enthalpy

Monday, January 21, 2008


Don't get in the way of a Leftist Intellecutal and their carbon footprint, for alas, their global travel doesn't cause global warming. Especially when it's done in the name of "research."
Take a conference I attended last year in Amsterdam. I flew 6,687 kilometers from Minneapolis to Holland to attend a virtual-ethnography workshop. We discussed such problems as research ethics, the transference of traditional ethnographic methods to the Internet, and differences between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face interactions. It was a fascinating set of discussions and a great opportunity to interact with leaders in that new field.

However, there is more than a little irony in flying thousands of miles to discuss virtual modes of communication. As several colleagues and friends back home asked, "Couldn't you do that from here?"
I can enjoy the tone of the article, in that it's always "someone else's" pollution that's fucking up the planet, but still.



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