I keep trying to get guest entries from Carrie after the famous “swiffer” post, but she’s on to bigger and better venues. This came out before the election (I think). It’s an essay on Sarah Palin and “hetero butch.” Liminalities did a killer job on the layout.
Category Archives: Ideas
A Canadian DMCA
The Conservative government cleverly tabled Bill C-61 shortly after a massive and public apology to First Nations people over the horrific school system that attempted to forcibly assimilate generations of First Nations people. The press focused on the First Nations apology, as it should have. Canada’s history on matters of race is not pretty, and …
This is exactly what’s wrong with theories of leisure time
Sivacracy links to a speech by Clay Shirky about “cognitive surplus” which epitomizes the problem with how people think about leisure. They think that the best way to understand leisure is through its generation of things that are useful. Indeed, the whole essay uses an economic metaphor “cognitive surplus” to describe what people have when …
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I didn’t know you could do that in Musicology
In all the commotion around here I haven’t had much of a chance to say anything about my trip, which was delightful. My tour of Europe (okay, the UK and the Netherlands) was one of the most intellectually rewarding experiences of my life. Partly, it was the timing. In the last 3 weeks of April …
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Can “owl of Minerva” be used as a verb?
Today, I put something approximating finishing touches on an essay that’s been on the backburner for too long, since I had never promised it to anyone and never set a deadline for myself. It about the circulation of recordings of Osama bin Laden’s voice in the western (mostly U.S.) media and I’ve been working on …
Quote of the Day (for yesterday)
Didier Delmas, from the preamble to his PhD comprehensive exam defence: The demands of everyday life conspire to hide the relevance of advanced knowledge.
Some Suggested Directions for Canadian Copyright Law
Israel recently reformed its copyright code, and given that it shares many of the same intellectual property issues as Canada, its path is instructive. Although there is much talk that Canada must adopt DMCA-like anti-circumvention measures (a provision that even authors of the DMCA now disown), it appears that small countries with big knowledge economies …
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