Cyrus Farivar

Becky and I saw Ira Glass and David Rakoff at an event in Berkeley tonight.

The NYT had a big piece today on my hometown, Santa Monica. Next door, Rooms & Gardens (No. 1311-A) sells furniture, antiques and accessories like pillows fashioned from an antique Indian sari. The actress Mary Steenburgen, one of the store’s three owners, praised the walkability of the area — not a common commodity in Southern California — when I asked her about the location of her store. “The thing I love about Montana is that you feel as if you…

Last night I watched Crossing the Line, an amazing documentary about Joe Dresnok, the last American defector to North Korea. After putzing around the Internet, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that one of Dresnok’s fellow defectors, Charles Robert Jenkins, who has since left North Korea for Japan, is about to come out with a book. His book previous had only been published in Japanese and Korean, and is finally scheduled for release early next month in English, published…

Free access for everyone: We have service providers, our people have computers. Almost every Estonian has a cellphone — or two of them — and most have laptops. It’s already becoming impossible to work or to study without a laptop. But universal coverage is not the same as universal access. I have an idea which hasn’t been suggested yet. It takes advantage of the fact that we already have good coverage but our “free” Wi-Fi isn’t really free. To my…

Not surprisingly, Estonia has opened up an embassy in Second Life: Perhaps unlike other “embassies” in Second Life, Estonia’s is interesting because of its focus: they’re not here to show off the natural beauty of their lovely country and attract tourists. Instead they have settled to invite the visitors to experience a very high-tech country which is at the forefront of the computer and Internet revolution. It’s very likely that they’re planning to attract similarly-minded individuals, organisations, and governments from…

Here’s what I’m reading today: Iranian fundamentalists preach in cyberspace (The Guardian Newsblog) DC’s Best Embassies (Washingtonian) The Legend of Barack Obama (Washingtonian) The Demise of Hyphy (SF Weekly) Oops: Columbia j-school dean sends self-evaluation to class (Romenesko) Here’s what I did today: Cover the GDC for the CBC.

Dear Friends, I’ve been informed that my radio piece on the eBay boycott will air on Morning Edition tomorrow (Jan. 20)! It will be available on any of these stations (and their Internet streams). New York – 5 am to 9 am Eastern – WNYC – 820 AM – www.wnyc.org Washington, DC – 5 am to 10 am Eastern – WAMU – 88.5 FM – www.wamu.org Los Angeles – 2 am to 9 am Pacific – KPCC – 89.3 FM…

Or, if you prefer, direct from the source (Spanish), or in translation (English).

AP: By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Filed at 6:14 p.m. ET FONTANA, Calif. (AP) — A hunger for carnitas nearly led to some carnage after a Fontana man was robbed of a bag of tacos at gunpoint. Police Sergeant Jeff Decker said the 35-year-old victim had just bought about $20 in tacos from a street-corner stand Sunday night and was bicycling home when the suspect confronted him and said ”Give me your tacos.” Decker said the suspect grabbed the bag of…