Archive for January, 2006

Peter Kavanagh, brother of Patrick, dies

Saturday, January 28th, 2006

Peter Kavanagh, brother of the late poet Patrick, has died in New York, where he was a professor of English literature. It was to Peter that Patrick dedicated his Collected Poems, and after Patrick's death Peter put much energy into keeping his reputation and poetry alive, eventually succeeding in ...

To each cow its calf, to each grad student a conference presentation

Monday, January 16th, 2006

Yay! Looks like I'll be presenting my paper on an early - 6th century A.D. - Irish copyright case at the ICA conference in Dresden. [Yes, I'm aware it's a rather specialized topic.] More fun - it appears that Jürgen Habermas will be one of the keynote speakers.

Free phone calls endangering morals in Bangladesh?

Monday, January 16th, 2006

From InterWorldRadio:Mobile phone operators in Bangladesh have been ordered to stop offering free late-night telephone calls in response to requests to protect the moral values of young people. The move followed complaints by parents to the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission who said their childrenÂ’s behaviour had changed as a result ...

New shareholder for Ireland’s TV3?

Monday, January 16th, 2006

I wonder who's going to buy CanWest's share of TV3.

Toasted Heretic burnt by I.P. issues?

Monday, January 16th, 2006

Courtesy of Simon, an odd story on the Toasted Heretic website, about how they have been sent a cease-and-desist in response to their use of (a parody of) the Tayto-man logo on their new album, Now in New Nostalgia Flavour, which is essentially a reissue of their 1980s albums, which ...

Risk aversion on television

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

The Freakonomics blog has had a number of posts about Deal or No Deal, a television show that had passed me by until I came back to Ireland for Christmas. I've now seen parts of several episodes of the British version, which I'm guessing is fairly close to the U.S. ...

Class bias and ‘standardized’ testing

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006

You couldn't make it up. Greg Palast draws attention to some of the questions on the standardized test for third-grade students in New York. Or, rather, since the test is currently taking place, the official practice test:The year 1999 was a big one for the Williams sisters. In February, Serena ...

Community Radio in the 21st century

Tuesday, January 10th, 2006

I'll be giving a talk to the Radio Society in NUI, Galway tomorrow (Wednesday) evening. The topic is "Community radio: the position of the sector in the twenty-first century." OK, it's not the most catchy title ever, but it was the best I could come up with. The content should be ...

Data retention and vehicle tracking

Monday, January 2nd, 2006

Just before I came home for Christmas I was Paul's guest on MediaGeek on WEFT. We had intended, originally, to talk about the state of community media in Ireland and Europe generally, but ended up spending most of the show talking about the Data Retention compromise that had just passed ...