yesterday, a good friend and colleague at ATDP left for a year's study in Camelot. well okay, it's modern-day England, but it might as well be another universe in time and space it's so far away, the Internet notwithstanding. Candace is pursuing her Master's degree in English Literature at the University of Durham in County Durham, in the north of England. (according to our office atlas, the regnant industries there are sheep-herding and oats.) Durham truly looks to be in the middle of nowhere, astride the neck of the "sitting frog" shape that is the United Kingdom, with the cold North Sea on the back side and the Irish Sea on the inside. the nearest possibly fun cities for Candace to visit and gad about are Manchester about 80 miles south, and Edinburgh a hundred miles to the north in Scotland, home to tartans, bagpipes and men wearing skirts. ;-)

the picture above shows the River Wear in Durham town. this pretty darkgreen brook apparently runs through the university itself, so we shall soon expect Candace to be punting along it, and telling us all about it in exquisite prose. perhaps she might even find a swarthy swain to punt the boat for her like a gondolier, while she reclines on a pillow munching on strawberries (not oats! lol). good luck, Cher Prudence... may your knight in regal garb (not a skirt! lol) whisk you upriver to find nirvana. whoops, wrong culture. ^_^ interestingly, Candace will be living in a dorm that was once an ancient barn. this barn, though, is now fully 21st-century compliant and has T1 connections in each room, so Candace will be back soon, regaling us with tales of Olde/Newe Englande from her ethernetted laptop in her dorm room which no doubt houses ghosts of bovines and poultry past.

right now, though, Candace's in London, and in fact she updated her weblog from Piccadilly Circus. which is why my weblog is titled thusly. and to continue flogging a dead sheep: WEBLOGGING RULES. websites are dead. long live the web!

WARNING: intense texts ahead...

Giancarlo... death: life in the city streets

i ran after one of them and soon i was chasng him up some stairs, then he turned around and pointed a .45 at my chin, and i had my .22 on his lips ... he said someting to me that shocked me ... "your greed huh? back when i was 7 i wanted to be just like you. but i guess i gonna end your life and end the 1st of the 7 sin crew huh? . . . but i know that if i kill greed the rest sins will kill me. so either way im dead ... but at least i take a you down w/ me..."

Laura... heartbreak: losing texts in the city streets

I'm still so sad. I read these essays really quickly before I left school, and they were beautiful. The stories about their families were full of love and happiness and loneliness, moms who work in hotels, dads who are affectionately described as fat. You know, I always lose the most precious things, the sweater my mother knit for me, the expensive and much-needed rain jacket my father bought me for my trip to Europe. No matter how hard I try not to, I just do sometimes.

Fed... irony: increasing the digital divide

So much for Bridging the Digital Divide. I received a very disconcerting e-mail from Dr. Allen Hammond, director of the upcoming Digital Divide Conference in Seattle next month. Read my e-mail to him, and his response.

Tom... discovery: a modern tribe down south

To begin, the local people appear gaunt and pale. Sickly, even. It is a deplorable condition to be pitied by the more advanced peoples. Despite our shortage of time for investigation, it would seem that healthy dietary staples like red meat are completely absent. Instead, the peoples of this resource-poor land are subjected to feeding off plants and unidentifiable morsels of unknown origin.

{ net.casting }
^