January 2008
35 posts
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An exchange between Pat Buchanan and Joe...
Buchanan: Here’s a guy, basically, what does he say? The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re gonna have a lot more wars.
Scarborough: We’re gonna start a lot of wars! He has promised, for the record Keith, John McCain’s platform — and it certainly looks inviting for the fall — he has promised less jobs and more wars. Now that’s something we can all rally behind.
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“We need to stop shoe-horning cultural use into the little carve-outs in...”
– Cory Doctorow, writing in the Guardian [via Boing Boing]
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Reason Magazine - Ending Global Apartheid →
Interesting article on the effects of reducing barriers to the free flow of global labour and of separating citizenship from geographical location.
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LEGO.com →
Today is the 50th anniversary of my favourite toy.
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-1-27) →
John Carroll Akron/Family Beastie Boys A Tribe Called Quest Animal Collective Imported from Last.fm Tumblr
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Booksthatmakeyoudumb →
Wonderful comparison of university SAT scores with the favourite books of students at that university. Wonderful use of facebook data.
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Chris Blattman's Blog: Invasion of the 'freakish,... →
Good post by Blattman on the consequences of limited genetic diversity in crops (and animals) for development.
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Passage →
Score one for the good guys in the “video games as art” argument. The game (mac, pc, linux) only takes 5 minutes. Play it first and then read the author’s statement. I would comment further but I don’t want to ruin it. Truly a must play.
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Name that Developing Country's President
You get six clues: His father died of malaria before he was born; His election was marred by fraud and intimidation on both sides; The final count was disputed in four regions, three of which were under military occupation at the time (and whose supreme commander was the new President’s supporter); The inauguration ceremony was held in secret because of fears of an insurrection by the...
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Webpage for the National Council for Human Rights... →
Hosted on geocities, circa 1996? I kid, I kid.
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What I miss
Okay, I have been in Cairo for three weeks now and the thing that I miss the most is downright nerdy: the security of a good hard drive backup. I have been running regular backups with CarbonCopyCloner (free) ever since I lost a month of course work two years ago. When Leopard came out I started using Time Machine as my default solution. (I may be dead wrong, but I don’t feel like I need a...
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(n+1) Interview with a Hedge Fund Manager →
Funny and informative (and not too technical) [via Kottke]
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My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2008-1-20) →
The Books
Animal Collective
Akron/Family
Hot Chip
M.I.A.
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr
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DCortesi: Twitter Stats →
Amazing script for Mac users who also use Twitter (there should be substantial overlap on the two groups). It grabs statistics on your tweets and allows you to easily spit out cool looking charts in Numbers. See if facebook can do that!
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Pakistan blasts Dion for hint of NATO intervention →
Dion was right about saying that NATO will never bring peace to Afghanistan so long as the Taliban can escape across the border into Pakistan, but he was stupid to say it publicly. Man, the choice will be this guy or Harper? F#$%
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Canada removes U.S., Israel from torture watchlist →
The Conservatives caved in to pressure to censor the truth rather quickly, didn’t they? I don’t suppose the Liberals would have acted differently.
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I am glad I am not in law
Estoppel, noun—the principle that precludes a person from asserting something contrary to what is implied by a previous action or statement of that person or by a previous pertinent judicial determination. (From my Mac’s dictionary.) I am glad that Maya is the one going after a law degree, not me.
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“At some point … the Canadian government developed the suspicion [Khadr]...”
– William Kuebler, lawyer for Omar Khadr. [via Al-Jazeera]
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“A nation may fall under colonial rule because of the media.”
– Kyaw Hsan, Burmese Information Minister, commenting on why Burmese regime is clamping down (further) on the media in Burma. http://tinyurl.com/3bbk33 [via BurmaNet News]
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Bill Easterly on where Sachs gets aid wrong
Not entirely fair to Sachs, but an interesting video nonetheless. It is good to see this stuff making it online (even if the video does have 0 comments and only 1 vote). http://tinyurl.com/24b7m5 [via bigthink]
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The Brothers Brick →
Thanks to Maya for pointing me to an awesome blog about my favourite childhood activity.
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Amazon.fr fined for offering free shipping
Amazon has been ordered to pay €1000 a day in fines or stop offering free shipping in France. A French court declared that the free shipping violates France’s 1981 law prohibiting bookstores from offering discounts over 5%. Including free delivery, Amazon’s online store crossed the 5% mark. Amazon has decided to pay the fine, rather than stop offering free shipping....
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New Design/Macworld/Sleep
I will try to solidify the design of the blog over the next week. This standard template seems pretty good to me. The changes here shouldn’t affect RSS readers. It is night here in Cairo so I am off to bed. The Macworld keynote was pretty good, but I wanted a 32gb iPod Touch and OSX 10.5.2. Meh.
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“I will not introduce, support, or endorse any copyright bill that, either...”
– Copyright pledge to put to Canadian MPs http://tinyurl.com/2cqnem [via Michael Geist]
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“You will acheter une visa”
– Told to me by a cab driver at the Cairo airport. He met me before customs and I bought my entry visa from him for US$15.
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"All in all, it wasn't the global jihad's proudest...
Boy scout foils dastardly plot: http://tinyurl.com/29d6od [via FP Passport]
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In my seemingly never-ending struggle to find something that provides facebook functionality and ease with openness, I am going to try tumblr.
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About Me
I am a PhD student in international relations, with a specialization in international development, at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, DC. My research interests are in foreign aid and governance. I completed my undergrad at the University of Ottawa in the international development and globalization program.
This blog was created to give me one centralized...