Year: 2004

« Delta Air Lines says pay cuts or bankruptcy »; in other words, pilots should screw themselves out of a third of their paychecks or we’ll take our marbles and go home: ‘Delta Air Lines said Monday that it may have to file for bankruptcy if its pilots union doesn’t agree to significant wage cuts,...

Seems a little lazier, a little more mellow here than last week (well, except for the freeways, but that’s another story). There were a few people sitting on porches along State Street Row, but less in a party posture than a relaxation posture. Campus was alive and breathing, but not all that hectic: a few...

Just woke up from another spectacularly weird dream … this one was a first, since it was just like watching a TV show and I wasn’t in it. In fact, it was a TV show … Dallas, of all things. I don’t recall ever watching a single episode of Dallas ever. Not even the ‘Who...

« Lawrence Ferlinghetti is still beating ‘em »: ’… The first plane to hit the first Twin Tower The last plane to hit the last Twin Tower The only plane to ever hit the Pentagon The birth of a vast national paranoia The beginning of the Third World War (the War Against the Third World)...

Thomas Jefferson wasn’t perfect, but he was on to a good thing when he wrote that separation of church and state was a good and desirable thing. Case in point is Colorado, an increasingly Fascist FunDumbMentalist state where « a judge and lawmakers are being threatened and harassed by nuts from the Springs »: ‘Colorado...

The Torture Roundup for tonight: « A pregnant Lynddie England gets hung out to dry ». She’s been turned into the face of American torture by the media and the military, her family is angry at the military, angry at Bush and in denial and she herself is back home and pregnant. The New York...

Publicly, the NeoCons want us to think everything is a-okay and hunky-dory. Privately, « as the Washington Post reports », military officials are unhappy with the Dr. Strangerummy/Wolf-of-Dimwitz lunacy: ‘Deep divisions are emerging at the top of the U.S. military over the course of the occupation of Iraq, with some senior officers beginning to say...

Downtown was (if possible) more packed today than usual. Must have been the nice weather and lots of out-of-towners. We saw a couple of movies at the State (“Latter Days” and “Good Bye Lenin!”—the latter for the second time), poked around at Kaleidoscope (a great, albeit cramped, store just down State from the theater, packed...

I don’t think it’s a particularly uncommon thing to want to eat out at a restaurant and (if you’re a non-smoker, or if tobacco smoke makes you physically nauseated or you’re allergic to smoke) ask to be seated in an appropriate section. The restaurant we ate at last night made a pretense of seating us...

Here’s a familiar one. A newspaper (in this case, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune) interviews a handful of undergrads (in this case, at the University of Minnesota) about their research practices. One student says that she goes to the library and uses it as a kind of away-from-home study hall, but uses it for nothing else. She...

Repetitive stress injury workers’-comp costs as a justification for implementing RFID ….. hmmmmm. That’s a new one on me. I can’t say (as a public library patron) that I wouldn’t check out books that are fitted with RFID, but it sure would make me think twice. On the other hand, since RFIDs are clearly the...

As usual, Librarian.net puts it way better (and way more succinctly) than I ever could: Of course, any librarian knows that the best thing to do is to call your librarian [who is at the library already] and then have her [or him] find the answer which might involve using Google but might not.

Nicholson Baker has announced that Duke University Libraries has agreed to house his American Newspaper Repository collection. To make a long story short, Baker saved a lot of old newspapers in their original runs by organizing a corporation and purchasing the newspapers from various libraries (most of the collection was from the British Library) that...

Humidity was fairly high today (now yesterday). I brought a sweater, but the library complex was strangely warmer. It felt like the first really humid, warm day of the year (though I’m sure there have to have been a couple of others). A couple of middle-school girls spent the whole time on the bus home...

There’s an attention-grabbing Library Journal article about “NextGen” users (born between 1982 and 2002) and their attributes. (Courtesy Creative Librarian.) They’re “format agnostic,” they’re “nomadic,” they multitask, they prefer web sites with content richness rather than table-of-contents-centered navigation, and they “find no need to beg for good service.”

Why does it take the publicized photos of humiliated and abused and tortured Iraqi prisoners (which has arguably further ruined our tattered image and made the nation even more vulnerable to terrorist attack) to get the Boy Emperor to, as the BBC put it, ‘make an unprecedented public apology’? After all, he won’t apologize for...

There is a website devoted to the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, at which you can view a slide show and order a video of the episode. The originator of the experiment, Philip Zimbardo (whose Psych 101 course I took as a freshman), told the New York Times (also reprinted on the front page of...

You know, I’m sorry, but I’m on an our-culture-is-crappy kick tonight. While at that notorious southeast AA middle school, I served a couple of hours in the ‘media center.’ It was fine, I always enjoy that. But am I a complete old crotchety s.o.b. because I think it should still be called the library, damnit!?...

While subbing today at the city’s notorious southeast-side middle school, I noticed one thing during a geography class viewing of a movie about South Africa and apartheid during the 1980s: The kids were talking and laughing and not paying the slightest attention during the parts where the characters were laughing and having fun. But when...

I just woke up from two very weird dreams. In the first, Frank died and I started dating Julia Roberts. Yes, really. And after a month, she proposed. And her mother was talking to me about stuff and saying that I was the one Julia had been waiting on for so long. (The trigger: I...

“Friends” and “Frasier” are broadcasting their final episodes this week and next, respectively. “Friends” I watched occasionally but never really got the point of. Tina Brown has written a scintillating column in the Washington Post about its cultural significance, so I suppose I’ll re-read that and try to absorb the Zeitgeist. (There’s also an interesting...

It’s supposed to be over 80 outdoors today. No problem, right? Well, in the past two weeks or so, the huge turn-on-the-air-conditioning project has taken place all over campus (I presume); Scott tells me that they have to schedule months in advance and bring in these vast teams of union workers to manipulate the age-old...

According to this account, seven students from Kalamazoo College were banned from entering Bush’s campaign rally at Wings Stadium on Monday. So much for inclusiveness. If you’re not a verifiable Bush supporter (and reading this, I don’t know what you would have to do to prove that you were a supporter in order to gain...

I’m a little late on this, but here goes. Grab the nearest book. Open the book to page 23. Find the fifth sentence. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions. “But this is to anticipate the end, rather than to find a serviceable beginning.” [The Third Reich: A New...

Without going into details, my grades this past term were either as good as or better than I expected. So I came off all right (not perfect, not even close, but better than I expected) in 503, the Search and Retrieval class that had me up until 5 in the morning a couple of weeks...

It’s too disgusting to even link to, but Major League DumbBall is putting ads on the freakin’ bases, for cryin’ out loud. And they’re for a stupid, ignorant and inevitably crappy sequel to a crappy Hollywood movie version of a crappy comic book about an freaky arachnid weirdo superhero. Gosh, just when you thought they...

Much more bustling downtown today. Still not like a typical school day, but Steve says the traffic getting around town, especially around State, was actually worse than during the school year. A mixed bag, I think. I found a table in Ambrosia easily. Campus (the outdoors parts) seemed fairly busy. The libraries were fairly dead....

The Boy Emperor’s Cabal’s attempts to screw workers out of overtime pay were scuttled by the Senate, at least temporarily, : ‘The U.S. Senate voted to block … Bush’s administration from putting into effect overtime pay regulations that would limit extra pay for some workers. Senators voted 52-47 to bar changes in overtime rules that...

While subbing in the media center of a south central AA middle school today, the latest issue of People came in, featuring the ‘50 Most Beautiful’ yahoos on the planet, headlined by Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, of course. Two selections catch the eye however; both are the offspring, next-generation of 1970s pop culture people....

Today was significantly more crowded around campus than yesterday. Not sure why; was Monday the tail end of a three-day weekend? Anyway, it’ll be interesting to try to get a read on the traffic patterns in the next few days and weeks. It seemed as though a lot of the people out and about today...

I read on one Okie blog that respondents to a poll on that site voted that computer access and refrigeration are more important than indoor plumbing. Let’s just say that it was an unscientific poll and leave it at that. After all, my ancestral state has far bigger problems than little polls. « The Daily...

Former rightwing attack shill David Brock has « a new website, Media Matters », ostensibly dedicated to combating the same Fascist claptrap he used to produce. How the worm turns. Still, donkeys are flying; let’s not criticize them too much and see how far they fly …

« Here’s how our Tough-on-Terror Boy Emperor is protecting us from evil »: ‘The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden’s and Saddam Hussein’s money, documents show. In addition, the Office...

The Boy Emperor’s twin ideological tenets, tax cuts for wealthy people and privatization of everything so that those wealthy get even wealthier, is « trickling down all over »: ‘This summer, when backpackers, hikers, and families—with kids in tow—pony up to get into America’s national parks, they could be in for a rude and crude...

Says Pat Boone, « ‘Censorship is healthy‘ »: ‘A healthy society needs censorship to survive, 1950s musical icon Pat Boone said yesterday. He added that he would welcome strong content restrictions governing movies and other artistic works. “I don’t think censorship is a bad word, but it has become a bad word because everybody associates...

Doing some catchup as to what’s going on around the world: Since it was in the Village Voice, it wasn’t much noticed, but « James Ridgeway noted how … slick the ties are between the Royal Bushes and the Royal Sauds » in fact, the two familes are ‘locked together.’ Yeah, locked together in an...

The BBC is all atwitter tonight about the 25th anniversary of the accession to power of Margaret Thatcher (or should I call her Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven?). I’m not sure how history will judge her. I lived in Britain when she was running for her third term in office, and even then Britain seemed a...

My favorite artificial language. [Link courtesy Political Theory Daily.]

I must plead guilty to causing the cold snap. I lowered the roof on the Jeep for the first time since we moved to Michigan, because I wanted some sunshine and air the other day. Now it’s too freakin’ cold to go out there and mess with putting it back up. I had a rather...

All you can do is laugh (unless you’re kicking yourself for forgetting your gloves): The National Weather Service in Detroit/Pontiac has issued a freeze warning for all of Southeast Michigan from midnight until 8 am EDT Tuesday. Temperatures will fall below 32 degrees after midnight across Southeast Michigan. Low temperatures will bottom out in the...

My undergrad university’s alumni mag has this article on blogs in its latest issue. Nothing out of the ordinary, that is, nothing beyond the usual cliches and cant: low readership, cool photos, rants, inside jokes, personal reflection, you can be anybody you wanna be on the Internet (yeah, right), linking to random crap “just because...

It was great to hear Loretta Lynn, God bless her, shock and tweak the boring Melissa Block on NPR today during an interview about her new Jack White-produced album, Van Lear Rose. (“It’s been good talkin’ to you too, honey.”) Sounds like an awesome album too.

According to Total Guitar Magazine (via BBC), these are the Top 20 Riffs of All Time: Guns N’Roses “Sweet Child o’ Mine” Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Led Zeppelin “Whole Lotta Love” Deep Purple “Smoke on the Water” Metallica “Enter Sandman” Derek & The Dominoes “Layla” Metallica “Master of Puppets” AC/DC “Back in Black” Jimi...

Morrissey at the Apollo????? It’s true. According to a link from Gawker, he’s playing there tonight through Friday. That is truly surreal. It’s sort of like, I don’t know, Moby at the Whisky a Go-Go. Anyway, Morrissey’s new single (“Irish Blood English Heart”) is great, 2:39 minutes of spitting, droning glory and fury. I doubt...

Bush was reportedly in Niles, Kalamazoo, and Sterling Heights today on a “bus tour.” His bus has the slogan “America, Yes We Can” on it. Tell that to all the folks in Michigan who’ve lost their jobs in the past three years, Mr. President. On another somewhat related topic, I was in Borders this afternoon...

It’s May 3, but the wind was astonishingly cold and biting this morning, so much so that I regretted leaving the house without coat and gloves. Same story at 12.30, still, though it had grown more temperate within an hour.

It was not empty in Ambrosia this afternoon, but it wasn’t packed, either. The atmosphere was more relaxed than it’s been in a while. Campus had a similar feel. Fairly empty at 9 when I got there, but enough people around when I left the office around 12.30 for it not to be a ghost...

More slurpees today. I’m developing a serious addiction to FCB’s slurpees, particularly coke and wild cherry and white cherry. Nirvana. Thank god they’re downtown and have inconvenient parking at best, or I’d be spending what’s left of our money on them. We went downtown to return movies to the library and I didn’t want to...