I find it a convenient shorthand to tell people I live in New Orleans, but since 1992 I've actually lived in the nearby bedroom community of Mandeville. As many people who actually do live in New Orleans will tell you, though, Mandeville isn't New Orleans. It isn't even close, no matter how easy it is to drive here from there.

The movies would have you think the culture of New Orleans is Cajun French, but that's not so. Cajun culture is centered almost 150 miles from here, in the Acadian parishes surrounding the city of Lafayette. If you want a culture that belongs uniquely to New Orleans, you'd find it in Chalmette and the Ninth Ward, where the language, food, and customs are like no place else on Earth.

Full Story (117 comments, 3291 words in story)

While visiting my native land--the Faroe Islands--this summer, I became bored and looked for somewhere even more remote and isolated to venture to: somewhere in the Arctic I'd never visited. Having seen most of Scandinavia and much of northern Russia, my choices were limited but had to be apt. I ended up going to Scoresbysund, Greenland and then to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. These are some of the most remote parts of the world and their isolation and insular situation both makes them spellbinding places to visit and also reflections of broader Nordic culture.

This is the story of my journey.

Full Story (83 comments, 5135 words in story)

On November 2, the residents of Denver, Colorado passed the Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative. With 100% of precincts reporting, the final tally for the vote was 56,001 YES votes to 48,632 NO votes, approximately 54% - 46%. The measure changed city law to allow for possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and over. The act is largely symbolic, though, as state and federal laws supersede local law, and authorities have already stated that state possession laws would be applied. However hope remains, for the passage of the initiative marks Denver as the first area in the nation to legalize private use of marijuana, for recreational as well as medical use. Is the legalization of marijuana at the federal level now within our reach?

Full Story (347 comments, 745 words in story)

The phone is ringing. It's still dark out. Who the hell calls at this hour? What hour is it anyway?

Waking up is never easy. Waking up at 0620 on a Saturday is especially difficult. The confusion dissipates as I recognize the number on the phone. It's my mom, calling to wake me for the estate sale.

So that's why I slept in my clothes.

Full Story (98 comments, 1295 words in story)

Life, I've been told, is a school. I've always thought that it was more like a college, where your participation determines what you get out of it. I never made it through college, but I've learned a lot in life, and over the past year, I've been engaged in a sort of group learning experience - one of me, thousands of them. They are honeybees, and they teach the lessons of the hive.

Full Story (92 comments, 1697 words in story)

During the spring semester of my sophomore year at the University of Colorado Boulder, I took an entry-level sociology class called Deviance in Society. I registered for the course after a long pot smoking session with this sociology major named Ruthie who'd taken it her freshman year.

"Is that class really as cool as it sounds?" I said, passing the green plastic bong down to where she was sitting barefoot on the rug. I'd been burned before on courses that had cool sounding names, like the Chaos Theory and Non Linear-Systems class that actually expected you to do some pretty intense math.

"Hell yeah," Ruthie said before taking a hit. I watched the brown bong-water bubble at the bottom and realized I really needed to change it. "I loved that class. You learn a lot of neat stuff," she said as she exhaled.

Full Story (114 comments, 6770 words in story)

There comes a time in everybody's life when you realise that you've accumulated too much crap over the years, and that some of it just got to go. You need to make room for the new crap, especially if you are like me and a bit anal about keeping every single thing that you ever bought/got as a gift/found in the street. So, I decided to go through a few boxes filled with assorted stuff. And I found some books that I last read when I was 8.

Full Story (70 comments, 584 words in story)

Homeschooling came into focus in the late 20th century but is still a relatively seldom used method of educating children. As of 2003, 1.1 million children in the United States are were homeschooled (2.2% of the school age population), up from approximately 850,000 in 1999 (only 1.7% of the school-age population). Those who have been through the homeschooling experience, however, are usually firm defenders of its educational merits and sometimes even have the documentation to back it up. There are those who oppose the homeschool movement, though. Some argue that a responsible citizen should participate in the improvement of the public school system instead of "taking the easy way out" and abandoning it, while others emphasize the professional qualifications of public school instructors.

As both the public/private and homeschool environments implement more of today's technology, which classroom has the upper hand?

Full Story (141 comments, 706 words in story)

Many artists are finding their place within contemporary F/OSS (Free/Open Source Software) communities. This is a chance for creativity to flourish unbound by the entrenched commercial software model. Here I use the term 'artist' fairly broadly, including visual artists, experimental musicians and those making software-based installations among others.

Full Story (44 comments, 1035 words in story)

When entering a Best Buy store, I'm now `greeted' by a guy in a blue shirt. (Lately they've been changing their shirt color to a Best-Buy yellow, but that doesn't matter.) In addition to loudly bellowing out "Hello!" he also mumbles "...howyoudoing?"

Full Story (281 comments, 939 words in story)