December 11, 2013

BySean Chin

Pope Francis, the People’s Pope

What makes this Pope so important is the speed with which he has captured the imaginations of millions who had given up on hoping for the church at all. People weary of the endless parsing of sexual ethics, the buck-passing infighting over lines of authority when all the while (to borrow from Milton), “the hungry Sheep look up, and are not fed.” In a matter of months, Francis has elevated the healing mission of the church—the church as servant and comforter of hurting people in an often harsh world—above the doctrinal police work so important to his recent predecessors. John Paul II and Benedict XVI were professors of theology. Francis is a former janitor, nightclub bouncer, chemical technician and literature teacher.

Congrats Pope Francis It’s good to see TIME name someone that goes over and beyond in their role as the 2013 “Person of the Year”.

Norway is digitizing all its books and making them free to read online

It’s similar to the mass digitization efforts in the UK and Finland, but Norway has taken the extra step of making agreements with many publishers to allow anyone with a Norway IP address to access copyrighted material.

I absolutely applaud Norway for leading the way with this procedure.

Similar Posts

  • December 9, 2013

    BySean Chin

    Edward Snowden voted Guardian person of the year “He gave his future for the sake of democratic values, transparency, and freedom,” said Miriam Bergholz. Colin Walker wrote: “We need people like him to have the courage to forget about their own life in the cause of other people’s freedom. Let’s face it, his life is…

  • The Fall Of BlackBerry

    BySean Chin

    Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail published an article yesterday entitled “How BlackBerry blew it: The Inside Story“. This is quite an extensive inside look at the demise of this former tech giant. 9 pages in total. It tells a story of how divided focus among executives is extremely hurtful to a company. The best…

  • November 28, 2013

    BySean Chin

    The Inequality We Don’t Talk About Upper-middle-class two-parent families can invest far more time and resources in their children than lower-middle-class single mothers can, no matter how good their intentions. But the impact of family structure on children goes far beyond money. Kids from lone-parent families do worse on many measures. And the marriage gap…

  • November 18, 2013

    BySean Chin

    Games Definitely Don’t Harm Kids, Says Huge Study The key findings that came out of the study included that exposure to video games from the age of five was shown to have no effect on behaviour, attention or emotional issues. Neither television nor video games caused attentional or emotional problems and there was no difference…

  • October 28, 2013

    BySean Chin

    Cheapest 150Mbps broadband in big US cities costs 100% more than overseas In the US, wireless providers are increasingly monetizing data caps by charging users for any data they use beyond their limit. American greed at its finest. Power equals knowledge. And the internet is fast access to a plethora of knowledge. Obviously, these Internet…

  • Podcasting Thus Far

    BySean Chin

    Over the last four months, I have: Produced and co-hosted over 25 episodes of Capsule. Joined Andrew J. Clark for an evening at The Menu Bar. Starred in the season 3 trilogy of Life, Code and Stuff: “Starting“, “Failure” & “Success“. Featured and explained my podcast setup on Vintage Zen. Not too shabby I might say.