Good news: I’ve hired an awesome designer to update the site. Her name is Miriam and she’s at http://flinknet.com. The first bit of business was moving this blog to WordPress from B2, which is evil and unmanageable. Note the new address for the blog. The bad news is that in the fight against comment spam, …
Author Archives: Jonathan Sterne
French Update
The other night I attempted to order a pizza over the phone in French. I got through the “small pizza with green pepper” delivered to my address part, but when I asked for some garlic bread (pain a l’ail), the woman’s response was “we don’t have any diet Sprite.” Ummmmm. Right. That’s interesting, since “pain …
More NYU
Here’s a letter from faculty to the president that’s making the rounds. — Dear colleagues, Teaching assistants at NYU conducted a union drive in 1999-2000, won an election, and affiliated with the United Auto Workers (in a local that also includes other educational professionals in NYC such as Museum of Modern Art and New York …
NYU Strike
Wow. I don’t know how I missed it before, but there are serious goings-on at New York University. As you may know, the Labor Relations Board did an about-face and basically said that because NYU is private, it does not have to recognize a TA union. Thus, when it came time to negotiate a new …
A Taste of Canadian Racism
Well, after all that stuff about the Milwaukee paper, here’s a letter to the editor straight outta 1845 from today’s Globe and Mail — authored by one Wayne Valeau of Calgary: The Black-Eyed Peas are a perfect fit for the CFL (Imported Peas — editorial, Nov. 29). What we saw at the Grey Cup’s half-time …
The Latest RIAA PR
“Owning music is so last century.” I’ve read versions of this quote at least three times in the last week. It sounds all hip and progressive, like our options now are so much better than owning CDs. Take the followup from a SF Chronicle Article quoted by my friend Steven Rubio: They’re overpriced, ugly and …
Report on the Ongoing Canadianization Project
The Milwaukee trip over thanksgiving was its usual pleasure (though this was our first trip to Milwaukee for said purpose). One of my colleagues commented that she found Americans’ devotion to thanksgiving bizarre, a sentiment echoed by other Canadians I’ve met. I don’t have a profound answer except to say that like Halloween (my other …
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