Time for a little weekend trip. This 25-minute high-definition video will acquaint viewers with the world’s first national park like nothing else can — except going there.
If it doesn’t make you want to visit Yellowstone, there’s probably not much that will.
I’ll be back to serious writing in a day or two. Thanks to the folks at “The World From Above” for making these videos available!
The just-announced entry by the New York Times and other major media into Facebook should put to rest any doubt about the importance of social media for communication.
I finally got on the Facebook bandwagon a little more than four years ago, when Wisconsin’s political attacks on education and the middle and lower classes began. Since then, I’ve mostly followed Facebook news and groups, rarely posting except to reply to friends as an occasional method for conversing in the virtual world.
There are a number of reasons for stepping up my Facebook and other social media activity. Among them is my disappointment with more conventional local means of governance — especially after UW-Stevens Point’s baffling decision to disempower its faculty senate.
Although I’ve focused mostly on words related to a couple of trips I’ll be taking with classes, one of my blog’s goals is to give me an outlet to occasionally talk politics and governance. This is my first occasion for that.
A recent letter to the editor of our local daily set me off a bit. Here’s my response to that letter. In my response, which appeared in today’s print version of the Stevens Point Journal, the paper included links to both the first letter and to the column from UWSP’s chancellor that got the discussion rolling.
But what did Socrates know? After all, he was mostly a philosopher. In the new educational order, he’d be among the first downsized in the name of efficiency and profit. — from my letter
Here’s the “too long/did not read” version: despite what some Wisconsin citizens and politicians believe, education and the UW System aren’t supposed to be all about profit and efficiency.
As Chancellor Bernie Patterson noted, there may be times when we need to run “more like a business.” It’s unfortunate, though, when some folks think that means we are a business.
We’re not.
Click to visit Lonely Planet’s YouTube channel video on Uluru.
A little research goes a long way in virtually any area, and travel videos are no different. It helped me turn a quick review of one video into a discovery of a couple of other video sources that I’ll link toward the end of the post.
The post started as a review of another International Programs offering, a video on Southeastern Australia that was also produced by Lonely Planet. While the 45-minute disc, featuring former English footballer, travelogue host and comedian Ian Wright, was not exactly to my taste, it might be worth the time spent for some COMM 373 student. The disc can be checked out from the IP office.
I found the video less informative and only slightly entertaining; perhaps it’s Wright’s style that doesn’t do much for me. Quirky like much of Lonely Planet’s work, the 2005 video focuses mostly on five different cities in the Australian Southeast, but the focus is often scattered, overly brief or lengthy, and trivial. Frankly, had I seen this on TV, I might have switched channels in the first five minutes, most of which was spent on Wright making light of an annual country music festival in Tamworth, the “Nashville of Australia.”
Highly recommended
UWSP’s International Programs office keeps several of the well regarded Lonely Planet guides, including the 2013 edition of its 1,106-page Australia guide to the entire country. One would expect this publisher’s Australian guides to be particularly good, as the company is based in Melbourne, and its story (which is included in the back of most of its guides, as well as online) will probably appeal to the average student, as it involves a beat-up car, a penurious budget and an idea.
Lonely Planet says great guidebooks should “inform, educate and amuse,” and most readers would likely agree that this book does a solid job of that. Its sheer size means there’s plenty of information; that raises questions about whether it’s too massive to cart around on a short-term trip or whether it’s more than is needed for students who will generally be limited to the southeastern portion of the country. It will definitely be useful for those able to do post-trip travel to other parts of this equally massive country (the world’s sixth-largest — the U.S. is fourth and about 20 percent larger than Australia).
Words Are Roads 