culture jamming

I was browsing an online architecture and desgin journal, and they had a snippet about this site, the Coca-Cola World Chill Map. This allows visitors to select thier current mood: either "Freakin", "Buggin", "Uptight", "Calm", or "Chill", then zoom in to where they are to put a peg in with the color of thier mood. This theoretically gives us a global picture of who's chillin'. California and the East Coast, unsurprisingly, are all chillin' and so is most of the UK. Someone with a sense of humor has realized the litebrite potential and has created a giant happy face in the middle of Siberia. The website also offers a screensaver so you can get a feel for how chill the world is in realtime. Personally, I think this is just ridiculous and hilarious, especially as the website thinks that this information is on par with global stock indicies. Coca Cola is trying way too hard. However, this does provide an interesting concept. Instead of "how are you feeling today?", what if the US government did "how safe do you feel today?" or "how many of you are planning on voting?" there's huge potential as a polling device. However, the usual problems, like the giant happy face in siberia, need to be rectified.

I finished my paper last night and turned it in this morning. It's a pretty good paper. Last night, there were still people coming into the library to check out the articles and books that they needed to compare. Today in architecture history after we turned our papers in we split into ten groups. The scenario was that we were a religious sect on a mediterranian island, and we needed a religious structure to serve as our model. Five religious buildings were presented: Byzantine, Islamic, Gothic, Romanesuqe, and one other. One group would act for each building and one group against. My group got the Islamic building, the Dome of the Rock. As I was the only one in the group who had covered Islam in the paper we had just turned in, it fell to me to be the spokesman for the group. So we talked about its strenghts and what I should say, and finally, I had to get up in front of the 150 students and talk. It's an intimidating experiance, and without my notes I would have been lost. Even though it was only two minutes or so of talking, its still a little unsettling. It helps to think of myself as a different person, as Brother Alexander, talking to the Fellows. I think I did a good job. I was complimented a few times throughout the day.

On a sadder note, Jen left for home today. She'll be gone until Sunday night. It's good that she can go home and spend time with her family; even if I didn't have so much work to get done, its 24 hours of travel just to get to my family's apartment in Moscow!