Chris Hardie's Blog

There's a line out there that moves up and down all day long. A lot of people watch it because they think it's a sign of how wealthy they are, or how wealthy they could be. Some people have killed themselves when the line goes too low, others have gone to jail. [...]

One of the books I've been working my way through recently is David C. Korten's The Great Turning, which I bought after seeing him speak at a conference last year. In a recent article in Yes! Magazine that distills the essence of the book nicely, Korten suggests that one of the barriers to achieving [...]

Journalist Amy Goodman, along with two other members of her crew, were roughed up and arrested at the Republican National Convention despite clearly displaying their press credentials.  Other journalists hoping to provide media coverage of the convention and the protests around it were pre-emptively arrested before it even began.  And of course, many other people [...]

Like many people of diverse political affiliations, I bristled during the Republican National Convention when various speakers including VP candidate Sarah Palin made fun of "community organizer" as a worthwhile way of spending time.
It wasn't problematic for me because the attack was being used against candidate Barack Obama, although I [...]

I attend a variety of public lectures at Earlham College here in Richmond, and while the speakers are usually quite satisfactory in both content and style, I find myself repeatedly shocked at how poorly some of the students conduct themselves in the Question and Answer segment of the programs. Self-absorbed, oft-incoherent, rambling diatribes are unfortunately [...]

It's been a while since I posted one of these, here are a few highlights from my Delicious link feed:

Dave Pollard's process flowchart for blogging [GIF]
travis poling, the blog - A new blog by Travis, who's taking blogging to a new level
Bikes as Transportation - A new blog by Mark, locally based but globally [...]

This past weekend I attended Blog Indiana 2008, a conference by and for bloggers in the region, which I mentioned here a few months ago. Overall, I would call the event quite a success. For $50, participants had access to a weekend packed full of rich and informative sessions, great networking opportunities with [...]

Earlier this year, I kind of made fun of Twitter. And people who use Twitter. I kind of called them things like "insane" and "isolated" and "distracted." I would like to officially apologize to anyone who felt offended by those statements.
Completely unrelated, I'm now trying out Twitter myself. I could tell [...]

In a few weeks, I'm presenting at the Blog Indiana 2008 conference, and my first session is on "blogging basics." My hope is that anyone with any comfort level around blogs and website tools will be able to leave the session with what they need to know to start blogging that day.
I'm putting together [...]

Quick reviews of three books I've taken in lately:

Spycraft: The Secret History of the CIA's Spytechs, from Communism to al-Qaeda by Wallace, Melton and SchleshingerFascinating, scary, and geeky. With great diagrams and photographs explaining how spy devices were constructed and worked, and with interesting stories about various successes and failures, all told from the [...]