New Tech, Old Diplomacy

Some people like to talk about generational shifts — changes that occur that clearly mark a division between one generation and the next.  I’d argue that the Internet and the continuing stream of related technologies it produces, is one of the biggest generational shifts in recent memory.  No big news there, but what does it mean for someone like me, whose computer experience during my formative years was Dark Castle on a Macintosh SE, Frogger, and a friend named Rob Walsh who understood the intricacies of an IBM PS/2.  I typed my U.S. History term paper my senior year in high school on an electronic typewriter for god’s sake (and RIP forever to all typewriter correction ribbons).

Three Words: Del.icio.us

Simply saying the words “social bookmarking” gives me pause, but I’ve decided to give it a try.  You’ll now notice a new category called “My Del.icio.us Days”, which will contain links to articles  based on the del.icio.us bookmarking site.  Apparently, it’s all about tagging.   This is for items that might not merit their own posting — though the Townhouse merits construction, that’s for sure.   One thing though:  wouldn’t you rather split up “delicious’ as de.lic.ious? 

13% traveller

Picked this up from a fellow blogger. A good way to remember where you’ve been (if you’ve been anywhere). I considered any country where I stayed at least 3 days as “visited.” Only 13% of the world…
create your own visited countries map

One Bookish People

I’m not usually one for advocating those sort of lists that come across as reminiscent of pre-teen methods of finding out information about your friends that you could probably gain just by asking them, and I am not really sure that such things qualify as memes per se, but my love of books and reading tends to trump most challenges, intellectual or inane.  So here’s one I found that was called a “bookworm meme”:

As anyone who was educated in the field of English literature can testify, you can’t escape the Badass Bard, Will the Man, or “Shakey” as he was known.  And you shouldn’t try to escape the Shakespeare Insulter.

Lookie, a New Page

Just added a new page called Perfect Music Postcards.  I’d add the music referenced on here for downloading, but wordpress won’t let me do that yet.  Anyone have ideas?

Political Ambassadorial Appointees…a classic.

The Death of Naguib Mahfouz

It must be something to die at the age of 94.  I first encountered Mahfouz’s writing at the suggestion of a woman I was infatuated with.  Sadly, the infatuation never amounted to anything substantive, but she asked me if I had read his work — I hadn’t — and pronounced “Mahfouz” with a slight lisp.  Enough to make my buy the first volume of the Palace Walk trilogy.

#27 on the NYT Best Seller List…and climbing?

Apparently some teenagers are so impressionable that they can subconsciously write passages from other people's novels verbatim in their own works of fiction. This teenager unfortunately attends Harvard, and is a sister to boot. Check it out for yourself. Seems pretty obvious to me. She says she didn't realize how much she had internalized the original works. Come on, if you're going to internalize something at least make it a work that contributes to the canon we call literature. Oh wait, she would have been more likely to get caught if she had plagiarized Toni Morrisson. Hey publishers, maybe it's not such a good idea to give so much advance bling to everyone.

UPDATE:  She fessed up.  They pulled the book from stores.  Over 40 instances of copying.  She's the scapegoat for "book packagers."  What drama.  And the book probably wasn't even that good.  'Nuff said about this.  It's pathetic.

Delicious Library

I’ve spent many of the late-night hours this week using a new program called Delicious Library. With it, I scan the bar codes of my books and cds and they are logged and filed, even as the program links to Amazon.com and other sites for details and reviews. So now I have my own electronic catalog of items that I own and it can keep track of who borrows what, etc. Many of the books that I have in mass market paperback format don’t automatically appear when I scan them. So I have to enter the ISBN number by hand. In these cases, the program will usually recognize the book, but not be able to locate the exact cover artwork.

Hate Speech

A couple of people have commented on my use of the term "hate speech" in a previous post. The idea of "hate speech" as it is used in the U.S. is that there may be speech intended to degrade or incite violence against people based on their ethnicity, race, gender or sexual orientation. Which means that there may be some speech that isn't protected under the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Not surprising…there are plenty of things that we can't say without incurring possible punishment. A Canadian law professor named Catharine McKinnon, in a book written in the early 90s called Only Words, takes the idea of hate speech further and claims that there may be some speech which is not simply speech. In her view, such speech is in fact oppression.

Even if the term "hate speech" is not used outside of the U.S., many countries, including the UK, Germany, Canada, Iceland and others, have codified laws that regulate and/or punish hate speech.  Ditto for the Council of Europe. The idea has already criss-crossed the Atlantic numerous times. Here are some examples, and articles on both sides of the debate.  I do think that the concept is often misused, and not  discussed cogently, and I also think it's ultimately a losing proposition over the long term.  But it merits a serious discussion about equality and power, as freedom of speech and expression don't live in a vacuum.  Probably wishful thinking.

Kolkata

It's time to go home.  We've been assigned to the city of Kolkata, India for 2 years, beginning in August 2006.  I suppose it's necessary that I go and live in India.  Just because I was born there, mind you, not for any other particular reason.  I'm not sure what to make of it.  Instead of going to my roots in the south, I'm going east.  Where does one start, really, with a place like India?  How about the National Portal of India?