I recently visited Wes in New York City a few weeks ago where happenstance brought us to a 14th floor studio loft on the Lower West Side.  The entrance fee was your choice of a donation or food and alcohol.  So we walked down the block to a gas station and each armed ourselves with a six-pack of beer and a bag of pretzels.  We now had our ticket to enter Slideluck Potshow.

Slideluck Potshow is a non-profit slideshow and potluck (duh!) where members of the art community, and all types of artists, showcase their work in a slideshow format to help create “a forum for exposing artists, curators and editors to new work.”  Through a spirited evening of food, alcohol, and music, the event creates a great atmosphere for reminding us of “why we are creating in the first place.” 

Slideluck Potshow will be coming to a town near you, even if you live in Europe or South America.  So far, Slideluck events have taken place in Sao Paulo, Berlin, Seattle, Washington D.C., and many other large cities.  All you have to bring is an appetizer, wine/beer/liquor, and a love for art.

Last year, I studied in Germany for an entire summer with a program that sought to enlighten its students on the history of the former Yugoslavia and the newly independent nations of this region’s attempts to join the European Union.  Presently, only one former Yugoslav state has joined the EU: Slovenia.  The rest are a long way off.  Anyway, my program included a field trip to Croatia and Bosnia in which we met with several journalists, parliament members, and other organizations to gain some first hand accounts of the war and current EU accession projects.  The experience was one I’ll never forget and also one that won’t be recounted at this time.

Which brings me to Radovan Karadzic.  Since the end of the war, Karadzic has been the most hunted war criminal in the world and is responsible for the deaths of 7500 Bosnian Muslims.  He is being charged with several other war crimes and is currently in The Hague, in the custody of the ICTY.

But the most interesting part of his story is his 13 years as a fugitive under the name Dragan Dabic, a “bioenergy channeling, alternative medicine peddling, new age guru”.  Jack Hitt of the New York Times retells the story of Karadzic’s second life here.  Hopefully some, but maybe none of you will find this interesting.

Photo courtesy of BBC News

I don’t think we’ll ever really know but there is some help.  And Snopes is one site that tries to quiet those crazy internet rumors.  By compiling thousands of internet rumors and urban legends into easily browsed categories, you’ll never have to wonder again if President Obama received college financial aid to attend Occidental College as a “foreign student from Indonesia.”  Or the next time you receive a forwarded email from a concerned family member claiming gang initiates are driving with their lights off to provoke a flash from a good samaritan so they can then kill them, check it out on Snopes to see how this rumor originated.

The creators of Stickk, a website that allows you to form Commitment Contracts, helps provide the extra incentive necessary to reach your goals.  Want to lose 10 pounds this month?  Well Stickk will help you create a contract on yourself with stipulations that incline you to follow through.  One example is to allow Stickk to draft a chosen amount of money from your checking account and donate it to a charity in which you disagree with if you fail to reach your goal.  The site also involves your friends and family as “referees” to help keep you in check.

Stickk was created by Yale economics professors Dean Karlan, Barry Nalebuff, and Ian Ayres, as well as Yale student Jordan Goldberg, as a scholarly research project but it has blossomed into a reputable business venture with customers reporting an 85% success rate.

As an aimless, lazy and poor twenty-something, a contract with Stickk could finally take advantage of my fiscal prudence to help me get in shape.  All I need is an incentive to actually make the contract…

Mitchell Joachim has spearheaded an inventive, artistic, and revolutionary “non-profit philanthropic design collaborative that integrates ecological principles in the urban realm.” The project is called Terreform 1 and it is already garnering great press and support. From soft cars (bottom) to tree dwellings (below) to Blimp buses (top) to a self sufficient New York City, Terreform 1 has created a vast array of green designs and sustainable technologies that will change the way humans perceive the world around them.I encourage you to visit the site, peruse the pictures and projects, and watch the videos.  Joachim was recently on  The Colbert Report episode and his interview can be read here. Photos courtesy of Terreform.

All Things Considered interviewed Dan Florio, the creator of a new website called Runpee, which tells you when is the best time to run to the bathroom during a movie without missing anything important.

So if you’re one of those people who hates missing part of a movie and is reluctant to ask your friend/date what you missed, check Runpee before you catch a flick and you’ll never miss out on any important plot twists again.

And if you’re lucky enough to have an Alamo in your town, go ahead and order that extra beer.

Pope Benedict XVI has recently launched his new website, Pope2You, in an effort to engage the world’s online youth and broaden the Church’s audience.  His new Facebook application allows you to “listen to his words, see his pictures, receive his messages of congratulations through virtual postcards”, so you can send them to all of your Facebook “friends”.  And if that isn’t enough, he has applications for your iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as a YouTube channel, to make attending church even more obsolete than sitting at your home computer.

The website is an important step for a pope who warns against the addiction of social networking.  “It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop online friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbors and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation,” says Benedict’s message available for download on the website.

I don’t think the Pope has anything to worry about until he feels compelled to “tweet” his concerns.

Many of the barbaric acts described were designed to gruesomely kill the victim, something the Bush administration’s torture tactics avoided.

But Cheney was only off by a couple of centuries. Waterboarding was first used during the Spanish Inquisition over 500 years ago. Fortunately, new methods of interrogation with proven results are underway to help restore our image.

The poll shows that 6 out of 10 Catholic voters welcome the President to the university despite his views on abortion and stem cell research.  Additionally, the poll shows that Catholic voters (of which the majority do not attend church regularly) are just as split on the abortion issue as the average voter.

This poll is either highlighting the diminishing role of religion in voters’ hearts and minds, or is proving that having President Obama as your commencement speaker is just too great of a press opportunity to pass up.