Until this morning, we have never heard of Rolf Potts -- but after reading a short CNN story about him, we have promoted him to Travel God. Potts, 40, according to the CNN story is not a person who talks about traveling, he talks about traveling while he's traveling. The CNN piece discusses Potts theory about time-wealth — a commodity we have all heard about but Potts understands.

These days, when symphony orchestras make national news, the topic is usually not a happy one. Yet one group has received a very different kind of coverage: the YouTube Symphony Orchestra (YTSO). Culminating in a performance at Australia's Sidney Opera House on March 20, 2011, this experiment has generated unprecedented buzz and excitement.

Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door aired last night at 8pm on CNN. The CNN Belief blog has an additional perspective to highlight the segment. Ivy, an American, converted to Islam and began to wear the hijab. She had the following to say about the experience: "I feel like I have more respect. Before, I could be pumping gas in my car and some guy would whistle or make some type of catcall. It was an uncomfortable situation," she said... When you put on a scarf ... [you] know that people can't look at you as a sexual object."

As always, Stephen Zunes' writings on US policy toward the Middle East and nonviolent action are some of the most thorough and informative out there, and his articles on the situation in Libya are no exception. At the end of February, he wrote this in-depth piece on the history of US-Libyan relations, which I found very helpful, and more recently he had a great critique of the concepts of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and humanitarian intervention.

The five Disarm Now Plowshares activists who infiltrated Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base in Washington to symbolically disarm the nuclear weapons stored there received sentences yesterday ranging from six to 15 months confinement. With the action having taken place in November 2009, this decision has been a long time coming.

Sometime ago, I came across this image on a blog, 8 ways to kill an idea. These are all clever and very real ways to kill an idea on the work environment. But it made me think of way's I've killed an idea, on a personal level, and I realized its missing a nine-nth one: Not writing it down.

Two weeks ago, I messed up my Galaxy S phone. I was having trouble with the back key activating by itself without touching it. As I've said before, I use Darky's ROM instead of the crappy Samsung/Telcel default one. So searching for a possible solution, I found out that you could update your touchkeys firmware.

I just bought a dauntingly complicated fancy-pants touch screen thermostat for our house. But Honeywell has encoded so many social presuppositions (into a thermostat!) that I can't believe they're able to sell them. The device assumes that you have a regular daily schedule with wake up times, departure times, return times, and sleep times. It lets you adjust those times and the heating/cooling temperatures that you want for the different times.

The other day my wife and I were in the mood for some classic Italian food so we went to the Olive Garden -- because when we're there, we're family. We had to wait for a little while and we sat on a bench near the hostess. As customers would leave, invariably saying, "Good bye," I noticed she said the exact thing to all of them..."Have a good one." I kicked that around my feral brain for a while and then mentioned it to my wife. We both tried to put a finishing touch on what she wanted these people to have a good one of.

Should we or should we not support war on Libya? This question is being seriously posed by many on the left and in the progressive world, and I've honestly been quite surprised by who has gotten behind the use of military force. At the end of one particularly nasty piece, after telling a story about how terrible Qaddafi is, Juan Cole, whose analysis I often like, wrote: "Payback is a bitch." Even Phil Weiss of Mondoweiss has written of his mixed feelings on the attack. How people who are so knowledgeable about US foreign policy can buy in to the humanitarian argument for war is beyond me.

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