AirBeagle

On tonight’s broadcast of The Connection (an NPR-affiliated radio show):

Blogs offer a constant rush of political opinion: the gloating, the jeering, and those knockout punches. But not everyone thinks bringing punditry to the people is a good thing. New Yorker writer George Packer argues that by blurring the line between journalism and pure rant, blogs may not be the best thing for democracy …. George Packer feels that blogs are a culture of people commenting on other people’s comments.

And what are newspapers and magazines? A culture of ….. anonymous sources and power-wielding officials feeding tomorrow’s pre-approved tripe to profit-driven news sharks. The calm, cool, and collected Connection host, Dick Gordon, bless his heart, sounded as though he’d never read a blog until his producer told him he’d have to prepare for tonight’s broadcast.

Apparently George Packer thinks that bloggers should get off their butts and “be reporters” and go out and “talk to people.” True enough. But they already do! I would love it if reporters like Packer actually bothered to read blogs. But no, that would be too much work.

Oops—I mean, that would be reporting !!!!!

From this morning’s Free Press:

Historically, Brood X has sidestepped Wayne, Macomb and most of Oakland counties. They were, however, spotted in Bloomfield Hills the last time they came out in 1987.

Go a little west, though, to Washtenaw, Lenawee and southern Livingston counties and you’ll run into them. Millions of them. Hundreds of millions.

I was at work this afternoon and thought I heard the first wave, but it was just someone in the office with some headphones on. When I got home, Steve pointed to a series of definite holes in the dirt near the back patio. Then we stood outside and listened, for several minutes, straining to hear over the blare of a lawnmower: and there it was, off in the distance, a definite cicada song on the breeze.

Nancy Pearl was on NPR this morning, recommending older political novels to serve as an antidote to all of those scary partisan election-year non-fiction diatribe-tomes on sale at your favorite bookstore. (Some of her recommendations: Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, Ward Just’s A Dangerous Friend, and Henry Adams’ Democracy).

She’s got a really appealing presence, she has a sense of humor, she’s charming, she knows her books, and she makes looking for new stuff to read sound fun.

She’s also got a great gig. Librarian, book reviewer, writer, and semi-Oprah rolled into one: how much fun must that be? Plus, she’s fantastic PR for the profession and for the library itself. More power to her.

My only (minor, minor, minor) quibble: Why was the story taped in a bookstore (in this case, Washington DC’s Politics and Prose) rather than inside a library?

No offense—I’m sure P&P is an awesome bookstore—but I’m sure there would have been plenty of libraries willing to open their doors and let Steve Inskeep and Nancy Pearl tape a segment about libraries and summer reading inside their premises. [NPR link courtesy LISNews.]

We’re having regular thunderstorms and thunderstorm forecasts this time of year. Having never experienced thunderstorm season in the Midwest, I find it fascinating. Last night, for example, a fairly rambunctious storm rumbled through at about 11. Tonight, on the other hand, while I was at work, there was a brief burst of rain and thunder, making me kick myself for having not brought an umbrella. It lasted about 10 minutes, then nothing; in fact, the sky cleared up. I’m used to rain and storms being a days-long, miserable, unpleasant event, as they are in the Bay Area during the intermittent rain seasons they have there. The thunderstorms here are actually (thus far, anyway) a pleasant interlude. I’m sure, as with most of my weather expectations, something will eventually come along to change my outlook, but so far I’m enjoying the rain, fleeting though its presence may be.

It amuses me, I’m not sure why, that there are more articles on the upcoming cicada infestation in the Washington Post (a search of the Post website shows 17 separate articles on cicadas in the last week alone) than I’ve seen in the local papers, although I suppose the Post’s cicada watch amounts almost to a case of hysteria. There’s this from a May 6 article, a brief mention of the Kensington Park Library in Kensington, MD, and its cicada plans:

To help preschoolers deal with the invasion, children’s librarian Linda Swanson has scheduled an earlier program featuring insects as positive creatures. Come picnic day, “we’ll take a look around at 10 in the morning and see how these cicadas are doing. If there are five of them per square inch, we really don’t have a choice. It’s hard to eat a sandwich if a cicada’s sitting on it.”

My god I didn’t think it was possible, but it’s true; the Boy Emperor is incable of learning from his mistakes and « is beginning the march of war on Syria »:

’[The Boy Emperor] will order economic sanctions against Syria this week for supporting terrorism and not doing enough to prevent militant fighters from entering neighboring Iraq, congressional and administration sources said Monday. The sanctions, which the White House will impose as early as Tuesday, are being ordered because the administration believes Syria has aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups. “We have talked previously about our concerns when it comes to Syria’s continued development of weapons of mass destruction, when it comes to their support for terrorism and when it comes to their failure to adequately police its border with Iraq,” [Imperial Minister of Agit-Prop] Scott McClellan said.’
—SFGate.com

We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the laugh- and vomit-inducing arrogant and clueless accusation that Syria is aggravating tensions in the Middle East. I think Abu Ghraib and the West Bank have more to do with that than Damascus.

But if this hollowed-out and moral derelict man is re-coronated next January, look for the wingnuts to be screaming about WMDs in the spring, followed by cheering bloodlustily as the Big Red One enters Damascus triumphantly.

We have just one opportunity in November to attempt to restore sanity to the government. After that, well, it’s not gonna be pretty around here.

« 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, the first time the struggling carrier has publicly linked the two issues in a regulatory filing. The nation’s third-largest airline has been cautious about discussing the possibility of bankruptcy. But Delta said Monday in a quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it might pursue Chapter 11 unless it achieves a “competitive cost structure” for pilot wages. A spokesman for Delta acknowledged that it’s the first time such language has been used in a public filing. “It’s an option,” the spokesman, Anthony Black, said of bankruptcy. “It’s not anything we see in the foreseeable future, but it’s out there.”’
—SFGate.com

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article reports the airline had over $2 billion in liquid cash at the end of the first quarter, but it’s bond rating is ‘deep in the junk range,’ it’s borrowed to the hilt and facing a billion in debt payments in the next year, and so on.

But the real meat of the matter is, as The Chronicle noted, USAirways and United used Chapter 11 to secure deep pay cuts from employees, and American used the threat of Chapter 11 to the same effect.

And that’s what it’s really about … while the executives badly mismanage their airlines, they take home millions and millions of dollars in cash and bonuses and stock. That mismanagement and greed puts the airline into an unwinnable financial situation and the same executives then blame it on the workers salaries and threaten to send the company into Chapter 11 or ground the planes forever if the workers don’t pony up. It’s not that difficult to figure it all out.

I noticed that no one in any of these Chapter 11 articles questioned these executives about the financially stupid venture that is Delta’s ‘low-fare airline within an airline,’ ‘Song,’ or United’s equally stupid ‘Ted,’ or compared their management with that of perenially profitable Southwest. And when the comparison is made, they focus exclusively on worker salaries. Typical crappy and clueless journalism.

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 classes in summer circles on the lawn, a few Frisbee tossers, a lot of students in shorts and flip-flops. The heat was on: it got up to the mid-80s and it felt hotter and more humid than I can recall it feeling all year. I was grateful for the air-conditioned library today, that’s for sure.

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 Shot J.R.’ series. But it was in my dreams this morning.

Bobby (who I think was supposed to be J.R., but was called Bobby in my dream) was played by Jack Nicholson. His wife, Susannah, was played by Angie Dickinson. And yes, I know that Bobby’s wife was Pam and that there was know Susannah, but a Sue Ellen. Hey, it was a dream.

Anyway, Susannah went out to the oilfield in her Cadillac convertible to see Bobby. They talked for awhile and then he stabbed her. She was surprised. He walked away and while he was gone, she took out a pen and wrote, ‘Bobby Ewing did this to me,’ and signed it ‘Susannah Ewing,’ which is how I know how to spell her name.

She managed to put up the roof of the convertible while he was gone. When he came back, she took a gun from under the seat and shot at him and then put the car in gear and chased him around the pasture, finally cornering him and forcing him to fall backwards into a sunken concrete box, where he sat with only his head showing.

But suddenly somehow, the tables were turned and she ended up in the box. I woke up as he was dragging a hose from a gasoline pump over to the box so he could fill it up and set her on fire.

Yeesh. Pretty much the weirdest one I’ve had in a very long time.

« 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)
The first trip abroad by an ignorant president
The last free-running river
The last gas and oil on earth
The last general strike
The last Fidelista the last Sandinista the last Zapatista
The last political prisoner
The last virgin and the last of the champagne
The last train to leave the station
The last and only great nation
The last Great Depression
The last will & testament
The last welfare check for rent
The end of the old New Deal
The new Committee on Unamerican Activities
…’

And so on.

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 lawmakers who voted against impeaching a judge who made a gay-positive ruling in a child custody case are being swamped with demands from the conservative lobby group Focus on the Family to turn over all of their files, letters, documents, emails, phone records and notes. FOC, one of the most vocal opponents of gay issues, had sought the removal of Denver District Judge John Coughlin after he ruled last November that a woman could not subject her child to homophobic teachings at her church. … Judge Coughlin in awarding custody ordered [the woman] to prevent the child from receiving any homophobic religious teachings.’

That one really stirred up the FFs:

’”This is a judge who has put the word ‘homophobia’ into a court decision,” said Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s vice president for public policy. “That is very alarming to us. We want to know everything we can about this case and the reason why our elected officials did nothing to look into this matter.”’

But even the Fascist-leaning Colorado legislature refused to play ball:

‘When the impeachment measure reached the House Judiciary Committee a majority of members, including some conservative Republicans, found that Coughlin had done nothing to warrant impeachment. Even Gov. Bill Owens, who opposes same-sex marriage, advised against impeaching Coughlin. Now, FOC is using Freedom of Information Laws to see if lawmakers were “unduly influenced”. Some members of the committee call the action political blackmail and other accuse the FOC of harassment. One member, Rep. Anne McGihon (D-Denver) who refused to vote for impeachment, and who calls FOC’s actions harassment, said she would comply.’

Yup, she’ll comply. And FOC will continue to grow in power and influence in the state. Having lived there for a year, I can attest to its character and the curious paradox that, in spite of being so hyper-religious and praise-Jeebus, it’s one of the most unfriendly and aggressive and violent places I’ve ever visited (and that includes Oakland and Detroit). I’ve said many times that the Columbine HS massacre was no surprise.

And stuff like this just continues to bolster my impression. And to make me think that Thomas Jefferson knew what he was talking about.

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 Times goes into exhaustive detail here about her personal life; detail which I haven’t seen on any of the male participants. Coming at the same time as Ann-thrax Coulter and other Fascist pundits’ blaming the torture and abuse of Iraqis on women in the military specifically and feminism generally, it’s an interesting phenomenon.

« A different view of Private England » and the place where she hailed from:

‘Lynndie England, 21, a rail worker’s daughter, comes from a trailer park in Fort Ashby, West Virginia, which locals proudly call “a backwoods world”. She faces a court martial, but at home she is toasted as a hero. At the dingy Corner Club Saloon they think she has done nothing wrong. “A lot of people here think they ought to just blow up the whole of Iraq,” Colleen Kesner said. “To the country boys here, if you’re a different nationality, a different race, you’re sub-human. That’s the way girls like Lynndie are raised. “Tormenting Iraqis, in her mind, would be no different from shooting a turkey. Every season here you’re hunting something. Over there, they’re hunting Iraqis.” In Fort Ashby, in the isolated Appalachian mountains 260km west of Washington, the poor, barely-educated and almost all-white population talk openly about an active Ku Klux Klan presence.’
—The Daily Telegraph

Which brings up a rather interesting and disturbing point; in George W. Bush’s Amurrican Empire, despite his protestations to contrary, it is not at all unAmerican to support torture and eye-for-an-eye. The entire rightwing Fascist chorus doesn’t think this is a big deal at all; their attitude was summed up thusly:

‘A colleague of Lynndie’s father said people in Fort Ashby were sick of the whingeing. “We just had an 18-year-old from round here killed by the Iraqis,” he said. “We went there to help the jackasses and they started blowing us up. Lynndie didn’t kill ‘em, she didn’t cut ‘em up. She should have shot some of the suckers.”’

That’s a pretty succinct summation. And of course, torture and prisoner abuse is not only not unAmerican, it’s long been very much the American Way all over the world and in the heart of the Empire itself, in places like Parchman and Angola and San Quentin and McAlester and Huntsville, etc. While the Boy Emperor was the provincial governor of the Republic of Texas, the prison system spent most of his time in office under judicial consent decrees, a situation replicated in 39 other state prison systems. A judge wrote about the Texas system:

‘Many inmates credibly testified to the existence of violence, rape and extortion in the prison system and about their own suffering from such abysmal conditions.’

The judge imposed the decree after learning that Texas prison guards were allowing inmate gangs to buy and sell other inmates as sex slaves.

It’s simply a fact that this kind of thing is a very American as The New York Times article (from which the quote above comes) noted:

‘Physical and sexual abuse of prisoners, similar to what has been uncovered in Iraq, takes place in American prisons with little public knowledge or concern, according to corrections officials, inmates and human rights advocates. In Pennsylvania and some other states, inmates are routinely stripped in front of other inmates before being moved to a new prison or a new unit within their prison. In Arizona, male inmates at the Maricopa County jail in Phoenix are made to wear women’s pink underwear as a form of humiliation. At Virginia’s Wallens Ridge maximum security prison, new inmates have reported being forced to wear black hoods, in theory to keep them from spitting on guards, and said they were often beaten and cursed at by guards and made to crawl.’

In fact, America’s penal system can be directly connected to Abu Ghraib:

‘The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time. The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country’s criminal justice system. Mr. McCotter, 63, is director of business development for Management & Training Corporation, a Utah-based firm that says it is the third-largest private prison company, operating 13 prisons. In 2003, the company’s operation of the Santa Fe jail was criticized by the Justice Department and the New Mexico Department of Corrections for unsafe conditions and lack of medical care for inmates. No further action was taken.’

He claims to have left Iraq after Abu Ghraib was reopened and has washed his hands of more recent events. But it really doesn’t matter. Instead of exporting freedom, liberty, democracy and our traditions of civil rights, Constitutional due process of law, respect for justice and so on, we’ve exported our arrogance, our violence and our prison system.

But that’s okay. The Cabal is circling the wagons. Fascist pundits are on the case, and « now a soldier has been trotted out to say ‘it ain’t that bigga deal »:

‘Arevalo said he was angered by the reports of prisoner abuse because he felt that soldiers at his compound were doing a good job. Arevalo said he even made a point of being friendly and talking to the prisoners, including one Iranian prisoner who used to tell soldiers off in English and Arabic. “We prided ourselves on keeping prisoners in control, and after that came out, I was somewhat disappointed,” he said. “It’s not the whole army’s fault. It’s two people who were bored or something. Just a few bad apples.”’

Yeah, he’s one of the good Germans, er, I mean Americans. Maybe some Iraqis will send him some rose petals …

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 that the United States faces the prospect of casualties for years without achieving its goal of establishing a free and democratic Iraq. Their major worry is that the United States is prevailing militarily but failing to win the support of the Iraqi people. That view is far from universal, but it is spreading, and being voiced publicly for the first time. Army Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., the commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, who spent much of the year in western Iraq, said he believes that at the tactical level at which fighting occurs, the U.S. military is still winning. But when asked whether he believes the United States is losing, he said, “I think strategically, we are.”

Army Col. Paul Hughes, who last year was the first director of strategic planning for the U.S. occupation authority in Baghdad, said he agrees with that view and noted that a pattern of winning battles while losing a war characterized the U.S. failure in Vietnam. “Unless we ensure that we have coherency in our policy, we will lose strategically,” he said in an interview Friday. “I lost my brother in Vietnam,” added Hughes, a veteran Army strategist who is involved in formulating Iraq policy. “I promised myself, when I came on active duty, that I would do everything in my power to prevent that [sort of strategic loss] from happening again. Here I am, 30 years later, thinking we will win every fight and lose the war, because we don’t understand the war we’re in.”’
—The Washington Post

Wolfie, of course, disagrees with all this and has his head planted firmly in his arse:

‘Wolfowitz, the Pentagon’s No. 2 official, said that he does not think the United States is losing in Iraq, and said no senior officer has expressed that thought to him, either. “I am sure that there are some out there” who think that, he said in an interview yesterday afternoon. “There’s no question that we’re facing some difficulties,” Wolfowitz said. “I don’t mean to sound Pollyannaish—we all know that we’re facing a tough problem.” But, he said, “I think the course we’ve set is the right one, which is moving as rapidly as possible to Iraqi self-government and Iraqi self-defense.”’

But the Army has Wolfie’s number:

‘A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. “It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this,” he said. “The American people may not stand for it—and they should not.” Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. “I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion,” he said. “Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice.”’

Of course they didn’t. ‘Cause the Cabal is always right, the Cabal is always omniscient, praise the Cabal.

The article quotes senior military officials as saying we’re going to be in Iraq for at least five years (for the rest of the Boy Emperor’s ‘term’ wink wink?) and we will be taking casualities throughout that period. Interesting.

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 with used books, pulp paperbacks, old magazines, old toys and games, and all kinds of other cool stuff—like every great find you’ve ever seen at a garage sale crammed into one spot) and had dinner at Full Moon, which has taken over the business of Don Carlos, formerly a block south on Main. (Apparently closed—that’s the second Mexican restuarant to shut its doors since we moved here.) A nice evening out.

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 in non-smoking and then the server proceeded to get huffy and pissy when we complained that smoke from the smoking section was wafting over and interfering with our meal. She then proceeded to deep-six us and ring up our order only after we’d sat waiting for her to return with our check for fifteen minutes and we’d gotten up and walked up to the cash register. Along with that, she gave us this treacly, sing-songy little sarcastic number about how “oh, sorry,” she’d conveniently “forgotten” our check. Yeah, a really memorable dining experience, for all the wrong reasons. I’d love to have seen what Larry David would’ve done in a situation like that.

On another subject: yes, this blog is full of rants, kvetches, complaints, gripes, invectives, and questions. The point is, we do have that tendency, as do many blogs, partly because ranting is somehow definitionally part of what it is to be a blog (check out other blogs if you don’t believe me). Yet we also have many moments of wonderment, moments of reflection, moments of joy, and moments of beagleness.

So if you are reading us regularly (or even if you just stumbled upon us), and you’re okay with the fact that we sometimes gripe a little more than maybe we should, we’d like to say that we greatly appreciate your patience, your calm, and your support. Thank you.

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 complains that the library website is hard to navigate and that the library charges fines if a book is a day late.

Other common undergrad library use perceptions: The library system is too big and too daunting. Students want one answer and they want it now (“gimme gimme gimme”). Students like studying at Borders or Barnes and Noble; they can browse, find items quickly without having to memorize LC or Dewey Decimal numbers, take books off shelves and put them back when they’re done, don’t have to check anything out, and all of the books have new covers and attractive dust jackets. (All of the books in the library have had their jackets removed and are therefore “old” to the students.) They can bring food and beverages into the chain bookstore and not get yelled at or told to leave.

And of course, the big one: Everything you want to find out, you can find out on the Internet.

The one librarian interviewed for this article had exactly the right approach: “The question we are asking is what kind of library does the millennial generation need, not what do we want to give them.” She adds: “Faculty members are so annoyed by the low-quality research students do. I don’t want to let that happen. So what do we do to entice them here and make it welcoming and easy to use the library?”

But who knows how many libraries actually have the resources and the determination to put that mode of thinking into hard practice? Almost any of the remarks undergrads make in this article could be made about the University of Michigan’s library system (or, I imagine, most university library systems). The UM library system intimidated me when I first started using it, and I love libraries and everything about libraries, including the rows upon rows of LC-numbered books without dust jackets. It must have taken me at least a month or two of regular use before I shook the feeling that I wasn’t really supposed to know how to negotiate the library. And I forced myself to use the library for some reason almost every day. How, I wonder, would a freshman on a tight class deadline who’s not used the library extensively before feel upon encountering the vast UM morass?

It’s a tough question, and there are no easy answers, but the implications of finding a set of implementable answers are crucial to the survival of the library as we know it.

[Link courtesy LISNews.]

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 wave of the future, no matter how loudly the ACLU and the EFF protest, why groan and moan about it?

But will RFIDs answer this perennial SFPL user question: “When the online catalog says a book is ‘missing,’ does that mean it’s checked out?” [EFF link courtesy Librarian.net.]

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 were allegedly getting ready to consign them to the Dumpster. He then wrote a book-length diatribe about the ordeal, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, that, among other things, claimed that vicious, short-sighted librarians were all but deliberately destroying the cultural heritage that newspapers embody. As the originator of the post about this story on LISNews wryly observed, “Maybe now old St. Nich will quit bashing librarians and stick to writing novels.”

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 singing some tunes deliberately off-key, setting everyone’s teeth on edge. I went outside around 11.00 and the air was spookily still, then five minutes later, lightning flashed, a warm breeze picked up, and a thunderstorm raced swiftly through the county north and east of Ann Arbor, causing a little rumbling and noise and a strange tension in the air.

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 the five arrests, the cocaine use, the alcoholism, the DWIs, the casual attitude toward military service to his country during time of war, and the rape of workers, the environment, gays and lesbians, the elderly, retirees, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum, ad nauseum …

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 today’s Ann Arbor News) that he was “not surprised” that the Iraq prisoner abuse occurred.

Although it’s obvious that Zimbardo isn’t a prison booster (indeed, his whole point is that prisons are by definition inhumane), using the aborted experiment for financial gain (especially when the experiment, originally supposed to last two weeks, had to be terminated after six days because of its effect on some of the subjects) seems to me kind of misguided. Not only that, the potential for his remarks to be taken out of context seems immense.

For instance, the crux of the Times article is not that prisons are inhumane and that the penal system needs to be examined, though Zimbardo is quoted as saying something to that effect, but that the Iraq prisoner abuse was no big deal, no significant failure, because these things happen in prisons all the time. That’s a great message to carry away from this whole sordid affair—that it’s just one more grisly event to which to numb ourselves and for which to make allowances and excuses.

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!?

And further crotchetiness ensued when I was shelving returned books for the 900s and came up to the biography section. I had to shelve just-read and returned bios on Steven Spielberg and [gag] Britney Spears between bios of Bessie Smith and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, which hadn’t been checked out in a very long time.

Now, I’m sorry again, but I admit to having a bit of hard time lately living in a society/culture which has plunged from the heights of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Bessie Smith to the likes of Mr. E.T. and that trashy blond singer/slut thing in a mere 100 years.

Just call me Grandpa and be thankful I don’t get a t.v. reception.

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 conflict came on the screen (a loud argument between two girls), the room suddenly got very quiet and everyone watched in rapt attention. Shortly thereafter, when one girl was crying and being consoled by another character, they laughed at her and called her a crybaby and then resumed their chatter.

Like it or not, our society is in enthrall to violence and conflict. Kinder and gentler is an unattainable myth. It’s all downhill from here. Especially since these kids will be added to the ranks of Ann Arbor’s homicidal drivers in just two years.

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 read in People yesterday that a 17-year-old kid saw Julia on location and hastily scribbled a sign asking her to the prom. She declined because she’s already married.)

The second dream was just as strange. Back-to-back dreams. My sister was driving her Suburban, I was in a Cherokee and Frank in the Wrangler. We were in Oklahoma City and going back to Duncan. She had a young Asian couple with her. The man rode with Frank, but my sister said this would be a good time for the woman to drive me in the Cherokee. We got in and she proceeded to be unable to make turns and drove through a field, laughing and having a good time, with me trying to turn the wheel back to the road and explaining that she has to take it slow and easy because of the Cherokee’s higher center of gravity. As we were about to get on I-40, the alarm rang and woke me up.

Yeesh.

“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 story over at The Smoking Gun about allegations of harassment and other generally inappropriate and over-the-top behavior by the overwhelmingly male scriptwriters for the series.) I guess the hype and the nostalgia are more about the “lifestyle” (imaginary though it may have been) that the show represented, as well as the pre-reign-of-terrorism time that the show harked back to, than the show itself and its soon-to-be-fading-celebrity multimillionaire stars.

“Frasier” I watched a lot more. I enjoyed some episodes, found Kelsey Grammer sometimes sublimely funny but generally irritating beyond description, and lost interest once Niles and Daphne got together after, oh, seven years of mooning and pining and Shakespearean intrigue. Now “Everybody Loves Raymond” is the sole surviving veteran sitcom (unless you count “The Simpsons,” still going strong, more or less, after almost 14 years).

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 gears and wheels and cogs to bring the air-conditioning apparatus online. No, it’s not all connected to a mainframe somewhere, and I don’t know anything beyond that. It’s COLD in the libraries now after months and months of endless and uncontrollable heat. I dressed in short sleeves yesterday and didn’t bring anything else and regretted it. So, the dilemma is: bring layers or not? I’m thinking a sweater will suffice.

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 entry to one of Bush’s events), forget about ever seeing the man in the flesh.

I’m a little late on this, but here goes.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. 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 History, Michael Burleigh (2000, New York: Hill & Wang).]

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 ago struggling to pump out the final paragraphs of my take-home final. So, I made it, at least this far. We’ll see how I do in the coming year, when I’ll be shouldering 14 units each term, but at least I have reason to believe that I’ll be able to pull this thing off, and that’s for the good.

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 couldn’t go much lower in our culture, they find new depths.

Meanwhile, one of the game’s heroes, who may be on track to break Hank Aaron’s homerun record, the penultimate baseball stat, petulantly tells the media to either prove he’s on steroids or shut up about it, even as federal investigators were told on 2-Mar that the hero was among six major-league players who received steroids from a California lab through the hero’s boyhood friend and longtime weight trainer. A corroborating source told a newspaper that steroids and human growth hormone had been obtained for the hero for three years.

I’m not exactly sure how much worse the Majors can get; I’m sure it won’t be too long before they dig up Lou Gehrig and put Disney animatronics in him and trot him around to each ballpark in the system so he can do ads for Propecia and Diet Coke.

Or it could be even worse than that. Kevin Costner could make Field of Dreams II (‘If you build it, they will buy Budweiser’).

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. As I walked home after work tonight (first time I’ve walked all the way from campus home in a long time) there were a couple of parties going on out on front lawns on South State, including a volleyball game in front of one of the frats; not sure if these were just stragglers or what. I was able to cross South State without getting killed, which would not have happened on a typical day during the year. So, I’m not sure. Like I said, a mixed bag. It definitely doesn’t feel as though the town has emptied out, though.

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 would shrink the number workers eligible for overtime and 99-0 for another provision that guarantees overtime for workers in 55 professions, including computer programmers, teachers and journalists. Both provisions are attached to a tax bill that is being debated. … The votes mark the second time in a year senators moved to stop the Labor Department from issuing rules that would restrict overtime pay.’
—Bloomberg.com

Hooray for the Senate. But of course, the Orwellian administration immediately started bleating, ‘Won’t somebody please think of the corporations!!!!’ and whining that those nasty idiot workers at places like Wal-Mart are about to scuttle the entire economy and deny any profit at all for the embattled and put-upon rich by their endless whining and lawsuits:

‘Labor Secretary Elaine Chao has said the revisions would save U.S. companies including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and RadioShack Corp. $2 billion a year in litigation costs for overtime disputes. They would cost companies $1.1 billion for extra wages in the first year and $375 million for higher pay each year after that.’

The corporate shill/harpy has been on an extended PR campaign (a la Johnny Reb Asscroft’s tour of cities to drum up support for USAPATRIOT) to whine and moan and bitch and complain about those evil mean Democrats and labor unions:

’”As the issue moves to the House, we will continue to expose the misinformation campaign against the rules and strengthen overtime rights for workers,” Chao, 50, said in a statement.’

Isn’t it great how this disingenuous idiot warps the truth by saying that they want to ‘strengthen overtime rights for workers’ by stripping workers of overtime rights?

How disgusting are they gonna get?

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. The first is Josh Ritter, John Ritter’s son. Look for a Three’s Company: The Next Generation movie soon, methinks.

The second is heiress and Symbionese Liberation Army gun moll Patty Hearst’s daughter, and let me just say I have rarely seen a more anorexic-looking apparation in the pages of People. Well, at least not since 30 pages before with Jennifer Aniston’s pics, but you get the idea. I mean, I’ve seen Somalian famine victims in the ‘80s with more meat on their bones.

But isn’t it nice to know that the legacies of John Ritter and Patty Hearst will be with us for another few decades? Of course, if Patty’s offspring doesn’t eat a burger soon, that may not be true.

Listen to me, so catty today. That comes from the gorgeous spring day outside and the deserted, sepulchrous media center inside. The highlight of the day was helping students research old dead presidents this morning and discovering that the school has killer wireless internet access.

Not that I’m complaining. I hadn’t read an issue of People in, oh, say three years. So now I’m caught up on that …

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 were tourists and townies. The townies in particular (for good reason) seem intent on claiming their space (it is their space, after all) as emphatically and for as long as they can. I saw a couple of people in caps and gowns get video shot in front of landmarks, so there must have been some peripheral ceremonies going on. All in all, still way less claustrophobic than a school day. It only took me about 10 minutes to get from State and William to Industrial after work tonight.

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 Oklahoman just wrote an editorial bemoaning the expansion of Oklahoma higher education in the state »:

‘Last we checked, Oklahoma had 13 publicly funded comprehensive and regional universities, a dozen two-year colleges and two higher education centers. From Goodwell to Durant and points in between, college students have no shortage of choices. Now they may soon have yet another. The state House of Representatives gave final legislative approval last week to a bill that would make Duncan the home to a branch campus of Cameron University. Cameron is located in Lawton, which is just 30 miles from Duncan. … Under House Bill 2624, by Rep. Jari Askins, D-Duncan, a learning center in Duncan will be used to offer lower- and upper-division courses and master’s-level graduate courses. Askins says no additional state funding would be needed to operate the campus. We’ll be interested to see how long that lasts. Askins is in line to become House speaker if Democrats retain their control in November, so it’s unlikely Gov. Brad Henry will want to buck his colleague on this. But he should weigh it carefully. There’s no question Oklahoma needs more college graduates, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it needs more college campuses.’
—The Daily Oklahoman

Couple of problems here. First, Duncan has had a higher education center in partnership with my alma mater, Cameron, for several years now. This represents just an expansion of its mission and offerings.

And second, as someone who spent five years of his life commuting on Oklahoma’s terrible two-lane roadways that 30 miles between Duncan and Lawton that the Oke seems to think is piffling, well, let’s put it this way: ‘Hey, Daily Oklahoman! Bite me!!!

The condescension, arrogance and petulance in the editorial is just amazing, particularly on this subject. Bringing the opportunity to get a college degree to more and more Oklahomans is a great thing and the Daily Disappointment should be leading the cheerleading instead of trying to snark negative political points against Jari Askins and the Democratic governor.

Shame on them.

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 of Foreign Assets Control said that between 1990 and 2003 it opened just 93 enforcement investigations related to terrorism. Since 1994 it has collected just $9,425 in fines for terrorism financing violations. In contrast, OFAC opened 10,683 enforcement investigations since 1990 for possible violations of the long-standing economic embargo against Fidel Castro’s regime, and collected more than $8 million in fines since 1994, mostly from people who sent money to, did business with or traveled to Cuba without permission.’
—Yahoo News

Yup, that’s the Boy Emperor’s Cabal for you … always and above-all is the ideology, while they pretend to do the opposite.

Don’t you feel safer?

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 awakening. Due to dramatic budget cuts some parks may be cutting back their hours, hiking trails may be un-passable, educational programs may no longer exist, and even some bathrooms may be shut down. Over the past few months, the National Park Service (NPS) has quietly imposed a hiring freeze, abandoned maintenance projects, cut visitor services, and reduced park hours at a number of America’s national parks. In response, according to Ski magazine, “Forest Service officials appear to be leaning toward a policy change that would allow more visible displays of sponsors, whose logos, names or ads could appear on items they underwrite.” The NPS believes that “its private partners in the tourism industry can help stem the decline in park visitation through aggressive efforts to lure more paying customers into the parks,” says Scott Silver, the executive director of Wild Wilderness, a Bend, Oregon-based environmental advocacy group.’
…
‘The National Park Service used to be one of the most dependable government-run outfits, Silver says. “From its earliest days, the idea behind the agency was that our national parks would be to America what the Cathedrals and architecture of Europe were to those countries, and most NPS officials cared a great deal for the parks and did a good job managing them.” … during the mid-sixties, the tourism industry begun to sink its claws into the NPS and “the process of Disneyfication” had become well-established by the time George W. Bush took office. Now, “politics rule supreme within the Department of Interior and it appears that when the leadership of the NPS is not misdirecting the media and the American public, they are speaking out of both sides of their mouths,” Silver told me in an e-mail exchange.’
—Working For Change

Sounds like the Boy Emperor’s administration: Mortgage our future, rape our past, make our present as Orwellian as possible. The depredations of snowmobiles in Yellowstone will be looked upon nostalgically in a few years when we have to pay Dreamworks a fee to look at Old Faithful, which will only erupt after the captive audience has seen seven previews of upcoming movies starring the Olsen Twins, Jim Carrey, Angelina Jolie and William Hung.

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 it with some kind of restriction on liberty,” said Mr. Boone …’

Censorship is NOT a restriction on liberty, I see. This is a joke, right? Not exactly:

‘A more serious meeting of celebrities was when Mr. Boone was invited to a private screening of Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” “After the screening was over, I turned and said, ‘Mel, you’re an apostle,’ ” said Mr. Boone, who has appeared in 15 films. “An apostle is one commissioned by God to tell the story and you are telling it more powerfully than it has ever been told or will ever be told, and you are therefore an apostle.” “I consider it the most important film ever made. It is a film that is not only of gigantic proportion but one that changes life, that affects people’s eternal destiny.” It is all the more significant, he said, “because Hollywood has an open antipathy toward Christianity itself.”’
—The Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times

Mel Gibson, an apostle and The Passion the most important film ever made.

Well, I think I might actually find myself in agreement with Pat: Censorship just might be desirable … so somebody slap some tape on his mouth.

After all, shutting Pat Boone up isn’t a restriction on liberty, right?

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 unholy alliance that could make things very higgledy-piggledy for the rest of us:

‘If the Saudis decided to let the so-called free market take over, flooding the globe with crude and sending oil prices into a steep dive, then the U.S. would be faced with a true nightmare. Lower prices would finish off not only smaller international companies that had been enticed into the oil play by high prices, but could wipe out the domestic oil companies in the U.S., causing sheer political hell for … Bush in his little oil bastion of Houston.’
—The Village Voice

Look out. This October Surprise could get very interesting.

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 very polarized, hardbitten, driven place, and that was mostly Thatcher’s doing. There’s no doubt she transformed Britain, but was it for the better? Her legacy is what I suspect hangs over London far more than any contribution of her successors, and from all accounts I’ve read London is now a slick, humming, purring, affluent metropolis, yet essentially cold and hostile. If such is her legacy, so be it. I don’t think it’s a particularly worthwhile legacy.

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 cool ride to and from Huron HS today for my subbing gig.

Sorry I caused the freeze. By the way, I ain’t laughing over here. This is friggin’ MAY for God’s sake!

My geography lesson yesterday was on Russia, and the textbook noted that the Upper Midwest of the United States shares the same climate as Siberia.

Yeah, like, no duh.

Speaking of high school and blogging, 16-year-old girls no longer trade secrets about hair, boys and parties. They talk about html, how to post photos and smileys on their blogs and trade web addresses and opinions on whether Blogger is a good tool or not.

No skateboard hijinks today; they were too busy playing a rousing game of ‘Hearts.’ Kids today playing ‘Hearts’??!! I thought that was a Grandpa’s game. (Not that I’m not guilty of playing it by the hour on Windoze machines … after all, that’s about all you can do on a Windoze machine without going stark, raving insane.)

Still, I learn something new every day that I go to high school …

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 upper 20s to around 30 degrees by sunrise. Temperatures will climb above

freezing around 8 am.

A freeze warning is issued when freezing temperatures are forecast to threaten outdoor plants. Those with agricultural interests in the

warned area are advised to harvest or protect tender vegetation.

Also … potted plants normally left outdoors should be covered or

brought inside away from the cold.

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 you feel like it,” yadda yadda yadda. I particularly savored the characterization of blogs as “an outlet for post-teen angst.” So this blog is, what? Post-post-post-post teen angst? Middle-age angst? Pre-senility angst? I know not.

I do know now, however, something I didn’t know before reading this particular piece: that the typical Stanford student’s blog is just as likely as not to be filled with photos of Jaguar XK8s and California poppies, which, I suppose, is just about in keeping with the school’s image as a playground for the spawn of the leisure class.

I also notice from class notes that someone from my graduating class lives right here in good old AA. I wonder how many other Stanfordites live in the area?

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.