Media pics

James Hill of the New York Times has just created an interesting photo essay about Russia and the way of life of rural farmers, called "Russia: The Land". It's a bit romantic at times, but the images are beautiful and give a picture of Russia we don't get to see much anymore in the West.

I also highly recommend the SNL parody of an interview with Sarah Palin. Brilliant.

Oooh, a film that walks the line between fiction and reality, dealing with contemporary French teenagers. MUST SEE . . . . (I had a dream last night that I moved to New York that involved corruption and time travel and a whole lot of baggage. . . sometimes I so wish I could be in the place where things always happen first. . .)

Lazyman's paradise

YAY! A simple program to put my Google Calendar into my system tray. Even works for me with the dreaded Windows Vista. And Yahoo Widgets, hooray.

Battles over democratic citizenship in Europe

The European Commission has come to the bewildering decision to support the mass fingerprinting of Roma in Italy, a decision which the European Roma Rights Center and the Open Society Institute Justice Initiative have challenged the EC to defend.

I am so disturbed by this whole situation in Italy.

(See also EU Roma Policy Coalition.)

Anthropology of the Web 2.0 -- Michael Wesch on YouTube

Michael Wesch, Assistant professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University, has created another fascinating contribution to YouTube, this time a lecture to the Library of Congress integrating video into a highly informative and thought-provoking multimedia presentation about the social world of YouTube. I spent my rainy Saturday morning watching the whole thing, and apart from the fact that I can't get the song "Numa Numa" out of my head, I'm thrilled that I did, because it makes me really excited about how anthropologists can engage Web 2.0 in new ways to guide our products as well as our research design.

Celebrating Barack in Hungary

I'd been waiting a long time for someone to make this pun! Finally, Americans in Hungary for Obama are hosting the "Peachfest" in Budapest. Barack in Hungarian means peach, so Obama's first name has lovely sweet associations for Hungarian speakers, if a bit funny. Oszibarack is peach, sargabarack is apricot, kopasz barack is nectarine. Mmmmm, Barack.

New Czech blog about integration in urban space in Europe. Hmmmm. Could be interesting.