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.

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....

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.

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.

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.

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?

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".

All the news that fits the preconceptions

Some of you may have read news articles about President Bush appointing a panel to examine the pre-invasion intelligence reports dealing with "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. You may not, however, have read anything about its composition or its schedule.

From MoveOn's "Daily Misleader":

[T]he president will appoint the entire commission himself, breaking the previous tradition of allowing lawmakers from both parties to appoint commission members. Although lawmakers have raised objections to the commission's lack of independence, the White House is moving forward with its plans.

Additionally, despite the fact that the commission's work will be critical to national security, the president will only authorize a commission that produces a report after the election -- so as to minimize any political fallout for himself.

It looks like we can expect another (cough) unbiased report along the lines of Senator Danforth's whitewash... er, "investigation"... of the Waco Branch-Davidian fiasco. If the Bush appointees insist -- against all credulity -- in actually conducting a real investigation, it will no doubt meet the same fate as the inquiry into the September 11 attacks which the Bush White House has mysteriously insisted on stonewalling at every turn.

Thanks to Louise, my sole remaining blogfriend, for the link.

Bye to Biblioblog

Carlos has drawn the curtains on his Biblioblog. I'm sorry to see this, because I've enjoyed reading the thoughtful conservative viewpoint he brings to LibraryLand. If you change your mind, Carlos, let me know. If it's the tiresome schedule of daily posting that's getting to you, you could always to what I do and just post whenever you feel like it, with lordly disdain for such tiresome things as schedules.

Without the Biblioblog, I have only one "friend" to list on my sidebar.

Apply for the mystery job!

I think I'd want a little more information first....

Perhaps they should try smuggling rabbits instead?

Cubans sailing vintage car caught off Florida.

Up a creed without a paddle

I thought about applying for this position... until I read more about the institution.

Among their Faculty Membership Requirements, one finds such gems as the following:

1. [X] College faculty members are required to subscribe to three historic Reformed “forms of unity”—the Beligic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dordtrecht—and pledge to teach, speak, and write in harmony with the confessions....

2. [X] College faculty members are required to be active members in good standing of a congregation in the Christian Reformed Church or a denomination in “ecclesiastical fellowship” with the CRC as defined by the CRC Synod....

3. [X] College faculty members are expected to support and promote Christian education at all levels and are normally required to provide their children with Christian schooling for grades K-12. Schools affiliated with the Christian Schools International (an association of parent-run schools with traditional ties to the CRC community) are expected to be the primary schools of choice, though exceptions are usually granted for home schooling or enrollment in non-CSI Christian schools....

A search of old issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education brought forth even more entertaining bits. To wit:

Howard J. Van Till, a now-retired physics professor at [X] College, had an even more grueling experience when he published The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us About Creation (Eerdmans, 1986). The administration had no problem with his writings, but angry members of the denomination objected to his support of evolutionary theory and his suggestion that biblical texts had been strongly influenced by the cultures in which they were written.

Under pressure, the college's Board of Trustees formed an investigative committee. The situation soon turned Kafkaesque. For three and a half years, Mr. Van Till met with the group monthly to explain his theological views. "As the years of questioning and interrogating continued, the arena of concern just got larger and larger," he recalls, "until it became a test of the entirety of my theological position."

This, Pablo, is why I'm wary of "creedal" churches and other institutions that demand unthinking obedience to sets of bylaws concocted by earthly religious authorities. They never content themselves with merely reiterating basic religious principles; oh no, they must dictate everything, up to and including dictating what schools people are "allowed" to send their children to and what results a researcher is allowed to find. ("What Would Galileo Do?")

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't fit in there for the same reason that I'd make a lousy Catholic, Mormon, or fundamentalist of any stripe. I'm just not very good at that whole mindless-obedience, marching-in-lockstep thing. It's rather sad that these people are so determined to raise their children as intellectual cripples who have never seriously confronted a single foreign idea.

Google amongst the academics

This article from the Seattle Times (Google for a Grade : UW class to study popular search engine) has excited a certain amount of discussion on a library listserv to which I subscribe. From the article:

Using their interest in research and technology as a backdrop, the 50 students who finish [Professor Joseph] Janes' class in March will have to determine whether Google is in fact good or whether researchers' reliance on such a simple and one-sided search tool is degrading the quality of research.

I wonder: will he require them to document the use of non-Googled sources for their research?

Doubt : a history, by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Here's yet another book I may have to read. From the Washington Post's review:

For instance, Xenophanes, another of the pre-Socratics, argued that the gods of mythology must be human inventions. The Ethiopians posited black gods, while the gods of the red-haired Thracians were, unsurprisingly, red-haired. If horses and oxen had hands and could draw, he dryly remarked, they would draw their gods as great horses and oxen. Xenophanes suggested what Montaigne insisted on 2,000 years later: The exclusive authority claimed by competing religions cannot be taken seriously; their myths derive from obviously local sources, and their truth claims cancel each other out....

Montaigne, as it happens, thought that disagreements among scientists showed that science was as much a cultural construction as religion, and ought therefore to be treated with skepticism.

Hang on, Sloopy!

An amusing piece of legalese.

Censorship and consolidation

Last year, the FCC dismissed concerns about the effects of media consolidation on the diversity of viewpoints available to Americans. They were overwhelmingly vindicated this year, when CBS even-handedly accepted ads from all political viewpoints during the Super Bowl.

Oh, wait a minute. They didn't.

The network refused to let political activist group MoveOn buy airtime for an ad that criticizes the Bush administration's runaway deficit spending. That's political issue advocacy, said CBS, and, gosh, we can't allow that kind of stuff on the air. (Meanwhile, an ad from the Bush White House was run in its place.)

Another ad, from PETA, was also banned:

"We just want to be able to present our jiggly women," said Lisa Lange, spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, asking to join advertisers like beer brewers who has boosted sales with images of scantily-clad women . -- from Planet Ark

CBS claimed that PETA's ad "raises significant taste concerns and has strong potential to offend significant numbers of viewers." I guess that's a privilege that CBS reserves for itself.

This story has actually received a fair amount of press over the last few days, and CBS has been on the receiving end of well-deserved jeers. What's less well reported is the fact that such bias is widespread and routine in the broadcast world, and is significantly restricting, even warping, the view of the world that is available to people who receive most of their information from broadcast media.

Adbusters, an activist group that criticizes and mocks consumerist "culture", has routinely been banned from purchasing airtime by all major broadcast networks (other then CNN, which acquiesced after some initial resistance.) The litany of reasons given for banning their ads ("Big Mac Attack", "Buy Nothing Day", etc.) is as damning as it is, occasionally, funny:

"We can't advertise something that's too controversial.... [w]e're a network and we're loyal to our advertisers." -- MTV

"[F]or a broadcast TV network things like boycotting television and anti-consumerism might not go over very well with our other advertisers." -- Fox Broadcast Corporation

"The character is seen burping." -- Channel 5, France

-- from Jan/Feb issue of Adbusters magazine

Now I recognize that a private business has the right to make decisions about what viewpoints it wishes to express, and isn't obligated to provide a soapbox to everyone who has an idea to shout out. But what about a marketplace where the availability of soapboxes is limited by artificial scarcity imposed by a government agency, as when broadcasting licences are controlled by the FCC? And is consolidation and centralized control of those scarce soapboxes, under any aegis, a good thing? (Discuss amongst yourselves, please.)

Progress down under

While the U.S. persists in abandoning and scrapping railroad lines even as traffic increases and railroads experience "traffic meltdowns" with distressing frequency, the Aussies are laying new rails and adding new trains to the schedule. Maybe the folks Down Under know something the American bigwigs have forgotten.

Choice the screen as right....

One of the gifts I received at Christmas is an external hard drive for my computer. Sadly, the instruction manual seems to have been written by one of those legendary typing monkeys:

Step 1: Click on [start], choice the [control panel] in [setting],double click [system] and open [hard disk]. A screen appears as right.

"Step 2: You can see the USB2.0 hard Disk you just add. High light the USB Hard Disk and choice the [property], select [setting]. setting the USB2.0 Hard Disk to [removable].

"Step 3: After restart the system, a removable HDD is added to [My Computer] . Choice the removable HDD and click right bottom of mouse. Select the [format] to format your USB2.0 Hard Disk Drive.....

Unfortunately, none of the above results in the computer acknowledging the drive, either "after restart the system" or before, no matter what I "choice", no matter whether I "click right bottom of mouse" or somewhere else. I expect that I and their telephone technical-support staff will be spending much productive time together.

Political preconceptions

It's interesting to watch people making assumptions right before your eyes.

Last week, while I was chatting with one of my colleagues at the reference desk, he casually asked me: "So, who are you voting for in the Democratic primary?"

It's apparently inconceivable that anyone working at a university could be anything other than a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

Little does he know that I am a secret servant... er, campaign worker... of Cthulhu For President! ("Why vote for a lesser evil?") I particularly like the Great Old One's statement of political positions ("Eat Them Up, Yum!"), and his associates' "Look-and-Feel" lawsuit against the Thing That Came From Redmond.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!

Back from the Sunny Shore

Again, I've been delinquent about posting, but due to overwhelming public demand (thanks, Carlos), I'm back to harass, harangue, and generally blather away from my little virtual soapbox-in-the-ether.

I enjoyed the trip to California, although I quickly realized that the comfort level on crowded, long-distance late-night "cattle car" flights between major cities was going to be very different from what I was accustomed to on shorter and less crowded flights. I also realized that I much prefer flying out of small airports like those at this or thisrather than overcrowded, Dante-esque multi-terminal places like LA International. The Detroit Metro Airport is somewhere in between the two extremes, being fairly new, spacious, and more-or-less logically laid out.

Being trapped in LAX for eternity, with no boarding pass or means of leaving the airport, would be a fair approximation of Hell.

"Saint Barbie" is a very pretty town, but as usual, there's a catch. The median house price is about $550K, and the oh-so-chic residents have passed all kinds of entertaining laws to govern themselves. Among them is a requirement that all construction -- even a Burger King -- must be Spanish Colonial. Now I have nothing particularly against courtyards, or stucco walls, or tile roofs, but an entire city built in a uniformly "cute" architectural style is uncomfortably reminiscent of The Village. And, of course, there are precious few library jobs that will permit one to shell out a mil or two for a house. Most of the people who work in the library seem to commute for an hour or two each morning, and back again in the evening.

Talking with the folks at the library early on the morning of the interview quickly revealed that they were particularly interested in presentations involving electronic show-and-tell, so I scrapped the presentation I had planned to do (for which I was going to rely heavily on verbal interaction, handouts, etc.) and improvised a talk about a subject for which I had prepared an electronic research guide which was accessible on the Internet. I easily managed to fill the allotted time, since it was on a subject in which I have a particular personal interest, but not in a terribly organized fashion. Time will tell what the search committee thought about it.

Saturday was devoted to seeing the sights of Saint Barbie. The South Coast Railroad Museum, in a relocated depot building about a mile from the university, has a model railroad display depicting S.B. when it was a division point yard on the Southern Pacific's Coast Line, as well as a somewhat larger "model railroad" and other exhibits. Unfortunately, although the model railroad looks like it could be operated so as to duplicate the actual operations of the SP, I was informed that it's rarely used for anything but round-and-round display operation nowadays. The Mission and Presidio in were interesting, if a bit crowded in their built-up urban setting, and the State Street shopping district yielded a few interesting restaurants and bars, although the high rents have apparently driven out all the secondhand bookstores, leaving only the Two Big B's. (Those who think that I stood on principle and refused to buy anything from the B's don't know me very well.) A little Thai restaurant supplied a lamb curry with a fieriness balanced exquisitely on the line between pleasure and pain, and a glass of a locally-brewed pale ale provided a nice cool-and-sharp counterpoint. A few dubious business concepts made me shake my head, as when something called Bogart's Bar advertised "genuine Irish style".

Guess I didn't know His Coolness was Irish. (Shakes head, walks on down the street....)

Sunday was devoted to driving around aimlessly to see if I could find any place less grossly overpriced. The crooked, challenging highways through the startlingly jagged coastal mountain range were fun to drive, especially since the rental outfit at the airport had supplied me with a sexy black Mustang instead of the dowdy four-door midsize car I'd reserved. This sleek, sable FelixMobile surely struck fear into the hearts of other drivers on the road, especially when its driver suddenly realized that he needed to be three lanes over on the highway, or decided on the spur of the moment to veer into one of the sightseers' roadside parking spots overlooking a precipitous coastal cliff. It was almost cool enough that I could hold my head up amongst the ubiquitous Porsches and Beemers and Hummers.

"Saint Inez", located about twenty miles inland, proved to be almost as overpriced as Saint Barbie. A kindly and condescending real estate agent advised me to try about twenty or thirty miles further west, near the air force base. While eating a chicken-and-brie sandwich at a local winery/restaurant, I listened to the local horsey set chat about their concerns. The waiter was Hispanic and very obsequious. The historical society across the street was exquisitely decorated, hushed, and watched over by a very dignified lady who made it quite clear that she had better things to do than chat with the hoi polloi. While I was there, a nervous-looking blonde, in high heels and dressed to the nines, arrived for her appointment to discuss volunteering. Meanwhile, I looked over their well-preserved and/or professionally-restored collection of 19th-century carriages and stagecoaches and peered in the windows of what must be the world's smallest public library (a frame building, about 10 feet square, open only on Saturdays from 2 to 5).

The nearby "Saint Inez" mission was well-preserved, but between the Mass in progress and the sign (like the one in Saint Barbie) demanding a $4.00 ticket for a "self-guided tour", I decided I'd pass on anything more than a cursory walk around its exterior.

It's just as well. "Purity" Mission, out in a less crowded area, was a knockout by comparison. Less successful as a mission, it's more successful as a historical site. After being abandoned in the 1800's, it fell into ruins and was reconstructed as a historical site in the 1930's by the CCC, complete with rebuilt irrigation channels, animal corrals, workrooms, gardens, etc. I could easily have spent all day wandering around the place, and I couldn't help but think that it would be the ultimate site for a live-action Old West roleplaying game. Turns out that, according to one of the park rangers, it is in fact used as a set for television and film scenes from time to time.

(Feel free to make comments about me preferring churches as historical artifacts over churches as living institutions....)

This nearby town looked like a place I might be able to afford to live in, although by this time it was too late in the day to find any apartment leasing offices open. So I drove out to the local beach -- much more attractive, and cleaner, than the ones near Saint Barbie, with an Amtrak depot and railroad junction to boot! Unfortunately, although it was open on the day I visited, it seems one cannot count on that always being true.

Closed the day by following the Lompoc Branch of the railroad back to town, noting several modelable features (short length, attractive scenery including fields of commercially-grown flowers in addition to the aforementioned beachfront junction with the mainline, and a small-town terminal with a steeply-climbing switchback spur up San Miguelito Canyon to a plant producing diatomacious earth), then driving back to Santa Barbie via the incredibly constricted Gaviota Pass, which still looks much like this picture, except that the highway has been expanded by blasting a tunnel through one of the rock walls of this geographical chokepoint. I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to commute along such a highway for an hour in and an hour back every weekday, especially if several hundred other people are having to make the same commute.

Gaviota Beach, where a towering iron trestle carries the Coast Line over the beach and a long fishing pier reaches out into the Pacific, seemed like a good place to watch the sun set and have a beer, after which it was back to the SB airport for an 8:00 departure. Or so I thought. When I got there, the folks at the United ticket counter, due to some unspecified problem with their scheduled flight, were frantically shunting all their ticketholders over to the American counter for transfer to an earlier flight. Okay. Despite being tagged for "special treatment" by the baggage-searchers, I managed to make the flight, but without a boarding pass for the connecting flight out of LAX.

Fortunately the "Northwest Club" staff at LAX were able to print me one with a minimum of delay, but they quietly made it clear that non-First Class riffraff were not quite welcome there, so I waited among the crowds of people waiting for an Air New Zealand flight.

My plan to sleep on the overnight flight back to Michigan worked about as well as you might expect, and arriving at 5:30 a.m. local time left me about as dazed as you might expect at work the next day... and the next.

And so back to normal. Or what passes for it.