Australien perdu

The World Today - Montreal: a tale of two cities

The only problem is actually working out where I am. I’ve been working for about 10 minutes and I’m too ashamed of my French to ask anybody. None of the signs seem to make much sense either.

En fait, il aurait probablement pu demander en anglais…

So… “Culture” is a Bad Word?

Jon Stewart interviews Rick Santorum
From the perspective of a cultural anthropologist, some intriguing bits in that interview, including interpretations of the history of “natural marriage” and notions of the State’s involvement in people’s lives.
A lucky thing is that despite a wide gap in point of view (which we might be able to intepret throught the so-called “Culture Wars”) the participants in the interview managed to hold a respectful honest debate. Nice to see such a thing, even if it has to come from a fake news show.

Why Be Popular? (Podcast Rankings)

Playlist: Apple changes podcast rankings
Thing is, the very notion of ranking podcasts (or voting for them) seems to run against one of podcasting’s most interesting feature, related to the Long Tail principle. Specialized podcasts with few subscribers are as much part of the “success story” as those so-called “mainstream podcasts” which often attempt to mimmic the ways attitudes of mainstream radio from the US.
When you add the problem with bandwidth for small popular podcasts, it seems that being an obscure podcast only catering to a few like-minded people is the way to go as opposed to having the podcast with the most buzz.
Oh, but, yes, right, they’re thinking in this mindframe of eyeballs and eardrums. “The more listeners you get, the better your advertising revenues will be.” “What? Don’t have advertising yet? Well, this is your chance, got a great deal for you!” Talk about reification…