Alt Wire  is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Reanimation Library founder Andrew Beccone.

Made in Chicago: The Chicago Underground Library is one of my favorites of a new crop of DIY libraries springing up around the country. The CUL's primary collection development requirement is that every item it acquires needs to have been published in Chicago, and within that directive it seems that almost anything goes. When I visited the library last summer, its founder, Nell Taylor, showed me photocopied gutterpunk zines, handcrafted poetry chapbooks, and a 10-year run of the quarterly newsletter of Adlerian Psychology Associates, Individual Psychology Reporter. In a recent email, Taylor helpfully noted that that last item "begins very dry and straightforward, but later ones branch out to include poetry, quotes, cartoons, and extended back and forth arguments between readers. Topics cover the applications of Adlerian Psychology, the French Revolution, Chomsky, and paintings of geese."

Art is Cheaper in a Book: Printed Matter may be one of the coolest bookstores on the planet. It was founded in Manhattan in 1976 by a group of artists and artworkers (including Sol Lewitt, Lucy Lippard and Carl Andre) who embraced publishing as a way to produce and disseminate artwork on the cheap. A central part of their mission is to promote publications made by artists, and to that end they debuted the Research Room in 2007. Geared towards scholarly study, the Research Room features a searchable database of 10,000 titles, critical essays, and curated lists of artists' publications.

Pickle Surprise!: Sometimes I think that YouTube should be banned from social gatherings because it leads people from talking to watching, but had my friends Chris and Paul observed that ban at a party at their apartment I would have missed out on this. Thank you Tom Rubnitz, and R.I.P.

Anitomically Morbid: Joanna Ebenstein runs the rigorously researched and regularly updated blog Morbid Anatomy. Its tag line is "surveying the interstices of art and medicine, death and culture." Prepare to be overwhelmed by a feast of arcane medical imagery; Morbid Anatomy is probably the single greatest resource for images of anatomical models on the web. If you like Philadelphia's Mütter Museum, you'll love Ebenstein's blog. Here in New York Ebenstein has made her personal collection of books available to the public in the form of the Morbid Anatomy Library and is collaborating with a handful of likeminded individuals on the recently opened event space, Observatory.

Gargantuan Playground of Obscure Things: UbuWeb bills itself as "a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts." That hardly prepares you for the site's gargantuan playground of obscure texts, videos, and sound recordings. With it's donated server space, volunteer labor, and commitment to a gift economy, UbuWeb is as close to an online utopia as I've ever come across. Amidst all the concrete poetry and conceptual art, it's hard to point to a favorite, but I was completely caught off guard by a, um, Joseph Beuys music video for his 1982 protest pop song, Sonne Statt Reagan. The web being the web, it turns out you can find this on YouTube too, but there's something about watching it in the quasi-scholarly context of Ubu that makes it that much more bizarre.

Please Take Me to Los Angeles: Nothing has made me want to decamp to the West Coast more than Machine Project in Los Angeles. Housed in an empty storefront in Echo Park, Machine Project apparently has access to a magical elixir that ensures a limitless supply of brilliant ideas. They take advantage of their flexible space by doing pretty much anything that they want. Why not create an indoor forest, or drill holes in the floor to make a secret basement gallery, or host a pie theory lecture + practicum? Last November, the people of Machine Project took over the LA County Museum of Art for a day, an event which included, among many other notable projects, a guitarist performing one minute of speed metal in a replica of the Doorway with Arms of the Count of Chazay at the top of each hour.

Geostationary Banana Over Texas: I gather that it's not quite shovel ready, but good lord—can somebody please launch this giant banana into the sky?

Bio: Andrew Beccone is the founder and director of the Reanimation Library in Brooklyn, NY. He also makes music and works as the Librarian at a contemporary art gallery. The Reanimation Library can be followed on Twitter @reanimationlib.

Alt Wire   is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Eyeteeth and Minnesota Independent editor Paul Schmelzer.

Seed bombs: We've all heard of seed bombs—clumps of seed-embedded earth tossed into abandoned lots by guerrilla gardeners—but here are two new takes. Korean artist Jin-wook Hwang imagines actual cluster bombs that disperse seeds in the air to combat desertification (via Another Limited Rebellion), likening the action to that of Gale "Candy Bomber" Halvorson, an American World War II pilot who dropped candy from his plane for the children of Berlin. Japanese-born Hiroshi Sunairi, an NYU art professor, is sharing hibaku seeds—literally, "A-bombed seeds," ancestors of those affected by the bombing of Hiroshima—for people around the world to plant and tend. The persimmons, Japanese holly, jujubes and other varieties have been sprouting in places as far flung as London, Geneva, New York, Holland (Mich.), Joetsu City (Japan) and Minneapolis—where I'm tending my persimmon. The project's documentation will be exhibited at the New York Horticultural Society this December.

The Visual News: Two of my favorite sites for considering the visual aspects of the news are Michael Shaw's BAGnewsNotes and No Caption Needed, by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites. The former recently republished an MSNBC photo entitled, "Last-second Escape"—which shows a U.S. Marine diving to avoid an explosion in Afghanistan—noting that the headline misleads: while one escaped, two other Americans were killed by the IED. Shaw calls it "an example of the disconnect between these wars we keep getting ourselves into and the all-too-familiar tendency to deny or romanticize." The latter has recently looked into news imagery of fallen soldiers returning to their home countries, finding that too often this somber ritual reflects a "radical isolation."

Street screeds (and other free-culture gems): UBUWEB is a wonderful trove of cultural resources, from the just-posted 1983 video, "Martha Rosler Reads Vogue" (in which she deconstructs messages in the ads and content of the fashion magazine), Craig Baldwin's film-collage Sonic Outlaws (a must-see for culturejammers, DJs and copyleft activists), and an incredible gallery of NYC street flyers—hand-made posters that range in theme from the political to the philosophical (here's one by a woman who thanks supporters for helping her win the U.S presidency three times—in 1973-1/2, 1976-1/2 and 1999-1/2.)

Pity the Nation: While it feels like a Bush-era remnant, Staceyann Chin's reading of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's poem Pity the Nation—with its reference to a "nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves"—never fails to give me chills, and should serve as a reminder to stay vigilant.

Mashups for peace: If Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" can peacefully (and rhythmically) coexist with Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (thanks to DJ Morgoth), can't we all? Here are two more new lion-and-lamb mash-ups: Yes-meets-Sir Mix-a-Lot in "Owner of a Lonely Butt" by Minneapolis artist Richard Barlow. And Jay-Z meets Thom Yorke in New York DJ Max Tannone's Jaydiohead: The Encore.

Bio: Minneapolis-based writer and editor Paul Schmelzer blogs about art and activism at Eyeteeth: A Journal of Incisive Ideas; by day he is editor of the Minnesota Independent. He recently moderated Designing Obama, a panel hosted by the Walker Art Center.

 Alt Wire  is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Believer editor Andrew Leland.

I first used an internet search engine around 1994, when as a 13-year-old I had a dial-up Internet connection and my own home page, "Uncle Andy's Giggle Shack," which featured SNL- and Simpsons-derived jokes, done up in rudimentary HTML. This was pre-Google, of course, but once I'd gotten the hang of using Webcrawler or Lycos or whatever engine I was using, I began performing what I immediately recognized were impressionistic internet searches. This is to say: rather than searching for relatively utilitarian subjects such as "Tutankhamun," or "Matt Groening biography," I'd feed the Internet strings like "feast of sadness, whispered pumice vampire, jiggles milk" or whatever shards of language I happened to be "feeling" at the time (and as a 13-year-old, as now, these emotional, surrealistic phrases regularly surf into my consciousness—usually on a board carved from hormones).

And then I'd delight in seeing what the rowdy, teeming, brand-new World Wide Web could spit back. (In this sense, the experience resembled a psychedelic, doors-blown-off version of chatting with Eliza, the early "interactive" Freudian psychoanalysis bot.) Most of the hits my impressionistic searches returned would be pages, usually hosted by computer science departments at large research universities, that simply listed (for some arcane database-related reason) every word in Webster's. These pages were interesting enough (at least knowing they existed, and wondering why), but if I refined my search a little, down to just, say, "feast of sadness, whispered pumice," then real strange treasures would wash ashore. These usually came in the form of fan fiction (I recently discovered, for example, the wealth of online erotic fan fiction devoted to Xena: Warrior Princess), full texts of inscrutable books, and heated discussion boards for topics I'd never otherwise have the pleasure of running across—places where text accumulates in eccentric formations.

Bio: Andrew Leland is the managing editor of The Believer and founding editor of Uncle Andy's Giggle Shack, which we would link to if we could.

Alt Wire is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Noemi Martinez of the zine and blog Hermana, Resist and of the organization Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Justice Collective.

Maegan "Mamita Mala" Ortiz pointed me in the direction of The Sanctuary, Building Bridges & Breaking Down Walls. Anyone interested or working in/with immigration, (im)migrant rights and civil rights should be turned on to this. 100% pro-migrant, my kind of place. 

Vivir Latino keeps me grounded on what's going on in the land of Latino politics and entertainment, often with that tongue-in-cheek attitude I love.

In zine talk, I'm very excited about Alex Wrekk's second edition of Stolen Sharpie Revolution, and must soon get this in my grubby hands. I'd already been doing zines when it came out years ago, but the sheer wealth of info contained, makes me, well, giddy. When I was tabling with my "traveling zine library" of a couple of hundred zines packed into suitcases, I told zine newbies that Stolen Sharpie Revolution was *the* zine bible.  Alex makes buttons, with that small distro feeling we all love and miss.

I'm in between rented houses, as usual, and half my things are packed including books, posters and suitcases full of zines. But I get by on easily digestible but thought provoking zines with copious amounts of radical love from brokenbeautiful press, Nadia, letter writing, and Raven's Eye (whose posts remind me of radical love that doesn't make it into books).

Bio: Noemi Martinez describes herself as "a Chicana/Boriqua writer & activist spiller of truths and secrets living in the militarized borderland of deep South Texas." She writes the zine Hermana, Resist and blogs at hermanaresist.com.  She's a member of the Speak! Radical Women of Color Media Justice Collective. Being vegan in the land of cabrito and fajitas was not challenging enough, so she organizes Mujerfest, Homenaje a Nuestras Muertas, and Valley Voices against Violence. She's also a "single mami to two kick ass future alternative media makers." You can also find her work on Twitter at @5secondpoems 

Alt Wire is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is RUMINATE editor-in-chief Brianna Van Dyke.

Sand in the Gears: Tony Woodlief's blog is one of the few I blogs I regularly check—aside from my sister's (she lives in Tacoma and I miss her). I am always antsy for the next post from Tony, which could be a sermon or a rant on the misuse of the word "literally" or even fatherly advice intended to rescue his son "from a lifetime of involuntary virginity." Very useful stuff.

Anything and everything: Arts and faith is one of my favorite forums on anything and everything related to the arts (music, film, visual art, literature) and faith.

Behind the curtain: I could spend hours poring over all the publishing market statistics compiled by the editor's of Duotrope's Digest (and they update daily!). With their stats on acceptance and rejection rates, response times, and pay scales, it feels like peeking behind the curtain of the literary magazine world. I also get a kick out of checking the stats on "The Slothful," a list of the publishers with the slowest average response times. The current publisher at the top of the list averages 340 days to respond to a writer...Yikes! 

Finding Traction: I consider myself a connoisseur of editor's notes—they're such fun and quirky little things—and the editor of Agni, Sven Birketts, writes some of my favorites. I especially enjoyed his refreshingly honest note on editing and aesthetics entitled "Finding Traction."

Writer's Block: I recently attended a gallery opening for photographer Cole Thompson's The Ghosts of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Cole is a great artist and completely devoted to the art of black and white photography. I visit his site for inspiration—and it seems to be especially helpful for writer's block. Another helpful muse is Ausie rocker Xavier Rudd.

Bio: is the founder and editor-in-chief of RUMINATE, a literary and arts magazine that engages the Christian faith. Along with the rest of the RUMINATE crew, she contributes to the  editor's blog and also enjoys writing the occasional editor's note.

Alt Wire is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Broken Pencil editor Lindsay Gibb.

I started making zines when I was 15 and I stapled my last page when I was 21. A short run by comparison to other zine-makers who, when one zine is played out, start up a new title, and who foresee no end to the zine as their means of creative output. And while I read new zines on a daily basis, I recently when stumbled upon Teri Vlassopoulos’s blog and was brought back  to the days when I used to make my own. Vlassopoulos was the creator of Melt the Snow. It was one of my favorite zines in the ‘90s, and she uses her blog to talk about zine history, Canadian lit mags and books she’s recently dug into. She also writes about zinemaking in Shameless magazine’s new anthology She’s Shameless which is due out at the end of June.  

When I’m not reading or writing about zines I’m usually knitting. I’m relatively new to knitting—only 5 years in the game—but the obsession swelled quickly in me. Some of the best social networking sites I’ve found for knitters include Ravelry—where you can share patterns, organize your projects using the sites cataloguing tools and show your latest creations to other users and Men Who Knit—where male knitters can create profiles and blog about their projects. Church of Craft is, of course, a great example of a way to not only connect knitters and other crafters online, but also to lure them off the web and into workshops, craft retreats and stitch and bitch nights in various cities. And whether you care about knitting or not, Thread Banger's recent "DIY Roundup" of the funniest knitting patterns on the net is definitely worth a look.

Since I write about documentary filmmaking on the side, and I’m a David Lynch fan, those two things combined have me interested in Lynch’s Interview Project, in which takes a trip across America to meet regular folks and talk to them about their lives. As Lynch says “it’s something that’s human and you can’t stay away from it.”

I wanted to give an honorable mention to the sites I frequent when I really don’t want to be productive for a half hour: Fuck You Penguin, CakeWrecks and Totally Looks Like.

Bio: Lindsay Gibb is the editor of Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. She is based in Toronto where she is also a staff writer for Realscreen, a trade magazine for documentary filmmakers, and an associate editor and co-founder of Spacing magazine, which examines Toronto’s urban landscape. Watch for Can’tLit: Fearless Fiction from Broken Pencil, to be published by ECW Press in Fall 2009.

Alt Wire is a digest of spoon-fed inspiration curated by our favorite editors, journalists, artists, and visionaries. Today's guest is Dollars & Sense editor Chris Sturr.

What is “popular economics”? Here are two things it is not:

It’s not the economics that’s popular with most professional economists or econ profs, or among most politicians and policy-makers (yes, including Obama) who rely on the kind of mainstream, pro-free-market economics that not only failed to predict the current financial crisis, but laid the groundwork for it.

And “popular economics” definitely doesn’t refer to popular media coverage of the economy—the business press or personal finance advisors, which either promote “elevator economics” (“the Dow is up!” “the Dow is down!”) or train people to think that their fortune in the economy is entirely an individual matter.

Popular economics is economics education for and by the people, aimed at inspiring action. We all live in the economy, right? So we all know about the economy, and can teach each other about it. And what we would teach each other about the current economic crisis is a far cry from MSNBC, Fox News, or even public radio’s Marketplace. For one thing, we’d tell each other that we’re all in this together, and we’re not going to defeat the people who got us into this by paying attention to the Dow, investing in the right mutual fund, or clipping coupons. We need to organize!

Here’s how:

Workshops: Veteran Boston-area organizer Mike Prokosh has been working with Jobs with Justice in Massachusetts to put together an Economic Crisis Workshop. Steve Schnapp and others at United for a Fair Economy have put one together called Bankers, Brokers, Bubbles, and Bailouts.

Comic Books and Mutual Aid: Comic books are another great vehicle for pop-econ organizing. Chuck Collins of United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies worked with long-time Dollars & Sense cartoonist Nick Thorkelson to put together the comic book Economic Meltdown Funnies. Chuck has also been spreading the word that we’re all in this together through Common Security Clubs.

Prison Crisis: Before the financial crisis, the 2.2 million people in prison or jail and the 6+ million more on probation or parole—plus their families and communities—were coping with the prison crisis. Lois Ahrens of the Real Cost of Prisons Project provides resources—including terrific comic books—to activists and organizers that help explain the impact of mass incarceration. (For more great resources on the prison crisis, check out the Prison Policy Initiative and Prisoners of the Census.)

Summer and Solidarity: The Center for Popular Economics has been running a Summer Institute for years. This year’s will focus on “solidarity economics” as a response to the economic crisis. (Also check out the newly formed U.S. Solidarity Economy Network.) The organization also provides online courses.

Fighting foreclosures: People are protesting around the world, but there’s been little outcry in the United States (tea-baggers notwithstanding). One big exception is City Life/Vida Urbana in Boston. They are standing up to the banks and helping owners and renters forestall foreclosure. Their innovative organizing was featured recently on Bill Moyers.

Toxic Textbooks: How did all those mainstream economists learn to be rigid free-marketeers? It started in the classroom. There’s a growing movement to reverse the right-wing takeover in economics education, including Real-World Economics Review’s Toxic Textbooks campaign and Adbusters’ True Cost Economics campaign. (Dollars &Sense had been covering bias in econ education for years.)

Bio: Chris Sturr is co-editor of Dollars & Sense, which has been providing left economic analysis in plain English for 35 years. Dollars & Sense also publishes (non-toxic!) textbooks. Check out the D&S blog and coverage of the financial crisis.

Welcome to the brand new Alt Wire blog. Never heard of Alt Wire? We launched this guest contributor series in early 2009 and loved the project so much we wanted it to be its own blog. You will love Alt Wire, we promise.

Here's how it works: we recruit our favorite magazine editors, bloggers, journalists, writers, and artists to assemble a list of at least five things that inspire them in the wide world of the webernet.

Subscribe to the Alt Wire RSS feed for spoon-fed inspiration. Or follow us on Twitter.

To get you started, here are 10 choice links culled from previous Alt Wire posts:

Fatemeh Fakhraie  (editor, Muslimah Media Watch): "The Muslim Sex Shop website takes a 'halal' approach to sex in the life of a Muslim, discussing issues frankly but humorously in the form of poetry, guest fiction, and cheeky merchandise."

Davy Rothbart  (editor, Found): "Creep, Kansas City is one of the most raw, sad and beautiful videos I can imagine, and I don't think a filmmaker could craft something quite this rich and pure. This girl has a ton of other similar, strangely affecting videos. This video, to me, represents the magic of the found bits available on YouTube "

Jason Marsh  (editor, Greater Good): "Researchers at Project Implicit have created a series of fascinating tests that help you detect your unconscious biases (along the lines of race, religion, sexual orientation, and much more). They’ve found, for example, that most Americans have an automatic, unconscious bias for white faces over black ones. Do you?"

Phil Yu  (blogger, Angry Asian Man): "Jen Wang and Diana Nguyen are the smart and sassy ladies behind Disgrasian, an ingenious, hilarious spin on the Asian American issues blog. Taking on politics, pop culture and current events with thoughtful wit and a healthy dose of snark, they often say the things I can never quite muster up the courage to say myself. And they're damn funny."

Jessica Valenti   (blogger, Feministing ): "Whipping Girl is one of the most important feminist books to come out in years.  The author, Julia Serano, is just brilliant and writes about gender, trans women and femininity in a way that not only educates, but inspires.  I wish everyone would read this."

Will Braun  (editor, Geez): "California artist Mark Bryan sees tanks in the shape of churches and steeples built of missiles."

Rinku Sen  (editor, ColorLines): "I always need the 'black bourgeoisie perspective on politics' of Jack and Jill Politics."

Dan Sinker  (journalism professor and founding-editor of Punk Planet): "While newspapers in the U.S. struggle to find footing in the great digital reboot, it's exciting to see groups like Ushahidi emerge where nothing existed before using suddenly ubiquitious technologies. Originally started to report on rioting following elections in Kenya in 2008, Ushahidi is now a system for distributing reporting using cellphones with basic SMS text functionality."

Matt Novak  (blogger, Paleo-Future): "After discovering the Prelinger Archives in college I spent about 3 sleepless months downloading and watching an amazing collection of old industrial and ephemeral films. You've been warned."

William Patrick Tandy  (beloved Baltimore zine maker): "The Johnny Eck Museum celebrates Baltimore native son Johnny Eck, who made a name for himself early in life through appearances on the sideshow circuit and, most notably, in director Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Freaks.  In later years, Eck became a renowned painter of window screens, a common practice in his East Baltimore neighborhood since the early 1900s."

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger most weekdays. Today's guest is William Patrick Tandy, creator and editor of Smile, Hon, You're in Baltimore! (a Best Zine nominee for the 2009 Utne Independent Press Awards ).  We asked him for five links and here's what he came up with. 

Baltimore has never done a particularly good job marketing itself.  The Powers That Be in the nation’s 20^th largest metropolitan area strive for that “big city” recognition among out-of-towners who are otherwise abandoned to negotiate for themselves the gap between John Waters and David Simon – each of whom, like the world’s religions, might possess kernels of the truth, though never its entirety.  The following subjects – lesser known beyond the city limits – are a mere sampling of the scuffed heritage and earthy character that still captivate me, a Jersey boy, nearly 10 years after my arrival…

A. Aubrey Bodine: From 1920 until his death in 1970, legendary Baltimore Sun photographer A. Aubrey Bodine documented life in Baltimore and across Maryland in the pictorialist style while simultaneously exhibiting his work and winning competitions the world over.  Today, Bodine’s daughter, Jennifer, maintains an extensive, ever-growing online database of his work, offering reproductions for sale.

The Johnny Eck Museum: Billed as the “Half-Man”, Baltimore native son Johnny Eck made a name for himself early in life through appearances on the sideshow circuit and, most notably, in director Tod Browning’s 1931 classic Freaks.  In later years, Eck became a renowned painter of window screens, a common practice in his East Baltimore neighborhood since the early 1900s.

Baltimore John Watch: Outraged by the area’s illicit sex trade (and attendant criminal activity), a handful of bold (and tech-savvy) residents of Baltimore’s Pigtown neighborhood launched Baltimore John Watch in 2008.  Contributors document the often brazen activities (which frequently go down – no pun intended – within feet of the elementary school, during school hours), going so far as to post photographs of the perpetrators, their vehicles and plate numbers.

Killduffs.com: Curator Thomas Paul maintains this online repository devoted primarily to collecting the histories and images of old movie houses in Baltimore and across Maryland, most of which have been razed, long ago converted for alternative use or simply left to rot.  Paul’s brother, Adam, operates the equally engrossing Baltimore Ghosts: Unsung Monuments of the Monumental City, which delves even further into such esoteric history as streetcars, advertising, railroad lines, streetlights and more.

Baltimore Crime Beat: In his nearly 20 years with The Baltimore Sun, veteran crime reporter Peter Hermann has run the journalistic gamut from covering the city’s police department to serving as the Sun’s Middle East correspondent.  At a time when the Fourth Estate more closely resembles the House of Usher, Hermann’s knowing which questions to ask (and of whom) as well as his insight and good old-fashioned legwork render this daily blog an indispensable portal into the city’s criminal element, its victims and the men and women of law enforcement who stand between them.

Guns and Potato Chips: Former bounty hunter Michael Papantonakis stands accused of selling guns over the counter at the Utz potato chip stall where he has worked since his old man bought the place 39 years ago.  “I love the Utz stand down there!” a friend of mine (and former employee in the Mayor’s Office) said in disbelief when I brought the story to her attention.  “Indeed,” I replied, “and according to the charging documents, so do the Bloods, the Crips and the Angels.”  Smile, hon, you’re in Baltimore!

Bio: William Patrick Tandy began publishing Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! under his Eight-Stone Press imprint shortly after fleeing the Garden State for less-oppressive climes in 2000.  From the harbor to the hills, the submission-based Smile, Hon collects the tales of those on whom Mobtown has left her indelible mark: polished, professional essays; barroom sermons delivered from the sanctity of a favorite stool, the poet’s fleeting sentiment captured in both word and snapshot – a slice of Baltimore as told by Baltimore, all presented with the time-honored, DIY accessibility of a limited-run, handcrafted zine.  Learn more at http://www.eightstonepress.com.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Alycia Sellie, Davy Rothbart, Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Image by Davida Gypsy Breier.

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Davy Rothbart, creator and editor of Found magazine and frequent contributor to This American Life. We asked him for five links and he came up with 13. No complaints. 

These days I spend about 87 hours a day on YouTube, usually hopping from found snippets (someone blowing out the candles at their birthday party or singing sadly alone in a car) to 80's rap videos (Nice & Smooth; EPMD) to the kind of classic sports moments that set my nostalgiac streak a-tremblin' (think Elvis Grbac's touchdown pass to Desmond Howard). Whatever emotional buttons you want to press on yourself, with YouTube you're only a couple of clicks away. (I've been having trouble, though, locating a clip of Jeff Van Gundy hanging on for dear life to Alonzo Mourning's leg—any leads appreciated.)

I can still remember my first visit to YouTube way back in 2007: A friend had sent me a link to Stephen Colbert roasting President Bush at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. It was love at first sight—not with Colbert, but with YouTube. Here are five favorites from my favorite web planet:

Creep, Kansas City: This video, to me, represents the magic of the found bits available on YouTube. This is one of the most raw, sad and beautiful videos I can imagine, and I don't think a filmmaker could craft something quite this rich and pure. This girl has a ton of other similar, strangely affecting videos.

Wet Pets: As a longtime fan of local cable commercials, I've seen some dandies (Puffer Reds, anyone?) but this one outshines them all.

V. Count Macula's "Smooth Wizardz": When people ask me what it's like to live in Michigan, I share with them this visionary song and video from Detroit's next legend, V. Count Macula. The best shot's gotta be of Shark wielding the nunchucks while he's on his cellie.

Bakopoulos/Okopski Holiday Card 2008: Novelist/professional bad-ass Dean Bakopoulos sent over my favorite holiday card of 2008.

Baron Davis, It's Time to Come Home: How could B.D. not have been swayed?

Frosting: Another found snippet, this one of a happy family; oddly, I recognize my brother Peter's Poem Adept CD playing in the background. "YouTube, where are you now?"

Gasoline Addiction: Speaking of Peter, when he first moved to Seattle, he was offered lead guitar in this band; apparently, they often play shows on the motocross circuit. I'll never forgive him for turning the opportunity down.

Bio: Davy Rothbart is the creator and editor of Found magazine, a frequent contributor to public radio's This American Life, and author of the story collection "The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas." He's also the subject of an upcoming documentary film, My Heart Is An Idiot. Davy and Peter Rothbart are about to hit the road on a 57-city FOUND Tour; please check local listings.  

EDITOR'S NOTE: We couldn't resist turning Rothbart's post into a YouTube playlist. Here are his picks, make it a lunch-at-your-desk date:

Previous Alt Wire Guests:   Roger White, Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak, Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Roger White, co-editor of the contemporary art journal Paper Monument. We asked him for five links and here's what he came up with:

Mystical, Creative Acts: Collaborative poetry duo Jon Cotner and Andy Fitch recently guest-edited an issue of the online poetics journal Interval(le)s, centered on the idea of transcription. It’s a wonderful, formidable document—and only possible on the internet. The mammoth project contains thousands of PDF-ed pages of transcription-based prose and poetry (and a little bit of art), and none of it—from Kenneth Goldsmith’s Celexa® (citalopram hydrobromide) Tablets/Oral Solution (20 pages of drug warnings and pharmaceutical legalese) to Eileen Myles’s Myles/Driving (a notation of words and phrases uttered by the author while driving alone in Los Angeles)—is going to make Oprah’s Book Club any time soon. But the reward for investing your time with these often-demanding texts is this: paying attention to people who pay attention to speaking and writing makes you pay more attention to speaking and writing yourself. After perusing Cotner and Fitch’s journal, everything from sending a text message to ordering a sandwich will seem like a mystical, creative act.

The Myth of Artist Privilege: Working Artists and the Greater Economy (W.A.G.E.) is a recently-formed arts activist organization created to bring attention to—and transform—some lousy economic practices on the part of contemporary art institutions in particular, and the situation of art workers in general: people on whom a multimillion dollar industry is based, and who often never see any actual financial returns from it.  You may ask: do artists have it so rough? Well, no more or less rough than other labor forces in the United States without job security, health care, a union, or political visibility. W.A.G.E. is interesting both in its campaign to dismantle the myth of the artist as a privileged fauxhemian, and in the fact that its constituency is looking less like an exotic subculture and more like a possibly very accurate representation of tomorrow’s American workforce. 

Volunteer Critical Sleuthing: There are always more good paintings being made than there are places to see them. As the contemporary art market contracts and galleries go out of business, art blogs are going to become even more important simply as exhibition venues. And while looking at a painting as a JPEG is even worse than listening to a record as an MP3, these are desperate times and I’ll take what I can get. Two New York painting-centric blogs, Anaba and The Old Gold, are consistently surprising and accessible documents of the medium and its practitioners. Both are highly idiosyncratic, interspersing things you’ll probably see in commercial galleries with things you’ll probably never see anywhere else. Martin Bromirski and Jon Lutz, respectively, do a tremendous amount of volunteer critical sleuthing, sometimes tracking under-known artists for years in a valiant attempt to patch the gaps in the ongoing history of painting.

Unusual Phobias: Trying to find a word for “the fear of everything,” I came across Unusual Phobias, a decidedly non-professional but meticulous survey of the world of irrational dreads. Based on user-submitted accounts of personal, “not-psychologically recognized” phobias, the site indexes a host of bogies ranging from banal objects—crickets, rice puddings, and necklace jewelry clasps—to improbable situations—gravity reversing itself, waking up during surgery, or becoming a ghost. While there’s a certain amount of one-upsmanship in the confessional accounts posted, and some of them are blatant piss-takes (fear of Thousand Island dressing?), the site does confirm an unnerving truth: no matter what it is, someone, somewhere, is afraid of it.

The Indexer: The good thing about the internet is all the information. That’s also the bad thing, as it turns out, and historians of the future will look back on our era and shudder at the crimes against information science perpetuated every day on the web. Luckily, the Society of Indexers has been working since 1953 to promote clarity and rigor in this field, and they’re not stopping, not even when print is completely dead. The Indexer, their semi-annual journal, is online and picking up the gauntlet thrown down to informatics by the eventual digitization of all printed matter. The Indexer couldn’t be more out of step with the laissez-faire spirit of digital information economies, and that’s a good thing: somebody needs to regulate all this data. Articles on the indexing of Chinese personal names, creating searchable databases for digitized films, and the perennial problem of the word The in indexing the titles of works of art, all speak to a drive for order which will keep pace with the challenges of the future. 

Bio: Roger White is a painter and co-editor of the contemporary art journal Paper Monument. He exhibits his work at the Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:  Dan Sinker, Phil Yu, Matt Novak, Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Dan Sinker, journalism professor and founding editor of Punk Planet magazine. We asked him for five links and here's what he came up with:

"All around the world I've been looking for new..." so sings the Jam's Paul Weller. It's a good song, and a good philosophy for exploring the web as well: Look for new things, and look for them globally. To me, while there's a lot of great stuff happening on the web locally, stretch outside the States and you suddenly unlock the door to the incredible.

Ushahidi: While newspapers in the U.S. struggle to find footing in the great digital reboot, it's exciting to see groups like Ushahidi emerge where nothing existed before using suddenly ubiquitious technologies. Originally started to report on rioting following elections in Kenya in 2008, Ushahidi is now a system for distributing reporting using cellphones with basic SMS text functionality.

Bonus link: I think that mobile technology is where all the action is at, in terms of true leveling of the information space around the globe (there are, after all 4 billion active cell phones around the world now). Peruse MobileActive.org for more exciting innovation in the global mobile space.

Abandoned Japanese Theme Parks : I can't even begin to tell you anything about this project other than the fact that I've known about it for three years and I keep coming back to it time and again. The images are so haunting and strange, I think they will probably stay with you too.

Bonus link: Dig far enough into the collection to find the surreal image of an abandoned Gulliver, still tied up by Lilliputians who long left him for dead. When I am at my absolute worst, I dream of that image. 

The music mashups of Kutiman: This Israeli musician takes snippets of YouTube videos and creates whole orchestras of new sound. I'm going to let a good friend, Kevin Duneman, take the heavy lifting on contextualizing this for you: "It's the art of it that gets me. To be able to tune in so thoroughly and pay that close attention to his source material, that is a seriously classical approach. It makes me think about the near impossibility of having another true master painter, a Rembrandt. This is that, but for now." Exactly right, Kevin. My only addition: On the above embedded video, the last movement of the song, which begins at 4:36, makes me cry every time I hear it--if it doesn't do the same to you, you'd better check that your heart is still beating.

Bonus link: This essay about Kutiman, by Merlin Mann, is simply badass.

Cameras for Kibera: An inspiring, short webdoc about a Dutch endeavor that puts video cameras into the hands of young people living in the Kibera slum in Nairobi Kenya. A good reminder of how transformative technologies we take for granted can be when placed into the right hands and the right contexts.

Added bonus: Rocketboom, the site that this video originates from, is worth a daily visit for sure.

Projeto Secreto: Brazillian journalist Denis Burgierman returned from a year in the States and set out on the road, in a tiny car, to document the growing DIY youth culture of Brazil. The goal is to create a new kind of magazine for this new generation of mediamakers (those who have grown up free from the shadow of dictatorship and open to the possibilities of a digital revolution). Entirely written in Portuguese (so brush up, or install Ubiquity--detailed below), this blog offers a unique look into a unique time in a unique land.

Bonus link:The final magazine concept as presented in this Flickr set makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Bonus bonus link: Ubiquity, translation made easy. The Mozilla Foundation has a project called Ubiquity that's a little confusing to explain in full (go to their site for the full explanation though, like me, you may still be confused), but it's a tool that I use for a single purpose: translating text from web pages in place. Once you've installed Ubiquity into your Firefox browser, you can simply select text, right click (or, on a Mac control-click) on it and a contextual menu will open up that allows you to choose, simply Translate, and Ubiquity will do the heavy lifting of figuring out what language it is, translating the text, and--to me this is the best part--placing the newly translated text back into position on the very website you're looking at. The first few times you use it, it's like magic.

BIO: Dan Sinker teaches in the journalism department at Columbia College Chicago where he focuses on entrepreneurial journalism and the mobile web. He was the founding editor of the influential underground culture magazine Punk Planet until its closure in 2007 and is the editor of We Owe You Nothing: Punk Planet, The Collected Interviews. He blogs about media for the Huffington Post and makes videos about DIY businesses at the website hangingbyashoestring.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Phil Yu, Matt Novak, Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Phil Yu of Angry Asian Man. We asked him for five links and here's what happened:

Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives: An extensive, comprehensive online collection preserving the photographs, letters, art and oral histories of the Japanese American internment experience.  Fascinating, beautiful, and sometimes haunting, it's an invaluable resource for the kind of American stories I never got to read about in my high school history textbook.

A Song For Ourselves: DJ Phatrick's companion mixtape to Tad Nakamura's short documentary 'A Song For Ourselves.' The film is a tribute to the life and legacy of revolutionary folk singer Chris Iijima, an early titan in the Asian American activist movement.  Blending Iijima's songs with the music of conscious hip hop statesmen Blue Scholars and Native Guns, the mixtape drops a serious soundtrack for a new generation of APA activists.

I Know Where Bruce Lee Lives: I can't really explain this, except that this "Ultraineractive KungFu Remixer" takes my favorite cinematic icon and lets you mash up music, sound effects and flashy graphics to make your own little visual/aural Bruce Lee symphony.  I came across it years ago, and it still provides ridiculous loads of fun.

Disgrasian:Jen Wang and Diana Nguyen are the smart and sassy ladies behind this ingenious, hilarious spin on the Asian American issues blog.  Taking on politics, pop culture and current events with thoughtful wit and a healthy dose of snark, they often say the things I can never quite muster up the courage to say myself. And they're damn funny.

Secret Identities: The first ever Asian American superhero comic book anthology, due out this month from The New Press.  Co-editors Keith Chow, Jerry Ma, Parry Shen and Jeff Yang have assembled stories from an impressive array of the comic book industry's Asian American talent. These are the superhero stories I always wanted to read as a kid.  Instead, I was stuck with the stereotypical Samurai from the old "Superfriends" cartoon.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Matt Novak,  Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Matt Novak of Paleo-Future. We asked him for five links. He sent us the best online archivists you may not know (want more paleo-future goodness? Listen to our Utnecast interview with Matt).

Charlie Shopsin has cornered the market on 20th century popular science magazines. If you're looking for inspiration from pure American ingenuity, look no further than the Modern Mechanix blog.

While the name of this blog has never made sense to me, the collection of amateur photos from '50s and '60s tourists to American theme parks on Gorillas Don't Blog is pretty interesting to peruse.

The Animation Archive collects comic books, single-panel cartoons and animated films from all eras of illustrated history.

After discovering the Prelinger Archives in college I spent about 3 sleepless months downloading and watching an amazing collection of old industrial and ephemeral films. You've been warned.

BIO: Since he started the Paleo-Future blog 2007, Matt Novak has become an accidental expert on past visions of the future, and has amassed the world's largest (only?) library of media related to the study of paleo-futurism. 

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Jason Marsh, David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Jason Marsh of Greater Good magazine . We asked him for five links. Here's what happened:

Over here at Greater Good magazine, we spend our days reporting on “the science of a meaningful life.” What makes people do good? What makes them happy? What makes them get along well with others?

Of course, we can’t help but ask these same questions of ourselves—and wonder how we stack up against the rest of humanity. Fortunately, the web is home to several scientific tests—well, at least tests designed or inspired by scientists—that can help us (and you) determine just how good we are. They’re short (most take just a few minutes), fun, and illuminating. Here are five we like best.

How moral are you? University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt and colleagues are the brains behind YourMorals.org. Questionnaires on the site provide a window into your morals and where they come from. Check out their “Moral Foundations Questionnaire,” which reveals your core moral beliefs and how they inform your political views.

How prejudiced? Researchers at Project Implicit have created a series of fascinating tests that help you detect your unconscious biases (along the lines of race, religion, sexual orientation, and much more). They’ve found, for example, that most Americans have an automatic, unconscious bias for white faces over black ones. Do you?

How empathic? Autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen has devised the “Mind in the Eyes” test to measure how well people can decipher the emotional states of others, just by looking at their eyes.

How socially intelligent? This experiment created by the BBC, based on the work of legendary psychologist Paul Ekman, tests how well you can tell the difference between a fake smile and a real one.

How compassionate? This test, developed by sociologist Sue Sprecher and psychologist Beverly Fehr, measures how much “compassionate love” you feel for others, including strangers and even all of humankind. To take it, you’ve got to register through the University of Pennsylvania’s “Authentic Happiness” program, which features lots of other questionnaires you can take to gauge your levels of happiness, gratitude, and more.

BIO: Jason Marsh is the editor in chief of Greater Good magazine and an editor of The Compassionate Instinct: The Science of Human Goodness, an anthology of Greater Good articles forthcoming from W.W. Norton & Co. His article on why sadness makes us want to buy things appears in the March/April issue of Utne Reader.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: David LaBounty, Jen Angel, Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is publisher and playwright David LaBounty of Blue Cubicle Press . We asked him for five links. Here's what happened:

With two kids and one computer, I’m lucky if I’m allowed time to update my own sites. Here is one site I visit every day, and four others I wish I could frequent more often.  

The Morning Post: Every morning for almost two years, rain, snow, or moonlight, I donned my paperboy bag and delivered The Washington Post to Suburbia. I hated it: early mornings, loud dogs, scary garden gnomes, newsprint-covered hands, and falling asleep in English class. Sundays, when I could only carry four papers at a time, I would think to myself: “There has got to be a better way to do this.” However, a bond grew between the paper and me. After I finished my route, I would sit at the kitchen table and read the comics (three pages!) while I ate my bowl of cereal. No matter where I’ve lived, I’d try to find a copy to read – it’s as close to a hometown paper as I ever had. Twenty years later, I still start every morning with a bowl of cereal and The Post – online. I feel a little guilty for contributing to print’s demise, but I’m sure it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to deliver.

Atomic Baltimore: I love every bookstore that carries our journals, but only one has a blog I follow: Atomic Books in Baltimore. If I didn’t think print was dead, I’d start my own bookstore, and I’d model it after Atomic.

Meet Fwis: Will you be able to judge an electronic book by its cover? Thankfully, we have a few months to worry about that. (Album art is already dead – no more hours ‘studying’ Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy.) For now, we can judge real book covers courtesy of the gang at Fwis. The discussions are usually as interesting as the covers.

Teen Zine Clubs and More: For the moment, print is still alive – in Montana. Slumgullion is a “publishing collaboration project that strives to create community, empower young voices, and promote literacy and the humanities through the book arts and zines.” They run a Teen Zine Club and a bicycle-powered bookmobile. If they had been around when I lived there, I never would have left. 

Get Published: We started The First Line because there were few publications available for new writers. Now, thanks to the interwebs, there is no shortage of magazines willing to read your prose or poetry. (Good or bad? Discuss.) Duotrope is a wonderful, simple site that filters out the noise and allows you to find publications (even print ones) for your masterpieces.  

BIO: David LaBounty is an editor by day and a playwright by night. His plays have appeared on stages both large and small, and with his wife, Robin, he runs Blue Cubicle Press, home of the literary magazines The First Line, Workers Write!, and Overtime.

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is writer and media activist Jen Angel . Five amazing activist organizations you've probably never heard of (but should check out right now):

Reclaim the Media: A small Seattle-based non-profit, Reclaim the Media is one of the best sites for news on media policy issues and activism.

SmartMeme: For the last five years, SmartMeme has been developing story-based strategy—understanding how narratives and stories work to aid campaigns and social movements.

Courage to Resist: Courage to Resist supports members of our military who oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Military opposition to the war in Vietnam was a critical element in the anti-war movement, and it can be again.

Rising Tide North America: An up-and-coming environmental activist group, known for their creative direct actions and no-compromise stance opposing fossil fuel use.

The Beehive Collective: This group of talented artist-activists useintricately detailed murals as vehicles to educate the public about the history and implications of complex political, economic and social issues, from Pan Pueblo Panama to mountain-top removal coal mining.

BIO: Jen Angel is a writer and media activist, currently helping others promote their work through the cooperative publicity and tour management group, Aid & Abet. She is the former publisher of Clamor Magazine and a founding board member of Allied Media Projects. She blogs at http://jenangel.wordpress.com.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Will Braun, Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam, Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan, Fatemeh Fakhraie, Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Geez editor Will Braun. 

Religion is an awkward topic. But heck, it's kinda fun to squirm a bit every now and then. So here's some of the irk and the smirk of religion in a (partially) post-religious age. 

Super-powered religion: California artist Mark Bryan sees tanks in the shape of churches and steeples built of missiles. (And his online gallery is clean, attractive and easy to use.)

I believe in Lego: It's part art, part snark, and part straight-up Word of God. With a Lego set to die for, Brendan Powell Smith has masterfully created Lego dioramas of over 300 Bible stories. The stories–with titles like "Massacre of the Peaceful, Unsuspecting People," "Bestiality," and "When to Stone Your Children"–are conveniently rated for nudity, sexual content, cursing and violence.

I Married the Pastor: He leads a small Bible Belt church; she likes pedicures and "magazines with pretty pictures." This is her take on things. This blog is a satirical, endearing, and delightfully vain insider's look at the daily life of the faithful.

My favorite televangelist: Reverend Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping tap into the genre of televangelism to warn of the coming "shopocalypse."  If you've never seen anyone exorcise consumerist demons out of a Wal-Mart cash register, check it out.

Eccentrification of the world: Determined to "imagine something beyond televised teenage angst," members of The Winking Circle have pretty much rendered boredom obsolete. With spiritual undertones, these young folks from the little town of Uxbridge, Ontario have chosen positive action over passive entertainment. Their art bikes, music, gardens, art cars, and films demonstrate a creativity unencumbered by sophistication or caution. I love these guys. 

Bio: Will Braun is the editor of Geez, a quarterly publication that offers out-churched and over-churched souls some "holy mischief in an age of fast faith." In a recent article entitled "A month of under-stimulation," he chronicles his experiment in trying to reduce his addiction to the internet.   

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Regan Hofmann, Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is POZ editor Regan Hofmann. POZ won an Utne Independent Press Award last year for its work covering one of the most diverse audiences out there: people living with HIV/AIDS. Here are Hofmann's picks (check back tomorrow for Geez editor Will Braun): 

The stigma around HIV has yet to significantly wane after 28 years of a global epidemic. As an openly HIV positive woman involved in a daily struggle against the stigmatization of people living with HIV, I sometimes ask myself whether it is possible to change people’s perceptions. When you’re fighting a seemingly unwinnable battle every day, it’s helpful to remind yourself that there are many other people around the world fighting arguably even more difficult wars of social injustice and that they occasionally win.

Here are links to five people I have met have who inspire me with their incredible commitment to preserving the health and dignity of humanity despite unspeakable odds. They serve as reminders that a single person with the right level of determination and motivation can do what armies of people sometimes cannot.

Fighting Bondage: Somaly Mam, a Cambodian activist and founder of the Somaly Mam Foundation, strives to end the slavery of women and children by eradicating human trafficking. Freed herself from a life of bondage, she fights an industry profiting between $7-12 billion U.S. dollars a year and gives victims and survivors a voice, empowering them to “create and sustain lives of dignity” despite the atrocities they have survived.

On the Ground: Christopher Morrison is the founder and executive director of Care Highway, an organization that responds swiftly to natural and manmade disasters around the world. Based on the notion that everyone has the right to freedom and security, Care Highway works with human rights “on a practical level and not with issues concerning governments, political factions, ideologies, economic interests, or religious creeds.” When political unrest or faith-based issues keep some relief organizations from a given area, Care Highway goes in.

HIV in China: Dr. Gao Yaojie and Li Dan are both AIDS activists in China who helped daylight the problem of HIV polluting the blood supply in rural Zhengzhou, Henan province when the Chinese government maintained it was not a concern. Despite being put under house arrest because of their efforts to highlight the AIDS epidemic there, they both continue to fight unrelentingly for justice for people living with HIV in China.

Twana Twitu: Mwende Edozie is the founder of the Twana Twitu orphanage in Kenya. While on vacation in Africa, she saw the faces of many children on the obituary pages of the local newspapers. She asked, “How had Kenya allowed the pandemic to reach such catastrophic heights? Why were all these deaths not raising more fear? Were their interventions in place to prevent further spread?  And finally, did support systems exist to protect the survivors particularly the children?” Seeking the answers led to Twana Twitu. Today, she sends food, money, clothing and medical care to 55 children in and around the Migwani division, near her hometown.

News by You: I also like Demotix, a new site for citizen journalism that allows people to upload stories and photos; they then get sent to the mainstream media.

BIO: Regan Hofmann is the editor-in-chief of POZ magazine and poz.com. She is on the boards of The National Association of People with AIDS and The Names Project (which uses the AIDS Memorial Quilt for HIV education and prevention). She is an ambassador for the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. She has a memoir coming out this September describing her personal journey from secrecy to public AIDS advocacy and entitled “I Have Something to Tell You." Regan is currently working with the staffs of POZ and NAPWA on The Denver Principles Project that aims to reawaken the spirit of self-empowerment for people living with and affected by HIV.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Josh Breitbart, Andrew Lam,  Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Joshua Breitbart, (check back tomorrow for POZ editor Regan Hofmann): 

I have been doing the Internet equivalent of buckling my seat belt for what I expect will be a bumpy ride. The $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), commonly referred to as the stimulus package, includes substantial funding for lots of things we’ve been doing as volunteers or nonprofit workers for at least the past eight years, if not more. Especially for people my age, the bulk of whose activism was spent in the era of "big government is over"—it’s giving us whiplash.

In the world of community technology alone there is $7.2 billion. That doesn't even count the money for health information technology or job training that could also support computer centers and digital media classes or other Internet infrastructure. The proportion of government funding to other revenues will shift dramatically over the next two years for everyone working in this field. Nonprofits that have relied on foundation funding will undergo perhaps the most tumultuous transitions.

The Baller Herbst Roundup: If you follow these sorts of things, then every day you're clicking on links from the Baller Herbst daily roundup. Jim Baller is the guru of public interest telecom law and the invitation-only list is our daily sermon. Jim and his colleagues have prepared a highly-detailed memo on the stimulus bill, which they have shared publicly on their site, along with other helpful resources. Hat tip to Beth McConnel at the Media and Democracy Coalition for passing this around.

Holistic Thinking: The amazing thing about the stimulus bill is that it has so many moving parts. The funding flows through specific government agencies. If you have a narrow focus, that probably works for you. But the bill seems to be intended to reward the kind of expansive, holistic thinking that community media activists have been pioneering for years. Amalia Anderson Deloney has put this in context with a recent article, "Thinking Things Through, Together." She talks about combining weatherization with fiber optic or wireless installations, which would leverage two different pots of stimulus money to achieve our shared goals of environmental and media justice.

The Future of Detroit:  In Detroit, people have been thinking about the local economic impact of community media. Jenny Lee, my colleague at Allied Media Projects, gives an overview of how this works in her article, "Detroit: Arsenal of Creativity" I've been sending this one around and it's the only link I've posted to my Facebook profile. The basic argument is that media production is an economic engine unto itself, but it is also the vehicle for imagining new solutions for all of our problems and for collaborating on their implementation. Media is how we think things through together, and then do them.

The Barriers to Government Grants: It will be a challenge to connect the humongous opportunities in the ARRA with local visions of a community media-based economy. Most of us grew accustomed to government being the enemy of vision and progress over the last 8+ years. The first thing we have to do is spread the word. The second thing we have to do is remove some pointless barriers to applying for government grants. One key to both of these will be overhauling the government's Grants.gov website, as Harold Feld describes.  I would add to Harold's recommendations the need for XML formatting and RSS feeds. Technical acronyms notwithstanding, the point is to make all of the information – about what grants are available and what people have proposed – accessible and not just available. That way we can pull the information onto other websites where we can comment on it, categorize it, suggest improvements, and make it more graphically enticing.

Don't Keep Your Ideas to Yourself: Don't wait for that to happen, though. People are hatching plans as I write and as you read. In New York, the state senate is holding field hearings on the stimulus bill. In part, the new Democratic majority leader Malcolm Smith is responding to popular calls for transparency in how the state allocates whatever money it receives, but he also wants to see as much federal money come to his constituents as possible. If you have ideas, your elected officials will be excited to hear from you. You should start reaching out to partners and allies now. Also, when Smith says, "The idea of this stimulus package was for Washington to create the resources, hand it off to the state and we get it down to the local level," don't believe him. While state governments have an important role to play, the broadband money is available to go directly to community-based nonprofits, among other potential applicants. (Don't tell Senator Smith I said that.)

BIO: Joshua Breitbart is the Policy Director for People's Production House and a board member of Allied Media Projects. At this year's Allied Media Conference, he and PPH will be presenting their latest video and workshop on cellular phones. You can see their earlier video, "The Internet is Serious Business" (produced with CUP and City-As-School) online. He writes a monthly column on urban media policy for Gotham Gazette.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Andrew Lam, Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore

The new economy may be forcing Americans towards a new diet—or at least a cheaper way to eat. Spam and mac & cheese are selling swiftly, but if you know where to look, there is plenty of advice on how to survive on a shrinking budget and still enjoy balanced and nutritious meals. 

Six Dollars a Day: John Handley is a young father searching for work while spending less than 6 dollars a day to survive in San Francisco. He writes about the experience at Youth outlook, a literary journal of youth life in the Bay Area.

Six Dollars and Fifty Cents a Day: Meanwhile, Andrea Nguyen, author of Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavors has a piece over at Viet World Kitchen called How Would You Eat for $6.50 a Day? “The stock market may be bearish on mortgage-backed securities, but I'm bullish on home cooking,” Nguyen writes. “A good home cooked meal is always a safe bet, in good and bad times.”

The Korean Taco: In Los Angeles, the Korean taco is the rage. It's a combination of spicy bites of pork, chicken, or tofu and kimchi wrapped in soft taco shell and spiced with sesame chili salsa—all for $2 dollars a pop.

Frugality is Healthy: Last but not least check out The Cultural Defense: Frugality is Healthy and Wise, a piece I did that makes me very hungry for home cooking.

BIO: Andrew Lam is an editor at New America Media and the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Jessica Valenti, Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Jessica Valenti of Feministing . We asked her for five links, and here's what she gave us (check back for Monday's guest, media activist Joshua Breitbart ): 

My Flickr Favorites: I have a bit of a thing for feminist graffiti and street activism/art.

Interview with bell hooks:  What can I really say—this woman is just incredible. I could watch this interview over and over...I've also assigned it in a Gender & Pop Culture class that I teach at Rutgers. hooks has this incredible talent for making complicated ideas accessible, which is really powerful.

The Virgin:  I've been thinking a lot about virginity lately (not a surprise given my new book, I suppose!) and I came across this Gustav Klimt painting; I'm not sure how I feel about it yet but I keep looking at it...

My fake wedding website: My partner and I just thought that buying the url would be hilarious.  It still makes me laugh whenever I look at it.

Whipping Girl: One of my favorites, and—in my opinion—one of the most important feminist books to come out in years.  The author, Julia Serano, is just brilliant and writes about gender, trans women and femininity in a way that not only educates, but inspires.  I wish everyone would read this.

Bio: Jessica Valenti is a feminist author and founder of the blog and online community Feministing.com.  Her newest book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Yong Women , has just been released.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Jessica Hoffmann, Noah Scalin, Rinku Sen, Paddy Johnson, Melissa Mcewan,  Fatemeh Fakhraie , Joe Biel , Anne Elizabeth Moore 

Add-Art: The Anti-Advertising Agency doesn’t just critique and poke fun at the excesses of modern day advertising, it does something about it! Their recently completed Firefox plug-in Add-Art, replaces annoying web ads with curated art that’s changed bi-weekly. I’ve been using it for a couple of months and it’s completely changed my experience of the web.

Bent Objects: When I was working on my Skull-A-Day project I stumbled into an entire universe of art blogging folks I had no idea existed. By far one of the best is Terry Border’s Bent Objects. His brilliant wire and household object constructions, posted every couple of weeks or so, strike just the right tone of clever, funny, and disturbing and are consistently inspiring to me. It helps that they are also immaculately shot, thanks to his commercial photography background.

Kristen Hersh: I’m addicted to music and Kristin Hersh has been feeding that addiction since I fell in love with her sadly underappreciated Throwing Muses in the 80’s. Not only is her music diverse and beautiful, but she’s recently been pioneering the future of music distribution by giving away her latest solo and side- project recordings for a donation of your choice (or free if you’re feeling stingy) via the CASH Music project. Plus they’re Creative Commons licensed, so you’re encouraged to experiment with them.

Power to the Poster: Whether you want to prepare for your next rally or just decorate your living space, designer Justin Kemerling’s Power To The Poster project has you covered. The site features free downloadable PDFs of issue driven posters by designers from around the world ready for home printing. Originally in B/W only, the post-election site now features inspirational posters in color and is accepting new submissions until May 1st.

Trailers from Hell: I’ve been a cult movie fanatic since I was a kid, so discovering Trailers from Hell is like finding a free candy store! Some of the greatest cult movie directors wax poetic over the trailers of some of the most amazing films (cult and beyond) ever made. It’s basically 2-3 minute chunks of sheer joy regularly updated and freely available courtesy of Gremlins’ director Joe Dante himself.

BIO: Noah Scalin is an activist and founder of the award-winning, socially conscious design & consulting firm Another Limited Rebellion. Noah's work at ALR has gained international exposure in over two-dozen books and is frequently featured in design publications. Noah's fine art has been exhibited internationally and his first book, SKULLS, based on his Webby award- winning online art project Skull-A-Day, has been featured in a segment on the Martha Stewart Show and was honored by the Young Adult Library Services Association as a Top Ten Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers. Noah is a regular lecturer at universities and to business groups. Noah is also an adjunct faculty member in the graphic design department at Virginia Commonwealth University where he teaches Design Rebels, a course on socially conscious graphic design.  He is currently plotting to take over the universe with his multi-platform science-fiction project League of Space Pirates.

Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. We asked today's guest, Shakesville blogger Melissa McEwan, for five great links. Here's what happened (check back for Monday's guest, Paddy Johnson of Artfagcity):

Five links, they tell me. They asked me because they know I am a wicked, insurrectionary, feminist malcontent, and so they should not be surprised that my first order of business is breaking the rules. These are my seven deadly sins of the internets:

Lust—Glasvegas, my current unquenchable music crush, whose "Go Square Go" puts me in a Scottish pub during a footie match so certainly I check my shoetops for spilt ale.

Gluttony—Feminist Literature, a compilation of the full texts of feminist literature available online, a virtual pâtisserie of delectables begging me to devour them whole and savor indulgently every nourishing morsel.

Greed—Fluevog, shoes in which to rule the world; my altar, my church, my Mecca, at which one day I will make these mine.

Sloth—The Chicago Museums, which, combined, can create a timesuck of link-adventuring so cavernous it is rivaled only by the devilry of YouTube's related videos lists.

Wrath—Care.org, an international humanitarian organization fighting poverty while centralizing women's issues, more accurately described as the antidote to my wrath, a catharsis, the means by which my anger is translated into action.

Envy—Rachel, whose recaps of my favorite show, "Lost," make me laugh until I am gasping for air and are one of the very few things on the internet that ever make me think, "I wish I'd written that…"

Pride—Comment is free, the Guardian's blog collective, the grand ambitiousness of which is rivaled only by its capacity to deliver, and I am proud to be a (very) small part.

BIO: Melissa McEwan is the founder and editor of the cultural blog Shakesville, which was highlighted in the Utne Reader's survey of the feminist blogosphere.  McEwan also contributes to Comment is free America and AlterNet, and lives just outside Chicago with three cats and a Scotsman.

Previous Alt Wire Guests:  Fatemeh Fakhraie ,  Joe Biel ,  Anne Elizabeth Moore  

 Alt Wire is a morning digest of links and information collected and explained by a different guest blogger every weekday. Today's guest is Muslimah Media Watch editor-in-chief Fatemeh Fakhraie. Check back for tomorrow's guest, Shakesville blogger Melissa McEwan.

Wajahat Ali’s blog, GOATMILK, is hosting a monthlong series entitled “The Contemporary Muslim Women”, where Muslim women writers post guest entries. One of these writesr, Noura Erakat, writes about Irshad Manji’s misguided approach to the Gaza crisis.

The Muslim Sex Shop website takes a “halal” approach to sex in the life of a Muslim, discussing issues frankly but humorously in the form of poetry, guest fiction, and cheeky merchandise. 

Jamerican Muslimah writes a checklist of Muslim male privilege in the style of Peggy McIntosh.

Persianesque is an online Iranian lifestyle magazine. The magazine recently featured a British exhibition of three generations of female Iranian artists, entitled
“Masques of Shahrazad”, and featuring artists such as Shadi Ghadirian (one of my personal favorites), Mansoureh Hosseini, and Golnaz Fathi.

Riffat Hassan, a theologian and Islamic feminist scholar of the Qur’an, writes a wonderful paper titled, “Members, One of Another, Gender Equality and Justice in Islam,” which thoroughly explores Islam’s position on human/women’s rights.

BIO: Fatemeh Fakhraie (Fatemehfakhraie.wordpress.com) is an Iranian-American Muslim woman who writes about Islamic feminism, Islam, and race for several online and print outlets, including Bitch magazine, Racialicious, and ReligionDispatches. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Muslimah Media Watch, website dedicated to critically analyzing images of Muslim women in global media and pop culture. She also serves as associate editor for the new website alt.muslimah.

Previous Alt Wire Guests: Joe Biel, Anne Elizabeth Moore