Blog posts

Via Jeremy Zawodny’s linkblog I discovered this piece at arstechnica reporting that CNN has cancelled Crossfire, the ‘debate’ show that Jon Stewart very publicly dissed a couple of months back. Of particular note are these comments from Jonathan Klein, new President of CNN: Mr. Klein specifically cited the criticism that the comedian Jon Stewart leveled at “Crossfire” when he was a guest on the program during the presidential campaign. Mr. Stewart said that ranting partisan political shows on cable were “hurting America.” Mr. Klein said last night, “I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart’s overall premise.” He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion. ...

Salon is one of a number of outlets that has discussed the imminent departure of James Wolfensohn from his position as President of the World Bank. I had often wondered why the Bank always had USian presidents, but the article explains that: The United States is the bank’s largest shareholder. The bank traditionally has had an American president. Its sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, traditionally has been headed by a European. ...

Since I took over the Grand Rapids WiFi site I’ve been wanting to let users search by location, finding all their nearest spots. What I lacked was any simple way of converting addresses into longitude/latitude so that I could then do the calculations required. While exploring the Wireless London project recently I followed a few links and discovered geocoder.us, a site that provides just that data. So a quick interface to their web services offering, a little application of pythagoras’ theorem, and it’s all in place on the search page. ...

The introduction for Kathleen DeBoer at today’s January Series lecture ( Gender & Competition: How Men & Women Approach Work & Play Differently) had me a little worried. Before working in local government, Ms. DeBoer had a relatively high-profile career in the world of sports and the thought of sitting for an hour hearing tales from the field left this non-sportsman a little concerned. But while there were many, many stories from that world, she is a dynamic enough speaker and grounded enough to spin a presentation that I could identify with. ...

Alan Wolfe was the speaker for the second in the January Series at Calvin, discussing the topic of “American Greatness.” Starting off with some well placed comments on the disgraceful response that followed Jan Egeland’s criticism of western countries’ ‘stinginess’, Wolfe aptly built his thesis that more fundamental than the liberal/conservative divide within American politics is that between those who are focussed on America as ‘good’ and those who think the nation should strive for ‘greatness.’ ...

It’s been a long time since I last heard Vladimir Putin described as ‘a liberal’, yet that was the label Vsevolod A Marinov put on him during his inaugural lecture in Calvin’s January Series: “Russia In Search of Democracy”. Marinov set out to make a case for democracy and then to map the state of democracy’s development in Russia. He was an engaging speaker who’s clearly thought in detail about his subject. Unfortunately, his talk left me feeling rather uncomfortable more than once. ...

As if to ensure his own entry after I linked to other friends’ new blogs yesterday, Graeme has just posted his second entry at Everything In Its Right Place, making a customarily interesting observation on how silences are observed at times of tragedy.

A few links I meant to blog over the Christmas period, but didn’t quite get to: Two more friends, Paul Northup and Jim Stewart (aka the Fat Controller, not a close relative) have started blogging. Fred over at Slacktivist points out why there’s more to fear from the Left Behind phenomenon than simply bad literature, and on a much lighter note larknews lampoon the mega-church trend, by suggesting more people are commuting to church — by airplane

One of the emerging hot-button issues in the tech world seems to be competition between public (either grassroots or governmental) and private wireless network providers. A while back, Larry Lessig posted about the challenges the City of Philadelphia was facing as it tried to set up a public wireless network for its citizens. The State legislature recently passed a bill with the unintended consequence of making it illegal for cities to offer telecommunications services for compensation if that competes with private enterprise. In other words, the City could not charge a fee for the service if any private company wanted to offer the same service. ...

The reply to my last email to Brian Mayes, the man behind Christian Music Makeover, was rather shorter than I expected: Hi James, Thanks for all of your interest. Check out the site when it launches in January - I believe all of your questions will be answered. Merry Christmas. I was disappointed with this response, to say the least. The interest these blog entries have generated suggests I’m not the only one with deep concerns about this initiative. It may be that as Brian says, the yet-to-be-launched website will answer my questions, but it’s a shame that conversation couldn’t continue. ...