Librarian's Rant

Cuz tonight's State of the Union Address will need a snortload of liquor to handle this year's SOTU Drinking Game.

I am virtuously on the reference desk this Tuesday evening, as I have been every Tuesday evening for the last 10 years. Therefore, no booze for me. Not until I get home and catch it on my TiFaux, of course. At which point I shall scream and throw dirty hosiery at the TV until the pain stops.

Mid-term elections, folks. It's the only way.

...is for an upstanding scientist. From the NY Times:

Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him

James E. Hansen, longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said in an interview that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists.

Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. "They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public," he said.

..."Communicating with the public seems to be essential," he said, "because public concern is probably the only thing capable of overcoming the special interests that have obfuscated the topic."

Thank you, Dr. Hansen, for trusting us to think for ourselves.

http://blogs.kansascity.com/tvbarn/2006/01/shouldnt_it_be_.html


Does this mean I'll finally get to see Veronica Mars? We don't have a UPN affiliate here--not enough market. But we have a WB affiliate. Hmmm...

Thanks to Chris Z. on LU for the link.

From Jenna Freedman at Radical Reference:

Members of the NYC collective of Radical Reference and others are organizing a Library Education Forum from the perspective of current LIS students and recent grads. Unrecent grads, library practitioners, and LIS faculty are also invited to participate.
http://libraryeducationforum.info/PressMaterials

Pat Robertson is losing it. His political savvy, that is. How can he assume his remarks about Ariel Sharon's massive stroke being the work of God will do anything to forward his own cause? Does he really believe this nonsense? Since August he's threatened the life of the Venezuelan president, told a small American town they would be smote by God for thinking "intelligent design" had no place in science classes, and now declared that a seriously ill world leader of one of the world's more volatile countries was struck down by God. Oh, yeah, and Rabin had it coming in '95 when he got assassinated.

I've always assumed he was a religious nutjob with a primarily political mission. Now I think he's just a religious nutjob.