I Support the Northern Gateway Pipeline

I consider myself a progressive. I've given thousands to the NDP and
even threw a few strategic progressive dollars to the Bloc Québécois.

I also consider myself an environmentalist. Perhaps not enough to give
up my travel addiction (poverty has temporarily taken care of that),
but enough of one that I live in a downtown apartment and walk to
work.

People in Bangladesh are going to die because of global warming.

I'm writing this on an iPhone that was assembled just north of Hong
Kong in China. Parts of it were made in Taiwan and Korea. The energy
used to manufacture the iPhone was most likely derived from coal.
Ditto my computers, TV, Playbook, Kobo and iPad (did I mention I'm
poor?).

So we send Asia oil that is slightly better for the environment than
coal, they give us cool gadgets that reduce needless trips to the store
for shopping, driving around while lost, enable shortcuts, and
dramatically reduce my consumption of paper. Win, win.

More importantly, BC takes a slight environmental risk instead of
Moncton suffering the guaranteed pollution that would come from Irving
refining Alberta oil in St. John.

Moncton is where I live. Not BC. The people of Bangladesh and China
matter as much to me as the people of BC (on a per capita basis). They
are guaranteed to have millions of people die because of global
warming and coal generated air pollution. If it replaces coal, Alberta
oil would reduce both. Northern BC (where very, very few people live)
incurs a slight risk of having localised water and soil pollution. But
I live in Moncton.

The federal government has spoken. Time to move on. And if you live
anywhere near the proposed pipeline, you might want to move to
Vancouver, because as a rural Canadian, your carbon footprint is
amongst the largest in the world, and that's not cool.

Justin Bourque, 24 Year-old Angry White Man

Justin Bourque murdered 3 Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers Wednesday night in Moncton. Based on his Facebook page, the alleged RCMP killer clearly loved guns. When I read his Facebook page, he still had 49 friends, many with public timelines no less scary than Bourque's.

This is what I gleaned from his public Facebook timeline:

(I'm using the present tense but I'm guessing he'll be dead when you read this.)

-He appears to be anglophone despite his last name (many of his Facebook friends live in the very English speaking suburb of Riverview). 

-He lives in a trailer park

-He has at least one black friend

-He loves guns

-He hates the police but is pro-military/militias

-He is libertarian leaning

-He admires Putin, but fears Russia will invade Canada first (before Ukraine?)

-He isn't big on writing. He prefers to repost

-He is a member of the Anonymous World Resistance Group of Facebook.

-Perhaps he was a fan of Megadeath? Well he quoted verse 1 of Hook in My Mouth on his Facebook page before going outside and starting his rampage. Perhaps he just felt the name of the group was apropos (since he was gong to have multiple victims). By the way, that song came out 26 years ago, before Justin Bourque was borne. 

-He like fishing

-He likes hunting

Mostly, he just likes guns. Also, by Moncton standards, for the first time this season, it was really hot tuesday in Moncton and quite humid the day of his murders. That's usually when people get violent.

The Goddess of Democracy Would be 25 Years Old

I had so much hope for China in 1989. Oh well, at least I got an iPhone. 

Media Talk is Dead, Long Live Media Talk

The Guardian's Media Talk is the king of media podcasts. And it is dead.

As I wrote on The Guardian site in 2010: 

I love your podcast. It is like you guys live in a different world. I'm 100% more informed about British media every time I listen.

This is horrible news, really. This is on the same scale as the end of Diggnation. Twit.tv is still alive. So I know podcasts aren't dead. But Media Talk is dead. Long live Media Talk. It will be missed.

The Producer Matt Hill will try to revive the format with a new independant podcast starting June 6th. But you know it is going to suck (just like Top Gear America). Host John Plukett will continue to exist on Twitter. Original host Matt Wells still works for The Guardian, but he now works out of New York City where he is apparently to busy/lazy to take a few minutes out of his week to host a media podcast. 

The UK is a different world. How else would North Americans have earned that Big Brother was popular there in the winter. Or that phone hacking female journalist were costing Rupert Murdoch money.

Other source:

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RadioToday | The Guardian cancels Media Talk podcast

Meanwhile, this blog you are reading is alive and well. In fact, the hundred dollars Google just dumped in my bank account easily paid for the bottle of vodka I'm drinking (seemed appropriate since talking about media and journalism). 

I previously wrote about alternative media podcasts. Check them out and, as Mashable likes to say, leave your comments in the comment fields below. Please. Pretty please!

In Blogs We Trust: Making Money from a Macro-Blog in the Age of Social Media

Google just gave me an other hundred bucks for all the ads on my blog (hosted by Google but written by me).

I have to admit I prefer microblogging on Twitter. That's proven by 14,000 tweets. It is a far more efficient medium to share ideas and reference material already written by others. However, blog posts have staying power. Tweets are short term. As I no longer blog frequently, my page rank on Google has taken a hit and yet  people still manage to read my old blog posts thanks to other search engines and links on Wikipedia and other sites. And then they click on the ads.

Often, the best way to change someone's opinion on something is to let them speak. As they run out of arguments, they start to self doubt. That's when they are vulnerable to new ideas. Macro-blogging does that. Whereas someone might have enough knowledge and strong opinions on a subject to write 140 characters or to forward a text picture on Facebook, they quickly run out when faced with the unlimited space of a blog post.

If you have real or social media friends that have strong opinions that you disagree with, encourage them to blog. Tell them about the bored government workers that read blogs on their lunch hours because Facebook is banned from the office. Tell them about the articles you wrote 5 years ago that are still read. More importantly, tell them that your drinks this weekend were financed thanks to stuff you wrote in bed.

In other news, my favourite podcast, The Guardian's Media Talk, is coming to an end. Here is the last episode (MP3) of Media Talk. The folks over at Twit.tv seem to still be able to monitze the spoken word. Anybody know of a good alternative to Media Talk? I'd settle for a blog.