Politics, Re-Spun on Coop Radio, 8.16.10: The HST, Tamil Ship, Haiti…
Last night it was Imtiaz Popat and I on “The Rational” talking about the HST, HST petition oddities, recall of MLAs, a fall legislative session, the BC Conservatives and the NDP on the HST, a new BC Liberal leader, Kim Campbell and Rita Johnson, a fall federal election, direct democracy, Vic Toews being an immigrant [...]
The Tamils’ Gift: Some Needed National Values Exploration
I think one of the key issues in all my questions about the Tamil ship the other day is what kind of Canada do we want. Are we really open to visitors, immigrants, refugees? If there is a federal election this fall, the G20, the long-form census and how we ought to treat “visitors” like [...]
A Basic Primer on the Tamil Ship
Before anyone starts talking about the Tamils who will arrive in Canadian territorial waters today, make sure you understand more than just a 50-word summary of what is going on. For instance, we have this statement in a news report: The Tamil Tigers have been outlawed in Canada as a terrorist group since 2006. via [...]
An Informal Name Change for Stanley Park?
In recent weeks, we’ve heard the suggestion of renaming Stanley Park Xwayxway, after a native village that existed in the park for centuries before Europeans settled here. Despite a decision to leave the name alone, I think we can informally add a name to it. And we can do that all by ourselves. Share the [...]
Canada Impedes Mohawks’ Right to Return Home
This is what integrity looks like. Three Mohawks from Quebec travelled to Cochabamba for April’s climate summit. They left on the Haudenosaunee Passport since they accept neither Canadian nor American citizenship. They were easily allowed out of Canada with those credentials. But then Canada wouldn’t let them in unless they signed a Canadian document. Their story [...]
Interested in Contributing to Politics, Re-Spun?
Building a community and social network: a curious concept. I’m eagerly watching the Diaspora and Appleseed alternatives to Facebook developing, but really, this site itself is already a place of human/social interaction with an average of 9,000 visitors/month and 32,000 pageviews/month.
So should I be seeing if anyone wants to contribute beyond me?
Why Teens Give Me Hope
In the category of young people who keep me from weeping for the future, we have Jamie Keiles who is living an experiment to let Seventeen magazine “run” her life for a month. Her high school English teacher should be proud of the media critique she is already pumping out. Jessalynn Keller once interned with [...]
For Everyone Saying “I Told You So” About Facebook
Infrastructures via xkcd: Infrastructures. Share the Love: Twitter del.icio.us email RSS Facebook Google Bookmarks Digg LinkedIn StumbleUpon Technorati Yahoo! Buzz
Just Bring Your Social Network Out of Facebook
Sure, Diaspora is only weeks old, but if you’re reluctant to leave Facebook because they’re holding hostage the rest of your social network, just bring your people to an open source alternative. This blog is a fine companion to the official Diaspora development team blog. There are grounds to be optimistic about an alternative to [...]
Diaspora: #Facebook’s Open Source Nemesis
Here. Read this. If you don’t speak “social media sociology”, what it’s saying is that Facebook sucks and they’re going to build an open source, distributed, non-corporate, free, privacy-rich replacement. Now give them money to fund their junk food summer. It’ll be the best investment you’ll ever make in a liberating social media interweb. Thanks, [...]
What Distributed Social Media Looks Like
Having already written about reasons why I’m leaving Facebook, I’d like to explore how new, open source, non-proprietary, non-profit, non-corporate, decentralized, distributed social media could work. Let’s start by talking about BuddyPress. It started as a WordPress plugin designed to add social media elements [like Facebook features and Twitter] to people’s WordPress sites. Then BuddyPress [...]
Quitting Facebook: Privacy Shouldn’t Be the Price of Community
Facebook is Celebration, Florida, the surreal Disney-owned community so effectively critiqued by Naomi Klein in her stimulating book, No Logo. It is a similacrum in the disturbing Dick/Baudrillard sense of the word. It is also a surrogate for more authentic and rich human connections. So I’ll be extracting myself from Facebook over the next few [...]
Empire State of Mind
I’m having trouble getting this song out of my life. Vancouver is a fine town, but aside from a nice mention in Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” there’s not much we could do to make a civic anthem like this song. It feels like lots of things: Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” Neil [...]
A Poem A Day for April
I’m inking up my poetry quill again this month! Write Club: NaPoWriMo is a Facebook group I joined yesterday. I’ll let them explain themselves: “April is National Poetry Writer’s Month, or NaPoWriMo for short. In 2003, Maureen Thorson invented the NaPoWriMo 30/30 Challenge. As such, all are invited to participate in NaPoWriMo by writing a [...]
Fixing Institutionalized Education
Having taught high school for 12 years, then TAing at university during my MA, I’ve seen more than my share of human carnage in an increasingly institutionalizing education ‘industry” as kids endure the K-12 system then try to function in the world or in post-secondary institutions after graduation. Two core problems increasingly vex the system [...]
keep looking »contributors
