Watching Charlie Wilson's War

I did go to a movie on Christmas, since I managed to get out of baking a cake and we all had some time on our hands. We decided on Charlie Wilson's War after a short debate about seeing that or Juno. I'll probably go to Juno with Kelly anyway, so this worked out well.

It was a pretty good flick, as far as dark comedies with superstars go. Mom didn't find it funny (which doesn't surprise me), but Nick & I did. I know that some reviewers have been put off by the quick roundup of the lack of support for Afghanistan at the end of the move (and the war against the Soviets), and I also felt that it missed something at the end. But it wasn't the tacked on bits about the Zen master and the unintended consequences of ditching your "allies." Instead, it was the naive manner with which they portrayed Wilson at the end. I mean, come on! this guy had been in Congress for a while; I can hardly believe he really was surprised that everyone would just walk away once there were no more Soviet helicopters to bomb. He really never asked "so, what happens once the war's over?" during the course of rounding up weapons and money? Geez.

But, then again, maybe that really is how it was. It's the "what happens next" that gets you in trouble, and that's what people always ignore until it's too late. I was reading something stupid in Commentary today about "no one" anticipating something or other (I can't remember exactly what it was . . . perhaps it was the rise of the Taliban and their anti-US stance). And all I could think was: get real, plenty of people could see this coming.

So, if anyone is surprised by any of the following, I'm just going to tell them they are an idiot in no uncertain terms. And this is a short list, so there may be many other idiots coming:

• Civil War in Pakistan


• Violent ethnic/religious uprising in India, goaded by the BJP


• Ethiopia getting bogged down in a two front war


• The entrenchment of al Qaeda in North Africa, including more bombings in Algeria, and probable violence in places such as Morocco, Sudan, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia


• Growing charges of authoritarianism and diminishing democracy in South Africa, along with political instability caused by Zimbabwe's economy and SA's support of Mugabe


• Housing-based recession (in several other OECD countries as well as the US), with increasing disparity between the middle class and the rich, along with a strong push to free states from balanced budget requirements

Who knows if any of these will happen. Just saying that we shouldn't be surprised if they do.

Now, what will really surprise me? Whatever Americans choose to dump all of their money into next. They've done stocks and houses. I just can't quite wrap my head around what they'll pick next. Art/antiques/collectibles, gold, and foreign currencies are the three that seem most accessible, but they also don't seem very likely to snag more than a few true believers. There's got to be something that will fill all those get-rich-quick desires and then explode into a giant catastrophe by 2014. But what?

Video IM Disasters

For whatever reason I can't get the video IM to work on Windows Messenger. It's very annoying.

So, to cheer myself up, I've turned Saskia into a LOLcat.


moar funny pictures

I'm sure she'd be horrified if she used the internet.

Nothing like working after a holiday . . .

Boy was today one of the quietest days on record at work - even worse than last Friday. At least I got part of my desk cleaned up.

And I'm still getting over my inability to get a new water heater. Here's hoping the old one manages to survive until we can get all the plumbing updated. And Sears better get my credit card bill refunded soon, or I'm going to get pissed!

And in my bit of complaining, I want to say that I'm really sick of getting DVDs of shows through Netflix and only having 2 episodes! I know this isn't Netflix's fault, but it's freaking annoying to have to get five separate discs just to watch 13 episodes. Somebody tell Al Gore how wasteful it is!

Next, a Water Heater

Well, I'm nearly done with replacing nearly every major appliance in my house. The new water heater should be installed on Friday, and then I should be able to take a breather and actually spend money on making my house look better.

I'm seriously sick of home maintenance.

And the cat's keep attacking my holiday decorations. I think I need some people revenge--like this:
Some days I can has cheezburger is the only thing that makes me smile . . .

Cat Vacation & A New Oven

Well, the kitties are on their mini vacation (it's listed on their very own google calendar - they're very up to date technologically). I hope they don't hate me too much when I pick them up tomorrow.

The new oven is here! It looks a lot like the old one, but we managed to get this one level. Now we're waiting for the fridge. It should be here within the hour. That will also have to be leveled and somehow crammed into the back hall closet. To get the old one out, we had to take off the doors (of the fridge and the entryway). You can see the fridge door in the picture below. Oh, the joys of old homes. . .

At least the plants love it. I've got more African Violet blooms coming, and the Christmas Cactus that used to be at my grandparents is blooming once again. I wasn't sure it'd like my house as much as their apartment, and despite blooming like mad late last winter, here it is, blooming again. And this time it's just in time for Christmas!

Things you hear in the shower in the wee hours of the morning.

As per the usual, I was listeng to MPR in the shower when Marketplace Morning Report came on. It was about the mortgage crisis (of course), and in almost a passing fashion they mentioned that Moody's was predicting a 30% reduction in home values by 2009.

30%!!!

I'm gonna have to pull out my secret librarian powers and try to corroborate that one, 'cuz it just seems too remarkable to be true. A 30% reduction in home prices would send the Twin Cities market back to some time in 1999 or 2000!

While prices have gone a bit crazy in the last few years, it's hard to imagine that a median home in the Twin Cities is actually only going to be worth about $145,000 in two years. If you imagine that a home should cost about 3 times the buyer's income, that would put the median home at cheaper than the median household income in this town can afford. Now, that just doesn't seem quite right . . . especially since a big chunk of the bottom of the income scale doesn't buy any homes.

And if it were true, we're in for a shaky few years. My guess is that there is a huge chunk of the home-owning crowd who has at least 70% of their home value in the form of a mortgage or other loan. Loosing that much ground would send thousands of people upside down in the lending sense. Would banks foreclose? What a mess that would be.

To be honest, even in the most heated housing markets on the coasts, it's hard to imagine a 30% drop in prices. If you could buy a house in Santa Barbara for $6-700,000 there would be a mad dash - and rising prices once again.

So, I wonder how the other parts of the first world who have crazy housing markets are doing. Do they watch news reports of our downturn and wonder about their own fates? England has already had a run on a bank (how It's a Wonderful Life of them), and Australia's booted their PM. Seems it could just get more turbulent at any moment. . .

North American Union?

Seems that the Ron Paul crowd is all worked up about the possibility of a North American Union. They're out in force to ridicule a recent article posted on Newsweek, which doesn't take the threat of a European Union-style multinational government very seriously.

So, they're concerned about a government based on border-crossing highways, a single currency, free movement of goods and people between states, and a unified system of tarrifs? Well folks, we already got it. The Founding Fathers thought it up.

Maybe these folks miss the days of Michigan and Ohio fighting their own wars, or multiple currencies across the many colonies. Can't say that I do.

I gotta wonder, what exactly do these folks think would happen if we joined a union with Canada and Mexico? (Not that it's likely - there's too great a social and economic divide to even imagine it right now.) Personally, I think an open border and single currency would be a real boon to the Mall of America, since it would be easier for Canadians to spend money there . . . especially when the dollars are proportioned as they are. Besides, we're already crawling with illegal Canadians. They're hard to ferret out!

The Cake that Broke my Oven

Here's the guilty cake. It was pretty tasty, though.

The Green Thumb Strikes Again!

Apparently, ignoring plants is one of the best things you can do for them. This orchid was handed to me after it had given its flowers to a wedding bouquet. (It had also been damaged when a closing door snapped both the stems and the sticks supporting them.) I stuck it in my east window along with all of my happy African Violets and basically forgot about it, except for weekly waterings of course.

It spent all summer growing a new leaf, and I periodically wondered if it should be repotted, if the stems should be trimmed off, or if I should move it to a new location. But I never bothered to do anything.

And now, if you look at the stem on the left you'll see that it's growing a new stem. It looks like I may actually get blooms! And the cats must find the taste horrible, since the orchis has no nibble marks, unlike the snake plants that are contantly ragged and stringy from chewing.

Plus, the mini African Violet looks like it's getting ready to bloom again. Boy, there's nothing like an east window. I'll post pictures of them both in bloom if they ever get there.

Mazel Tov, Snow, Burns, Broken Ovens, and Alarms

Today, while waiting for the light rail, I noticed some interesting graffitti in the shelter: someone had scratched "mazel tov" into the plastic window. It made me laugh a little.

I was in the shelter because it's showing like mad out there right now. Which concerns me a little, since I baked the equivalent of 4 cakes yesterday (they are in the form of one two tiered cake and one sheet cake). Those cakes need to be driven to a party, and there better be at least 50 people there to eat them!

In the process of baking those cakes I was burned by a hot pan I was trying to hand to mom. And I was so focused on finishing the cakes that I didn't stop to run cold water on the burn.
Why was mom involved with the cake baking? Because my oven died. Right after I finished baking the first 10 inch layer (I thought it took a long time to bake). I guess I should have expected this - it was a "hot" oven by about 76 degrees, so obviously something was terribly wrong with it.

So now I get to shop for a new stove(we fixed this one once before - not again when a new one is only a bit more expensive than a repair bill). Hopefully I won't set off any alarms in Sears like I did this morning in the Skyways.

I tried to take a peek at what was in the window of the Nina Bliese Gallery, and suddenly the alarm is blaring. No one seemed to care, so it may still be squeeling away when I finish my reference shift.

Now all I have to do is successfully transfer a two tiered cake to Rosemount and decide what finish I want for a new stove. But that means I have to figure out what I want for countertops too . . . ack, so many decisions!

I'm on Facebook now

Yep, there I am. I've been thinking about doing it for a while, because it seems that as long as everyone is so gaga over it, I might as well know what it is.

What it is, is a mess. There doesn't seem to be much of anything there that you can't do in other ways (what is a wall except a cross between email and IM?), most of what is there is pretty lame, and once you have much on your page, it's suddenly as messy as my dining room table after I've left Nick home alone for a week.


So, we'll give it a go and see if it's still worth any time once the novelty of getting new friends wears off. Perhaps I'll fall in love with Scrabulous. For the moment, I'm still feeling that banking is the online activity I like best.

Stupid 2.0 is more interactive!

Yesterday was the SLA libraries 2.0 talk from Stephen Abram. Not much new, and I always leave these sorts of 2.0 talks wondering "who cares?" I mean, it's just more ways to be just as we are. So, now I have a facebook account, on top of my IM account, on top of my personal blog, on top of my work blog, on top of my Bloglines account, on top of my Flickr and YouTube accounts, on top of my Citeulike and Delicious accounts. And does this actually make my life easier/better/more interesting? Not really.

And does it make us any smarter, or at least better informed? I'm still waiting to see evidence of that. I think of my great grandfather reading the Congressional Record on his farmstead in rural Montana, and boy, that's a lot more informed than your average Delicious user. Just think, in 1860 when the Confederates attacked Fort Sumpter everyone thought the war would be quick, easy, over in a month or two. Now, after the invention of the telephone, the interstate highway system, email, cell phones, IM, Twitter, and on and on, the vast majority of Americans believed in March 2003 that war would be quick, easy, over in a month or two. Seems to me we just get to spread our flawed opinions in a slightly faster, and more digital manner. So we learned of the 2005 Tsunami in minutes and it took hours for people to hear about the eruption of Krakatoa? Did that really change anyone's response? (Oh, I would have cared, but this news is six hours old!)

French class seems much more informative and useful. And it's SOOOO 1.0. We actually sit around a classroom, read from a textbook, and attempt to form sentences in front of each other. C'est la vie! (Which reminds me, I do intend to practice my tiny bit of French in a blog post one of these days. Beware French speakers, there will be butchering of your tongue!)

What a busy month!

Seems like a whirlwind! I barely got back from Orlando and I was out the door to New York. Back from New York and it's time to drive across Wisconsin for the holidays. Add in oral surgery (boy, fake bone is expensive and painful), and you've got one packed (and expensive) month.

That's why I don't feel bad about letting Nanowrimo slide. I beat last year's total, so at least that's good.

So, here's me at the New York Public Library.

Vodcast from the Tap

5,000 baby!

I can barely believe it! I've made it past the 5,000 mark on just day two. If I can push ahead to a strong finish this weekend, I may actually be able to finish my 50,000 by the end of the month without spending the entirety of Thanksgiving writing.

And, let me tell you, writing this terrible prose is almost as bad as reading it.

Will it work this year?

Once again I'm trying to do NaNoWriMo. We'll see if this year is any better than last. I've already beat last year's total, but that was pretty easy with only 1600 words in last year's novel.

It's certainly terrible this year, but it's more fun to write. So maybe I'll get to 25,000 this time. I'm not counting on winning yet, that's for sure.

Colloquium Fun!

Here I am in Orlando . . . working the long hours and eating hotel food. I'm almost halfway through, and the suite is nice. But I'm here so little, it's almost not worth it. Tonight I'm sitting in the living area, watching tv #2, just so I can feel like I'm getting the full use of the room!
I've been swimming in the pool two nights so far. I think it's a colloquium record for the librarians!
And now for a funny picture from icanhascheezburger.

Boy, talk about being a Librarian!

Today I finally posted my weird database search experience on one of the listservs I'm on. One day I was searching for information about SWOT analyses and I went into ProQuest's ABI/INFORM. Since I didn't want to see any actual company SWOT analyses--I was interested in finding articles that explain the process--I did a very basic search so that I could identify the marker of a company SWOT and figure out how to remove them from a second search. To do that I searched just SWOT. I thought that would be simple, and then I got my results back.

Sure, there were some articles out of the 3000 that used the word SWOT. But the vast majority were highlighting a few different, and very unusual, words instead: wonk, nerd, and grind. What the heck was going on? At first I thought that the database just didn't like my acronym, but a search for TQM was spot on. Then I became more puzzled.

The other librarians couldn't give me an answer (okay, they laughed at me). So I brought it to the listserv, and then suddenly it all started to make sense. One of the librarians mentioned that Swot is British slange for a nerdy person. Now I had a link between swot and nerd. Well, it stands to reason that wonk can be viewed in the same light. We use wonk almost exclusively in it's policy wonk form, but it may actually be a broader term.

But GRIND? That required an internet search, and lo and behold, after all the dirty slang usages is a much tamer one: someone who is mocked for being too studious. So, there you go. ABI/INFORM, which is set at our library to search related terms, has gone a little overboard. It's now adding british slang to BUSINESS SEARCHES! Someone there has got to have a weird sense of humor (humour).

Speaking of odd humor from across the pond: Tristram Shandy rocks so far!

Back in the Groove

Since my last post was all about keeping my energy consumption low, I think it's appropriate to start up my posting again with a bit of an energy complaint. There is some numbnut at Walgreens who goes out every morning at 7 a.m. (I know because I'm standing at the bus stop at that hour) and starts up his obnoxious leaf blower. Now, it's not just annoying because of the hour, and because it's a mostly pointless endeavor, but these days he's out there making a ruckus when it's RAINING! He can't possibly be accomplishing anything - everything is plastered to the ground! It's just noise for noise's sake.
At least I'm back to reading with some sort of regularity. For so long I was reading almost nothing but newspapers and the economist. I ended up with $11.50 in fines at the library (largely for books I didn't read), and my list was looking really pathetic. Almost no books read all summer!
Part of the problem was what I was reading. It just hasn't been a good summer for books for me. Not since Cat's Cradle in the spring, really. So I just got a Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart (not his best, I have to admit), but it was just good enough to get me back to normal. That's especially good since my last novel for fun was The Countess of Dellwyn by Henry Fielding's not-so-talented sister Sarah. The first chapter was fantastic. And then it sucked. For ... four ... whole ... books. At least it was only two hundred pages of yuck, and I plowed through to make way for Murakami.
Now I can start Tristram Shandy, which was available from the library in a very handy purse-sized edition from the '50s. It's 600 pages, but they should be fun pages, and the tissue-like pages are light enough to make it on the bus every day. If only I could bring myself to hack War and Peace into little pieces - I love what I've read so far, but I just can't stand carrying it around. The first 100 pages nearly threw my back out! What I wouldn't give for an original serialized version in a magazine . . . maybe the Economist. And then all would be perfect!

I Made It!

Since it's the end of September, I think I can say that I've officially made it through the year without putting in the air conditioner at home. Although we didn't have any record-breaking temperatures this year, we did have more 90+ days than usual. Quite impressive, if you ask me. All that money I saved on electricity - I am betting it's actually more than the extra cost of the water I used to keep my new plantings alive through the drought. Now, if the bonsai tree makes it through the winter (and the rabbits don't eat my poor little bushes), it'll be a pretty successful year for the garden!

Hmmmm -

Okay, as I was writing the last post I noticed my Economist Pocket World in Figures. I may have become slightly addicted to it, but it has such interesting tidbits.

The US is 9th in GDP per person and 12th in car ownership. New Zealand is both the top country in terms of car ownership per person, and also tops on the environmental performance index. The US has by far the largest rail network in the world, but we don't even register in the top 20 for rail passengers. The Germans beat Americans in terms of tourist dollars spent, and that's total dollars, not per person! With only 83 million people, I wonder how many are on vacation at any given time . . .

Bonjour, Messieursdames!

I'm not sure why it's been so long since my last post. I guess I've been a bit busy since French class started. Even with only one night a week, it still takes away from the little free time I have. Still, I'm really enjoying it.

I'm also going to blame the Economist, which I spend far too much time reading. And then to top it off, I've started reading books that are reviewed in the Economist. It's a bit inbred.

Boy, this is a dull post. To spice it up, check out the new ad campaign by Wyoming Libraries. Very funny, and it's caused quite a stir in the library listservs.

Duck in Duluth!

Photo Montage

Wedding Video

Dangers along the Mississippi

Here we are, just a few days since two sewer workers were swept to their deaths in the Mississippi, and another disaster has hit the river. I was at Dairy Queen when someone told us that the 35W bridge collapsed. I never drive along that stretch (I stick mostly south of the river in Mpls, and far east of 35W in St. Paul), so I actually had to look at a map before I was sure of where it was.
People keep saying that you just don't see that type of thing in Minnesota. It's repeated over and over by witnesses in the Strib. But obviously it can, and apparently does happen here. Maybe that's part of the problem. You always hear Minnesotans saying that the bad things that happen elsewhere just can't happen here: no earthquakes like San Francisco or hurricanes like New Orleans. Only tornadoes, which never take out major portions of infrastructure. Perhaps our sense that it won't ever happen to us has made us complacent about our civic works. Or maybe you just can't ever be sure, and no amount of monitoring or engineering will make it perfect. Every bridge is a one-off affair, and we can't crash test them like a minivan.
It's remarkable how much you just have to trust that the things around you will work. As if I don't get nervous enough riding along on the lower section of the Washington Ave bridge as it is! Tomorrow will probably be twice as crowded and just as creepy.
Check out the Strib's photo gallery.

"The longest and the shortest wedding I've ever been to."

After a tense 45 minutes waiting for a judge who never arrived, Dad called Pastor Dan and the wedding went on as planned only an hour and half late. Then, ten minutes later, it was over. If not for that one snag, it all would have gone as planned.
Since we 'crowd sourced' a lot of the wedding activities, it'll be a little while before I have a picture album to link here. We're waiting for pictures to be uploaded and emailed around. I"ll then pick the best - there are already over 160 photos. Also, Kelly needs some time before she can get the video done. I hope to have that online relatively soon!
For now, you can see an initial selection of photos at my shutterfly album.

Hello Visitors!

Now that I have the Clustermap, I've become a bit obsessed with my far-flung visitors. How do they come here? What do they think? I've had the ability to see who's coming in via Sitemeter for a while, but it wasn't until I had that array of red dots growing on my map that I really began to become excited. It's just a shame that I added the map after the visits from Brazil and Australia. I keep hoping for representation from every continent!
If you stumble upon (well, I'm sure you can't find me through Stumble Upon) my blog from elsewhere, go ahead a post a short comment. This is just a blog, after all. And as long as you don't fill up too much space, it'd be interesting to hear from you. That goes for my friends who visit as well.

Beating the Heat

Even with temps hitting the mid nineties, and a heat index over 100, we're still only 86 inside. If we can keep this up, we might make it the whole summer without hauling up the air conditioner! Although I think it is starting to mess with my body - I just have enough time at night to get accustomed to the heat and then I have to sit all day in the freezing air conditioning. And just hauling the sweater home the half mile from the bus stop makes my poor arm sweaty. . .

Universal Careful

I'm a fan of universal health care in the countries that have it - it seems to work great for them. But at heart I'm a realist (pessimist, perhaps) about what is possible, and I just can't see universal health care working in the United States. Not because there's something fundamentally wrong with a single government system (it's got flaws, of course, but so does every other system), but because there are some fundamental aspects to Americans themselves that can't be ignored.

1) Universal Health Care is expensive. Of course European countries pay less in total for their health care (and it's reasonable to say that many of those countries provide better care to the bulk of their populations than we do), but their costs are all lumped in one big number. Americans pay piecemeal, and piecemeal means we never have to see the whole cost. Heck, most Americans couldn't tell you what the total employer plus employee costs are for their own health insurance, let alone the entire nation. And with 300 million people, the total cost of American universal health care would be phenomenally huge. We can't wrap our head around the cost of the Iraq War (200 billion or so really isn't that much). Can you imagine 1.2 billion for health insurance every year!?! (That's the cost if we spent what Ethiopia does per person for health care.) How about a more reasonable number - say we pared down to just $4400 for each of us (what a former employer said was their cost), we'd hit $1,320,000,000,000! Of course that's less than we spend now, with all of our varied plans or lack of them, but that's beside the point. That many zeroes would sap a lot of public support fast.

2) It's easy to underfund. England's been doing it for ages, and the U.S. has a fine history of underfunding all sorts of things. We're busy underfunding Katrina relief as I write today. With the giant numbers of the previous point to back them up, the more conservative and libertarian members of Congress would be happy to cut, slash, and drown the whole system in a bathtub. Europe doesn't have the same political culture - and we shouldn't forget that.

3) Government programs are a favorite way to control others' moral lives. Food stamps are full of rigid rules because we can't imagine the poor ever deciding for themselves, and universal health care would be just the same. The reason Medicare is largely free of this is because every woman on Medicare is menopausal and people are comfortable turning off the machines when the patient is 90. Imagine Terri Schaivo and the HPV vaccine fights magnified a hundred times. Brace yourself for the rhetoric: "why should my tax dollars pay for Pap smears for sluts?" Even when they pay cash we can't help tsking the drunks who get kidney transplants. Now any and every medical condition will be fair game because "we" are paying for it: fertility treatments, cancers with potential behavioral causes, birth control, birth defects with potential maternal or genetic causes, STDs, injuries due to abuse, injuries due to carelessness, etc.

4) Existing universal systems aren't posh enough for our taste. For those of us who know the numbers, it's so tempting to see the dollar amounts for European health care and imagine a big cut if we made the move, but it probably wouldn't work out that way. Europeans are content with a lot less posh. In fact, they'll even share rooms! I've seen American hospital rooms that are larger than whole apartments in London or Paris. Those nice digs cost money, as do full body scans, 3D fetal sonograms, and waiting-room aquariums. In America success is visible - in a fancy car, big house, and marble countertops - will we trust a hospital that doesn't look successful? And how happy will be be receiving care there?

5) We're pretty damn sick compared to other places. We've got a lot of uninsured people just waiting for a chance to receive care. We've got more poor, and more rural people without much in the way of access today. The second we insure these people, there will be a surge in demand. And that could last several years. Of course it could make Medicare cheaper, as those in their early 60s stop putting off treatment until they're pretty far gone, but it'll be pretty pricey to get up to speed.

6) The government will start to look at public health issues as a bottom line reducer. That's great, right? Well, sure, until they start handing out all sorts of rules and regulations that we don't like. And it'll be a pretty big fight on our hands as we try to debate a few billion saved on heart disease and diabetes versus a fat tax. C'mon, you really want to eat your cake, and buy it cheap too. Just as some businesses have responded to health care costs by banning smoking near entrances and pressuring staff to start exercise programs, the government will do the same. And that's not something Americans are used to putting up with. A significant number of us still bristle at seat belt laws or required home smoke detectors. Suddenly everything has the potential to be a government health care cost saver from gun locks to hand washing.

7) We don't expect it to work. We've believed for years and years that it won't work. It's just a recent blip that we've found the current system too expensive. The second we're on universal care every wait or list or restriction will bring our minds right back to 1994 and HillaryCare. Statistical increases in infant survival or broader availability of preventive care can't compete with perception, and we're primed to perceive it as a failure.

I know this is pessimistic, but I'm not totally without hope. Some states are full of people willing to pay up and judge the system by the same criteria that Europeans and Canadians do. And those states should go ahead and do it. Just don't expect what's good for Massachussetts to be good for Mississippi, even if Mississippi "needs" it more.

Kitties in the Tub!

Library Schmibrary

This article from the New York Times made it's way into my inbox via the ALA newsletter, and I just have to wonder, what are they thinking? A library in Arizona has done away with Dewey (call numbers on books, that is) and shelved according to Barnes & Noble. Apparently this is supposed to make younger patrons happier, since they can now just browse through based on subject.

But, ahem, that's what Dewey was designed to do. Only now, instead of browsing your way through a small collection on a specific topic, you have to wade through EVERYTHING. Okay, this may work out okay for this pissant little library in the middle of nowhere, but how can any substantial library even begin to serve its patrons this way? I get annoyed enough at my local branch because all the novels are in alphabetical order (how am I supposed to stumble upon more 18th century novelists when they could be a hundred linear feet apart?). I've actually scanned the LC shelves at my old college library for new authors and then tried to look them up individually in the public library catalog. Even a big Barnes & Noble has a paltry collection in political science or biology. An average urban library can have dozens of shelves where a store has only a couple.

And that's where the problem lies. Book stores are about brand new books. Libraries are about collections that have been developed over years. Sure, some library patrons are fine with whatever serendipity presents them, but others actually want to find something specific, and for those people, trolling one segment of a number is far better than wandering through everything under the sun.

The problem with the Dewey Decimal System is not that it is outdated (because it's more than adequate for what most public libraries need), but that it presents people with a visual reminder of their own ignorance. If you don't understand Dewey, it doesn't actually hamper your ability to pick up a book as you saunter along, but it does remind you that you don't really understand why it was shelved where it is.

I guess that those of us who can't stand the thought of wandering around trying to find a single volume can always make the library staff do it: I'll pick mine up at the Patron Request shelf. Lets think of it as a bit of job security for paras.

Passing Judgement on McMansions

The Austin Chronicle had an Am I a McMansion or Not contest, and you've got to see some of them to believe them. While I can't imagine living in a giant house (old or new), it seems only a fraction of newly built mansions have anything even approaching an aesthetic sense. That'll be readily apparent when you view the pictures posted for the contest. Some of the houses aren't ginormous, they're just out of keeping with the neighborhood by 1000 or so square feet. Others are just such gigantic monstrosities that I can't imagine anyone wanting to live nearby. Seriously, I've seen oil refineries with more aesthetic value than some of these.

The other interesting thing about this contest is that there's actually no way to tell just how large the houses are from the pictures. People love to point out huge old homes as somehow being exempt from being ugly, but in reality, it's kinda tough to find an original Victorian that's above 7,000 square feet. Most of them fall into the 3,500-5,500 category, and it's their architectural styling that creates the impression that they're larger. Troll a real estate website and check out the numbers - it's eye-opening.

But what really makes me wonder in all of this, is why people are so interested in just the square footage. The detractors tend to hate the hideous, with the greatest opprobrium leveled against the giant and ill-proportioned. But why would someone building a 8,000 square foot house decide that proper proportions, consistent styling, and careful material choice don't matter? Are they just aesthetically blind? Or do they care so much about the size that anything else doesn't matter? I walk around my neighborhood and see just terrible houses - and most of these are infill or remodeling jobs. There are 70s suburban-style split levels turned on their sides and sandwiched in, homes that keep getting larger as you move backwards in the lot (a homeowner's version of "big fish eat little fish"), and others that create a timewarp of 30s craftsman followed by 80s modernism. Others just build a giant garages (3, 4, 5, how many can I get if I don't pull a permit?) that fill the entire backyard. And yet those people still need to park on the street.

Apparently we need all this space for our stuff, but our stuff can't possibly be worth it. Maybe one or two percent of the population is housing a museum-quality collection of something in their back rooms, but most of us are just housing crap we haven't bothered to get rid of. And now that it's all coming from China, where it's been made in 15 minues or less by a person making a dollar an hour, it can't possibly warrant the extended life-span we insist on. At over $100 a square foot in nearly every community in America (up to $1000/sqft in the most expensive neighborhoods), that's a lot of money to spend storing old sweatshirts, unused exercise equipment, and VHS tapes. In my neighborhood, going from 2 bedrooms to 3 can be a $30,000 option. That's a lot of money for a "scrapbooking room."

Any thoughts?

Global Literacy or Idiocy?

Newsweek must have spun their non-news wheel again and landed on that trustworthy holier-than-thou wedge that suggests yet another story about what people think they know, but get wrong. The funny thing this time is not that more people can name Jordin Sparks than John Roberts, but that some of their own questions are iffy, belying their own focus on the popular rather than the substantive.

First, their question about how many countries have nukes was an adventure in patriots vs. realists, and fear-mongers vs. skeptics. The first seven are pathetically easy: US, Russia, England, France, China, Pakistan, and India. None of them deny, all have done obviously successful tests. Next there's Israel, which, please remember, officially has nothing. Does acknowledging that they do make one as dangerous to the state of Israel as Mordechi Vanunu? (Aside: Isn't it interesting that when Vanunu tells the truth about his government's activities, it lands him in jail, but when Libby lies about his, he gets a get-out-of-jail-free card . . . ) And then there's North Korea, which should really just be awarded the Participation Ribbon of nuclear proliferation. Their one test threw off some radiation, but most analysts say that the bomb test was a bomb (in the it-didn't-really-work sense). So is it really fair to add them to the list when they probably couldn't hit a internet cafe in Seoul with what they've got?

And then, in the most bizarre question of any You-are-Dumb test I've ever seen, they ask if we're winning the fight against Al Qaeda. Here's how they summarize the results: "roughly half the poll's respondents (52 percent) think that the United States is losing the fight against (bin Laden's) terror group, Al Qaeda, despite no military defeats or recent terrorist attacks to suggest as much."

What an interesting thing to say when Al Qaeda is floating around all over the place, and has successfully executed or planned attacks on our allies on a regular basis. The idea that we must be winning because there hasn't been an attack in the U.S. is preposterous (Napoleon to troops: We must be winning the invasion of Russia! How do I know this? Not a single Russian attack has been made on Paris!) The funniest part is that as I'm typing this very post, the top story on the Newsweek website is "The Return of Al Qaeda: A New National Intelligence Estimate Raises Concerns that the Terrorist Group is Growing Stronger." That raises a fascinating possibility:
Newsweek's editors think that we're winning, but implying that we may be losing sells more magazines (and they wonder why 52% think that's true).

But, of course, that question relies on a belief that I just don't share: that you can really tell who's winning or losing a struggle with terrorists when you're stuck right in the middle of it. Sometimes you can't even tell for sure when it's over. So, who's winning: ETA or the Spanish Government? Who won: the British Parliament or the IRA? Even before the first NATO soldier arrived in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda had a nearly decade-long history of attacking intermittently with long stretches between operations. It is far too easy to mistake a tactical decision on their side for a success on ours. And with an ever-expanding list of affiliated organizations we could destroy Al Qaeda only to find ourselves deep in the muck with it's varied brethren. It seems to me that when you have doctors signing on for terrorist operations, you can't plausibly say the movement is on the outs. Declaring victory against Al Qaeda is a bit like declaring victory against the water in my basement: every time it rains and the floor stays dry, I'm a bit more confident, but it'll take a lot of rainstorms before I can be sure.

No, but yeah, but no, but yeah . . .

My newest obsession is Little Britain (I know I'm way out of date, but it has to do with when we find things at the library . . . and as everyone should know by now, I'm so horribly behind in my Netflix queue, I've barely made it out of the 70s).

Anyhoo . . . if you haven't seen it, you absolutely must! Lou and Andy are my favorite, and now that I've read that the older you get, the less you can identify humor, Little Britain is proof that I'm still young at heart! Now I just have to count my moles . . . I hate turning 30!

Photos from ALA

I've finally uploaded my pictures from Washington DC. Check them out - they are librarian free, but full of the Library of Congress!

On another note, I subscribed to the Economist and now I'm getting junk mail from the Cato Institute. It's a long letter (by junk mail standards) and includes an encomium from JOHN STOSSEL!!!! I can't imagine anything less likely to impress me (except, maybe, financial advice from Robert Mugabe's finance minister).

When East Africa beats the West

Several African countries have already or will shortly be enforcing plastic bag bans. This includes Zanzibar, Rwanda, Uganda, and Kenya. Check out this great little story on the BBC about why Uganda has decided on a ban.
Seems to me that if American environmentalists want to finally get rid of the plastic bag from our shores, they can take a hint from Africans: the flying latrine. Okay, you don't have to do it yourself--farm this one out to the pooches--but imagine what would happen if every empty plastic bag was quickly filled with poo and then thrown as far as the arm could toss it. If it were up to me, I'd add fire to the mix, but that's probably not safe . . .
On a related note, a former owner of my house purposely buried plastic bags in various parts of the yard. It was a real bitch to clean out, and probably exacerbated my drainage problem in the basement. Sheesh, if you're going to use an artificial barrier, at least have the good sense to buy something suited to the job!

Freeware that's worth it

I just added Zotero to my Firefox browser. It's a reference management software that seems to be pretty snazzy. Although it is not portable, it's got so many nice features that I can't help but be excited. I'll have to check out how easy it is to export references to Word!

Is it hypocrisy or hilarity?

In vetoing the latest embryonic stem cell bill the president stated that "destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical."

What a peculiar thing for him to say, considering that saving lives was precisely the justification he gave for starting the last two wars (the killing part goes without saying). It's the basis for both the mushroom cloud and the liberate Iraq lines of reasoning. In fact, killing others in order to save lives is the 2 second definition of the Just War. Anyone remember the days when we were totting that one out? And it's the only "patriotic" explanation EVER given to explain the nuclear bombing of Japan in WWII ("threatening the Soviets" may be a plausible explanation, but it doesn't win you friends at a 4th of July parade).

Maybe it would all be okay if it were Iraqi cells . . .

Reading Lolita

I just finished Reading Lolita in Tehran for my book club. In one of those happy coincidences, there is a flurry of articles about Iran in the press these days, so I've been able to compare RLIT's view of the 1980s against the contemporary situation. It reinforces one of the themes of the book: whether one should remain steadfast in one's beliefs, or bend a little in order to survive. At several points in the book Nafisi regards the small concessions of the regime as being inconsequential changes compared to overall repression of women. Yet, I keep wondering, isn't lasting change always a bit on the incremental side? In our democracy, which Nafisi prefers to Iranian autocracy, our major law-giving institution, Congress, was purposely designed to be slow to change. And women's rights in America have been two centuries of fits and starts, with a lot of slower social change alongside the leaps of legislation. Perhaps there is still so much of the revolutionary in her, she can't abide any remnant of the revolutionary in the other side. And what happens when two sides lock themselves into a battle of all or nothing?

Why is this so funny?

Card Catalog Rant

It's happened twice this week, and frankly I'm sick of it. Someone will start complaining about how much easier research was back in the days of the card catalog . . . and they haven't the slightest idea just how IGNORANT that makes them sound. Not in the sense that they don't know how to use the new, electronic databases, but they don't have a CLUE what academic research has looked like for the last century. Sure, in the past you could go to the library and thumb through a drawer of cards, pick out a title or two, and fetch the books off the shelf. And that was a perfectly reasonable way to do research--if you were in the 11th grade!
Real scholarly research has been dependent on peer-reviewed journal articles for decades and decades. In the old paper world that meant spending hours flipping through paper indexes--a different paper index for every single year. Interdisciplinary subjects could push you to several different indexes, one for each year.
It's not fun, and not that easy. I know. I've done it. You thumb through five years of indexes and then suddenly realize that maybe another subject heading might have been better. Do you go back? Do you pretend you did? Just picking the subjects is an adventure in futility. There's no natural language to help you out, no guide to the inner thoughts of those indexers except for that volume of alphabetized words. You have to search an index to search the index! Not to mention the fact that once you find your subjects, and see those beautiful entries listed beneath, you have to scan through all of them. You can't just tell the index to winnow the entries to precisely the ones you want. Why miss out on all that fun?
It makes me wonder why anyone would wish for those tactile, paper days. I still love to read a real, physical book, but reading is a sensual pleasure. Finding journal articles is a task, like scrubbing the toilet. It needs to be done, and can at times be satisfying upon completion, but no reasonable person wishes to throw away a faster, simpler way to do it. It astounds me each day that so much is now at my fingertips, that I can change my mind about a search term or focus, and have a new list of results in just a second or two, that the whole thing can be repeated at the drop of a hat, and that I can repeat it all at the drop of a hat.
I wish all these people would suck it up, spend the 20 minutes learning the technology, and stop pining for a Masters degree that is as research intensive as freshman English.

ALA Conference

I'll be off soon to ALA. If only I could decide what to attend!

False Alarm and What We See

I've just started reading False Alarm, which is about the culture of fear that we seem intent on living in. It's generally a good, if somewhat thin, treatment of the subject.
But it contains one of my great pet-peeves about supposedly observant authors: he assumes something that is not actually true. This typically happens when normally academic or scholarly people (it's a doctor in this case) imagine something about the quotidian world around them that is easily debunked by casual observation (regular people do this as well, but they have less claim to authority). In this case he is remaking on the irrational fear of lyme disease in a patient when he mentions that the patient lives in Los Angeles, which he says has no deer. But, of course, there are deer in Los Angeles. I have seen several in my few trips to the city. Has he never been to L.A.? Has he just not bothered to look at the hills along the freeway? Does he just assume that there aren't deer in major metropolitan areas?
I found the most glaring example of this in an article in Smithsonian several years back. A professor who took his students around Boston specifically to encourage them to look at the world around them mentioned that he knew that all ironwork in the United States is now coming from India based on his observations of manhole covers. Yet, if he had bothered to come to the Midwest and peruse our streets he would have immediately been disabused of that notion. I have seen civic applications of ironwork from Neenah Foundries (located in Wisconsin) in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Many examples are in older neighborhoods, but I have seen some in relatively new suburbs as well. While this doesn't prove that the foundry is in business today, it must have been when the streets were laid.
I guess it's all a matter of where you look.

Updating LibraryThing

I'm trying to add the books I've read to library thing, and also add some meaningful tags about the themes I find interesting. It's been so long since I've read some of them that it's hard to remember which book had what . . . it's funny how a single author's works can start to merge in my mind. It's also hard to go back and add tags to the books I've already entered, not to mention reducing the number of words in my tags while retaining meaning.

New widgets

I've finally learned how to IM, and now I have added some cool widgets to my blog. Check out the meebo window on my blog, and also the sitemeter. I'm so excited - maybe someone will visit!

I've also learned how to put search engine shortcuts in Firefox. I can now search Google Scholar or Google without having to open up the window. Very cool.

Using Google Docs & Spreadsheets

For this week's Library 2.0 exercise, I'm trying out Google Docs. If I've done this right, I'll be able to post it to my blog and take a look at it from there. I've read through some of the Google Help screens, and it looks straight forward enough, but that's no guarantee of success. I just figured out how to sort incoming messages in Outlooks, so I'm a bit technologically behind.

As you can see, I'm trying a few more complicated options. Here's a link to my blog, for instance. I just learned that unlike in Microsoft Word, I have to reposition the link - highlighting the text for the link wasn't enough.

I've also published a small spreadsheet.

I have noticed a couple things:

• you need to watch what you label on the spreadsheet, since Google creates the title line. That means giving the sheet a name and not putting the title in the first cell.
• The title for my blog post didn't come through - when I edit the blog posting I see no title. There is what appears to be a title on the post itself, but it is slightly different.
• What I put into Google Docs was very WYSISYG in my blog, but the spreadsheet looks different in the non-edit mode.

Progress on the Green Front

We've finally moved all of the orphaned plants back into the backyard, and we're starting to fill in the new beds. I've uploaded some pictures to Flickr. Check them out at my Flickr Account.

Technorati and finding blogs

I got a little behind on my 2.0 projects and neglected to look at Technorati until today. I don't feel like I really understand what I can do with this yet, but I signed up anyway.
I was able to find my friend's blog and mark it as a favorite. I'm hoping someone else will extend the courtesy . . .
I also was able to use the popular links to find a blog about members of Congress who are trying to live on the amount of food a person can buy with a week's worth of food stamps. They're highlighting how little money that is ($21), but they haven't really talked about the other constrictions on food stamps. Not only does it have a dollar limit, but it severely limits you in terms of the types of foods you can buy. I'm not just talking about banning candy bars, but also favoring certain parts of the food guide pyramid over others. For example, you can buy vegetables at a farmer's market, but not at the grocery store. Perhaps this is one reason (beyond price) that grocery stores in poor neighborhoods have been found to carry fewer fresh, healthy foods.
At any rate, I wish the members of congress luck, since even they seem to know that they are somewhat privileged in their weeklong stint. Check out one of their blogs here: Congressional Food Stamp Challenge.

Baby African Violet

I planted the leaves way back at the end of November, and just last week I saw the first bit of new growth appear. I don't know which leaf had the baby, or if it's two babies, or even if these two leaves came from the same plant or two different ones. I guess I'll have to wait until it blooms. I also repotted the suspected parent so I could bury the neck that had formed. Let's hope it survives its trimming and root disruption.
I looked at a website today to check on what I should do about the neck, and it mentioned that rooting these can be so intoxicating that the african violet gardener ends up with a million little ones filling the house. I can totally see that happening to me. It's even more fun than rooting pothos. And now I want a pink one. Anyone want to put in an order?
Next I have to trim the bonsai, which is a lot more stressful than this.

LibraryThing

I fell a bit behind on my 23 things this week, and neglected to try LibraryThing and Rollyo. I have seen LibraryThing before, but this is my first time with an account. Here it is (and oh, so nerdy). LibraryThing

Fall & Winter

Here are my new paintings from Laura.

Laura's Paintings

Here's a painting by my best bud of ages and ages (yikes, I'm getting old!) that I took off her MN Artists webpage. It's going to have to stand in until I take some photos of the two she just delivered. Yes, after five years of waiting, I have the first two of my four seasons series.

Now I just have to get them on the wall.

A New Look . . . AGAIN!

I think I've changed the template about three times for this blog (once every two posts, I guess). I even added a picture of myself that I made using Portrait Illustration Maker. It's a pretty fabulous tool. Try it yourself: Illustration Maker.

I know, I know, I'll stop now. . . maybe.

Social Bookmarking

I've kind of skipped ahead to some bookmarking sites, thanks to the presentation at ARLD on Monday. I've signed up for CiteULike and Furl, just to see how I like them. I'm not sure how useful these will be, since CiteULike doesn't play with many of the databases we have, but we'll give 'em a whirl.
The really crazy part of it is how blank your mind goes once you have logged in for the first time. There I am with a brand new Furl account and I can't think of a single website I want to add, even though I've spent so many unhappy moments in the past wondering "whatever happened to such-and-such a site."
Perhaps I'll just give into my inner web nerd and only have a short list of extremely useful sites. I heard a report the other day about what the most popular uses of the web were. I can't remember what they were, but I'm sure it was along the lines of socializing with friends, porn, and videos (not necessarily in that order). I turned to Nick and said my favorite use of the web was banking. He didn't seem the least bit surprised . . .

My RSS Feeds

I have successfully added a link to my bloglines account, so now you can see my RSS feeds. They're not very exciting, but you can take a look at the few I have out there.

Fence & Garden

Fence & Garden
Originally uploaded by ebrothen.

Here's my newly built fence from last summer (along with the construction debris from the neighbor's major remodel). I just hope all those plants come up again this year!

Canal in Utrecht

Canal in Utrecht
Originally uploaded by ebrothen.

Here's a view down one of the canals in Utrecht. When the Rhine changed course the city of Utrecht saw a sharp decrease in the water level, allowing them to line the old canals with warehouses. Many are now restaurants and bars.

Starting up

I thought I should start a new blog as part of my 23 things. It seems to be working just fine . . .