Commonplace Book

So, I’ve set myself up this new blog. I created it for two (unordered) reasons:

• I’d like to keep the focus of Život v Cizine on life abroad, and so I needed somewhere else to put my more miscellaneous postings.
• I was worried that my webgeekstress credentials were being eroded by my time spent teaching English. So, setting up a WordPress blog, which is really so much geekier than blogger.com (which powers this blog), seemed like a good move. I like WordPress quite a bit: it’s much more powerful and flexible than blogger, and I may end up moving Život v Cizine over as well.

This new blog is lightly populated with some of the miscellaneous postings that had appeared on Život… It remains to be seen if I’ll be more dedicated to keeping this one up to date.

Why the Name?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a commonplace book is “a personal journal in which quotable passages, literary excerpts, and comments are written”. And since I’m using this to keep track of, and occasionally comment upon, (mostly web-based) things, it seemed an appropriate name.

Well, I’ve set up an account on Twitter: twitter.com/webgeekstress. I’ve resisted this for a while: after all, I already have my blog! But, hey, all the other cool kids are twittering, and I was feeling left out.

Unfortunately, the name puts me in mind of a former and massively unlamented manager. My description of her ignorance, lack of humor, and propensity for parroting the latest management idea du jour prompted my mother to dub her "Twitty". The name was so thoroughly apropos that not only did I adopt it, but several of my co-workers did as well.

I suppose I should feel guilty… it does seem rather childish now. I don’t, though; in fact, I had a subsequent manager whom I think of as "Twitty Two".

According to http://3trillion.org/, the estimated cost of the war in Iraq is $3 trillion. Here’s how that $3 trillion breaks down:

• $526 billion — borrowed money poured into Iraq so far
• $615 billion — total interest costs for taxpayers
• $280 billion — to rebuild our military
• $590 billion — disability benefits and health care for Iraq veterans
• $1.5 trillion — estimated costs through 2017

I shopped around to see what I could buy with that much money. I still have close to $3 million left, but hey, a girl (or a nation, I suppose) needs her pin money, y’know?

	100 New Libraries QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $5,000,000,000.00
	give every teacher a rai$e QUANTITY: 2 PRICE:$100,000,000.00
	Secret Island Fortress QUANTITY: 2 PRICE: $15,000,000.00
	Help Iraq Children QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $500,000,000.00
	Plant 1,000,000 trees QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $10,000,000.00
	Luxury Cruise Around the World QUANTITY: 2 PRICE: $1,200,000.00
	Pay a Teacher’s Salary QUANTITY: 5 PRICE: $39,274.00
	Build 100 New Schools QUANTITY: 4 PRICE: $2,500,000,000.00
	Kyoto Protocol Worldwide Compliance QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $400,000,000,000.00
	Make a Hollywood Movie QUANTITY: 3 PRICE: $106,600,000.00
	End Third-World Debt QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $422,000,000,000.00
	New Clothing, Shoes, Coats, and School Supplies for Ten Million Children QUANTITY: 5 PRICE: $10,000,000,000.00
	Cure a Deadly Disease QUANTITY: 5 PRICE: $1,500,000.00
	Achieve Universal Literacy QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $5,000,000,000.00
	End our Dependence on Foreign Oil QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $500,000,000,000.00
	Switch to Solar QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $420,000,000,000.00
	End hunger and poverty related diseases QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $195,000,000,000.00
	Fight AIDS in Developing Nations QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $15,000,000,000.00
	Pay a Peacekeeper QUANTITY: 6 PRICE: $130,000.00
	Universal Health Care for All QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $932,368,000,000.00
	Provide Clean Drinking Water for the World QUANTITY: 1 PRICE: $25,000,000,000.00
	Sustainable Agriculture Education, Worldwide QUANTITY: 1 PRICE:$200,000,000.00

I just signed up to participate in Amnesty International’s Global Write-a-thon, taking place December 7-10, 2007.

December 10th is Human Rights Day. To mark this day, thousands of people will gather across the United States and all around the world to participate in Amnesty International’s Global Write-A-Thon. Last year activists in more than 30 countries wrote over 100,000 letters to political leaders and others in a position of authority, to help make a difference in the life of someone whose human rights were being violated. Everyone can participate! It all begins with people just like you taking a few minutes to write a short letter.

I hope you will take part in the Global Write-A-Thon. This December you can save a life.

Register today at Amnesty International USA’s Sign up for the 2007 Global Write-a-thon.