The Mad Philosopher » Antiwar

Made in China

Darren — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 18:04:19 +0000

CJSR is Podcasting Now!

Darren — Sun, 13 Nov 2005 09:30:51 +0000

CJSR, the community radio station from my hometown, is podcasting now. More specifically, it’s just the CJSR News Department that’s doing it.

Yeah, yeah, I know. News sounds really boring. But it really isn’t news—the word “news” is the wrong word. Really, what the News Department does is spoken word stuff, local happenings, interviews, lectures, and informative programming. So it has little to do with the “6 o’clock news”.

A lot of the programs are particular to Edmonton. But my favourite program, and the only one I regularly listen to, could easily entertain a global audience. It’s called “Radio Outpost” and it’s a travel show for budget travelers. Travel stories, travel documentaries, and travel tips. Check it out.

I also like “Youth Menace”, Canada’s only young offender/child welfare show, hosted by and for youth. It covers issues that touch a lot of people in our society, often the most forgotten.

There’s a whole lot more than these, so look around the site.

A nice feature is that the individual shows have RSS feeds so you can subscribe and have the shows automatically downloaded to your computer and put onto your mp3 player. The site also has an overall RSS feed that’s a bit hard to find, so here it is for your convenience. Rock on, CJSR!

RSS XML feed:

http://www.cjsr.ualberta.ca/news/cjsr_updates_rss.php

After the Flood

Darren — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 09:05:14 +0000

In a recent post, I pointed you to an article written by a paramedic couple that were trapped in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. They were featured recently on This American Life. The episode is in the 2005 archives in Real Audio format, under episode number 296, entitled “After the Flood”.

It’s disturbing and angering, but there are great moments of true humanity as well. And we find out from another interviewee about the true mission of the “armed thugs” moving about the Convention Center. It is well worth listening to and spending some time contemplating.

An Account of Hurricane Katrina

Darren — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 07:39:04 +0000

Here’s a horrible account of two paramedics trapped in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and what they did to survive. Their greatest enemy ended up being the police who lied to them, stole their water and food, and fired their guns at them. Their summary:

Throughout, the official relief effort was callous, inept, and racist. There was more suffering than need be. Lives were lost that did not need to be lost.

[via]

Lance Anderson’s Magic

Darren — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 14:32:52 +0000

Lance Anderson’s recent Verge of the Fringe stories are brewing with the brilliant series entitled “The Pakistan Files”. Download the mp3s and hear Lance tell the tale of “The Twin Towers, The FBI and Goofballs” that suddenly showed up in his life, and just as suddenly, disappeared. If it happened to him, maybe it could happen to any one of us…

Radio Open Source on the Great Firewall of China

Darren — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:07:24 +0000

If you are interested in China and the Internet and censorship—all that’s been in the news lately—Radio Open Source has put together a panel of people discussing the issues in amazing depth and clarity. I highly recommend listening to this one. They do a much better job than I could ever do at explaining the intricacies of the Chinese modern culture and present political situation.

Radio Open Source — The Great Firewall of China

Chinese Blogger Slams Microsoft

Darren — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 09:02:46 +0000

Wired News is carrying an excellent article about Isaac Mao, the Chinese über-blogger, and his views on how Microsoft’s MSN Spaces is sucking up to the Chinese government. Yes, everyone knows that Microsoft is a criminal organization (remember the anti-trust violations?), but sometimes we need to be reminded just how evil they really are. (Google is evil, too, remember, for sleeping with the Chinese government in the same way.)

Wired News: Chinese Blogger Slams Microsoft

If you know any Chinese who are interested in starting a blog, please encourage them to stay away from MSN Spaces.

The unfortunate news of the story, however, is in the last few paragraphs. They detail that the real problem with the Internet in China is not the ISPs’ or Microsoft’s censorship, but the apathy of China’s most wired citizens. For further reading, the following is a good editorial by Sascha Matuszak:

China’s Internet Generation–It’s Not Revolutionary.

The religious right: An anti-American terrorist movement

Darren — Wed, 18 May 2005 09:35:27 +0000

The title says it all: The religious right: An anti-American terrorist movement. It’s a very good essay that elucidates the extremism of the Religious Right movement in America. Most Christians that I know, including my family, do not hold such views consciously, but elements of their belief system overlap with such extreme ideas and can, in the extreme, be pushed in that direction. It was for this reason, I believe, that the framers of the U.S. constitution established a system that explicitly rejects a theocracy. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be holding up very well in today’s America.