Blog posts

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. ...

The Christmas break delayed the continuation of the ‘Christian Music Makeover’ discussion started here and continued here. But Brian responded last night with this email: Hello James, Your contention that music-based reality television shows focus only on surface aspects of the industry has no factual basis. “American Idol” winner Kelly Clarkson is not your average stick-thin bombshell, and Ruben Studdard and Clay Aiken hardly fit the superstar mold. “Nashville Star” selected a middle-aged songwriter. Shows like “Star Search”, “FAME” and “America’s Most Talented Kid” have solely focused on talent and musical ability, going so far as to draw fire from the industry for not selecting more marketable talent. And let’s not forget that Christian music finally got it’s own show with “Gifted”, which aired in November on TBN. ...

Spending Christmas Eve in downtown Chicago seemed like a great plan in theory. After gathering with Kari’s family on the 23rd, we decided, we’d check into a hotel and then travel back to Grand Rapids on the 25th. For most of the day it worked well, we enjoy the chance to spend time in a larger city and were definitely glad to finally see Almodovar’s excellent " Bad Education" (it’s typically provocative, and well worth seeing, but not up to the standard of " Talk To Her"). The hotel was great and with Christmas presents being opened it was particularly handy to have a good stereo in the room. ...

Via Joi Ito I found the news that Chris Anderson, author of the article The Long Tail that I blogged about here is writing a book on the subject and now has a blog at www.thelongtail.com. Should make for interesting reading.