Sunday Reading: The unnecessarily long edition

Well, I was in a good mood this morning, until I realized it was snowing. To counter new feelings of depression, I found as many entertaining (and some informative) links as possible and put them here. Enjoy! (And Happy Easter and Passover for those who celebrate!)

• TWITTER: I told everyone not to join Facebook but now I think as many (Middlebury) people as possible should use Twitter, mainly because of its value as a protest tool or important life moment facilitator. Not sure who to follow first? Start with Middblog and all its friends, then move on to these heavy hitters, and, if patient, try Dante or Ceasar.
• LIPSTICK INDEX: In hard times, it’s important (apparently) for women to good (as if that weren’t true in good times as well). In the current recession, as compared with say, WWII, women are choosing flawless foundation over lipstick, thus giving economists a new way to measure economic activity.
• ECONOMY: Could it be, the free fall is over? It is to Obama advisor Larry Summers. Then again, he did early $5 million last year to work one day a week.
• ITALY: Italy has been in the news a lot this week, first for its earthquake, then for various gaffes by its Prime Minister and now for a newly discovered footprint that could be older than dinosaurs!
• MOVIES: The crowd at Zac and Miri Make a Porno gave the film mixed/shocking reviews on Friday night. Though those may be seem like whimpers compared to the reactions of those who have seen Seth Rogan’s new movie, Observe and Report.
• COLLEGE LIFE: MTV’s newest reality TV show, The College Life, appears tomorrow. It promises “the truth about sex, drinking, friendships, dating and more in college.” Oh good, I’m glad someone’s finally going to tell me.
• TECHNOLOGY: Convinced that you’re inefficiently using technology? Check out Prof. Mittell’s lists of daily tech essentials–from blogging to word processing–as well as this list of ways to trick out your Firefox.
• ANIMAL HANDS: Animal Hands, there like shadow puppets, except way cooler.
• INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: My J-term project was to prove that the Associated Press is hurting creativity by limiting our “fair use” rights. It looks like they still haven’t given up.
• HOLLYWOOD: Hollywood was electing black presidents before the rest of America, did they figure out the right diplomacy towards pirates before us, too?
• MIDDLEBURY: Middlebury was featured on Fortune the other day. The article provides amazing insight into how the College’s finances right now as well as a tour of the admissions process. My only question though is: do they really have a spreadsheet of all clarinet players?

Website of the week: Eurovision 2009. For those who don’t know, Eurovision is a yearly music contest for all European countries (whatever that means) and Israel. And what it boils down to is pure-mass-consumerist-main-stream-entertainment. America never really seems to have caught on to this process, but its combination of horrible singing and embarassing choreography is a great procrastination tool. Especially check out the one from Greece. It’s like a Disney-fied Ricky Martin except with unnecessary amounts of hipthrusting that brings one right back to basement Italian discoteques with 200 strangers.