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Adventuring

Photographing 2012

Winter in Canada

Image

Image

Categories
Adventuring

Instagramming 2012

Except that it’s not instagram. But still. Crappy mobile phone photos. Enjoy.

See also the Royal Ontario Museum photos, which get their own special collage.

Categories
Reading

Amory Blaine on socialism (via F. Scott Fitzgerald)

Amory Blaine on socialism (via F. Scott Fitzgerald)

On advertising:

“Oh, I’ll admit there’s money in it eventually. Talent doesn’t starve any more. Even art gets enough to eat these days.

Categories
Reading

Sherlock Holmes on the countryside versus the city

Sherlock Holmes on the countryside versus the city

On ‘an ideal spring day,’ Watson and Holmes are on a train to Winchester. Watson admires the view. Holmes replies:

“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

Categories
Thinking

Drawing the social network of digital diplomats

Twiplomats graph (Fruchterman-R)
The entire Twiplomacy network graphed and laid out in aesthetically-pleasing fashion. Click on the image for a version you might actually be able to read. A link to a PDF version is at the bottom of this article.

Inspired by Lada Adamic‘s excellent Coursera on Social Network Analysis I thought it might be interesting to try to graph the network of Twiplomats – the world leaders or diplomats on twitter. Simply to see who follows who, who the central nodes in the network are, and whether hubs or communities have developed.

Categories
Thinking

Discussing ideas of an Open UN – one month on

About a month ago I posted a proposal for an Open United Nations web platform. This is the idea of making global governance – the discourse, debates and decision-making at the UN and beyond – more transparent.

I thought it might be useful (to me, at least) to blog about what it’s like to try to start something like this despite having no idea what you’re doing. Here’s post number one.

Categories
Thinking

Imaginer une ‘Open’ ONU

Le mouvement  “Open“ (“ouvert” en anglais) est en plein essor.  Il existe actuellement des projets de gouvernements ouverts, de budgets participatifs, d’ “Open Charities” et même d’ “Open Corporates (EN)” (pour une plus grande transparence des entreprises).

Mais il n’y a toujours pas d’organisations internationales “ouvertes”: pas d’Open FMI, d’Open World Bank ou d’Open OMC.