And I don't feel like regurgitating other's reporting like I'm a journalistic tourist. When I do original, outside reporting, you'll hear about it. Otherwise, I'm just a listener.

Thai Chicken Curry. Taken with a phone camera and served in a plastic container. Where have my standards gone?

Since starting life in the professional world, I've come to appreciate cooking at home, both for its frugality and control of taste. I've been making delicious burgers and fries, chicken pasta, talapia with rice, and finding new ways to prepare vegetables. But my favorite dish to make by far is Thai chicken curry. It's a simply flavorful, nutritious, and filling meal that can yield 2-4 servings in about 20 minutes for ~$2 per serving.

Here's my recipe, adapted from my fiance's and other recipes from around the internet. All ingredients can be had at an Asian/farmer's market (cheaply) or a traditional grocery store.

Ingredients:

• 12-16 oz of frozen stir-fry veggies (Broccoli, peppers, mushrooms, onions, green beans, etc.)
• 16 oz raw chicken breast and/or tenderloin, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1, 14oz can coconut milk
• 10-50g Thai curry paste, depending on label suggestions (Ingredients include: Shallot, lemongrass, chili)
• 1 tbsp curry powder (Ingredients include: Curry, tumeric, chili, coriander, cumin)
• 1 tbsp cooking oil
• 1.5-2 cups Jasmine rice
• Leaves from 2-3 branches of Thai basil

Directions:

1. Start cooking Jasmine rice in a rice cooker or by other method. Pre-heat skillet or grill pan over medium heat. Open can of coconut milk and mix with curry paste and powder. Heat covered over medium in a large pot.
2. Start cooking chicken pieces in oil in a pre-heated skillet or grill pan. You may season the chicken however you'd like, but the spices will fall off the chicken and into the sauce later. I like to season with salt, pepper, dry basil and chili powder.
3. Add frozen vegetables and fresh Thai Basil to coconut milk mixture and cover. Stir occasionally.
4. Once chicken is cooked, stir into vegetables and sauce. Cook at least 3 minutes and until rice is done.
5. Split into 2-4 servings, layering rice under chicken/veggie/sauce mixture. Add Sriracha hot sauce to taste.

Click here to download WTFuck by djSquared.

Tracklist:

1) Loca People - Sak Noel

2) Ho's and Disco's - Space Laces Remix - Lucky Date

3) Sweet Dreams - Cazzette Meet At Night Mix - Avicii

4) Turn Me On (feat. Nicki Minaj) - David Guetta

5) Ready for the Stomping - Far Too Loud

6) Born This Way (Zedd Remix) - Lady Gaga

7) Innocence - Nero

8) The State - Skism Remix - Porter Robinson

9) I'm In Need - Savoy

10) Promises (Skrillex & Nero Remix) - Nero

11) Memories - DJ Nato

As I was standing in line at the grocery store, a friend I was with started wondering aloud why people would care so much about the endless celebrity drama portrayed on tabloid covers. The gossip industry is a highly competitive and profitable one. Publishers are often willing to pay a photographer tens or even hundreds of thousands to get that one most-desired shot. After giving this some thought, I believe the popularity of tabloids, among many other cultural phenomena, are indirectly connected to the influx of suburban sprawl the United States has seen in recent decades.

Effects of physical community arrangement

Before suburbs became popular with Americans, the three main components of society - residential, commercial, and industrial sectors (thanks for engraining those in my head, SimCity) - were very close together. Sometimes, one could find all three sectors in the same building. But, as societies continued to grow, the urban areas became overcrowded and busy, and as a result, people developed a desire for a blend between rural countryside lifestyles while still maintaining easy access to cities.

The predecessor to today's suburbs were very much literal cabins in the woods, according to architecture author and novelist James Kunstler in his TED talk in 2004. Once these lone homes became popular in the 1950s, vast tracts of them were constructed and created the types of suburbs many of us live in today. While the original idea of a suburb was to live away from the city, while still close enough to it to commute, commercial and industrial sectors began to move into the suburbs to accommodate the rising number of suburban-dwellers. Demand for commercial and especially industrial sectors in urban environments fell dramatically once significant portions of a city's population moved away from the city's center, and the three main societal sectors became segregated.

Suburbs have now furthered the need to commute between locations. Before suburbs, people were naturally brought together in public spaces. When a city's population is able to live, work and play in close quarters, the need to commute is reduced and can even be eliminated. Suburb-dwellers, though, must travel anywhere from ten to thirty minutes to go anywhere significant beside their homes. A tremendous issue of isolation exists for people living in suburbs.

To understand this point further, watch Kunstler's passionate talk from TED 2004 here:

Maintaining culture through communication

Communication is a key component to maintaining a culture. By definition, culture is built around shared meaning and experience. Without communication, culture starts to become frail and ill-maintained. All cultures, from the ancient to the present, have made some attempt to eternalize their beliefs, values, stories, and experiences. Ancients resorted to such expressions of culture as cave paintings, rock carvings, monument construction, etc. Today, our culture is recorded in a plethora of mediums, including books, photographs, and blogs. Arguably, the mediums used today aren't as permanent as those used thousands of years ago, but both sets of cultures recorded themselves just the same.

Radio and television were primary modes of mass communication sixty years ago, while the telephone facilitated peer-to-peer communication. Options for communication are more varied today, and range from texting and picture messaging, to e-mail and social networking. On the most basic level, these forms of communication arose in order to help strengthen cultures. They can't, however, substitute for real-world shared experiences, the basis and inspiration for storytelling in culture. Culture begins to degrade when communication is reduced or eliminated from it, but a larger factor for sustaining culture is maintaining a high level of real-world shared experiences. If people within a certain culture do not have shared experiences, their culture begins to rapidly degenerate. It's no coincidence that suburbs and mass communication took on popularity around the same time period, the 1950s.

Impact of physical community arrangement on culture

An aerial view of housing developments near Markham, Ontario. Photo by IDuke, November 2005.

Because the dissemination of physical communities, and therefore a significant reduction in face-to-face communication, shared experiences have reduced at a rate that directly correlates to the popularity of suburban living. The closer physical arrangement of communities seen in more urban environments naturally brings people together. Face-to-Face communication often occurs without appointments. In suburban lifestyles, in order to accomplish face-to-face communication and have more shared experiences, people often need to take time and resources to move from place to place. Essentially, people are far more isolated from one another today, and face-to-face communication, and shared experiences as a result, are more limited as a result.

Substitutes for true shared experiences were needed when physical communities became more separated by suburbia. Mass media rose out of this need. Storytelling via radio, television, etc. has satisfied, to varying degrees, people's newfound needs for shared experience and storytelling. (Side note: In broadcast announcing, talking to the audience is referred to as "visiting" and carries a familiar tone, as if the announcer was talking with the listener personally.)

Furthermore, the Internet has facilitated shared experience in a duplex, digital context. The use of social networking has exploded because it's a faster form of communicating with more people without having to be in the same physical location. Services exist for virtual meetups, including Second Life. Such methods of attaining virtual shared experiences have been rising exponentially in the last 15 years, and is poised to continue to increase so long as suburbs isolate large portions of the population.

Shared experiences - personal and media-generated

The percentage of shared experienced that are media driven varies from person to person. For some, media makes up a majority of their shared experiences. Many know at least one person who spends much of their time watching television or posting on Facebook in lieu of having real-life experiences with other people. It's these kinds of people tabloids cater to.

More specifically: The higher the percentage of shared experiences had by one person by mass media, the broader and more personal the genres of mass media consumed by that person will be. People who make up, say, 20 percent of their shared experiences with mass media, have a substantial amount of shared experiences coming from real life. These most certainly include personal subjects - what's commonly referred to as "drama." People who make up a larger percentage of their shared experiences from mass media, i.e. 60 percent or more, likely do not personally experience as much "drama" as they would like to, and resort to media outlets for gossip news.

It is at this point the definition of "shared experience" can be interchanged with certain genres of media. Genres like gossip were typically reserved for close personal friends, family etc. in the times before mass media prevalence. When enough people allow a majority of their shared experiences to be media-provided, those once personal topics begin to come into demand, and accessible subjects, celebrities, became targets for this need. The public is aware of celebrities and their works and existence, and because of their notoriety, they have become of interest to people seeking shared experiences in place of their own personal "drama."

Conclusion

In his TED talk in 2004, Kunstler described the typical suburban home as "habitats" that "are producing immense amounts of anxiety and depression in children." Adults aren't the only people accepting these virtual shared experiences. Children are increasingly exposed to mass media, and more and more of their shared experiences are coming from television, cinema, and the Internet. It will be devastating for those children with high levels of media-driven shared experience when they realize there is little special or unique about their culture, and it's all been hand-fed to them instead of experienced by themselves. On the same token, adults must be careful to not let their cultures be drowned out by media. They must make a conscious decision to avoid the suburban lifestyle as much as possible for the sake of preserving their individual cultures. And, for goodness sake, let's not allow celebrity gossip to become our only shared "drama" experience.

Camera:

Canon XH-A1

Editor: Final Cut 7

Graphics: Photoshop CS5

Primary Role: Producer

Sun Sounds of Arizona is a local non-profit that provides access to printed materials, primarily periodicals and local newspapers, that the visually impaired otherwise wouldn't have access to. I was asked to lead a team of two photographers and one editor to produce a 5-7 minute promotional video for the organization. For this, we used a documentary-style approach and gathered interviews from listeners of the service as well as volunteer readers.

As this was a group project, production came with compromises, even though I was the producer. The introduction is not as unique as I had wanted it to be. My vision for the intro was to open on a first-person POV shot of everyday life with an emphasis on reading things like the newspaper. The rest of the group decided against it and we went with a more generic-style opening. I guess you can't win them all.

In the end, Sun Sounds was very happy with this video, and it will be used to engage potential donors and volunteer readers.

Much of the world celebrated Osama bin Laden’s death as a victory. In some ways it was. Al-Qaeda was officially decapitated on that first Monday in May. But the terrorist organization’s battles stretch far beyond suicide bombings, and in other ways, they are the victors.

The U.S. has not won this “War on Terror” yet, and it may actually be heading completely away from victory.

Since its establishment in 1988, Al-Qaeda has worked toward removing Christian and Jewish presences in Islamic nations. Its primary means of accomplishing this is through violent acts of terrorism designed to instill fear in the general population. Its armed forces, which could be as few as hundreds or as large as thousands, aren’t affiliated with any state, and operatives are located across multiple nations in the middle east.

Al-Qaeda, and thusly Osama bin Laden, took the international spotlight and provoked the United States with the September 11, 2001 attacks – events of a caliber the U.S. hadn’t seen since Pearl Harbor. Shortly after the attacks, President George W. Bush declared a “War on Terror,” and deployed military to Afghanistan to seek Osama bin Laden and any Al-Qaeda members responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This is exactly what Al-Qaeda wanted.

About four years after the September 11 attacks, Al-Quds Al Arabi, a London-based, independent Arab newspaper, published excerpts from a document titled “Al-Qaeda’s Strategy to the Year 2020”. Among those excerpts was a simple, five step plan to defeat the United States by spreading its resources thin. While many may believe the U.S. is currently winning the “War on Terror,” the portion of Al-Qaeda’s plan the country’s actions fulfill suggests otherwise.

Step one: Provoke the United States into invading a Muslim country.

This step has been over a decade in the making. United States armed forces still occupy Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s still uncertain how much involvement the U.S. will ultimately take in Libya.

It is clear that when the topic of pulling out of the middle east is brought up, even under the Obama administration, it’s all talk and no game. One of Obama’s primary campaign promises was a timely withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan. (President Obama announced an exit date for Iraq in 2009: December 31, 2011.) The fact that forces are still touring in both countries doesn’t only cost the U.S. money, it costs lives. More on that later, in step five.

Step two: Incite local resistance to occupying forces.

Despite the Bush administration’s ascertainment that Afghan and Iraqi citizens welcomed the United States’ presence, not everyone in those nations was happy about the occupation. One of the major reasons for Afghan opposition is the high numbers of civilian casualties which has risen in recent years. According to the UN’s annual report on the civilian death toll in Afghanistan, 2,777 civilians were killed in 2010. Al Jazerra notes that this number is a 15 percent increase from 2009 and akin to numbers last seen at the start of the war.

In Iraq, local opposition was strongest in 2008 when the U.S. proposed a security pact to extend the occupation for three years. The New York Times reported that many Iraqis viewed the “prospects of a long-term American troop presence as demeaning and humiliating.” Obviously, not all citizens of Iraq or Afghanistan are welcoming to U.S. military.

Step three: Expand the conflict to neighboring countries, and engage the U.S. in a long war of attrition.

In 2001, the United States began the war in Afghanistan. In 2003, the first troops were deployed in Iraq. Since the beginning of those two wars, talks of additional infiltrations and interventions have hit the table, including Iran. The U.S. has already begun to interject in the Libyan civil war sparked by anti-government protests. While the objectives of each of these wars don’t all relate directly to Al-Qaeda, they still qualify as expanding conflict to neighboring countries. The United States’ confrontations in the middle east have lasted longer than the Vietnam War, also qualifying the second clause in this step of Al-Qaeda’s plan.

Step four: Convert Al-Qaeda into an ideology.

This step in Al-Qaeda’s plan for the year 2020 has yet to be achieved, but it remains a realistic goal. In March of 2010, the Washington Times reported that, while remaining small, Al-Qaeda’s network in North Africa has shown some growth.

The terror organization’s main ideology to eradicate those condemned by Islam (namely Judeo-Christians) seems to still be resonating, though still on a small scale. While unlikely, it isn’t impossible that Al-Qaeda may still grow to a size that could be considered an embraceable ideology.

Step five: U.S. economy collapse.

National debt for the United States continues to climb to all-time highs. As of this writing, the national debt is approximately $14.3 trillion. The U.S. has been in its current economic trench, the Late 2000s recession, for the last three to four years with little end in sight. The wars in the middle east have certainly not helped this debt. Monetary cost for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have totaled over an estimated $1 trillion, and the wars aren’t over yet.

Such exorbitant military spending, along with bailouts of major American corporations and banks have both played a significant role in increasing the national debt. Add an additional $2.4 trillion in personal debt, according to the Federal Reserve, and it’s evident that the economy is not in its best place, and its future is highly unclear.

Aside from the financial cost, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and civilians. In 2010, the Washington Post reported the total death toll of U.S. military alone to be over 1,000 in Afghanistan and 4,366 in Iraq. This doesn’t include other military and civilians, which adds thousands more to the count.

It’s an unfortunate fact that a simple majority of these steps have been executed successfully. Whether or not a mass number of people will embrace Al-Qaeda as an “ideology” has yet to be seen. But based on the plan outlined in 2005, it appears as if the United States is headed directly for the fifth and final step of Al-Qaeda’s plan for success.

And, at that point, Osama bin Laden’s death will mean nothing.

It all comes down to the fact that the United States is spreading itself too thin and doesn’t set its priorities correctly. In one recent example, congress debated cutting funding for public broadcasting while maintaining a military budget that has cost the U.S. over $1 trillion over the last decade.

The Perpetuity of Terrorism, the United States

As previously mentioned, Al-Qaeda has been continuing to grow, though at a slow pace, even while the U.S. has been fighting a war on terror for almost a decade. Although Osama bin Laden has been removed from the top of the organization, another leader will likely arise. The Christian Science Monitor reported one week after the announcement of bin Laden’s death that Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s chief strategist, is the most likely Al-Qaeda leader to take bin Laden’s place. So, while Al-Qaeda’s head may have been chopped off, it could just as soon grow back.

Other terrorist organizations exist beyond Al-Qaeda. Of course, not all of them have an axe to grind with the United States, but if Al-Qaeda were to fall completely, the world would not be free of terror.

The death of Osama bin Laden comes with a reminder that the United States has sacrificed many of its military men and women and contributed to the economic downfall it has seen in recent years all to dethrone a man who has been in hiding for years and will simply be replaced. And some of the costliest issues related to the United States’ priorities are not apparent in the death toll or debt figures.

For example: Nearly one in ten American citizens are without a job today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and roughly 17.4 million households in the U.S. face food shortages, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These two important issues, among many others, remain hardly addressed when compared to the amount of attention given to wars abroad. And while there is no direct correlation between the wars and these domestic issues, the level of spending the federal government is willing to dedicate to the war vastly overshadows that for social issues at home.

Osama bin Laden is dead, but it has hardly meant victory for the United States. The retaliation to the September 11 attacks has contributed to a lack of domestic support for Americans, and while Al-Qaeda’s leader is dead, the extreme costs of war, both financial and human, are exactly what he wanted all along. Bin Laden’s death is not an end to terrorism - the real event worth celebrating.

Cameras:

Canon T2i

Canon XH-A1

Editor: Premiere Pro CS5

In 2009, I covered the Arts and Business summit hosted by the Flagstaff Arts and Business alliance for NAZ Today. It was at that summit that I learned how interconnected the art industry is with the local economy - that the arts mean business. Since that summit, I've noticed that a rising number of galleries in downtown Flagstaff have been closing their doors. This project is an attempt to overview what exactly is changing in the art industry and what the future of art in Flagstaff is by talking with local business owners, art leaders, and artists about the state of the art-based economy, business strategies, and the importance of the First Friday ArtWalk.

(Watch in HD!)

Cameras:

Panasonic HMC-150 (x3)

Editor: Final Cut 7

Every other fall, the merchandising program at the NAU School of Communication produces a fashion show featuring local designers alongside student designers. I first participated in documenting this event in 2008 under poor lighting and audio conditions. This time around, in 2010, the venue, and thusly the production quality, changed for the better. This 42 minute program was filmed in HD on Panasonic SD-card-based cameras. For this production, I served as one of the camera operators and the editor. Original shooting date was in November, but it was only recently completed because it was done pro-bono.

(Give the video a few minutes to load to start; Total file size is 300 MB. Resolution is 720p.)

This is something I spent the first 18 years of my life without.

I'm about to graduate from Northern Arizona University. My parents and American society in general told me that I needed a degree to get a good job. That's probably true, but what I've gained the most from this college experience is not an education. It's social conditioning.

Social nuances between my domestic upbringing, such as sharing a bedroom with another person, community bathrooms, and having to cook for myself, seemed a bit daunting when I first entered the undergraduate scene. Since then, like most, I've come to like these facts of living, and I recognize that they actually have helped me develop into a better person.

Today marks the start of Spring Break. Normally I would be with my family, but this year, I've had to dedicate the first half of the week-off to various production and broadcast engineering projects. My roommates have left, my girlfriend has left, and my good friends have left. Campus is virtually empty, and I'm basically alone.

What I've discovered is that cooking for one is boring. When I'm done with a long but good day of work, I don't have anyone to talk to about it when I get home. Likewise, no one is around to tell me the stories of their day. This is utterly, and completely, boring.

I don't know how I lived like this before. My typical routine before college would be to go to school, go to work, then go home and dabble online for the rest of each evening - maybe chat online with a couple of friends. What was I doing with my social life back then? Obviously, not enough.

foreveralone.jpg, courtesy of the Internet.

For the remainder of my life, be it through friends, roommates, or a wife, I genuinely hope to never be alone.

Kurt Vonnegut once said, "I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." I just want to make sure my farting around is around other people.

The smoke stack in mid-fall. (Photo: Brandon Neuman/NAZ Today)

LAUGHLIN, Nev. – Southern California Edison demolished an approximately 41-story smoke stack this morning, which had landmarked the Mohave Generation Station and the Colorado River Valley. The plant had been decommissioned in late 2005, and today, the first major phase of demolition was completed.

“It was a great resource for power and it was also a great resource for jobs locally,” said Steven Conroy, spokesperson for Edison.

Future plans for the station involve demolishing the two large boilers next to where the smoke stack stood. They will be demolished by implosion in July, with the site being completely deconstructed by 2012.

The coal-burning station was shut down due to expired contracts for coal and water supplies. Plans were in place to upgrade the station to pass new emissions standards; the projected cost of the upgrades was $1.2 billion according to Gil Alexander, media relations for Edison.

(In this video: Steven Conroy, Media Relations for Southern California Edison)

Further information about the Mohave Generation Station