New Media

Human Rights and Halftime Shows in America

jnarvey — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:07:01 +0000

Here’s a human rights condundrum for you:

You are reasonably certain that an asylum seeker sent back to his country of origin could face torture.
You are equally certain that this person poses a lethal terrorist threat to citizens in the local community (or abroad, if this person is given a chance to incite violence from the safe haven of your own shores).

In many countries, the practical solution has been to keep the suspected threat here, either monitored at ruinous expense, or left to his own devices in the hopes that he does not commit the terrorist offenses you were worried about in the first place. I argue it doesn’t have to be this way, in Terrorism, Asylum Seekers and the Human Right to Life

Also, do check out the Halftime in America video. If only because it’s Clint Eastwood.

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A Little Vancouver Maritime History

jnarvey — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:59:24 +0000

Here’s a photo I took a little while back of the mural outside the Vancouver Maritime Museum. Neat perspective.

Video. The Neighborhood of Hastings Sunrise A neat video tour of the East Vancouver neighborhood of...
More Media Coverage of a History of The Middle Eastside Shortly I first arrived in Vancouver, one of my first...

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The Creepiest House In Vancouver

jnarvey — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:08:13 +0000

Anyone know what the story is behind this decrepit house on Main Street where they keep mannequin heads in the window?

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Occupy Movement on a Low Boil. For Now

jnarvey — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 04:22:45 +0000

Isolated pockets of the Occupy Movement’s anarchic resistance appear to be popping up in cities around North America with almost random timing. The movement is sure to come back hard when the winter snow gives way to Spring sunshine — it’s not like the 99 percent’s complaints have been met (or could be met) so far. And while I have noted with disdain some of the more visible stupidities of the Occupy movement, I’ve also been heartened by some of the signs I’ve seen on the protest sites from Vancouver to New York City.

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Murder, Lies and the Bigotry of Low Expectations

jnarvey — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:48:15 +0000

My latest broadside in The Propagandist, The Bigotry of Low Expectations of Muslim Immigrants by an Imam. A note on honour killings, expectations of Canadian citizenship and some very weird comments by a Canadian Imam who the mainstream media loves to quote. The way this guy talks about his fellow co-religionists, you’d almost be tempted to accuse him of… well, Islamophobia.

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Another Day In Paradise

jnarvey — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 01:00:42 +0000

In case you were wondering, the title of this blog post refers to my being back in Vancouver, paradise of the west coast. In contrast, Maui’s an absolute hellhole.

I kid, I kid. Vancouver truly is all that, but Hawaii’s certainly a pleasant place to spend a week. Here are some shots from my recent trip there.

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2012. The Year of Living Creatively

jnarvey — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 07:27:46 +0000

It’s a whole new year — well, more than halfway through the first month of it, anyway, and I’m overdue for laying out my nefarious plan for 2012. OK, here goes.

Get my new pulp detective/sci-fi/horror novel published. Yes, I’m still going to self-publish this baby in the meantime, since it’s so darn fast and easy to do it now using Amazon. But it would be nice to get an actual dead tree publisher on board with the project before all of the dead tree publishers are pushed into bankruptcy by eBooks.
Write another novel by the end of June. It really seems like I’ve got the hang of this thing, now. Once I get going, I can write 10-15 pages of fiction at a clip. It seems reasonable to figure that I can bang out another 300 pages of awesomeness by the middle of summer, particularly since I’ve already got a pretty good outline for it — but again, I must actually devote some time to selling the damn things.
Boost my website copywriting business by 50 percent. I’m going to need to devote more time to business development. That means more marketing, networking, maybe some ad buys — We’ll see. Business has been good; I just want to see how hard I can push it before the Euro-crisis turns us all into dirt farmers again.
More political writing. That means returning to the fun of writing full-on op-eds on The Propagandist. Also, finding others pundits who want to share the space with me and shout from the digital soapbox.
Starting another blog or three. These would be fun projects that would help market my creative writing, besides just being cool in their own right. I’ll plug them when they launch.
Recording some more podcasts with my fellow awesome nerd, Shane Birley, along with other awesome nerds.
Continue to help organize the Northern Voice personal blogging conference. I like where it’s going.
Continue writers meetups every Sunday afternoon.
Continue to play the Savage Worlds RPG every Tuesday. It’s not just downtime with beer — I find these sessions also help inspire my creative writing projects.

So… given time constraints, how will I achieve all of this? Well, I’m certainly not going to work much longer hours. That’s just not sustainable. I know myself too well. I’ll burn out soon and be back to square one. An extra hour a day of work, tops.

Mostly, I just need to use my time more effectively. I can definitely give up some of the time I currently spend zoning out scanning my Google Reader feeds or seeing what’s new on YouTube. This alone will add about an hour a day for me — not a small amount of time (Just think of what you could accomplish in 365 hours). Video games are also to be cut out of my life — I hadn’t been playing them much anyway, but now that’s getting slashed to zero. And that’s it — presto, I’m that much more creative and awesome than I was before.

Coolness.

My Middle East Predictions for 2012 I wrote a novel a little while back dealing with...

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SOPA and the End of the Internet

jnarvey — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 01:30:08 +0000

Every blogger in the universe should be up in arms against this SOPA legislation coming out of the USA. This is soooooooo bad. Watch the video.

How To Not Appear Crazy On The Internet Wow. Sooooo many people I know (well, not personally, but...

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Frog Playing Ant Smasher on iPhone

jnarvey — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 17:44:45 +0000

This made me chuckle. Nice to see the frog got to eat something in the end.

OK, time to get some work done around here…

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Merry Christmas. Woody Allen Jesus

jnarvey — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:28:46 +0000

Entertaining and potentially blasphemous. It’s got my vote. Merry Christmas, y’all.

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