tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52548412024-03-07T05:31:19.555+01:00Narratives in Media and eCommunicationA blog by Álvaro RamírezOjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.comBlogger66125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-49987696054833706122007-12-02T13:40:00.000+01:002007-12-02T15:38:31.691+01:00Blending Theory and Practice in Community InformaticsWe met in Porto this week. The <a href="http://dionisio.inescporto.pt/twiki/bin/view/CIBlend/WebHome">International Workshop<span style="font-weight:bold;"> CIBlend</span></a> was a wonderful writing-sharing experience. We were a mixed group of ten people interested in Community Informatics from several different nationalities: Portuguese, Kenyan, South African, New Zelander, British, Colombian, Netherlander, American and two Australians.<br /><br />We had never attempted to write together before and we managed to engage in a very inspiring writing process where we drafted two articles to be published in a journal.<br />We took <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/16575658@N00/2076346432/"><span style="font-weight:bold;">photos</span></a> and exchanged lots of ideas around issues related to the work with communities and the use of ICT´s in different environments and places.<br /><br />I am looking forward to continue meeting these wonderful group of colleagues, most of them academics but also largely engaged in activism and praxis.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-76107222157793335592007-09-02T09:26:00.000+02:002007-09-02T11:06:20.331+02:00Connecting with others, celebrating Blog DayWe could say <a href="http://otexto.net">we are celebrating</a> <span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://www.blogday.org/">Blog Day</a></span> this week. A unique opportunity to link to people and blogs that we seldom connect to, read or know about.<br /><br />As part of this <a href="http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/09/01/happy-blog-day-2007/">"linking" celebration</a> and inspired by <a href="http://el-oso.net/blog/">David Sasaki </a>I want to recommend some blogs to you.<br /><br />The first one is <a href="http://narijibon.blogspot.com/">Bangladesh from our View</a> where a group of girls from the <a href="http://www.narijibon.com/">Nari Jibon Project</a> tells about their lives, businesses and dreams while they participate in the <a href="http://wiki.rising.globalvoicesonline.org/">Risisng Voices Online Project</a> that aims to give them skills and access to the digital world available via Internet. It is very inspiring to read them and have a peek in their lives and whereabouts.<br /><br />A similar group or young people in <a href="http://sierravisions.org/portal/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=1">Sierra Leone</a> has began to work together and soon will begin their blogging activities to show the world that this country is much more than blood and diamonds. In their site is possible to <a href="http://rising.globalvoicesonline.org/freetown/2007/08/16/meet-tbcs-interns-part-1/">get to know who them</a> a little bit.<br /><br />Building the culture of writing, reading, and critical thinking among youth in Kolkata's social and economic margins in <a href="http://marginswrite.wordpress.com/">Kalam: Margins Write</a> the tutors talk about this initiative and their experiences with bringing blogging tools and writing skills to the underprivileged of India.<br /> <br />Authentic citizen journalism from Colombia is still alive and well in <a href="http://colombiaherald.wordpress.com/2007/07/07/colombians-protest-against-kidnappings/#comment-417">The Colombian Herald</a> is a new media outlet that uses blogging tools to air an independent view of what happens in a rich and beautiful land facing enormous challenges due to long civil war being fueled by money coming from cocaine trade.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-4722490736320917412007-06-08T11:32:00.000+02:002007-06-08T11:47:20.525+02:00Culture as exchange of earsIn this insightful and prophetic text Eduardo Galeano, the argentinean author and prolific writer defines his and others people´s approach to culturre several decades before the creation of the Internet with all the participative and conversational modes of communication that this technology allows.<blockquote>"Culture did not end for us in production and consume of books, paintings, symphonies, films or theatre plays. It did not even started there. <span style="font-weight:bold;">We understood culture as the creation or any meeting place between human beings</span>, and all the symbols of collective memory and identity: testimonies of what we are, the prophecies of imagination and the denunciation of what stop us from being.<br /><br />We wanted to talk to people and answer their words. In order not to get mute, we believed <span style="font-weight:bold;">culture had to begin by not being deaf</span>. We published our texts about reality but also, and moreover, texts from reality. Words picked up in the street, in fields, in mine caves, stories of life, folk songs."</blockquote><br />Food for thoughtOjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-43137857922196729652007-03-17T23:32:00.000+01:002007-03-17T23:35:28.428+01:00A new medium: The Colombia HeraldNot without certain irony or sarcasm Carlos Raul van der Weyden has created <a href="http://colombiaherald.wordpress.com/">The Colombia Herald </a>a medium targeting the big English speaking audience searching for information on Colombia. I think I read an oxymoron in the title of this hybrid medium that using the blog format reports with the neutrality and credibility of good journalistic practices. <br /><br />His promising adventure deserves attention and good sailing winds in its navigation. There is quality on his writing. I encourage him to continue the good work at The Colombia Herald which I warmly recommend.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1164139766669726182006-11-21T21:09:00.000+01:002007-06-08T11:51:40.892+02:00Comunicacion - Blog de Victor Solano: En cuanto venderas tu blog?<a href="http://solanoconsultores.blogspot.com/2006/11/en-cunto-venderas-tu-blog.html">En cuanto venderas tu blog?</a>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1160469189119610262006-10-10T10:26:00.000+02:002006-10-10T10:33:09.153+02:00Diebold AccuVote-TS Security Demonstration<table xmlns="http://purl.org/atom/ns#" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td colspan="2"><embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=8673726680080882009&hl=en" style="width:400px; height:326px;" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"> </embed></td></tr><tr/><tr><td>Princeton researchers demonstrate security flaws in a Diebold electronic voting machine.<br /> </td></tr></table>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1124783059570337502005-08-23T09:23:00.000+02:002005-08-23T09:58:22.996+02:00Public Discourse in USA since 1960<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8074/166/1600/Schudson%20Michael.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/8074/166/320/Schudson%20Michael.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a> Today, are we going to have pleasure to listen to Michael Schudson in a Guest lecture at our Department (University of Bergen). He is going to talk about his field of expertise which is Sociology of the American News Media, advertising, popular culture, and cultural memory. He has been recently examining the growing freedom of expression in the United States from 1960 to the present, and its complicated consequences.<br />The title of his lecture is: <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">"Revealing, Disclosing, and Accounting: Some Features of American Public Discourse Since 1960"</span></span>. I imagine he will be using (and most problably criticizing) Habermas concepts around the Public Sphere in relation to his research on recent Public Discourse in the USA. I am looking forward to it.<br /><br />If you want to read a sound and original <a href="http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/f_schudson_nashville.html">Keynote Lecture</a> delivered by Schudson in 1999 here is the <a href="http://communication.ucsd.edu/people/f_schudson_nashville.html">link</a>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1115921176161825372005-06-08T11:06:00.000+02:002005-06-08T11:23:53.913+02:00Other Advantages of Open SourceAnother good thing and really the key advantage of Open Source is not cost savings.<br />Reduced dependence on software vendors appears more important than low cost<br /><br />Computer Economics recently conducted a survey of visitors to its website regarding the perceived advantages in the use of open source software. Although not a scientific sample, the results are nevertheless startling. <br /><br />As nearly everyone knows, open source software is a low cost alternative to proprietary software. For example, the open source Linux operating system is commonly seen as a low cost alternative to Microsoft’s Server 2003 operating system, or Sun’s version of Unix. The popularity of open source is seen in the fact that today the largest market share for web servers is held by the open source Apache system.<br /><br />One might think, therefore, that the key advantage of open source software is its low cost of ownership. But visitors to our website didn’t think so.<br /><br />Via <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/11/open_access_research/">Frank Scavo</a>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1115921263449880602005-06-05T20:06:00.000+02:002005-06-05T10:22:06.376+02:00Dutch academics declare research free-for-allScientists from all major Dutch universities officially launched a website a couple of weeks ago where all their research material can be accessed for free. Interested parties can get hold of a total of 47,000 digital documents from 16 institutions the Digital Academic Repositories. <span style="font-weight:bold;">No other nation in the world offers such easy access to its complete academic research output in digital form, the researchers claim.</span> Obviously, commercial publishers are not amused.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.darenet.nl/en/page/language.view/keur.page">DAREnet</a> was already launched about a year ago, but for demonstration purposes only. The €2m DARE programme - a joint initiative by all the Dutch universities, the National Library of the Netherlands, the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) - harvests <span style="font-weight:bold;">all digital available material from local repositories, making it fully searchable. Aside from bibliographical information, the content can be full text, or even audio and video files.</span><br /><br />The initiative is clearly not welcomed by commercial scientific publishers such as Elsevier Science. Increasingly, universities complain about the high cost of scientific journals and many argue that the research results should be distributed freely or at significantly less cost to library subscribers.<br /> <br />Via Jan LibbengaOjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1117882473285057352005-06-04T12:49:00.000+02:002005-06-04T12:54:33.290+02:00Color perception can be universalIn the <a href="http://www.newscientist.com/home.ns">New Scientist</a> Print Edition there is a report implying that our perception of the palette of colours is universal, according to a survey of 110 different cultures, according to a survey conducted by <span style="font-weight:bold;">Paul Kay at the International Computer Science Institute</span> in Berkeley, California. So when it comes to choosing the reddest red or the bluest blue, everyone tends to go for the same hue.<br />But it is not clear why this should be so. The researchers asked the participants to choose from an array of 330 colours the shades that came closest to their absolute for each hue. Most subjects chose similar colours (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0503281102). <span style="font-weight:bold;">Kay suggests that the common palette emerges because of similarities in the way our brains are wired.</span>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1115656703801027752005-05-09T18:23:00.000+02:002005-05-11T15:39:35.510+02:00Should the taxpayers pay for expensive software?Some days ago <a href="http://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/changing.media/CV%20details/CV-Gripsrud.html">Jostein Gripsrud</a> wrote (in Norwegian) an important article in <a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2005/04/19/429215.html">Dagbladet</a>, arguing against the dependency of a nation like Norway from a monopolistic international sofware corporation. It does not stop there. We should also think about the large sums of dollars payed by public and government offices to a handfull of companies acussed of monopolistic and unfair trade and competition. <br /><br />In a report appeared in <a href="http://www.tes.co.uk/2094985"><span style="font-style:italic;">The TES</span></a> - a British leading education newspaper published by <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Times</span></span>, I learned today that The British Educational Communications and Technology Association (BECTA) is telling primary and secondary schools in the UK <span style="font-weight:bold;">to dump Microsoft Operating systems and products </span>in order to save millions. <br /><br />According to this organization which will publish a report next week: <blockquote> <span style="font-weight:bold;">"Schools which have turned to free software instead of the market leader’s products have saved 24 per cent in tax payers money.<br /> <br />The association analysed costs at 33 schools which use paid-for software, and compared them with 15 which have pioneered the use of free programs, known as open source, and the pared-down hardware to run them.<br /><br />Average costs, including software, hardware and support costs, were always less per computer in secondaries using open source."</span> </blockquote><br /><br /><br />Via Slashdot.comOjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1110803389211570952005-03-14T13:01:00.000+01:002005-03-14T13:29:49.213+01:00Borealis 2005, the festivalThe Borealis 05 is a tiny festival for contemporary music, experimental sound and navigation. It has just began here in Bergen and it will last until the 20th of March. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.borealisfestival.no/english.html">The festival</a> will be a week-long celebration of Terry Riley's 70th Birthday a man who is a legend in contemporary music, and who will be in Bergen with some of his most known colaborators. Terry Riley is from San Francisco and was the man who started minimalism in 1964 and managed to associate La Monte Young, Philip Glass og Steve Reich to the movement. Robert Fripp and King Crimson calle Riley "The Father of the Loop". <br />At four p.m today he will be talking about his music, minimalism and hippie times in San Francisco at the Bergen Hall of Art.<br /><br />The program for the week includes concerts with Terry Riley, Krishna Bhatt, Nihar Mehta, Gyan Riley, Stefano Scodanibbio, The Vigil Band, Zuleikha. Bergen Harding-fiddle 'In C' Orchestra, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Bollyphony, N-Collective, 9 Beet Stretch among others.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1110534989147441712005-03-11T10:21:00.000+01:002005-03-14T12:52:11.743+01:00Blogging as publishing formatFollowing on the same track and the discussion that has develop in the comments space of <a href="http://jilltxt.net/?p=1269">Jill Walker’s post</a> I would like to bring the attention to very good post by <a href="http://torillsin.blogspot.com/2004/05/are-weblogs-journalism-online.html">Toril Mortensen</a> in her thoughtful blog, <span style="font-weight:bold;"><a href="http://torillsin.blogspot.com/">thinking with my fingers</a>,</span> where she asks herself and answers to the question: <br /><blockquote>so: is blogging journalism? No. But a blog can be a medium for good reporting, good news coverage, and good investigative journalism. It is also a lot more.</blockquote><br />I agree. But... there is a small noticeable difference here. A blog can be used as a good and effective publishing tool to do the tasks of a notable and important profession like journalism. But I would not dare to say that this in itself makes a single blog a medium proper. It is rather an authoring platform that once is up and running can enter in the public sphere and create all kinds of ethic and aesthetic distinctions and conflicts given the interests that are into play once a challenging utterance has come out to the public. As it is the case with Apple's court case against three bloggers. <br /><br />I would say that it is in the networking of comment, dissent, track backing and linking that the blogging activity flourishes and become what I have called a very clear format with <a href="http://jilltxt.net/archives/blog_theorising/final_version_of_weblog_definition.html">well defined</a> characteristics, tools (database, syndication etc) and set of rhetorical conventions and ideological and aesthetic similarities.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1110389623505709962005-03-09T17:21:00.000+01:002005-03-09T18:33:43.510+01:00Blogging as format and its legal consequencesIn her wonderful blog, <a href="http://jilltxt.net/?p=1269">Jill Walker</a> discusses recently the court case Apple has initiated against blogs <a href="http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=11008">who apparently revealed industrial secrets.</a> I agree with Jill that the court case raises questions about the legal status of blogs. But disagree with her when she says <blockquote>"that blogging’s... not really about journalism at all".</blockquote> The reason for my disagreement is conceptual. There is a tendency to consider blogging a genre or a medium when in fact blogging is a format.<br /><br /><strong>And a format is a formal and content set of conventions created within a medium to rhetorically address a certain audience. </strong><br /><br />Each medium can have several formats. I have commented and presented an example as an argument for what I understand is a format: in Radio (and blogging has strong similarities with Radio) you have a medium and different formats: magazines, news programs, soaps etc. <br /><br />As a matter of fact within the blogging format there are several genre within this format: the personal, collective, fictional, opinionated and news blogs. There are journalists who write in their blogs as if they were broadcasting news (they double check their sources, they are reliable and they follow known journalist’s ethical standards.) So in this particular case of bloggers who ordinarily report on facts and are used to cover events as elections, gatherings or corporate strategies are blogs that exercise a profession called journalism.<br /> <br />I do not know on which grounds the American judge tentatively will rule that three blogs should reveal the source of leaked information about an unreleased Apple product. But he/she should take some of these issues into consideration.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1109950976526298092005-03-04T16:03:00.000+01:002005-03-04T16:42:56.530+01:00Film classics in top DVD transfers<a href="http://www.criterionco.com/asp/">Criterion Collection</a> has always been the very best on the DVD market. They began doing their top quality and careful film transfers in the old times of Laser Discs (eighties and nineties). They have become a legend in the industry for their classic catalog, superb commentaries, booklets, and other "special features." <br /><br />But <a href="http://store.warnervideo.com/whv.product.asp?upc=012569562127&fmt=dv&mscssid=JK6KK63AT5289L5MEHR9PVFCV6S197K2">Warner Home Video</a> is now out there to compete with them. According to Fred Kaplan: <blockquote>Now it's time to take note of another logo that almost guarantees high quality—Warner Home Video. At least since 2002, the video division of Warner Bros. has released one great-looking DVD after another. I know of no other label, in fact, whose output has been more consistently spectacular.<br /></blockquote><br />A recent 2 disc edition of <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0034583/">Casablanca</a> and other valuable releases of films like <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0045152/">Singing' in the rain</a> and <a href="http://imdb.com/title/tt0045537/">The Band Wagon</a> show an outstanding picture quality and color definition and rendition. Why? Because they've been mastered from the original Technicolor three-strip negatives. In some ways, these DVDs have finer color and detail than even the original film prints. In the old days, it was difficult to align those three strips perfectly but now Warner is doing and coming out with authentic jewels.<br /><a href="http://www.members.tripod.com/.../ Gifs5/MoviePoster23.gif "><img width="88" height="31" src="http://members.tripod.com/.../ Gifs5/MoviePoster23.gif " border="0"></a><BR><BR>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1102459775633299582004-12-07T23:38:00.000+01:002004-12-08T17:47:14.650+01:00Buy Nothing ChristmasBuy Nothing Christmas is a very interesting initiative started by Canadians in connection with adbusters and supported by them.
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<br /><img src= href=" http://www.buynothingchristmas.org/images/resources/posters/2004/where_did_I_say.jpg">
<br />OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1101083948847721702004-11-21T13:55:00.000+01:002004-11-22T01:45:10.050+01:00Editing and mixing Fahrenheit 9/11Via <strong>Sven E Carlsson</strong> I find this fascinating <a href="http://www.fullsail.com/index.cfm/fa/news.story/con_id/1845/Gary_Rizzo_Mixing_Fahrenheit">description</a> of the process of sound editing in the last film of Michael Moore: Fahrenheit 9/11
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<br />"Another key to the success of the sound edit was the tireless efforts of Carl Deal, the chief archivist. His job was to make sure there was plenty of archival footage for Moore to cut into the movie. “Along with the archival footage comes archival sounds,” Rizzo says. “If a piece of archival news footage had really bad sound, we looked to Carl to find us something better, another source for the same piece of audio.” Rizzo recalls that even though Deal was often able to come through, there sometimes wasn't a better sound source to be found, so other elaborate audio restoration actions had to be taken.
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<br />One of the Fahrenheit sequences that was particularly important to Rizzo, and particularly moving in the film, was the 9/11 montage. Cinematically, it was decided that since Americans had seen the Trade Center footage hundreds of times, the film would allow the sounds to carry forward the images.
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<br />“We wanted to start off with a couple of seconds of quiet, of city ambience,” Rizzo explains. “The last sound before our world changed. Then you have all this confusion. This mass panic. Some people are screaming, some people are crying. A little bit of radio clip. Every sound that you hear [in the movie] came from recordings of 9/11. No library sounds were used. The challenge was to make it as powerful as possible without doctoring it up. Make it as adrenaline-flowing as it really was without hypersensationalizing it. Make it real.”
<br />OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1098849855272014462004-10-27T05:35:00.000+02:002004-10-27T14:22:35.063+02:00Norway and Denmark join Open AccessSince I found about the <a href="http://www.biomedcentral.com/openaccess/">Open Access</a> movement I have become a strong advocate of this initiative. Not too long ago I was <a href="http://carnivalesque.blogspot.com/2004_06_06_carnivalesque_archive.html">lamenting the fact</a> that the U of Bergen was not part of this initiative.
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<br />I hope they have heard me :-) even though I doubt anyone can pay attention to this blog. The good news is that today I have learned that<span style="font-family:georgia;"> Norway has made a nationwide commitment to <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italic">Open Access</span> for the biomedical research it funds. All universities, polytechnics research institutes and hospitals in Norway became BioMed Central members on 1 October 2004.
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<br />According to </span><a style="FONT-FAMILY: georgia" href="https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/1182.html">Peter Suber</a><span style="font-family:georgia;">: "Norway's decision is another landmark in the move towards <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; FONT-STYLE: italic">Open Access</span> for all biomedical research." </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">Three other European countries have already taken out nationwide BioMed Central membership for the majority of their publicly funded researchers since Denmark has recently has joined this initiative. </span>
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<br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">BioMed Central's Institutional Membership Program was launched in January</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">2002 and now has over 450 members, including some of the world's most</span>
<br /><span style="font-family:georgia;">prestigious academic institutions.</span>
<br />OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1097525882605476722004-10-11T22:14:00.000+02:002004-10-11T23:20:19.393+02:00A day of peaceful demonstrationThe political climate in Colombia is hot at this very moment. The present government is giving all attention to security and the war against leftist guerilla groups and very little to the needs and pressures of the lower and middle classes. Unemployment runs rampant while the wealthy get richer and richer.
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<br />Tomorrow the Trade Unions (grouped in <a href="http://elpais-cali.terra.com.co/paisonline/notas/Octubre062004/centra.html">CUT</a>) and the left movement united around the banner of “<a href="http://www.viaalterna.com.co/index2.htm?http://www.viaalterna.com.co/pdi_16ago2.html">Polo democratico Independiente</a>” are launching a national stand still day inviting people to hit the street and protest against the government. It will be a tense day. I hope for peaceful demonstrations and a very tolerant police force, so that people can express their discontent without getting hurt.
<br />OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1090578630688682112004-07-23T12:20:00.000+02:002004-07-23T12:30:30.686+02:00Away for a whileIn the next couple of weeks I will be traveling to New York and later to Bogotá mainly for family gatherings. I guess I will have very little chance to post in this blog for a while. I will try though. It will all be a matter of new schedules some tourist activity and real life as opposed to cyberwriting. I am looking forward to it.
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<br />OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1090419999859935052004-07-21T16:26:00.000+02:002004-07-21T16:26:39.860+02:00Internet a truly international resource? Internet like many other technologies were created Eurocentric. And this will have to change. Like many other things many westerners using Internet asumme that everybody has to write using the Western alphabet. But the facts tells us that millions of people in this planet have languages that use diferent characters. And the Internet should include them.
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<br />Eurocentrism is naturalized as "common sense" and by this concept goes that the best has been created by Europeans which includes also "neo-Europeans" of the Americas, Australia and elsewhere.
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<br />Eurocentrism, as <a href="http://cinemabooks.org/0415063256.html">Ella Shohat and R.Stam </a>have described it, engenders a fictitious sense of the innate superiority of European derived cultures and peoples.
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<br />The Internet as as site of power has been develop in the English-speaking countries. But the demographics are against this dominance.
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<br /><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/3906013.stm">BBC reports</a> that since the net's centre of gravity is moving East, there are efforts aimed at finding standards in order to communicate more easily and make Internet a truly international resource.
<br />
<br />I hope that this type of news increases an awareness of how big the World really is and how Eurocentrism narrows our view of the planet. OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1089642905842172522004-07-12T16:25:00.000+02:002004-07-12T17:37:14.733+02:00"When I close a book I open life"Today, a hundred years ago, one of my favorite writers, <em><strong>Pablo Neruda</strong></em> was born in Chile. That is a big day for the owner of this blog. Time to celebrate his words by citing one of his poems.
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<br /><em><strong>Ode to the Book</strong></em>
<br /><em>translated by Nathaniel Tarn</em>
<br />
<br />When I close a book
<br />I open life.
<br />I hear
<br />faltering cries
<br />among harbours.
<br />Copper ignots
<br />slide down sand-pits
<br />to Tocopilla.
<br />Night time.
<br />Among the islands
<br />our ocean
<br />throbs with fish,
<br />touches the feet, the thighs,
<br />the chalk ribs
<br />of my country.
<br />The whole of night
<br />clings to its shores, by dawn
<br />it wakes up singing
<br />as if it had excited a guitar.
<br />
<br />The ocean's surge is calling.
<br />The wind
<br />calls me
<br />and Rodriguez calls,
<br />and Jose Antonio--
<br />I got a telegram
<br />from the "Mine" Union
<br />and the one I love
<br />(whose name I won't let out)
<br />expects me in Bucalemu.
<br />
<br />No book has been able
<br />to wrap me in paper,
<br />to fill me up
<br />with typography,
<br />with heavenly imprints
<br />or was ever able
<br />to bind my eyes,
<br />I come out of books to people orchards
<br />with the hoarse family of my song,
<br />to work the burning metals
<br />or to eat smoked beef
<br />by mountain firesides.
<br />I love adventurous
<br />books,
<br />books of forest or snow,
<br />depth or sky
<br />but hate
<br />the spider book
<br />in which thought
<br />has laid poisonous wires
<br />to trap the juvenile
<br />and circling fly.
<br />Book, let me go.
<br />I won't go clothed
<br />in volumes,
<br />I don't come out
<br />of collected works,
<br />my poems
<br />have not eaten poems--
<br />they devour
<br />exciting happenings,
<br />feed on rough weather,
<br />and dig their food
<br />out of earth and men.
<br />I'm on my way
<br />with dust in my shoes
<br />free of mythology:
<br />send books back to their shelves,
<br />I'm going down into the streets.
<br />I learned about life
<br />from life itself,
<br />love I learned in a single kiss
<br />and could teach no one anything
<br />except that I have lived
<br />with something in common among men,
<br />when fighting with them,
<br />when saying all their say in my song.
<br /><img alt="il postino.jpg" src="http://submission.intermedia.uib.no/alvaro/archives/il postino.jpg" width="272" height="318" border="0" />
<br />
<br />
<br />Want to read more by Pablo Neruda? <a href="http://www.lone-star.net/literature/pablo/">click here</a>
<br />OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1089052215199346212004-07-05T20:30:00.000+02:002004-07-05T20:56:19.023+02:00Rhetoric, Community, and Culture of Weblogs<strong>The Spirit of Paulo Freire in Blogland: Struggling for a Knowledge-Log Revolution</strong> is a very good article written by independent researcher, Christine Boese.
<br />
<br />She discusses weblogs and <a href="http://www.dijest.com/aka/categories/klogs/">klogs</a> (knowledge blogs) as a notable social phenomenon.
<br />By applying some of the key concepts of The pedagogy of the oppressed to analyse Main stream Media Institutions like Time and CNN she makes an original exploration on digital and online dialog (through the blog technology) as sites of contestation and resistance.
<br />
<br />I recommend not only this article but most of the others in the new publication <a href="http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/">Into the Blogosphere</a>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1088789084071757852004-07-02T19:24:00.000+02:002004-07-02T19:28:51.833+02:00Moore's Public ServicePAUL KRUGMAN Op-Ed Columnist of the New York Times makes a very interesting and relevant point in his <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/02/opinion/02KRUG.html?th">column today</a> when he points to the small space mainstream media outlets in the US are giving to one of their most important duties that of being a public service channel for Democracy and the citizens who turn to them to get information and a qualified opinion.
<br />
<br />News Media should always be a watchdog for the use and abuse of power. In this sense I respect Michael Moore much more than Krugman seems to do when he says :
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<br />"<em>And for all its flaws, 'Fahrenheit 9/11' performs an essential service. It would be a better movie if it didn't promote a few unproven conspiracy theories, but those theories aren't the reason why millions of people who aren't die-hard Bush-haters are flocking to see it. These people see the film to learn true stories they should have heard elsewhere, but didn't. Mr. Moore may not be considered respectable, but his film is a hit because the respectable media haven't been doing their job."</em>OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5254841.post-1088010021799274702004-06-23T17:45:00.000+02:002004-06-23T19:00:21.800+02:00Michael Moore begins to blogOn June 22 Michael Moore's <a href="http://www.michaelmoore.com/index_real.php">official website</a> informed that the famous documentary filmmaker will soon become a blogger. I must say he is very welcomed to the world of instant publication.OjO al Textohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07085960829580724144noreply@blogger.com0