A former coworker,and ACA graduate, that is a world traveler and a candidate for travel photo journalist. A brilliant designer with a touch that proves that woman are better designers then men! She is in Japan now, and doesn't have links to the incredible images she has been shooting there, need to bug her some more about that.

You must check out her images, here is a quote about the ones I am posting:

"At Geghard monastery. The Armenian Apostolic Orthodox faith includes some interesting pagan elements, including animal sacrifice"

http://www.r-flux.com/interest/caucasus/index.html

So I wrote the post about the use of cell phones for museum tours and I come across a front page article in the New York Times about the unauthorized Podcast tours of the MoMa.

The article speaks of "Hacking the System" and adding spice to bland/stale guides. An actual practical and exciting use of the technology. They gave an example of a Pollack painting description in which a woman is aroused when the guide asks.. "So what does this painting say to you sexually?"

I just think the hype is silly... podcast=mp3 download. Just like blog=Content Management System and Flash Mob was nothing but the use of email to organize stunts ala MTV Jackass.

I wonder if the people up in Minneapolis ever used my idea to do a Runnin of the Bulls Flash Mob down the main street of their outdoor Nicolet Mall. A couple people dressed up in Bull costumes running down the middle of the street with other Mobbers dressed in full Matedor regala charging out of various stores after them... :)

I have a new found interest in using international search engines to browse hard to find local sites as Google doesn't seem to have extensive country specific penetration.

So I am hitting general Muslim culture boards and its mostly one line declerations of anti-arab hate speech styled after Fox News Networks "talking points". When you hit the archives, these online communites really had nothing to do with religous propoganda but were simple online communities sharing information.

One board has a guy making 50 posts over a month with no new threads, all in the typical "ugly american" style, mostly one liners, things you might here on Ruch Limbaugh. Finally, one of the original Arab user's came in had a look around. After talking about the fact that people that live in the Middle East are sick and tired of violence and politics he wrote a long post which concluded:

"Insults are good outlets for frustration but do little to heal or mend fences. Just to put the shoe on the other foot..... Americans would not like to hear that the world at large think they are loud, insensitive, arrogant, brash & opinionated.... and not very informed about other cultures (except for what they see in the movies or glean from books or the internet). Ever heard the joke an American thinks that speaking another language is to speak as they would only louder and slower?"