Once a week the Information Program of Open Society Foundations sends out a weekly digest of news, analysis and events all about … you guessed it, information. It is usually prepared by the inimitable Becky Hogge, the former executive director of the Open Rights Group, who now contributes to openDemocracy and co-hosts the Little Atoms [...]

I like to poke fun at my friend Christian. Though he is Guatemalan, when I see him in Buenos Aires he speaks like a native Porteño. A few months later, in Santiago, and his accent changes completely to the affectionate chirpiness of Chilean Spanish. I have heard his slight southern drawl as he speaks fluent [...]

It is said that Marcel Proust preferred to read train timetables as he fell asleep. According to Alain de Botton: The document was not consulted for practical advice; the departure time of the Saint-Lazare train was of no immediate importance to a man who found no reason to leave Paris in the last eight years [...]

My movements as recorded by default on my iPhone and available to anyone with access to my computer. A perfect distraction for jealous couples. More information here, here, and here.

I spent most of my Saturday night playing around on the website of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. Yup. Google Earth 3D rendering of INEGI’s headquarters in Aguascalientes. INEGI is responsible for the population census every ten years and the economic census every five years. As in many countries, including the United States, [...]

I had a personal stake in this one. When I hear the prevalent claims of false nostalgia that “modern writers can’t compete with the classics,” I often point to Barbara Kingsolver as an obvious illustration of literary prowess that far exceeds even the greatest excerpts of eloquence by the likes of Balzac, Voltaire, Cervantes, Joyce, [...]

It looks like the US government might soon shut down. Most media are covering the story as though it were unprecedented. In fact, as any regular reader of Lapham’s Quarterly knows well, rare is the newspaper article that hasn’t already appeared hundreds of times throughout history. A few weeks ago I watched an excellent 8-part [...]

What follows is more or less a rough approximation of my notes for a presentation I gave on Monday at a conference organized by the United Nations Development Program and the Institute for Elections and Citizen Participation of Jalisco. The panel, “Technological Platforms, Social Networks and Political Action,” also had the contributions of Jorge Soto [...]

In April 1982 then-President José López Portillo ordered all government agencies in Mexico to cancel their advertising contracts with Proceso Magazine. It was well known that López Portillo ran one of the most corrupt governments in the world at the time, but he was tired of Proceso reporters constantly pointing it out. Without the support [...]