And it was good. The Guiness approach to evolution.

Carol Rueckert, an American citizen teaching English in Beijing shares her insights on her rare tour of North Korea. For only the third time in just over a decade, North Korea is providing these highly-restrictive tours to Americans in limited capacity during October. This coincides with the Mass Games that celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Workers Party of Korea and includes over 100,000 performers in an enormous arena.

Consider this article in today's New York Times Magazine article about "emerging adulthood" - a so-defined transition period between college and adulthood for 20-somethings. Then use the following links for reference while you're reading...

The highly-publicized new dorm on Swarthmore's campus is reviewed in The Phoneix, their student paper. The same project is explained by William Rawn Associates the architecture firm that specializes in new college community spaces.

A Time Magazine cover story (January 2005) focused on the ideas of emerging adulthood, using the term "twixters" to describe the young people stuck between being a kid and an adult. Get an introduction to Dr. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett, author of Emerging Adulthood, who coined the term. Then hear Dr. Arnett and Lev Grossman (author of the aforementioned Time cover story) in a roundtable on the WHYY FM program, Voices in the Family.

Here are two additional books of note in the NYT article: Youth and Life by Randolph Bourne (1967), and Indecision by Benjamin Kunkel (2005). And finally, an old post of mine from 2002: Dissecting the Millennials. Happy reading!

Hop to it: a recent article from the Philadelphia Weekly talks with yours truly about the sensational transit online reference tool, Hopstop.com. I really don't often get that lost, but on occasion, it's certainly a good learning experience...

"If you have a design problem, nature’s probably solved it already."

When it comes to seeing zebras, elephants, ostriches, impalas, giraffes, and at least two dozen more species of African animals, there's just no place like Botswana. National Geographic's WildCam Africa takes you there with realtime, streaming, brilliantly clear and smooth, live footage from Pete's Pond, a manmade reservoir built to house this amazing technical feats of documentary footage, all while providing a watering hole in the Northern Tuli Game Reserve that's safe from poachers. Plans to expand the reserves will encompass lands within South Africa and Zimbabwe in the coming years.

Meanwhile, you can enjoy beautiful live images on your screen all day long. Seriously, there's a giraffe stooping over to take a drink from the water right now, with some ostrich babies running by in the background. How'd they do it? Dedicated satellite uplink, 24 hours a day. For the best viewing experience, open this link in RealPlayer and make it full screen. It's the best reality TV out there (especially in the mornings (EST) ... the sun goes down midafternoon (EST), but the camera switches over to night vision so you can still enjoy the elephants bathing and the hyenas playing for the rest of the day).