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It's the last day of 2007, and all in all, it's been a pretty great year. I'm going to finish the year going to a really cool art festival downtown called First Night, where they make downtown into a giant art project. Austin stole the idea from Boston, but the fact that they're running something like this is what makes me love this city. They're also going to be setting off fireworks along Town Lake, so I'll wander down there and try to take some photos of that. I wish I'd splurged for a tripod now though.
My Italy itinerary is now set! We booked our hotel rooms, and my friends picked out some great places:
And all for great rates, so it'll be about 30 euro's a person/night overall to sleep right next to the main sights. I love going in the off-season!
Crucial to all of this was using TripAdvisor and Venere to look up reviews by the people who actually stay there. This is why I can't imagine life before the Internet... I mean going blindly into another country without knowing what your hotel is really like, or even where it is? That's just crazy!
And speaking of Austin, the Christian Science Monitor had a small piece about Austin's Pecans. I'm not a huge fan of the nut, but I have noticed lots of people rummaging along the ground lately, and now it makes a lot more sense.
Also from the CSM, an article about charity lending, through organizations like Kiva.org, which I use to make microloans. The Nobel Peace prize winning idea is that people in 3rd world countries want to make better lives for themselves, but lack the capital to do it. Banks aren't willing to lend money in such small amounts to people without collateral or credit history. But if regular people and/or banks can lend the money and accept the risk, then you can lift people out of poverty. Thus it's even a charity a die-hard Republican can love, since you even get back your investment (sans interest however) which you can lend again or deposit back into your own bank account. Check it out, it's an amazing idea that makes a real difference in the life a person.
Finally, someone points out the flaws in making religion synonymous with politics. I realized long ago that because of my religious (or lack there of) views I have no hope of ever getting elected to office, despite that America's founding fathers wanted us to be a secular nation. But some of the presidential candidates seem to be on the verge of religious zealotism at times in order to court "faith" voters. Particularly with Rommey's "freedom requires religion" speech. No Mr. Rommey, it does not.
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