Summer co-op job

Haven’t written since the winter semester finished, so here’s a quickie: I managed to snag a technical writing position at Sierra Wireless for the summer. Cool thing is the staff technical writer was a graduate of the Print Futures program from 10 years ago. It’s nice to meet someone who ‘made it’.

Anyways, hope to do more posts in the future. And now that it doesn’t have to be work-related, perhaps I can make things a little more interesting (i.e. more critical, controversial, ascerbic, etc. etc.).

Cheers.

Is This Law Going Too Far?

Some of you have probably heard or seen the recent reports about the passing of a new French law making it a crime for non-journalists to film a violent act and distribute the video on the Internet.

This article from ArsTechnica provides a succinct summary of the controversy surrounding this new law.

Personally, I recognize the intent of the law and I support it, but the fact is that it will be next to impossible to enforce. Sure, video-hosting sites can be compelled to remove these sorts of videos, but as we all know with the Internet, once something is posted, it’s there forever.

But what do y’all think about this? Is it right that the French government legislate who can and cannot record videos of events occurring in the public domain? What do you think of the logic behind the requirement that only journalists be allowed this right? What defines a journalist in today’s age of bloggers?

Alternative Fuels

I recently read an article about Nigeria’s oil situation in the February issue of Vanity Fair. This was a real eye-opener.

In brief, Nigeria is the fifth-largest oil producer in the world. Its economy depends largely on the sale of oil to foreign multinational corporations. But its corrupt government is illegally siphoning hundreds of millions of dollars a year from this industry. Communities in the Niger Delta, where most of the easy-to-access stores of oil are found, see none of the oil money since government officials are keeping it for themselves. These communities lack safe drinking water, electricity, and sustainable economies. Their people rely on a subsistence fishing economy to survive. Needless to say, they are very, very, unhappy. They have taken to committing various terrorist acts, such as kidnapping foreign oil workers and sabotaging oil pipelines, in order to make themselves heard.