Monthly Archives: October 2010

An unedited, stream-of-consciousness, but rational piece on the Jon Stewart rally

Posted on October 31, 2010 by

(originally I was going to craft a carefully-written, well-edited piece on the media’s absurd reactions to the rally which included the media predicting how the media would react, the media reacting in that form, and then the media turning on … Continue reading →

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On why nostalgia for the past sucks

Posted on October 28, 2010 by

Sadness Originally uploaded by etherflyer In his recent post “The hard edge of empire”, science fiction writer Charlie Stross describes his unhappiness with the lazy assumptions underlying some steampunk. What is steampunk, you may ask? Wikipedia’s definition is concise. Steampunk … Continue reading →

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On when you know a minority group has made it

Posted on October 26, 2010 by

The city of Toronto just held its mayoral election. The results are in; populist mayor Rob Ford, representative of the suburbs and famous for his tax-cutting ways, has been elected with 47.3% of the votes cast in 96.5% of the … Continue reading →

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Musings on sovereignty

Posted on October 24, 2010 by

Thorbjorn Jagland, Chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, and former Prime Minister of Norway, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times decrying China’s jailing of Liu Xiaobo. Jagland’s piece covers the concept … Continue reading →

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On the rails of the future

Posted on October 23, 2010 by

The German electronic group Kraftwerk is hugely influential, with an influence on everything from hip hop to electronica to pop that persists to this day. My favourite song of theirs is “Trans-Europe Express”. The song’s title came from the now-defunct … Continue reading →

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Music matters

Posted on October 21, 2010 by

Over at A Bit More Detail, I wrote about the way in which French pop star Mylène Farmer’s song “C’est une belle journée” is a song that defines quite strongly the end of one period of my life and the … Continue reading →

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On Derakhshan, blogs, and freedom

Posted on October 21, 2010 by

The Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan, once based in Toronto and arguably the father of Farsi-language blogging, escaped a death sentence, at least. Slim consolation for him. Ottawa is ratcheting up pressure on the Iranian government to release Hossein Derakhshan, the … Continue reading →

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Social networking, for good and for ill

Posted on October 20, 2010 by

Over at my blog, it turned out that I made some posts illustrating the ways that social networking can mobilize people, for good and for ill. For good? For starters, there’s the way that social networking services like Facebook are … Continue reading →

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Whither Belgium?

Posted on October 19, 2010 by

I’ve been following the deadlock in Belgian politics between the Walloon and Flemish parties for awhile now. I’m not sure I really grok the issue, so I have to ask: Would Belgium breaking into constituent Francophone and Flemish halves really … Continue reading →

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Enter stage left…

Posted on October 19, 2010 by

And this is my first post (there’s a trend here.) I’m Tom Gehring, and unlike Randy I’ll bet none of you know me from anywhere. I’m new to the whole “blogging for the public” thing, having had a relatively tightly … Continue reading →

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