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My Favorite Spam posted on November 7, 2011 - 9:05pm
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Lunch at Berkman: Doing Science in the Open posted on October 25, 2011 - 8:18pm
Liveblogging Michael Nielsen’s presentation on Doing Science in the Open at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos, and general stupidity (all of which are mine and mine alone). Michael Nielsen is at the Berkman Center today to talk about the ideas in his new book, Reinventing Discovery, which explores how the Internet is changing the way we collectively tackle complex scientific problems and enabling us to collaboratively break new scientific ground. Peter Suber, introducing Nielsen, points out that the timing of this talk is particularly good, given that it’s Open Access Week.
Daniel Kalinaki berates Uganda’s “middle-class intellectuals whose rarefied dialogue takes place on Facebook and Twitter” for not paying closer attention to the fate of “old school” activists: For years the government came for journalists and few people cared. Some even said we deserved it. Now they are going after authors and civil society activists and many still remain indifferent. The real story will come the day a blogger or a “tweep” is arrested for something they put online. That is the day we will all realise that we should have been concerned and worried all the time. Read the whole article in last week’s Sunday Monitor.
Possibly the worst map of Africa I’ve ever seen posted on August 26, 2011 - 10:27pm
Coming out of blog hibernation to show you this: The map above makes up just under half of a TIME.com article by Thomas P. M. Barnett that so inanely oversimplifies African geopolitics (Muslim terrorism! China is scary!) that I’m almost at a loss for words. Shame on you, Barnett, and shame on Time for posting this.
The meaning of Uganda’s walk to work protests posted on May 13, 2011 - 4:09pm
Iwaya says it better than anyone:
Lunch at Berkman: Culturomics posted on May 10, 2011 - 9:25pm
Liveblogging Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel’s presentation on Culturomics: Quantitative Analysis of Culture Using Millions of Digitized Books at the Berkman Center. Please excuse misrepresentation, misinterpretation, typos, and general stupidity.
Two documentary filmmakers traveled to Uganda last year to help tell the story of Uganda’s gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community — a community that is besieged by a hostile administration, media, and culture. Their film, Call Me Kuchu (“kuchu” is a slang term for Ugandan LGBTs), centers largely on David Kato, one of Uganda’s most outspoken LGBT activists. The story behind the film shifted abruptly after Kato was murdered this January. The filmmakers returned to Kampala to document the impact of this loss; the resulting film both celebrates the courage of Kato and the LGBT community and mourns his death. The official description:
Why I’d Like a Digital Public Library of America posted on April 26, 2011 - 4:58am
Next month I’ll be spending a few quiet days in Amsterdam at the end of a work-related trip. It’s been ages since I’ve traveled alone — years, even — and I’m looking forward to wandering from café to café with a stack of dense novels and several long stretches of spring afternoon during which I can read them. I’m a fast reader, and during vacations I often find myself at the end of the last book I’ve brought with me before I’m finished traveling. I try to plan ahead by bringing thick, dense bricks that weigh down my suitcase but keep me entertained for as long as possible — fruitcake books, some call them. Today I posted a question to Ask Metafilter in search of these kinds of books to take with me on my upcoming trip.
I posted about this yesterday, but I just put together a longer piece for Global Voices in which I’ve tried to give a bit more context for the protests: As opposition politicians and others angry over rising fuel and food prices in Uganda continue to stage walk to work protests against the current regime, the government is asking Internet service providers (ISPs) to shut down access to Facebook and Twitter.
Ugandan Government Asks ISPs to Block Facebook, Twitter posted on April 18, 2011 - 11:48pm
Cross-posted on the OpenNet Initiative A copy of the blocking request letter, via @kasujja on Twitter