Chris Hardie's Blog

I remember back in the day (i.e. a few years ago), when you wanted to put video on your website, you needed to think about disk space, bandwidth, media format compatibility and a host of other issues before you could even hope to have people looking at the actual video content. Today, sites like [...]

Just one reason of many, I'm sure: Borat film tricked poor village actors. Excerpt:
"Mr Tudorache, a deeply religious grandfather who lost his arm in an accident, was one of those who feels most humiliated. For one scene, a rubber sex toy in the shape of a fist was attached to the stump of his [...]

There's a book meme going around, and Eric has tagged me. As he says, "a meme is an idea that spreads...Meme ideas spread by imitation, by exact copying and inexact copying. Memes can be melodies, catch-phrases, stories, clothing fashions, and ways of making pots. Many memes spread unintentionally in the course of casual conversation [...]

It would be nice if some day we could say, "great, now we know about ALL of the human-made products and processes that can give us cancer and harm the planet, now let's start doing something about them." But alas, it seems that everywhere you look, there's a new story about a chemical or [...]

About a year ago, I wrote down some observations about the phenomenon of podcasting: "...I'm probably just joining the throngs of people holding this up as The Next Big Thing, but I'm excited about what it represents: another positive use of the Internet for knowledge exchange and personal expression."
Since that time, I've really come to [...]

Last year I made a short video about the raising of a 104-foot wind turbine at the Cope Environmental Center here in town. I've just gotten around to posting it, so you can take a look and let me know what you think. It's a little dramatic and rough around the edges, but [...]

I enjoyed attending the premier party tonight at WCTV, Richmond's local public access cable television station. As I've encountered the station over the years I've come to appreciate that it's another amazing (but underutilized and oft-overlooked) resource that sets Richmond and Wayne County apart. Three stations with a diverse lineup that ranges from [...]

Wednesday night I attended a screening of The Ambassador, a documentary about John Dimitri Negroponte, currently the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and formerly U.S. ambassador to Honduras, the United Nations and Iraq. Negroponte has been a controversial figure due to his involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair and human rights violations in Honduras, and [...]

When I first discovered David Gray, it was by encountering his song Please Forgive Me, which was quite impressive, stunning maybe, to me as a song in its own right. But when I got the full album it was on, White Ladder, I realized that it was part of a package deal that achieved [...]

For the last several weeks I have been participating in a broad stroke study of law enforcement practices on city streets across America. I have done ride-alongs with police officers from coast to coast - Portland, Oregon to Austin, Texas to Cincinnati, Ohio to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These ride-alongs are usually in the form [...]