Why Are People Leaving Xitter En Masse?
The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over. That’s the headline for a piece in today’s Guardian newspaper. People and…
Internet & social media
The Book of Knowledge: 1
When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, having an encyclopedia in your home was the bee’s knees, to use my grandmother’s phrase. It was a sign of…
The day that reason died
I’m not a believer in alien visitations and UFOs, but I’ll bet if an alien did swing by, after an hour or two observing us, checking out Facebook or Twitter,…
Goodbye, Information Age
“Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now,” is the headline of an article by Italian philosopher and professor Gloria Origgi, published recently on Aeon Magazine’s website.…
Dictionary vs Dictionary.com
Did you know that doxastic is a philosophical adjective relating to an individual’s beliefs? Or that doxorubicin was an antibiotic used in treating leukemia? Or that doxy is a 16th…
The bucket list, kicked
Nowadays the “bucket list” concept has become a wildly popular cultural meme, thanks to the movie of the same name. Subsequent marketing of the idea to millennials has proven a…
Server upgrade coming
Sometime in the next two weeks, I will be amalgamating servers for the several sites I manage and conflating them onto one, new and (I hope) faster and more efficient…
Facebook, Likes and Big Data
I suppose you could call it ironic. There was a story from a ‘friend’ on my Facebook news feed today called “Quitting the Like” all about escaping Facebook’s data collection…
No Data Are Better Than Bad Data
The full name of an article I read today is, “The Fallacy of Online Surveys: No Data Are Better Than Bad Data.” It’s from 2010 and very good. You can…
Social media and social dialogue
A recent poll done by Pew Research reiterated what I’ve been saying for the past two years: social media (SM) doesn’t necessary facilitate social debate and in fact may be…
Crossing the line
There’s a story on ipolitics that in part echoes my own thoughts about media and responsibility. Yet the author draws different conclusions than I believe I would have, were I…
Six Rules for Politicians Using Social Media
This is an updated version of the talk I presented at the the eighth annual Municipal Communication Conference in Toronto, November 2013. I use social media regularly and frequently.…
We have heading up for your net
I have to admit that I frequently read the spam comments WordPress traps for my moderation, and I often do so with a smile. The clumsy, crazy constructs, the awkward…
Anti-Intellectualism: The New Elitism
There’s a growing – and disturbing – trend in modern culture: anti-intellectual elitism. The dismissal of art, science, culture, philosophy, of rhetoric and debate, of literature and poetry, and their…
Words, words, words
Writing before the arrival of the internet*, Bob Blackburn commented on the nature of exchange on then-prevalent BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), words that could as easily be written today about…
Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?
That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may…
The (sometimes violent) urge to write
As of this writing, I will have published 253 posts since I began this blog at the ending week of December, 2011. Two hundred and fifty three posts in 21…
Going, going, gone… from Hostpapa
I’ll be moving to a new server in the next week or so. That means there may be a downtime of several days until I get everything fixed and running…
WP theme experiments ongoing
With the latest update to WordPress (3.6) comes a new theme, Twenty Thirteen. I’ve activated it with the upgrade, and I like it so far, but I’m not 100% satisfied.…
Kill the Apostrophe? Rubbish! Keep it!
A site has popped up with one of the stupidest ideas about English I’ve read in the past decade or two. It’s called Kill the Apostrophe. Subtle. At first, I…