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.
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.
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Protect the ones you love
Trebor has accused me of paranoia in the preceding post, and Fiend has mentioned that one of her classes is reading about whether animals and humans should receive equal treatment. Clearly the time is right for this product.
(Thanks to Louise for the tip.)
Trebor has accused me of paranoia in the preceding post, and Fiend has mentioned that one of her classes is reading about whether animals and humans should receive equal treatment. Clearly the time is right for this product.
(Thanks to Louise for the tip.)
HR 3261 revisited
A year or two ago, in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Eldred v. Ashcroft which effectively enshrined perpetual copyright as the Law of the Land, I sarcastically commented that we should look next for the corporate conglomerates to try to bribe their way into "ownership" of the existing public domain.
I thought I was being sarcastic. Little did I know.
One of the basic principles of copyright law is that it protects only a particular expression of an idea or fact, not the fact itself. You can't, for example, "own" the fact that the sky is blue just because you happened to write it down this morning -- you own only the particular prose or poetry in which you happened to record this fact, not the fact itself. Nor can your telephone company "copyright" your telephone number, prohibit you from giving it out to your freinds or to potential employers, and insist that it be disseminated only through their pay-per-use Directory Assistance service. Nor can Merriam-Webster "own" the correct pronunciation of a word, nor can WestLaw demand a fee every time a lawyer cites the facts or the decision in a case discussed in their legal publications, nor can Dutch publishing conglomerate Reed-Elsevier claim perpetual copyright "ownership" of the facts discussed in one of their extortionately-overpriced academic journals and thus prohibit medical researchers from acting on those facts. Intellectual ownership of facts -- or , more accurately, of useful applications of facts -- is properly the realm of patent law, which has a much shorter term of protection and different legal standards of infringement.
That's all due to change, according to the proposed "Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act", HR 3261. (Text and legislative information can be looked up here.) Under this bill, which, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is largely the result of persistent lobbying from multibillion dollar Dutch conglomerate Reed Elsevier, anyone who provides public access to "a quantitatively substantive part of" a database would be in violation of the Act and liable for triple whatever damages the database owner cares to claim. As the Chamber's white paper on the Act says, "[I]t is unclear whether this definition would allow a person to let co-workers borrow his dictionary". The same paper goes on to cite examples of ways in which financial planners and medical researchers, for example, could be significantly impaired in their legitimate and timely use of factual information if those facts were held to be "owned" by a database which incorporated them, or a news service which reported them.
There is an exclusion for nonprofit educational and research institutions, but it is vague and subject to court review -- which means that a multibillion-dollar conglomerate could use the threat of hugely expensive legal proceedings leading up to such a review to effectively squash any library or private individual that attempts to disseminate factual information to which they have laid a claim and which does not have their immense legal resources.
Lest I be thought alarmist, consider that this bill is explicitly aimed at eliminating the legal principle established in Feist v. Rural Telephone, a 1991 case in which the Supreme Court established the principle that facts are not copyrightable. That case involved a telephone company which claimed copyright "ownership" of its customers' telephone numbers and sought to prohibit them from being disseminated by anyone other than the telephone company. That's the kind of behavior that Reed Elsevier and the other supporters of this bill wish to legitimize.
From Justice O'Connor's opinion in Feist: "Common sense tells us that 100 uncopyrightable facts do not magically change their status when gathered together in one place."
More information is available here, here, here, and here. The American Library Association's Washington Office Newsline alert about HR 3261 is particularly useful for those who have the gumption to speak up on this latest giveaway of the intellectual commons to multinational conglomerates, since it lists the Congresscritters who are on the committee currently considering the bill.
This is not just a problem for Americans, either, given the American government's ongoing trend of using the carrot-and-stick of trade negotiations to force other governments into "harmonization" (i.e., slavish imitation) of grossly-overreaching intellectual property laws bought and paid for by industry lobbyists. Australia is just the latest example.
A year or two ago, in response to the Supreme Court's ruling in Eldred v. Ashcroft which effectively enshrined perpetual copyright as the Law of the Land, I sarcastically commented that we should look next for the corporate conglomerates to try to bribe their way into "ownership" of the existing public domain.
I thought I was being sarcastic. Little did I know.
One of the basic principles of copyright law is that it protects only a particular expression of an idea or fact, not the fact itself. You can't, for example, "own" the fact that the sky is blue just because you happened to write it down this morning -- you own only the particular prose or poetry in which you happened to record this fact, not the fact itself. Nor can your telephone company "copyright" your telephone number, prohibit you from giving it out to your freinds or to potential employers, and insist that it be disseminated only through their pay-per-use Directory Assistance service. Nor can Merriam-Webster "own" the correct pronunciation of a word, nor can WestLaw demand a fee every time a lawyer cites the facts or the decision in a case discussed in their legal publications, nor can Dutch publishing conglomerate Reed-Elsevier claim perpetual copyright "ownership" of the facts discussed in one of their extortionately-overpriced academic journals and thus prohibit medical researchers from acting on those facts. Intellectual ownership of facts -- or , more accurately, of useful applications of facts -- is properly the realm of patent law, which has a much shorter term of protection and different legal standards of infringement.
That's all due to change, according to the proposed "Database and Collections of Information Misappropriation Act", HR 3261. (Text and legislative information can be looked up here.) Under this bill, which, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is largely the result of persistent lobbying from multibillion dollar Dutch conglomerate Reed Elsevier, anyone who provides public access to "a quantitatively substantive part of" a database would be in violation of the Act and liable for triple whatever damages the database owner cares to claim. As the Chamber's white paper on the Act says, "[I]t is unclear whether this definition would allow a person to let co-workers borrow his dictionary". The same paper goes on to cite examples of ways in which financial planners and medical researchers, for example, could be significantly impaired in their legitimate and timely use of factual information if those facts were held to be "owned" by a database which incorporated them, or a news service which reported them.
There is an exclusion for nonprofit educational and research institutions, but it is vague and subject to court review -- which means that a multibillion-dollar conglomerate could use the threat of hugely expensive legal proceedings leading up to such a review to effectively squash any library or private individual that attempts to disseminate factual information to which they have laid a claim and which does not have their immense legal resources.
Lest I be thought alarmist, consider that this bill is explicitly aimed at eliminating the legal principle established in Feist v. Rural Telephone, a 1991 case in which the Supreme Court established the principle that facts are not copyrightable. That case involved a telephone company which claimed copyright "ownership" of its customers' telephone numbers and sought to prohibit them from being disseminated by anyone other than the telephone company. That's the kind of behavior that Reed Elsevier and the other supporters of this bill wish to legitimize.
From Justice O'Connor's opinion in Feist: "Common sense tells us that 100 uncopyrightable facts do not magically change their status when gathered together in one place."
More information is available here, here, here, and here. The American Library Association's Washington Office Newsline alert about HR 3261 is particularly useful for those who have the gumption to speak up on this latest giveaway of the intellectual commons to multinational conglomerates, since it lists the Congresscritters who are on the committee currently considering the bill.
This is not just a problem for Americans, either, given the American government's ongoing trend of using the carrot-and-stick of trade negotiations to force other governments into "harmonization" (i.e., slavish imitation) of grossly-overreaching intellectual property laws bought and paid for by industry lobbyists. Australia is just the latest example.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Be a Librarian for a Day!
I'm not quite sure what to think about this contest. It'll be interesting to see what kind of entries they get.
I'm not quite sure what to think about this contest. It'll be interesting to see what kind of entries they get.
A book the ALA needs to read
Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960, by Stephen Karetzky. From the Claremont Review of Books 's commentary :
Stephen Karetzky, Library Director at New Jersey's Felician College, has produced a compelling indictment of prominent American librarian's affection for the Soviet Union from the time of the Russian Revolution through the 1950's. "In thought and deed," Karetzky writes in the introduction, "they betrayed the fundamental values, goals, and interests of their profession and their country." He weaves together institutional and intellectual history to place these attitudes in the context of similarones held by many leading American educators and cultural figures during these years -- including their willful ignorance of conditions in the USSR, despite numerous reliable accounts of those conditions that were published as early as the 1920s.
One of the more interesting aspects of this book, in fact, is its description of the transformation of pre-Revolutionary Russia's libraries to a centralized, totalitarian library system that promoted literary primarily to propagandize the citizenry.... The Soviets consistently boasted of having an astronomically high number of books and libraries, but the the regime defined a "book" as anything more than a few pages and a "library" as any collection of more than 50 books.
American librarians often repeated such fantastical claims in what Karetzky terms "wonder stories" about Soviet libraries that periodically appeared in professional publications. Several of these authors actually believed that the USSR was on the road to utopia and clearly envied the power of Soviet librarians, conveniently overlooking the fact that they were functioning almost exclusively as propaganda agents....
Sounds familiar. Those who refuse to learn from history....
Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960, by Stephen Karetzky. From the Claremont Review of Books 's commentary :
Stephen Karetzky, Library Director at New Jersey's Felician College, has produced a compelling indictment of prominent American librarian's affection for the Soviet Union from the time of the Russian Revolution through the 1950's. "In thought and deed," Karetzky writes in the introduction, "they betrayed the fundamental values, goals, and interests of their profession and their country." He weaves together institutional and intellectual history to place these attitudes in the context of similarones held by many leading American educators and cultural figures during these years -- including their willful ignorance of conditions in the USSR, despite numerous reliable accounts of those conditions that were published as early as the 1920s.
One of the more interesting aspects of this book, in fact, is its description of the transformation of pre-Revolutionary Russia's libraries to a centralized, totalitarian library system that promoted literary primarily to propagandize the citizenry.... The Soviets consistently boasted of having an astronomically high number of books and libraries, but the the regime defined a "book" as anything more than a few pages and a "library" as any collection of more than 50 books.
American librarians often repeated such fantastical claims in what Karetzky terms "wonder stories" about Soviet libraries that periodically appeared in professional publications. Several of these authors actually believed that the USSR was on the road to utopia and clearly envied the power of Soviet librarians, conveniently overlooking the fact that they were functioning almost exclusively as propaganda agents....
Sounds familiar. Those who refuse to learn from history....
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Words of Wisdom from Wyoming
It's possible that I and Mr. John Thurman, of Worland, Wyoming, might disagree about a number of issues. His letter to the editor of a local paper about the recent CBS Super Bowl debacle contains a lot of wisdom, though.
I'll go him one better. Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have had musicians or celebrities who have disagreed with each other very publicly -- say, the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith -- on stage at the same time, singing or talking about the stupendous fact that, because of America's tradition of intellectual freedom, they're not obligated to literally kill each other over those disagreements?
It's possible that I and Mr. John Thurman, of Worland, Wyoming, might disagree about a number of issues. His letter to the editor of a local paper about the recent CBS Super Bowl debacle contains a lot of wisdom, though.
I'll go him one better. Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have had musicians or celebrities who have disagreed with each other very publicly -- say, the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith -- on stage at the same time, singing or talking about the stupendous fact that, because of America's tradition of intellectual freedom, they're not obligated to literally kill each other over those disagreements?
News from the front
Various news reports are confusedly saying that they think US and affiliated troops may be closing in on Osama Bin Laden. This is one overseas military venture that I support. Bin Laden and his followers chose to commit acts of war against unsuspecting, innocent civilians, and they deserve to have the full wrath of God, or, in His absence, the full wrath of a powerful military and judicial system, come down upon their heads. I hope these reports are true.
Despite what the Bush administration may hope, it does not change my opinion that their attack on Iraq, and their ongoing assaults on Constitutional liberties within the United States, are unjustified and unacceptable.
If the news reports are true, and if these events result in the capture or elimination of those responsible for the September 11 attacks, it is my hope that the U.S. may return to some form of sanity.
Various news reports are confusedly saying that they think US and affiliated troops may be closing in on Osama Bin Laden. This is one overseas military venture that I support. Bin Laden and his followers chose to commit acts of war against unsuspecting, innocent civilians, and they deserve to have the full wrath of God, or, in His absence, the full wrath of a powerful military and judicial system, come down upon their heads. I hope these reports are true.
Despite what the Bush administration may hope, it does not change my opinion that their attack on Iraq, and their ongoing assaults on Constitutional liberties within the United States, are unjustified and unacceptable.
If the news reports are true, and if these events result in the capture or elimination of those responsible for the September 11 attacks, it is my hope that the U.S. may return to some form of sanity.
The Celestial Library?
Discussed this morning on a library listserv: Mediachest, which appears to be a voluntary, online way for private individuals to create a union catalog of their book, CD and DVD holdings, and organize loans of said holdings.
A couple of weeks ago, in response to another subject, S. and Pablo commented about the possibility of private libraries. Well, what about private interlibrary-loan services?
A respondent on the library listserv brought up some questions, though:
(1) What methods are there for enforcing the return of loaned items? It seems that unscrupulous people willing to create fake accounts, or just brazen it out, could "borrow" stuff and refuse to return it or deny ever having borrowed it.
(2) What about privacy concerns, as mentioned by a previous respondent?
(3) Will the RIAA/MPAA and other monopoly-barons seek to legally squash it, claiming that it "aids and abets copyright piracy", and citing Napster as a precedent?
Discussed this morning on a library listserv: Mediachest, which appears to be a voluntary, online way for private individuals to create a union catalog of their book, CD and DVD holdings, and organize loans of said holdings.
A couple of weeks ago, in response to another subject, S. and Pablo commented about the possibility of private libraries. Well, what about private interlibrary-loan services?
A respondent on the library listserv brought up some questions, though:
(1) What methods are there for enforcing the return of loaned items? It seems that unscrupulous people willing to create fake accounts, or just brazen it out, could "borrow" stuff and refuse to return it or deny ever having borrowed it.
(2) What about privacy concerns, as mentioned by a previous respondent?
(3) Will the RIAA/MPAA and other monopoly-barons seek to legally squash it, claiming that it "aids and abets copyright piracy", and citing Napster as a precedent?
On the side of the angels (for once)
This story from the Associated Press states that the Federal Communications Commission has issued a report to Congress which is favorable to the establishment of small local radio stations. Some interesting discussion at Slashdot.
The monstermedia conglomerates, as you might expect, think this is a terrible idea. I mean, someone somewhere might hear something that wasn't piped straight from the corporate headquarters in San Antonio, and we can't have that! Several commentators on Slashdot have correctly pointed out that this is merely a recommendation to Congress. The monstermedia conglomerates will not be silent on this issue; their lobbyists will be plying Congress liberally with bribes and propaganda to block any action of this type. If you want to increase its chances of becoming more than a recommendation, write your Congresscritter and make it clear that you will be paying attention to their action on this issue. (Representatives here; Senators here.)
I'll be interested in seeing how this develops. Will it pave the way for a more diverse spectrum of broadcasting, with schools, churches, community groups, and/or energetic individuals or small businesses adding spice and variety to the bland banquet of Top-Forty Radio? Or will religious broadcasters (for example) grab up all the available airspace and turn it into wall-to-wall JesusRadio(TM)? Or will Monstermedia Inc. just buy up all the pennyante licences to idle them or turn them into more clones of their existing stations?
Stay tuned.
(Sorry. Couldn't resist that last.)
This story from the Associated Press states that the Federal Communications Commission has issued a report to Congress which is favorable to the establishment of small local radio stations. Some interesting discussion at Slashdot.
The monstermedia conglomerates, as you might expect, think this is a terrible idea. I mean, someone somewhere might hear something that wasn't piped straight from the corporate headquarters in San Antonio, and we can't have that! Several commentators on Slashdot have correctly pointed out that this is merely a recommendation to Congress. The monstermedia conglomerates will not be silent on this issue; their lobbyists will be plying Congress liberally with bribes and propaganda to block any action of this type. If you want to increase its chances of becoming more than a recommendation, write your Congresscritter and make it clear that you will be paying attention to their action on this issue. (Representatives here; Senators here.)
I'll be interested in seeing how this develops. Will it pave the way for a more diverse spectrum of broadcasting, with schools, churches, community groups, and/or energetic individuals or small businesses adding spice and variety to the bland banquet of Top-Forty Radio? Or will religious broadcasters (for example) grab up all the available airspace and turn it into wall-to-wall JesusRadio(TM)? Or will Monstermedia Inc. just buy up all the pennyante licences to idle them or turn them into more clones of their existing stations?
Stay tuned.
(Sorry. Couldn't resist that last.)
Saturday, February 21, 2004
The Birth of a Nation!
With pride, joy, and hope, the fledging Dominion of the Human Mind has set forth upon the tortuous course of political and economic development, courtesy of an online nation-simulation game created by Max Berry, author of the recent novel Jennifer Government.
It looks like an entertaining way to spend a few pixels. If any of you, Gentle Readers, wish to create your own virtual nations in the same "region" in which The Dominion of the Human Mind is located, feel free to do so. Contact me for the password. It appears that there are ways in which other players could "invade" the region if it's not password-protected, and I'd like to keep this a safe little sandbox until I figure out more about how the game works.
After creating and naming your "nation", you'll have to fill out a little quiz about the political principles that you expect your nation to follow, and occasionally deal with an "issue". I'm not too sure about the "capitalist paradise" tag that the software attached to my colony, or some of the conclusions it drew about the living conditions. We'll see how things develop.
With pride, joy, and hope, the fledging Dominion of the Human Mind has set forth upon the tortuous course of political and economic development, courtesy of an online nation-simulation game created by Max Berry, author of the recent novel Jennifer Government.
It looks like an entertaining way to spend a few pixels. If any of you, Gentle Readers, wish to create your own virtual nations in the same "region" in which The Dominion of the Human Mind is located, feel free to do so. Contact me for the password. It appears that there are ways in which other players could "invade" the region if it's not password-protected, and I'd like to keep this a safe little sandbox until I figure out more about how the game works.
After creating and naming your "nation", you'll have to fill out a little quiz about the political principles that you expect your nation to follow, and occasionally deal with an "issue". I'm not too sure about the "capitalist paradise" tag that the software attached to my colony, or some of the conclusions it drew about the living conditions. We'll see how things develop.
Love at the Library
This romantic soiree at the British Library might have been interesting if I were in London and (sniff) if I were invited. (Link found in Lady Crumpet's Armoire.)
"[G]uests queued for lapel stickers - with suitably anonymous labels such as "Darcy seeking Elizabeth", "Titania seeking Oberon" or "Adam seeking Eve"....
"An older "Narcissus seeking Narcissus" was not convinced, arguing that the modern library, which opened in 1997, had "none of the sexual charge that used to crackle around the old, round reading room at the British Museum".
What say you, Gentle Readers? Anyone feel like sharing their literary lusts? As for me, I can't decide. "Beren seeking Luthien"? "Don Quixote seeking Dulcinea?" Perhaps "Horvendile seeking Ettarre" would be most accurate.
This romantic soiree at the British Library might have been interesting if I were in London and (sniff) if I were invited. (Link found in Lady Crumpet's Armoire.)
"[G]uests queued for lapel stickers - with suitably anonymous labels such as "Darcy seeking Elizabeth", "Titania seeking Oberon" or "Adam seeking Eve"....
"An older "Narcissus seeking Narcissus" was not convinced, arguing that the modern library, which opened in 1997, had "none of the sexual charge that used to crackle around the old, round reading room at the British Museum".
What say you, Gentle Readers? Anyone feel like sharing their literary lusts? As for me, I can't decide. "Beren seeking Luthien"? "Don Quixote seeking Dulcinea?" Perhaps "Horvendile seeking Ettarre" would be most accurate.
Scrabble geeks, rejoice!
The rest of us will just sit here and scratch our heads in puzzlement. Qi? Za?
Interestingly, the article acknowledges the importance of bluffing:
Against a human, Pate's highest point score in a single turn was 167 points for the misspelled word "graineries." Pate knew it was spelled incorrectly, but his opponent didn't challenge him, and the score stood.
What I want to know is, why doesn't everybody just use the Oxford English Dictionary? (...says the fellow who spent a substantial part of his undergraduate days poring over medieval and Renaissance English poetry....)
The rest of us will just sit here and scratch our heads in puzzlement. Qi? Za?
Interestingly, the article acknowledges the importance of bluffing:
Against a human, Pate's highest point score in a single turn was 167 points for the misspelled word "graineries." Pate knew it was spelled incorrectly, but his opponent didn't challenge him, and the score stood.
What I want to know is, why doesn't everybody just use the Oxford English Dictionary? (...says the fellow who spent a substantial part of his undergraduate days poring over medieval and Renaissance English poetry....)
For all you grad students out there
The Lord of the Rings is clearly an allegory of working on one's dissertation.
The Lord of the Rings is clearly an allegory of working on one's dissertation.
A bit o' fun
Can you tell a computer geek from a serial killer? (Warning: there are a few disturbing sound effects, so don't do this at work if your boss already thinks you might be hiding bodies in the basement.)
I somehow managed to score an unbelievable 9 out of 10. Should I consider changing careers?
Can you tell a computer geek from a serial killer? (Warning: there are a few disturbing sound effects, so don't do this at work if your boss already thinks you might be hiding bodies in the basement.)
I somehow managed to score an unbelievable 9 out of 10. Should I consider changing careers?
Friday, February 20, 2004
Over the transom
Being on a wide selection of magazine mailing lists does have its advantages. Not only do I get to read the hysterical whip-up-the-supporters propaganda of both sides of every conceivable political issue, I sometimes get pleading missives from no less than the President himself. (See? There's his signature, right there at the bottom!)
With both sides' election machinery cranking up to its full whirling fury, I have in the past two weeks received a presidential photograph-suitable-for-framing and a certificate officially designating me a Leading Republican of [This Fair City] (and pleading for money), a survey from the Democratic Party earnestly trying to determine what I think so that their candidates can script their speeches accordingly (and pleading for money), and hysterical pleas for money from the Heritage Foundation, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood, each of which implores me to ACT NOW!!! because their dastardly opponents control the press and the government and only with my generous help can they save civilization as we know it!
Eh.
I still have the one from the ACLU. I might write back to them. The presidential photo (a differently-cropped version of the one they sent me before - don't they think I have any visual memory?) rests in a Wal-Mart frame in a place of honor on top of the toilet tank. I remind the rare, puzzled visitors to my spartan barracks to remember what I'm doing when I face that photograph.
The issue of the Claremont Review of Books which arrived unsolicited in my mailbox was a more welcome gift. Although the magazine is politically conservative in outlook, it does contain a book review by William F. Buckley in which the dean of modern American conservatism takes Ann Coulter to task -- albeit quite urbanely -- for the "mischief" and exaggerations in her book Treason : Liberals from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Buckley, an intelligent man, clearly recognizes that, although he agrees with some of Coulter's impassioned defense of Red-hunter Joseph McCarthy, she has gone off the rhetorical deep end with her hysterical assertions that anyone and everyone who fails to unquestioningly agree with her is a "traitor". The title of his review? "Tailgunner Ann" -- a nickname with a great deal of resonance for anyone familiar with the tale of McCarthy. For those who miss the historical allusion, the illustration -- a drawing of a glaring, poofy-haired Coulter ominously swinging a lynch noose -- makes the point.
Disappointingly, though, Buckley backs off the criticism in his conclusion, allowing how it's "fun" to indulge in "mischief" against the "other guy". Too bad; he was on the verge of regaining my respect.
Also particularly interesting, in light of my own observations on a college campus and a blogfriend's recent cryptic allusions to some unspecified vile behavior on the part of a purportedly human male, was the cover story, Wimps and Barbarians : the sons of Murphy Brown, a lengthy essay by Terence O. Moore, a private school principal and former Marine lieutenant and history professor.
Moore's thesis is that, in the absence of strong education in the classical male virtues, the current generation of young men tend to develop toward one or the other of two models, the Wimps and Barbarians of his title. Those who have spirit, lacking a firmly defined proper channel for that spirit, develop into "barbarians":
Today's barbarians are not hard to find. Like the barbarians of old, the new ones wander about in great packs. You can recognize them by their dress, their speech, their amusements, their manners, and their treatment of women. You will know them right away by their distinctive headgear. They wear baseball caps everywhere they go and in every situation: in class, at the table, indoors, outdoors, while taking a test, while watching a movie, while on a date. They wear these caps frontward, backward, and sideways. They will wear them in church and with suits, if ever a barbarian puts on a suit. Part security blanket, part good-luck charm, these distinctive head coverings unite each barbarian with the rest of the vast barbaric horde.
Recognizing other barbarians by their ball caps, one barbarian can enter into a verbal exchange with another anywhere: in a men's room, at an airport, in a movie theater. This exchange, which never quite reaches the level of conversation, might begin with, "Hey, what up?" A traditional response: "Dude!" The enlightening colloquy can go on for hours at increasingly high volumes. "You know, you know!" "What I'm sayin'!" "No way, man!" "What the f---!" "You da man!" "Cool!" "Phat!" "Awesome!" And so on. Barbarians do not use words to express thoughts, convey information, paint pictures in the imagination, or come to a rational understanding. Such speech as they employ serves mainly to elicit in others audible reactions to a few sensual events: football, sex, hard rock, the latest barbarian movie, sex, football. In the barbarian universe, Buckleyesque vocabularies are not required.
Those who lack spirit or courage become wimps instead:
If barbarians suffer from a misdirected manliness, wimps suffer from a want of manly spirit altogether....
Like the barbarian, the wimp is easily recognized by his personality and preoccupations. His main passion is music. Music does not serve him as it does the Platonic guardian, to balance his soul. Nor is he usually a performer or student of music. He has no affinity for classical symphony or opera. Rather, he finds that certain types of music evoke a mood of listless self-infatuation. He may at times listen to music with friends. And he will probably try to express his interest in a girl by quoting a song lyric. Nonetheless, his absorption with music is essentially a private refuge from the challenges of the world.
In addition to music, the wimp may take an interest in the opposite sex. But his approach to dating and relationships is different from the barbarian. The barbarian has simple appetites. His ideal is the Playboy playmate or the winner of a hot legs contest at Daytona Beach, and his ultimate aim in any relationship or encounter, whatever he may say, is sex. As an athlete, the barbarian is a hero of sorts. He walks with an unmistakable air of confidence. The wimp, on the other hand, has more complex reasons for wanting women. Although sex is certainly one of his desires, more than sex he needs affirmation. He desperately needs a girlfriend to boost his self-confidence. Having someone else notice him will somehow show the world that he is not a total loser. The wimp also needs someone to hear his laments, to commiserate with him when he is feeling down, to discover his secret self. Since he has few qualities or achievements to recommend him, he seeks to appear "interesting" or mysterious. Initially, the wimp might seem amusing to an unsuspecting young lady and very different from the insensitive jocks and rowdies she has known. Ultimately, however, the wimp seeks to draw her into his web of melancholy and self-pity. The story always ends unhappily since romance cannot be based upon pity or the thin facade of personality. He might mope and whine his way into a woman's bed but will find excuses to avoid "commitment." The wimp will begin the relationship by saying, "You're the only one who understands me" and end it by saying, "You don't understand me at all." The truth is that there is not much to understand.
Some choice, eh, ladies?
Being on a wide selection of magazine mailing lists does have its advantages. Not only do I get to read the hysterical whip-up-the-supporters propaganda of both sides of every conceivable political issue, I sometimes get pleading missives from no less than the President himself. (See? There's his signature, right there at the bottom!)
With both sides' election machinery cranking up to its full whirling fury, I have in the past two weeks received a presidential photograph-suitable-for-framing and a certificate officially designating me a Leading Republican of [This Fair City] (and pleading for money), a survey from the Democratic Party earnestly trying to determine what I think so that their candidates can script their speeches accordingly (and pleading for money), and hysterical pleas for money from the Heritage Foundation, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood, each of which implores me to ACT NOW!!! because their dastardly opponents control the press and the government and only with my generous help can they save civilization as we know it!
Eh.
I still have the one from the ACLU. I might write back to them. The presidential photo (a differently-cropped version of the one they sent me before - don't they think I have any visual memory?) rests in a Wal-Mart frame in a place of honor on top of the toilet tank. I remind the rare, puzzled visitors to my spartan barracks to remember what I'm doing when I face that photograph.
The issue of the Claremont Review of Books which arrived unsolicited in my mailbox was a more welcome gift. Although the magazine is politically conservative in outlook, it does contain a book review by William F. Buckley in which the dean of modern American conservatism takes Ann Coulter to task -- albeit quite urbanely -- for the "mischief" and exaggerations in her book Treason : Liberals from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Buckley, an intelligent man, clearly recognizes that, although he agrees with some of Coulter's impassioned defense of Red-hunter Joseph McCarthy, she has gone off the rhetorical deep end with her hysterical assertions that anyone and everyone who fails to unquestioningly agree with her is a "traitor". The title of his review? "Tailgunner Ann" -- a nickname with a great deal of resonance for anyone familiar with the tale of McCarthy. For those who miss the historical allusion, the illustration -- a drawing of a glaring, poofy-haired Coulter ominously swinging a lynch noose -- makes the point.
Disappointingly, though, Buckley backs off the criticism in his conclusion, allowing how it's "fun" to indulge in "mischief" against the "other guy". Too bad; he was on the verge of regaining my respect.
Also particularly interesting, in light of my own observations on a college campus and a blogfriend's recent cryptic allusions to some unspecified vile behavior on the part of a purportedly human male, was the cover story, Wimps and Barbarians : the sons of Murphy Brown, a lengthy essay by Terence O. Moore, a private school principal and former Marine lieutenant and history professor.
Moore's thesis is that, in the absence of strong education in the classical male virtues, the current generation of young men tend to develop toward one or the other of two models, the Wimps and Barbarians of his title. Those who have spirit, lacking a firmly defined proper channel for that spirit, develop into "barbarians":
Today's barbarians are not hard to find. Like the barbarians of old, the new ones wander about in great packs. You can recognize them by their dress, their speech, their amusements, their manners, and their treatment of women. You will know them right away by their distinctive headgear. They wear baseball caps everywhere they go and in every situation: in class, at the table, indoors, outdoors, while taking a test, while watching a movie, while on a date. They wear these caps frontward, backward, and sideways. They will wear them in church and with suits, if ever a barbarian puts on a suit. Part security blanket, part good-luck charm, these distinctive head coverings unite each barbarian with the rest of the vast barbaric horde.
Recognizing other barbarians by their ball caps, one barbarian can enter into a verbal exchange with another anywhere: in a men's room, at an airport, in a movie theater. This exchange, which never quite reaches the level of conversation, might begin with, "Hey, what up?" A traditional response: "Dude!" The enlightening colloquy can go on for hours at increasingly high volumes. "You know, you know!" "What I'm sayin'!" "No way, man!" "What the f---!" "You da man!" "Cool!" "Phat!" "Awesome!" And so on. Barbarians do not use words to express thoughts, convey information, paint pictures in the imagination, or come to a rational understanding. Such speech as they employ serves mainly to elicit in others audible reactions to a few sensual events: football, sex, hard rock, the latest barbarian movie, sex, football. In the barbarian universe, Buckleyesque vocabularies are not required.
Those who lack spirit or courage become wimps instead:
If barbarians suffer from a misdirected manliness, wimps suffer from a want of manly spirit altogether....
Like the barbarian, the wimp is easily recognized by his personality and preoccupations. His main passion is music. Music does not serve him as it does the Platonic guardian, to balance his soul. Nor is he usually a performer or student of music. He has no affinity for classical symphony or opera. Rather, he finds that certain types of music evoke a mood of listless self-infatuation. He may at times listen to music with friends. And he will probably try to express his interest in a girl by quoting a song lyric. Nonetheless, his absorption with music is essentially a private refuge from the challenges of the world.
In addition to music, the wimp may take an interest in the opposite sex. But his approach to dating and relationships is different from the barbarian. The barbarian has simple appetites. His ideal is the Playboy playmate or the winner of a hot legs contest at Daytona Beach, and his ultimate aim in any relationship or encounter, whatever he may say, is sex. As an athlete, the barbarian is a hero of sorts. He walks with an unmistakable air of confidence. The wimp, on the other hand, has more complex reasons for wanting women. Although sex is certainly one of his desires, more than sex he needs affirmation. He desperately needs a girlfriend to boost his self-confidence. Having someone else notice him will somehow show the world that he is not a total loser. The wimp also needs someone to hear his laments, to commiserate with him when he is feeling down, to discover his secret self. Since he has few qualities or achievements to recommend him, he seeks to appear "interesting" or mysterious. Initially, the wimp might seem amusing to an unsuspecting young lady and very different from the insensitive jocks and rowdies she has known. Ultimately, however, the wimp seeks to draw her into his web of melancholy and self-pity. The story always ends unhappily since romance cannot be based upon pity or the thin facade of personality. He might mope and whine his way into a woman's bed but will find excuses to avoid "commitment." The wimp will begin the relationship by saying, "You're the only one who understands me" and end it by saying, "You don't understand me at all." The truth is that there is not much to understand.
Some choice, eh, ladies?
Monday, February 16, 2004
In tribute
In a recent e'mail exchange, I wrote to a friend that I was reluctant to write about Susan, or try to guess what she would have thought about certain issues, because "that way lies the danger of creating a caricatured plaster saint, reflecting only my own wishes, rather than the memory of an actual person". His response: "Hold the plaster" -- as in "hold the mustard", "hold the mayo". Don't slop good intentions all over the truth. But I can't just go back to casual blogging without acknowledging the death -- and, more importantly, the life -- of one of the most radiant human beings I have ever known. And so I will try to limit myself to saying about Susie only those things which are as simply and objectively true as any of the things that really matter about a person can be.
She was the most faithful of friends, always forthright yet tactful, always willing to offer sympathy and good advice, but never insistent or offended if others failed to follow it (as I often did.) When a friend needed companionship or quiet support she was always there, even if they literally showed up on the doorstep unannounced and dripping with rain and mud at the most inconvenient time imaginable.
She was a devoted and diligent mother to her two sons whom she loved dearly, a loving wife to her husband, and a credit to the parents who bore and raised her. They have every right to feel fierce pride in her achievements even as they grieve her loss.
She was a brilliantly talented writer and teacher, and a particularly articulate advocate of peace and understanding between cultures. She fought with all the tools at her disposal against the ignorance and unthinking bigotry that turn nations and people against one another.
She knew and understood the unique combination of wildly different cultures that had nourished her, and transcended them all by combining the best of all of them.
She had a wonderfully clever sense of humor, and a way of smiling and laughing that seemed to make colors brighter and sounds sweeter whenever she was around.
She was a doer and a creator of things of beauty and worth, rather than a mere dreamer or schemer.
She could be sharp-tongued when dealing with laziness, dishonesty, or bigotry, but unlike the less wise among us, she also knew to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain or embarassment.
It is not "objective" for me to say so, but having known her makes it easy for me to understand the "cult of domnei" by which certain medieval knights were willing to swear service and loyalty to a lady knowing full well that she was as unattainably far above them as an eagle above the creatures of the ground.
Anyone who had the marvellous good fortune to have known her well would, I think, be not only willing, but eager to change places with her if it would bring her back. She was the best and brightest this world had to offer, and the loss of her and her son leaves a void that cannot be filled. She is sorely missed.
Everything and anything that I can say about her is hopelessly inadequate. In a just world I would not have to write such things at all, and her husband, her surviving son, and her parents would not have to endure what they are enduring now.
In a recent e'mail exchange, I wrote to a friend that I was reluctant to write about Susan, or try to guess what she would have thought about certain issues, because "that way lies the danger of creating a caricatured plaster saint, reflecting only my own wishes, rather than the memory of an actual person". His response: "Hold the plaster" -- as in "hold the mustard", "hold the mayo". Don't slop good intentions all over the truth. But I can't just go back to casual blogging without acknowledging the death -- and, more importantly, the life -- of one of the most radiant human beings I have ever known. And so I will try to limit myself to saying about Susie only those things which are as simply and objectively true as any of the things that really matter about a person can be.
She was the most faithful of friends, always forthright yet tactful, always willing to offer sympathy and good advice, but never insistent or offended if others failed to follow it (as I often did.) When a friend needed companionship or quiet support she was always there, even if they literally showed up on the doorstep unannounced and dripping with rain and mud at the most inconvenient time imaginable.
She was a devoted and diligent mother to her two sons whom she loved dearly, a loving wife to her husband, and a credit to the parents who bore and raised her. They have every right to feel fierce pride in her achievements even as they grieve her loss.
She was a brilliantly talented writer and teacher, and a particularly articulate advocate of peace and understanding between cultures. She fought with all the tools at her disposal against the ignorance and unthinking bigotry that turn nations and people against one another.
She knew and understood the unique combination of wildly different cultures that had nourished her, and transcended them all by combining the best of all of them.
She had a wonderfully clever sense of humor, and a way of smiling and laughing that seemed to make colors brighter and sounds sweeter whenever she was around.
She was a doer and a creator of things of beauty and worth, rather than a mere dreamer or schemer.
She could be sharp-tongued when dealing with laziness, dishonesty, or bigotry, but unlike the less wise among us, she also knew to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain or embarassment.
It is not "objective" for me to say so, but having known her makes it easy for me to understand the "cult of domnei" by which certain medieval knights were willing to swear service and loyalty to a lady knowing full well that she was as unattainably far above them as an eagle above the creatures of the ground.
Anyone who had the marvellous good fortune to have known her well would, I think, be not only willing, but eager to change places with her if it would bring her back. She was the best and brightest this world had to offer, and the loss of her and her son leaves a void that cannot be filled. She is sorely missed.
Everything and anything that I can say about her is hopelessly inadequate. In a just world I would not have to write such things at all, and her husband, her surviving son, and her parents would not have to endure what they are enduring now.
Thursday, February 12, 2004
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Shall we play a game?
Be a Patriot! Play the PATRIOT Act game!
(Link found on the indispensible www.librarian.net. More commentary here.)
Be a Patriot! Play the PATRIOT Act game!
(Link found on the indispensible www.librarian.net. More commentary here.)
More news from Iowa
It appears that, with protests and embarassing publicity mounting by the day, federal prosecutors have withdrawn their subpoenas for information about protesters and activists who attended a legal conference at Drake University recently, as well as the gag order that prohibited university personnel from discussing it. (More here and here.)
This is a Good Thing. However, it makes one wonder how many other such investigations are still proceeding under cover of similar gag orders. This incident seems to have appeared on the public radar largely because the National Lawyers' Guild, one of the left-wing activist groups being investigated, was not covered by the gag order. How much ya wanna bet that federal prosecutors won't make that mistake again?
Note that, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "[S]ince the deliberations of a grand jury are secret, the investigation of the meeting may not yet be over."
The so-called "PATRIOT" Act that makes such things possible is an abomination, and we can't afford to rely on leaky gag orders and relatively well-funded protester organizations like the ACLU to contest every potential abusive purpose to which it will be put. Not every person or group subjected to such treatment will have access to free legal counsel or hordes of conveniently-located college-student protesters. The thing needs to be killed dead.
Meanwhile, with the aid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , "OPG and the Swarthmore students are seeking compensation from Diebold for misuse of copyright law, as well as a court order stating that those who publish or link to the archive--and ISPs who provide Internet connectivity to them--have not violated copyright law." (EFF press release here.)
Diebold, like the federal prosecutors in Iowa, dropped its demands after public reaction to them became too embarrassing. So why pursue a moot point?
It's become a fairly common tactic for corporations and prosecutors to use the overreaching provisions of the misnamed "PATRIOT" Act, the DMCA, et al, to make intimidating demands and accusations, and then back off (thus avoiding a hostile judicial ruling and the resulting legal precedent) if the targets are able to muster a legal defense or if their actions arouse too much public outrage. But, of course, most people don't have a building full of lawyers on retainer just waiting for them to be sued, and white knights like the EFF and the ACLU, can't be everywhere all the time. I hope that the EFF and its clients are able to get a definitive legal ruling against Diebold's misuse of the DMCA in this case, thus establishing a precedent for reducing the scope of its potential abuses. It will be at best an incremental reduction of the harm, but if Congress is too ignorant or corrupt to repeal the DMCA entirely, an incremental approach is the only way to go.
It appears that, with protests and embarassing publicity mounting by the day, federal prosecutors have withdrawn their subpoenas for information about protesters and activists who attended a legal conference at Drake University recently, as well as the gag order that prohibited university personnel from discussing it. (More here and here.)
This is a Good Thing. However, it makes one wonder how many other such investigations are still proceeding under cover of similar gag orders. This incident seems to have appeared on the public radar largely because the National Lawyers' Guild, one of the left-wing activist groups being investigated, was not covered by the gag order. How much ya wanna bet that federal prosecutors won't make that mistake again?
Note that, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "[S]ince the deliberations of a grand jury are secret, the investigation of the meeting may not yet be over."
The so-called "PATRIOT" Act that makes such things possible is an abomination, and we can't afford to rely on leaky gag orders and relatively well-funded protester organizations like the ACLU to contest every potential abusive purpose to which it will be put. Not every person or group subjected to such treatment will have access to free legal counsel or hordes of conveniently-located college-student protesters. The thing needs to be killed dead.
Meanwhile, with the aid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , "OPG and the Swarthmore students are seeking compensation from Diebold for misuse of copyright law, as well as a court order stating that those who publish or link to the archive--and ISPs who provide Internet connectivity to them--have not violated copyright law." (EFF press release here.)
Diebold, like the federal prosecutors in Iowa, dropped its demands after public reaction to them became too embarrassing. So why pursue a moot point?
It's become a fairly common tactic for corporations and prosecutors to use the overreaching provisions of the misnamed "PATRIOT" Act, the DMCA, et al, to make intimidating demands and accusations, and then back off (thus avoiding a hostile judicial ruling and the resulting legal precedent) if the targets are able to muster a legal defense or if their actions arouse too much public outrage. But, of course, most people don't have a building full of lawyers on retainer just waiting for them to be sued, and white knights like the EFF and the ACLU, can't be everywhere all the time. I hope that the EFF and its clients are able to get a definitive legal ruling against Diebold's misuse of the DMCA in this case, thus establishing a precedent for reducing the scope of its potential abuses. It will be at best an incremental reduction of the harm, but if Congress is too ignorant or corrupt to repeal the DMCA entirely, an incremental approach is the only way to go.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
The ultimate Constitutional amendment to protect Biblical marriage...
...can be found here at this very cool blog.
Although I consider John Kerry to be, overall, about as exciting as overcooked broccoli, the comments discussed here make more sense than anything else I've heard on the subject.
Indeed, why not separate civil unions from the marriage ceremonies required or accepted by various religions? Must the things of God be yoked together with the things of Caesar?
...can be found here at this very cool blog.
Although I consider John Kerry to be, overall, about as exciting as overcooked broccoli, the comments discussed here make more sense than anything else I've heard on the subject.
Indeed, why not separate civil unions from the marriage ceremonies required or accepted by various religions? Must the things of God be yoked together with the things of Caesar?
Addendum
Jessamyn West, to whom I referred in yesterday's spiel about the ALA, SRRT and Cuban repression, does, to her credit, have a link in her blog's archives to information about the imprisoned dissidents.
Jessamyn West, to whom I referred in yesterday's spiel about the ALA, SRRT and Cuban repression, does, to her credit, have a link in her blog's archives to information about the imprisoned dissidents.
A puzzling reference question
A friend asks: Do you know if there is a way to search for blogs by subject, sort of like
yahoo? Like say I wanted to find blogs that focused on bonsai trees or
civil war poetry.
I played around with Google for a while, and came across a few places that claimed to be "directories" of weblogs, but most of them appeared to be woefully inadequate. Librarians, as one might expect, have done a reasonably good job of compiling on-the-fly directories of weblogs dealing with their own particular interests, but is there any good overall "finding aid" for the blogosphere?
Any ideas?
A corollary to yesterday's comments on weblogs: the widespread freedom to publish means that the resulting outflood of writing is nearly impossible to categorize or catalog in a timely fashion. Widely known but bears restating in this context.
A friend asks: Do you know if there is a way to search for blogs by subject, sort of like
yahoo? Like say I wanted to find blogs that focused on bonsai trees or
civil war poetry.
I played around with Google for a while, and came across a few places that claimed to be "directories" of weblogs, but most of them appeared to be woefully inadequate. Librarians, as one might expect, have done a reasonably good job of compiling on-the-fly directories of weblogs dealing with their own particular interests, but is there any good overall "finding aid" for the blogosphere?
Any ideas?
A corollary to yesterday's comments on weblogs: the widespread freedom to publish means that the resulting outflood of writing is nearly impossible to categorize or catalog in a timely fashion. Widely known but bears restating in this context.
A quiz
... which is quite obviously based on the hoary old Myers-Briggs personality-type paradigm. It informed me that [a]s a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.
... which is quite obviously based on the hoary old Myers-Briggs personality-type paradigm. It informed me that [a]s a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Pump Up The Volume reconsidered
Back in the long-distant Eighties and early Nineties, I studiously ignored most of the pop culture around me. Let's face it, most of it was eminently forgettable. (Thompson Twins, anybody?) But in the course of ignoring the crap, I also missed out on some good stuff.
This was brought home to me a few months ago when I caught the 1990 movie Pump Up The Volume on a cable channel late at night. Now, I had seen bits and pieces of the film before, but never paid much attention. Just another teen movie, thought I.
This second time around, I was amazed by the topicality of the film. Sure, the clueless parents and the villainous high-school administrators are straight from Teen Movie Central Casting, but how many other films had the prescience to make the Federal Communications Commission one of the villains? Or to show how the vapid, disassociated, condescending consumerism of the dominant mass media leaves intelligent minds gasping for oxygen?
The last scene (which I am NOT going to give away) was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, because the FCC's recent decisions have, in fact, made such things nearly impossible in broadcast media. Inspiring, because the internet -- and weblogs in particular -- are making that final scene a reality in a different media.
The movie got it right, more than a decade in advance, except for pinning its hopes on the wrong media.
....This is Hard Harry, signing off....
Back in the long-distant Eighties and early Nineties, I studiously ignored most of the pop culture around me. Let's face it, most of it was eminently forgettable. (Thompson Twins, anybody?) But in the course of ignoring the crap, I also missed out on some good stuff.
This was brought home to me a few months ago when I caught the 1990 movie Pump Up The Volume on a cable channel late at night. Now, I had seen bits and pieces of the film before, but never paid much attention. Just another teen movie, thought I.
This second time around, I was amazed by the topicality of the film. Sure, the clueless parents and the villainous high-school administrators are straight from Teen Movie Central Casting, but how many other films had the prescience to make the Federal Communications Commission one of the villains? Or to show how the vapid, disassociated, condescending consumerism of the dominant mass media leaves intelligent minds gasping for oxygen?
The last scene (which I am NOT going to give away) was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, because the FCC's recent decisions have, in fact, made such things nearly impossible in broadcast media. Inspiring, because the internet -- and weblogs in particular -- are making that final scene a reality in a different media.
The movie got it right, more than a decade in advance, except for pinning its hopes on the wrong media.
....This is Hard Harry, signing off....
What's going on in Iowa?
It may be too early to know all the details yet, but this situation sounds like just what civil libertarians have been anticipating from the Bush/Ashcroft junta. More here, and here, and here, and (surprisingly enough...) here.
For those who lack a historical perspective on such matters, note that demanding membership rosters and information about leaders of activist organizations was a common intimidation tactic during the Civil Rights Movement and other times of tension between citizen activists and the government. Sometimes it became more than mere intimidation, as those on the membership lists could be targeted for investigation or harassment. Or worse.
It may be too early to know all the details yet, but this situation sounds like just what civil libertarians have been anticipating from the Bush/Ashcroft junta. More here, and here, and here, and (surprisingly enough...) here.
For those who lack a historical perspective on such matters, note that demanding membership rosters and information about leaders of activist organizations was a common intimidation tactic during the Civil Rights Movement and other times of tension between citizen activists and the government. Sometimes it became more than mere intimidation, as those on the membership lists could be targeted for investigation or harassment. Or worse.
ALA hypocrisy
The American Library Association's refusal to forthrightly condemn the Cuban government for its brutal suppression of non-government-approved bookstores and libraries has rankled me for a long time. But because I maintain a certain distance from the slithering, reptilian bolus of its governing Council, I have never addressed the issue directly.
Fortunately, Nat Hentoff is not so discreet. And, as always, his principled defense of freedom of speech shows up the hypocrisy and cowardice of those who would rather ignore the issue.
Those on the ALA Council who most strongly defend the Castro government's "right" to imprison librarians and other distributors of books and other printed materials are the biggest hypocrites of all.
Mark Rosenzweig and Ann Sparanese are two of the most outspoken defenders of the Cuban government in this matter. Rosenzweig is an influential member of the Orwellianly-misnamed "Social Responsibility Round Table"; more about him later. Sparanese, in a recent issue of Library Juice, makes the remarkably specious arguments that (1) the imprisoned librarians aren't really librarians because the only real librarians in Cuba are the ones so designated by the dictatorial government, (2) that the Cuban government is justified in confiscating their materials and imprisoning them because it alleges that they are financially supported from the U.S., and (3) because the U.S. is less than perfect-in-every-single-way, no principles of any kind apply to the Cuban government.
The first proposition is a semantic Rube Goldberg construction so laughable that it hurts. By that standard, the Nazis committed no crimes against humanity because, after all, they defined Jews as nonhuman. Besides, why does it matter whether or not they are "officially" librarians? These are "human" rights we're talking about, not special privileged "librarian" rights. So what if, as Sparanese asserts, they are "dissident politicians, apparently non-violent, who sometimes use the moniker of 'librarians' to enhance their stature"? Don't dissident politicians have any rights in Ms. Sparanese's Brave New World of "Social Responsibility"?
The second proposition truly shows their blatant hypocrisy. Nevermind the idea of free speech and free press being any kind of a universal principle; as far as Rosenzweig and Sparanese are concerned, it applies only to their side. Rosenzweig, not entirely coincidentally, is head of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, an institution affiliated with the Communist Party USA. If the US government applied the same standards to his "library" as his beloved Maximum Leader applies to dissenting librarians and archivists in Cuba, Mr. Rosenzweig would be spending his days in a solitary cell talking to the cockroaches. Rosenzweig and Sparanese hide behind the (rightful) protection that they enjoy in the United States, while blithely approving of the violation of those same rights by their pet dictator.
The third proposition is either a stunning non sequitir or yet more hypocrisy. What, because person X stole a car and got away with it, person Y is therefore entitled to rape and murder at will? How's that again?
What is most disturbing and disgusting about this whole sordid issue is the fact that otherwise sensible librarians and activists like Jessamyn West and Rory Litwin, who normally speak strongly in defense of free speech, are silent or seem to agree with the pro-repression faction. Is this just more of the same old "No-Enemies-On-The-Left" attitude that led liberals of the early twentieth century to defend the USSR even while "Good Ole Uncle Joe" Stalin starved, butchered, and massacred millions? Or do they actually agree with the idea that anyone who disagrees with a (left-wing) government should be imprisoned?
For shame. The "No-Enemies-On-The-Left" attitude damaged the credibility of the Left for decades after the extent of Stalin's crimes against humanity became known, and American librarians' silence on this issue damages the credibility of our stand against potential abuses of power by our own government, as Mr. Hentoff and other commentators are already pointing out. Does it make any sense at all to tacitly approve of actual, real abuses while condemning potential future ones?
A principle is a principle is a principle. Or else it's no principle at all.
The American Library Association's refusal to forthrightly condemn the Cuban government for its brutal suppression of non-government-approved bookstores and libraries has rankled me for a long time. But because I maintain a certain distance from the slithering, reptilian bolus of its governing Council, I have never addressed the issue directly.
Fortunately, Nat Hentoff is not so discreet. And, as always, his principled defense of freedom of speech shows up the hypocrisy and cowardice of those who would rather ignore the issue.
Those on the ALA Council who most strongly defend the Castro government's "right" to imprison librarians and other distributors of books and other printed materials are the biggest hypocrites of all.
Mark Rosenzweig and Ann Sparanese are two of the most outspoken defenders of the Cuban government in this matter. Rosenzweig is an influential member of the Orwellianly-misnamed "Social Responsibility Round Table"; more about him later. Sparanese, in a recent issue of Library Juice, makes the remarkably specious arguments that (1) the imprisoned librarians aren't really librarians because the only real librarians in Cuba are the ones so designated by the dictatorial government, (2) that the Cuban government is justified in confiscating their materials and imprisoning them because it alleges that they are financially supported from the U.S., and (3) because the U.S. is less than perfect-in-every-single-way, no principles of any kind apply to the Cuban government.
The first proposition is a semantic Rube Goldberg construction so laughable that it hurts. By that standard, the Nazis committed no crimes against humanity because, after all, they defined Jews as nonhuman. Besides, why does it matter whether or not they are "officially" librarians? These are "human" rights we're talking about, not special privileged "librarian" rights. So what if, as Sparanese asserts, they are "dissident politicians, apparently non-violent, who sometimes use the moniker of 'librarians' to enhance their stature"? Don't dissident politicians have any rights in Ms. Sparanese's Brave New World of "Social Responsibility"?
The second proposition truly shows their blatant hypocrisy. Nevermind the idea of free speech and free press being any kind of a universal principle; as far as Rosenzweig and Sparanese are concerned, it applies only to their side. Rosenzweig, not entirely coincidentally, is head of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, an institution affiliated with the Communist Party USA. If the US government applied the same standards to his "library" as his beloved Maximum Leader applies to dissenting librarians and archivists in Cuba, Mr. Rosenzweig would be spending his days in a solitary cell talking to the cockroaches. Rosenzweig and Sparanese hide behind the (rightful) protection that they enjoy in the United States, while blithely approving of the violation of those same rights by their pet dictator.
The third proposition is either a stunning non sequitir or yet more hypocrisy. What, because person X stole a car and got away with it, person Y is therefore entitled to rape and murder at will? How's that again?
What is most disturbing and disgusting about this whole sordid issue is the fact that otherwise sensible librarians and activists like Jessamyn West and Rory Litwin, who normally speak strongly in defense of free speech, are silent or seem to agree with the pro-repression faction. Is this just more of the same old "No-Enemies-On-The-Left" attitude that led liberals of the early twentieth century to defend the USSR even while "Good Ole Uncle Joe" Stalin starved, butchered, and massacred millions? Or do they actually agree with the idea that anyone who disagrees with a (left-wing) government should be imprisoned?
For shame. The "No-Enemies-On-The-Left" attitude damaged the credibility of the Left for decades after the extent of Stalin's crimes against humanity became known, and American librarians' silence on this issue damages the credibility of our stand against potential abuses of power by our own government, as Mr. Hentoff and other commentators are already pointing out. Does it make any sense at all to tacitly approve of actual, real abuses while condemning potential future ones?
A principle is a principle is a principle. Or else it's no principle at all.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Tell 'em, Annie!
From an interview with author Annie Proulx, published in the January/February issue of Public Libraries:
Public Libraries: Your stories are frequently about people on the edges of civilization --
Annie Proulx: I beg your pardon, sir. Rural places are not the edges of civilization.
PL: I apologize. But areas of life that the general public doesn't know about --
AP: There you go again. You're talking about urban people as the only people in the world who count as being real people while people who live in rural areas are somehow subhuman?
PL: Maybe I should phrase it as, "What it is about these characters, who aren't often talked about in popular literature, that attracts you?"
AP: Right, most people write about suburban or personal or urban affairs. I write about rural areas by choice; I live in rural areas. I have for almost my entire life except for brief stints in New York City and Tokyo, which I figured was my lifetime's worth of urban life. I'm keenly interested in the rural surroundings partly because they are neglected.... [T]hey're seen as places for use; use of extraction for minerals or crops or products of some kind. Or for disposal of unwanted wastes that the cities won't have. And this colonial attitude is something that really irritates the hell out of people who live in rural areas. It's hard to take being treated like invisible people or people who simply don't count. And I write about these people and these places because I like them.
For the bulk of the interview, those who are curious will have to find a printed issue of the magazine. Ms. Proulx was one of the authors that the proprietor of the "Booked Up" bookstore in Archer City, Texas, recommended to me on the one occasion that I got to talk books with him. Perhaps one of these days I'll have to take his advice.
I agree with Ms. Proulx that densely-populated hyperurban hellholes (or, for that matter, tickytacky generic suburban housing developments) are not a place where I want to spend most of my life. And I've noticed a tendency among people in urban areas to blithely ignore the interests of people in less densely populated areas whenever it suits their interest and they're able to use their concentrated political power to railroad it through the relevant governmental body. Unfortunately, my choice of careers -- which was largely predicated on the fact that library reference work and collection development are the only things I seem to be much good at -- makes it difficult to find suitable employment in sparsely-settled and non-crazymaking areas.
From an interview with author Annie Proulx, published in the January/February issue of Public Libraries:
Public Libraries: Your stories are frequently about people on the edges of civilization --
Annie Proulx: I beg your pardon, sir. Rural places are not the edges of civilization.
PL: I apologize. But areas of life that the general public doesn't know about --
AP: There you go again. You're talking about urban people as the only people in the world who count as being real people while people who live in rural areas are somehow subhuman?
PL: Maybe I should phrase it as, "What it is about these characters, who aren't often talked about in popular literature, that attracts you?"
AP: Right, most people write about suburban or personal or urban affairs. I write about rural areas by choice; I live in rural areas. I have for almost my entire life except for brief stints in New York City and Tokyo, which I figured was my lifetime's worth of urban life. I'm keenly interested in the rural surroundings partly because they are neglected.... [T]hey're seen as places for use; use of extraction for minerals or crops or products of some kind. Or for disposal of unwanted wastes that the cities won't have. And this colonial attitude is something that really irritates the hell out of people who live in rural areas. It's hard to take being treated like invisible people or people who simply don't count. And I write about these people and these places because I like them.
For the bulk of the interview, those who are curious will have to find a printed issue of the magazine. Ms. Proulx was one of the authors that the proprietor of the "Booked Up" bookstore in Archer City, Texas, recommended to me on the one occasion that I got to talk books with him. Perhaps one of these days I'll have to take his advice.
I agree with Ms. Proulx that densely-populated hyperurban hellholes (or, for that matter, tickytacky generic suburban housing developments) are not a place where I want to spend most of my life. And I've noticed a tendency among people in urban areas to blithely ignore the interests of people in less densely populated areas whenever it suits their interest and they're able to use their concentrated political power to railroad it through the relevant governmental body. Unfortunately, my choice of careers -- which was largely predicated on the fact that library reference work and collection development are the only things I seem to be much good at -- makes it difficult to find suitable employment in sparsely-settled and non-crazymaking areas.
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Should Vermont secede from the U.S.?
Yes, says Thomas H. Naylor, professor emeritus in economics at Duke and co-author of Affluenza. More here, here, here.
This can't help but remind me of the occasional half-serious proposals for the upper peninsula of Michigan (along with, perhaps, parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota) to secede from the lower half and form the "State of Superior".
Voting with their feet
Meanwhile, the libertarian folks at the Free State Project seem to have set their sights on New Hampshire, and some of the inhabitants of Killington, Vermont, seem inclined to join them.
I wouldn't mind trying it out, personally, although libraries might not be the highest item on a libertarian government's list of budget priorities. I suspect that neither the Green Mountain State nor the Granite State has winters much worse than the U.P. Any libraries in Vermont or New Hampshire looking for a slightly cranky reference librarian?
Yes, says Thomas H. Naylor, professor emeritus in economics at Duke and co-author of Affluenza. More here, here, here.
This can't help but remind me of the occasional half-serious proposals for the upper peninsula of Michigan (along with, perhaps, parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota) to secede from the lower half and form the "State of Superior".
Voting with their feet
Meanwhile, the libertarian folks at the Free State Project seem to have set their sights on New Hampshire, and some of the inhabitants of Killington, Vermont, seem inclined to join them.
I wouldn't mind trying it out, personally, although libraries might not be the highest item on a libertarian government's list of budget priorities. I suspect that neither the Green Mountain State nor the Granite State has winters much worse than the U.P. Any libraries in Vermont or New Hampshire looking for a slightly cranky reference librarian?
Spread the word
Project Censored's list of the Top Twenty-Five under-reported news stories of 2002-2003 is worth looking over. If you're concerned about the direction this country's going, mention some of these to people who get most of their news from broadcast TV, radio, or a "major daily newspaper".
Project Censored's list of the Top Twenty-Five under-reported news stories of 2002-2003 is worth looking over. If you're concerned about the direction this country's going, mention some of these to people who get most of their news from broadcast TV, radio, or a "major daily newspaper".
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