One of my (not so) odd (anymore) habits involves Google. I Google everything, and have been for some time. I never thought there was anything out of the ordinary about this habit until a friend stated to me one day, that before I had prompted her, she never used Google. I guess at some point I got irritated by her asking me for info all the time and started referring her to Google. Even before Google, as a kid I spent countless hours researching random things on Encarta just for the fun of it.
Another one of my pointless talents is finding interesting info on the youtubes. I once had a friend tell me I could teach a course with all the interesting links I found on Youtube.
So because I'm one of the world's worst bloggers (my posts tend to be sporadic, and few and far between...although lately I've been more inspired I'll admit) I think I'll start posting my weekly youtube finds...I'll call it my Friday Finds!
So my first Friday finds center around environmental issues that affect everyday, middle class, minority world (aka 1st world, Developed nations, the North...people with a fair amount of privilege) citizens. Why did I choose to focus on environmental issues??? Because I fancy myself a bit of a treehugger, and feel that everyone should watch these videos at least once (if not many times) because they challenge what most of us take for granted...so enjoy!
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1 comments:
I'm a bit of a Google fiend myself. As an immigration lawyer, we often had to prove through documentary evidence that our clients and their families had suffered torture or might suffer torture or death if required to go back to their homelands. Google was and is an amazing tool for this sort of work.
Once, a judge told me that if I could prove that my client would not have access to adequate medical care for diabetes in her particular town overseas, then he would agree not to deport her. He gave me three hours to come back with the documentation of my assertion. I went to Google, went back to court after the lunch break and had like two hundred pages of materials. So, she didn't get deported or separated from her children.
Enjoying research is not a useless or weird orientation at all. Nobody should go to law school unless they have that same "oddity", because they are NOT going to enjoy law school and they are NOT going to enjoy practicing law if they don't like research.
Here's a look at my most detailed pieces of research as a blogger, which ultimately provided the source for almost two million hits at Google, of people citing cites that had cited my research.
I spin off blogs all the time where I can post the research and thoughts I have on subjects that not many people know about. If you put what you find up at your targeted blog, other people can use your research to find even more information about your topic and use it in constructive ways that you wouldn't have imagined. One guy made three videos that he posted at YouTube based on the information at my blog, and I've never personally spoken with or corresponded with the person. The videos have been seen over eight thousand times!
Give yourself a pat on the back! Knowledge is power and the ability to create knowledge and communicate it is even more powerful still!
Thanks for commenting at my blog about that abominable "Brown Sugar" song by the Rolling Stone-Age Color-Aroused Antagonists (RSACAA). The RSACAA song you cited is even worse than the Elton John song I cited, because the RSACAA song includes an historical recitation of all of the reasons why white men should stop raping and oppressing Black women, and then the song glories in that very same atrocious and abominable history and encourages white men of the present to think as others did during slavery. And they played that color-aroused and color-arousing indoctrination on the radio!
I wouldn't be surprised if you find yourself teaching a course on something one day. My mother was a city planner, got an offer to teach sociology at a community college and stayed there for the rest of her career.
Research is fascinating sometimes, and you never know where it will take you. My research assistant looked up the family persecution facts of one of my clients and found that the whole story was recounted and documented in the New York Times when it happened, a decade before. When the immigration judge saw the research and documentation we had done, she offered to make a favorable decision in the case on that very first day.
There are many people in desperate need of the skills, aptitude and determination you have.
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