New House is to be named!

I received an email last night that New House, the newest dormitory on campus, will actually have a name other than "New". While it hasn't been revealed, people are starting to wonder what it will be. The most interesting suggestion I've heard so far is Gore House, for Al Gore. He's this year's commencement speaker (très passionnant) and so it's possible for the announcement to coincide with his speech. I suppose it's fitting, given it was the first LEED-certified dormitory in the country and he is such an environmental activist. However, he really has no other affiliations to the university, so I find it odd that he would donate that much money for his name on a building at a college to which he has no connections.

Anyhoo, keep a lookout for that announcement. It will be weird to have New House under a different name. I lived there three years ago, and to all who lived there it will forever be just New House. And to think, the Orientation Leaders and Counselors will have to come up with all new cheers for the building.... ^_^

I <3 PostSecret

Improv Everywhere

I recently stumbled upon this awesome organization (thank you Angela!) and find it one of the most refreshing things I've seen in a while. A group of people getting together to do something outrageous and random, to make strangers laugh (or get angry, or puzzle them, depending). I particularly like the No Pants mission.

After seeing what they've done, I really want to participate. I think it would be a ton of fun, and it totally fits me, because I love doing random things that connect people. However, I also tend to be one with some inhibitions to overcome in order to do things like this, and subsequently don't do it enough. So being involved in a mission with a lot of other people doing the same thing would help break them.

Lasse Gjertsen

I recently discovered this guy on youtube and he's so amazing! He films everything in time series, so the videos are just clips of video strung together expertly to create the illusion that he's playing the instrument, or walking down the street, or actually beatboxing. Check it out!


This is really awesome!



Probably my favorite. Norwegian is so cool!



And for all the beatboxers I know and love....

xkcd

I've loved the xkcd comics for a long time, and just started reading a lot of them again recently. Randall Monroe (the creator) is coming to speak at CMU in a few weeks, which I find appropriate and hilarious. Most of the comic speaks to students of science, especially computer scientists, and it has developed quite a following here, to the point where someone had actually made a large-scale copy of one of the comics and installed it onto the entrance window of Wean Hall. How funny we are.

Here are some of my favorites at the moment:

Check it

A friend sent me a link to this awesome map. It becomes readily apparent which countries give their citizens more freedoms than others, and one can also easily see how wealth correlates with them. Sad, but true.

From the website:

The World Freedom Atlas is a geovisualization tool for world statistics. It was designed for social scientists, journalists, NGO/IGO workers, and others who wish to have a better understanding of issues of freedom, democracy, human rights, and good governance. It covers the years 1990-2006.

Pretty cool, huh?