More intellectual-property follies

From the December 14 Chronicle of Higher Ed:

The American Chemical Society has sued Google, the popular Internet search company, arguing that the new Google Scholar service violates a trademark the society holds for its search product, Scifinder Scholar.

In the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on December 9, the society argues that it holds a "common law" trademark for the term "scholar," because people often refer to the Scifinder Scholar tool as simply "scholar." ...
(Full story by subscription here.)

In other news, I hereby assert a trademark on the word "hill". I demand that cartographers everywhere immediately cease and desist from infringing on this "common-law trademark". A license to use my trademark may be available at very reasonable rates. Or not.

Some tuneful theologizing

... courtesy of a link forwarded by Pablo (The Still-Blogless).

A Hymn for the Reformed Child

Carry on Pablo, you'll someday be free of that dour predestinationism.

Spotted on the way to work...

... at Suburban Public Library this afternoon:

A fire-engine red Monte Carlo with the vanity license plate "QABALAH" and a large Star-of-David window sticker. Sadly, I could not tell whether the driver was wearing a skullcap or sporting payos.

A tiny Japanese compact car with the words "Rice Goes Here" stenciled over the fuel hatch.

These things amuse me, I know not why. Perhaps I'm suffering fever-induced brain damage or something. But then again, Cherry 2000 amused me, too, so perhaps the damage is something I've been living with for a while.

The Librarian

Last night, I and a couple of local friends settled in with cheesy-popcorn, potato chips, and other assorted snacks to watch The Librarian : Quest for the Spear, a 2-hour made-for-TV movie that appears to be intended as the pilot for a projected series. I had, I confess, some hopes that it would be an ironic-but-intriguing boost to the rather pathetic public image of the profession.

Sadly, none of the snacks could compete with the cheesiness and flakiness of what was presented on the screen. I'm not a big fan of taking one's frustrations out on television screens -- unlike Edward Abbey, I've never taken a gun and blasted a hole in the silly thing -- but on this occasion, the screen did get pelted with popcorn on a number of occasions.

The plot of the first fifteen or twenty minutes of the show can be summarized more or less as follows:

Our Hero, an uber-nerdish perpetual live-at-home grad student with 22 degrees (and counting), gets thrown out of university for being too good of a student. This guy's so pathetic outside the classroom that the blind dates his mother sets up for him last about thirty seconds before the woman goes sailing out the door, advising him to get a job. His own mother, in between bludgeoning him with thunderously trite advice about head and heart, feels compelled to advise him not to listen to the books if they "tell him to do bad things".

Fortunately for our socially-inept hero, a magically-engraved invitation to apply for a "prestigious position at the Metropolitan Public Library" inexplicably falls from the sky into his hands.

While interviewing for said position in an improbably opulent public library building, he suddenly starts pulling Sherlock Holmesian stunts like telling the interviewer all the embarrasing details of her personal life based on his hyperacute observation and excruciating knowledge of trivia. This, apparently, is enough to get him the job as "The Librarian", since the interviewer is so wowed by his perception that she has mononucleosis that she immediately cancels all the other interviews and Bob Newhart magically materializes in a shimmer of sparkly stuff to guide him into a deep dark secret vault underneath the library where, it turns out, all the greatest magical treasures of myth are conveniently stored in one place. Our Hero is informed that he's really, really special because there's only one Librarian (with a capital L) and they choose The Librarian very carefully. In response, he promptly tries to open Pandora's box and nearly gets decapitated by Excalibur.

Believe it or not, the plot gets less plausible from there. Mayan temples in the Amazon rain forest, filled with impossibly complicated booby-traps lifted straight from the Indiana Jones films. People blithely tromping through the peaks of the Himalayas with jackets unbuttoned. People jumping out of airplanes and surviving because someone else jumps out of the same airplane with a parachute and chases them down and catches them before they hit the ground. Butch-and-Sundance-style paired jumps into impossibly shallow water, and a subsequent swim down the river in which an important book, while carried in a visibly soggy backpack, somehow conveniently fails to get wet. Ridiculous purported mental feats like instantly learning a dead language with only one surviving manuscript and nothing to compare it to. Ridiculous physical feats of the kind made possible only by CGI and the total denial of reality. A couple of sultry female kickboxers who, after the requisite tough-girl posturing, inexplicably-but-predictably come to lust for the nerdish hero. (I will grant, however, that their inevitable one-on-one faceoff yields one of the few really funny one-liners in the movie.) Plot holes you could drive the Polar Express through, including the totally unexplained disappearance and reappearance of a major character.

It's as if the producers deliberately looked for every silly action-movie cliche they could find, and then asked themselves: yes, but how can we make it WORSE?

I could go on, but why bother? If you must watch it, watch it for unintentional laughs. Or for the novelty of seeing Bob Newhart try to portray a martial artist. He really does try, but even staged choreography and professional editing just aren't up to the task of making the avuncular Bob Newhart appear to move quickly.

Best and most unintentionally unironic line: "The fate of the world rests in my hands? That's sad."

Miscellaneous political links

Okay, that was nice. I'll have to do the nice, nonpolitical personal anecdote thing more often. But I have a great big heaping stack of political links collected over the past month, too! Most of 'em are old news but rather than simply consigning them to oblivion, I'll give them their brief moment to shine in the rather feeble public glory of this blog.

Conservatives had snarky things to say when Hillary Clinton used rubber-stamped signatures to help sell copies of her book. What do they have to say, I wonder, about Donald Rumsfeld using fake auto-signatures on the condolence messages sent to the grieving families of US personnel killed in Iraq? (Discussion at DailyKos.) I guess it's probably okay. After all, Dubya and Rummy have important press conferences and golf games to get to. "Yer kid's dead. Now watch this drive!"

If George W. Bush were running against Jesus of Nazareth, his campaign advertisements would look like this.

General JC Christian, Patriot, explains it all for you. Presumably Republican Jesus would kick Liberal Jesus's ass. In a 100% manly, thoroughly heterosexual kind of way, of course.

Not exactly breaking news, but worth noting as one more example of BushCo's authoritarian, secretive, anticonservative agenda: the attempt, over the summer, to suppress legal information about asset-forfeiture procedures by which governmental bureaucrats unconstitutionally seize private property.

And, last but not least, the post-US election cover of Britain's Daily Mirror.

A charming, nonpolitical personal anecdote

A couple of nights ago, Yours Truly was working the reference desk at Huron State U. when a student walked up and asked for a sound recording of a certain play. Y.T. dutifully checked the catalog and found that the library owned an 33 rpm LP recording of the play.

YT: "Well, miss, we have a recording of the play, but it's an LP."

Student (confused): "What do you mean, LP?"

YT: "Long-playing record. You know, a record on vinyl."

Student: "Uh.... vinyl?"

YT: (After a pause). "It's an older recording format. You've probably seen them. Black records, about this big across?"

Student: "Will it play in my CD player?"

YT felt very old at that moment.

I'm back!

After a monthlong gap in posting due to a combination of long hours at work, disgust with BushCo and the lemminglike dittoheads who voted for them, and the national snark shortage, I'm back.

This message brought to you by....

Fiend, whose moral and intellectual support (and repeated queries of "when are you going to start blogging again? Huh? Huh?") have prompted me to get back up off my *ss. (Take that, Limes!)

Now among her words of advice were to write about small, everyday, personal things, rather than trying to Solve the Problems of the World. Since the upcoming Quincy World Summit Meetings, to be held concurrently with the annual family holiday reunion dinner, will no doubt supply plenty of opportunities to discuss the parlous state of the world and be informed about how most of its problems are due to the pernicious influence of "liberals", I will for the most part follow that advice. I will studiously ignore the ongoing neocon ideological purge in the US cabinet. I will not comment on the replacement of crusading evangelical Attorney General Ashcroft with Bush's personal lawyer from his salad days in Texas, who advises him that the Geneva Convention's prohibitions against torture, assassination, and other war crimes are "quaint" and "obsolete". Nor will I discuss the replacement of Colin Powell, the only member of the cabinet with actual, recent military administrative experience and any degree of international respect, with Condoleeza Rice, an unquestionably bright woman who nonetheless seems to have a unsettling tendency to refer to her boss as her "husband". Nor will I

Actually, I don't think I'll be able to follow Fiend's advice for very long, despite the risk of being "smited" for criticizing "God's President". I mean, BushCo just cries out to be mocked, doesn't it? Don't those "unser Führer" billboards down in Florida richly deserve to be held up to the derision and horror of those capable of consulting an English-German dictionary or using a simple web translator?

You don't believe we're on the eve....

I go to bed tonight hoping that the Bush Administration will not spring some last-minute plan to disrupt the election tomorrow. I go to bed hoping and praying that the election will go smoothly, but dreading that it will be tainted by fraud and by blatant Bush administration attempts to suppress democracy to preserve its profitable, cozy grip on power. I find myself wondering whether, if exit polls begin to go against the ruling administration, there will be "terrorist" attacks intended to panick the remainder of the electorate into voting for a warmonger.

Am I paranoid? Or are these thoughts rational when the ruling administration has shown itself to have no moral or ethical principals whatsoever in its singleminded, Machiavellian pursuit of power, profit, and personal aggrandizement? Can it be that the only reason democracy has survived thus far in the U.S. is because no political administration thus far has been amoral and vicious enough to subvert or defy it?

Is it rational for me to wonder whether the Bush Administration, which believes itself to be anointed by God and (more importantly) to have the unquestioning support of the military, will accept the results of any election that goes against it? Or to wonder whether the votes cast will even be counted?

For you who are on the fence, or contemplating voting for Bush: Consider the various proposals that the Bush Administration has floated as "trial balloons" in the past couple of years, and then backed down on because they feared the loss of popular support. Cancelling elections. PATRIOT II. Enabling corporations to import vast numbers of indentured servants from the Third World to replace American workers. Consider its chutzpah in starting a bloody war on blatantly fraudulent premises, and using that war to funnel billions of dollars to its business cronies in no-bid contracts so openly rigged that the FBI is investigating them even in the face of likely retaliation from an administration whose notorious penchant for petty vengeance has led it to betray CIA agents in order to "get back" at their spouses for criticizing it. Consider the President's assertions that he and his operatives have the legal power to seize anyone, at any time, and plunge them into a black hole of perpetual incarceration without trial, without legal representation, without family contact or judicial review or public acknowledgement of any kind. To "disappear" people in the style of the old-fashioned South American goon squads. To torture and degrade prisoners in total disregard of international treaties and basic human decency.

Now consider what that same administration would be like in a second term, with no Constitutional incentive to care about popular opinion.

If you consider Bush and Kerry to be equally offensive, consider this: Kerry will at least have an incentive to acknowledge public opinion if he wants to be re-electable in 2008.

If you are morally offended by Kerry's unwillingness to outlaw abortion, consider this: is Bush's insistence on smugly sending thousands of adult men and women out to die or to wreak havoc on tens of thousands of other human beings in an unwarranted war any morally superior?

I grant that the bulk of the American populace may, in fact, be blinkered and ignorant enough to blindly follow Bush down the path toward further destruction of America's historical tradition of political and economic liberty. As P.T. Barnum famously said, no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public. I hope that this is not the case. I don't think it is.

And I go to bed hoping that when the tumult and the shouting dies tomorrow, the tumult and the shouting will be all that dies.

Of Canada and satellite dishes

This legal news from up north might be of interest to one or two readers. Slashdot discussion here, along with discussion of the British Columbia privacy minister's reaction to the US goverment's insistence on indiscriminate data-mining via the so-called "PATRIOT" Act and other means.

A convergence

We want to bankrupt the U.S., says Bin Laden. Okey-doke, says Bush....

A convergence

We want to bankrupt the U.S., says Bin Laden. Okey-doke, says Bush....

Bush spreads lies again

Remember the Bush campaign's telephone smear campaign against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary? The one in which Bush used anonymous automated telephone diallers to smear McCain with false charges at the last minute?

Guess what.

That's right, they're doing it again. The Detroit Free Press and the Daily Kos weblog are reporting a surge of automated, anonymous telephone calls in Michigan, all either seeking to link Kerry with the phrase "gay marriage" or to fraudulently direct voters in Democratic districts to incorrect polling locations.

If anyone out there's contemplating voting for Bush, at this point you're doing so consciously knowing that you are voting for lies, bigotry, and deliberate subversion of democracy.

An interesting challenge for law students:

Find a way to make sharia law compatible with human rights.

More Bush campaign dirty tricks

Old news, I'm afraid, since I haven't had much time for blogging lately. But for the benefit of anyone who hasn't read it elsewhere:

"Former employees of a Republican-controlled company, Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes, which conducted voter registration drives in Nevada, have blown the whistle on its practice of selectively destroying the registration forms of people who attempted to register as Democrats.

"Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"'We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me,'" said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

"Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

"So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken...."

"The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee."

The Republican-funded company reportedly skipped out on its Nevada landlord without paying the rent and flew (by night, presumably) to Oregon, where it busily committed further election fraud on behalf of its paymasters. Just another example of the "moral values" loudly touted by the current crop of Republicans.

More here, here, here.

Libraries are thieves!

Old news, but still entertaining: the Writers Against Piracy. "Put down the library book, and back away slowly...."

Of G.W. Bush and solipsism

Apparently, not only does the Bush Administration not care what the rest of the world thinks, they don't want the rest of the world to know what they think.

Durn furriners. Y'all just shet up an' do what yer told!

Conference report, days two, three, and four (belated)

Blogging the succeeding days of the conference turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, due to limited availability of internet terminals and time.

The exhibitors' hall was somewhat smaller and attracted fewer vendors than the ones at prior Texas L.A. and American L.A. conferences I've attended, but I came across a few interesting regional publishers and distributors I wouldn't have found otherwise. At the library association sales table, amongst the high-priced and (ironically) poorly-indexed directories of state associations, lacquered jewelry, library-themed tchotchkes, and recent books by conference-attending authors, someone was selling bars of all-natural "librarian-made" soap in various flavors (pumpkin, rose petals, etc.) I asked her if she'd read Fight Club. She laughed knowingly. I didn't buy any soap. Others did, however; she was sold out by the second day.

The keynote speaker on the first day discussed at some length the various impacts that he thinks technology will have on libraries. Although a great deal of what he said regarding the social impact of constant electronically-enabled social connectedness made sense, I suspect that some of those few who read this blog will take exception to his statement that "bloggers don't care about privacy." It was the first, but not the last, time that the concept of privacy was dismissed as old-fashioned and no longer relevant to the modern, wired, interconnected world.

Gleanings from various sessions and workshops throughout the conference:

The state electronic library plans to change their interface this coming January. I can't see anything wrong with the current interface, but I guess Change is Good (TM).

A speaker on internet privacy recommended ZoneAlarm as a good free-or-cheap downloadable firewall to protect personal computers from viruses, trojans, etc. (Any thoughts/reviews from those more technically savvy than myself?) He also suggested, without overtly saying so, that a dismaying number of government computers were distressingly vulnerable to such malware. The fact that many such computers have access to citizens' private information was duly noted.

All Music Group has good swag at their presentations. I picked up a couple of nice classic-jazz compilation CDs at their presentation table before rudely skedaddling to another talk. (So sue me.) It occurs to me to wonder about the ethics of having commercial vendors do scheduled presentations about their for-profit products on the same featured basis as non-commercial speakers, meetings of professional interest groups, etc.

I sat in on a session about "use and creation of portfolios for professional development" in academic libraries. Who knows? Such information may someday be useful to me. While waiting for the presentation to begin, I noticed that one of the tech people from Suburban Public Library was also sitting in the room. Was she contemplating a job switch into the academic world, I wondered? And what did she think about seeing me in the room? It turned out she was receiving an award from the group sponsoring the talk. Thinking quickly, I grabbed my digital camera out of my briefcase and snapped a picture. Then I sat through the rest of the talk, about how to organize a portfolio for tenure review and/or promotion in academic libraries, as if it were a boring but necessary adjunct to getting her photo.

Meeting people from both "Huron State" and Suburban Public Library throughout the conference was slightly awkward. It was as if I were trying to negotiate a social event while juggling two dates. (Which, for the record, I have never done, and never intend to do.) Fortunately, the Huron State folks made it rather easy for me by not inviting me to go to lunch with them or otherwise interact with them for much longer than the space of a brief hallway conversation or two. The SPL folks were more friendly, which isn't particularly surprising considering that SPL was willing to pay my way to the conference and Huron State wasn't. I was a bit annoyed when I found that the other SPL folks were staying at the ritzy conference hotel while I roughed it at a cheaper chain hotel five miles down the road. But I shouldn't complain about it. I could have insisted on staying at the conference hotel, even when the head of reference darkly hinted that, for a part-timer, low conference expenditures would be a good idea. (Really, I don't mind that they had in-room jacuzzis while I had a dank chain-hotel swimming pool with cloudy water. Or that they had dinner and drinks in a top-floor-of-the-skyscraper bar and restaurant overlooking the bay while I gnawed on bread and cheese and apples from a cardboard box, or that they had spectacular tenth-floor views of the autumn colors of the northern Michigan forests while I had a first-floor view of a parking lot. Really, I don't mind. Believe me. Not at all. Nope.)

Thursday afternoon, a presentation billed as Business for Beginners turned out to be an overview of small-business-startup resources available from a particular state agency and other sources, rather than the more general discussion of current, general business-reference resources that I'd hoped for. But I did get some useful lists of resources for the occasional library user who's contemplating starting a business.

The "best of the best" presentation about exemplary small-library programs and projects in the state featured the director of the library of my former residence in the U.P. and, among other things, the display of wedding gowns and other feminine stuff that she and the local historical society had put on at the library. After the talk, I inquired about the status of their unique and extensive archival collection on a very interesting Yooper railroad. Fortunately, it seems they are in the process of digitizing portions of it, and took my e'mail address to send me further information. Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything from them since.

Thursday night, having opted out of the $38-a-plate dinner with accompanying celebrity speech, I decided to walk from the El Cheapo Motel to the local downtown for dinner. Bad idea. Three miles later, I turned around and started walking back. In the rain. Cold rain. At least I slept well once I got back.

The Friday morning presentation on library weblogs didn't tell me much I didn't already know, but it did inspire me to think that SPL might benefit from public and/or staff weblogs, and that if I were to suggest and implement such a thing it might actually look like a technological "achievement". (Gotta think about that portfolio.)

The motivational speaker at the end of the conference didn't particularly appeal to me, but others seemed to like her. Spent the rest of the afternoon driving up the very narrow peninsula north of Traverse City, past beachfront property that I'll never be able to afford and many, many acres of cherry trees and vineyards, to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse, where I snapped a photo of granddad's Land Yacht posed in front of the lighthouse, under a sign announcing the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. I figured he might enjoy seeing how far north it's ventured. (The lighthouse, by the way, seems to be a private residence. It must be strange to live there, with tourists constantly walking by, gawking and taking pictures of your house from ten or twenty feet away.)

The Land Yacht performed flawlessly on the road, surging along the road like a battleship ponderously but effortlessly shouldering its way through the waves.

And so home, and so to bed.

Conference report, day one

I'm blogging tonight from a terminal in the coffeeshop of the very swanky Grand Traverse Resort. Not a whole lot to report, other than an uneventful trip and the first half of a preconference program called Poetry in the Branches. The most entertaining, if not necessarily the most useful, parts of the program were the occasional brief writing exercises. The first was to write a short poem addressing an audience and telling them to do something. Here's my rather uninspired free-verse offering:

An address to the audience

You with vacant eyes
waiting sadly in your chair
for beauty or vitality
to enter, by the ears or by the eyes,
that closely guarded chamber of your skull:
Hey! You! Get off your ass!
Write! Speak! Do!

The second was to respond to Kim Addonizio's "What Do Women Want?" and the third was to write something beginning with the phrase "I want...." I cheated and combined the two:

What Do Men Want?

I want a red convertible.
V-8, dual pipes, standard shift.
Four on the floor. Oh, yeah!
Roaring down the road
without a care, without a worry,
without a payment or insurance bill,
without paying for the gas.
Driving in the sun along the California coast.
And when it rains...

Hm.

No. I want a red truck!
4x4. Ground clearance. Yeah!
Now we're talkin'! In my red truck,
I'll go anywhere! And everywhere!
Up hill, down hill, through the woods, through the mud.
More powerful than any other driver on the road,
except...

Hm.

I want a red tractor-trailer.
Now we're talkin' power! Air horns!
I'll roam the country as I please.
No one gives me orders! I'm an independent man!
No one gives me orders!

(Except for that woman in the red dress.)

Not exactly masterpieces, but they kept me entertained.

Now I'm off to see if I can find the considerably cheaper hotel where I'll actually sleep tonight, perhaps a nice restaurant, perhaps a beach or bluff looking west over the lake so can feel all romantic and Byronesque and stuff as the sun sets and the full moon floats overhead.

And I'm off again...

... to beautiful Traverse City, on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, for the state library conference. No doubt its proceedings will be enlightening as all get-out, but I'm actually looking forward to a few days of comparative relaxation. For once, I'll have my evenings free to wander on the beach, watch TV, read a few books, or do whatever else takes my fancy. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be sick-unto-death of the area's cherry fetish by the time I get back. (Cherry fudge, cherry salsa, cherry hamburgers...)

Depending on availability of internet connectivity, I may or may not be able to check e'mail and do blog updates from T.C.

In case you ever wondered...

... about Lynne Cheney's lost and long-out-of-print literary masterpiece, Sisters, www.whitehouse.org is auctioning off a signed copy and has posted copious excerpts online.

Also available online: an extended summary of John Kerry's lost and long-out-of-print book The New Soldier.

Both books are scarce and drawing high prices on the secondhand market, in case anyone's lucky enough to own one. But Your Humble Correspondent predicts a rapid fall in demand for one or the other in one week.

Dammit.

The Libertarian candidate for president came to Huron State, and I missed it. Dammit.

A startling moment

While driving back from Missouri, I stopped at a gas station near Indianapolis. While filling the tank, I popped the hood and checked the oil. Consternation! There was no oil to be seen! I could see the entire length of the dipstick, right down to the very end! Was I running without any oil at all? What new disaster was this?

Running a finger down the length of the dipstick, I realized that it was indeed coated with oil. Clean, translucent oil. Oil that I could see through. After driving that truck for eight years, I had forgotten that engine oil could look like anything other than opaque black sludge.

Blogger back briefly again

Back from the Ozarks again, this time with grand-dads car safely in hand. No doubt about it, it's a land yacht (like this one); however, it seems to be a smooth-riding and mechanically solid land yacht, and it's a definite improvement over relying over Ol' Whitey, who seems to be experiencing grave medical difficulties and is currently parked with the transmission firmly stuck in second gear.

A couple of vignettes from the bus trip:

* * * * *

Waiting at the decrepit, crumbling A-squared bus depot for an hour and a half after the bus was scheduled to arrive, with temperatures dropping and dampness descending out of the darkening sky. Being asked, repeatedly, by a woman with a foreign accent, whether I knew when the bus was going to arrive. Chatting with a cabbie who parked his vehicle under the depot's unused loading bay and cheerfully informed everybody in earshot that the buses had been known to run two hours late, that at the rate things were going, nobody would make their Chicago connections, and that he had "often" taken people to Chicago to make their connections after they missed trains or buses. According to him, the bus company would reimburse any such fare. Uh huh.

* * * * *

"Pardon me, is this seat taken?"

"Uh huh. My friend's sitting there."

(After the bus pulls away from the depot with the seat still unoccupied)

"I'm sorry to see that your friend apparently missed the bus."

"Wha? You talkin' ta me? There weren't no friend! I just did'n wan' you sittin' there! HAW, HAW!!!"

* * * * *

The Chicago terminal is reasonably modern and clean and bustling, but the St. Louis terminal is surrounded by what looks like a bombed-out postapocalyptic disaster area. It's a pity, since the interior of the terminal still has some residual shreds of grandeur. With its two-story tall lobby, towering pillars, and decorated ceiling, it's reminiscent of the old-style grandiose urban railroad depots.

Outside, amongst the boarded-up storefronts and burned-out apartments/housing projects, I couldn't help but notice some apparently abandoned railroad tracks, with what appeared to be rusting catenary-wire supports, that emerged from an alley and promptly dived into an underground tunnel nearby. I doubt that I'll ever find out more than that about them, though.

Thursday's headlines....

... in the Detroit News say a lot about the American electorate:

STATE LOSES MORE JOBS: Factory rolls are down 6,000 while tourism sector takes hit, edging jobless rate to 6.8%

KMART'S EX-CEO TO GET $94M: Payout to departing exec comes as chain cuts workers, payroll

AS GAS PRICES SOAR, DRIVERS CHANGE LIVES: Motorists consider hybrid vehicles, cancel vacation plans to accommodate skyrocketing costs

NEWS POLL: BUSH LEADS IN MICHIGAN.

Let's see. The economy is in the tank, corporate executives are looting companies while running them into the ground, prices for vital commodities are soaring out of reach. Why, clearly what this country needs is... more of the same! "Thank you sir, may I please have another?"

It's eerily reminiscent of the situation described in this book, in which Baffler veteran Thomas Frank seeks to explain why midwestern voters routinely express unquestioning, lemming-like support of a party that just as routinely victimizes them economically.

Blogger back, briefly

Returned from the hills 'n' hollers of the Ozarks last Monday. Grand-dad's birthday party was quite impressive as such things go, with perhaps 40 or 50 cousins and nephews and nieces and relatives of various types in attendance. Unfortunately, I could not for the life of me identify more than a handful of them by name, although I was generally able to distinguish those on my grandmother's side of the family from those on my grandfather's side. It helps when one branch is generally short and slight, with sharp facial features, and the other is generally big & burly.

Heard a few interesting stories about grand-dad. Apparently at one time, a fellow who had boxed professionally in a nearby city came back to D. County and challenged him to a sparring match. According to Uncle B.'s recollections, the onetime pro had the advantage in the first round, and went somewhat beyond the level of "friendly" sparring. By the second round, grand-dad came back at him and drove him out of the impromptu ring. "At first I was only defending myself, but it turned out the only way to defend myself was to hit him first...." (That's not an exact quote, but it's close.)

Looking at the pictures from the 1930's, when he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps' construction projects around the Ozarks, I find the story believable. In the pictures, he's a tall, burly, dark-haired guy with a rather bellicose, glowering look on his face, invariably wearing a fedora cocked at a rakish angle as if he's daring someone to knock if off his head. Today he spends most of his time in a wheelchair, but he still looks pretty good, I'd say, for someone who's ninety years old. I won't have any cause to complain if I last that long.

The toughness wasn't just physical, either. Several people alluded to the fact that he basically had to assume the duties of a farmer and head-of-household at the age of 12, when his father died of pneumonia and, literally with his last breath, told him to take care of his mother and numerous younger siblings. Something to remember when I'm tempted to bemoan my sad fate because of some comparatively trivial difficulty encountered much later in life.

Mother, as usual, had exerted great effort in organizing and decorating for the party. The cake was a work of art, complete with a photographic representation of a Model T in green-and-black icing, and the booklets that she and Uncle B. put together were well worth reading. (Yam and S., you should get one if you can.)

I'm headed back to Missouri tomorrow evening by bus to pick up a car and drive it back to the northlands. Carlos, as a seasoned aficionado of Trailways and Greyhound, do you have any helpful hints as to proper etiquette and comfort on such trips?

Blogger on the road

Gone to Missouri for the next few days for a relative's birthday. Back early next week.

"We overturn Poletown."

Not exactly breaking news, but worth noting: the 1981 Poletown decision, in which the Michigan Supreme Court allowed a municipal government to use the power of eminent domain to seize an entire neighborhood of private dwellings and businesses and hand it over to a politically-connected business, and in doing so paved the way for a flood of similar schemes across the nation, is no more. (See also here and here. Text of decision here.)

Historical background, with some information about the pernicious effects of the Poletown precedent, here. As I understand it, the Hathcock ruling requires that eminent domain be used only when the intended use of the land is for public USE, not for the private benefit of some politically-connected real estate developer or corporation that speciously asserts that their personal profit is somehow connected to the "public interest" by way of vague promises of "economic development" or "increased tax revenue."

Good riddance to bad legal rubbish.

A vote for Bush is a vote for....

"I am often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever."

-- Ann Coulter, professional hatemonger and Republican mouthpiece. From her recent book How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), p. 3.

News for game theory geeks

A team from Southhampton University, in England, has developed a program for Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma which can -- in certain circumstances -- beat the reigning champion Tit-for-Tat. Discussed on Slashdot, of course.

Speaking of game-geeks, I did my good deed for today by introducing J.-from-Wixom to a couple of my fellow untenured wageslaves at Huron State. Actually, it was her idea to show up at the library this evening inquiring about the flight speeds of African swallows (laden and unladen), but by serendipitous chance she showed up just after I and my two colleagues had started talking about the game Settlers of Catan. The "reference interview" quickly turned into a cheerful babble of gaming geek-speak, and discussions of plans to meet up for a beer after work. (Where they await me even now, probably planning all sorts of dastardly tricks and ambushes.)

Unfortunately, it means that I probably should not tell J.-from-Wixom about the blog. Pity.

More alarums and clamours

If you still think we live in a democracy, and wish to preserve that illusion, you might try taking the advice of the American Library Association's Washington Office Newsline and raise a stink about the legislative committee which is reportedly working on resolving the differences between different versions of two bills passed by the House and Senate.

The Senate bill, the National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 (S.2845) is reported to closely follow the actual recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, according to the ALA. The only provision that arouses their discontent is the creation of a de facto national ID card, which Senator McCain has surreptitiously sneaked into an amendment without public debate. (Where, one wonders, are the Republican Evangelicals who always froth at the mouth over such "marks of the Beast"?)

By contrast, according to ALAWON's current issue,

The House bill, H.R. 10, the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, goes far beyond the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission and includes a variety of anti-liberties and immigration provisions, including some parts of the PATRIOT II legislation. Among other things, the bill:

* Broadens intelligence surveillance inside the United States to non-citizens with no connection to a foreign entity;
* Permits the deportation of individuals to a foreign country without a functioning government, even if there is a risk of torture;
* Limits the ability of individuals to seek political asylum;
* Expands preventive detention;
* Creates a national I.D. system that goes beyond the Senate bill, requiring all motor vehicle databases to be linked together. It also ties driver's licenses to visa status.

On the other hand, if you'd rather not have your name on the Bush Administration's list of "disloyal" citizens to be put under surveillance and rounded up after the election, perhaps it would be best to keep a low profile.

An assertive paradigm for library service

I got a chuckle out of this posting to the LibRef-L listserv a few days ago. Best quote:

If we want students to locate library reference tools when they enter the library (either in person or online), then force them to encounter these resources whether they're looking for them or not. We should be as ubiquitous as porn sites, and as hard to get rid of as spyware.

Stratford and other wonderful things

Stratford, Ontario, is a fairly small city well out into the farmlands of central Ontario. Nonetheless, it's home to one of the premier theatrical festivals in Canada, and a fun place to visit, especially on a cool crisp autumn weekend, and especially with the right company. And "Fiend" is most certainly the right company!

Despite the Attack of the Overly Friendly Feline (who apparently thought that any human interlopers in his/her territory were fair game for frantic, neurotic leg-rubbing and lap-crawling), we managed to make it to two plays.

The authorship of Henry VIII seems to be disputed. Current scholars seem to think it's the result of a collaboration between Shakespeare and a certain John Fletcher. It's a somewhat melodramatic history play, which portrays a few tumultuous years of the reign of its namesake king. Notably, it portrays only the first two of his famous eight wives, and ends with the birth of Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VII and Anne Boleyn. (Jane Seymour, wife number 3, makes a brief, nonspeaking appearance at the very end, but this doesn't seem to be part of the original script.) It's quite clearly intended to glorify the father and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I, and promote the virtue of Elizabeth, the ruling monarch in Shakespeare's time, and her Protestant rule. The very existence of Mary, Henry's fanatically Catholic daughter by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is ignored totally; the Catholic archbishop Wolsey is presented as a scheming, corrupt manipulator who tricks the king into divorcing Katherine in order to promote a marriage to a French princess, thus conveniently absolving the King of responsibility for his divorce. Incredibly, for anyone familiar with the history of the time, Henry's historic split with the Catholic church is completely ignored except for a few oblique references, by very unsympathetic characters, to "spleeny Lutherans" and "heretical" beliefs on the part of the King's eccleciastical supporter, Thomas Cranmer. The closing speech, praising the newborn infant Elizabeth in terms more suited to the birth of a demi-goddess, is such blatant flattery that I could hardly suppress myself from laughing out loud during it.

In short, the plot is politically-motivated melodrama that makes hash of history. But it's tasty hash, full of delicious intrigue and the spice of danger. The actress playing Queen Katherine almost steals the show with her spirited reaction to the shabby treatment meted out to her by the King and Cardinal, and the actor portraying the Machiavellian Cardinal Wolsey is a worthy villian indeed, full of smooth words and sharp dealing.

My favorite moment that didn't happen: a cell phone went off, somewhere in the audience, while the King was summoning a couple of intimidating-looking Guards to the stage, and I found myself wishing that, with a snap of the royal fingers and a commanding sweep of the royal hand, he had ordered them to summarily drag the offending churl out of the theater to be cast into Outer Darkness.

The other play was a fresh interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the human characters in modern dress and the denizens of the faerie world attired in form-fitting, jungle-inspired costumes, climbing and dancing with wild abandon and occasionally cavorting in mid-air. (The fairies' trapeze and bungee-cord maneuvers were reportedly developed in consultation with Cirque de Soleil.) Even so, I got the biggest laughs from the clever comedic acting of the actors portraying the confused human lovers, the bumbling amateur actors, and the much-put-upon rational ruler Theseus and his court. There are a few elements that aren't strictly Shakespearean, but I have to imagine that if acrobats flying through the air on bungee cords had been available in his time, he'd have happily used them. Perhaps he would even have found a use for those irritating cell phones.

Of the two plays, I preferred Henry VIII by a small margin. (Sorry, Fiend!) But that may be only because it was entirely new to me. Both were good. I enjoyed the unfolding, unfamiliar plot of Henry VIII, and I enjoyed the spectacle and witty dialogue and broad physical comedy of Dream.

For the bibliophiles among us, Stratford holds a number of decent bookstores to browse. Nothing near the level of Larry McMurtry's monument to bibliophilic obsession out in Archer City, but acceptably interesting. I picked up a book of medieval castle plans and several SF novels by Iain M. Banks which, so far as I know, are not officially "in print" on this side of the border. Fiend managed to score a copy of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, which should serve her well in trying to figure out just what I mean when I refer to the latest place my imagination has wandered off to.

And, of course, Stratford has a railroad yard and depot. Fiend will no doubt be utterly fascinated to find out that that mysterious green-and-yellow locomotive on the grain train we saw appears to belong to the Virginia Southern Railroad. (Right? Right? *grin*)

Yuck.

Not a "wonderful thing" at all, but noteworthy anyway. I had my first experience dealing with an internet masturbator earlier this evening. A kid, apparently from one of the local high schools. Another library user reported seeing him "wackin' off", so after locating him and verifying his odd behavior, we had the campus public-safety officers come talk to him and escort him out of the building.

Now, who gets to disinfect the keyboard?

A quick note in preparation for tonight's debate

Do you have your Bush Bingo cards ready?

Sadly, I'll be at the reference desk while the Great Debate unfolds, but I'll be dropping by this event afterwards to catch the post-debate chitchat.

More, about Stratford, Ontario, and other wonderful things, later. Must get back to reference desk now.

The right-wing censorship machine rolls on

Florida Gulf Coast University cancels a scheduled speech by author Terry Tempest Williams "after President William Merwin and the board of trustees decided Wednesday that the forum would be too politically unbalanced and negative toward President Bush."

As Williams points out, "the school’s 13 trustees, six of whom are directly appointed by the governor, have ties to the Bush family." And university administrators know who controls their purse strings.

Phone Phollies, episode 3

"Huron State" prides itself on being a technologically advanced institution. However, they can't seem to install a telephone correctly. It's still dead.

A bookstore to avoid

Elder's Bookstore, in Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Scene explains why.

As different as can be

I looked over three job postings yesterday. The institutions involved are as different from each other as different can be.

One is a large state library with a strong archival and historical focus. I think they may be looking for someone with more knowledge of genealogical research, but perhaps my involvement with the state historical society and railroad-history groups will appeal to them.

The second is a bare-bones "business college" which focuses on providing vocational training for entry-level clerical and health-related jobs. It's a part-time position which would allow me to keep working at Suburban Public Library and in doing so reduce my work week from 60 hours down to 50 or so.

The third is at a tiny private college deep in the forested hills of Vermont, which originated in 1863 as a Unitarian seminary and has since made itself a testbed for experimental educational ideas. (I didn't even know Unitarians had seminaries.) Its turbulent history has included financial troubles, high administrative turnover, and most recently, suspension of their residential undergraduate program in favor of graduate programs, adult education, and nonresident programs. Its library catalog is largely non-automated, but somehow it seems that working there would be an interesting challenge. How many Institutes Of Higher Education, after all, have the sense of humor to include statements like this in their official histories?

During those years, several applications were made to the regional accrediting association --- and were rejected, in part because the financial resources of the college were fragile, in part because its program and procedures were so radically different from those of most colleges. In early December of 1959, however --- and to the genuine surprise of most people at (G.) --- the most recent application for accreditation was accepted....

They seem to still have a certain innovative spirit, judging from their current calendar of events, which includes a "Celebration of Homeschooling":

(G.) invites homeschooling families with teens to attend a weekend retreat on our beautiful Vermont campus at the height of autumn foliage season. We are designing a new undergraduate (B.A.) program specifically for young people who are ready to begin college studies (full- or part-time) and want to continue learning in the independent, community-based style they’ve enjoyed as homeschoolers. We want to work in partnership with homeschooling families to plan the details of the program, and during this retreat we will hold several open-ended planning discussions.

Homeschoolers are definitely a niche market that is underserved by traditional colleges. But how, exactly, does one provide good library service to a user population this scattered? Especially with limited electronic resources? A library position at such an institution might end up more like being a research consultant or long-distance information broker than like a traditional librarian. What an interesting thought experiment.

Meanwhile, Huron State has issued forth a decree from those on high that all library periodical holdings -- all 5000+ of them -- must be assigned to particular academic departments within two weeks. Why this must be done, no one knows. Why it must be done in two weeks, no one knows. All anyone knows is that the tenure-track librarians can't be bothered to do it, so the lecturers have to.

Of 'Cubas and Camaros

A heartwarming story from the Detroit Free Press: 16-year-old gearhead girl rebuilds her mother's first car from a rusted-out wreck into the drop-dead gorgeous, fire-breathing muscle machine it was meant to be. Most envy-inspiring line:

Christie doesn't dare drive the 'Cuda to school. It might get scratched or dented. Instead, she has a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro, also a classic, for everyday driving.

And speaking of Camaros: David Koresh's Camaro, complete with "David's 427 Go God" stamped on the engine block, was recently auctioned in Fredericksburg, Texas. (You missed your chance, Carlos!)

I am 80% "Mr. Right"

"h4yleyg" from Bookcrossing offers her opinion on what ten books a man should have on his shelf if he wants to impress women... er, I mean, be a well-rounded individual.

But really, War and Peace? Please, no!

Note: 80% calculated on basis of books read, not necessarily books currently owned. Void where prohibited by law. Your results may vary.

America, Bush style

The mother of a soldier killed in Bush's unnecessary war in Iraq is dragged away from a campaign event in handcuffs while the crowd chants "Four more years! Four more years!"

Because, you see, they support the troops. Get it?

Y-town makes the news, sort of.

Joseph Sobran comments on a week spent back in his hometown: Et tu, Y.?

Meanwhile, the local police attract unwanted media attention by getting themselves caught on video conducting warrantless searches of citizen's homes. The fruits of their search: a stash of porn, some kinky sex-toys, and a secondhand strippers' pole apparently salvaged from the dumpster outside a local strip club. Aren't you glad that we got rid of that annoying Constitution thingie so that we could be protected against secondhand strippers' poles in people's basements?

Aren't you, citizen?

Messages from beyond

How long do you suppose it will be until we see this used as a device in a detective novel?

"Most people leave notes behind in drawers or boxes knowing or hoping they will be found after they die.

"This is the same, but via Internet," said Alberto Iriarte, 33, director of Global Spectrum, the Pamplona-based company which runs the service....

..."People find computers more intimate and private than letters and they feel freer to say things this way."

The Good Old Days of pulp SF

David Langford's column in the current issue of F&SF amusingly skewers some horrible pulp SF of the 1960's, including the following passage from March of the Robots by "Leo Brett" (aka Lionel Fanthorpe):

Terrifying things, steel things; metal things; things with cylindrical bodies and multitudinous jointed limbs. Things without flesh and blood. Things that were made of metal and plastic and transistors and valves and relays, and wires. Metal things. Metal things that could think. Thinking metal things. Terrifying in their strangeness, in their peculiar metal efficiency. Things the like of which had never been seen on the earth before. Things that were sliding back panels…Robots! Robots were marching…

It almost works as a kind of psychotic poetry. But not quite.

I guess it's easy to retroactively romanticize the days of the pulp magazines and publishers. Having heard of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensman books for years, I once bought a stack of paperback copies of them from a used bookstore and sat down to be entertained. That's not an experience I plan to repeat. Smith's prose style would have to loosen up quite a bit before it could be called wooden. However, in deference to his historic significance in the field, I will gladly add a recently donated omnibus editon of his "Skylark" stories to the SPL collection. This is not entirely charitable on my part. Sometimes, the best way to combat an undeservedly good reputation is to actually expose the "legendary" work to public view, just as one of the best ways to combat undeserved obscurity is to make the obscure work visible to those who might enjoy it and talk or write about it.

And who knows? There may even be someone out there who will enjoy the Skylark of Space. Just as someone might enjoy the chanting repetition of the passage above. (Not to mention its repetitive chanting.)

Phone Phollies, Episode Two

The telephone in my little corner of "Huron State U." seems to have worked for part of one day. Now it's dead again. Nobody seems to know why.

Only in Texas?

While browsing through a copy of Texas A&M Press's book catalog that somehow was misdirected to Suburban Public Library, I noticed this book. Is it a sign of a healthy commercial instinct for a major academic press to publish a book about the university football mascot? Or just one of those "only in Texas" kinda things?

Not only in Texas

Also of note: This book seems tailor-made for anyone who enjoyed Cold Mountain and want to read up further about the domestic turmoil of the South during the Civil War. Vigilante "justice" was not limited to Appalachia during that time. But I wonder how many public libraries will stock it? Public libraries can awfully snobbish about books that are "too academic".

Lost in a good dictionary

According to a recent PR squib, the Oxford English Dictionary has set up a new feature for subscribers. They've added to the subscriber page a "Lost for Words" button, which allows for random browsing through the online version of the dictionary. Jasper Fforde, eat your heart out.

For those unfortunate souls who do not have institutional or personal subscriptions ($295 a year!), there's always the Word Of The Day via e'mail. I wonder how long it would take to accumulate the text of the complete dictionary by this means?

Say it ain't so

A poster on the LibRef-L listserv mentions that Kirkus Reviews has begun offering "commissioned reviews" for $350. The information is attributed to trade publication Publisher's Lunch, to which I don't have access. Anyone out there know more?

In the cool of the evening

After a frantic last-minute burst of activities among the denizens of Suburban Public Library, I have now a few moments of peace to collect my thoughts before walking out to the parking lot and hoping that Ol' Whitey will cooperate in taking me back to my distant home. The two people who couldn't get MS Word to lay out their documents properly have departed; the fellow with the extremely loud voice who talks at great and repetitive length about his disabilities has gone home; the telephone messages about placing books on hold or getting a library card for somebody's husband have been answered and deleted from the memory of the answering machine. The library is dark, except for a few strategically-placed emergency lights, and deserted, except for me. And, to quote the bard, "I am left, alive and well, looking up and wondering why and wherefore."

(No, not that Bard. This one.)

Peace has been a rather rare commodity lately. I've been rushing back and forth between the two jobs so frantically that I literally have to plan a week in advance when I'm going to do laundry, and although finding money to buy a replacement for Ol' Whitey is a challenge, it's even more of a challenge to find time to go look at and test-drive new cars. Trying to plan the out-of-town trips that I want and need to take over the next month or two is an exercise in frustration, since virtually every weekend is filled with work shifts at one or the other job or other non-negotiable commitments.

Unfortunately, this is a rather a short-lived peace, since an appointment tomorrow morning means that I can't afford to stay up excessively late tonight. I'd take a late-night stroll around the mill pond and gentrified downtown "entertainment district" of Suburbia, but unfortunately the town pretty well closes up at nine o'clock on weekdays. You know you're in suburbia when the coffee shops close at six.

To shamelessly steal a line from another southeastern-Michigan blogger: Goodnight, my invisible friends. And forgive me my infrequent posting as I forgive you your infrequent comments.

Observations on job application procedures

Someone on a library listserv posted a query earlier today about strange documentation requests in library job postings. I composed the following unhinged screed in response, but instead of sending it to the listserv where it belongs, I'm posting it here.

The most amusing and irritating job postings are the ones, typically from municipal and community-college libraries, that demand official transcripts, plus X number of personal letters of reference, PLUS an essay or two or three on some abstruse topic particularly addressing the institution's needs, PLUS completion of an online application. "Resumes are not acceptable."

The online appliation, of course, seems to work only on alternate Tuesdays between the hours of midnight and 5:45 a.m., takes 45 minutes to partially complete, and demands abstruse information that no actual human beings have available. (Do you know the exact date that you began and quit *all* past jobs, including that part-time pizza delivery job during the summer of your sophomore year? How about *all* former supervisors' name and rank and current contact information? Invariably, there is no option for "information not available".)

Note the reference to *partial* completion of the online application. This is all you will accomplish, because after 45 minutes of laboriously retyping the information which one has already organized into a simple, attractive, easy-to-read resume, the "online application" website crashes and loses all the data and refuses to reconnect. No telephone contact information is supplied.

"Ha Ha! Better luck next time, sucker!"

When I compare this to the usual "resume, cover letter, and references" requirements for most job postings at major reputable colleges and university, I am tempted to draw a universal conclusion from my anecdotal experiences : The desirability of a job is in inverse proportion to the difficulty of applying for it.

Making connections

Ytown-blogger Mark Maynard recently initiated a meetup of local bloggers at a downtown bar. The party was winding down by the time my work schedule permitted me to drop by, but there was enough life left to keep me engrossed in conversation with kindred souls like Steve and Hillary and Brett S. Unfortunately, the unpredictable flow of the social tides kept me from meeting MM himself or YpsiDixit, whose writing I've admired from time to time (and who, judging from occasional recent postings, seems to have at least a passing interest in the local ferroequines.) I look forward to any future meetups with local and regional bloggers. Perhaps I will learn at last why a nearby burg is overrated.

P.S. For the benefit of any reader who knows not my face: no, I'm not in any of the meetup pictures. You'll have to keep guessing.

From the office of....

Huron State recently -- after nine months of relegating Yours Truly to a wobbly cubicle between the staff coffee machine and the mailbox/copier/stapler counter -- graciously allocated an entire office for my use. It's ten feet by ten feet of utter white-wallboard-and-nondescript-industrial-carpeting bliss, by comparison to The Cubicle. I spent several hours late last week hanging library propaganda on the walls, shoving institutional gray metal furniture around, and, of course, theorizing about compact office model railroads.

The next day, the telephone disappeared. The office's previous occupant apparently put in a work order confiscating the telephone to save him the trouble of re-recording his answering machine message. No word yet on when telephone service to my little closet-o-bliss will be restored. A telephone tech showed up today just before quitting time. He plugged in a telephone. It didn't work. He scratched his head and left.

The Employer Giveth, and the Employer Taketh Away. In the meanwhile, I have a ready-made excuse for avoiding administrative summonses.

In search of... a writing style

I finally got my hands on a copy of The Da Vinci Code a few days ago, courtesy of Suburban Public Library, and figured I might as well find out what all the fuss was about.

It's a fairly quick read, and the bite-sized chapters are eminently suitable for someone with a short attention span, or who, like me, has to fit their reading into scattered fifteen-minute chunks. The book is 454 pages long, with 106 chapters plus a prologue and an afterword; thus, the average chapter is just over four pages long. Considering that virtually every chapter ends with a cliffhanger of some kind, it's a breathless ride. Brown has mastered the time-honored storyteller's trick of giving out just enough information to tantalize the readers, but withholding the critical last piece at the last minute to keep them coming back for more. Sample chapter endings, chosen at random:

After a long wait, another man came one, his tone gruff and concerned. "Bishop, I am glad I finally reached you. You and I have much to discuss." (Chap. 59)

When Collet read the label above the empty peg, he knew he was in trouble. (Chap. 67)

Is there time?
He knew it didn't matter.
Withoug hesitation, Langdon broke into a sprint back toward the stairs. (Chap. 21)

Unfortunately, Brown's mastery of characterization is not quite up to his mastery of storytellers' shtick, and most of the characters never become more than two-dimensional cutouts who seem to exist mainly in order to pursue, be pursued, or inject Shocking Revelations and other useful info-dumps into the story.

The "shocking" historical/conspiratorial element of the story seems to be largely based on the 1982 book Holy Blood, Holy Grail with a smattering of references to more academically respected sources like the fragmentary Gospel of Mary, topped off with a rather implausible series of purported secret meanings said to be embedded in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. The way that the latter are brought into the story is even more implausible than the purported secret meanings themselves. The reader is asked to believe that a mortally wounded man, dying from a bullet to the gut, could, in the course of fifteen minutes, concieve, plan, and set up an elaborate intellectual treasure-hunt throughout the galleries of the Louvre, incorporating complicated cryptographic clues, obscure artistic references, private references only to be understood by certain members of his own family, and a generous helping of red herrings. And then, after removing his clothes and using his own blood to write a cryptic message and paint several arcane symbols on and around his body, arrange himself in a specific pose alluding to a well-known work of art before expiring. That's one very active dying man.

If one can swallow the implausibility of that opening gambit, though, the story is a fast-paced adventure tale, with large doses of entertaining intellectual and cultural gamesmanship, and it can be enjoyed on that basis. Its conspiratorial hypotheses are about as plausible, in detail, as Oliver Stone's movies, and yet it may serve a useful intellectual and historical purpose if it makes readers aware of the fact that religious dogmas, and even scriptures, have been shaped through the ages by political forces, and inspires more serious attention to the diversity of interpretations that existed in the early Christian church before the Emperor Constantine and the politically-established church at Rome imposed a single scriptural canon.

Addendum, 9/17: Lebanon has banned the book.

Of elections, voting machines and credibility

A while back, Black Box Voting publicized what it described as yet another flaw in Diebold voting machines. Details here; typical Slashdot discussion here.

I mentioned this to S., who has a certain degree of knowledge about accounting practices, and she expressed some skepticism about both sides of the squabble.

This comment, by an "Anonymous Coward" on Slashdot, raises quite another issue. Even if the election is NOT tampered with or plagued by obvious electronic FUBARs, the results will lack ironclad credibility if there is no recountable paper trail. The transparency of vote-counting, and the existence of a verifiable hard-copy record of the vote totals, and the consequent willingness of the loser to concede the election, are just as vital to a working democracy as the counting of the votes. But what if there is no transparency, no recountable paper trail, no credibility other than Diebold saying that they really, really promise, cross their hearts, that you lost fair and square, and that you should trust them? I really can't put it any better than the A.C., and so I shamelessly cut and paste:

As a country that has such a long history of voting for our representatives, we have taken for granted the single most important aspect of democratic governance: Transparency. No democracy since the invention of clay voting markers has survived without this fundamental facet of the process. It does not matter if it is a pure democracy or a representative government. It does not matter if we use electoral colleges or parliamentary votes. It does not matter if we use clay tablets, punched cards or write-once CDs. What every election-monitoring group is designed to enforce is transparency.

Why? Because the loser has to concede to the fact that he has lost. We do not force the loser to lose, the loser allows the winner to win. "I lost in a fair fight. Better luck next time." The concession speech is just as important to democracy as the acceptance speech.

If a loser of an election disputes the results and the winner cannot defend the vote count, then the loser has every right to appeal to other means--in most countries, violence.

In the last American election, the loser disputed the vote count. The winner could not defend the results, so the loser appealed to other means--the Supreme Court.

The fact that there was no outbreak of violence (at least of any significance) was not due to the voters' acceptance of the count. It was due to the voter's acceptance of the Supreme Court as the final word in American government. The loser accepted the Supreme Court decision and allowed the winner to win. The voters (some begrudgingly) accepted the decision.

But please note: the last disputed election had something that the next one will not: chads--a paper trail--transparency. Win or lose, everyone had the hope that eventually, the truth would be known. It may take days, weeks or months to determine, but the truth would be known. The system would work.

Ignore conspiracy theories. Ignore corporate donors. Ignore programming loopholes. The threat of the next disputed election is the notion that even if the election is honest, even if every vote is counted, even if the outcome truly matches the intent of the voters, the loser will be able to dispute the outcome and the winner will not be able to defend it.

Imagine the turmoil if after the last election, over a million of the punch ballots had gone missing. That is what these systems offer. It does not matter who wins this fall. The loser will dispute the result and the winner will not be able to defend it....

Here, there, and everywhere

While helping a teenager find a copy of Catcher in the Rye, I noticed a copy of what looked like a fantasy book -- R.A. Salvatore's Immortalis -- shelved in the general fiction. Investigating further, I found that it's part of one of his multifarious multi-volume series. Suburban Public Library, naturally, has one volume shelved in general fiction, one volume in Young-Adult Fiction, and one volume in the SF/Fantasy shelves. I'll not quite sure whether this is an error, resulting from chaotic collection-development and staff turnover, or a deliberate attempt to make Salvatore's sagas more visible to browsers. I suspect the former.

Ai! A Malrog is come!

Courtesy of J. from Wixom comes this link to the Grand Flaming Marshmallow Balrog Contest. Clearly, my hobbies are too boring, since they do not burst into flames on command.

Of books and memories

Michael Bronski's obsessions are not my own; however, I find much common ground with his Boston Phoenix column about the emotional and intellectual ties one develops to a collection of books. I can't recall the exact date and place and circumstances under which I acquired every book I own, but quite a few of them are associated, in my mind, with a particular time or place or person. My copy of Julia Seton's Pulse of the Pueblo is indelibly associated with the pleasant shock of finding it signed by the author, with the inlaid signature of her better-known husband, abandoned in a library book sale. My stained and shelfcocked 2-volume Norton Anthology of English Literature is likewise indelibly associated with the pleasure I derived as an undergraduate from the authors I discovered by browsing idly through its pages (not, fortunately, with the stifling boredom of the literature class for which I purchased it.) This means that a decision to sell or discard them is, emotionally, much like a decision to sell or discard that part of my life. As a result, the bookshelves groan and sag a bit more each year.

Wireless in the wheatfields

Philadelphia recently made the news because the city government was pondering the establishment of a city-wide wireless internet access area. It seems that Walla Walla County, out in Washington State, has beaten them to the punch, though.

I wish some such option were available to me, rather than paying unGodly amounts of money to ComCast for a hardwired connection. Such networks might also help bring good-quality internet access to places like the family's Ancestral Home, where the telephone infrastructure is wobbly at best and cable television and other high-speed telecommunications connections are nonexistent.

Whether it should be done through governmental efforts, like the old Rural Electricity Administration, or through corporate efforts, though, might well prompt another debate over the proper place of government and free-market economics. Left to their own devices, will ISPs clamor for the chance to serve sparsely-populated areas?

Islamism discovers women

Unfortunately, in the current state of affairs, it seems this is the result.

More politics

Some of my (apparently nonexistent) readers may not appreciate the number of political postings. Too bad; it's an election year!

This fellow quite eloquently and concisely makes a case against Bush. The only question, for me, is whether I can stomach Kerry, who's been considerably less than energetic in defending civil liberties, enough to vote for him instead of the dark-horse Libertarian candidate. I think, though, that I'll stop short of this Ypsi-blogger's tongue-in-cheek suggestion of holding "food poisoning parties" for likely Bush-voting relatives the day before the election. (Mine live too far away, in any case.)

More on the NEA reading report...

... from Walt Crawford (.pdf file). Some of the doubts he expresses sound very familiar.

Drug companies and the medical press

As a librarian at a university with a sizable number of nursing students and a correspondingly high level of use of medical journals, I found this book review from Mother Jones to be rather disturbing. According to the reviewer's synopses of the two books reviewed -- The Truth About Drug Companies, by Marcia Angell, and On The Take, by Jerome Kassirer -- "the drug and biotech industries have gained unprecedented leverage over what doctors and patients know -- and don't know -- about the $200 billion worth of prescription pharmaceuticals consumed by Americans each year. Industry has gained that leverage by funding and, increasingly, controlling medical research...." Both authors are former editors-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. Any thoughts, Pablo? Or anyone else?

Libraries and librarians try diligently to make sure that unbiased information is available for library users, especially in areas such as medical research, where biased or inaccurate information can be literally deadly. We caution users against relying on unverified, unvetted, potentially biased material from the general web. But what if the peer-reviewed sources or the researchers whose work they report are also on the take? What if all the wells are poisoned?

I think I'll just plan to stay healthy.

Edit, 9/12: This new policy from several leading medical journals may help alleviate the problem.

America, Bush style

Mass arrests. Jailed journalists. Corporate censorship of the radio airwaves.

At least he believes in the "right to remain silent."

John Armstrong

Model Railroader Magazine and the Washington Post report the death of John Armstrong, author of many articles and books on model railroad track planning. I never met him, but as an armchair model railroader and dilettante of the graph-paper-and-pencil fraternity of model railroad trackplanners, I spent many an hour poring over his work, sometimes noting things that I would do differently, but more often being pleasantly surprised by his characteristic efficient use of space, clever illusions, and excruciatingly bad puns. And, most importantly, by his encyclopedic knowledge of actual railroad operations and the way that he incorporated that knowledge into his modeling. In doing so, he helped change the nature of the hobby. May he rest in peace. Although his genius was in an area that remains obscure to most people, his ideas will continue to bring pleasure to thousands of people for decades to come.

Journalistic objectivity, or corporate thought-control?

Mentioned recently on a library listserv: The Miami Herald has banned its staff from attending concerts by Bruce Springsteen, James Taylor, the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, John Mellencamp, and other musicians deemed "anti-Bush" by the newspaper's management. Original story in Spanish here. Translated excerpts as reported on the listserv:

The Miami Herald forbid its journalists to purchase tickets to anti-Bush
concerts supporting the Democratic party, because it would be a
political contribution not permitted by journalism ethics.

In a memorandum distributed to the daily's journalists, editor Tom
Fiedler explained that the profits from ticket sales would be handed
over to political action groups.

Fiedler also forbade them to accept free passes.

No word on whether the Miami Herald also forbids its staff from listening to Brooks & Dunn, Toby Keith, or other musicians who use their concerts to promote the Republican party. Nor is there any indication whether the Herald prohibits their staff from attending, say, Southern Baptist churches that promote Bush's theology of empire and adore him as if he were the Evangelical Pope. (Except, of course, when he accidentally fails to abhor other religions sufficiently.)

Of soldiers, death, and respect

I noted in an electronic newsletter this morning that a local peace group plans to spend part of an upcoming Sunday remembering the approximately 1000 US soldiers who have died in George W. Bush's misguided middle-eastern war. From the newsletter: "Arlington Midwest (1,000 crosses or other grave markers) will be on display throughout the day. At 7:30 pm there will be a sundown ceremony with reading of the names and playing of Taps."

Meanwhile, one of the local Republican bigwigs in nearby Oakland County spent the first part of August defiantly refusing to lower county flags in honor of Michigan soldiers killed in Iraq. According to him, publicly acknowledging and honoring fallen soldiers "politicizes the war":

Instead of lowering flags, government should be building support for the troops who are fighting the war, said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson (search), a Republican.

"His feeling is that lowering the flags to half-staff really politicizes the war and promotes opposition to the war," Patterson spokesman Robert Dustman said.

Ah, I see. A presidential candidate dressing up in a flight suit that he couldn't be bothered to wear in actual combat, and being flown out to an aircraft carrier for a photo op strutting around in front of a red-white-and-blue banner trumpeting "mission accomplished", is *not* politicizing the war, but admitting that there have been US casualties *is.* ("War is peace....") Just like the government's censorship of photos of military coffins being shipped back to the US. Just like Republican corporate supporters censored NightLine earlier this year when when they listed the US war dead.

Who's really honoring and respecting the troops here? Those who acknowledge their sacrifice, or the posturing Republican chickenhawks who use them as campaign props, then send them off to combat like so much conveniently animated meat and refuse to even publicly acknowledge them when they're killed or injured?

Down to the wire

As of 7:00 last night, the Huron State faculty union voted to authorize a strike. As of 1:00 a.m., the strike was called. As of 7:30 or 8:00 this morning (depending on which source one consults) the strike was called off as the negotiators reached a tentative agreement. So at least I didn't have to walk past a picket line.