When I came through JFK yesterday at 4:30pm, we were warned as we approached Immigration that the Immigration computers had been down nation-wide (!) for 1.5 hours. (I can’t find any mention of this in Google News, by the way.) The line for foreigners snarled on out of the room. It looked like some of them were going to spend the night sleeping on chairs at JFK. We US citizens, on the other hand, made it through our line in five minutes.

There’s a case for a country treating its citizens better than it treats non-citizens. But there’s also a case for treating visitors better than citizens. It’s called “hospitality” and it used to be the mark of civilization. (Cf. all of The Odyssey and how Abraham and Sarah welcomed three weary travelers (Gen. 18:1-5).) [Tags: immigration hospitality odyssey abraham]

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It turns out that I only had about 1.5 hours to wander around Helsinki this morning. Yet in that time I’m confident that I have absorbed the essence of this city, including its arts, culture, history, and people. And now I am ready to render judgment:

What a pretty city! I hope I can come back some time.

Stay tuned for future pronouncements.

I’m blogging from the Helsinki airport where I’ve learned that an “American” pizza has ham, pineapple and blue cheese on it. Perhaps the “Stoned American” pizza does, but that’s not a combo I’ve come across in the States. They’ve kindly made me one with just cheese. My limited experience of Finnish foods leads me to conclude – nay, to pronounce – that it is not the most vegetarian-friendly cuisine in the world. On the other hand, last night I had a cup of glogg (sp?), a mulled wine favorite of the season that was much better than I’d expected. I would have drank it anyway because it’s called glogg (sp?).

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Congratulations to Euan Semple on being named Information Professional of the Year.

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I spent the day with Nokia (very very interesting), and am about to go out to speak at an evening event, which means I will have managed to avoid seeing anything at all of Helsinki or Finland…except, of course, the Finns I got to talk with today. It’s been a fun and fascinating day, but I need more landmarks, dammit! :)

Tomorrow, I have a morning to wander. I’ve been advised to go up to the tippy-top of the Tower Hotel (all eleven floors) to get a panoramic view. After that, I’ll do whatever the concierge tells me to. And I’m looking forward to it. I’m sorry I only have a morning…

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Jean-Paul Borda is back from Iraq and has put together a mega-aggregation (megraggation?) of milblogs for your browsing and sorting pleasure. (Welcome back, Jean-Paul. Thank you for your service.)

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“Category imperialism” is the title of a new posting by Julian Bond that raises essential questions.

I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I’d point out that category imperialism results not just from decisions made by powerful sites about what categories/fields to track and which values to respect. It can also happen when folksonomies succeed in creating a power law distribution of a term: E.g., 95% of people at eBay who are selling laptops refer to them as “notebooks.” (Note: I made up that fact.) There’s some hope that computers can automatically translate local/personal taxonomies into the standardized terms, but Julian is pointing a truly tough issue: The long tail can be a powerful force for conformity.

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