Librarian's Rant

Some excerpts from Senator Byrd's (D-WV) speech last week:

That so many have sacrificed during this war in Iraq is reason enough to ask questions about our government's policy in that faraway country. Our troops continue to shed their blood, and our nation continues to devote enormous sums of our national wealth, to continue that war. Whether one supported or opposed the war at its outset: no American must ever surrender the right to question the government.

The Constitution protects the American people from unjust laws that seek to stifle the patriotic duty to question those who are in power, but it is the courage of the American people that compels them to actually speak out when those in power call for silence. If anything, attacks on the patriotism of freedom-loving Americans may result in even more Americans fighting against attempts to squelch the Constitutional protections of freedom. [emphasis is mine, outrage is pure Byrd]

Alibris.com has created a wishlist of items for libraries, from which you can purchase for donation. They are partnering with the Texas Library Association (see previous posts on Katrina) to store and distribute the books.

More info here: http://www.findability.org/archives/000067.php

To enter, snap a photo that includes the lemur, upload it to Flickr, and tag it with ambientfindability.

Entries will be accepted through December 11, 2005. At that time, a panel of judges will review the photos and select a winner.

Evaluation criteria include popularity (in Flickr, Google, de.licio.us), comicality (make the lemur laugh), and other facets of the user experience.

The winner will receive a $500 Amazon Gift Certificate, a $100 O'Reilly Gift Certificate, and autographed copies of the lemur and polar bear books.

MoveOn.org is trying something new to fight the latest budget nonsense, in particular the cuts to services specifically directed at the growing poor in our country: They're putting a face on it (link takes you to their Flickr page).

Interesting idea. Reminds me of Sorry Everybody following the elections last year.

The high prophet of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is writing a book. The FSM Bible, if you will.

The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which will codify Pastafarianism, is set to come out on Valentine’s Day. “My hope is that readers won’t know if I’m trying to make a point about pseudoscience or if I’m a complete nut,� says Henderson. “I’ll be really disappointed if it doesn’t spawn a cult.�

Are you Pastafarian? Well, look! Now you have head gear.

Bless the noodly appendage.

Outrage perhaps? Dismay? And yet all I feel when I read this...:

American Faces Charge of Graft for Work in Iraq

In what is expected to be the first of a series of criminal charges against officials and contractors overseeing the rebuilding of Iraq, an American has been charged with paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and kickbacks to American occupation authorities and their spouses to obtain construction contracts, according to a complaint unsealed late yesterday.

...This is the first case, but it won't be the last," said Jim Mitchell, a spokesman for the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office. Mr. Mitchell said as many as a dozen related cases had been referred to the Justice Department for possible prosecution.

...is a great sense of...resignation, I guess? I'm not even remotely surprised. Which makes me sad. Yes, I guess that's my predominant feeling: Sadness. Of course graft is nothing new, but the blatant, unapologetic scope of it is disheartening. Because you can be sure that everyone knew about it, and it was considered SOP by our government. Sad. We can do so much better. We can be so much better.

From yesterday's NY Times:

Want 'War and Peace' Online? How About 20 Pages at a Time?

In a race to become the iTunes of the publishing world, Amazon.com and Google are both developing systems to allow consumers to purchase online access to any page, section or chapter of a book. These programs would combine their already available systems of searching books online with a commercial component that could revolutionize the way that people read books.

What do you think of the new initiative of Amazon.com and Google to sell portions of books online? The idea is to do for books what Apple has done for music, allowing readers to buy and download parts of individual books for their own use through their computers rather than trek to a store or receive them by mail. Consumers could purchase a single recipe from a cookbook, for example, or a chapter on rebuilding a car engine from a repair manual.

Cheese Test: What type of cheese are you?

Thanks, Laura K. (and Gwynneth!)

The talented Michael Stephens of Tame the Web is doing a survey of "the Blog People" for his PhD work. Help him out: take the survey.