We are in that part of the semester where we could use some levity. The past week has been hard for many of us, but rather than get stressed out, I thought I would share some of my favorite creative blogs that never fail to make me think and smile. Consider this my list of "Blogs to Survive By." (And by all means, add your own!)

Garfield minus Garfield

This blog is genius. By carefully cropping Garfield out of each of Jim Davis' comic strips, we are left with "the existential angst of a certain young Mr. Jon Arbuckle. It is a journey deep into the mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness and depression in a quiet American suburb."

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This week's blog heroes, consider virtual worlds

• Morgan Ames, over at Accretions, shares her recent experience at Burning Man and considers the similarities to Second Life: 

  "I was thinking about the interviews I did last spring on Second Life and on my research interests in the role of fantasy worlds in our lives more generally.

Writing a thesis on a topic like "Open Culture" is a risky proposition. At best, it's a cloudy term, subject to misinterpretation and demanding a precise explanation. Since my primary interest is in open source software, I could have written a narrower thesis on copyright vs. copyleft. I certainly considered it.  Read More »

(Cross-posted on my fellowship blog - How International Values Shape Communications Technologies)  Read More »