The findingDulcinea Blog

Olympic Athletes Compete With Technology

With these Olympic Games comes a whole new way to keep up with your favorite athletes. Social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook have gotten much more popular and mainstream since the last winter Olympics. In fact, Twitter didn't even launch until March of 2006, and its number of users has grown exponentially since then.

So some are dubbing the 2010 Vancouver Olympics the "Twitter Olympics," because the athletes are more in touch with the everyday population than ever before. But is the constant communication and unedited flow of personal messages good for the Games and for the athletes' performances?

Gillian Reagan of the Business Insider points out that while there are rules and regulations regarding the information that athletes can publish about the Olympics, the easy access and widespread use of new technologies has presented some gray areas as far as what is allowable content for athletes to post. For example, the rules state that athletes can't "report" on events, ceremonies, behind-the-scenes happenings or other athletes, which makes it seem like they can't use social media tools during the Olympic Games at all. But later it seems that the rules were cleared up, and that athletes and personnel can post updates about the Olympics, just no updates, pictures or video during competition or the opening and closing ceremonies. The full rules can be found on the Olympic official Web site.

The Montreal Gazette reported that more than 80 of the 200 U.S. athletes have Twitter accounts, and coaches and others worry about the potential for distraction from the new tools. Psychologist Barbara Meyer, who is working with a few athletes in this Olympic Games, has advised some to stop using the social media tools during the Games to limit distractions. “Anything that increases anxiety or is a distraction has the potential to affect performance,” she told the Gazette. Some athletes have slowed down; for example, snowboarder Lindsey Jacobellis hasn't been Tweeting for most of February (see her account).

But other athletes might be reluctant to stop tweeting and Facebooking. Some say they really enjoy the support they get from fans, and others like to be able to give supporters an insider view of some under-appreciated sports. 

And for those of us not in the Olympics, it seems undeniable that we enjoy having the access to the athletes. Skiier Lindsey Vonn has more than 56,000 followers on Twitter (see her account), and many other athletes have gained substantial followings during the last few months (see a list of U.S. Olympian Twitter accounts). It will be interesting to see what technology has in store for the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

"The Buried Life" Task #57 : Spend A Week in Silence

So, “The Buried Life,” a show where four 20-something Canadians try to complete their list of 100 things to do before they die, premiered on MTV this week. The list includes lots of wild stunts such as kissing Rachel McAdams, standing under a plane while it lands and playing basketball with President Obama, which means it’s easy to miss the more wholesome side of this project: For every item they complete, they also must help someone else complete a task of his or her own. So far they’ve furnished the home of a man dying of lung cancer, taught a girl to break dance, bought a computer for an elementary school, and given another group of kids a shopping spree (actually that’s #71).

The most difficult item on the list is arguably to go to space"(#100) or perhaps to fall in love (#78) but a close third might be to spend a week in silence (#57).

These almost-famous idealists may need more than a week to think about what they will do with their stardom. Afterall, getting your 15-minutes or 15 years on camera can be as taxing as it is rewarding. Ask Susan Boyle. They might decide to follow the example of Neil Armstrong, who intentionally eschewed the cameras when his job was finished; however, the chances of that happening are slim.

Still, having time to reflect on their experience, how it’s shaped them, who they've met, and what they plan to do with the rest of their lives could make #57 one of the most gratifying challenges they'll face.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

After Folsom Prison: Glen Sherley’s Story

Johnny Cash’s concert at Folsom Prison on January 13, 1968, wasn’t his first break, but without the album recorded there, he might never have managed a comeback. After falling out of favor with the country music community because of his brash attitude and drug addictions, Cash decided to connect with fans who understood his troubles: prisoners.

The night before what would be his second concert at Folsom Prison (the first one wasn't recorded), Cash was given a tape recorded by an inmate and songwriter named Glen Sherley. He listened to the tape, and at the concert the following day, Cash addressed Sherley in the crowd, saying, “I hope I do your song justice.”

When Cash began playing “Greystone Chapel,” an excited Sherley " jumped out of his front-row chair with a smile I will never forget,” Glen Beley, a writer for the Virginia Quarterly Review, recalled.

Cash helped Sherley record his own album, “Live at Vacaville,” while still an inmate, and was also able to persuade the governor of California to release him early. (Hear Sherley's recording on Lastfm.com). Cash even brought him on tour, but Sherley slipped back into drug addiction, left the stage and took his own life in 1978. 

"In prison I guess he was one of the top dogs in the pecking order, but he found it hard to adjust to the outside world," said Lou Robin, Cash's manager. Cash paid for Sherley’s funeral, but he soon discontinued his prison outreach, turning his focus to helping American Indians.

According to Roseanne, his daughter, Johnny Cash’s life changed dramatically after the success of his Folsom concert and album. "The affirmation helped transform his personal life. It took him away from the heavy drug use and turned him back to religion," biographer Michael Streissguth told the Rocky Mountain News.

Johnny Cash died on Sept. 12, 2003, a few months after his wife June Carter Cash.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

Sweet Sites | Don't Know Much About Music?

In the research section of our Web Guide to Music we’ve touted allmusic, an underrated encyclopedic resource of artist biographies and album reviews. If you’re reading a review of an album on Answers.com or in the iTunes Music Store, it often originates at allmusic.

Stream through your favorites in dozens of genres with Lala, a site that lets you both stream and download music. In a companion piece to this blog post on findingDulcinea, “Enjoying Music on the Web—Legally,” we discussed Lala and a few comparable sites. Lala stands out because of its extensive archive of 7 million songs, including classical, country, classic rock, pop, jazz and indie rock. Artist pages on Lala often include bios, as well as links to similar artists and Lala users who streamed or bought the artist.

Essentials of Music is a classical music destination with composer biographies, MP3 samples of their work and articles on major eras in classical music. The site is based on the W. W. Norton book title, “Essential Classics.”

Parents, get your children educated about classical music with Cincinnati Public Radio’s Classics for Kids, a site with radio shows, audio samples, articles on periods and composers, special features and games.

Mainstream and indie music fans alike will appreciate the new Billboard. The site used to be a hard-to-access database of music charts and news. Now it’s a glossy, colorful, multimedia-filled publisher with interactive music charts, news, interviews, concert coverage and more.

If you like Billboard, be sure to check out “5 Must-Book Music Sites,” a must-read for indie music fans that are just getting their feet wet online. It features five top sites in five categories—concert listings, MP3 blog, music magazine, lyric database and video site—as well as five runners-up.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

The Internet Holds the Past, Too

Modern-day students live in a ‘now’ society, but now is constantly shifting. What’s ‘now’ right now—Kanye West’s rude interruption of country crossover Taylor Swift at the MTV Video Music Awards—has already begun sliding into the archives of our minds. It will appear in media outlets for days to come, and will be revived on end-of-year lists recapping the wackiest moments in pop culture, but it’s already passé to a lot of people, particularly young people.

A week is a long time in politics. It’s also a long time in a student’s life. My tenth grade history teacher once wisely told our Western Civ class, “Every year of your life will feel shorter.” Ten years later, I see he was right. For today’s students, the media—and particularly the Internet—is helping to stretch time even more. The number of events, exchanges, videos and emoticons that a young person experiences in a given week is far greater than it was for me ten years ago. But each digital transaction seems to hinge on the present, or better yet, the future. What about the past?

Beloit College publishes the Mindset List every fall. It’s an “effort to identify the worldview of 18 year-olds” entering their first year of college. The list is made up of cultural phenomena that have existed during these students’ lifetimes. For example, the class of 2013 has “never used a card catalog to find a book.”

As Time Magazine rightly notes in an article on the list, a lot has changed since 1991, the year most of this year’s college freshmen were born. “In 1991 the world watched a black motorist named Rodney King be beaten by L.A. cops, all of whom were acquitted; a majority of whites still disapproved of interracial marriage. Ask yourself, Would the people we were then have voted for a mixed-race President and a black First Lady?”

We can look back, and pat ourselves on the back for how far we’ve come. But to keep moving forward, we have to keep looking back—not only at last week, when outbursts by Rep. Joe Wilson, Serena Williams and Kanye West got us thinking about topics like race, sportsmanship, egotism, manners and musical talent—but farther back, decades and even centuries back.

The Internet has a reputation for showcasing the next big thing in an ever-refreshing browser page. But today’s young thinkers should remember that the Internet is a limitless store of information, and it has a very good memory.

Check out our article “Web Sites for Researching History” to delve deeper into the past online.

Stay tuned for our On This Day Challenge, launching next week, where students will improve their online research skills and general Web savvy by writing articles about historical events using online resources. Students will post their articles to findingEducation, our collaboration tool for teachers and students, and we'll be selecting the best for publication on findingDulcinea.

Sign up for findingEducation to get notified about the challenge launch!

Museums Hold the Key to International Treasures

The Chateau de Versailles

Mollie Caselli writes for GulliverGo, a new study abroad and travel Web site.

You’ve accomplished the big hurdle of moving to a foreign country to study abroad. Good Job! What better way to learn about your new culture than by checking out its museums, eating its local cuisine or hitting up festivals? Whether it’s archaeology, film, art or sports cars, you can learn a lot about a host city by what it values most in its museums. Here are a few to check out. For any museums, remember to carry your student ID card for extra discounts!

Versailles, France: Palace of Versailles. When you need a break from the excitement of Paris, hop on the train for an hour and spend your day at the Palace of Versailles. Louis XIV turned the court of Versailles into the center of political power when he moved there from Paris in 1682. Today the estate features royal apartments of former kings and queens, a grand opera, the famed Hall of Mirrors and Louis XIV’s prized gardens. It’s a worthy day trip from Paris.

Naples, Italy: National Archaeological Museum. The National Archaeological Museum in Naples is one of the most impressive in Italy. The art, sculptures, mosaics and literature provide a glimpse into Greek and Roman antiquity. Of course, art history buffs that yearn to see those Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces in person should head north to Florence’s Uffizi Gallery,which hosts works of art by great Italian artists such as Botticelli, Giotto, Cimabue, Michelangelo and Raffaello.

Dublin, Ireland: Guinness Storehouse Take a break from the castles and galleries for a real taste of Ireland. Built in 1904, the Guinness Storehouse building housed the fermentation process of Guinness beer until 1988. Not only can you sample a pint, but at the top of the museum you’ll also catch one of the best views of Dublin.

Sweet Sites | Not Your Sunday Comic Strip

Thanks to the recession, newspapers are slimming down their funny pages just when people most need the distraction. Fortunately, more and more Web comics are springing up to take their place, and there are plenty of guides to help you find your new virtual Snoopy. Actually, with these comics, you’re more likely to find your new virtual, geeky 20-something with relationship issues. Especially if you check out our personal favorite, the popular xkcd (don’t forget to roll your mouse over each strip for an extra punch line). The following links recommend tons of comics for every sense of humor, and with the extensive archives often available online, your cartoon fix will never have to wait for Sunday again.

Mashable’s “20 of the Best Web Comics” and NPR’s “Annotated Guide for the Understandably Perplexed” are two great introductions to the overwhelming range of comics out there. Although Mashable covers the most popular strips for every taste, NPR’s Glen Weldon simply lists his favorites, encompassing comics such as "surreal crypto-neo-ur-Victorian gags" (Wondermark) to a "breathtaking chronicle of New Orleans before, during and after Katrina" (AD: After the Deluge).  Weldon also provides tips and warnings for the uninitiated: He offers advice on navigating the sites, and warns you about strips devoted to “in-jokes pertaining to matters geeky: video games, comics, sci-fi, fantasy, scantily clad kitten-women.”

Speaking of scantily clad kitten-women, those who find Garfield a bit tame might want to check out Patrick Orndorff’s “10 Great Webcomics You Should Not Share With Your Kids” on Wired.com. If his “adult/bizarre/sophomoric streak” turns you off, then look at Wired's sheepish follow-up post, "Five Webcomics You Can Share With Your Kids."

Finally, if you love illustrated humor but long for the days when Boss Tweed, not Steve Jobs, reigned, the Library of Congress has a fantastic exhibition of cartoon art. Built around the donated personal collection of cartoonist James Arthur Wood, Jr., the site includes everything from 19th-century political cartoons by Thomas Nast to 1980s comic strips.

Jill Marcellus
Writer

Sweet Sites | Interviews and Talks with People Who Should Be Celebrities

Everywhere you turn, you see or hear about Jon and Kate, Lindsay Lohan, Lindsay Lohan's spray tan product, Jennifer Garner's cute kids, and Posh & Becks' shopping outings. These people are celebrities, technically speaking, but there are many other people out there, living and deceased, who were celebrities in their time, or should have been. We've uncovered a number of sites that host interviews and talks with notable people from many walks of life. Some of these Web sites might be familiar to you, but some may appear to be diamonds in the rough!

TED is probably the most well-known site for inspiring, amusing and cool talks with innovative thinkers and leaders. Learn about emerging technologies, the fashion world, religion, medicine, and much more from the Web site of the TED Prize and annual TED Conference.

The Mike Wallace Interview is a collection of interviews by Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" conducted between 1957 and 1960 and hosted by the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center. This generous site features interviews with pioneering people like Frank Lloyd Wright, Gloria Swanson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Aldous Huxley.

Charlie Rose has recently revamped the Web site for his PBS show and now includes free and lengthy archived and recent interview segments with actors, sports stars, economists, politicians, authors and much more.

The Paris Review "Interviews" section features an archive of interview excerpts with authors dating back to the 1950s. They are in text-only format, but very worthwhile.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development

If you're really into lectures, see our previous entry, "5 Must-See Lectures."

Sweet Sites | Use the Web to Find Summertime Fun, Wherever You Are

The temperature's warming up and you've got some free time, but you have absolutely no idea what to do with this glorious opportunity. Here are some sites that can help you with this high-quality problem.

Festivals.com allows you to search for U.S. events by region and type, including fairs, sporting events, crafts expos and motor shows. The site is particularly strong on music events; find out who's playing where in a variety of genres from alternative to zydeco.

Whatsonwhen offers information about intriguing events happening across the globe. Search by keyword or browse by destination or event type to learn more about a wide range of activities that includes both the North American Sand Soccer Championships in Virginia and the Baby-Jumping Colacho Festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain.

If your summer simply must involve a screaming tour of a roller coaster or a spin on the Ferris wheel, consult Theme Park Insider for help planning your next trip to the amusement park. The site offers reviews, park safety news and advice, tips to shorten your wait on ride lines, hotel information and more. 

Amy Goldschlager
Editor

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Kicking Off the Summer on a Positive Note

Memorial Day may have started as a tribute to war veterans following the Civil War, but in modern times, it also marks the beginning of summer and is often celebrated with cookouts, parades and general warm-weather revelry. Although Weather.com says it’s expected to be rainy “for much of the nation” this weekend, that won’t stop millions of us from taking day or weekend trips to visit family, or explore new or familiar getaway spots.

This summer, we're in a recession, but that needn’t make us any more glum. Recent polls encouragingly suggest that money isn’t strongly tied to happiness. One poll by the Associated Press and mtvU shows that a higher percentage of college students are happier this year than they were last year. Many people are stressed about the economy and job market, including college students, but there is also evidence that those with higher incomes aren’t necessarily happier than those who aren’t. Education level more strongly correlates with happiness, says a study by Britain’s National Literacy Trust, so take some time this summer to feed your mind.

The recession “may actually be good for people,” as our positive news columnist Anne Szustek wrote earlier this week. Follow the lead of New Yorkers, who are reportedly volunteering more, shirking their “self-insulating” stigma. For families, summer is an especially active time, and it shouldn’t be any different this year. Sticking together and sharing experiences is even more important now. Find affordable alternatives for your family to enjoy this summer.

Liz Colville
Senior Writer
Audience Development