Things I have learned, Volume Five

The Things I have Learned for the Month of December, here in Washington:

1) If you can think of it, someone probably wrote a book about it. (Goth Craft, for example.)

2) Yes, I can find an image with only a description, a possible name word, and some dumb luck. Extra points for the person asking the question because the description of the image was spot-on accurate.

2b) When describing things myself, sometimes the details that you think aren’t going to help much turn out to be precisely the details that make it all work.

3) I will recall that affixing my signature to my time sheet is a necessary part of ensuring that I get paid.

4) I can now join library_mofo, having spoken the appropriate entry phrase because of something work-related.

5) I will always keep in mind that physiologically, the brains of my users are always in development. The manifestations of this phenomenon are wide and varied.

6) Olivia comes in Latin.

7) I still hate being absentminded. Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate.

8) In the same vein as #1 on the November version (part 4) of this list, there’s no such thing as too-short shorts. Just paste on sufficient black spandex as to meet modesty requirements around the frayed and white short-shorts, and you’re good to go.

8b) There’s also no such thing as too early for perfume or adult-size purses. Sure, everyone wants to get older quicker, but at what point did we replace the water in the perfume bottle with actual perfume? (Should we blame the government? Or blame society? Or the perky bubbly *ping!* they call Barbie?)

9) The science fiction course I took in my undergraduate has been useful in one way or another at least three times this month.

10) I have a job where I can use the word “ratiocination” in proper context without straining or being called for a loquaciousness foul.

11) A lot of library staff have degrees that are pretty-but-otherwise-useless, myself included. However, as it turns out, there is at least one other person in the library system that I know of that has a similar undergraduate degree to mine.

12) The universe will always make sure that there is a Santa hat available when I make a remark about needing one.

13) Professional reading literature arrives in batches. It can be cleared with sufficient time and devotion, but the magazines tend to travel in packs, perhaps for their protection.

13b) The professional magazines are sometimes a month or three behind. That’s just a consequence of having lots of people on the list who want to read it. Does make for hilarity, though, when the most current issue of a magazine is out in my branch for quite a while before the magazine that’s a month behind arrives.

14) Winter festivals have a much different frame of reference when there’s no snow on the ground and there’s only occasional snow in the air.

15) Being a librarian means I have the freedom to engage in research when a curiostiy impulse hits me, like “While the First Amendment specifically forbids Congress from doing things, it’s usually extended to the state and local levels as well. When did that happen?”

16) *cough* Strong scents in the library have a way of getting to you. *cough*

Stumbling through another week - 04 January 2008

Huzzah for weekends. I think I want this one a little more than some others I’ve wanted in my career. Still short career that it is, anyway.

Joining the Sears "My SHC Community" installs a proxy on your computer, which monitors a lot of things it shouldn't. First, installing a proxy, bad. Second, the proxy phones home. Very bad. Third, it takes specific interest in things like secure website transactions, where sensitive information may be input into forms. Sears is probably going to get their heads nailed to the wall on this one. Consumers really hate it when corporations screw with their computers without their consent. Right, Sony?

After the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the Simon Rosenthal Center has taken out a full page advertisement in the New York Times asking the United Nations to formally address the problem of suicide bombing. If the intergovernmental body does take up the issue and comes to any sort of conclusion, will they also have found some way of creating a peace framework or process for those countries that have suicide bombers regularly?

Additionally, a United Kingdom police team is in Pakistan, conducting an investigation into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Unconvinced of the official line, or trying to see whether the government was deliberately leaving her at risk, perhaps this team will provide more convincing answers, even if they don’t differ from the official ones that much.

Jezebel has the eyes of time, and puts together Time from 1964, where black people were finally becoming "visible", to 2008, where a black man with a foreign name won a political election in a nearly all-white state. While we’re not saying that we’re fulfilling Dr. King’s dream yet, we are at least acknowledging that someone with a lot of money behind them can make a good run for the Presidency regardless of skin color. Well, not everyone. jblaque quotes a choice bit from the Free Republic website that still thinks Obama's a radical Muslim in disguise, and rejoices at his eventual defeat at the feet of any Republican candidate. He won Iowa. He is not the Democratic candidate yet. Then again, there are some for whom no Democratic candidate is anything but someone trying to subvert the great America into something else.

Cal Thomas says if we actually go for true bipartisanship, where the parties work together rather than sniping at each other, we might be able to change government. He’s right. Now, the question is, how do you convince both parties that coalition is better than electoral point-scoring and snapping at each other? Maybe the meeting described in the article will find out. If you believe, however, that the partisan infighting is the thing keeping the country from plunging into a dictatorship with two parties, then working together is probably the last thing you want the two parties to be doing.

Through some unlikely convergence of actions, a window washer who fell forty-seven stories to the ground has awakened and can speak. While he may not recover completely 100%, that he is still alive and looks to be making any sort of recovery is improbable enough.

In the United Kingdom, bicycle couriers are monitoring the amount of air pollution on their routes thanks to sensors and software on their mobiles. And where one leads, others may follow. All sorts of data may be available to scientists and others thanks to sensors and software on mobile phones or other garments. We always hope that these collections are opt-in rather than opt-out, and actually respect privacy, rather than just playing at it, but the trends can seem a bit evil-inclined at times. Staying in technology, utilizing nanowires of silicon in lithium batteries may triple their capacity and improve their safety. And there’s a possibility, if oil prices should continue to rise higher and higher, that other methods, such as reclamation of CO2 into hydrocarbon fuel might become economically viable - even if their large-scale distribution is still some fifteen to twenty years away.

Mind Hacks has an interesting proposition. Thanks to a trick that binds cholera and cocaine together, it may be possible to vaccinate someone against the effects of cocaine, as the cholera rouses the immune response, and then it learns to attack cocaine.

Okay, time to thwack someone stupid. Awful Announcing believes that the 58 times the two university bands during the Fiesta Bowl broadcast is 58 times too many. Apparently, there are better things in the stadium to devote camera time when the football action isn’t happening than organized cheers, a rowdy pep section, and fine musicianship. But what would I know? I’m one of those band geeks. I’m obviously a biased source.

After all the whackings delivered there, let’s have a cheer for the onrushing demise of DRM, as Sony-BMG is abandoning DRM on their digital music. Additionally, Zephoria has a nice capsule summary of the nine categories of potential fair use of copyright materials explored in the Center for Social Media's "Recut, Reframe, Recycle" report.

Last for tonight, if the Silver News Service is not doing things for you, or you want more, have a list of what Edward deLeau thinks is popular on the Internet. You can get just about any information in the world. If, however, you’d like a look at the world, the view from satellites orbiting the world may be just what you had in mind. Hey... I can see someone’s house from here, right? Although it might be on the other side of the world right now.

And now, sleep, ladies and gentlemen.