have changed history but that aren't in this exhibit, such as the napalm girl from the Vietnam War, Capa's "Death of Loyalist Soldier," and the student in Tiananmen Square.

Glimmers

On New Year's Day, all our neighbors turned off their holiday light displays. Suddenly, the world was darker. We walked the dog in the dark, went to work in the dark, and came home in the dark.

That's when we remembered a meditation on this year's winter solstice, written by Northwest College professor Richard B. Wilson. He's given us permission to share it here:

Winter solstice officially marks the first day of the winter season in Earth’s northern hemisphere, and, throughout history, people have celebrated this transitional day in a variety of ways.

The Zunis and Hopis in the Southwest repeat elaborate solstice rituals that reaffirm their connections to earth and sky--and thankfully acknowledge their people's connections to cycles larger than themselves.

Ancient Egyptians, the math geniuses of Asia and Africa, held ceremonies during the solstice to remind themselves that, although algebra and geometry were extremely useful for earthly and astronomical endeavors, they derived life and ultimate certainty from the constancy of solar cycles.

But five hundred years before the Great Pyramids rose along the Nile, more than 5,000 years ago, new stone age farmers in Ireland built an immense mound positioned precisely to let in the rising sun's light only during the solstice. During more than five millenia, for a transitory moment in the heart of each winter, the rays of first light have flooded the deepest recess, the open burial chamber within the stone mausoleum at Newgrange, replacing cold darkness with resuscitating warmth. Year after year, century after century, the light resplendently affirms that winter's barren fields will, once again, rhythmically yield to spring's renewed life.

Throughout history, humans have observed this seasonal milestone and created spiritual and cultural traditions to celebrate the rebirth of sunlight after the darkest period of the year. People around earth's northern half have recognized the solstice with ceremony and reflection, and they have celebrated light as both a mystery and a gift. Ceremonies honoring ancient Persia's god of light, Mithra, gave way to imperial Rome's solstice festivals in honor of Saturn, their god of farming. Hebrews memorialized an historical event in the festival of Hannukah, an annual ritualistic recognition of the miraculous gift of light.

Early Christians endeavored to attract pagans to their faith by adding Christian meaning to festivals, such as the feast of Saturn, which just happened to occur on the Roman calendar around December 25th. In 354 C.E., Pope Julius I set the birth date of Jesus Christ on that former Roman feast day, and the tradition has, of course, continued until the present. Christmas celebrations have, from the outset, incorporated universal pre-Christian customs such as gift-giving and feasting. We're all familiar with how this global holiday has picked up additional local variations such as bringing trees–real or facsimile–into our homes; revving up the electric light emissions of our homes and cities so that they're visible from the next galaxy; and whispering our material desires into the ears of chubby,white-bearded guys in red suits.

. . . I’d just like to share two short, quiet poems as part of our own celebration of regenerative light. The first is Robert Frost’s classic meditation on this “darkest night of the year,” the poem John Kennedy kept framed on his Oval Office desk, a poem that called him to remember humanity’s needs when all his instincts were crying out to escape commitments and responsibilities: "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening."

The other poem, by W. S. Merwin, looks forward to spring--a wet spring in Wyoming, we can only hope--and captures a simple but profound sense of universal connections that we celebrate here tonight. These lines, too, tell of the transformations of energy, light, and life: "For the Anniversary of My Death."

Poetic New Year's Resolutions

The editors of PoetryFoundation.org have posted a feature on poetic New Year's resolutions: ". . . Have you met all your goals and found ways to simplify your life? Well, don’t worry—no one has. Every year, though, many of us vow over a glass of champagne to kick that habit, better manage our time, or call our parents every week. Here are some poems to help you reckon with reckoning."

New Year's Customs

The folks at the Urban Legends Reference Pages (a.k.a. Snopes.com) have created a compendium of New Year's Superstitions that's fun to peruse: "Many of the superstitions associated with the event bear the common theme that activities engaged in on that day set the pattern for the year to come. Others have to do with warding off evil spirits or attracting luck."

Take a look at beliefs that relate to kissing at midnight, paying off bills, new clothes, breakage, loud noises, open doors, weather, and more.

Google Zeitgeist

Who is Borat?
How to refinance?
What is Hezbollah?
Define promiscuous.

These four searches represent the hottest basic questions asked on Google for 2006. The top Google search? Bebo. The top Google News search? Paris Hilton. (sigh)

Using the 2006 Year-End Google Zeitgeist, you can gaze at our collective online navel for 2006 and seek wisdom.