I wish I could say that I’ve been furiously scribbling away at some fabulous essays these past ten days, but alas, that would be an untruth. I have instead been yoked, harnessed, steeped, and stewed in various real-life (i.e., not virtual) community commitments that involved much face-to-face and even in-your-face contact spread across many late-late […]
Over at Alembic, Maria has distilled her first podcast, Whinery. It’s a must-listen (so go, listen): truly a full-bodied vintage, full of surprises, depth, and layered flavours.
Driving on an errand this morning, I managed to catch a few minutes of the CBC‘s The Current (with Anna Maria Tremonti). Her guests for today’s show were Adam Daifallah, “a former member of the National Post’s editorial board” and “the co-author of ‘Rescuing Canada’s Right’”; also, Judy Rebick of Rabble.ca, who “holds the Sam […]
I heard about this: Posters designed by a group of artists are causing quite a stir in Vienna. The image of three people having sex while wearing nothing but masks of Bush, Chirac and Queen Elizabeth is proving particularly controversial. Politicians are outraged and artists have offered to withdraw the two most shocking posters. Just […]
Updated, Jan.3/06 (see coda, below) Dave Pollard‘s recent (Jan.1/06) list of links for the week included this nugget by Paul Graham, Good and Bad Procrastination. At first I enjoyed reading it (it’s well-written and often funny), but in the end it really ticked me off. Graham talks about “running errands” as an avoidance tactic for […]
Maria tagged me for a “four things” meme, but I just can’t bring myself to follow up on it. I did start — yesterday — but then had to blow the computer up because something got hung. I was downloading a whole bunch of Stephen Downes‘s audiocasts to my desktop (they’re MP3s), so that I […]
Michael Edwards writes in OpenDemocracy of Love, reason and the future of civil society. All life, one might say, is negotiation, and the price of entry into civil society is the willingness to change one’s mind through an encounter with the views of others. Like rocks in a stream, the sharp edges of our differences […]
The asshole theme must be going around…. Frank Paynter emailed me a pointer the other day to the You’re an Asshole filmstrip, and Shelley has a philosophical entry about assholes (her maxims being “The world is full of assholes” and “sometimes you’re one of them”). In German, incidentally, Arschloch is a worse swear-word than shit […]
I took several silly quizzes. My portrait should be painted by Salvador Dali (whom I do not care for at all): Salvador Dali Salvador Dali should paint your portrait. You love to think about the world in a different way then everyone else. You are very ambitious, and you like strange things. You are curious […]