Month: March 2008
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Geography Cartoons
From Intellexual.net
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"Please Vote for Me" Is on Youtube!
A few months ago I raved about a 45 minute Chinese documentary I caught randomly on PBS. It was easily the best movie I saw last year. Although I downloaded a bittorrent of it, I am excited to find it on Youtube in 5 parts. Here’s Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and…
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There’s something there
When Robert Reich says that federal bailout of Bear Stearns won’t work (here’s part 2) and AEI is saying it won’t work (See Peter Wallison’s piece and John Chapman’s piece) , you know something serious is going on. David Frum sums it up: If Ben Bernanke owns a Ouija board, this might be a good…
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Europe does not have higher oil prices
From a New York Times article by Steven Weisman on US currency management: President Bush has appealed to oil-producing countries to increase the flow of oil to put a damper on oil prices. He has been repeatedly rebuffed, however, as oil ministers from the Persian Gulf charge that rising oil prices result more from American…
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How to Stifle a Heckler
On a thread about the Facebook interview fiasco, David Spark offers advice about how to deal with an unruly crowd. Get quieter This is a little known trick made popular by comedian Robert Schimmel. When the audience gets loud, there’s a tendency to try to shout over them and feel that you’re going to win…
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Tom Tomorrow on Defense Budget
Tom Tomorrow skewers the Bush defense budget. Why should we care? It’s only money.
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And the best SXSWi blogger is…Daniel Terdiman
After just a cursory look through blog postings, so far the person with the most reliable posts about SXSWi conference so far has been Daniel Terdiman from C.net news. Way to go, Daniel. Here’s an interview with Jane MacGonigel about The Lost Ring. Here’s her keynote, the Twitter phenom, the Frank Warren of Postsecrets keynote,…
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Missing the main story
Once again, I apologize for my hiatus from blogging. I have a lot of things to blog about and haven’t had a moment to sit down to do it in weeks (if not months). I expect to catch up a little later this week. Just read over the Spitzer prostitution scandal story on New York…
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Why Clickthrough Rates don’t matter
The mantra in advertising/monetizing websites is clickthrough rates. Here’s something to punch a hole through that by Starcom media group: The study illustrates that heavy clickers represent just 6% of the online population yet account for 50% of all display ad clicks. While many online media companies use click-through rate as an ad negotiation currency,…
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Update: Going to SXSW March 8-11
I’ll be heading to SXSW in Austin. I’ll be there between Saturday morning and Tuesday night. I’ll be staying part of Wednesday in Austin, then leaving for San Antonio on March 11. I really don’t plan to do a lot of blogging during that time, although I will encounter a lot of blogworthy topics, so…
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The better critic is… John Updike or James Wood (or me?)
I’m sorry I’ve fallen behind on blogging. I actually have had a lot of things on my mind worth blogging about recently. James Dirda answers the question of who is a better literary critic: John Updike or James Wood: D.C.: Where do you read literary criticism, and who would you consider to be a better…
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Chinese Languages
From a Pew report on Chinese Internet use ( here’s the PDF): Finally, the particular case of Chinese language presents an opportunity for an unprecedentedlinguistic situation. The Chinese diaspora, with about two-thirds of its population living in mainlandChina and about one third spread around the rest of the world, includes speakers of Mandarin,Cantonese, and many,…
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4 gigs of SXSW Music
Every year South by Southwest (SXSW) releases a gigantic bittorrent file consisting of all the mp3s downloadable for free on their website. Here’s the unofficial bittorrent which includes bittorrents for previous years as well. I will be attending South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas (March 8 through 12), so if anyone is going, feel…