Rotundus.com

I was reading through Darren's account of a recent photo trip that I almost went on, and thought for a second that he'd caught the CPR holiday train, but it was a prior year's version:

Basically, as a promo the CPR decorates a train with christmas lights and holds a short performance with a few singers on board - it's rather weird (maybe an understatement), but perhaps you might find it interesting.

This year's Western Canadian edition is scheduled to be in Calgary on Tuesday December 11th, continuing westward from there. Performers on this train will be Wide Mouth Mason (who have opened for groups such as the Rolling Stones) and Melanie Doane.

For more information see CPR's Holiday Train page.

With snow delaying my departure back to the Canadian prairies by about 2 hours, I used up the time in the airport catching up on some of the talks from Godblogcon2007.

A talk by Paul Spears subtitled The case for Blog Euthanasia was particularly interesting. A year or so ago oodles of people that I knew seemed to be taking up Xanga, but that seems to have largely faded (with many moving to Facebook).

The whole Godblogcon thing has also left me questioning how people define what constitutes a blog. Rotundus predates the blogging craze - it started back in 2001 - but over the past year or two I've gradually come to accept people labeling it a blog. Yet at the same time, I'm not quite sure how well this site fits how Godblogcon's definition of a blog.

This site might be classified as a personal journal - or me just thinking aloud and looking for some feedback. Unlike Godblogcon, I don't really care much about marketing (although I don't mind if people link to the site, as I think that for the most part the discussion here is of reasonable quality). Generally speaking I have a no-ads no-blogrings no-permalinks policy (I don't even link to my own sites - let alone anyone elses').

A month or two ago, I modified that no-permalink policy slightly with a disclaimer/permalink to some stuff from Desiring God at the top right hand of pages. I'm still not totally happy with the wording of though, but for now it will do.

The primary question that Godblogcon left me with was the role of marketing in blogging. Should a blog market itself, and can it ever get lost amidst the marketing? Secondly, what qualifications should a blog meet before it should be promoted?

A glance at the TV schedule suggests that House enters reruns tonight. Given the writer's strike in Hollywood, who knows when it might return.

To tide you over in the meantime, here's the music video to the song from which the theme to House is derived. I found it interesting that this music video is basically a single sequence showing a child in the womb.

I'm never quite sure how to interpret House on ethical issues. I think that it's good at bringing ethics to the surface, although I'm not always in agreement with the conclusions drawn. House in the show is not opposed to abortion - arguing for it in some circumstances. Yet, in some cases I think that the show has done a lot of good for the pro-life cause. Consider, e.g., one clip taken from a show in season 3 which seems to draw out the humanity of the unborn. Here's a link to the clip in question on Youtube.

Comments from Industry Canada have suggested that new copyright legislation may be introduced in a few weeks.

To quote Michael Geist (Law Professor at the University of Ottawa):

There is every indication this legislation will be a complete sell-out to U.S. government and lobbyist demands.

In spite of a request for an interview by a CBC radio show (CBC being the national public broadcaster) - the show notes that "we’ve gotten more comments on this than on every other story we’ve posted, combined" - the government's minister of Industry has declined an interview.

All this in a time when government reports aren't suggesting a whole lot of problems. According to Statistics Canada the profitability of the Canadian music industry is increasing, and an Industry Canada study has suggested that:

According to the data there is "a strong positive relationship between peer-to-peer file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." (HT: Michael Geist)

Perhaps it's time to start working my way down a list of suggested things to do about this