Short hiatus
Because of three work projects whose deadlines are bearing down on me like runaway freight trains, I'm taking a brief hiatus from blogging. But it shouldn't be more than a few days before I'm back. Fortunately, two of the projects are fairly interesting -- a monthlong library display promoting National Poetry Month, and a set of recommended-book bibliographies for an upcoming program about Frankenstein.
Back in a few days --
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Gypsy.... er, Romani Spirit
A week or two ago, I went to see the Budapest Ensemble's travelling music-and-dance extravaganza, Gypsy Spirit. Sadly, I'm not really knowledgeable enough to know whether the music was "authentic" or not, nor to competently evaluate the "artistic merit" of the dancing. I can say it was an enjoyable show -- the music was lively, the songs and choreography were clever, and the dancers were agile and energetic as the men rhythically slapped and stomped the rhythm while the women twirled colorfully around the stage, with rainbow-hued skirts swirling about their waists.
I couldn't help noticing a few things that seemed curious, though. There was a noticeable difference in personal appearance between the musicians and the dancers. The musicians, with the exception of one or two players, appeared dark-haired and dark-complected. I've often been told that the Gypsies (who reportedly prefer to be called Romani) are almost universally dark-haired and dark-complected, and are said to have originated in India. Several of the dancers, though, had noticeably blue eyes and light-colored hair. Curious. (The most captivating of the female dancers, though, had jet-black hair and eyes....)
I bought a CD and a copy of Ian Hancock's book We are the Romani people while I was there. In reading it later on, I came upon the following passages:
p. 3. (caption to a picture showing a female dancer with her skirt whirling above her knees:) The clothing depicted is not Romani, and showing the legs above the calves is taboo in Romani culture.
p. 102. Romani morals are in fact excessively strict by non-Romani standards; showing the legs, for example, is gadzikani forma, or non-Romani behaviour, and neither men nor women should wear shorts. The dancers who lift their colourful skirts on the state of the Teatr Romen are all non-Romanies, since the Romani members of the troupe will not do this.
Now even accepting that Dr. Hancock may be generalizing somewhat, this does seem to cast some doubt on the authenticity of the "Gypsy" dancing in the show.
I suppose it would not be surprising if the programme presented by the troupe were tailored to what audiences expected to see, and were presumably paying to see. After all, tourists are famously unconcerned about the cultural or ethnic authenticity of the entertainment they consume, and the same is presumably true of cultural "tourists" who partake of travelling presentations like this. (Does Silver Dollar City , taken as a whole, accurately reflect the lifestyles of 19th-century Ozark farmers? HA!)
Does it matter whether the dancers are actually ethnically Romani or not? Does it matter whether the dance moves are actually drawn from any real Romani tradition, as long as it's a good show? And does wondering about the authenticity of "Gypsy" music and dancing performed by non-Romanies put one in the same category as those who think that Caucasians can't play jazz or blues, or that blacks make good musicians and dancers because they have "natural jungle rythym"?
A week or two ago, I went to see the Budapest Ensemble's travelling music-and-dance extravaganza, Gypsy Spirit. Sadly, I'm not really knowledgeable enough to know whether the music was "authentic" or not, nor to competently evaluate the "artistic merit" of the dancing. I can say it was an enjoyable show -- the music was lively, the songs and choreography were clever, and the dancers were agile and energetic as the men rhythically slapped and stomped the rhythm while the women twirled colorfully around the stage, with rainbow-hued skirts swirling about their waists.
I couldn't help noticing a few things that seemed curious, though. There was a noticeable difference in personal appearance between the musicians and the dancers. The musicians, with the exception of one or two players, appeared dark-haired and dark-complected. I've often been told that the Gypsies (who reportedly prefer to be called Romani) are almost universally dark-haired and dark-complected, and are said to have originated in India. Several of the dancers, though, had noticeably blue eyes and light-colored hair. Curious. (The most captivating of the female dancers, though, had jet-black hair and eyes....)
I bought a CD and a copy of Ian Hancock's book We are the Romani people while I was there. In reading it later on, I came upon the following passages:
p. 3. (caption to a picture showing a female dancer with her skirt whirling above her knees:) The clothing depicted is not Romani, and showing the legs above the calves is taboo in Romani culture.
p. 102. Romani morals are in fact excessively strict by non-Romani standards; showing the legs, for example, is gadzikani forma, or non-Romani behaviour, and neither men nor women should wear shorts. The dancers who lift their colourful skirts on the state of the Teatr Romen are all non-Romanies, since the Romani members of the troupe will not do this.
Now even accepting that Dr. Hancock may be generalizing somewhat, this does seem to cast some doubt on the authenticity of the "Gypsy" dancing in the show.
I suppose it would not be surprising if the programme presented by the troupe were tailored to what audiences expected to see, and were presumably paying to see. After all, tourists are famously unconcerned about the cultural or ethnic authenticity of the entertainment they consume, and the same is presumably true of cultural "tourists" who partake of travelling presentations like this. (Does Silver Dollar City , taken as a whole, accurately reflect the lifestyles of 19th-century Ozark farmers? HA!)
Does it matter whether the dancers are actually ethnically Romani or not? Does it matter whether the dance moves are actually drawn from any real Romani tradition, as long as it's a good show? And does wondering about the authenticity of "Gypsy" music and dancing performed by non-Romanies put one in the same category as those who think that Caucasians can't play jazz or blues, or that blacks make good musicians and dancers because they have "natural jungle rythym"?
Monday, March 29, 2004
Also found on Lessig's blog:
This amusing quote from a Wall Street Journal review of his recent book Free Culture, in which the reviewer suggests that copyright reform might be an attractive "wedge issue" for the political right. "What’s to fear, that Hollywood will end its generous support of Republican candidates?"
Perhaps the Kahle v. Ashcroft folks are already adopting this approach. From the Stanford Center for Internet and Society's FAQ about the case:
1. What’s this case about?
It is about freeing our culture from unnecessary and harmful regulation....
This amusing quote from a Wall Street Journal review of his recent book Free Culture, in which the reviewer suggests that copyright reform might be an attractive "wedge issue" for the political right. "What’s to fear, that Hollywood will end its generous support of Republican candidates?"
Perhaps the Kahle v. Ashcroft folks are already adopting this approach. From the Stanford Center for Internet and Society's FAQ about the case:
1. What’s this case about?
It is about freeing our culture from unnecessary and harmful regulation....
Another salvo in the Copyright Wars
Found via www.librarian.net and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education:
In Kahle v. Ashcroft, the Internet Archive and the Preminger Archive of old film and television materials seek to overturn the retroactive application of automatic or "unconditional" copyrighted status to certain "orphan" works published between 1964 and 1978. I'm not sure that I understand their argument. It seems to be more complex than Eldred v. Ashcroft, and it may be beyond my puny reasoning capabilities. It looks to me like a case involving a fairly narrow set of copyrighted works, but Lawrence Lessig seems to think otherwise. He's discussed this on his blog, and suggests that "If the case were to prevail, Congress would have to reenact the Sonny Bono Act to protect non-orphaned works...."
.PDF of complaint is available here .
Found via www.librarian.net and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education:
In Kahle v. Ashcroft, the Internet Archive and the Preminger Archive of old film and television materials seek to overturn the retroactive application of automatic or "unconditional" copyrighted status to certain "orphan" works published between 1964 and 1978. I'm not sure that I understand their argument. It seems to be more complex than Eldred v. Ashcroft, and it may be beyond my puny reasoning capabilities. It looks to me like a case involving a fairly narrow set of copyrighted works, but Lawrence Lessig seems to think otherwise. He's discussed this on his blog, and suggests that "If the case were to prevail, Congress would have to reenact the Sonny Bono Act to protect non-orphaned works...."
.PDF of complaint is available here .
On a distant northern sea....
Self-described "railfan/boatnerd" Pete Jensen reports via the YooperRails mailing list that the shipping season has begun for Marquette's lower harbor. (The first freighter docked in the upper harbor on Saturday the 27th.)
I miss living on Lake Superior and watching it change through the seasons. I can remember watching for the first laker of the season to arrive, and wondering what it would have been like to live there before the coming of the railroads, when the place was almost totally isolated from the fall freeze-up to the spring thaw. I once spent a substantial part of a March afternoon standing on Presque Isle and watching a Coast Guard cutter break its way through the ice to free an oreboat whose captain had been a little too eager to be the first ship of the season. (I think it was the Saginaw, but I can't recall for certain.)
I guess the Detroit River is only about an hour's drive away from here, with several times the ship traffic than Marquette sees, but it's not the same as being able to see them from my front window and casually walk down to the waterfront any time I felt like it.
I will admit, though, that the webcam of the Great Lakes Maritime Institute on the Detroit waterfront is one of the coolest I've ever seen. It's mounted on top of a dethroned oreboat pilothouse, and can be remotely controlled to scan up and down the river for passing boats or anything else of interest. Apparently they funded it by auctioning off, among other things, a couple of bottles of 90-year-old Scotch that spent most of the last 70 years in a shipwreck on the bottom of Lake Huron.
Self-described "railfan/boatnerd" Pete Jensen reports via the YooperRails mailing list that the shipping season has begun for Marquette's lower harbor. (The first freighter docked in the upper harbor on Saturday the 27th.)
I miss living on Lake Superior and watching it change through the seasons. I can remember watching for the first laker of the season to arrive, and wondering what it would have been like to live there before the coming of the railroads, when the place was almost totally isolated from the fall freeze-up to the spring thaw. I once spent a substantial part of a March afternoon standing on Presque Isle and watching a Coast Guard cutter break its way through the ice to free an oreboat whose captain had been a little too eager to be the first ship of the season. (I think it was the Saginaw, but I can't recall for certain.)
I guess the Detroit River is only about an hour's drive away from here, with several times the ship traffic than Marquette sees, but it's not the same as being able to see them from my front window and casually walk down to the waterfront any time I felt like it.
I will admit, though, that the webcam of the Great Lakes Maritime Institute on the Detroit waterfront is one of the coolest I've ever seen. It's mounted on top of a dethroned oreboat pilothouse, and can be remotely controlled to scan up and down the river for passing boats or anything else of interest. Apparently they funded it by auctioning off, among other things, a couple of bottles of 90-year-old Scotch that spent most of the last 70 years in a shipwreck on the bottom of Lake Huron.
The Old Lions of Academia
"Thomas H. Benton", a pseudonymous columnist in the Chronicle of Higher Education, waxes nostalgic over the intimidating intellectual aura of the dignified, demanding, authoritarian professors of his youth. I have mixed feelings about such things.
On the one hand, a professor of the kind portrayed so fearsomely by John Houseman in The Paper Chase demands and deserves respect. By accepting no excuses and demanding the students display mastery of the material, he forces the students to learn not just the class materials but the discipline to learn needed information under time constraints and be able to present it under stress. Like it or not, these are necessary skills in most professions.
On the other hand, my experience in taking classes from three of Thee University's "Old Lions" was that two of them were simply rude, condescending, and stuck in their own little private intellectual rut.
One, in American Literature, airily dismissed all fantasy and science fiction writing as merely "popular" and therefore unworthy of academic attention. His response when I wanted to do a semester-long paper on James Branch Cabell went something like this:
Professor: "Is he on the syllabus?"
Me: "No; that's why I thought I'd ask y...."
Professor: "Well, that answers your question, then."
The second, a history professor, had a reputation as being an interesting and opinionated lecturer. During a study-abroad trip to the United Kingdom, he apparently couldn't stomach it that I disagreed with him about Irish politics, resulting in a tirade while waiting on a Dublin railway platform in which he accused me of being irresponsible and ungrateful, and then refused to speak to me again the rest of the trip. I guess I can see how political opinions could be called irresponsible, but I still haven't figured out what they have to do with gratitude.
The third was one of the oldest history professors in the school. I thought of him as "the last of the New Dealers", and for all I know he might have entered academia during the Roosevelt administration. His lectures were quite openly biased toward a populist-liberal viewpoint, but he didn't seem to mind when I or other students argued with him. That's a quality I respect more than I respect any overbearing self-appointed Unanswerable Authority.
Still, it would be nice to be one.
"Thomas H. Benton", a pseudonymous columnist in the Chronicle of Higher Education, waxes nostalgic over the intimidating intellectual aura of the dignified, demanding, authoritarian professors of his youth. I have mixed feelings about such things.
On the one hand, a professor of the kind portrayed so fearsomely by John Houseman in The Paper Chase demands and deserves respect. By accepting no excuses and demanding the students display mastery of the material, he forces the students to learn not just the class materials but the discipline to learn needed information under time constraints and be able to present it under stress. Like it or not, these are necessary skills in most professions.
On the other hand, my experience in taking classes from three of Thee University's "Old Lions" was that two of them were simply rude, condescending, and stuck in their own little private intellectual rut.
One, in American Literature, airily dismissed all fantasy and science fiction writing as merely "popular" and therefore unworthy of academic attention. His response when I wanted to do a semester-long paper on James Branch Cabell went something like this:
Professor: "Is he on the syllabus?"
Me: "No; that's why I thought I'd ask y...."
Professor: "Well, that answers your question, then."
The second, a history professor, had a reputation as being an interesting and opinionated lecturer. During a study-abroad trip to the United Kingdom, he apparently couldn't stomach it that I disagreed with him about Irish politics, resulting in a tirade while waiting on a Dublin railway platform in which he accused me of being irresponsible and ungrateful, and then refused to speak to me again the rest of the trip. I guess I can see how political opinions could be called irresponsible, but I still haven't figured out what they have to do with gratitude.
The third was one of the oldest history professors in the school. I thought of him as "the last of the New Dealers", and for all I know he might have entered academia during the Roosevelt administration. His lectures were quite openly biased toward a populist-liberal viewpoint, but he didn't seem to mind when I or other students argued with him. That's a quality I respect more than I respect any overbearing self-appointed Unanswerable Authority.
Still, it would be nice to be one.
I wonder why it's held on April 1st?
Behold the International Edible Book Festival.
(From the Bookfinder Insider mailing list.)
Behold the International Edible Book Festival.
(From the Bookfinder Insider mailing list.)
Are you a blogaholic?
Yet another of those lovable internet quizzes.
As for me:
"Your Score: 48 / 100
YOUR SCORE: 48.0% 48.0 points out of 100
AVG SCORE: 42.9% 42.9 points out of 100
12077 people have taken this silly test so far.
4083 people have scored higher than you.
6898 people have scored lower than you.
1096 people made the same grade as you.
What does this mean? *
48 points is in the 21 through 50 precent
You are a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you'd post a little more often, you'd make your readers very happy."
I have to wonder about that last bit. Trebor seems to be getting bored with my postings....
Yet another of those lovable internet quizzes.
As for me:
"Your Score: 48 / 100
YOUR SCORE: 48.0% 48.0 points out of 100
AVG SCORE: 42.9% 42.9 points out of 100
12077 people have taken this silly test so far.
4083 people have scored higher than you.
6898 people have scored lower than you.
1096 people made the same grade as you.
What does this mean? *
48 points is in the 21 through 50 precent
You are a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you'd post a little more often, you'd make your readers very happy."
I have to wonder about that last bit. Trebor seems to be getting bored with my postings....
Friday, March 26, 2004
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Differentiating "us" from the "enemy"
The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting take on the Pledge-of-Allegiance brouhaha.
The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting take on the Pledge-of-Allegiance brouhaha.
Does pledging allegiance to "one nation under God" constitute an "establishment of religion"?
That's the question before the Supreme Court. Interestingly, the plaintiff, Michael Newdow, is not only representing himself, but arguing his first courtroom case. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
The day in court was clearly dominated by Newdow, an emergency room doctor with legal training but no prior courtroom experience. A lively back-and-forth with the justices' quick legal minds can reduce even the most experienced attorneys' arguments to rubble, but Newdow often appeared to be in control of the debate.
Using a mix of emotional appeal and demonstrated knowledge of the court's precedents, Newdow laid out an argument that the justices seemed to have difficulty attacking.
Newdow even drew an uncharacteristic laugh from the court audience when, in an exchange with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, he argued that Congress' inclusion of the words "under God" in the pledge didn't draw more objection in 1954 because "atheists can't get elected to public office."
Unfortunately, there is a side issue which may muddy the waters and allow the Court to rule on this case while ducking the Big Question:
Terrence Cassidy, the lawyer for Elk Grove, hammered at Newdow's standing to hear the case.
"The question is what is in the best interest of the child, and in custody disputes, the court decides which parents has decision-making power," Cassidy said. Sandra Banning, the mother and legal guardian of Newdow's daughter, is a born-again Christian and doesn't approve of the child's involvement in the case.
It will be an anticlimax if the Supremes duck ruling on the Big Question by hiding behind the fig-leaf of a domestic difference of opinion.
That's the question before the Supreme Court. Interestingly, the plaintiff, Michael Newdow, is not only representing himself, but arguing his first courtroom case. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
The day in court was clearly dominated by Newdow, an emergency room doctor with legal training but no prior courtroom experience. A lively back-and-forth with the justices' quick legal minds can reduce even the most experienced attorneys' arguments to rubble, but Newdow often appeared to be in control of the debate.
Using a mix of emotional appeal and demonstrated knowledge of the court's precedents, Newdow laid out an argument that the justices seemed to have difficulty attacking.
Newdow even drew an uncharacteristic laugh from the court audience when, in an exchange with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, he argued that Congress' inclusion of the words "under God" in the pledge didn't draw more objection in 1954 because "atheists can't get elected to public office."
Unfortunately, there is a side issue which may muddy the waters and allow the Court to rule on this case while ducking the Big Question:
Terrence Cassidy, the lawyer for Elk Grove, hammered at Newdow's standing to hear the case.
"The question is what is in the best interest of the child, and in custody disputes, the court decides which parents has decision-making power," Cassidy said. Sandra Banning, the mother and legal guardian of Newdow's daughter, is a born-again Christian and doesn't approve of the child's involvement in the case.
It will be an anticlimax if the Supremes duck ruling on the Big Question by hiding behind the fig-leaf of a domestic difference of opinion.
Free speech in Michigan
The Michigan Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit between the Michigan Education Association sued the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market and pro-educational-voucher think tank that frequently criticizes the MEA and argues against its policy positions. More here and here.
The alleged misdeed? The Mackinac Center, in a fund-raising letter, quoted a public statement by the head of the MEA in which he said that he "admired" them. No one disputed that the quotation was accurate. The Mackinac Center acknowledged in the very next sentence that the MEA was generally "at odds" with them. The MEA sued, claiming that the quotation was an invasion of privacy.
The courts, clearly, thought otherwise.
Good show to the courts this time 'round. I find it difficult to imagine how any meaningful political discussion could take place in a legal environment in which public figures could prohibit political opponents, or news media, from quoting them.
The Michigan Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit between the Michigan Education Association sued the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market and pro-educational-voucher think tank that frequently criticizes the MEA and argues against its policy positions. More here and here.
The alleged misdeed? The Mackinac Center, in a fund-raising letter, quoted a public statement by the head of the MEA in which he said that he "admired" them. No one disputed that the quotation was accurate. The Mackinac Center acknowledged in the very next sentence that the MEA was generally "at odds" with them. The MEA sued, claiming that the quotation was an invasion of privacy.
The courts, clearly, thought otherwise.
Good show to the courts this time 'round. I find it difficult to imagine how any meaningful political discussion could take place in a legal environment in which public figures could prohibit political opponents, or news media, from quoting them.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Not about heroes
Last night I headed over to A-squared again, this time to see/hear a dramatic reading of a two-person play entitled "Not About Heroes", which portrays the friendship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two of the best of the generation of British poets who were cavalierly tossed into the meatgrinder of WWI trench warfare by pigheaded generals who considered the deaths of a hundred thousand men here or a hundred thousand there to be an everyday, blase occurence. It's a powerful play, closely based on the poems and letters of the two men, and it leaves questions lingering in one's mind.
Sassoon's war poems were read and acknowledged largely because he had demonstrated downright suicidal courage under fire, thus pre-emptively absolving himself of the charge of cowardice. Owen died in one of the very last actions of the war, trying to accomplish the same thing.
Does a person need to be a military veteran, or even a military hero, in order to be considered competent to judge the desirability of war and peace?
And how can a society where decisionmakers are completely insulated from the immediate results of their decisions expect to have any rational decisions made on its behalf?
Last night I headed over to A-squared again, this time to see/hear a dramatic reading of a two-person play entitled "Not About Heroes", which portrays the friendship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two of the best of the generation of British poets who were cavalierly tossed into the meatgrinder of WWI trench warfare by pigheaded generals who considered the deaths of a hundred thousand men here or a hundred thousand there to be an everyday, blase occurence. It's a powerful play, closely based on the poems and letters of the two men, and it leaves questions lingering in one's mind.
Sassoon's war poems were read and acknowledged largely because he had demonstrated downright suicidal courage under fire, thus pre-emptively absolving himself of the charge of cowardice. Owen died in one of the very last actions of the war, trying to accomplish the same thing.
Does a person need to be a military veteran, or even a military hero, in order to be considered competent to judge the desirability of war and peace?
And how can a society where decisionmakers are completely insulated from the immediate results of their decisions expect to have any rational decisions made on its behalf?
Which poem are you?
The full text of "me" can be found here. Rather eerily appropriate -- but then again, I also like this poem.
| Which poem are you? Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold You're probably strongly political, and a pacifist. Hey, and you're also slightly depressing. You think a lot of things suck and are pointless. Congratulations!
|
| Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests. |
The full text of "me" can be found here. Rather eerily appropriate -- but then again, I also like this poem.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Readers rejoice!
Silverlock is back in print, in a durable and affordable clothbound edition from NESFA! (Also available on Amazon and BN.)
If you don't know what all the fuss is about, read the Amazon reader comments about an earlier, now-out-of-print edition. Or better yet launch into it blind and discover for yourself what the Commonwealth is all about. It's worth the trip.
Silverlock is back in print, in a durable and affordable clothbound edition from NESFA! (Also available on Amazon and BN.)
If you don't know what all the fuss is about, read the Amazon reader comments about an earlier, now-out-of-print edition. Or better yet launch into it blind and discover for yourself what the Commonwealth is all about. It's worth the trip.
Don't get any ideas.
Libraries seem to be magnets for thieves. I've noticed a substantial number of items missing from the shelves of "Huron State U." since starting work here. These are usually items which are currently required textbooks or items which are predictably in high demand among student report-writers, but recently I found that two of the three volumes of an early edition of Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica were inexplicably gone from the shelves. That's a three-digit book on the secondhand market, and it seems unlikely to me that its disappearance is entirely a coincidence, or that they were taken by a student who needed them for a class.
The University of Oregon, in this story, is just the most recent university library to find its property being auctioned off on eBay. Miles Harvey, in The Island of Lost Maps, described in painful detail how a mild-mannered thief with the preposterously appropriate name of Gilbert Bland managed to lift millions of dollars worth of rare and salable old maps from library atlases simply by using WorldCat to locate the libraries that owned them, pretending to be a "scholar" in order to get access to them, and then surreptitiously dismembering them with a razor blade. (Amazingly, several libraries could not even be bothered to return the FBI's telephone calls when Bland was finally caught with a Florida strip-mall store filled with stolen library property.) And of course it's common knowledge to anyone who closely followed the sordid career of Mark Hofmann's forgeries that he 'acquired' appropriately-aged paper for his forgeries by slicing endsheets out of old library books.
It's tempting to say that this means secondhand book buyers should be suspicious of ex-library books and all old maps in internet selling venues; however, I know from firsthand experience how often libraries blithely and ignorantly discard books that are in high demand on the secondhand market. Advocating that such ex-libs be shunned, or that libraries summarily destroy discarded materials in order to prevent confusion between legitimately acquired ex-lib books and stolen ones, would be an intolerable injury to those readers who are savvy enough to know what to look for and where to find the legitimate ones offered for sale. Even an injury to learning itself, if I might wax pompous for a moment.
It's likewise tempting to advocate closing the stacks entirely, but this is financially prohibitive for most institutions, and a serious barrier to usage of the library. However, I note that the one volume of the Whitehead/Russell book which is still in the possession of "Huron State" is the one that was inexplicably placed in non-public storage.
As always, I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps the library world needs to hire someone like this.
(Note: if anyone reads this an takes it as an inspiration to start stealing library books, be warned: If I find out about it, I will hunt you down and take them back.)
Libraries seem to be magnets for thieves. I've noticed a substantial number of items missing from the shelves of "Huron State U." since starting work here. These are usually items which are currently required textbooks or items which are predictably in high demand among student report-writers, but recently I found that two of the three volumes of an early edition of Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica were inexplicably gone from the shelves. That's a three-digit book on the secondhand market, and it seems unlikely to me that its disappearance is entirely a coincidence, or that they were taken by a student who needed them for a class.
The University of Oregon, in this story, is just the most recent university library to find its property being auctioned off on eBay. Miles Harvey, in The Island of Lost Maps, described in painful detail how a mild-mannered thief with the preposterously appropriate name of Gilbert Bland managed to lift millions of dollars worth of rare and salable old maps from library atlases simply by using WorldCat to locate the libraries that owned them, pretending to be a "scholar" in order to get access to them, and then surreptitiously dismembering them with a razor blade. (Amazingly, several libraries could not even be bothered to return the FBI's telephone calls when Bland was finally caught with a Florida strip-mall store filled with stolen library property.) And of course it's common knowledge to anyone who closely followed the sordid career of Mark Hofmann's forgeries that he 'acquired' appropriately-aged paper for his forgeries by slicing endsheets out of old library books.
It's tempting to say that this means secondhand book buyers should be suspicious of ex-library books and all old maps in internet selling venues; however, I know from firsthand experience how often libraries blithely and ignorantly discard books that are in high demand on the secondhand market. Advocating that such ex-libs be shunned, or that libraries summarily destroy discarded materials in order to prevent confusion between legitimately acquired ex-lib books and stolen ones, would be an intolerable injury to those readers who are savvy enough to know what to look for and where to find the legitimate ones offered for sale. Even an injury to learning itself, if I might wax pompous for a moment.
It's likewise tempting to advocate closing the stacks entirely, but this is financially prohibitive for most institutions, and a serious barrier to usage of the library. However, I note that the one volume of the Whitehead/Russell book which is still in the possession of "Huron State" is the one that was inexplicably placed in non-public storage.
As always, I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps the library world needs to hire someone like this.
(Note: if anyone reads this an takes it as an inspiration to start stealing library books, be warned: If I find out about it, I will hunt you down and take them back.)
Make the pie higher!
Some of you, Gentle Readers, may have already seen the well-known "poem" created from snippets of President Bush's various malapropisms by a Washington Post editorial writer. It was recently forwarded around my place of work, and I've seen it elsewhere. It's quite entertaining; however, being skeptical of the veracity of such things, I turned to the font of all knowledge in such things, the good folks at the Urban Legend Reference Pages.
Somewhat to my surprise, they provide not only an imprimatur of its authenticity, but a detailed analysis of where each phrase came from.
Sadly, the one phrase I thought had real poetic power, "I am a pit bull on the pantleg of opportunity", was the only one for which they could not find a source.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I will point out that some of the phrases in the "poem", although they sound quite bizarre when taken out of context, actually do make a kind of sense in the context of their original appearance. Consider for example "Knock down the tollbooth!" Nonsense, huh? It originally appeared in a speech as follows:
"It's not fair!" Bush exclaims. "It's a tollbooth on the road to the middle class, and I intend not only to reduce the fees but to knock the tollbooth down."
Perhaps not the most elegant phrasing, but it does make a kind of sense as a rhetorical parallel to the "tollbooth" reference in the preceding clause.
"I think we all agree, the past is over" turns out to have been said in the course of politically making-up with an internal Republican Party rival after a bitter primary fight. Again, not elegant, but it sort of makes sense in context.
Likewise with "I know that the human being and the fish can coexist."
However, I'm not even going to try to justify mangled verbiage such as "misunderestimate", "How many hands have I shaked", or "Is our children learning". With those phrases, you're on your own, Mr. President.
Some of you, Gentle Readers, may have already seen the well-known "poem" created from snippets of President Bush's various malapropisms by a Washington Post editorial writer. It was recently forwarded around my place of work, and I've seen it elsewhere. It's quite entertaining; however, being skeptical of the veracity of such things, I turned to the font of all knowledge in such things, the good folks at the Urban Legend Reference Pages.
Somewhat to my surprise, they provide not only an imprimatur of its authenticity, but a detailed analysis of where each phrase came from.
Sadly, the one phrase I thought had real poetic power, "I am a pit bull on the pantleg of opportunity", was the only one for which they could not find a source.
Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I will point out that some of the phrases in the "poem", although they sound quite bizarre when taken out of context, actually do make a kind of sense in the context of their original appearance. Consider for example "Knock down the tollbooth!" Nonsense, huh? It originally appeared in a speech as follows:
"It's not fair!" Bush exclaims. "It's a tollbooth on the road to the middle class, and I intend not only to reduce the fees but to knock the tollbooth down."
Perhaps not the most elegant phrasing, but it does make a kind of sense as a rhetorical parallel to the "tollbooth" reference in the preceding clause.
"I think we all agree, the past is over" turns out to have been said in the course of politically making-up with an internal Republican Party rival after a bitter primary fight. Again, not elegant, but it sort of makes sense in context.
Likewise with "I know that the human being and the fish can coexist."
However, I'm not even going to try to justify mangled verbiage such as "misunderestimate", "How many hands have I shaked", or "Is our children learning". With those phrases, you're on your own, Mr. President.
Theater thuggery
When I left the State Theater Saturday evening, I noticed that there were police officers and an ambulance near the front door. I didn't find out why until I read this article from the Detroit Free Press.
.... According to police, [Paul] Elrod was talking loudly Saturday night in the State Theater during a showing of "The Triplets of Belleville" when Eisenbach turned around and said "Shush."
Elrod became irate and turned to his wife and said, "Should I bitch-slap this guy?"
He then began talking in Eisenbach's ear, kicking his seat, throwing popcorn and spitting on him. Eisenbach rose and turned to Elrod and said "Excuse me."
Elrod hit him in the face, the pair grappled and Eisenbach was pushed 13 feet down the stairs of the stadium seating-style theater. He suffered fractured ribs, a collapsed lung and cuts.
Book 'im, Dano. And while you're at it, you might want to investigate the fact that he "says he is on disability due to an injured leg."
(See? Sometimes I support the police!)
When I left the State Theater Saturday evening, I noticed that there were police officers and an ambulance near the front door. I didn't find out why until I read this article from the Detroit Free Press.
.... According to police, [Paul] Elrod was talking loudly Saturday night in the State Theater during a showing of "The Triplets of Belleville" when Eisenbach turned around and said "Shush."
Elrod became irate and turned to his wife and said, "Should I bitch-slap this guy?"
He then began talking in Eisenbach's ear, kicking his seat, throwing popcorn and spitting on him. Eisenbach rose and turned to Elrod and said "Excuse me."
Elrod hit him in the face, the pair grappled and Eisenbach was pushed 13 feet down the stairs of the stadium seating-style theater. He suffered fractured ribs, a collapsed lung and cuts.
Book 'im, Dano. And while you're at it, you might want to investigate the fact that he "says he is on disability due to an injured leg."
(See? Sometimes I support the police!)
More news & photos of last weekend's march
Eastern Echo
Michigan Daily
Detroit Free Press
Windchimewalker
Sadly I'm not in any of the photos, which ought to set Trebor's mind at ease.
Eastern Echo
Michigan Daily
Detroit Free Press
Windchimewalker
Sadly I'm not in any of the photos, which ought to set Trebor's mind at ease.
Monday, March 22, 2004
What's Hindi for "fatwa"?
State to seek extradition of 'Shivaji' author -- Times of India, March 23
MUMBAI: The controversy over American scholar James Laine's book Shivaji: Hindu king in Islamic India took a new turn on Monday with Maharashtra's home minister and state NCP president R R Patil deciding to seek Interpol's help in arresting and bringing the author to Mumbai.
The book is alleged to contain derogatory references to Chhatrapati Shivaji and his mother Jijamata.....
More about the book here and here.
I have to interpret that this as political grandstanding for the benefit of gullible election-year voters, since it seems extraordinarily unlikely that either Interpol or the US government will cooperate with such a ludicrous demand. What, exactly, is the charge? Allegedly libelling someone who's been dead for centuries? The Indian Prime Minister seems to have resisted the tide of mindless fanaticism for a while, but caved in when the howling of the mob became too loud.
If the United Nations or any of its agencies were ever so foolish as to try to enforce extraterritorial enforcement of purely political actions like this, that would be sufficient reason for the U.S. to immediately withdraw.
Editorial note, afternoon of 3/23: Fiend has quite properly pointed out that "fatwa" applies to Islamic religious rulings in general, not just the notorious assassination edicts against authors like Salman Rushdie. Future use of the word will be more precise.
State to seek extradition of 'Shivaji' author -- Times of India, March 23
MUMBAI: The controversy over American scholar James Laine's book Shivaji: Hindu king in Islamic India took a new turn on Monday with Maharashtra's home minister and state NCP president R R Patil deciding to seek Interpol's help in arresting and bringing the author to Mumbai.
The book is alleged to contain derogatory references to Chhatrapati Shivaji and his mother Jijamata.....
More about the book here and here.
I have to interpret that this as political grandstanding for the benefit of gullible election-year voters, since it seems extraordinarily unlikely that either Interpol or the US government will cooperate with such a ludicrous demand. What, exactly, is the charge? Allegedly libelling someone who's been dead for centuries? The Indian Prime Minister seems to have resisted the tide of mindless fanaticism for a while, but caved in when the howling of the mob became too loud.
If the United Nations or any of its agencies were ever so foolish as to try to enforce extraterritorial enforcement of purely political actions like this, that would be sufficient reason for the U.S. to immediately withdraw.
Editorial note, afternoon of 3/23: Fiend has quite properly pointed out that "fatwa" applies to Islamic religious rulings in general, not just the notorious assassination edicts against authors like Salman Rushdie. Future use of the word will be more precise.
Oh, those wacky Texas Republicans
Here is one of the main reasons Molly Ivins has prospered as a political editorialist. As she acknowledges in her online bio at Creators.com, "covering the Texas Legislature... doubtlessly accounts for her frequent fits of hysterical laughter" and gives her "plenty to write about." And a lot of the entertainment in the Texas Lege comes from ... guess who?
Yep, it's the platform of the good ole Republican Party of Texas, which seems to think that the John Birch Society is a buncha softheaded pinkos. They make such easy targets for satire that it seems almost too cruel to actually take shots at them.
Almost.
Now some of their platform is generic political boilerplate ("God Bless Texas!") and some of it actually incorporates some good ideas, such as the following:
Census The Party opposes any attempt by the United States Census Bureau to obtain any information beyond the number of people residing in the dwelling at the time of the census and in accordance with Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. We strongly support counting each citizen and urge elected officials
to resist taking a census by any other method.
Repeal of Federal War Powers Act A perpetual state of national emergency allows unrestricted growth of government. The Party charges the President to cancel the state of national emergency and charges Congress to repeal the War Powers Act and declare an end to the previously declared states of emergency.
Property Seizure Without Due Process The Party opposes the confiscation or seizure of private property without the benefit of due process. Furthermore, in order to discourage institutional greed and a false sense of fiscal independence from the citizenry, neither law enforcement agencies nor their parent organizations should be allowed to reap any financial benefit from such seizures.
Personal Confidentiality The Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and that this right shall not be violated. The Party directs that legislation be introduced in both the United States Congress and the State of Texas to repeal existing statutory requirements to end the ever increasing, incessant, recurring, and calculated gathering, accumulation, and dissemination of finger prints, Social Security numbers, financial and personal information of law-abiding citizens by business and governments, the use of which are contrary to and destructive of our individual and collective freedom. Such legislation shall provide remedy and redress to any individual denied service for refusing to provide the above–mentioned information.
However, it sounds like someone's crazy old aunt grabbed hold of the typewriter once the subject shifted to religion. How else to explain the following item?
Christian Nation The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation, which was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible. We also affirm the right of each individual to worship in the religion of his or her choice.
Ah yes.... we all know about the devout Christian orthodoxy of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, right? And although there's a grudgingly tacked-on affirmation of the right to worship, I can't help noting that it's devoid of any right not to worship.
It still perplexes me that a party that purports to defend personal privacy as described above still can't resist the urge to micromanage people's bedroom behavior, but there it is:
Homosexuality The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society....
Not that I'm an expert or anything, but, um, isn't that what the KY Jelly is for?
Furthermore, like Rep. Lewis of Kentucky, the party seems to be ignorant of the legal significance of Supreme Court decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas:
Texas Sodomy Statutes The Party opposes the decriminalization of sodomy.
And as for foreign relations? Simple!
United Nations The Party believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States that we immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to, the United Nations.
In truth, I could conceivably vote for a party that pursued the more sensible causes outlined here, but abandoned the crazy-eyed theocratic ranting and the disturbingly obsessive insistence on micromanaging the bedroom antics indulged in by the very same individuals over whose privacy in other spheres they purport to have such concern.
But I don't think I could vote for these guys unless they purged the would-be theocrats and bedroom meddlers from their ranks. Not to mention the cynical warmongers and the Enron and Halliburton alumni club. And that's clearly not going to happen any time soon. So I guess I'm stuck voting for (shudder) Democrats or maybe the Libertarians. If I try to vote by principles, the Libertarians probably come closest to a match; however, if I decide to vote on an anybody-but-Bush, get-rid-of-the-bum basis, the Democrat (gag) might be the most viable alternative.
Here is one of the main reasons Molly Ivins has prospered as a political editorialist. As she acknowledges in her online bio at Creators.com, "covering the Texas Legislature... doubtlessly accounts for her frequent fits of hysterical laughter" and gives her "plenty to write about." And a lot of the entertainment in the Texas Lege comes from ... guess who?
Yep, it's the platform of the good ole Republican Party of Texas, which seems to think that the John Birch Society is a buncha softheaded pinkos. They make such easy targets for satire that it seems almost too cruel to actually take shots at them.
Almost.
Now some of their platform is generic political boilerplate ("God Bless Texas!") and some of it actually incorporates some good ideas, such as the following:
Census The Party opposes any attempt by the United States Census Bureau to obtain any information beyond the number of people residing in the dwelling at the time of the census and in accordance with Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. We strongly support counting each citizen and urge elected officials
to resist taking a census by any other method.
Repeal of Federal War Powers Act A perpetual state of national emergency allows unrestricted growth of government. The Party charges the President to cancel the state of national emergency and charges Congress to repeal the War Powers Act and declare an end to the previously declared states of emergency.
Property Seizure Without Due Process The Party opposes the confiscation or seizure of private property without the benefit of due process. Furthermore, in order to discourage institutional greed and a false sense of fiscal independence from the citizenry, neither law enforcement agencies nor their parent organizations should be allowed to reap any financial benefit from such seizures.
Personal Confidentiality The Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and that this right shall not be violated. The Party directs that legislation be introduced in both the United States Congress and the State of Texas to repeal existing statutory requirements to end the ever increasing, incessant, recurring, and calculated gathering, accumulation, and dissemination of finger prints, Social Security numbers, financial and personal information of law-abiding citizens by business and governments, the use of which are contrary to and destructive of our individual and collective freedom. Such legislation shall provide remedy and redress to any individual denied service for refusing to provide the above–mentioned information.
However, it sounds like someone's crazy old aunt grabbed hold of the typewriter once the subject shifted to religion. How else to explain the following item?
Christian Nation The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation, which was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible. We also affirm the right of each individual to worship in the religion of his or her choice.
Ah yes.... we all know about the devout Christian orthodoxy of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, right? And although there's a grudgingly tacked-on affirmation of the right to worship, I can't help noting that it's devoid of any right not to worship.
It still perplexes me that a party that purports to defend personal privacy as described above still can't resist the urge to micromanage people's bedroom behavior, but there it is:
Homosexuality The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society....
Not that I'm an expert or anything, but, um, isn't that what the KY Jelly is for?
Furthermore, like Rep. Lewis of Kentucky, the party seems to be ignorant of the legal significance of Supreme Court decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas:
Texas Sodomy Statutes The Party opposes the decriminalization of sodomy.
And as for foreign relations? Simple!
United Nations The Party believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States that we immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to, the United Nations.
In truth, I could conceivably vote for a party that pursued the more sensible causes outlined here, but abandoned the crazy-eyed theocratic ranting and the disturbingly obsessive insistence on micromanaging the bedroom antics indulged in by the very same individuals over whose privacy in other spheres they purport to have such concern.
But I don't think I could vote for these guys unless they purged the would-be theocrats and bedroom meddlers from their ranks. Not to mention the cynical warmongers and the Enron and Halliburton alumni club. And that's clearly not going to happen any time soon. So I guess I'm stuck voting for (shudder) Democrats or maybe the Libertarians. If I try to vote by principles, the Libertarians probably come closest to a match; however, if I decide to vote on an anybody-but-Bush, get-rid-of-the-bum basis, the Democrat (gag) might be the most viable alternative.
"Call me [your name here]."
Are you looking for literary immortality, but sadly lacking in literary talent? No problem! Just donate money to this charity!
Are you looking for literary immortality, but sadly lacking in literary talent? No problem! Just donate money to this charity!
Not worth the trouble
Last week I received an e'mail and telephone call from a community college in Florida to which I had mailed a resume some time ago. They wanted to interview me. However, there were some special conditions. They wanted to do a video interview.
Okay by me. Then they mentioned that the nearest videoconferencing location they could arrange was in Grand Rapids, over two hours' drive away. And the only time they were able or willing to do the interview was at 1:00 p.m. on a Wednesday.
Since I was unwilling to use up a nonexistent vacation day to go driving across the state to sit in a Kinko's copyshop and be interrogated by a rented videocamera, I demurred. We can't do a telephone interview, they said. The video interview is mandatory. Too bad, said I.
This couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I declined to fill out their "voluntary" racial-identification form, could it? Oh well. I never really wanted to live in the Florida swamps anyway.
Last week I received an e'mail and telephone call from a community college in Florida to which I had mailed a resume some time ago. They wanted to interview me. However, there were some special conditions. They wanted to do a video interview.
Okay by me. Then they mentioned that the nearest videoconferencing location they could arrange was in Grand Rapids, over two hours' drive away. And the only time they were able or willing to do the interview was at 1:00 p.m. on a Wednesday.
Since I was unwilling to use up a nonexistent vacation day to go driving across the state to sit in a Kinko's copyshop and be interrogated by a rented videocamera, I demurred. We can't do a telephone interview, they said. The video interview is mandatory. Too bad, said I.
This couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I declined to fill out their "voluntary" racial-identification form, could it? Oh well. I never really wanted to live in the Florida swamps anyway.
"For informational purposes only...."
From the high country of Wyoming comes this story: Librarian defends pot-growing how-to book.
I'm with her on this one. It reminds me of a book on the forbidden art of distilling home-made whiskey that I picked up from a library book sale many years ago. I've never put its recipes to use, but it did make it much easier to figure out what had gone on at those old still foundations that can still be found in isolated forest gulches near the old family farm in the Ozarks.
From the high country of Wyoming comes this story: Librarian defends pot-growing how-to book.
I'm with her on this one. It reminds me of a book on the forbidden art of distilling home-made whiskey that I picked up from a library book sale many years ago. I've never put its recipes to use, but it did make it much easier to figure out what had gone on at those old still foundations that can still be found in isolated forest gulches near the old family farm in the Ozarks.
Comics in libraries
Here's a useful webpage about comics and graphic novels for any public librarians that happen to stumble across this page. (Link found, surprisingly enough, on SHUSH, "a website for the conservative librarian".)
One perceptive comment reflects a reality I have observed:
"Bluntly stated, libraries don't buy [comic books] because librarians don't like them."
-- Patrick Jones, Connecting Young Adults and Libraries: A How To Do It Manual, second edition (Neal-Schuman, 1998).
Librarians themselves can be among the most formidable of society's censors. Self-censorship, cloaked as library selection policy, may reflect little more than librarians' biases against certain formats or subject matter.
Here's a useful webpage about comics and graphic novels for any public librarians that happen to stumble across this page. (Link found, surprisingly enough, on SHUSH, "a website for the conservative librarian".)
One perceptive comment reflects a reality I have observed:
"Bluntly stated, libraries don't buy [comic books] because librarians don't like them."
-- Patrick Jones, Connecting Young Adults and Libraries: A How To Do It Manual, second edition (Neal-Schuman, 1998).
Librarians themselves can be among the most formidable of society's censors. Self-censorship, cloaked as library selection policy, may reflect little more than librarians' biases against certain formats or subject matter.
What I Did Last Weekend
Spent the first part of Saturday here. Although the newspaper reporters seem to have gone out of their way to find pro-war people to interview, most of the bypassers, bystanders, merchants, and other folks along the route of the march seemed friendly and supportive. One restauranteur in particular seemed to be having a great time dancing to the marchers' drumbeats, many downtown walkers flashed grins and/or "peace"-signs, and some of the policeman assigned to traffic control seemed to regard their assignment as a pleasant excursion, waving cheerily to the marchers as they passed by. Of course, "A-squared" is anything but a typical midwestern town in its politics.
Since I was already on the U-Michigan campus, I spent most of the late afternoon exploring their graduate library (Digital Sanborn maps! Hurrah!). It's a towering, monumental structure with a richly-decorated lobby, a palatial reading room, and a Gormenghastian warren of tunnels and cramped stacks for the staff and the printed collection. If only I could work in such a library -- but I probably never will.
Touching the Void
I closed out the day in A-squared by walking over to the State Theater to see Touching the Void, a documentary film about two mountain-climbers in the Andes whose assault on a previously unclimbed mountainface results in a disastrous injury to one of them, and an ethical quandry worthy of a law-school hypothetical case.
Situation: Your climbing partner has sustained an injury which makes it virtually impossible for him to climb back down the mountain unaided. You are lowering him down the treacherous snow-covered mountainside on a rope, one rope-length at a time, when suddenly you feel more weight on the rope as he disappears from sight, and he stops responding to shouts or tugs on the rope. You keep your hold on the rope for a long, long time, as your feet start slipping further and further down through the unstable snow under the strain of the unrelenting weight. It's getting dark, the weather's getting worse... and you remember that you have a penknife in your pocket.
It's a grim story, although the intercut segments of a present-day interview with the two climbers make it clear from the beginning that both of them somehow survived to talk about it. The re-creation of the climb was filmed using actors, but the continuing narrative of the principals keeps the film firmly tied to their actual story. It begins innocuously enough, with stunning vistas of the Andes that remind one why early film directors like Leni Riefenstahl loved making Alpine dramas (All that white backdrop for the actors, inherently dramatic situations, and beautiful scenery, too!). The re-creation of the fateful climb steadily gets more brutally realistic as the film goes on, with grime, frostbite, and decidedly unsanitary sanitary arrangements all on gruesome display. The mountains are awe-inspiring in their beauty, but what those mountains can do to the men who challenge them can be very ugly, and there several truly winceworthy moments when the viewer can almost literally feel the pain. There are only a few moments of humor, as when one of the climbers, hurt, exhausted, and dehydrated, starts experiencing hallucinations as he crawls through a maze of immense boulders. He gets a song stuck in his head -- and he doesn't like the song. The camera adopts a jittery, jerky, disordered viewpoint as he glares in bewilderment back and forth at the rocks around him and "Brown Girl In The Ring", a truly annoying piece of Euro-disco, swells in and out of audibility. "Bloody 'ell... am I gonna die hearin' Boney M?", he recalls thinking to himself. "I don't like Boney M."
It's hard to say that a film this brutal is "enjoyable", but it is awe-inspiring to see just how unbelievably stubborn human beings can be. And the mountains are beautiful.
Spent the first part of Saturday here. Although the newspaper reporters seem to have gone out of their way to find pro-war people to interview, most of the bypassers, bystanders, merchants, and other folks along the route of the march seemed friendly and supportive. One restauranteur in particular seemed to be having a great time dancing to the marchers' drumbeats, many downtown walkers flashed grins and/or "peace"-signs, and some of the policeman assigned to traffic control seemed to regard their assignment as a pleasant excursion, waving cheerily to the marchers as they passed by. Of course, "A-squared" is anything but a typical midwestern town in its politics.
Since I was already on the U-Michigan campus, I spent most of the late afternoon exploring their graduate library (Digital Sanborn maps! Hurrah!). It's a towering, monumental structure with a richly-decorated lobby, a palatial reading room, and a Gormenghastian warren of tunnels and cramped stacks for the staff and the printed collection. If only I could work in such a library -- but I probably never will.
Touching the Void
I closed out the day in A-squared by walking over to the State Theater to see Touching the Void, a documentary film about two mountain-climbers in the Andes whose assault on a previously unclimbed mountainface results in a disastrous injury to one of them, and an ethical quandry worthy of a law-school hypothetical case.
Situation: Your climbing partner has sustained an injury which makes it virtually impossible for him to climb back down the mountain unaided. You are lowering him down the treacherous snow-covered mountainside on a rope, one rope-length at a time, when suddenly you feel more weight on the rope as he disappears from sight, and he stops responding to shouts or tugs on the rope. You keep your hold on the rope for a long, long time, as your feet start slipping further and further down through the unstable snow under the strain of the unrelenting weight. It's getting dark, the weather's getting worse... and you remember that you have a penknife in your pocket.
It's a grim story, although the intercut segments of a present-day interview with the two climbers make it clear from the beginning that both of them somehow survived to talk about it. The re-creation of the climb was filmed using actors, but the continuing narrative of the principals keeps the film firmly tied to their actual story. It begins innocuously enough, with stunning vistas of the Andes that remind one why early film directors like Leni Riefenstahl loved making Alpine dramas (All that white backdrop for the actors, inherently dramatic situations, and beautiful scenery, too!). The re-creation of the fateful climb steadily gets more brutally realistic as the film goes on, with grime, frostbite, and decidedly unsanitary sanitary arrangements all on gruesome display. The mountains are awe-inspiring in their beauty, but what those mountains can do to the men who challenge them can be very ugly, and there several truly winceworthy moments when the viewer can almost literally feel the pain. There are only a few moments of humor, as when one of the climbers, hurt, exhausted, and dehydrated, starts experiencing hallucinations as he crawls through a maze of immense boulders. He gets a song stuck in his head -- and he doesn't like the song. The camera adopts a jittery, jerky, disordered viewpoint as he glares in bewilderment back and forth at the rocks around him and "Brown Girl In The Ring", a truly annoying piece of Euro-disco, swells in and out of audibility. "Bloody 'ell... am I gonna die hearin' Boney M?", he recalls thinking to himself. "I don't like Boney M."
It's hard to say that a film this brutal is "enjoyable", but it is awe-inspiring to see just how unbelievably stubborn human beings can be. And the mountains are beautiful.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
King & King
Expect to see this book and its sequel at the center of book banning controversies in school and public libraries.
Expect to see this book and its sequel at the center of book banning controversies in school and public libraries.
California courts and ACLU say First Amendment doesn't apply to Catholic Charities
It's hard to say how disappointed I am in this case. To vigorously defend women's rights to equality is entirely proper for an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union. Likewise, for them to oppose legalistic restrictions on public access to contraceptives. For them to vigorously defend abortion is understandable, although I believe their position is tragically and horribly wrong. But when they insist that state governments compel a religious charity to violate its beliefs by supplying contraceptives (possibly including abortifacients like RU486) to its employees, they have clearly lost all respect for the religious freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment.
The ACLU's brief in the case argues that "The Women’s Contraception Equity Act (“Contraception Equity Act”) requires employment health insurance policies that include prescription drug benefits to cover contraception....The statute exempts “religious employers” that satisfy four criteria:
(A) The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity. (B) The entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity. (C) The entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity. (D) The entity is a nonprofit organization pursuant to Section 6033(a)(2)(A)(i) or (iii) of the Internal
Revenue Code.1"
It goes on to argue that the right to consider religious beliefs in employment practices on the part of religious organizations applies only to "clergy officials, members of religious orders, and teachers at church schools established for religious instruction.... In contrast, the Act does not excuse institutions that provide secular services, such as hospitals, universities and relief agencies, from giving their religiously diverse workforce equitable health benefits, regardless of whether the employing organizations have a religious affiliation."
Note that the "religiously diverse workforce" results in part from the legal mandate that religious organizations may not exercise religious criteria outside of the narrow categories mentioned, and that 'equitable' has been quite arbitrarily defined by the state to mean 'supplying subsidized contraceptives'."
Unless Catholic Charities is somehow legally mandated to provide prescription drug coverage by California law, it appears that they have no choice but to drop their employees' coverage or violate their own beliefs by financially subsidizing practices repugnant to them. (Perhaps Pablo has some knowledge of the relevant laws/regulations?) Perhaps it would serve the state of California right if Catholic Charities promptly fired all non-Catholic employees and ceased all services to non-Catholics in hopes of fitting within the narrow, crabbed confines of the ACLU's and the court's definition of a religious organization, and thus still being allowed to honor their beliefs. The affected people could all be handed copies of the Court's decision and informed to seek help from the State of California and the ACLU.
I suppose if that happened, they would probably be sued for violating the First Amendment, or for violating some codicil of labor law. More distressingly, it would violate Christ's teachings and example of healing the sick and helping the poor.
Guess I won't be sending that check to the ACLU after all. I wonder: does the ACLU headquarters have a "No Catholics Need Apply" sign hanging in the front window?
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a civil liberties organization that truly cared about, well, civil liberties in general, even those of people who disagreed with its hyper-feminist faction's strident demands for subsidized abortions at all costs?
Now perhaps some folks reading this think that it's just hunky-dory to mandate that churches pay for their employees' contraceptives and, in the near future, pay for abortions, or euthanasia, or health care to homosexual partners/spouses, etc. Some may even consider it a victory to be crowed and bragged over. Such is left-wing triumphalism, no better than right-wing triumphalism. But consider: what would be the appropriate response if you, as the operator of a charity, were ordered by the State to do something you found sinful and utterly repugnant to your beliefs. Say, involuntarily sterilizing members of "genetically inferior" races, or euthanizing "economically non-viable" people, or forcibly administering mind-altering drugs to patients who held politically "undesirable" views? Think about it. Then ask yourself whether it's right to force Catholics to -- in their eyes -- financially support the murder of children.
Here's more food for thought. One of the key arguments in the ACLU's brief to ignore Catholic Charities' First Amendment rights in this case was, and I quote,
Catholic Charities is the paradigm of a secular organization that is not exempt from state labor policy. Its employees predominantly do not share the Catholic faith. Its charitable work is secular. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which receives substantial government funds. Catholic Charities serves people of all faiths – and people who adhere to no faith – in California’s pluralistic population. (emphasis added.)
What does this foretell about the "Faith-Based Initiatives" that propose to direct governmental money into the activities of religious organizations all over the country?
It's hard to say how disappointed I am in this case. To vigorously defend women's rights to equality is entirely proper for an organization like the American Civil Liberties Union. Likewise, for them to oppose legalistic restrictions on public access to contraceptives. For them to vigorously defend abortion is understandable, although I believe their position is tragically and horribly wrong. But when they insist that state governments compel a religious charity to violate its beliefs by supplying contraceptives (possibly including abortifacients like RU486) to its employees, they have clearly lost all respect for the religious freedom guaranteed in the First Amendment.
The ACLU's brief in the case argues that "The Women’s Contraception Equity Act (“Contraception Equity Act”) requires employment health insurance policies that include prescription drug benefits to cover contraception....The statute exempts “religious employers” that satisfy four criteria:
(A) The inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity. (B) The entity primarily employs persons who share the religious tenets of the entity. (C) The entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity. (D) The entity is a nonprofit organization pursuant to Section 6033(a)(2)(A)(i) or (iii) of the Internal
Revenue Code.1"
It goes on to argue that the right to consider religious beliefs in employment practices on the part of religious organizations applies only to "clergy officials, members of religious orders, and teachers at church schools established for religious instruction.... In contrast, the Act does not excuse institutions that provide secular services, such as hospitals, universities and relief agencies, from giving their religiously diverse workforce equitable health benefits, regardless of whether the employing organizations have a religious affiliation."
Note that the "religiously diverse workforce" results in part from the legal mandate that religious organizations may not exercise religious criteria outside of the narrow categories mentioned, and that 'equitable' has been quite arbitrarily defined by the state to mean 'supplying subsidized contraceptives'."
Unless Catholic Charities is somehow legally mandated to provide prescription drug coverage by California law, it appears that they have no choice but to drop their employees' coverage or violate their own beliefs by financially subsidizing practices repugnant to them. (Perhaps Pablo has some knowledge of the relevant laws/regulations?) Perhaps it would serve the state of California right if Catholic Charities promptly fired all non-Catholic employees and ceased all services to non-Catholics in hopes of fitting within the narrow, crabbed confines of the ACLU's and the court's definition of a religious organization, and thus still being allowed to honor their beliefs. The affected people could all be handed copies of the Court's decision and informed to seek help from the State of California and the ACLU.
I suppose if that happened, they would probably be sued for violating the First Amendment, or for violating some codicil of labor law. More distressingly, it would violate Christ's teachings and example of healing the sick and helping the poor.
Guess I won't be sending that check to the ACLU after all. I wonder: does the ACLU headquarters have a "No Catholics Need Apply" sign hanging in the front window?
Wouldn't it be nice if there were a civil liberties organization that truly cared about, well, civil liberties in general, even those of people who disagreed with its hyper-feminist faction's strident demands for subsidized abortions at all costs?
Now perhaps some folks reading this think that it's just hunky-dory to mandate that churches pay for their employees' contraceptives and, in the near future, pay for abortions, or euthanasia, or health care to homosexual partners/spouses, etc. Some may even consider it a victory to be crowed and bragged over. Such is left-wing triumphalism, no better than right-wing triumphalism. But consider: what would be the appropriate response if you, as the operator of a charity, were ordered by the State to do something you found sinful and utterly repugnant to your beliefs. Say, involuntarily sterilizing members of "genetically inferior" races, or euthanizing "economically non-viable" people, or forcibly administering mind-altering drugs to patients who held politically "undesirable" views? Think about it. Then ask yourself whether it's right to force Catholics to -- in their eyes -- financially support the murder of children.
Here's more food for thought. One of the key arguments in the ACLU's brief to ignore Catholic Charities' First Amendment rights in this case was, and I quote,
Catholic Charities is the paradigm of a secular organization that is not exempt from state labor policy. Its employees predominantly do not share the Catholic faith. Its charitable work is secular. It is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which receives substantial government funds. Catholic Charities serves people of all faiths – and people who adhere to no faith – in California’s pluralistic population. (emphasis added.)
What does this foretell about the "Faith-Based Initiatives" that propose to direct governmental money into the activities of religious organizations all over the country?
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Quoth the Iconoclast:
I have been frequently called an iconoclast, and bad as the title is popularly supposed to be, I trust it is not altogether undeserved. I have striven to break foolish idols and shatter false ideals, to hurl unclean gods from their pedestals in the public pantheon. A work of destruction is not, I admit, of a high order. Anybody may destroy; it requires genius to build up. The wonder of the ancient world sank to ruin irremediable beneath the torch of a morbid dude who had rather be "damned to everlasting fame" than altogether forgotten. A hungry wolf may destroy a human life which Almighty God has brought to perfection through long years of labor. But destruction is sometimes necessary. The seas must be cleared of pirates before commerce can flourish; the antiquated and useless building must come down before the school-house or business block can occupy the site. In the great cities are men who do nothing but destroy old buildings--professional wreckers of those works of man that have outlived their usefulness. They build nothing; but are they, therefore, to be condemned? So in the social world, a man may be a professional wrecker, without the constructive ability to build a political platform on a piecrate, and still be useful, indispensable. The wrecker of bad buildings does not contract to put good ones in their places; nor is the iconoclast under any obligation to find a heavenly grace for every false god that falls beneath his hammer, a saint for every sinner he holds up to scorn, a new truth for every old falsehood he fells to earth. He may, if he thinks proper, leave that labor to others and go on, with brand and bomb, bludgeon and bill-hook, wrecking, destroying--playing John the Baptist to a greater to come after.
From William Cowper Brann, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. OR THE LADIES AND THE APOSTLE. [A synopsis of Mr. Brann's address to the Ladies' Reading Club, San Antonio, Texas.]. (Collected in Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 12, and available online from Project Gutenberg and others.)
I have been frequently called an iconoclast, and bad as the title is popularly supposed to be, I trust it is not altogether undeserved. I have striven to break foolish idols and shatter false ideals, to hurl unclean gods from their pedestals in the public pantheon. A work of destruction is not, I admit, of a high order. Anybody may destroy; it requires genius to build up. The wonder of the ancient world sank to ruin irremediable beneath the torch of a morbid dude who had rather be "damned to everlasting fame" than altogether forgotten. A hungry wolf may destroy a human life which Almighty God has brought to perfection through long years of labor. But destruction is sometimes necessary. The seas must be cleared of pirates before commerce can flourish; the antiquated and useless building must come down before the school-house or business block can occupy the site. In the great cities are men who do nothing but destroy old buildings--professional wreckers of those works of man that have outlived their usefulness. They build nothing; but are they, therefore, to be condemned? So in the social world, a man may be a professional wrecker, without the constructive ability to build a political platform on a piecrate, and still be useful, indispensable. The wrecker of bad buildings does not contract to put good ones in their places; nor is the iconoclast under any obligation to find a heavenly grace for every false god that falls beneath his hammer, a saint for every sinner he holds up to scorn, a new truth for every old falsehood he fells to earth. He may, if he thinks proper, leave that labor to others and go on, with brand and bomb, bludgeon and bill-hook, wrecking, destroying--playing John the Baptist to a greater to come after.
From William Cowper Brann, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. OR THE LADIES AND THE APOSTLE. [A synopsis of Mr. Brann's address to the Ladies' Reading Club, San Antonio, Texas.]. (Collected in Brann the Iconoclast, Volume 12, and available online from Project Gutenberg and others.)
Constitutionally clueless
Rep. Ron Lewis, a Republican from Kentucky, is frustrated because the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review over acts of Congress. Fortunately, he has a simple solution: just have Congress enact a law giving itself the power to override the Supreme Court.
Thanks to the Library Underground list for the tipoff.
Rep. Ron Lewis, a Republican from Kentucky, is frustrated because the Supreme Court has the power of judicial review over acts of Congress. Fortunately, he has a simple solution: just have Congress enact a law giving itself the power to override the Supreme Court.
Thanks to the Library Underground list for the tipoff.
More Baptist Battles
According to the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the president of Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College has resigned after a book-banning battle initiated by the college's board of trustees:
President William Rory Lee angered some alumni and professors last year after he removed two books from the college's bookstore in response to complaints from a student and a member of the college's Board of Trustees. At the time, Mr. Lee said that the books, The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck, and A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, clashed with the Christian values espoused by the college.
The board then adopted a rigid textbook-screening policy that required all professors to receive approval for their textbook choices from both their department head and the vice president for academic affairs. Professors complained that the new policy infringed on their academic freedom (The Chronicle, January 9).
More reason for me to avoid applying to religiously-affiliated colleges, I guess. There are enough political landmines in academia without adding the overhead crossfire of feuding religious factions demanding that "undesirable" books be banned from campus.
According to the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, the president of Southern Baptist-affiliated Louisiana College has resigned after a book-banning battle initiated by the college's board of trustees:
President William Rory Lee angered some alumni and professors last year after he removed two books from the college's bookstore in response to complaints from a student and a member of the college's Board of Trustees. At the time, Mr. Lee said that the books, The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck, and A Lesson Before Dying, by Ernest J. Gaines, clashed with the Christian values espoused by the college.
The board then adopted a rigid textbook-screening policy that required all professors to receive approval for their textbook choices from both their department head and the vice president for academic affairs. Professors complained that the new policy infringed on their academic freedom (The Chronicle, January 9).
More reason for me to avoid applying to religiously-affiliated colleges, I guess. There are enough political landmines in academia without adding the overhead crossfire of feuding religious factions demanding that "undesirable" books be banned from campus.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Sanity on the northern frontier?
Another link stolen from LL: CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada
.... Held: The appeal should be allowed and the cross-appeal dismissed. The Law Society does not infringe copyright when a single copy of a reported decision, case summary, statute, regulation or limited selection of text from a treatise is made by the Great Library in accordance with its access policy. Moreover, the Law Society does not authorize copyright infringement by maintaining a photocopier in the Great Library and posting a notice warning that it will not be responsible for any copies made in infringement of copyright.....
Another link stolen from LL: CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada
.... Held: The appeal should be allowed and the cross-appeal dismissed. The Law Society does not infringe copyright when a single copy of a reported decision, case summary, statute, regulation or limited selection of text from a treatise is made by the Great Library in accordance with its access policy. Moreover, the Law Society does not authorize copyright infringement by maintaining a photocopier in the Great Library and posting a notice warning that it will not be responsible for any copies made in infringement of copyright.....
California Attorney General exposed as MPAA handpuppet
For once, my headline is hardly an exaggeration. According to a story at Wired News, analysis of the metadata included in a MS Word document in which the California Attorney General "characterizes P2P software as a "dangerous product" and describes the failure of technology makers to warn consumers of those dangers as a deceptive trade practice" shows that the document was, quite literally, written for him by the MPAA.
Are Californians really stupid enough to vote for people like this? The dollar amounts of the bribes -- er, contributions -- he's received from the "seven dwarves" of the MPAA show that he isn't just for sale -- he's for sale cheap.
(Link stolen from Lawrence Lessig's blog -- hey, I steal only the best!)
For once, my headline is hardly an exaggeration. According to a story at Wired News, analysis of the metadata included in a MS Word document in which the California Attorney General "characterizes P2P software as a "dangerous product" and describes the failure of technology makers to warn consumers of those dangers as a deceptive trade practice" shows that the document was, quite literally, written for him by the MPAA.
Are Californians really stupid enough to vote for people like this? The dollar amounts of the bribes -- er, contributions -- he's received from the "seven dwarves" of the MPAA show that he isn't just for sale -- he's for sale cheap.
(Link stolen from Lawrence Lessig's blog -- hey, I steal only the best!)
Monday, March 15, 2004
Godwin's Law
For those who are unfamiliar with this well-known net-meme, there's a definition here. The author, in this essay, describes how it originated as a memetic experiment -- a "counter-meme" run amok.
One can easily see why Godwin was tempted to create his counter-meme. It's all too easy in an inflammatory argument to start casually throwing "You're Like The Nazis" accusations around, trivializing the actual evil of the Holocaust and, usually, grossly misrepresenting the intentions of the other party. On the other hand, what about situations in which the doctrines or practices of the actual, historical National Socialist Party truly are relevant to the discussion? Seems the counter-meme may be a bit too broad in its attack, like an antibiotic that wipes out useful bacteria along with the pneumococci.
Beware! Blogs are infected with memes!
Memes, for those unfamiliar with the word, are a concept popularized by Richard Dawkins. They may be usefully thought of a mental constructs, ideas, which compete for mind-space and seek to reproduce themselves in as many minds as possible, in the same way that living beings compete for resources and seek to reproduce in as many environments as possible.
I do find the concept of meme-warfare fascinating. John Barnes has written at least two books (Candle and The Sky So Big and Black) based on the rather terrifying premise of meme-like computer viruses developing the ability to jump from electronic operating systems to organic ones (i.e., human minds) via the transmission of a sequence of verbal and visual inputs. It's less of a stretch to see everyday religion, politics, and the advertising profession (which nowadays includes a substantial portion of both religion and politics) as nothing more than an ongoing Darwinian competition, not between human beings, but between competing memes.
Extending the metaphor a bit further, each media in which memes can be transmitted can be likened to a new population of potential carriers, like a new population of hosts for a virus to inhabit, or a new continent for a species of animal to populate. Blogs are one of the newest vectors for transmission, and the infection has been raging at fever-strength for the past couple of years. (By now, you're infected, either agreeing with what I say or busily manufacturing the antibodies of counter-arguments or boredom.) But I seem to detect a certain dropoff in the furor of BlogMania nowadays.
Perhaps the population of memes proliferating through the blog population is beginning to subside, as the population of a virus in a host, or of animals in a previously unpopulated continent, rapidly climbs to a peak and then stabilizes or declines.
Does that make me a "fit survivor"? Or just a particularly susceptible carrier?
For those who are unfamiliar with this well-known net-meme, there's a definition here. The author, in this essay, describes how it originated as a memetic experiment -- a "counter-meme" run amok.
One can easily see why Godwin was tempted to create his counter-meme. It's all too easy in an inflammatory argument to start casually throwing "You're Like The Nazis" accusations around, trivializing the actual evil of the Holocaust and, usually, grossly misrepresenting the intentions of the other party. On the other hand, what about situations in which the doctrines or practices of the actual, historical National Socialist Party truly are relevant to the discussion? Seems the counter-meme may be a bit too broad in its attack, like an antibiotic that wipes out useful bacteria along with the pneumococci.
Beware! Blogs are infected with memes!
Memes, for those unfamiliar with the word, are a concept popularized by Richard Dawkins. They may be usefully thought of a mental constructs, ideas, which compete for mind-space and seek to reproduce themselves in as many minds as possible, in the same way that living beings compete for resources and seek to reproduce in as many environments as possible.
I do find the concept of meme-warfare fascinating. John Barnes has written at least two books (Candle and The Sky So Big and Black) based on the rather terrifying premise of meme-like computer viruses developing the ability to jump from electronic operating systems to organic ones (i.e., human minds) via the transmission of a sequence of verbal and visual inputs. It's less of a stretch to see everyday religion, politics, and the advertising profession (which nowadays includes a substantial portion of both religion and politics) as nothing more than an ongoing Darwinian competition, not between human beings, but between competing memes.
Extending the metaphor a bit further, each media in which memes can be transmitted can be likened to a new population of potential carriers, like a new population of hosts for a virus to inhabit, or a new continent for a species of animal to populate. Blogs are one of the newest vectors for transmission, and the infection has been raging at fever-strength for the past couple of years. (By now, you're infected, either agreeing with what I say or busily manufacturing the antibodies of counter-arguments or boredom.) But I seem to detect a certain dropoff in the furor of BlogMania nowadays.
Perhaps the population of memes proliferating through the blog population is beginning to subside, as the population of a virus in a host, or of animals in a previously unpopulated continent, rapidly climbs to a peak and then stabilizes or declines.
Does that make me a "fit survivor"? Or just a particularly susceptible carrier?
Sunday, March 14, 2004
"Can public libraries ever work?"
An interesting article from the Dayton Daily News about how public libraries might fare in the political realm if they were first proposed today.
The collision between libertarian/free market ideas and the practical usefulness of libraries is one that I've detoured around many times. I've usually convinced myself that libraries are defensible because they are a cultural record that no business would seek to provide otherwise. (But does even that weak argument apply to public libraries which primarily concern themselves with supplying only this week's bestseller, while unceremoniously trashing older material?)
Thoughts?
An interesting article from the Dayton Daily News about how public libraries might fare in the political realm if they were first proposed today.
The collision between libertarian/free market ideas and the practical usefulness of libraries is one that I've detoured around many times. I've usually convinced myself that libraries are defensible because they are a cultural record that no business would seek to provide otherwise. (But does even that weak argument apply to public libraries which primarily concern themselves with supplying only this week's bestseller, while unceremoniously trashing older material?)
Thoughts?
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Greendale -- Neil Young and Crazy Horse
Last Tuesday evening M., a freind from Marquette who has moved to Detroit, and I went down to the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit to hear Neil Young and Crazy Horse. We took a wrong turn or two getting down there, but despite (or perhaps because of?) M.'s nervous insistence on locking all the doors before entering downtown, we failed to get mugged or carjacked. (Actually, it's probably because no self-respecting thug would want my vehicle, or imagine that it contained anything worth stealing.)
First impressions of the theater itself were impressive, despite its seedy surroundings. The Fox must be one of the most extravagantly excessive movie palaces ever built. (It was later modified into a live venue.) The lobby is at least two stories tall, with red marble, elaborate painting, and lavish gilded ornamentation dripping from almost every square inch. It was a bit strange to see aging, leather-clad biker types with "Neil Young" tattoos on their arms casually wandering about such a venue, but so be it. The interior of the theater is equally lush, with pseudo-Oriental (Indian?) statuettes lining the walls and a golden elephant's head incongruously looming over the stage. Since I'm on a librarian's salary and M. is similarly underpaid, this approximates the view from the seats we could afford. Not that hearing Young and his famously raucous band was likely to be a problem at any distance....
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Greendale. Young has never been afraid of trying new genres and new ideas. Sometimes I think that, like Mervyn Peake, Young strives to do things that are difficult for him simply because they are difficult. (Young is frequently quoted as saying that his bestselling 1972 song Heart of Gold "... put me in the middle of the road. It got boring there, so I headed for the ditch.") Sometimes this has resulted in work of rare independence and originality; other times, it has resulted in awkward pastiches. I admire his versatility and nerve... but what was Greendale going to be?
When I saw the drum kit and the usual musical paraphenalia on stage surrounded by what looked like sets for a play, and then looked at the playbill and saw that it began with a family tree and a "Who's Who" including several credits to "Bernard Shakey", Young's pseudonymous cinematic alter-ego, plus credits for additional vocals by "The Mountainettes", followed by a "History of the Green Family" extending for several pages, my perplexity deepened.
I needn't have worried so much. It seems that in Greendale, Young has decided to incorporate storytelling, drama, and projected movie images, into his work. Clad in worn clothes with a grimy gimme-cap shadowing his face, he introduced each song with a short vignette telling a story about the inhabitants of the mythical small town of Greendale, a place which seems to exist in Young's mind the same way that Lake Wobegon exists in Garrison Keillor's. What resulted was a sort of Neil Young-style musical play, with Young and the band at center stage as actors played out the roles of various characters in his imagination on three stages around the perimeter of the stage, occasionally running across the stage or interacting with the musicians. It's eccentric and occasionally self-referential -- at one point, Young, singing the role of a character, gripes:
Seems like that guy singing this song has been doing it for a long time/
Is there anything you know that he ain't said?"
While voicing the same character, in the midst of a diatribe against obnoxious media coverage later in show, he takes another self-referential jab:
That guy who just keeps singing ? can't somebody shut him up?
I don't know for the life of me where he comes up with this stuff!
The set designs, and occasionally the acting, are gleefully amateurish. To nobody's surprise, Young's story and songs take unsubtle aim at several of his favorite political targets: corporatism, Clear Channel, environmental pollution, and the warmongering and citizen-surveilling aspirations of the Bush Administration. At one point, after a traffic stop in mythical Greendale has gone catastrophically wrong, resulting in a death, the discovery of a cache of weapons and "subversive" literature, and an Ashcroftian law-enforcement crackdown, a cartoon of a large billboard emblazoned "Clear Channel : Support Our War!" looms over the stage while Young sings:
There's no need to worry
There's no reason to fuss
Just go on about your work now
And leave the driving to us
And we'll be watching you no matter what you do
And you can do your part by watching others too.
(The Evil Empire is apparently not particularly concerned about this implied criticism, since they will happily sell tickets to his upcoming shows. From a server named "Orwell", no less.)
At one point in the show, after the sound system had apparently failed to adequately handle the droning bass note underlying the beautiful acoustic ballad Bandit, resulting in some unwanted unpleasant sound effects, Young seemed visibly irritated. A couple of obnoxious concertgoers who kept loudly whistling and shrieking during his next storytelling vignette, dealing with a meal delivered to a jailed character, became the targets for his well-known mercurial temper, as he briefly interrupted the story to snarl at them: "Why don't ya whistle at that? Don'cha like biscuits, ya f*ckin' *ssholes?" Before starting the next song, he asked one of the roadies for a C harmonica, and ostentaciously placed it on a stand in front of him. "This is for the guy that was whistling. All ya gotta do is come up after the show and get it...."
The Whistler shut up, at least for the remainder of Greendale.
Typically, Young sees the possibility for salvation in the young (no pun intended) and idealistic. The final song in the show, Be the Rain, is an energetic hymn to environmentalism: "We gotta job to do / we gotta save the Earth for another day...." Sun Green, a hippie-like idealistic young woman, takes on the crusade against corporatism, pollution, etc., despite harassment from police and FBI-type investigators. Many of her lines (as sung by Young) are delivered through a megaphone as she takes on PowerCo ("Hey Mister Clean, you're dirty now too....") and various unspecified environmental evildoers. I'll admit that the love affair between Sun and her lover "Earth Brown" was rather confusing and even embarrassing, but on the whole Greendale was enjoyable. It probably won't go down as Young's greatest work, but it's not an embarrassing oddity on the scale of Trans.
And then. And then.
After several minutes of silence, Young and Crazy Horse came back out for an "encore" of classic Crazy Horse songs that lasted nearly an hour and a half. An hour and a half of raucous roadhouse rock and roll from the King of Howling Feedback, with the walls of the theater literally shaking and thousands of Detroiters screaming themselves hoarse, singing along with familiar refrains, and (judging from the occasional odors) toking up with abandon. I won't bother trying to describe this part of the concert, because if you've ever heard Neil Young and Crazy Horse, you either love their unabashedly aggressive playing or you hate it. The final song, Down by the River, was awesomely, magnificently, powerful in its dirgelike pace and doom-laden grief. Listening to it on CD the next day proved only that listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse on CD is nothing like hearing them in person.
Last Tuesday evening M., a freind from Marquette who has moved to Detroit, and I went down to the Fox Theater in downtown Detroit to hear Neil Young and Crazy Horse. We took a wrong turn or two getting down there, but despite (or perhaps because of?) M.'s nervous insistence on locking all the doors before entering downtown, we failed to get mugged or carjacked. (Actually, it's probably because no self-respecting thug would want my vehicle, or imagine that it contained anything worth stealing.)
First impressions of the theater itself were impressive, despite its seedy surroundings. The Fox must be one of the most extravagantly excessive movie palaces ever built. (It was later modified into a live venue.) The lobby is at least two stories tall, with red marble, elaborate painting, and lavish gilded ornamentation dripping from almost every square inch. It was a bit strange to see aging, leather-clad biker types with "Neil Young" tattoos on their arms casually wandering about such a venue, but so be it. The interior of the theater is equally lush, with pseudo-Oriental (Indian?) statuettes lining the walls and a golden elephant's head incongruously looming over the stage. Since I'm on a librarian's salary and M. is similarly underpaid, this approximates the view from the seats we could afford. Not that hearing Young and his famously raucous band was likely to be a problem at any distance....
I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Greendale. Young has never been afraid of trying new genres and new ideas. Sometimes I think that, like Mervyn Peake, Young strives to do things that are difficult for him simply because they are difficult. (Young is frequently quoted as saying that his bestselling 1972 song Heart of Gold "... put me in the middle of the road. It got boring there, so I headed for the ditch.") Sometimes this has resulted in work of rare independence and originality; other times, it has resulted in awkward pastiches. I admire his versatility and nerve... but what was Greendale going to be?
When I saw the drum kit and the usual musical paraphenalia on stage surrounded by what looked like sets for a play, and then looked at the playbill and saw that it began with a family tree and a "Who's Who" including several credits to "Bernard Shakey", Young's pseudonymous cinematic alter-ego, plus credits for additional vocals by "The Mountainettes", followed by a "History of the Green Family" extending for several pages, my perplexity deepened.
I needn't have worried so much. It seems that in Greendale, Young has decided to incorporate storytelling, drama, and projected movie images, into his work. Clad in worn clothes with a grimy gimme-cap shadowing his face, he introduced each song with a short vignette telling a story about the inhabitants of the mythical small town of Greendale, a place which seems to exist in Young's mind the same way that Lake Wobegon exists in Garrison Keillor's. What resulted was a sort of Neil Young-style musical play, with Young and the band at center stage as actors played out the roles of various characters in his imagination on three stages around the perimeter of the stage, occasionally running across the stage or interacting with the musicians. It's eccentric and occasionally self-referential -- at one point, Young, singing the role of a character, gripes:
Seems like that guy singing this song has been doing it for a long time/
Is there anything you know that he ain't said?"
While voicing the same character, in the midst of a diatribe against obnoxious media coverage later in show, he takes another self-referential jab:
That guy who just keeps singing ? can't somebody shut him up?
I don't know for the life of me where he comes up with this stuff!
The set designs, and occasionally the acting, are gleefully amateurish. To nobody's surprise, Young's story and songs take unsubtle aim at several of his favorite political targets: corporatism, Clear Channel, environmental pollution, and the warmongering and citizen-surveilling aspirations of the Bush Administration. At one point, after a traffic stop in mythical Greendale has gone catastrophically wrong, resulting in a death, the discovery of a cache of weapons and "subversive" literature, and an Ashcroftian law-enforcement crackdown, a cartoon of a large billboard emblazoned "Clear Channel : Support Our War!" looms over the stage while Young sings:
There's no need to worry
There's no reason to fuss
Just go on about your work now
And leave the driving to us
And we'll be watching you no matter what you do
And you can do your part by watching others too.
(The Evil Empire is apparently not particularly concerned about this implied criticism, since they will happily sell tickets to his upcoming shows. From a server named "Orwell", no less.)
At one point in the show, after the sound system had apparently failed to adequately handle the droning bass note underlying the beautiful acoustic ballad Bandit, resulting in some unwanted unpleasant sound effects, Young seemed visibly irritated. A couple of obnoxious concertgoers who kept loudly whistling and shrieking during his next storytelling vignette, dealing with a meal delivered to a jailed character, became the targets for his well-known mercurial temper, as he briefly interrupted the story to snarl at them: "Why don't ya whistle at that? Don'cha like biscuits, ya f*ckin' *ssholes?" Before starting the next song, he asked one of the roadies for a C harmonica, and ostentaciously placed it on a stand in front of him. "This is for the guy that was whistling. All ya gotta do is come up after the show and get it...."
The Whistler shut up, at least for the remainder of Greendale.
Typically, Young sees the possibility for salvation in the young (no pun intended) and idealistic. The final song in the show, Be the Rain, is an energetic hymn to environmentalism: "We gotta job to do / we gotta save the Earth for another day...." Sun Green, a hippie-like idealistic young woman, takes on the crusade against corporatism, pollution, etc., despite harassment from police and FBI-type investigators. Many of her lines (as sung by Young) are delivered through a megaphone as she takes on PowerCo ("Hey Mister Clean, you're dirty now too....") and various unspecified environmental evildoers. I'll admit that the love affair between Sun and her lover "Earth Brown" was rather confusing and even embarrassing, but on the whole Greendale was enjoyable. It probably won't go down as Young's greatest work, but it's not an embarrassing oddity on the scale of Trans.
And then. And then.
After several minutes of silence, Young and Crazy Horse came back out for an "encore" of classic Crazy Horse songs that lasted nearly an hour and a half. An hour and a half of raucous roadhouse rock and roll from the King of Howling Feedback, with the walls of the theater literally shaking and thousands of Detroiters screaming themselves hoarse, singing along with familiar refrains, and (judging from the occasional odors) toking up with abandon. I won't bother trying to describe this part of the concert, because if you've ever heard Neil Young and Crazy Horse, you either love their unabashedly aggressive playing or you hate it. The final song, Down by the River, was awesomely, magnificently, powerful in its dirgelike pace and doom-laden grief. Listening to it on CD the next day proved only that listening to Neil Young and Crazy Horse on CD is nothing like hearing them in person.
Will the last blogger posting please turn out the lights?
With Carlos and Fiend both on indefinite hiatus, I'm getting a little lonely here in Blog-World. I guess if I'm the Last Blogger Standing, I really should post more often than once every three days. Perhaps quantity will make up for my notoriously erratic qualities.
With Carlos and Fiend both on indefinite hiatus, I'm getting a little lonely here in Blog-World. I guess if I'm the Last Blogger Standing, I really should post more often than once every three days. Perhaps quantity will make up for my notoriously erratic qualities.
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Library career advice
... courtesy of a source which shall remain unnamed (per his/her/their wishes).
For new librarians in public libraries, some career advice from a bunch of veterans sitting around having
one too many beers. Thank goodness one of us was sober enough to take notes! This message may be
freely disseminated provided it remains intact and no one dishonestly claims authorship. The authors are
anonymous and intend to stay that way.
=====
1. Your undergraduate degree or previous experience is irrelevant. If your background is English, you'll
be assigned to the Science Department. Fluent in a second language? Your collection development
responsibilities will be Hollywood videos. Want to work with children? You'll do cataloging. Your
acquisitions expertise will get you assigned to the bookmobile.
2. Forget the publish-or-perish law of academia. In public libraries, it is publish-AND-perish. Do not
publish anything as an entry-level librarian, except what you have been asked to contribute to the library
newsletter, until after your first promotion. Attracting favorable outside attention too soon
irritates your supervisors, who labor long and hard in the unglamorous administrative trenches with no public
recognition. They feel resentful when their subordinates develop name recognition or independent
reputations.
3. You can never suck up too much. Loyalty often counts for more than competence. Be punctual, be
perky, be passive, and don't ask tough questions. If you get called a "poor team player," it means your
boss dislikes you but has no objective basis for criticizing your performance. Start looking for
another job.
4. Tread carefully when ordering books with sexual themes or illustrations. Remember that not all
censorship challenges come from outside: if your support staff objects to typing the order or shelving
the book, your administrators might not back you up the way they would with an outside challenge.
5. Never forget that the public library is a political creature. It must satisfy its board and its
funders. In addition, there are always those jockeying for their next promotion. These political
tensions and alliances can be subtle and difficult to discern but they are there and potentially
treacherous.
6. In spite of its deserved reputation as a profession where eccentrics, nerds, free-thinkers, and
"alternative" people of all kinds can find refuge, public libraries can still be bastions of gender
conformity. As in other fields, male librarians often float to the top. Female librarians are often
promoted based on how well they do femininity (attractiveness, wardrobe, ability to follow orders)
rather than how well they do librarianship.
7. Does administration ask for your input? Consider it a formality. They want cheerleaders, not critics.
They've spent long years in tedious career purgatory, waiting for another lifer to retire or die so that
they can advance to where they can launch their own policies and projects. They're not interested in
yours.
8. Public libraries with low turnover and a civil service system where promotion is restricted to
insiders are more likely to be followers than leaders in the field. This is because those with the freshest
training and most energy, the new hires, have the least power and the longest wait to attain a position that allows them to innovate.
9. Exercise caution when seeking employment within 50-100 miles of a library school. Unlike places far
from library schools, which must work hard to recruit and retain librarians, cities with library schools in
town do not have to treat their staff especially well because they are easily replaced with the many new
graduates saturating the local market.
10. If your library is not unionized, start one. Historically, it is the most reliable way to elevate the traditionally dismal librarian salary.
Let's see: so far in my experience in public and academic libraries, numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 have bitten me. Number 4 is insufficiently inclusive, since it fails to warn against acquiring, say, religious or pro-Second-Amendment viewpoints that other staff wish to suppress. Number 6 is from a distant and unfamiliar planet with no relation to the reality I inhabit; every library at which I've worked has had a female director, and to the extent that I've observed any sexual discrimination, it has been directed against men in the public library. Number 10 is quite amusing, since the union to which I am required to belong as a condition of employment is currently spending most of its time and effort (and, probably, most of my mandatory dues) on internal squabbles and power-struggles, complete with the usual anonymous e'mail flames and self-righteous defensive responses from groups with names like the "Committee to Replace Person X" or the "Ad Hoc Committee for the Truth". This follows two or three months in which no one in the union administration could be bothered to respond to my telephone calls or e'mails seeking information about "my" union and its activities. Obviously the people in charge have a healthy system of priorities.
I'm not sure whether I've violated Number 2. Do pseudonymous weblogs count?
... courtesy of a source which shall remain unnamed (per his/her/their wishes).
For new librarians in public libraries, some career advice from a bunch of veterans sitting around having
one too many beers. Thank goodness one of us was sober enough to take notes! This message may be
freely disseminated provided it remains intact and no one dishonestly claims authorship. The authors are
anonymous and intend to stay that way.
=====
1. Your undergraduate degree or previous experience is irrelevant. If your background is English, you'll
be assigned to the Science Department. Fluent in a second language? Your collection development
responsibilities will be Hollywood videos. Want to work with children? You'll do cataloging. Your
acquisitions expertise will get you assigned to the bookmobile.
2. Forget the publish-or-perish law of academia. In public libraries, it is publish-AND-perish. Do not
publish anything as an entry-level librarian, except what you have been asked to contribute to the library
newsletter, until after your first promotion. Attracting favorable outside attention too soon
irritates your supervisors, who labor long and hard in the unglamorous administrative trenches with no public
recognition. They feel resentful when their subordinates develop name recognition or independent
reputations.
3. You can never suck up too much. Loyalty often counts for more than competence. Be punctual, be
perky, be passive, and don't ask tough questions. If you get called a "poor team player," it means your
boss dislikes you but has no objective basis for criticizing your performance. Start looking for
another job.
4. Tread carefully when ordering books with sexual themes or illustrations. Remember that not all
censorship challenges come from outside: if your support staff objects to typing the order or shelving
the book, your administrators might not back you up the way they would with an outside challenge.
5. Never forget that the public library is a political creature. It must satisfy its board and its
funders. In addition, there are always those jockeying for their next promotion. These political
tensions and alliances can be subtle and difficult to discern but they are there and potentially
treacherous.
6. In spite of its deserved reputation as a profession where eccentrics, nerds, free-thinkers, and
"alternative" people of all kinds can find refuge, public libraries can still be bastions of gender
conformity. As in other fields, male librarians often float to the top. Female librarians are often
promoted based on how well they do femininity (attractiveness, wardrobe, ability to follow orders)
rather than how well they do librarianship.
7. Does administration ask for your input? Consider it a formality. They want cheerleaders, not critics.
They've spent long years in tedious career purgatory, waiting for another lifer to retire or die so that
they can advance to where they can launch their own policies and projects. They're not interested in
yours.
8. Public libraries with low turnover and a civil service system where promotion is restricted to
insiders are more likely to be followers than leaders in the field. This is because those with the freshest
training and most energy, the new hires, have the least power and the longest wait to attain a position that allows them to innovate.
9. Exercise caution when seeking employment within 50-100 miles of a library school. Unlike places far
from library schools, which must work hard to recruit and retain librarians, cities with library schools in
town do not have to treat their staff especially well because they are easily replaced with the many new
graduates saturating the local market.
10. If your library is not unionized, start one. Historically, it is the most reliable way to elevate the traditionally dismal librarian salary.
Let's see: so far in my experience in public and academic libraries, numbers 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9 have bitten me. Number 4 is insufficiently inclusive, since it fails to warn against acquiring, say, religious or pro-Second-Amendment viewpoints that other staff wish to suppress. Number 6 is from a distant and unfamiliar planet with no relation to the reality I inhabit; every library at which I've worked has had a female director, and to the extent that I've observed any sexual discrimination, it has been directed against men in the public library. Number 10 is quite amusing, since the union to which I am required to belong as a condition of employment is currently spending most of its time and effort (and, probably, most of my mandatory dues) on internal squabbles and power-struggles, complete with the usual anonymous e'mail flames and self-righteous defensive responses from groups with names like the "Committee to Replace Person X" or the "Ad Hoc Committee for the Truth". This follows two or three months in which no one in the union administration could be bothered to respond to my telephone calls or e'mails seeking information about "my" union and its activities. Obviously the people in charge have a healthy system of priorities.
I'm not sure whether I've violated Number 2. Do pseudonymous weblogs count?
Librarians with glasses
It's wholly unscientific, of course. The Curmudgeony Librarian wants to know how many librarians conform to the glasses-wearing stereotype. Librarians can take the poll here; they and others can see the results here.
Although there are female librarians who have (or at least claim) perfect vision, the male of the species appears to have congenitally defective vision.
It's wholly unscientific, of course. The Curmudgeony Librarian wants to know how many librarians conform to the glasses-wearing stereotype. Librarians can take the poll here; they and others can see the results here.
Although there are female librarians who have (or at least claim) perfect vision, the male of the species appears to have congenitally defective vision.
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Places visited (second try)
Everybody else in Blog-World passed these maps around a long, long time ago. (Almost two months!!!) So I'm a procrastinator. So sue me. You'll get a full refund.
(Thanks to Fiend for helpfully pointing out an egregrious geographical blunder in the previous iteration. Unfortunately, I made further blunders in my response to her comment, and incompetent Enetation refused to let me correct them, forcing me to nuke the entire posting and redo it in order to get rid of the comments blunders.)
As a world traveller, I'm, shall we say, parochial:
create your own visited country map
However, within the United States, I've been a little more adventurous:
create your own personalized map of the USA
The "World66" website purports to be able to show a similar map of provinces visited in Canada, but unfortunately it generates only error messages when confronted with the disturbing prospect of someone like me who has visited only one such province (Ontario.)
The map of European countries visited provides little more information than the "world map" did, but I throw it in special just for you. Such a bargain!
create your personalized map of europe
Th-th-th-that's all, folks.
Everybody else in Blog-World passed these maps around a long, long time ago. (Almost two months!!!) So I'm a procrastinator. So sue me. You'll get a full refund.
(Thanks to Fiend for helpfully pointing out an egregrious geographical blunder in the previous iteration. Unfortunately, I made further blunders in my response to her comment, and incompetent Enetation refused to let me correct them, forcing me to nuke the entire posting and redo it in order to get rid of the comments blunders.)
As a world traveller, I'm, shall we say, parochial:
create your own visited country map
However, within the United States, I've been a little more adventurous:
create your own personalized map of the USA
The "World66" website purports to be able to show a similar map of provinces visited in Canada, but unfortunately it generates only error messages when confronted with the disturbing prospect of someone like me who has visited only one such province (Ontario.)
The map of European countries visited provides little more information than the "world map" did, but I throw it in special just for you. Such a bargain!
create your personalized map of europe
Th-th-th-that's all, folks.
Monday, March 08, 2004
"There's the disembodied voice of death, and then there's DEATH."
An unpleasant but not entirely unexpected sequel to Spalding Gray's disappearance last January.
One of the events I enjoyed most while living in north Texas was making an after-work road trip from Plano down to Waco to hear Gray do one of his monologues at the Hippodrome Theater. And of course I'd enjoyed seeing Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box on video. It amazed me then, and still amazes me in retrospect, that with nothing more than his voice, facial expressions, and a few minimal props, he was able to keep people's attention for the full hour and a half. A truly gifted storyteller. Ironically, Morning Noon and Night, as I remember it, deals largely with the interplay between Gray's morbid fascination with death and the vibrant life that he saw in his wife and children. The monologue closed with a sense of hope, a sense of looking toward the future, a sense that his family's love had saved him from his darker obsessions.
Can't help but wonder how those kids feel right now.
I believe that people have the right to end their own lives if they so desire. And I understand that Gray's recent automobile accident had resulted in a lot of pain and perhaps some disabilities. But what is permissible is not always wise or admirable. When one is surrounded by family or friends who love and depend on one, when it is possible to live with honor, and when so many who richly deserve to live are unfairly snuffed out for no apparent reason, committing suicide is nothing more than self-absorption and cowardice.
Bad show, Spalding.
An unpleasant but not entirely unexpected sequel to Spalding Gray's disappearance last January.
One of the events I enjoyed most while living in north Texas was making an after-work road trip from Plano down to Waco to hear Gray do one of his monologues at the Hippodrome Theater. And of course I'd enjoyed seeing Swimming to Cambodia and Monster in a Box on video. It amazed me then, and still amazes me in retrospect, that with nothing more than his voice, facial expressions, and a few minimal props, he was able to keep people's attention for the full hour and a half. A truly gifted storyteller. Ironically, Morning Noon and Night, as I remember it, deals largely with the interplay between Gray's morbid fascination with death and the vibrant life that he saw in his wife and children. The monologue closed with a sense of hope, a sense of looking toward the future, a sense that his family's love had saved him from his darker obsessions.
Can't help but wonder how those kids feel right now.
I believe that people have the right to end their own lives if they so desire. And I understand that Gray's recent automobile accident had resulted in a lot of pain and perhaps some disabilities. But what is permissible is not always wise or admirable. When one is surrounded by family or friends who love and depend on one, when it is possible to live with honor, and when so many who richly deserve to live are unfairly snuffed out for no apparent reason, committing suicide is nothing more than self-absorption and cowardice.
Bad show, Spalding.
Beware of naked people in the library
Library types beware. This contest may inspire some odd behavior in the stacks over the next month. Let's just hope they remembered to bathe. And keep the disinfectant wipes handy.
(Now THIS, Carlos, is why www.librarian.net is worth reading. Now you're forewarned about what those crazy Baptist kids might get up to!)
Library types beware. This contest may inspire some odd behavior in the stacks over the next month. Let's just hope they remembered to bathe. And keep the disinfectant wipes handy.
(Now THIS, Carlos, is why www.librarian.net is worth reading. Now you're forewarned about what those crazy Baptist kids might get up to!)
HR 3261 again
According to the current issue of the American Library Association's Washington Office Newsline and Thomas, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has returned HR 3261 with an "unfavorable recommendation", prompting the introduction of an alternative bill, HR 3872, which is reported to be less drastic in seeking to rewrite intellectual property law as it applies to database information. I have not yet read that bill, but it sounds like this could be good news.
According to the current issue of the American Library Association's Washington Office Newsline and Thomas, the House Energy and Commerce Committee has returned HR 3261 with an "unfavorable recommendation", prompting the introduction of an alternative bill, HR 3872, which is reported to be less drastic in seeking to rewrite intellectual property law as it applies to database information. I have not yet read that bill, but it sounds like this could be good news.
The Libertarian Purity Test
According to this cute lil' online test, I am....
51-90 points: You are a medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much.
I guess the authors of the test have been reading Trebor's comments. Thanks to Louise for the link.
According to this cute lil' online test, I am....
51-90 points: You are a medium-core libertarian, probably self-consciously so. Your friends probably encourage you to quit talking about your views so much.
I guess the authors of the test have been reading Trebor's comments. Thanks to Louise for the link.
Sunday, March 07, 2004
Libertarians and anti-Christian bias
There's an interesting essay about some libertarians' anti-Christian biases available at Lew Rockwell's website. Some of the hypothetical examples mentioned may particularly appeal to Carlos.
There's an interesting essay about some libertarians' anti-Christian biases available at Lew Rockwell's website. Some of the hypothetical examples mentioned may particularly appeal to Carlos.
So, I guess that makes me a pimp?
"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books. That's rubbish, of course, but it does wonders for the image of librarians."
-- United Kingdom columnist Guy Browning on how to use a library, The Guardian, October 18.
Where's my leopardskin hat and purple velvet suit?
"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books. That's rubbish, of course, but it does wonders for the image of librarians."
-- United Kingdom columnist Guy Browning on how to use a library, The Guardian, October 18.
Where's my leopardskin hat and purple velvet suit?
Australian IP landgrab
If anyone wants to read any of the public-domain classics archived at Project Gutenberg Australia, get 'em now.
Once again, reality has overtaken my feeble attempts at sarcasm and paranoia. Some time ago I sarcastically commented that it wouldn't be long before the corrupt copyright barons, not satisfied with perpetual monopoly control over currently-copyrighted materials, started trying to bribe governments into awarding them monopoly control over materials currently in the public domain. Well, as already noted, HR 3261 is trying to award them "copyright" protection for bits of non-creative information such as telephone numbers, sports scores, and word definitions.
Now it seems that the cancer is metastasizing abroad, as the U.S. is trying to bully the Australian government into "harmonizing" their intellectual-property laws with the monopolistic, perpetual-copyright regime of the U.S. as a condition of a proposed trade agreement. As one result, many of the materials on the Gutenberg Australia site, currently considered public domain under Australian law after the passage of fifty years, are to be retroactively stuffed back into the locked vaults of publishing cartels, most of whom can't be bothered to keep such books in print but delight in prohibiting anyone else from making them available.
If anyone wants to read any of the public-domain classics archived at Project Gutenberg Australia, get 'em now.
Once again, reality has overtaken my feeble attempts at sarcasm and paranoia. Some time ago I sarcastically commented that it wouldn't be long before the corrupt copyright barons, not satisfied with perpetual monopoly control over currently-copyrighted materials, started trying to bribe governments into awarding them monopoly control over materials currently in the public domain. Well, as already noted, HR 3261 is trying to award them "copyright" protection for bits of non-creative information such as telephone numbers, sports scores, and word definitions.
Now it seems that the cancer is metastasizing abroad, as the U.S. is trying to bully the Australian government into "harmonizing" their intellectual-property laws with the monopolistic, perpetual-copyright regime of the U.S. as a condition of a proposed trade agreement. As one result, many of the materials on the Gutenberg Australia site, currently considered public domain under Australian law after the passage of fifty years, are to be retroactively stuffed back into the locked vaults of publishing cartels, most of whom can't be bothered to keep such books in print but delight in prohibiting anyone else from making them available.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Triplets nearly upstaged by theater
With spring coming on, I'm less inclined to sit around in Mycroftian isolation, pondering the world through the frame of a computer screen. And so I and a library co-worker headed over to the nearby Michigan Theater yesterday for a showing of The Triplettes of Belleville. It's truly bizarre and innovative animation, set in a weird, visually distorted and frequently threatening world recognizably related to our own. It's a place that the blandly homogeneous, committee-written heroes and heroines of MouseCorp would never dare enter.
Part of the fun, for me, was in recognizing some of the animators' visual puns and allusions. Oceangoing ships tower absurdly into the sky like exaggerated versions of the iconic Normandie posters of the 1920's, and a historically accurate animated version of Richard Trevethick's pioneering 1804 steam locomotive appears in two or three sequences. Other images and sequences from the movie are, so far as I know, purely original, and unsettlingly effective, like the gangster/thugs who all share a certain menacingly interchangeable black ... er ... rectangularity. One of the subtle joys of the movie is the observing the way that the characters' actions, facial expressions, and miscellaneous sounds convey the story with no need for subtitles or translations. I'm reluctant to say more, because part of the fun of seeing such a movie is the surprise factor, and the delightful way that even the most improbable events neatly link together. I highly recommend seeing it. Don't arrive late, because you'll miss a hilarious song-and-dance routine featuring several recognizable pop-culture icons, some of whom meet unfortunate fates. Don't leave early, either. (Someone is still waiting....)
I, for once, did not arrive late, because I had heard that the Michigan Theater itself is worth seeing. And it is worth seeing, having been built at the height of the era when movie theaters were constructed as extravagant palaces instead of prefabricated boxes, and recently restored from top to bottom. It's also worth hearing. It's one of the few surviving theaters to still have its original, working 1920's theater organ still in place, proudly mounted on a hydraulic lift to one side of the stage. A be-tuxed organist serenades the audience with pop tunes and free-form improvisations between movies before being lowered to the floor, still playing, as the movie starts.
This is definitely the place to see my next showing of The General or some other silent-film classic.
With spring coming on, I'm less inclined to sit around in Mycroftian isolation, pondering the world through the frame of a computer screen. And so I and a library co-worker headed over to the nearby Michigan Theater yesterday for a showing of The Triplettes of Belleville. It's truly bizarre and innovative animation, set in a weird, visually distorted and frequently threatening world recognizably related to our own. It's a place that the blandly homogeneous, committee-written heroes and heroines of MouseCorp would never dare enter.
Part of the fun, for me, was in recognizing some of the animators' visual puns and allusions. Oceangoing ships tower absurdly into the sky like exaggerated versions of the iconic Normandie posters of the 1920's, and a historically accurate animated version of Richard Trevethick's pioneering 1804 steam locomotive appears in two or three sequences. Other images and sequences from the movie are, so far as I know, purely original, and unsettlingly effective, like the gangster/thugs who all share a certain menacingly interchangeable black ... er ... rectangularity. One of the subtle joys of the movie is the observing the way that the characters' actions, facial expressions, and miscellaneous sounds convey the story with no need for subtitles or translations. I'm reluctant to say more, because part of the fun of seeing such a movie is the surprise factor, and the delightful way that even the most improbable events neatly link together. I highly recommend seeing it. Don't arrive late, because you'll miss a hilarious song-and-dance routine featuring several recognizable pop-culture icons, some of whom meet unfortunate fates. Don't leave early, either. (Someone is still waiting....)
I, for once, did not arrive late, because I had heard that the Michigan Theater itself is worth seeing. And it is worth seeing, having been built at the height of the era when movie theaters were constructed as extravagant palaces instead of prefabricated boxes, and recently restored from top to bottom. It's also worth hearing. It's one of the few surviving theaters to still have its original, working 1920's theater organ still in place, proudly mounted on a hydraulic lift to one side of the stage. A be-tuxed organist serenades the audience with pop tunes and free-form improvisations between movies before being lowered to the floor, still playing, as the movie starts.
This is definitely the place to see my next showing of The General or some other silent-film classic.
Thursday, March 04, 2004
Mars = West Texas?
Like many other people, I've been interested in seeing the photographs and other data sent back to Earth by NASA's Mars rovers. However, I couldn't help but notice a certain theme in the naming of the landmarks discussed in this page.
El Capitan? McKittrick? Guadalupe?
Like many other people, I've been interested in seeing the photographs and other data sent back to Earth by NASA's Mars rovers. However, I couldn't help but notice a certain theme in the naming of the landmarks discussed in this page.
El Capitan? McKittrick? Guadalupe?
The blogger went down to Georgia
I spent part of Friday and most of Saturday roaming around the town where Susie and her family had spent the past two years before going to Jordan, and eventually realized that what I was trying to do was to imagine what it might have been like if I had gotten around to visiting them while they were in Georgia. Probably not a healthy habit to encourage; however, Milledgeville is a pleasant old town, and both the owner of the superlative bed & breakfast where I stayed and one of the other guests staying there knew Susie and Joel. The other guest was one of Susie's colleagues in teaching creative writing at GCSU, who had since moved on to Pennsylvania or New York. It was interesting to hear some of the things she & Susie had talked about regarding teaching, students, careers, academia, etc. It was oddly invigorating to hear her describe how she & Susie used to pass notes back and forth in faculty meetings, chuckling at private jokes and minor absurdities, because that's how I remember Susie and her roommate acting on the first day I met her.
I doubt that a memorial service can ever be described as "enjoyable", but I'm glad I went. It was held on Sunday afternoon in a rustic wooden building on a forested hillside overlooking a small lake belonging to the university, decorated with photographs, flowers, and several of Susie's paintings. The head of the GCSU creative-writing program read a piece from Rumi "invoking poetry"; someone played some classical guitar pieces; and four of Susie's students read selections from her poems, including a couple of works not yet published. Another student read a startlingly effective poem she wrote after hearing about the accident. Several people, including Cyrus's kindergarten teacher and Joel's uncle, talked about their experiences and memories; I talked briefly about some memories from Thee University. ("Welcome to the bridge, Counsellor....") They played a recording of Susie reading a poem as a prelude to a musical piece on a CD which was put out by the Hope College Jazz Ensemble in 2002.
It was good to see and hear Susie's influence in her students' lives. At one point, one of her students commented that the last time they talked, they had been standing almost where we were standing, and (oddly enough) reminiscing about her time at Thee University, a time which Susie seems to have regarded with a great deal of ambiguity. (She spoke on more than one occasion of being so bored her first week in Waco that she went down to the train yards and tried to hop a freight out of town. )
I'm a bit dubious about going to the memorial service planned by the University of Nebraska, not because I think it's wrong in any way for them to hold one, but because I don't think I particularly need to go through such things over and over again. However, I will be very pleased to make the trip in order to meet up with any mutual friends who plan to be there.
I spent part of Friday and most of Saturday roaming around the town where Susie and her family had spent the past two years before going to Jordan, and eventually realized that what I was trying to do was to imagine what it might have been like if I had gotten around to visiting them while they were in Georgia. Probably not a healthy habit to encourage; however, Milledgeville is a pleasant old town, and both the owner of the superlative bed & breakfast where I stayed and one of the other guests staying there knew Susie and Joel. The other guest was one of Susie's colleagues in teaching creative writing at GCSU, who had since moved on to Pennsylvania or New York. It was interesting to hear some of the things she & Susie had talked about regarding teaching, students, careers, academia, etc. It was oddly invigorating to hear her describe how she & Susie used to pass notes back and forth in faculty meetings, chuckling at private jokes and minor absurdities, because that's how I remember Susie and her roommate acting on the first day I met her.
I doubt that a memorial service can ever be described as "enjoyable", but I'm glad I went. It was held on Sunday afternoon in a rustic wooden building on a forested hillside overlooking a small lake belonging to the university, decorated with photographs, flowers, and several of Susie's paintings. The head of the GCSU creative-writing program read a piece from Rumi "invoking poetry"; someone played some classical guitar pieces; and four of Susie's students read selections from her poems, including a couple of works not yet published. Another student read a startlingly effective poem she wrote after hearing about the accident. Several people, including Cyrus's kindergarten teacher and Joel's uncle, talked about their experiences and memories; I talked briefly about some memories from Thee University. ("Welcome to the bridge, Counsellor....") They played a recording of Susie reading a poem as a prelude to a musical piece on a CD which was put out by the Hope College Jazz Ensemble in 2002.
It was good to see and hear Susie's influence in her students' lives. At one point, one of her students commented that the last time they talked, they had been standing almost where we were standing, and (oddly enough) reminiscing about her time at Thee University, a time which Susie seems to have regarded with a great deal of ambiguity. (She spoke on more than one occasion of being so bored her first week in Waco that she went down to the train yards and tried to hop a freight out of town. )
I'm a bit dubious about going to the memorial service planned by the University of Nebraska, not because I think it's wrong in any way for them to hold one, but because I don't think I particularly need to go through such things over and over again. However, I will be very pleased to make the trip in order to meet up with any mutual friends who plan to be there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)