Author Archive



Jamaica


h1 Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago at around evening time by oso

It was the half hour sliver of clock that is neither day nor darkness. But nobody realized. Not the prostitutes nor the cocktail waitresses nor my taxi driver, cheerfully escorting one more stranger back to the airport, back to where he came from.
“Where do you come from?” he asks.
There are two types of latin accents [...]

Nicholas Laughlin on the Eve of Calabash


h1 Posted 1 month, 3 weeks ago in the late afternoon by oso

This will have to be an English-only post until I get the video of Nicholas up on dotSUB and add Spanish subtitles. I’m currently at the Calabash International Literary Festival with Georgia, Nicholas, Annie, Kei, Peter, Jonathan, JJ, and company.
Here’s a video interview I recorded with Nicholas Laughlin, editor of the Caribbean Review of Books, [...]

Explosions in Medellin, Peddlers in Madagascar, Street Food and Footpaths in Calcutta


h1 Posted 1 month, 4 weeks ago in the late afternoon by oso

Every two weeks we feature four to five posts by Rising Voices participants as a way of showcasing some of the finest content from new voices that are typically ignored by both traditional and new media.
In order to make new voices heard, however, we must be willing to hear them. Please take twenty minutes [...]

Building Something Out of Nothing, But What?


h1 Posted 2 months ago around lunchtime by oso

The blue of the Las Vegas sky and the force of its sun never change throughout the day. It could be 8 a.m. or 6 p.m. Either way it’s bright and hot as hell. The lego-like horizon of the strip stares over the rest of the city in a stupor of superiority, full of its [...]

[Translation] The change in Japan’s record industry


h1 Posted 2 months ago around lunchtime by oso

Because it is interesting news in itself, and because I know that my friends Chris and Hanako are interested in blog posts about Japan in the non-Western world, here is my translation of a brief blog post by Mariano Amartino about the increasing profits by record labels in Japan.
The latest study by the Record Industry [...]

Attention and Empathy


h1 Posted 2 months ago in the late afternoon by oso

I’m in Houston International Airport, one of my least favorites, waiting for my delayed flight to Las Vegas, probably my least favorite city in the entire world. I left Buenos Aires filled with sweet sadness. There is so much that I’ll miss. Here in Houston, having arrived far too early in the morning and getting [...]

Ceibal Jam! An event for the XO


h1 Posted 2 months ago in the late afternoon by oso

Originally published on Idea Lab.

An avalanche of analysis, impassioned commentary, and angry rants descended upon the tech mediapshere over the two past weeks ever since One Laptop Per Child Chairman Nicholas Negroponte urged developers for the XO laptop (formerly the ‘$100 laptop’) to recreate the student computer’s user interface for Windows XP rather than Linux. [...]

Prison Diaries: Prisoners use blogs as a start to social reform


h1 Posted 2 months, 1 week ago around lunchtime by oso

Sometimes I feel like there are more websites dedicated to documenting citizen journalism than actual citizen journalism initiatives. Among them: J-Lab, Idea Lab, Media Shift, Press Think, MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media, Contentious, Online Journalism Review, Social Media, NewAssignment.Net, and a slew of personal blogs (like this one) that are often focused on that [...]

Pangea Day, A Glocal Event


h1 Posted 2 months, 1 week ago mid-morning by oso

With my lifestyle and the dispersed locations of my friends, it is very rare when we can all do what most groups of friends do at least once a month: relax by watching the same movie together. In fact, this year I will only have two opportunities to do exactly that. On June 28 in [...]

Modern Day Conquistadores


h1 Posted 2 months, 1 week ago mid-morning by oso

My faithful fellow anglophones, as you may have noticed, the last two entries around here were written in Spanish. Sorry about that. But then, change is the spice of life, is it not? I’m contemplating the idea of publishing all future blog posts in both English and Spanish. That would be a lot of work. [...]