IRB Blog Post 1- The New York Times: A New York Tale of Art, Money and Ambition

This article is a book review on actor Steve Martin's new novel “An Object of Beauty”. The story is about following a character, Lacey Yeager's, art world climb in New York City. She is called ambitious, feirce, odd, an alloyed opportunist, and a "stylishly attractive dynamo who, with only minimal irony, recognizes herself in the monstrous goddess that Willem de Kooning painted as “Woman I?”"
Mr. Martin invests his book with its larger drama, which is the art market’s wild evolution over the course of the last two decades. He writes about a time in New York “when the art world was building offshore like a developing hurricane.”

Reading this book review it made me realize how much Steve Martin really had an interest in art. He not only wrote a novel about the art world based in one of the most artistic cities in the country, but in the novel itself there are 22 reproductions of varied artworks.

http://www.mikeettner.com/11/2010/an-object-of-beauty-by-steve-martin/

IRB Post 1- US Magazine: Did Harry Potter's Tom Felton Father a Secret Love Child?

The article talks about a Harry Potter poster that had pictures of 7 of the main male characters from the films with a message at the bottom stating that one of the actors is the father of a secret love child.
Apparently people were certain that out of all of them, the child was most likely to be Tom Felton's (Drayco Malfoy). Rupert, Daniel, Jason, and Allan are yet to respond to the accusations but the twins Oliver and James Phelps have already denied it, as has Felton (along side his girlfriend)

In my opinion, this accusation is not true and the message looks like it could just be a prank or an attempted publicity stunt. Also I don't see it to be fair that the message was accusing one of seven of the co-stars but the tabloids decided to pick Tom Felton to exploit.

IRB Blog Post 1- CNN: South Korea deploys more long-range artillery on border island

The article is about how South Korea has recently deployed more artillery and rocket launchers. The South Korean president has said that South Korea will "firmly" respond to any more threats from North Korea and has said that his country will no longer be patient with the hostility from Pyongyang. The article discusses the emergency meeting that was called for the six major powers to meet and discuss the Korean peninsula. The six major powers include the United States, Japan, Russia, China, South Korea, and North Korea.

After reading this article I came to be aware of the six-party but am still somewhat confused of their significance. McCain says that the whole point is to get North Korea to the table, but if North Korea is party of the party how can they meet without all six powers present? Wouldn't that cause the results of the meeting to be biased?

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/11/26/china.north.korea.ties/index.html
this is an article about china's attempted support of North Korea being grounded due to many many years on conflict. It mentions how China has always had a conflicting relationship with South Korea and how China does not want to lose North Korea as a buffer zone.

IRB Websites

Entertainment: http://www.usmagazine.com/news

books/arts: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/features/books/bookreviews/index.html

current events/politics: http://www.cnn.com/

Online Reading..11/15

unlike many people my age today, i do not really read that much online. although i am always on the internet and my laptop is always on, i do not like to read from the computer. Mostly this is because reading the small font from the screen for so long makes my eyes and head hurt.
when i am online though, i always have facebook, gmail, sapphire, moodle and youtube.com open.
occastionally i read cnn, msn or aol news