"I'd best head to the library. Research beckons."

Pablo and perhaps others will appreciate the existence of the refereed critical journal Slayage : the On-line International Journal of Buffy Studies. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that the first issue included an article analyzing the importance of information and research in the exploits of Buffy and the Scoobys. After all, library writer and consultant GraceAnne DeCandido did refer to Giles as "our great sage and sex symbol" in her seminal article on "Giles : Hero Librarian."

The Image and Role of the Librarian

Giles may have had the highest profile of any librarian in pop culture in recent years, but he's not the only one. I recently enjoyed browsing through Haworth Press's book The Image and Role of the Librarian, which was also published as issue number 78 of The Reference Librarian. Particularly interesting essays:

Jungian/Myers-Briggs Personality Types of Librarians in Films by Jeanine Williamson (Marian the Librarian, from The Music Man, is an ISFJ, Mary from Party Girl is an ESTP, and the most common personality types in movie librarians are ISFJ, ISTJ, and INFP, according to Williamson. In contrast, a survey of real librarians found that ISTJ, INTJ, and INTP were the top three. NT's rule!)

Looking at the Male Librarian Stereotype, by Thad E. Dickson

The Long, Strange Trip of Barbara Gordon : Images of Librarians in Comic Books, by Doug Highsmith.

Excerpted form the latter article:

1. "The Library of Souls" (Batman)/ art: Jim Aparo; script: Peter Milligan; colorish: Adrienne Roy; letterer: Jim Apara. 22 p. in Detective Comics, no. 643 (Apr. 1992).

SUMMARY: A murderer, who can "read people like a book," establishes the occupation of each victim and leaves the bodies in jackets with three-digit numbers on them. One victim is found in a library, and Batman notices the Dewey numbers on the books. He guesses that the killer is a librarian, though the librarian explaining the clasification system to him disagrees: "That's a defamation of character. Librarians are gentle, bookish souls." But Batman is correct....

Lucien, the Librarian of The Dreaming, gets a favorable mention, although Highsmith seems mildly dissatisfied with Lucien's apparent lack of a formal graduate degree.

Since Buffy's off the air and the Sandman series ceased, we seem to have a lack of pop-culture librarian role models. Perhaps this show, about "a young man who discovers that the basement of the New York Public Library is loaded with mythical objects like the Ark or the Golden Fleece" and who must therefore "protect the sacred artifacts from the forces of evil" will adequately fill the gap. Or perhaps not.

How did I miss this story?

After all, it involves railroads, history, intellectual property law, archives, and apparently, satire. And it was even discussed on Slashdot!

Yale University's LawMeme recently ran a couple of stories about what it calls the "Worst ToS Ever", the absurd website user agreement found on the website of the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. Quoth LawMeme: "The legalese is an astonishing 21,000 words long, and gives every sign of having been professionally drafted by a competent lawyer with severe OCD...."

To be fair, the Museum, in its reply, does characterize this outburst of legalistic logorrhea as a "functional parody". Now it's certainly true that there's a lot to parody in intellectual property law nowadays, from absurdly over-reaching end-user-licence-agreements (EULAs), to what Ed Foster calls "patent absurdity", to attempts by companies like .. ahem... the Union Pacific Railroad to collect licensing fees for modelers' and historians' use of logos of long-ago-absorbed companies like the Missouri-Kansas-Texas, the Chicago & Eastern Illinois, the Texas & Pacific, et al, which UP does not currently use and has no apparent plan to ever use for any business purpose other than, well, collecting licensing fees.

The scary thing is, even Yale law students can't tell a parody from the real thing nowadays.

Gmail

Google's much-touted e'mail service is live in beta-test mode, at least for people with Blogger accounts.

Google's track record as a company suggests that it will be well done and relatively devoid of Evil(TM), but there's been some uneasy chatter among privacy advocates about the potential privacy problems involved in having *all* your personal e'mail correspondence permanently archived and indexed by a third party, especially one which also has access to your Google-searches and, in the case of Blogger account-holders, weblog archives. Brad Templeton, Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, comments on those issues here. And of course there's wildly erratic discussion at Slashdot, as usual.

Is it discriminatory for libraries to have a "Christian Fiction" bookshelf?

An interesting, if somewhat lengthy, ongoing discussion at the Fiction-L list.

As for myself, I prefer the one-big-collection method of shelving fiction. Heck, I'd stick the poetry and drama and essays-on-unrelated-topics-by-a-single-author into the same shelves, too, and just alphabetize them all by author. For good measure, throw in the books of criticism on a single author, too. Stick 'em right next to the books they comment on. Simpler that way. If it's absolutely necessary for library users to only look at one kind of book, use nifty colorful spine stickers or lists by genre.

Yeah, yeah. I know. "Too academic." (rolls eyes.)

Guns? Landmines? Or poison gas? Decisions, decisions....

Jessamyn West over at www.librarian.net posted a link to this modest proposal for dealing with those irritating library patrons who think reference books are for their use and benefit.

Guess who's back in print?

From Amazon's description of Naked Came the Stranger: (Note that book cover as shown is not 100% work-safe!)

"In 1969, a group of reporters at Long Island Newsday decided to have some fun. They were appalled at the poor writing in the then-current bestsellers by Jacqueline Susann, Irving Wallace and Harold Robbins. They decided to have a contest to see who could write on an even lower level of tawdriness.... [T]wenty-four seasoned newsmen and newswomen each wrote one chapter. Fifteen chapters were selected.... The book was presented to a publisher as being written by a 'demure Long Island housewife who thought she could write as well as J. Susann'....

"[T]he book became an international bestseller."

And the rest, as they say, is history. Seattle Weekly describes it thus:

"In 1966, appalled by the best sellers of Jacqueline Susann and others, [editor Mike McGrady] challenged his colleagues at Newsday, where he was a distinguished editor and writer, to perpetrate a book so mindlessly crass it could not fail. 'There will be an unremitting emphasis on sex,' he warned. 'Also, true excellence in writing will be quickly blue-penciled into oblivion....'

"Those ?60s pranksters were not looking to advance their own careers by duping their editors with too-good-to-be-true copy; they were simply trying to spoof the world of crap novels by out-crapping them?and they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. "

I'm tempted to buy a copy just so I'll have it handy to brandish in the air whenever I hear the phrase "Give 'em what they want." (See this editorial if that reference is unclear.) But then I'd be in the same position as the unfortunate reviewer at Bookslut who realized too late the horrible doom which she had brought upon herself:

"I asked to review Naked Came the Stranger by "Penelope Ashe" because the concept, as described, seemed like an awful lot of fun.... But when I tore open the envelope containing the book, I realized that in the end, the joke was on me -- because I was going to have to read the damn thing. And about three chapters in, it became pretty clear why everyone drank so much in the '60s."

An after thought: it will be interesting, and perhaps frightening, to see what advertisements Blogger puts at the head of this page after I post a message in which the words "naked" and "sex" appear a half-dozen times.

In unrelated news....

The Reader's Shelf readers-advisory column in the February 1, 2004 issue of Library Journal includes, under the headline of "A Fine Romance : Good Reads for Men", the following recommendation:

"For the man who likes a bit of spice with his romance, John Norman's 25-book series The Chronicles of Gor offers a twist of fantasy, out-of-this-world adventure, and lots of kinky sex. Tarl Cabot is brought up on Earth but finds himself on the planet Gor, where he rescues women from dungeons and dragons, then enslaves them, often falling in love with them along the way...."

In looking through the discussion from the Fiction-L listserv which the columnist apparently mined for this column, I found an actual, and fairly typical, quote from one of Norman's books:

Dancer of Gor by John Norman
"Doreen Williamson appeared to be a quiet shy librarian, but in the dark of the library, after hours, she would practice, semi-nude, her secret studies in belly-dancing. Until, one fateful night, the slavers from Gor kidnapped her."

Dang! Why don't I have any library co-workers like that?!?

The Gor books are in fact popular "spicy" adventure books, and they do have their fans, but their author's frequently reiterations of his philosophy of gender relations mean that a librarian might find that recommending them as "romances" is a bit dicey. Depends on the patron's tastes, I suppose....

Another afterthought: Those Blogger advertisements may have just gotten even more "interesting"!

That was then, this is now....

Marcus Epstein has an interesting editorial at www.lewrockwell.com about "The National Review flip-flop."

On the lighter side (in a manner of speaking)

Discovered while researching Gothic literature: the Goth-o-Matic Poetry Generator will help you Create Your Own Darkly Gothic Poem. Here we go:

Darkness Descends

the night falls with a silent sigh, soulless are we.
the understanding for which you lust
flares once, then dies,
smothered by a velvet ebon nothingness.
all hope must sicken and die.

your heart desires no more.
how could you fail to believe?
angels surround us, crying,
save us from ourselves.

Stuff that caught my attention today:

From Matthew Rossi's oddly-named weblog, by way of the Library Underground mailing list: Fanaticism is the ultimate enemy of mankind.

From the June1, 1987 issue of Library Journal, where I was diligently tracking down an article about the theory and practice of collection weeding: the information that the American Library Association was once given the honor of naming a US government-owned merchant ship in honor of its services to American soldiers in World War I. A name-the-ship contest was conducted in pages of Library Journal in 1920. Sadly, the world would never be graced with the U.S.S. Bookworm or the U.S.S. Open Book, as the ALA's Executive Board settled on the stunningly unimaginative U.S.S. ALA instead. More sadly, the ship, after going through a series of name changes as described on this page (see "Lapwing"), was torpedoed by a U-boat on October 9, 1942, with the loss of five crew. Somehow I can't see the US government naming a ship after the ALA nowadays, unless it were one of these.

From Justin Raimondo's most recent column at www.antiwar.com, indications that Bush the Elder may have counselled his son against charging into Iraq.

And finally, at the risk of offending my few female readers, the employment "news" that none dare report.

Added query, 4/20: If anyone has read The Bushes: Portrait of a Dynasty, I would like to know if the article linked to above is a fair representation of its content. Local libraries don't have it yet, so I won't get a chance to read it for a little while.

Meanwhile on the other side of the world,

While we in North America natter on about intellectual property feuds, gay marriage, and political elections -- as important as those are -- it's well to remember that there are places in the world where much more basic concerns rule the day. Concerns like "will I be shot today?"

For those of us in the U.S., who have just finished grumpily paying our annual tax bills or figuring out how much of our confiscated income the government is willing to return to us, it's worth remembering that the present-day chaos and violence in Iraq are mostly the product of our wallets.

Congratulations on your purchase. Come back again, sir....

Editorial note, 4/21. For reasons discussed in more detail in the comments, I have moved the picture link from the last word of the previous paragraph to the end of this paragraph instead. I believe that the picture does say something significant about the costs of President Bush's decisions, but it deserves more thoughtfulness and gravitas than I gave it in that offhandedly bitter sarcastic comment. It can be found here, and should be considered as one artist's way of illuminating the human cost of the Iraq war.

Free Anne!

Let's hope that this month's news from Canada is a harbinger of a more sensible age to come.

A bill to extend copyright protection for the works of authors who died between 1930 and 1949 has been dropped by the government. The bill was apparently motivated by the heirs of Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables books, who died in 1949 and whose unpublished works entered the public domain in 2003. Like the Disney megacorporation in the U.S., the Montgomery estate is in possession of a very lucrative collection of works from the past, and wishes to protect and extend its monopoly profits perpetually through legislation rather than through continued, present-day creativity. Unfortunately for them, it sounds as if Canada is moving in the opposite direction to the U.S.'s slow-motion lurch into perpetual copyright monopoly:

"Under the 1997 amendments, copyrights of published works enter the public domain 50 years after the writer's death.

For unpublished works, the law limited the rights of the author's estate to 50 years after his or her death plus a six-year window for the estate to either publish or communicate an intention to do so. Before 1997, an estate had perpetual copyright for posthumous unpublished writings." -- Globe and Mail, April 1, 2004, p. R1

Hurrah to Canada for saying, "no more." Now let's import some of that common sense south of the border. (Thanks to Lawrence Lessig's blog for the link to this CBC news story, and to the Globe & Mail for providing more details.)

Meanwhile, on the job front

Bad news and good news. On the one hand, the local public library has informed me that I'm not quite good enough to be one of their part-time substitute librarians. On the other hand, I've had a couple of telephone interviews lately, one for a director's position in a public library back up in da U.P., and one for a state university library job in a city which is also home to the world's premiere collection of J.R.R. Tolkien's personal papers, historical records of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railroad (better known as the Milwaukee Road), and an incredible treasure-trove of Great Lakes shipping records. (I wish the public libraries I've dealt with had such a constructive attitude toward historical materials.)

As an added lagniappe, a place I'll call Adirondack State University -- a liberal arts state university in far upstate New York -- has called to arrange a telephone interview next week. Wish me luck. It's becoming easier and easier to be cynical and frustrated about the library job market, especially when I look at these figures from the ALA's annual conferences for the past couple of decades. It looks like last year's Toronto conference was the most dismal in history, and the trend of declining numbers indicates that it wasn't just because of SARSophobia.

AWOL

No, that's not a reference to my own failure to post to the weblog for the past couple of days. You don't really expect that kind of self-criticism from such a clearly opinionated source, do you?

It's a reference to this story from the Village Voice, which describes two US Army personnel who have headed for Canada rather than be deployed to Iraq, and will face a Canadian immigration inquiry board in the near future.

I must say that I have less sympathy for them now, in these days of voluntary, professional military service, than I would if the draft were still in effect. They weren't forced into the military; they chose to enter it, knowing full well that violence and danger are inherent parts of military service. Jeffry House, their attorney, apparently plans to argue that they deserted the Army and seek refuge in Canada because their assignment to Iraq would violate international law:

Essentially, House will be putting the war itself on trial by contending that the U.S. wants to send these young men to jail—or worse—for choosing to comply with international law. "Rather than do something unthinkable or horrible as soldiers," House says, "they came to Canada. That's a huge step."

I do find it curious that one of them apparently signed up before reaching the legal age of majority, since the article reports that his father had to sign the enlistment papers. This of course raises the question, to me, of whether said papers can represent a binding agreement, but of course I Am Not A Lawyer.

On the lighter side

From the New Yorker comes this commentary on the history of jokes, especially the dirty ones.

The author's query into the subject, like so many of my own extracurricular intellectual explorations, began with picking up a discarded secondhand book. Found any good discarded secondhand web pages lately?

Coming soon: [Your Name Here] Weekly

Thanks to S. for mentioning this upcoming publicity stunt from Reason magazine. (Also discussed at Slashdot.) It appears that their June issue will feature on the cover a satellite photograph of each subscriber's home address, along with "four cover pages of intensely personalized information, a demonstration of bleeding-edge technology that may one day allow for mass-customized and hyper-individualized print publications."

What a concept! Felix Folio... The Carlos Courier ... The Fiend Files... Pablo Parade... The Trebor Tribune....

I find this interesting not because of the satellite photographs, which after all are readily available to any person or business who knows a mailing address and has access to websites like this, but because the ability to customize the magazine's interior content on a copy-by-copy basis could herald yet more Balkanization of the world of news and views. Already, by selecting only certain news sources to view or read, it's fairly easy to "set ones preferences" to only see news that is congenial to ones' own beliefs, and people from different self-selected "worlds" of information have difficulty communicating with each other even on those rare occasions with they wish to do so. And yet a print-magazine subscriber, or a viewer of broadcast news, cannot quite isolate himself entirely from uncongenial viewpoints because of the "granularity" of the traditional media.

If you get a copy of National Review or browse its website because it supports Bush's policies in the Middle East, you may also get an editorial from William F. Buckley that advocates relaxing marijuana laws, or a blistering denunciation of Bush's proposed immigration reforms (Mark Krikorian, "Amnesty Again". NR, Jan. 28, 2004, pp 28-31). (The latter article, interestingly, is not available on the NR website -- is Mr. Krikorian exercising his intellectual property rights, or does the NR staff wish to keep those Beyond the Pale of its print subscription list from finding and linking to such criticism during an election year?)

By the same token, if you get a copy of The New Republic because it bashes right-wing media types, you may also come across a review that criticizes a "liberal" news source like Al Franken's program on AirAmerica as "boring".

What will the world be like, I wonder, when all information, down to the level of individual articles and editorials, can be filtered, even in printed media, to a flatteringly homogenous blend of agreement with one's demonstrated or assumed beliefs and marketing demographic? Will it become all the more difficult to believe that anyone could sincerely or intelligently disagree with your dearly-held prejudices?

How on earth will libraries deal with this, if every copy of a magazine sent to a subscriber is custom-tailored to that subscriber?

One of the reasons I subscribe to a variety of political magazines is to keep myself honest and at least somewhat informed by actually reading what both right-wingers and left-wingers have to say about themselves, not just what those who think like me say about them on websites that I frequent. I wonder how a marketing department -- or a government agency -- would interpret that pattern of subscriptions and other demographic information? And how will it affect my thinking if all of them start "custom-tailoring" the magazines they deliver to my mailbox in order to match what they think I want to hear? Will I have to start swapping my copy of NR with Trebor's in order to find out what right-wingers are REALLY thinking?

An interesting item for sale....

The former Mineral Range Railroad depot in Calumet, Mich., appears to be listed for sale on eBay. Anyone got a spare couple of hundred thousand dollars and a business plan?

Die! Die! Die, disco, die!

The Henry Ford Museum reportedly has lots of interesting things to visit and see: an IMAX theater, the massive River Rouge factory that made assembly-line production part of American life, the only surviving Dymaxion house, and Greenfield Village, where they're recently reconstructed a 19th-century locomotive roundhouse to go with the steam-powered railroad.

This is not one of them.

"Get your groove on" this summer at Henry Ford Museum. Throw on your bell-bottoms and boogie on down to the Museum for the Experience Music Project's first major museum exploration of the rich, complex world of disco....

Umm..... no.

A brave new day dawns

... as I have just installed and started using the Mozilla Firefox internet browser on one of the two computers I use regularly. So far the only problem I've noted is that it doesn't seem to be compatible with one component of the virtual- or "chat" -reference software the library uses. That's fine with me, since I don't like the "co-browsing" or "URL-Pushing" feature anyway.

The main reason the Firefox browser sounded interesting was because of it's built-in popup-blocking characteristics. I'll see what I think in a few days.

Why do college students use public libraries?

The Spring 2004 issue of Reference and User Services Quarterly contains an interesting article by U. of Oklahoma Engineering Librarian Karen Antell on this topic. Unfortunately, as Jason Griffey has pointed out, the American Library Association and its affiliated periodicals such as RUSQ seem more interested in demanding open access from other publishers than in supplying it themselves, and the article is not available online.

Since the crossover use of public libraries by college students and its flipside, the use of college libraries by non-college students, is of interest to me, I'll take the liberty of summarizing some of the article's findings.

The top reasons cited by the students who were surveyed about their use of public libraries can be paraphrased as follows:

(1) Public library staff are more helpful.
(2) Public library is easier to use.

Two reasons tied for third place:
(3) Subjective appeal of public library.
(3) Public library (appeals to / accomodates) children.

It sounds like college libraries have some P.R. work to do. (The last-named reason, the public library's appeal to children, seems to be relevant to students who have childcare responsibilities and need to combine personal research time with keeping the kiddies occupied -- something which seems beyond the scope of academic library service.)

Other reasons cited included surprisingly frequent statements like "The public library has more materials that are useful to me", "the public library has more materials for pleasure reading", "the campus library's materials are often unavailable", and "the campus library is too big/too confusing".

The first would seem to indicate that the college library's materials selection practices may be out of touch with the students' actual needs. (Too many faculty demands for abstruse material, perhaps?). The second seems reasonable, although I'd suggest that the line between pleasure and "educational" materials is a vague one, especially in the humanities where fiction, film, etc., can be the subject (or the vehicle) of serious intellectual inquiry. The latter two statements seem to indicate that the college library needs to do some work with inventory control, simplify the physical layout, and make the electronic gateways less confusing. ("Huron State", for example, has over half its collection in an inaccessible storage area, which wouldn't be a major problem except that the user interface for retrieving items from storage is so nightmarishly nonintuitive that it's a wonder to me any non-librarians ever figure it out.)

Arnell found that previous studies, especially one by the late revered Marvin Scilken, had taken the approach of trying to push college students out of the public libraries and "back where they belong". Similarly, I've seen state-supported university libraries that refused to permit non-students to use any electronic resources -- and were meanwhile rapidly eliminating all non-electronic means of access to their collections. Such approaches seem shortsighted and unjustifiable to me, since both public and academic libraries in most cases draw funds from the population as a whole. College students pay local city and county taxes just like everyone else, including property tax (indirectly, through their landlords.) Funds from state and local taxes directly or indirectly subsidize most colleges and universities, especially those which are explicitly "state" institutions of higher education. Certainly they will need to have different priorities in acquiring materials. But why shouldn't a college student be able to use a public library copy of, say, The Great Gatsby that his rent money and local taxes helped to buy? And why shouldn't an attorney, businessman, or other professional whose taxes are supporting a nearby state university be able to use its library's resources for his needs?

Fun with typos

I hope SIRSI does a better job of debugging their library software than they did with the lead sentence of this news release:

"Laura Bush, Fist Lady of the United States, recently enjoyed the Rancho Mirage Pubic Library...."

Link ripped from www.librarian.net.

Nice save!

I've had some awkward job interviews, but nothing like this. Amazingly, she got the job, at least according to the anonymous and self-described "fictional hiring partner" writing the blog.

Whether the tale be truth or fiction, this deponent knoweth not. But it's a good story.

Seen on the wall of a bar in Milledgeville, Georgia:

"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut." -- Ernest Hemingway.

The Columbia World of Quotations confirms the existence of the statement, but attributes it instead to Charles Scribner, Jr., Hemingway's publisher. Either way, it's good advice.

Love those long-winded book titles!

While browsing in an "antique mall" (i.e., consignment secondhand store) recently, I came across a book by Emanuel Swedenborg with the following interesting title. (Slashes indicate linebreaks, and boldface indicates oversize type).

The Delights of Wisdom / pertaining to / Conjugal Love / after which follow / The Pleasures of Insanity / pertaining to / Scortatory Love / by / Emanuel Swedenborg / A swede.

Scortatory -- for those of you who were wondering -- means ‘Pertaining to or consisting in, fornication or lewdness’, and is formed from the Latin word 'scortator', which means 'to associate with harlots'. The English translation of Swedenborg's title, first printed in 1794, is the first known use of the word in the English language.

(I love the Oxford English Dictionary! But not conjugally, since that apparently leads to the Pleasures of Insanity.)

Who are your customers?

The Public Library Geographic Database may be of interest to those in the U.S. who wish to know the demographics of their public library's users.

(Link taken from March/April 2004 issue of Public Libraries, in which two of the PLGD's staff shamelessly plug their efforts.)

E-voting follies

This story from Wired News is a damning summary of the maniacal, singleminded bureaucratic push for unverifiable "e-voting". Excerpts:

Harris discovered that she could enter the vote database using Microsoft Access -- a standard program often bundled with Microsoft Office -- and change votes without leaving a trace. Diebold hadn't password-protected the file or secured the audit log, so anyone with access to the tabulation program during an election -- Diebold employees, election staff or even hackers if the county server were connected to a phone line -- could change votes and alter the log to erase the evidence....

(Diebold's response to this discovery, as is well known, was to use legal mechanisms like the DMCA to try to forbid dissemination of this information. Meanwhile they showed absolutely zero interest in correcting the "accidental" security flaws. Meanwhile, the chairman of the company confidently promised that he would "deliver Ohio" to his political buddies.)

In addition to glitches, there are concerns about the people behind the machines. A few voting company employees have been implicated in bribery or kickback schemes involving election officials. And there are concerns about the partisan loyalties of voting executives -- Diebold's chief executive, for example, is a top fund-raiser for President Bush....

...So one day on a whim, after completing her publicity calls, Harris typed the words "stock ownership" and the name Election Systems & Software into a search engine and pulled up a slew of articles. Reading the oldest ones first because that's where companies "give information that they haven't yet thought to hide," she uncovered some startling facts.

Up until 1995, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel had been chairman of ES&S (then called American Information Systems) before quitting the company in March of that year two weeks before launching his Senate bid. ES&S, based in Omaha, Nebraska, manufactured the only voting machines used in the state in his election the following year. According to Neil Erickson, Nebraska's deputy secretary of state for elections, the machines counted 85 percent of votes in Hagel's race; the remaining votes were counted by hand.

Hagel, a first-time candidate who had lived out of the state for 20 years, came from behind to win two major upsets in that election: first in the primary race against a fellow Republican, then in the general race against Democrat Ben Nelson, the state's popular former governor. Nelson began the race with a 65 percent to 18 percent lead in the polls, but Hagel won with 56 percent of the vote, becoming the state's first Republican senator since 1972....

It's long been a cliche for political cynics to say that one person's vote doesn't count. With the help of insecure and unverifiable voting machines controlled by political partisans, that may become the literal truth except for the one person who controls the voting software.

More from www.blackboxvoting.com, including a link to a startling article from the New York Times: Florida as the next Florida

Excerpts:

As Floridians went to the polls last Tuesday, Glenda Hood, Katherine Harris's successor as secretary of state, assured the nation that Florida's voting system would not break down this year the way it did in 2000. Florida now has "the very best" technology available, she declared on CNN. "And I do feel that it's a great disservice to create the feeling that there's a problem when there is not." Hours later, results in Bay County showed that with more than 60 percent of precincts reporting, Richard Gephardt, who long before had pulled out of the presidential race, was beating John Kerry by two to one. "I'm devastated," the county's top election official said, promising a recount of his county's 19,000 votes.

Florida's official line is that its machines are so carefully tested, nothing can go wrong. But things already have gone wrong. In a January election in Palm Beach and Broward Counties, the victory margin was 12 votes, but the machines recorded more than 130 blank ballots. It is simply not believable that 130 people showed up to cast a nonvote, in an election with only one race on the ballot. The runner-up wanted a recount, but since the machines do not produce a paper record, there was nothing to recount. [emphasis added.]

In 2002, in the primary race for governor between Janet Reno and Bill McBride, electronic voting problems were so widespread they cast doubt on the outcome. Many Miami-Dade County votes were not counted on election night because machines were shut down improperly. One precinct with over 1,000 eligible voters recorded no votes, despite a 33 percent turnout statewide. Election workers spent days hunting for lost votes, while Floridians waited, in an uncomfortable replay of 2000, to see whether Mr. McBride's victory margin, which had dwindled to less than 10,000, would hold up....

The 2004 election may make the 2000 Florida fiasco look like a toddler's tantrum if this is any indication. On the other hand, perhaps the vote-riggers will get their act together well enough to hide their tracks. Unless those pesky voters kick up enough of a political storm to force the election officials to provide verifiable, permanent, and re-countable hard copy ballots.

I am not alone...

... in using the term "fatwa" in a specialized, and perhaps too narrow, way. Arts & Letters Daily this morning pointed me to a National Journal article about the New York Times' ombudsman Daniel Okrent which contains the following phrase: "I hear that Okrent is already unpopular at The Times, that various angry staffers have issued fatwas."

The article is also interesting reading for those who are cynical about the New York Times or journalism in general.

One last intellectual theft of the evening:

Since every one of my postings today has begun with a link ripped from somewhere else, it's entirely appropriate to close the day by doing so once again. Thanks to Fiend for the link to this survey of blogging behavior, which provides some interesting food for thought regarding anonymity, liability, and the degree to which bloggers discuss personal or private material and occasionally have reason to regret it.

And so to bed.

Where's E.K. Hornbeck when you need him?

The county that gave us the Scopes Monkey Trial and a 2002 lawsuit about whether public schools should include Bible Education Ministry in the curriculum is at it again:

Associated Press, March 17, 2004: DAYTON, Tenn. — Rhea County [Tennessee] commissioners unanimously voted to ask state lawmakers to introduce legislation amending Tennessee's criminal code so the county can charge homosexuals with crimes against nature.

"We need to keep them out of here," said Commissioner J.C. Fugate, who introduced the motion.

County Attorney Gary Fritts also was asked by Fugate to find the best way to enact a local law banning homosexuals from living in Rhea County....

Apparently Rhea County still needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, forward into the twentieth century. Fortunately, the county attorney remembered reading about something called the Constitution, and the commissioners took his advice to rescind their motion. But not before providing the more civilized parts of the country with another round of amusement.

(Thanks to AaronIsNotAmused for the link.)

Censorship or selection

Also ripped from the "H20 lib blog": an insightful discussion of the semantic difference between "selection" and "censorship" in the language of LibraryLand.

I'm rather forcibly reminded of the reference supervisor who refused to "select" A Clockwork Orange for the library -- even as a donation! -- or permit it to be requested through interlibrary loan, despite multiple requests, because "young people shouldn't be reading such trash."

Mother Earth News

While browsing the Waterboro Library Weblog (or "h20boro lib blog)" earlier today, I found that all the issues of this interesting magazine from the first issue in January/February 1970 to April/May 2003 are available online. Fascinating stuff. I could browse this archive for weeks, however contrary to the spirit of the magazine that might be.

Articles from the first few issues that caught my attention:

Twin Oaks (Issue #1) A description of one of the more successful experiments in consciously designed communal living. Co-founder Katherine Kinkaid has described Twin Oaks in more detail in her books, but it's useful to read a contemporary account of its early days written by soneone else. Although I personally might find it difficult to live under some of the policies of the Twin Oaks group, it's a fascinating project that still exists today because its founders were practical enough to (1) establish a workable internal economic system based on "labor credits", (2) establish a system of democratic and flexible but effective organization, and (3) use the existing external economy to support themselves by producing both physical and intellectual products that fit within their principles and were desired by the outside world. Of course, it helped that they didn't have to make mortgage payments on the farm!

Mississippi Canoe Trip (Issue #4) I've frequently thought about doing something similar, but I think I'll work up to the Mississippi by stages, rather than just taking off with no prior canoeing experience as this couple did. The Huron River seems to be well thawed out, and the weather's getting nicer....

The Compleat Gentleman Homesteads in the Bush (Issue #5). "[I]f a man doesn't have a set of standards by which to live, he is little better than a savage. As a matter of fact, Saturday in my wilderness home was always special. I planned a good dinner with wine accompanied by one of the more exciting classical records and the Toronto Scottish pipe band on the record player. After the meal — with dishes washed and wolf and falcon fed — I sat in front of the TV set, sipped cold beer (it had been in the river all day) and relaxed . . . in a suit. Just because one lives in the woods is no reason to go completely native."

Trebor and others of sound practical sense may well point out that survival, engineering or business-related advice from idealistic sources should be taken with a grain of salt, or at least confirmed through another source before betting one's life or well-being on its accuracy. For example, it seems that the wood fire-powered refrigerator described in issue #35 has some potential flaws, as pointed out by a rather alarming letter in issue #37. (Unfortunately, Allie Fox's subscription apparently ran out before he read the second letter.)

But what a source of ideas and daydreams.

Would you read it on a train? Would you read it in a plane?

Bookmobiles are very well and good, but as this site indicates, there are many, many different styles of traveling libraries: Bookboats, book-bikes, book-donkeys, book-camels, et cetera. In the U.S., during the Great Depression, the Works Project Administration used many different means to distribute books to remote corners of the country, including most notably the Pack Horse Library Project as described in Kathi Appelt's Down Cut Shin Creek : the Pack Horse Librarians of Kentucky.

Of course, the first thing that comes to my mind is that a Book Train might make an interesting HO scale model. There were many U.S. prototypes to follow, and to cite as examples should any niggling nitpicker claim that such things "ain't prototypical". True, most of the railroad library cars were for the use of paying passengers only, but that's just part and parcel of the Gilded Age in America.

For a more altruistically inclined roving cultural artifact on rails, perhaps I could model one of the chapel cars that once plied the rails of North America bringing missionary efforts to remote areas and, in one case, serving as a semi-permanent meeting hall after the Upper Peninsula logging town of Ontonagan burned to the ground in 1896.

Thanks to the ever-eclectic Jessamyn West for the link. The Bookboat webpage is affiliated with the Prince Rupert (B.C., Canada) Public Library and "is intended to help us build support for a waterfront location for a new Prince Rupert Library and Archives." I wish them well.

Who Stole Petrarch's Head?

Is this to be the plot for Dan Brown's or Lewis Perdue's next novel?

I have mixed feelings....

... about this controversy, in which one of Michigan's largest law schools is suing the American Bar Association for blocking accreditation of two branch campus programs which cater to part-time and weekend students, and which have apparently met all stated ABA accreditation criteria.

On the one hand, I question whether the country needs yet more lawyers, and from a librarian's perspective, I can see how it might be difficult to make truly equal legal resources available at multiple campuses. On the other hand, a law school that is open to people who can't drop everything and attend full time for three years straight is a valuable service to anyone who has to support himself/herself and, perhaps, a family, with a full time job, but has the desire and the ability to "learn how to think like a lawyer".

I have considered trying to earn a second master's degree in order to improve my position on the academic job market, but find that many universities are too snobbish and stuck-up to even consider the possibility of tolerating part-time students. A relative of mine in Austin, Texas, has reported that the University of Texas graduate business school similarly has its nose stuck firmly in the stratosphere. It wants only full-time students who are supported by their parents and don't have to pay their own bills. Apparently people with actual ongoing hands-on business experience aren't classy enough.

My dad earned his law degree by working his tail off in evening and weekend classes while working full time as an engineer to support his family. He says that even at that time there was a noticeable hostility to part-time students, who were apparently perceived as being socially undesirable.

The ABA has refused to publicly comment about its role in this imbroglio, but it's hard to see it as anything but (1) old fashioned snobbishness and (2) turf-protection by existing attorneys who would just as soon not see large numbers of new-minted competitors enter the market.

Editorial note, 4/8: changed "supported by mommy and daddy" to "supported by their parents" in the third paragraph, because the students haven't done anything wrong and making fun of them doesn't accomplish anything.

On a lighter note:

Jon Carroll of the SF Gate has compiled an impressive record of editorials covering those lovely mondegreens.

Our valiant protectors

Good news! The Department of Justice is pulling out all the stops, resurrecting long-neglected laws and theories of prosecution, and devoting uncountable man-hours to rooting out shadowy networks of finance and individuals that threaten the very existence of America. 'Round the clock they work diligently, looking for incriminating evidence and ways to arrest those who seek to infiltrate our fair society with the scourge of....

Naked people.

Oh, you thought that terrorists were a bigger problem? I guess you don't hold daily prayer sessions in your taxpayer-funded office, either, you unAmerican freak!

As the Baltimore Sun article indicates, the current standard for "obscenity" prosecutions rests upon "the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision in Miller vs. California, which held that something is "obscene" only if an average person applying contemporary community standards finds it patently offensive.

But which community? Hollywood? Denver? Salt Lake City? Dime Box, Texas?

There's a simple solution, known to shady ambulance-chasing lawyers the world 'round, for juries and judges that refuse to give you the verdict you want. Simply go forum-shopping and find a community where the judge & jury will apply their standards to someone else's community:

The department's most closely watched case involves "extreme" porn producer Rob Zicari and his North Hollywood company Extreme Associates. The prolific Zicari is charged with selling five allegedly obscene videotapes, which he now markets as the "Federal Five," that depict simulated rapes and murder....

The case hangs on a strategic move by the Justice Department that could make or break hundreds of future cases. Instead of bringing charges in Hollywood, where Zicari easily defeated a local obscenity ordinance recently in a jury trial, department officials ordered his tapes from Pittsburgh, Pa., and charged him there, hoping for a jury pool less porn-friendly. (From the Baltimore Sun article linked above.)

Now Mr. Zicari's trashy productions are doubtless unpalatable to most people. But apparently the community of Hollywood doesn't consider them legally obscene. No problemo! Just apply some other community's standards that more closely match Mr. Ashcroft's own opinions. The application of this principle to the internet is obvious: whatever Mr. Ashcroft deems personally offensive is to be prosecuted or banned nationwide.

From a 2001 interview with the PBS program Frontline, as quoted in the B. Sun:

"Just about everything on the Internet and almost everything in the video stores and everything in the adult bookstores is still prosecutable illegal obscenity," [Ashcroft] said....

It's incredible that in the age of the internet, with communication of ideas and images between points thousand of miles apart reduced to a matter of mouse-clicks and mere seconds, Mr. Ashcroft intends to apply the most restrictive "community standards" he can find to all communities in the nation, with total disregard for the wishes of the vast bulk of the country. It's quite possible that a jury in East Buckfutt, Idaho, might very well convict someone of obscenity for content that wouldn't even raise an eyebrow in, say, San Francisco. It's quite possible that in some benighted one-horse town, a halfway competent prosecutor could get a jury to ban Charles Darwin as "obscene". The possibilities are endless....

Perhaps he will be equally sympathetic when Saudi Arabia demands -- in accordance with its local "community standards" -- that websites containing the text of the Christian Bible be shut down as "obscene". Or when a politically liberal, atheist community somewhere in the U.S. files suit to ban objectionable religious proseletyzing websites from the Internet. Ya wanna bet?

Rural retreats

Pursuant to Fiend's recent recreational expedition to a northwoods "Sugar Shack", USAToday reports that less glamorous agricultural businesses are also becoming the objects of "agritourism":

Rural life becoming tourist attraction

My more rural relatives would probably get a laugh from the idea of city folks paying good money for the privilege of picking fruit or looking at cows. On the other hand, I did enjoy my summers at the farm while I was growing up.

Oh frabjous day! Calloo, Callay!

The Biblioblog is back!

Alternate alternate realities

The Lord of the Rings as it might have been written by Arthur Conan Doyle... or Ayn Rand... or Dr. Seuss....

The "Jack Vance" version sounds oddly like James Branch Cabell to my ear. Perhaps Carlos could comment on whether this version has captured the true Wodehousian esprit d'Jeeves?

A breezy ride through hell

"Elena", a biker in the USSR, has posted a truly eerie photostory about riding along the highways and through the ghost towns near the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

(Link taken from The LoneWacko Blog, who seems to have gotten it from Art Bell. Despite the latter's reputation for promoting silly theories about paranormal conspiracies et al, nothing about the photos looks implausible to me. Just grim and scary and haunting.)

Well, I'm back....

... and just in time, as Trebor's threatening to turn the place into a Sex Shoppe in my absence. Bad Trebor. If you want public nudity, go to Canada. Or buy the Librarians Gone Wild videotape. (Latter link courtesy of Library Underground.)

Meanwhile I'll get back to blogging about boring old politics and books and stuff.

Short hiatus

Because of three work projects whose deadlines are bearing down on me like runaway freight trains, I'm taking a brief hiatus from blogging. But it shouldn't be more than a few days before I'm back. Fortunately, two of the projects are fairly interesting -- a monthlong library display promoting National Poetry Month, and a set of recommended-book bibliographies for an upcoming program about Frankenstein.

Back in a few days --

Gypsy.... er, Romani Spirit

A week or two ago, I went to see the Budapest Ensemble's travelling music-and-dance extravaganza, Gypsy Spirit. Sadly, I'm not really knowledgeable enough to know whether the music was "authentic" or not, nor to competently evaluate the "artistic merit" of the dancing. I can say it was an enjoyable show -- the music was lively, the songs and choreography were clever, and the dancers were agile and energetic as the men rhythically slapped and stomped the rhythm while the women twirled colorfully around the stage, with rainbow-hued skirts swirling about their waists.

I couldn't help noticing a few things that seemed curious, though. There was a noticeable difference in personal appearance between the musicians and the dancers. The musicians, with the exception of one or two players, appeared dark-haired and dark-complected. I've often been told that the Gypsies (who reportedly prefer to be called Romani) are almost universally dark-haired and dark-complected, and are said to have originated in India. Several of the dancers, though, had noticeably blue eyes and light-colored hair. Curious. (The most captivating of the female dancers, though, had jet-black hair and eyes....)

I bought a CD and a copy of Ian Hancock's book We are the Romani people while I was there. In reading it later on, I came upon the following passages:

p. 3. (caption to a picture showing a female dancer with her skirt whirling above her knees:) The clothing depicted is not Romani, and showing the legs above the calves is taboo in Romani culture.

p. 102. Romani morals are in fact excessively strict by non-Romani standards; showing the legs, for example, is gadzikani forma, or non-Romani behaviour, and neither men nor women should wear shorts. The dancers who lift their colourful skirts on the state of the Teatr Romen are all non-Romanies, since the Romani members of the troupe will not do this.

Now even accepting that Dr. Hancock may be generalizing somewhat, this does seem to cast some doubt on the authenticity of the "Gypsy" dancing in the show.

I suppose it would not be surprising if the programme presented by the troupe were tailored to what audiences expected to see, and were presumably paying to see. After all, tourists are famously unconcerned about the cultural or ethnic authenticity of the entertainment they consume, and the same is presumably true of cultural "tourists" who partake of travelling presentations like this. (Does Silver Dollar City , taken as a whole, accurately reflect the lifestyles of 19th-century Ozark farmers? HA!)

Does it matter whether the dancers are actually ethnically Romani or not? Does it matter whether the dance moves are actually drawn from any real Romani tradition, as long as it's a good show? And does wondering about the authenticity of "Gypsy" music and dancing performed by non-Romanies put one in the same category as those who think that Caucasians can't play jazz or blues, or that blacks make good musicians and dancers because they have "natural jungle rythym"?

Also found on Lessig's blog:

This amusing quote from a Wall Street Journal review of his recent book Free Culture, in which the reviewer suggests that copyright reform might be an attractive "wedge issue" for the political right. "What’s to fear, that Hollywood will end its generous support of Republican candidates?"

Perhaps the Kahle v. Ashcroft folks are already adopting this approach. From the Stanford Center for Internet and Society's FAQ about the case:

1. What’s this case about?

It is about freeing our culture from unnecessary and harmful regulation....

Another salvo in the Copyright Wars

Found via www.librarian.net and the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education:

In Kahle v. Ashcroft, the Internet Archive and the Preminger Archive of old film and television materials seek to overturn the retroactive application of automatic or "unconditional" copyrighted status to certain "orphan" works published between 1964 and 1978. I'm not sure that I understand their argument. It seems to be more complex than Eldred v. Ashcroft, and it may be beyond my puny reasoning capabilities. It looks to me like a case involving a fairly narrow set of copyrighted works, but Lawrence Lessig seems to think otherwise. He's discussed this on his blog, and suggests that "If the case were to prevail, Congress would have to reenact the Sonny Bono Act to protect non-orphaned works...."

.PDF of complaint is available here .

On a distant northern sea....

Self-described "railfan/boatnerd" Pete Jensen reports via the YooperRails mailing list that the shipping season has begun for Marquette's lower harbor. (The first freighter docked in the upper harbor on Saturday the 27th.)

I miss living on Lake Superior and watching it change through the seasons. I can remember watching for the first laker of the season to arrive, and wondering what it would have been like to live there before the coming of the railroads, when the place was almost totally isolated from the fall freeze-up to the spring thaw. I once spent a substantial part of a March afternoon standing on Presque Isle and watching a Coast Guard cutter break its way through the ice to free an oreboat whose captain had been a little too eager to be the first ship of the season. (I think it was the Saginaw, but I can't recall for certain.)

I guess the Detroit River is only about an hour's drive away from here, with several times the ship traffic than Marquette sees, but it's not the same as being able to see them from my front window and casually walk down to the waterfront any time I felt like it.

I will admit, though, that the webcam of the Great Lakes Maritime Institute on the Detroit waterfront is one of the coolest I've ever seen. It's mounted on top of a dethroned oreboat pilothouse, and can be remotely controlled to scan up and down the river for passing boats or anything else of interest. Apparently they funded it by auctioning off, among other things, a couple of bottles of 90-year-old Scotch that spent most of the last 70 years in a shipwreck on the bottom of Lake Huron.

The Old Lions of Academia

"Thomas H. Benton", a pseudonymous columnist in the Chronicle of Higher Education, waxes nostalgic over the intimidating intellectual aura of the dignified, demanding, authoritarian professors of his youth. I have mixed feelings about such things.

On the one hand, a professor of the kind portrayed so fearsomely by John Houseman in The Paper Chase demands and deserves respect. By accepting no excuses and demanding the students display mastery of the material, he forces the students to learn not just the class materials but the discipline to learn needed information under time constraints and be able to present it under stress. Like it or not, these are necessary skills in most professions.

On the other hand, my experience in taking classes from three of Thee University's "Old Lions" was that two of them were simply rude, condescending, and stuck in their own little private intellectual rut.

One, in American Literature, airily dismissed all fantasy and science fiction writing as merely "popular" and therefore unworthy of academic attention. His response when I wanted to do a semester-long paper on James Branch Cabell went something like this:

Professor: "Is he on the syllabus?"

Me: "No; that's why I thought I'd ask y...."

Professor: "Well, that answers your question, then."

The second, a history professor, had a reputation as being an interesting and opinionated lecturer. During a study-abroad trip to the United Kingdom, he apparently couldn't stomach it that I disagreed with him about Irish politics, resulting in a tirade while waiting on a Dublin railway platform in which he accused me of being irresponsible and ungrateful, and then refused to speak to me again the rest of the trip. I guess I can see how political opinions could be called irresponsible, but I still haven't figured out what they have to do with gratitude.

The third was one of the oldest history professors in the school. I thought of him as "the last of the New Dealers", and for all I know he might have entered academia during the Roosevelt administration. His lectures were quite openly biased toward a populist-liberal viewpoint, but he didn't seem to mind when I or other students argued with him. That's a quality I respect more than I respect any overbearing self-appointed Unanswerable Authority.

Still, it would be nice to be one.

I wonder why it's held on April 1st?

Behold the International Edible Book Festival.

(From the Bookfinder Insider mailing list.)

Are you a blogaholic?

Yet another of those lovable internet quizzes.

As for me:

"Your Score: 48 / 100

YOUR SCORE: 48.0% 48.0 points out of 100

AVG SCORE: 42.9% 42.9 points out of 100

12077 people have taken this silly test so far.
4083 people have scored higher than you.
6898 people have scored lower than you.
1096 people made the same grade as you.

What does this mean? *
48 points is in the 21 through 50 precent
You are a casual weblogger. You only blog when you have nothing better to do, which is not very often. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you'd post a little more often, you'd make your readers very happy."

I have to wonder about that last bit. Trebor seems to be getting bored with my postings....

Going antiquing on a grand scale

Thee University scores a coup.

Differentiating "us" from the "enemy"

The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting take on the Pledge-of-Allegiance brouhaha.

Does pledging allegiance to "one nation under God" constitute an "establishment of religion"?

That's the question before the Supreme Court. Interestingly, the plaintiff, Michael Newdow, is not only representing himself, but arguing his first courtroom case. From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

The day in court was clearly dominated by Newdow, an emergency room doctor with legal training but no prior courtroom experience. A lively back-and-forth with the justices' quick legal minds can reduce even the most experienced attorneys' arguments to rubble, but Newdow often appeared to be in control of the debate.

Using a mix of emotional appeal and demonstrated knowledge of the court's precedents, Newdow laid out an argument that the justices seemed to have difficulty attacking.

Newdow even drew an uncharacteristic laugh from the court audience when, in an exchange with Chief Justice William Rehnquist, he argued that Congress' inclusion of the words "under God" in the pledge didn't draw more objection in 1954 because "atheists can't get elected to public office."

Unfortunately, there is a side issue which may muddy the waters and allow the Court to rule on this case while ducking the Big Question:

Terrence Cassidy, the lawyer for Elk Grove, hammered at Newdow's standing to hear the case.

"The question is what is in the best interest of the child, and in custody disputes, the court decides which parents has decision-making power," Cassidy said. Sandra Banning, the mother and legal guardian of Newdow's daughter, is a born-again Christian and doesn't approve of the child's involvement in the case.

It will be an anticlimax if the Supremes duck ruling on the Big Question by hiding behind the fig-leaf of a domestic difference of opinion.

Free speech in Michigan

The Michigan Court of Appeals has dismissed a lawsuit between the Michigan Education Association sued the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market and pro-educational-voucher think tank that frequently criticizes the MEA and argues against its policy positions. More here and here.

The alleged misdeed? The Mackinac Center, in a fund-raising letter, quoted a public statement by the head of the MEA in which he said that he "admired" them. No one disputed that the quotation was accurate. The Mackinac Center acknowledged in the very next sentence that the MEA was generally "at odds" with them. The MEA sued, claiming that the quotation was an invasion of privacy.

The courts, clearly, thought otherwise.

Good show to the courts this time 'round. I find it difficult to imagine how any meaningful political discussion could take place in a legal environment in which public figures could prohibit political opponents, or news media, from quoting them.

Not about heroes

Last night I headed over to A-squared again, this time to see/hear a dramatic reading of a two-person play entitled "Not About Heroes", which portrays the friendship between Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, two of the best of the generation of British poets who were cavalierly tossed into the meatgrinder of WWI trench warfare by pigheaded generals who considered the deaths of a hundred thousand men here or a hundred thousand there to be an everyday, blase occurence. It's a powerful play, closely based on the poems and letters of the two men, and it leaves questions lingering in one's mind.

Sassoon's war poems were read and acknowledged largely because he had demonstrated downright suicidal courage under fire, thus pre-emptively absolving himself of the charge of cowardice. Owen died in one of the very last actions of the war, trying to accomplish the same thing.

Does a person need to be a military veteran, or even a military hero, in order to be considered competent to judge the desirability of war and peace?

And how can a society where decisionmakers are completely insulated from the immediate results of their decisions expect to have any rational decisions made on its behalf?

From the Totally-Missed-the-Point Department:

Couple arrested after 'Passion' fight

Which poem are you?

Which poem are you? Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold You're probably strongly political, and a pacifist. Hey, and you're also slightly depressing. You think a lot of things suck and are pointless. Congratulations!

Click Here to Take This Quiz Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

The full text of "me" can be found here. Rather eerily appropriate -- but then again, I also like this poem.

Readers rejoice!

Silverlock is back in print, in a durable and affordable clothbound edition from NESFA! (Also available on Amazon and BN.)

If you don't know what all the fuss is about, read the Amazon reader comments about an earlier, now-out-of-print edition. Or better yet launch into it blind and discover for yourself what the Commonwealth is all about. It's worth the trip.

Don't get any ideas.

Libraries seem to be magnets for thieves. I've noticed a substantial number of items missing from the shelves of "Huron State U." since starting work here. These are usually items which are currently required textbooks or items which are predictably in high demand among student report-writers, but recently I found that two of the three volumes of an early edition of Whitehead and Russell's Principia Mathematica were inexplicably gone from the shelves. That's a three-digit book on the secondhand market, and it seems unlikely to me that its disappearance is entirely a coincidence, or that they were taken by a student who needed them for a class.

The University of Oregon, in this story, is just the most recent university library to find its property being auctioned off on eBay. Miles Harvey, in The Island of Lost Maps, described in painful detail how a mild-mannered thief with the preposterously appropriate name of Gilbert Bland managed to lift millions of dollars worth of rare and salable old maps from library atlases simply by using WorldCat to locate the libraries that owned them, pretending to be a "scholar" in order to get access to them, and then surreptitiously dismembering them with a razor blade. (Amazingly, several libraries could not even be bothered to return the FBI's telephone calls when Bland was finally caught with a Florida strip-mall store filled with stolen library property.) And of course it's common knowledge to anyone who closely followed the sordid career of Mark Hofmann's forgeries that he 'acquired' appropriately-aged paper for his forgeries by slicing endsheets out of old library books.

It's tempting to say that this means secondhand book buyers should be suspicious of ex-library books and all old maps in internet selling venues; however, I know from firsthand experience how often libraries blithely and ignorantly discard books that are in high demand on the secondhand market. Advocating that such ex-libs be shunned, or that libraries summarily destroy discarded materials in order to prevent confusion between legitimately acquired ex-lib books and stolen ones, would be an intolerable injury to those readers who are savvy enough to know what to look for and where to find the legitimate ones offered for sale. Even an injury to learning itself, if I might wax pompous for a moment.

It's likewise tempting to advocate closing the stacks entirely, but this is financially prohibitive for most institutions, and a serious barrier to usage of the library. However, I note that the one volume of the Whitehead/Russell book which is still in the possession of "Huron State" is the one that was inexplicably placed in non-public storage.

As always, I'm open to suggestions. Perhaps the library world needs to hire someone like this.

(Note: if anyone reads this an takes it as an inspiration to start stealing library books, be warned: If I find out about it, I will hunt you down and take them back.)

Make the pie higher!

Some of you, Gentle Readers, may have already seen the well-known "poem" created from snippets of President Bush's various malapropisms by a Washington Post editorial writer. It was recently forwarded around my place of work, and I've seen it elsewhere. It's quite entertaining; however, being skeptical of the veracity of such things, I turned to the font of all knowledge in such things, the good folks at the Urban Legend Reference Pages.

Somewhat to my surprise, they provide not only an imprimatur of its authenticity, but a detailed analysis of where each phrase came from.

Sadly, the one phrase I thought had real poetic power, "I am a pit bull on the pantleg of opportunity", was the only one for which they could not find a source.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I will point out that some of the phrases in the "poem", although they sound quite bizarre when taken out of context, actually do make a kind of sense in the context of their original appearance. Consider for example "Knock down the tollbooth!" Nonsense, huh? It originally appeared in a speech as follows:

"It's not fair!" Bush exclaims. "It's a tollbooth on the road to the middle class, and I intend not only to reduce the fees but to knock the tollbooth down."

Perhaps not the most elegant phrasing, but it does make a kind of sense as a rhetorical parallel to the "tollbooth" reference in the preceding clause.

"I think we all agree, the past is over" turns out to have been said in the course of politically making-up with an internal Republican Party rival after a bitter primary fight. Again, not elegant, but it sort of makes sense in context.
Likewise with "I know that the human being and the fish can coexist."

However, I'm not even going to try to justify mangled verbiage such as "misunderestimate", "How many hands have I shaked", or "Is our children learning". With those phrases, you're on your own, Mr. President.

Theater thuggery

When I left the State Theater Saturday evening, I noticed that there were police officers and an ambulance near the front door. I didn't find out why until I read this article from the Detroit Free Press.

.... According to police, [Paul] Elrod was talking loudly Saturday night in the State Theater during a showing of "The Triplets of Belleville" when Eisenbach turned around and said "Shush."

Elrod became irate and turned to his wife and said, "Should I bitch-slap this guy?"

He then began talking in Eisenbach's ear, kicking his seat, throwing popcorn and spitting on him. Eisenbach rose and turned to Elrod and said "Excuse me."

Elrod hit him in the face, the pair grappled and Eisenbach was pushed 13 feet down the stairs of the stadium seating-style theater. He suffered fractured ribs, a collapsed lung and cuts.

Book 'im, Dano. And while you're at it, you might want to investigate the fact that he "says he is on disability due to an injured leg."

(See? Sometimes I support the police!)

More news & photos of last weekend's march

Eastern Echo
Michigan Daily
Detroit Free Press
Windchimewalker

Sadly I'm not in any of the photos, which ought to set Trebor's mind at ease.

What's Hindi for "fatwa"?

State to seek extradition of 'Shivaji' author -- Times of India, March 23

MUMBAI: The controversy over American scholar James Laine's book Shivaji: Hindu king in Islamic India took a new turn on Monday with Maharashtra's home minister and state NCP president R R Patil deciding to seek Interpol's help in arresting and bringing the author to Mumbai.

The book is alleged to contain derogatory references to Chhatrapati Shivaji and his mother Jijamata.....

More about the book here and here.

I have to interpret that this as political grandstanding for the benefit of gullible election-year voters, since it seems extraordinarily unlikely that either Interpol or the US government will cooperate with such a ludicrous demand. What, exactly, is the charge? Allegedly libelling someone who's been dead for centuries? The Indian Prime Minister seems to have resisted the tide of mindless fanaticism for a while, but caved in when the howling of the mob became too loud.

If the United Nations or any of its agencies were ever so foolish as to try to enforce extraterritorial enforcement of purely political actions like this, that would be sufficient reason for the U.S. to immediately withdraw.

Editorial note, afternoon of 3/23: Fiend has quite properly pointed out that "fatwa" applies to Islamic religious rulings in general, not just the notorious assassination edicts against authors like Salman Rushdie. Future use of the word will be more precise.

Oh, those wacky Texas Republicans

Here is one of the main reasons Molly Ivins has prospered as a political editorialist. As she acknowledges in her online bio at Creators.com, "covering the Texas Legislature... doubtlessly accounts for her frequent fits of hysterical laughter" and gives her "plenty to write about." And a lot of the entertainment in the Texas Lege comes from ... guess who?

Yep, it's the platform of the good ole Republican Party of Texas, which seems to think that the John Birch Society is a buncha softheaded pinkos. They make such easy targets for satire that it seems almost too cruel to actually take shots at them.

Almost.

Now some of their platform is generic political boilerplate ("God Bless Texas!") and some of it actually incorporates some good ideas, such as the following:

Census The Party opposes any attempt by the United States Census Bureau to obtain any information beyond the number of people residing in the dwelling at the time of the census and in accordance with Article I, Section 2 of the United States Constitution. We strongly support counting each citizen and urge elected officials
to resist taking a census by any other method.

Repeal of Federal War Powers Act A perpetual state of national emergency allows unrestricted growth of government. The Party charges the President to cancel the state of national emergency and charges Congress to repeal the War Powers Act and declare an end to the previously declared states of emergency.

Property Seizure Without Due Process The Party opposes the confiscation or seizure of private property without the benefit of due process. Furthermore, in order to discourage institutional greed and a false sense of fiscal independence from the citizenry, neither law enforcement agencies nor their parent organizations should be allowed to reap any financial benefit from such seizures.

Personal Confidentiality The Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution guarantees the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and that this right shall not be violated. The Party directs that legislation be introduced in both the United States Congress and the State of Texas to repeal existing statutory requirements to end the ever increasing, incessant, recurring, and calculated gathering, accumulation, and dissemination of finger prints, Social Security numbers, financial and personal information of law-abiding citizens by business and governments, the use of which are contrary to and destructive of our individual and collective freedom. Such legislation shall provide remedy and redress to any individual denied service for refusing to provide the above–mentioned information.

However, it sounds like someone's crazy old aunt grabbed hold of the typewriter once the subject shifted to religion. How else to explain the following item?

Christian Nation The Republican Party of Texas reaffirms the United States of America is a Christian nation, which was founded on fundamental Judeo-Christian principles based on the Holy Bible. We also affirm the right of each individual to worship in the religion of his or her choice.

Ah yes.... we all know about the devout Christian orthodoxy of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, right? And although there's a grudgingly tacked-on affirmation of the right to worship, I can't help noting that it's devoid of any right not to worship.

It still perplexes me that a party that purports to defend personal privacy as described above still can't resist the urge to micromanage people's bedroom behavior, but there it is:

Homosexuality The Party believes that the practice of sodomy tears at the fabric of society....

Not that I'm an expert or anything, but, um, isn't that what the KY Jelly is for?

Furthermore, like Rep. Lewis of Kentucky, the party seems to be ignorant of the legal significance of Supreme Court decisions such as Lawrence v. Texas:

Texas Sodomy Statutes The Party opposes the decriminalization of sodomy.

And as for foreign relations? Simple!

United Nations The Party believes it is in the best interest of the citizens of the United States that we immediately rescind our membership in, as well as all financial and military contributions to, the United Nations.

In truth, I could conceivably vote for a party that pursued the more sensible causes outlined here, but abandoned the crazy-eyed theocratic ranting and the disturbingly obsessive insistence on micromanaging the bedroom antics indulged in by the very same individuals over whose privacy in other spheres they purport to have such concern.

But I don't think I could vote for these guys unless they purged the would-be theocrats and bedroom meddlers from their ranks. Not to mention the cynical warmongers and the Enron and Halliburton alumni club. And that's clearly not going to happen any time soon. So I guess I'm stuck voting for (shudder) Democrats or maybe the Libertarians. If I try to vote by principles, the Libertarians probably come closest to a match; however, if I decide to vote on an anybody-but-Bush, get-rid-of-the-bum basis, the Democrat (gag) might be the most viable alternative.

"Call me [your name here]."

Are you looking for literary immortality, but sadly lacking in literary talent? No problem! Just donate money to this charity!

Not worth the trouble

Last week I received an e'mail and telephone call from a community college in Florida to which I had mailed a resume some time ago. They wanted to interview me. However, there were some special conditions. They wanted to do a video interview.

Okay by me. Then they mentioned that the nearest videoconferencing location they could arrange was in Grand Rapids, over two hours' drive away. And the only time they were able or willing to do the interview was at 1:00 p.m. on a Wednesday.

Since I was unwilling to use up a nonexistent vacation day to go driving across the state to sit in a Kinko's copyshop and be interrogated by a rented videocamera, I demurred. We can't do a telephone interview, they said. The video interview is mandatory. Too bad, said I.

This couldn't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I declined to fill out their "voluntary" racial-identification form, could it? Oh well. I never really wanted to live in the Florida swamps anyway.

"For informational purposes only...."

From the high country of Wyoming comes this story: Librarian defends pot-growing how-to book.

I'm with her on this one. It reminds me of a book on the forbidden art of distilling home-made whiskey that I picked up from a library book sale many years ago. I've never put its recipes to use, but it did make it much easier to figure out what had gone on at those old still foundations that can still be found in isolated forest gulches near the old family farm in the Ozarks.

Comics in libraries

Here's a useful webpage about comics and graphic novels for any public librarians that happen to stumble across this page. (Link found, surprisingly enough, on SHUSH, "a website for the conservative librarian".)

One perceptive comment reflects a reality I have observed:

"Bluntly stated, libraries don't buy [comic books] because librarians don't like them."
-- Patrick Jones, Connecting Young Adults and Libraries: A How To Do It Manual, second edition (Neal-Schuman, 1998).

Librarians themselves can be among the most formidable of society's censors. Self-censorship, cloaked as library selection policy, may reflect little more than librarians' biases against certain formats or subject matter.