In comparing our building–a redone calendar factory–with the other dwellings in our neighborhood–more typical Montreal brick duplexes or triplexes–I often joke that we are the gentrifiers. But it’s actually not a joke at all. I knew this intellectually, but now it’s been driven home for me. We are now literally (in the literal sense of …
Category Archives: Politics
Some parts of the economic crisis might still have to do with overproduction
The academic gloom-and-doom stories are moving north. Fresh off a New York Times story about new PhDs having trouble finding jobs in a year when so many searches are being cancelled, the Globe and Mail reports (a few years too late) that maybe minting all those extra PhDs wasn’t such a great idea after all. …
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Yes, the Conservatives are Still Conservative
There’s been a lot of talk in the press since Harper unveiled the Conservative budget and Ingatieff rolled over for him that the Conservatives are no longer conservatives because of their proposed lavish spending and deficits that will disappear through imaginary forces in just a few years. But the reality is that when it comes …
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The End of Analog TV
Fagstein has an excellent post on the end of analog TV signals in the US, and the same fate that will fall upon Canadians in 2011. I say what I’m about to say as someone who enjoys watching my HDTV on a regular basis. The switchover from analog to digital TV is one of the …
NCA Post-Hoc
Sometime in December I mentioned some politics in the National Communication Association (US) around the San Diego conference. Beyond the whole Horowitz silliness, there was the fact that the Hyatt was in the middle of a labor dispute and was funneling money into the campaign to oppose Prop 8. This YouTube video isn’t exciting but …
Criminalization of Chemistry
Annalee at io9 posted a story about a Saskatchewan university student arrested for having a chemistry lab at home. What’s most disturbing to me is that a few years earlier, Saskatchewan police evacuated a Salvation Army community centre after finding chemicals for a darkroom. One interesting and unfortunate side effect of the consumer-electronicsification and digitization …
Rentschler on Palin
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.