Monthly Archives: December 2010

On the arbitrariness of holidays

Posted on December 31, 2010 by

Here in Toronto we’re caught squarely in the middle of the holiday season, Christmas five days past and New Year’s Day just over twenty-four hours away as I type. Living outside of the gemeinschaft culture of Prince Edward Island where … Continue reading →

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Information and democracy

Posted on December 30, 2010 by

Yesterday evening at my blog, I posted a link to an essay hosted at NewsAPPSblog, originally from Germany’s Die Zeit and written by one Julian Nida-Rümelin, which defended WikiLeaks as a guarantor of the continued existence of the democratic peace … Continue reading →

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Some notes on the Internet’s fluid, incoherent archives

Posted on December 20, 2010 by

When my friend Pierre showed me his account at Delicious (then the domain-hacked del.icio.us) some years ago, I was interested by the idea that there was a service out there which would give users the ability to create and to … Continue reading →

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From one Nobel laureate to another

Posted on December 18, 2010 by

President Martti Ahtisaari, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from two years ago, appeared today morning in a Finnish television interview, which ended a few minutes ago. The President was asked if he wished to send special Christmas greetings to anyone. … Continue reading →

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Solidarity and Finlandization

Posted on December 16, 2010 by

Exactly thirty years ago – on December 16th, 1980 – the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers was revealed in Gdańsk, as a consequence of the negotiations between the Polish Communist government and the Solidarity movement. The present year has … Continue reading →

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Does WikiLeaks mean we’ll now have agency again?

Posted on December 11, 2010 by

WikiLeaks‘ leak of American diplomatic cables–barely more than one thousand of the quarter-million claimed have been released, so far–is a major news item, perhaps the major global news item, has been for some time. Reactions to it vary hugely, from … Continue reading →

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Wikileaks as a historical source

Posted on December 6, 2010 by

The Baseball and Futility series is taking a one-week hiatus because of a lack of time. It should return next week. On another note, there was a post on H-Net asking about using Wikileaks as source material for research. I … Continue reading →

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On epidemics and memory and history

Posted on December 2, 2010 by

My World AIDS Day post at A Bit More Detail was concerned with the ability of HIV/AIDS to annihilate entire communities, and their histories and even the very memory of their existence. This isn’t entirely unexpected, since unlike other epidemic/pandemic … Continue reading →

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