Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal, nails my discomfort with the “new” atheism (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, etc):
Author: James McNally
Viva Cuba
Cuban flag
Originally uploaded by Patrick Dinnen
Brooke and I are off early tomorrow morning for eight days in Havana. We’ve never been to Cuba before and thought we should go now before it all changes. We’re not beach people, so we didn’t care about staying at a resort where we wouldn’t be able to meet Cuban people or see what their lives are like. Instead, we’re staying at a casa particular, a kind of Cuban version of a bed and breakfast. After reading raves about them on TripAdvisor.com, we’ve decided to stay with Ana and Pepe in the Vedado neighbourhood of the city. Though they do have internet access, don’t expect me to tie it up posting to Flickr. But when we get back, I’ll likely be posting like a fiend. Wish us safe travels, everyone, and we’ll raise a mojito for you!
By the way, Viva Cuba is actually a very charming recent film from filmmaker Juan Carlos Cremata Malberti. I reviewed it over on Toronto Screen Shots.
GodTube.com Growing Fast
This is interesting in light of some of the issues we discussed at our panel at SXSW Interactive this past spring. You can listen to the podcast here. I wonder if there’s a way to measure if more people are actually “attending” church online than offline. They certainly seem to be indulging their curiosity at this new site.
Of course, my fear is always that online “community’ is often just an invitation to flame others with views different than your own. The internet makes it much easier to express views you wouldn’t feel comfortable expressing to a stranger IRL, but it also makes it easier to trash someone else’s views without getting to know them first.
Must keep an eye on this GodTube thing…
Just Give Them Blogs and WiFi
From the November 2007 Harper’s magazine:
From a summary of recommendations in Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation, a 211-page report released in July by the RAND Corporation’s National Defense Research Institute, under a $400,000 contract with the United States Joint Forces Command.
HARNESS THE POWER OF INFLUENCERS: Businesses strive to harness the power of influencers and word of mouth in their marketing efforts. The U.S. military should harness the influencing power of indigenous government employees and security forces by having them blog about their views regarding coalition forces. The military might further consider enhancing the Internet access of indigenous populations via distribution of cheap and durable Wi-Fi-capable laptops and by sponsoring Wi-Fi clouds around U.S. operating bases.
There Goes The Neighbourhood
Something very odd happened in July. My site traffic slowed to a trickle. Admittedly, most of my “visitors” are people who arrive at some ancient entry through the magic of Google search. But my unique visitor count went from 4,430 in June to a measly 642 in July. August continues the trend. Does anyone out there know what happened? Has Google tightened up its algorithms? They have been criticized for ranking blogs too highly, but wow, that hurts! Of course, I’m asking a question that nobody out there will even read, based on recent traffic. Oh, the indignity…