Getting Linky

A few stories that have piqued my interest:

Sports Illustrated has a great article on Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas, who has more caps for Wales than any player in that country's history. He also is openly gay. And he is still playing. The question that motivates Gary Smith's article is when will there be an openly gay player in American team sports?

Conservatives always seem to predict apocalypse when it comes to social reform and economic regulation. And they are almost always completely wrong.

I don't think I have ever seen a Powerpoint presentation that did not detract a lot more than it added. Most people who use Powerpoint use it as a crutch to cover up their inability to convey material well. As a result students come to rely upon it as if it were necessary. It looks like many in the US military agree with me.

Here is an experiment all married people should get behind: Try to do it every day for a month. (Honey? Are you reading?)

Technology's Burdens

Rob Horning at Popmatters has an insightful post on consumerism and the false allure of free stuff that more than anything speaks to me about the tyranny of technology that supposedly makes our life better by giving us more access to free information at our fingertips. And for those of us who work in the realm of knowledge and information there is nothing more seductive than free information.

And yet at least for me, this access is at best a dual-edged sword. I get probably a score of news sources sent to my main email account regularly. Most of this I can justify as work, at least broadly, inasmuch as so much of it helps me stay abreast of African developments that are crucial to my writing on the Foreign Policy Association blogs and elsewhere. But couple these with far too many listservs, and then with a slew of personal email or email from actual people related to professional stuff, and then emails that qualify as junk, and then emails that qualify as semi-welcome junk (emails I signed up for that nonetheless is geared toward selling me something), and then emails regarding financial stuff -- credit card statements, cell phone, etc. and you begin to see the problem. On a day when I'm diligent about emails I find that I'll stay on top of that day's inbox -- unless something big happens in Africa, say -- and may whittle away at ten emails from, more than likely, yesterday, before other duties intercede. then to top that off with the fact that my account was violated some time ago, and I am still dealing with the ramifications (oh yes -- whoever got in there not only copied my contact list but stole it. If we know one another I probably don't have your email address any longer).

And so it was with equal parts fear and loathing that I loaded my main and campus email accounts on to my new Blackberry today. The deluge is already coming. And I asked for it.

(Via Andrew Sullivan, who picked it up from Nicholas Carr

The Dual-Edged Sword of Email

I'm certain I'm not alone among my readers, but I spend an insane, inordinate amount of time on email. Keeping up with friends, of course, but also academic listserves, which proliferate seemingly daily, and news sources -- newspapers and magazines and journals -- and too many sports-related emails to mention. Much of my daily contact with Africa comes to me via email. Email that by any definition is work-related. There are days, it seems, when "work" consists entirely of deleting email, responding to email, ignoring email, blogging based on things I receive via email, and engaging in endeavors and making the sort of inquiries that will lead to more email. A day away from the computer can set me back two days. A week away from email and I cannot imagine how I would dig myself out.

Now we have confirmation that we are not alone from the website of the respected literary magazine-cum-journal N+1, which explicitly makes the case"Against Email." Here is a sample, though the whole thing is worthwhile:

America, most efficient country on earth, is in fact a nightmare economy of squandered time. Our economic system condemns people to work in offices and send email; that’s what they do there. (And in order to cover their asses, they cc everyone about everything.) Then they go home and take with them all the work they were supposed to be doing all day. Their revenge upon those of us who don’t work in offices? To send us email from nine to five.

We too have sometimes been the have-nots in the email economy. In the role of supplicant emailer, we have labored to achieve the impossible right tone: so winning that others will have to write back, so casual you can pretend it doesn’t matter when they don’t. The whole thing is painful all around. And this, finally, is what must be understood: email, which presents itself as a convenience, a breeze, is in fact a stern disciplinary phenomenon. You must not stray too far from your desk. You must be polite, you must write back soon. And yet in order to strike the right note, you must not write when too giddy, angry, tired, or drunk. Always at the disposal of email, never, except guiltily, at the disposal of your moods. . . . It fits our phase of capitalism: the collective attitude is casual, natural-seeming, offhand; the discipline is constant and intense.

Email represents a form of self-inflicted tyranny, but it is tyranny nonetheless. But I have to cut this short. I have to check if I have any new messages before I go to bed.

XM and Sirius Merge

I received an email last night telling me something that the Thunderstick and I had long suspected would happen: XM and Sirus are merging, assuming the FCC approves. As a huge fan of satellite radio, I naturally worry what this will do to the consumer -- will I have to buy new equipment? Will my subscriber fees go up? At the same time, I cannot help but be pleased with what will inevitably be expanded options -- I will now get all NFL games in addition to the MLB package, wonderful news inasmuch as I will be able to listen to all the Pats games and listen when, say, I am driving back from San Antonio on a Sunday afternoon. The FCC will have some serious anti-trust questions to address, and the technological issues might be more difficult to reconcile than the principals think, but as one of the major players in the deal argued yesterday, the idea of only one satellite station may have been inevitable anyway. At least with this merger, one of them won't collapse.

Fair Warning

I have made the switch to Google's new format for blogger. This almost inevitably means that I will spend much of the next month screwing up posts, sending you to screwed up links to nowhere, and swearing at my computer screen. Just to provide you with fair warning.