Blog posts

The BBC is reporting that Japan has offered to write off a $200million debt owed to it by the Nepalese government. The loan was made 20 years ago and had yet to be paid off. This development shows a shift in Japan’s policy regarding international debt from the position four years ago when Jubilee 2000 campaigners gathered outside the Japanese embassy in London every Tuesday morning to petition the then-president of the G8 to raise debt’s profile on the G8 agenda for their annual summit in Okinawa. That campaigning had little immediate fruit (but the embassy staff enjoyed the attention each week) and Japan was at the time alleged to be threatening countries with cuts in development aid should they apply for debt cancellation. ...

Joi Ito links to this piece by Chris Anderson in Wired. Dubbed “The Long Tail” it explores the new sales models that the vast catalogues of online services such as amazon, iTunes and netflix are opening up. With their low overheads such services can afford to keep far larger inventories than their bricks-and-mortar equivalents and are seeing significant returns on those inventories with large numbers of sales of items that would otherwise fade into obscurity. ...

When discussing the issue of international debt, the most common question people have is a variant on who controls these debts? The answer is usually a combination of the IMF and the World Bank. These two institutions, funded by a conglomeration of governments, are responsible for lending money to countries for development projects. It is these bodies that are responsible for the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, that requires countries who desire debt reduction or cancellation to demonstrate their commitment to good economic governance (and, along the way, the privatisation of public services and the removal of trade tarrifs) through the production of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). ...

I don’t remember first discovering the music of Sam Phillips. I think she was one of those artists whose names I heard somewhere and whose records I subsequently scoured the Greenbelt fringe stalls for. Right now, we’re waking up to Martinis and Bikinis. Usually ‘waking up records’ wear on me quickly, but this one’s lasting longer than most. She’s coming to Calvin on October 16th, and in anticipation of that I was delighted to find this article/interview with her. It’s a great mixture of personal reflection and substantial interview. It can’t hurt that it contains the news that T-Bone Burnett is working on a new record (and I’m taking that more seriously than the rumours of such that have been floating around for at least 8 years now). ...

It was more work cycling out to Beaner’s than I’d been expecting, but I’m sure the exercise did me good. I was here for a meeting with Joel about a project we’re working on (on which more later). Wireless access seems pretty good, even when a guy across the room fired up some peer-to-peer software, though mid-afternoon it did slow down considerably. It seems to be one of the more popular hotspots locally with about half a dozen users at any one time, but even when it is slow the connection seems reliable. I enjoyed my coffee, but wouldn’t recommend the club bagel which seemed a little ‘plastic’. Maybe I need to be less demanding about cheeses? ...

While many of us have been looking the other way, Israel has mounted its largest incursion for some time into Gaza. According to the Guardian, 50,000 people are trapped in Gaza by the Israeli army’s renewed strategy of demolishing homes and blocking roads. The operation is being referred to as “Operation Days of Penitence”. The irony is palpable and tragic. ...

I promised a change of subject, so here it is. Today, Julie Lee’s fabulous new record “Stillhouse Road” is released in the USA (and maybe Canada). Rather than make many comments about the record I will note that the website has audio clips, that the album features such luminaries as Allison Krauss, Vince Gill, and Colin Linden, and that there will be more information about it on the website as soon as possible. ...

For anyone interested in things so techie, I’ve just posted a PHP wrapper for the Technorati API over at my work site. Technorati’s a search engine for blogs with an interface to allow programmers to use their data on their own sites. It seemed that no-one had written an interface to that for PHP, and I thought it about time they did. So if that sort of thing interests you, do check it out. If not, I’ll try and change the subject tomorrow. ...

For a while now, it has looked like the Bush administration would do well to distance themselves from Halliburton. It seems they may have missed the opportunity, as the administration’s favourite defence contractor seems to want out of some of its highest profile contracts. While the firm’s name has come to symbolise all that is wrong with the administration’s spending and empire-building policies, this Guardian piece reveals that it itself is facing difficult times. ...

There are a couple of exceptions to the deplorable lack of inquiring, investigative interviewers in US broadcast journalism. Chief amongst them is a man who claims to purvey “fake news”. Last week, Jon Stewart was interviewed on NPR’s Fresh Air and repeated a thankfully-increasing-refrain that media has been subverted so that it no longer holds truth claims up to scrutiny but instead simply repeats what it’s fed. The interview is well worth a listen. You can do that right here. ...