What is it about vampires that is just so damn fascinating? I was trying to stay away from the whole vampire craze because I honestly cannot see the appeal of Twilight, but somehow True Blood sucked me in. It all started with the Vampire Diaries. I thought it would be terrible, but it's actually not that bad. Stephen is no where near as broody and hot as Angel, and Damien is not as deliciously bad as Spike. Of course, then I had to watch True Blood to compare. I must admit that it was the opening credits that got me hooked on the show more than anything. Bad Things by Jace Everett is so incredibly catchy and fits the tone of the show perfectly. The opening is done really well and the only show that can even compare is the opening for Dexter.



I've always wondered why no one has ever made a movie or tv show about fairies or the fae. There's so much about vampires, witches and demons, but nothing about the fae. I'm not talking about the warm and fuzzy kind, but the darker stuff. I've never been into fantasy so I don't actually know all that much about them, but it seems like such an unexplored market.

In case you haven't heard already, change all your passwords. Someone hacked hotmail, gmail, facebook, yahoo, etc with phishing programs. 10, 000-20,000 passwords from hotmail have already been posted online.

I cannot believe Obama won a Nobel. It's way too early. This will only further polarize the States and turn the Nobel Committee into a joke. However, I do like the humility he demonstrated. It's not his fault he won. I do wonder what the nominator was thinking since he had only been President for about 12 days when the nominations were due. I cannot wait to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report!

Edited to add:

I've done some more reading on the subject and perhaps the Nobel Committee wasn't crazy to award Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. I still think it's premature, but it's also terribly crafty of the Nobel Committee. They're essentially telling Obama, "That's a good start; now follow through." It places great pressure on the President to carry out his many promises. Also, props to the President for donating the money to charity. That was very well played.

The BBC also has some beautiful pictures from Darfur. One day, I hope I will be the one taking these types of pictures.


( Warning: Some of these pictures are kinda horrifying )

Lynsey Addario has taken some beautiful yet absolutely devastating pictures of the current situation in Darfur.


( Read more... )

Time has some rare pictures from inside North Korea. I don't know about anyone else, but when I think of North Korea, these aren't the type of images that come to mind. The country is actually far more developed than I was led to believe and certainly not as poverty stricken.

It's all kinds of wrong, but amusing nevertheless.

I'm thinking of doing an undergrad in psychology. I want to study the affects of violent conflict on the mental health of African people and on society as a whole. Most African countries have a very weak health care system. Hospitals can barely treat basic health issues, let alone mental health issues. I want to know how the failure to address the mental health of African post-conflict has led to protracted conflict situations. If I go this route, then I'd definitely go into academia. I'd write about this for my dissertation. However, that's another four years of school on top of 2 years for a masters and 4 years for a PhD. I think it's 4. I have no idea how long a PhD takes. Maybe I'd have to do a double masters in order to have the appropriate political science knowledge. That's a lot of school. And I have no background in psychology. I dropped the one psych class I registered in because I heard it was hard and especially challenging for those who never took bio in high school, which I didn't. Am I gonna have to take some high school bio classes to qualify for admission into a psych program? The sheer amount of school is overwhelming.

The polisci nerd in me rejoices at the fact that I've figured out I can read academic journals through google reader : ) . However, I'm already extremely behind in my blogs and twitter reading. There are seriously thousands of posts that I have failed to read. I wonder how my profs keep up with everything when there is so much.

I still haven't been able to concentrate enough to comprehend and retain the information. Delicious has made my life easier by allowing me to bookmark and tag everything so it'll all be organized and ready when I am finally able to focus. I usually use Evernote to organize everything, but Delicious allows me to share my bookmarks and read other people's bookmarks. I haven't really been keeping up with the political world so that's a really important feature. Although I think I'm going to have a very hard time keeping track of everything since I have the firefox bookmarks, safari bookmarks, delicious, zotero, google reader, evernote, and I also use the Apple Mail rss reader. It gives me a headache just thinking about it.

OMG!! So excited for season 6 of House. It looks amazing!

Go to the people, live among them.
Learn from them, love them.
Start with what they know; build from what they have.
But for the best teachers, when their task is accomplished,
their work is done, the people will remark,
"We have done it ourselves."

-Lao Tzu, father of Taoism.

Hands down best part of Half-Blood Prince.

I really want to see this.

It's everywhere! I didn't think anyone outside South Korea listened to Wonder Girls.

I'm very amused by the fact that modern technology has allowed renowned development economists like Bill Easterly and Jeffrey Sachs to duke it out on their blogs, columns and twitter. These are scholars that I studied in school and now I can communicate with them through blogs and twitter. Modern media and information exchange is amazing.

Happy Canada Day!