Reader-funded foreign correspondent

Two days ago three intrepid American backpackers bid their ill fourth companion a speedy recovery at their hotel in Kurdistan and set off for a trek through the Northern Zagros mountains, the forested land pouring with waterfalls that spring toward the Tigris and Euphrates. Happening on the activity one would perhaps most like to avoid in such a place, they wandered into Iran where they were soon arrested. Thanks to their satellite phone and sick companion, I presume from reports, they are being tracked down and negotiated for.

My first thought about this news was curiosity about the lands they were trekking. So much pizazz and spin surrounds our attention, that a few hikers cuts through those representations to a resonating intrigue: What were they there to see? Which leads to more questions like, What do those mountains look like? What grows and lives there? What is their history? What are the people like? So, of course, I was a mouse-potato for a good while.

During which time, I discovered Michael J. Totten's blog. Apparently, like those hikers, he is guided by a curiosity and attraction to the landscapes and people of the Middle East and, unlike the hikers, is a seasoned traveler who negotiates scenarios with perspicacity, the result being immunity to the hikers' situation. A note on being reader-funded, I am willing to pay for quality news. I don't know why journalists are having a such a temper-tantrum. If the news sources are delivering what we can't get on 24 hour cable news, then we will do what it takes to get it. I subscribe to periodicals that give me information I want. This guy is funded by individuals. Who says people don't want good investigative journalism? Au contraire: build it and they will come.

More importantly, the result are communiques detailing both his man-on-the-street musings with locals, such as "How do people here feel about Americans?" and his savvy inquiries into local socio-political attitudes, options, and interests. Much as with the hikers in the news, the virtualized media ether withdraws from these reports, replaced instead by his immediate constraints of necessity and accident. An interview is short because his paramilitary escorts must not be waylayed by a coming storm; regional coverage is biased by the whim of a picturesque trek. Is the bias of cultural geography any less investigatory than the bias of reporting gunfall from allied havens?

With respect to conflicts whose roots may be better understood by studying the topological map than the ideologies of politicians, probably not.

Indexed, the blog

A worthwhile blog.

Exodus, anyone?

Procrastination = maggots.Suzy went as a lion. Bobby went as a greedy brat.

I scored best on the Biology GRE section on ecology, which mostly covered interpreting visual representations of data. Surely this relates to why I love this blog, Indexed, Jessica Hagy's post of figures sketched out for a laugh or a revelation.

My recent dreams are full of new themes, mostly relating to plants, flowers, and evolutionary theory. I take this as a good sign of my brain responding to doctoral studies. It's just such daily training that's mandatory to rewire a brain, and I often wonder what it's like to think in certain other terms, such as those here on Indexed. Jessica uses astute logic based on clarity and creativity to draw these relationships, something I need to master. Hence my daily reps on this little cranial bench-press.

Note:
Here's a video some guys made with ideas from Indexed
Some great tees
And a book of figures is coming out soon.

AbeBooks focus on art

Find of the day.

AbeBooks uses their expertise to point the reader in the direction of the best art books. Handy categories for perusal include

- New Art Books
- Deals For the Starving Artist
- Fine Books & Collections: Art in the Collection
- Bookseller Profile: Michael Fagan Fine Art & Rare Books
- Staff pick favorite book: Vitamin P

How else to stumble upon Josef Váchal, for example?

One artist close to Michael's heart is Josef Váchal– who, in layman's terms, could be considered the Czech William Blake . A writer, painter, graphic designer and book-printer, Váchal died in poverty in 1969 after being ostracized by the communist rulers of Czechoslovakia. One of his finest pieces of work is Satanu – a dramatic interpretation of a poem by the Italian Giosuè Carducci. Michael has one copy for sale at $22,500 and he suspects he will never see another one.

"Váchal himself is a great study in contrasts as he expressed a vital spirituality beyond traditional religion," said Michael. "Personally a loner and social reject, he thrived on the edges and enjoyed taking on all forms of the established order. In Satanu, the poem by Carducci gave him visual license to explore new limits of the outrageous."

Váchal made the paper for the copies of Satanu by hand, created the 1000 printed characters of his own making, and printed it in his Prague studio. The book isnumbered by using thumbprints and fingerprints.

Fantastic.