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New new thing…

February 25, 2010 by Michael Boyle

In the span of a couple of tweets and not more than 3 hours, Sylvain and CFD went from conception to birth of Pssstopedia, a wiki devoted to archiving and memorializing the history of Internet culture in Quebec. I’ve already contributed!

Tags: Culture, History, Hour, Internet, Quebec

In Jamie O’Meara’s column

January 25, 2007 by Michael Boyle

In Jamie O’Meara’s column

this week comes the news that CBC’s Brave New Waves has been cancelled. At least that’s how I got the news. Jamie and I are exactly the same age – I might be a couple of weeks older – and I remember that even in Ottawa, BNW seemed like it was coming from Mars it was so different than the early-Muchmusic, Video school dance environment I came from. The show has always been an oddball on CBC Radio 2, but still, it’s a sad development at the Corpse that they couldn’t find a spot – in the middle of the night – for such innovative – after all this time – programming.

Tags: Hour, Media, Montreal, Music

You don’t have to be in Montreal

November 8, 2002 by Michael Boyle

You don’t have to be in Montreal

to have a quintessentially Montreal experience, as meg hourihan described yesterday. “The cheeseman switched right over to English from that moment on. I insisted on French. Back and forth we went, but I wouldn’t budge a linguistical inch.”

Tags: French, Hour, Meg Hourihan, Montreal

Naomi Klein

September 15, 2001 by Michael Boyle

: Game Over: The End of Video Game Wars.

When I was in undergrad I published my first and only paper in a journal. It wasn’t actually much of a paper, and I never followed up on the subject very seriously, but it resonates a bit now.

The paper was about the rise of trade unionism in the First World War in Germany and the UK. The story is often forgotten, but it’s important. The British Union movement staunchly resisted the war effort, and in particular resisted giving in blindly to the government’s demands due to “wartime considerations”. They fought tooth and nail for concessions in working hours, in pay rates, and most importantly for recognition by the state.

Britain still won the war (with lots of help from others of course), and not in spite of the Unions, because the criticisms they brought to the table improved the conditions of people in general, which led to greater success and support in general for the war effort.

There’s a lesson in this for us, today. Important parts of societies can be critical of their government and strive for improvement while not dooming the whole effort. Societies can be improved during crisis periods, and such improvement doesn’t always mean blindly following along, necessarily.

The price of freedom, it is said, is eternal vigilance. That applies equally, always, inwards as well as outwards. The external foe is not the only threat.

Tags: Arts, EFF, Game, Hour, Price, SMS, Video, War

Reading between the lines

September 10, 2001 by Michael Boyle

, it seems that someone slagged Meg Hourihan about her totally reasonable entry the other day. It boggles the mind. The “contentious” entry was nothing but a nicely-worded observation by someone who has more perspective about this stuff than most. She was nice enough to grant that she was “sorry for the confusion.” Uh, that was gracious as hell, but if anyone was confused, they were looking for it.

Tags: Hour, Meg Hourihan

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