2008

While walking around the European Parliament building last week, I invented a new gang sign. EU in da house, y’allz! We spent a great three days putzing around the Marché de Noël in Strasbourg. We’re now in Paris until Sunday, then Lyon for a night. Then Nate comes and we’ll all head to Lucy’s châlet in Pontcharra for two nights, then back to Lyon for New Year’s and then my birthday on the 2nd. I start teaching again on the…

Holy crap. The Internet of Elsewhere might actually be real — I just filed my first draft. Grand total word count came to about 83,000 words. I’m pretty stoked but also deathly afraid. I apologize if I haven’t been very communicative over these past few weeks as I’ve been trying to pound this thing out. Becks and I are in Geneva for the weekend for the Fête de l’Escalade and to visit my old Italian teacher, Luca Notari. Thanks to…

The Estonian parliament (pictured) has just approved a bill to let Estonian citizens vote via their mobile phone. This makes the country the first country in the world to do so, and comes about 20 months after Estonia held its first nation-wide election where the electorate could cast their ballots online. Mobile phone voting, which likely will come via a new secure SIM card to be used in conjunction with the country’s digital ID card system, will take effect in…

In the last year, I’ve been to Finland (where I bought a temporary SIM card for my three-day trip there). I also have SIM cards for Iran, Estonia, the Netherlands, France, the US, Senegal and others. But once I get home, these SIM cards are useless to me — they sit in my desk drawer. I’m sure there’s hundreds if not thousands of other people worldwide who have a stack of SIM cards that they don’t use much, but keep…

Sanam Dolatshahi, an Iranian blogger now living in Florida, says that the arrest of Hossein Derakhshan has been confirmed by his family in Tehran. The arrest has also been confirmed by a friend of the family’s, as quoted in today’sThe Globe & Mail. To be clear, I myself, have not spoken with anyone in Hoder’s family yet. Sanam writes: My friend Nazli finally got the OK from Hossein Derakhshan’s sister, Azadeh Derakhshan, to publicly announce that Hossein Derakhshan, one of…

I’ve just flipped through the International Telecommunications Union recently released executive summary of their Telecom Reform 2008 report. The ITU says that there are now 1.5 billion Internet users worldwide, and 4 billion mobile phone users. Oh, and then there’s also this: ITU’s Internet and broadband data suggest that more and more countries are going high-speed. By the end of 2007, more than 50 per cent of all Internet subscribers had a high-speed connection. Dial-up is being replaced by broadband…

SF Chronicle: But [Stephanie Reyes, senior policy advocate with San Francisco’s Greenbelt Alliance] and other advocates acknowledge that the importance of SB375, signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in late September, lies as much in the tone it sets as in what it will accomplish, which remains unclear. Essentially the law, which will take years to implement, uses incentives and requirements to encourage local governments and builders to concentrate growth in urban areas or close to public transportation hubs…

Scott Carney, an American journalist friend living in Chennai (nowhere near Mumbai), describes the situation as “unbelievable,” adding that this is the “first time that there has been real urban warfare in the country.” He points me to the SAJA Forum for some good online resources and a hastily organized series of webcasts. There’s also a bunch of info floating around Twitter. My thoughts go out to all those affected in Mumbai, India and throughout the world. Also, a big…

This is exactly why Santa Monica was a great place to grow up, but why I have no desire to live there again. NYT: That warning the other day was among hundreds that have been issued in a culturally tumultuous crackdown by Santa Monica officials against violators of a city ordinance, rarely enforced till now, that bars congregating on traffic medians. The target is increasingly loud, littering and generally intrusive groups of exercisers who gather from dawn until dusk along…