A new standard: drinking like the rest of the world April 14, 2007
Posted by mwj as opinion, politics, twu, writing. 2 comments.Since I’ve kind of gotten into a habit of posting work published elsewhere, I present my final opinion piece (ever?) for Mars’ Hill, the student newspaper at TWU.
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After the Fraser Health Authority decided we had too much arsenic in our water, Trinity Western University was forced to give students as much clean, tasty water as they could handle. I moved off campus this year, so I was kind of miffed that I missed my chance to drink water at TWU that didn’t taste like goose poop.
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Nick Gisburne and YouTube: a new context for an old debate February 14, 2007
Posted by mwj as journalism, media, philosophy, politics, technology, web2.0, youtube. 3 comments.
This is a YouTube piece that excerpted from the article below. Unfortunately, I had to record it with a stone age camera, but I got the audio with my iBook speakers, so its fine. (Link)
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The debate over religion and free speech has erupted on YouTube. Nick Gisburne, an atheist on YouTube, recently published a video entitled “Islamic Teachings: Cruelty From The Qur’an.” This video was taken down by YouTube staff, at first citing its “inappropriate nature,” and both of Gisburne’s YouTube accounts were subsequently made unavailable to the public and permanently disabled. Until other users started to publish Nick’s work on their own account, it was impossible to find any of Nick’s videos, either his attacks on Christianity and Islam, or his videos speaking in defence of himself.
I have a huge interest in this debate, and believe it is an opportunity to examine the implications of “new media” for the old discussion over the tension between religious freedom and the freedom of speech. It also shows us a darker side of Web 2.0: in a world where “social networking” is the new mechanism for determining what content we do and do not see, there is the major danger of the whole enterprise devolving into “gang warfare,” as one YouTube member has so aptly put it.
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GooTube’s got company December 22, 2006
Posted by mwj as art, business, media, politics, technology. 2 comments.
Something new in the blagosphere? Lulu.tv and Lulu.com are offering free, on-demand video and book publishing, and the author keeps 80% of the profits. For any print publishing, this is based off of the number of sales (which, I assume, are made one at a time - how much quality they sacrifice for cheap one-off printing costs I don’t know). For the videos, they promise 80% of the ad revenue generated by video views goes to the person who uploaded it. I don’t know what sort of algorithm they’ve got rigged up for that one, but with a little bit cleaner and tighter presentation on their .tv site, I think they could give the new big kid on the block a run for their video advertising dollars.
Raymond’s plan for TWU September 20, 2006
Posted by mwj as governance, politics, twu. 9 comments. I went to my first Undergraduate Academic Council yesterday, and heard Dr. Jonathan Raymond’s unveil some of his new ideas for TWU. The highlights? If all goes as planned at the board meeting in October, Student Life as we know it will no longer exist at Trinity. The focus of both the Board and the President’s Cabinet over the next year will be almost entirely on policy, based on the Carver model. And by next Fall we should have a framework from which to focus on academics and become Canada’s premier Christian university.
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Nested authority at TWU September 6, 2006
Posted by mwj as governance, politics, twu, twusa. 3 comments.I met with Dr. Raymond yesterday. I’d booked 45 minutes but his secretary had cut it down to half an hour and he was 10 minutes late, so I had to be understandably pointed in my approach. We were going to have dinner with him as an executive tonight, so I figured we could save the pleasantries ’till then.
Thumbprints at TWU September 1, 2006
Posted by mwj as politics, twu. 3 comments.It’s been too long, but I’m back, and I’m ready to put my fingerprints all over this clay that we call Trinity Western University.
There’s a new president here, and a new style of leadership. No longer are we Wayside School, a horribly flawed architectural project one story wide and a hundred stories high. Jonathan Raymond has come to flatten this institution and give back power to the people who make this place run.
Those people are the staff that break their backs cleaning up after students. Those people are the professors who take a 50% cut in their paycheck and choose students over the lofty towers of academia. And those people are the students themselves who pay more than they should for their education, taking loans and working part-time jobs for an education they have to keep convincing themselves is worth it. (more…)
Games and the culture of silence May 21, 2006
Posted by mwj as games, politics, twu. 2 comments.Dr. Ian Bogost published an excellent article today about the way in which American mainstream press handled the story of the Super Columbine Massacre RPG. The game (and web site) has pretty strong content, with the potential to make some queasy and others offended. However, as Bogost mentioned before, the efforts made by the game’s creator to examine the motives behind the Columbine massacre are “brave, sophisticated, and worthy of praise.”
Conflict of interest at TWU May 9, 2006
Posted by mwj as governance, journalism, politics, twu, twusa. 2 comments.At Trinity Western University, the newspaper is run a bit like it was in the Soviet Union. One man is resonsible for appointing the editor of the school newspaper, Mars’ Hill. This same man is also the chief advisor to the student government, TWUSA. This same man is also the only person on the final appeals board for “accountability” (i.e. disciplinary) issues. This same man is also in charge of the most ubiquitous campus institution, Student Life.
Save Larry the Registrar May 5, 2006
Posted by mwj as politics, twu. 1 comment so far.So apparently the registrar at Trinity Western University just got fired. His name is Larry Van Beek. There’s a website out there called Save Larry that claims that he “has been dismissed without proper cause, and outside of due process.”
Anyone have any ideas what this is about?
The star-spangled Anacreon May 1, 2006
Posted by mwj as poetry, politics. 1 comment so far.So apparently the American national anthem is based on a drinking song entitled To Anacreon in Heaven.
Francis Scott Key wrote the lyrics originally as a poem about the defense of Baltimore in a key battle of the War of 1812, but they were soon adapted to this stylishly bawdy song honouring the early Greek poet Anacreon. The melody had become a theme song for The Anacreontic Society, a group which was “dedicated to “wit, harmony, and the god of wine.”
Thanks to KnowledgeNews for this one.