Thursday, September 22, 2005

Misc Thurs

Jason Kottke writes about a conference speaker - "[Nicholas] Negroponte also shared a story about outfitting the kids in a school in Cambodia with laptops; the kids' first English word was "Google", and from what Negroponte said, that was followed closely by "Skype". He also said the children's parents loved the laptops because at night, it was the brightest light in the house."
We shouldn't underestimate the power of technology and the impact that it has to bring cultures closer together.  We probably have more in common with other cultures than we think.  The quote also makes me think about how dominant American culture really is.  When we were in Brasil, it seemed like a lot of their pop culture was largely American.  Films were shown with Portuguese subtitles, they listened to a lot of the same music our students listened to, and they loved Nike stuff.  I actually kind of regretted it, in the sense that their movies should be in Portuguese with English subtitles.

Missionary-blogs.com
New aggregator for missionary blogs.  Via Dennis.

One Look Reverse Dictionary
"OneLook's reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the box and hit the 'Find words' button. (Keep it short to get the best results.) In most cases you'll get back a list of related terms with the best matches shown first."

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