Cleaning The Cluttered Brain

Somalia

2010-02-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

I am thinking about Somalia. I watched two old documentaries about Somalia from the 1960s: The Parching Winds of Somalia and another one that I can't locate right now...a nice one about a Somali nomad boy and his way of life. The documentaries were made available for viewing on Bartamaha.com, a Somali website that provides Somali news, videos, etc in English, so I am assuming if they were approved by the Somalis who created this website that a certain percentage of Somalis (at least, perhaps the ones living in the United States) would approve of them as true history as well. I think the regime changes and wars that they had endured changed some of their old time culture, and I am sure that the refugees who are here in the States who lived during the "good times" have some nostalgia for those older more peaceful times.

Even in the more peaceful times, most Somalis lived a life that would be very hard by Western standards, but according to these documentaries they seemed very happy to live this life. Even those living in the Somali cities had a much different lifestyle in more peaceful days than what they have now...in the 1960s, for example, they had an incredibly strong feminist movement--even supported by some men--which was fighting against forced cliterectomies for girls. I don't know if the Somali women are still fighting against it in their own communities; I know that women like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and films such as Wustenblume (Desert Flower) are educating the world about this issue...

In any case, the more I learn about Somalia, the more I want to learn, to better understand my neighbors here in St. Cloud.

LGBT Folks: Backbone of America

2010-02-03T18:53:00.001-08:00

If my partner dies, because we could never file as a couple on federal taxes, my Social Security payment would be affected. I would not receive the extra payment that widows and widowers normally receive from the federal government. Watch this video and see what I mean.

This is not propaganda. This is the honest truth. We pay more tax than anyone, and then get nothing when we become too old to work and outlive our partners.

BTW--folks who lose their partners as war casualties will not get extra government payments either.

This is why straight folks should know every single LGBT person serving alongside them in the military. They should hear firsthand how we pay double to be citizens, and serve with honor, for no reward. They should know that we are the slaves of this system, and the economic backbone of America, and this should come to an end.

Pagans Now Welcome in the Air Force

2010-02-01T19:22:00.000-08:00

"Earth religions" get worship area at Air Force Academy

Why not? Appeal to the special Wotan clan of white supremacists and pagan folks who normally aren't military joiners to make the military seem like a friendly place for pagans. Think long and hard before you sign those papers!

Maybe We Aren't Ready for Gays in the Military

2010-01-31T16:07:00.000-08:00

Here is a big problem in the US military that no one is talking about:

One third of female veterans of the US military have been raped by male soldiers within their own units, and 71% of post-traumatic stress disorder cases reported by female veterans of the US military involve sexual assault committed by male soldiers within their own units.

No one talks about this, because the government wants to encourage young women to serve in the military just as much as men, especially during this time when we need young soldiers.

If women aren't safe in the US military, and very little has been done to address this, then how are openly LGBT servicepeople going to have safety in their own unit in the military?

LibraryThing

2010-01-23T20:03:00.000-08:00

am gathering data on LibraryThing users who have joined LibraryThing groups. According to the website, there are 900,000 LibraryThing users around the world, but based on the numbers that I am adding up right now, not everyone has chosen to join a special group to discuss books or other topics.

Counting up the number of people who could fit neatly into different categories is also a challenge, as some can be counted in more than one category. For example, if someone is a member of a Hogwarts LibraryThing group, they could be counted in the Childrens/YA category, the fantasy category, the single-author fan category, and the fiction category, so categorizing LibraryThing folks is not always an exact, obvious science. Not only that, but a member of one LibraryThing group could potentially belong to other groups; I can only count them once, though.

Martin Luther King Day

2010-01-18T08:34:00.001-08:00

As today is Martin Luther King Day, here are a few words from the man in relation to race and humanity. I would like to believe that when King uses the word "man", he speaks for all human beings. I also am going to interpret the use of "God" here as the network of Nature, circle of life, the image of our ancestors, the strength of our DNA that has been passed down to us from the generations that have survived...we all must play our part to keep the Earth turning, to keep human civilization alive...this is what we all have in common, and why we have to work together in achieving that goal, to strengthen and improve human civilization.

Deeply rooted in our religious heritage is the conviction that every man is an heir of dignity and worth. Our Judeo-Christian tradition refers to this inherent dignity of man in the Biblical term "in the image of God". The image of God is universally shared in equal proportions by all men...Every human being has etched in his personality the indelible stamp of the Creator. Every man must be respected because God loves him. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his intellect, his racial origin or social position. Human worth lies in relatedness to God. An individual has value because he has value to God. Whenever this is recognized, "whiteness" and "blackness" pass away as determinants in a relationship and "son" and "brother" are substituted.
(Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, 1967)

CALL FOR FILM REVIEWS AND ARTICLES: JURA GENTIUM CINEMA

2010-01-15T14:13:00.000-08:00

The online journal "Jura Gentium Cinema" (www.jgcinema.org) is seeking film reviews (between 500 and 1000 words) and articles (3,000-7,000 words) for a special issue on Jewish film.

As the Jura Gentium is a center devoted to the study of international law and global politics, the films addressed in this issue should address at least one aspect of this broad field and how it relates to Jewish people, culture, history, or religion anywhere in the world. Acceptable topics would also include documentaries about or film interpretations of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, the Jew as "other", Jewish identity, culture clashes among Jews of different ethnicities/cultures/nationalities, minorities within the Jewish community, relationships between Israelis/Palestinians, the kosher food industry, Jewish geography, the Israeli movie industry, and the Israeli film fund.

Film reviews should be informative and evaluative, without being dismissive; that is, the reviewer should find some value in the work being reviewed.

For examples of previous publications, please go to our website www.jgcinema.org. For questions regarding submissions for this issue, please contact Rachel Wexelbaum at rswexelbaum@stcloudstate.edu .

Deadline for submissions is March 1, 2010.

News Becomes Entertainment

2010-01-11T12:49:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin signed a multiyear contract with Fox News to be a regular contributor and commentator.

Kind of funny when just yesterday I watched a 60 Minutes video clip about how the Republican presidential campaign folks kept repeating that they were very sorry that they chose Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate because, in their words, "there was so much that she did not know".

Maybe Sarah Palin will fudge 9/11 stories and the George Bush legacy as well...after all, she could not see it from her window in Alaska.

American Jewish Group Creates Fund for LGBT Rights in Uganda

2010-01-10T16:15:00.000-08:00

The American Jewish World Service (AJWS) has created the "Urgent LGBT Uganda Fund" in response to the proposed anti-gay legislation that would broaden the criminalization of same-sex relationships in the African nation. A donation website has been set up for those wanting to make a difference.

As AJWS president, Ruth Messinger, said in the press release:

"AJWS's work is propelled by a very basic value: the essential dignity of every human being...We are especially reminded of this in supporting the work of LGBT communities around the globe."

Established in Boston in 1985, the AJWS is an international development organization committed to fighting hunger and poverty, while advocating human rights and promoting the values and responsibilities of global citizenship within the Jewish community.

BIG FAT LIARS

2010-01-08T20:47:00.000-08:00

I will never feel guilty about telling little white lies again, because some people told BIG FAT LIES today. Like Rudy Giuliani, who actually said that there were no domestic terror attacks while George W. Bush was president. Hello, remember 9/11, that happened in YOUR CITY while you were mayor??? What the hell??? Are the Republicans having a contest to see who can tell the biggest lie, or who can be the biggest homophobe, in order to become the next president? I used to like Rudy Giuliani. NOT ANYMORE.

The American people are tired and beaten down. They are out of work or overworking, worrying about healthcare, debts, their kids, their families, while they count their pennies, pop two Ibuprofen and go back to work. They do not have enough time to focus on the news. And so the politicians are taking this opportunity to LIE AS MUCH AS THEY CAN to keep good Americans oppressed and confused, and to make them turn on each other.

Uganda Anti-Gay Bill "Not Necessary"

2010-01-08T06:16:00.000-08:00

Ugandan minister says that the gay death penalty is "unnecessary".

Under current Ugandan law, a person can go to prison for 14 years if they are caught involved in a homosexual act, and Minister of State Investments Aston Kajara says that this punishment is "quite enough".

Some countries, like Sweden, are threatening to stop their aid to Uganda if they pass the anti-gay bill, and so this voice of dissension in the government may be financially--rather than humanistically--motivated, but it is a start. I hope that, under the current system in Uganda, no one accuses Kajara of homosexuality or tortures or murders him for his dissension. If that is the case, then Uganda is not a democracy after all.

Be Careful What You Wish For

2010-01-04T08:58:00.000-08:00

This article was published in today's New York Times online:
US Evangelical's Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

The best part is that some of the American gay haters who are invited to Uganda feign total ignorance regarding what their words mean to Ugandans. Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International who was invited to Uganda to to tell Ugandans how to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals, had the nerve to say that "He felt duped", and even goes so far as to say "That's horrible, absolutely horrible. Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people".

That's right, Schmierer. Once you are gay, you are always gay, and your life may now be in danger if you set foot in Uganda...unless the proposed laws do not affect mzungus. That's horrible, indeed! Wishing for the eradication of gay people, and then saying that some of them are the nicest you have ever met...

Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundridge, Don Schmierer, and Rick Warren who funded it with the money from his church--you all might as well be eugenicists, or Nazis. And now you all claim shame, even though your books and actions express that you want gay and lesbian people not to exist. Well, you got your wish in Africa. Now innocent lesbians are being raped by HIV-positive men, and innocent gay men are being beaten, castrated, and murdered, with full consent from the Ugandan government, church, and general public.

To all of you church goers out there--please read the fine print on where your donations might end up. If your church is supporting homophobic missions to Africa that promote the persecution and eradication of gay people, or missions that provide faulty information about HIV/AIDS, do a few hours in the soup kitchen or make sure that your donation is specifically earmarked for your local Sunday school or coffee money. Make it a resolution in 2010 not to fuel further hatred or ignorance in this world.

Ugandan Travel Videos

2009-12-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

They are not travel videos, nor safari videos, but the sickest anti-gay rally videos you will see in the modern world.

If the Ugandans weren't going after LGBT folks, they would be going after albinos, or Indians ("the Jews of East Africa"), or Muslims. Ultimately, someone is responsible for why Uganda is messed up. Instead of exercising the powers of critical thinking, the Ugandan government would resort to Dark Age witchhunts and the mass murder of innocent human beings.

Blame the British and German colonizers of this land, blame Christian missionaries, blame American AIDS educators who were sorely uneducated about the true needs of Ugandans, and last but not least for fundies like Rick Warren for pumping money into Christian missions going to Africa, for what we have now.

At the same time, do not use what is happening in Uganda as a smokescreen to make LGBT civil rights in the United States look so much better. Use it as a tool to show people that the same thing could happen here in the United States should the same right wing and Christian fundamentalists who pumped money into Uganda pump money into anti-LGBT legislation and perpetual resistance here in the United States.

What Uganda and the United States Have In Common

2009-12-22T13:24:00.000-08:00

Uganda and the United States both start with the letter "U". They share a more insidious similarity as well. The governments of Uganda and the United States both reduce LGBT people to second class citizenship. Both governments are manipulated by religious leaders who consider homosexuality an abomination.

The proposed government plan for LGBT people and their allies in Uganda involves the "eradication of homosexuality" and withdrawal from international treaties or protocols that recognize the human rights of gay people. Ugandans who speak against the bill will also be labeled gay and targeted for persecution.

The Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009 would jail consenting adults who engage in gay sex. It would give life sentences to people in same-sex marriages. It would also extradite gay Ugandans living abroad and prosecute them.

David Bahati, the writer of this bill, calls it a "very wonderful piece of legislation".

American evangelicals can be blamed for encouraging Ugandan homophobia. Their limited imaginations did not envision an African government taking the big step. In the United States, human beings have many protections under the law, while in Uganda they do not. This is why Americans must be careful as to what they preach in Uganda.

If you would like to stay current on LGBT rights in Uganda, bookmark Gay Rights Uganda to watch how our brothers and sisters in Uganda are living. Do not think for one moment that LGBT people in the United States are safe from discrimination, when our own Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty expresses regret over his passing of an LGBT anti-discrimination bill because it protects "cross-dressers".

What Does "White" Really Mean?

2009-11-20T19:39:00.000-08:00

"White" is not a culture. And yet so many American people will claim that it is. So will white supremacists.

Although many Americans will identify as "white", so will white supremacists. White supremacists will go one step further to identify the white people whom they believe do not fall into that category.

The concept of "white" only exists when people descended from Europeans, or people of a lighter complexion, separate themselves culturally, physically, legally, and ideologically from those who are not descended from Europeans, or those people with a darker complexion. The same is almost true of "black", although there were no "black" people until those who considered themselves "white" enslaved the poor and people of color.

Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay

2009-11-17T07:44:00.000-08:00

Marco Pierre White and Gordon Ramsay both run "Hell's Kitchen"--Marco in the United Kingdom, and Gordon in the United States. Although Marco Pierre White trained Gordon Ramsay, his training is reflected in Ramsay's culinary style and quest for perfection, not his management style. Marco, who may cut a more menacing figure than Ramsay, never loses his temper in the kitchen, never curses, and gives his cooks sufficient training and warning before they get the chop.

The British and American versions of "Hell's Kitchen", while both reality television shows, have different goals. British and American celebrities are selected to cook in Marco's kitchen, while culinary students and working cooks/chefs are selected to cook in Gordon's kitchen. The winner of the British "Hell's Kitchen" simply lives to tell the tale of the experience (maybe they get some prize money to go to charity, not sure), while the winner of the American "Hell's Kitchen" is selected to run one of Gordon Ramsay's restaurants.

I enjoy watching Marco Pierre White a lot more than watching Gordon Ramsay. Marco walks around his kitchen with a kaffiyeh tied around his head, wielding a twelve inch chef's knife, like a barbarian king...but he is wise and gentle. He has a sweet tooth and crazy hair. And the man is a real artist.

Skinheads, NeoNazis, Veterans Day, and Cocksuckers

2009-11-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

I stayed up late last night watching documentaries on YouTube about skinheads and NeoNazis in the United States, Europe, and Russia. One of the documentaries was actually a National Geographic special, as opposed to one renegade filmmaker's perspective, which validated all of the other independent filmmakers' work on this subject for me. These are terrorists among us, on American soil, and these are the people that red-blooded Americans should be weeding out, imprisoning and torturing in Guantanamo!

Today we celebrate Veterans Day in the United States. Our World War Two veterans sacrificed the best years of their lives to overthrow the Nazis. Meanwhile, some of their children and grandchildren are buying into the neo-Nazi and skinhead movements due to lack of employment, hatred of Mexican immigrants engaged in low paying jobs, and greedy companies outsourcing.

Today, the United States military has thousands if not millions of Americans serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. A percentage of these people are doing their military time in order to train for the white revolution. Some of the soldiers who return from the Middle East bring a hatred of Muslims back with them. Some who have not even served in the US military are writing asinine editorials titled "Why Can Muslims Serve, Not Gays?". The Advocate, normally a reputable news source for the LGBT community, has used extremely poor judgement in publishing an Islamophobic editorial written by--wait for it--A PORN STAR DIRECTOR/PRODUCER.

The best part is that the editorial has nothing to do with allowing gays to serve in the military, but everything to do with the incredibly flawed belief that Muslims cannot be patriotic citizens because they "hear the Koran". I am so ashamed that The Advocate published this trash! And what about all of those gay Arabic interpreters who were booted from the military simply because of their sexual orientation--some of them were Muslims, too. I was shocked to find out that many of those who responded to this porno guy's editorial agreed with him! I could not help but post a comment in response to the editorial.

Just replace "Muslim" with "Jew", or "queer", or your choice of minority in Lucas' editorial, and it is chilling. Read the comments posted, and see how many people agree with this guy. I wonder if Lucas is going to suck the cocks of closeted White Power dudes next.

Lifetime Achievement Award

2009-10-21T06:59:00.000-07:00

Amira Hass received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Women's Media Foundation. This has not been written about in any mainstream paper, nor has it made the headlines of Ha'aretz, Amira's own paper. This is very sad, especially since so many people have criticized the fact that she received the award.

Amira's critics make the argument that she has never truly been in danger, and has never been silenced. Amira agrees that Israel is a democracy, and freedom of speech is supported there. At the same time, the fact that she is Jewish and an Israeli, and dares to criticize Israeli policies of Occupation, does make her a brave soul, a strong person who does not care what the Jewish community thinks about her. The fact that she is one of the only Jewish people who nails it right on the head--that the modern state of Israel cannot sustain its existence through the oppression of Palestinians, that Israeli citizens (including herself) are all guilty of perpetuating the oppression, and that things have to change in order for Israel to exist--makes her an outsider, and that is a hard life. She has not gone through her career unscathed; she has been beaten up by Jewish settlers, she has had stories go unpublished, she has been "banned" from Gaza. Amira Hass has sacrificed a lot to bring her stories to the world, and we must recognize her for this.

Great video of Amira's acceptance speech for her award, as well as an interview with Democracy Now!.

Reaction to Obama's Speech to America's Schoolchildren

2009-09-08T10:24:00.000-07:00

President Barack Obama spoke to America's schoolchildren at Wakefield High School in Arlington County, Virginia on Tuesday September 8, 2009. High school senior Timothy Spicer-- athlete, AP student, and class president--had the honor of introducing the President to his school. Spicer was introduced before he got on stage. The fact that he is a successful African-American student made his role in the event even more significant.

The speech only lasted for twenty minutes, which was just enough time to make the point. Just about everything that Obama said was what a parent who values education would have said to their child. And more. This is because Obama had a similar childhood as many poor kids from single-parent homes. He knew every excuse that a kid could make for not succeeding in school, and he was on to all of them.

Some quotes from Obama's speech:

"We can have the best teachers, the best schools, the best parents--but it won't make a difference unless you put in the work."

"You have a responsibility to yourself to find out what you are good at."

"If you quit school, you're not just quitting on yourself--you are quitting on your country."

"Some of the most successful people in the world have had the most failures."

He encouraged students to study hard, to set their own goals for their education, and to use failure as a teacher, not as an identifier. He encouraged students to ask adults whom they trusted to help them stay on track of their educational goals. He told students that right now, school is their job.

I heard a lot of these things from my own parents. I am sure that a lot of Republicans heard this from their parents as well. I hope they feel good and silly making all of that fuss about this speech. If they are still mad, well...they will have to attend an anti-racism workshop or two.

Obama's Speech to America's Schoolchildren

2009-09-07T12:58:00.000-07:00

The concept of children writing essays about the President, or what they could do for their country, or what they could do to help the President, is not new. Only now, people getting bent out of shape because a president actually provided lesson plans to accompany his speech to schoolchildren. You can access these lesson plans for K-6 and 7-12 here.

No one said that the assignments were mandatory. In fact, no one said that listening to the speech was mandatory. Actually listening to the speech would be a good idea, though, simply to overcome one's fears, or to have something tangible to critique. Maybe this speech would encourage kids to become more engaged in civics and public affairs, and make them realize that they are not too small to make a difference. Where is the harm in this?

Evil Rabbis

2009-07-23T16:59:00.000-07:00

Really shoddy news article from BBC News online

The headline of this article is "US Rabbis Arrested in Crime Probe". The focus of the very small article, however, is only some of the government officials involved in this case.

I am sure that BBC News will do some followup reporting, but posting the article like that was irresponsible.

As the day progressed and the details came to light, here was the new headline:

"US Rabbi Held Over 'Kidney Trade'" (with no mention of the rabbi)

A few hours later, the story fills out, and the headline becomes "US Corruption Probe Nets Dozens".

Everyday Racism

2009-07-23T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Advocate posted a telling story about prominent Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Gates got locked out of his house, and tried to get back in. A "local woman" called the police, because all she saw was an African-American man attempting to get into a house on the Harvard University campus. The police went into this situation also with the assumption that this was a break-in. Of course Gates would be indignant and outraged, especially since some police offers like to play up their authority and act like bullies. Gates was arrested for "disorderly conduct" and released on a $40 bail.

I was born and raised in the Northeast, where racism and segregation is still a part of everyday life. If you are a person of color in a predominantly white neighborhood, the residents will call the police if they do not know you, or if a neighbor cannot "speak for" you. If you are a person of color driving through a predominantly white neighborhood in a nice car, the police will come to check you out. This is what happened to my Foundations of Education professor Dr. George Fouron.

Dr. Fouron happened to work at a university on the North Shore of Long Island, New York, where now and then he would take a shortcut through one of the whitey white old money neighborhoods while driving his Mercedes Benz. One day he was late for class, and he told us that the reason he was late was because a policeman stopped him simply because he was a person of color driving through a white neighborhood in a Mercedes Benz. I was shocked. But I was even more shocked when a young man raised his hand and said, "Dr. Fouron, don't worry. I work for the police department and can get you a pass that will tell the police that you are OK."

No one said a word. I don't know if it was because they were as stunned as I was with this drama that played out before us on the stage of our lecture hall, or because they agreed with this system. I just didn't know what to say. How degrading this all must have been for Dr. Fouron.

Anyway, the responses to the article about Henry Louis Gates Jr. sickened me. You can read the article and the comments here.

This story reached President Obama's ear, and he had something to say about it:

Obama Criticizes Police Handling of Professor Henry Louis Gates

Please understand that when these incidents are brought to light, and when everyone speaks out against the bad behavior of police, it actually improves how the police treat everyone.

For the record, I am watching a lot of documentaries these days about racism in Russia. The Russian police do not provide security for anyone, especially if those people are not ethnic Eastern Orthodox Russians. In fact, many of the Russian police who are sent to arrest some of the most outspoken leaders of ultra right wing xenophobic groups tell those dudes, "Sorry man, I am just doing my job...if I wasn't a policeman I would be marching with you."

The United States has come a LONG WAY. Always remember that the police are PUBLIC SERVANTS, hired to KEEP THE PEACE and TO MAKE EVERY INDIVIDUAL FEEL SECURE.

They are not hired thugs, they are not skinheads, they are not vigilantes, they are not Klansmen. There is no reason why any innocent person should feel threatened or intimidated of a blue uniform, or be put on the defensive when approached by someone in a blue uniform.

Albino Murders in Tanzania: 21st Century Witchcraft

2009-06-25T13:23:00.000-07:00

In Tanzania, albinos are being murdered for their body parts, believed to have magical powers.

In this article from The New York Times, the "witch doctors" are marketing albino skin, hair, and bones as ingredients that will make people rich. According to a statistic in this article, 1 in 3,000 people in Tanzania are albino (which, compared to US figures for albinism at 1 in 20,000, is pretty impressive).

This article claims that 1 in 5,000 people in Tanzania are albino, and that the Lake Victoria region has the largest concentrated population of albinos in the world due to minerals from a native fish (according to legend).

This article from BBC News says that there are 4,000 "registered" albinos in Tanzania, but there could be as many as 173,000. Some are powerful female government figures...

Albino killings for body parts have been reported by the BBC since 2007.

The Red Cross has set up a sanctuary for albino infants, toddlers, children, and teenagers at a school for the disabled. You can see their photos here. They are in desperate need of sunscreen, which is very expensive in Africa as elsewhere around the world.

The albino killings are giving witchcraft a bad name in Tanzania. The licenses of all traditional healers in Tanzania have been revoked in the attempt to put an end to the murders, but the black market trade in albino parts is still thriving outside of Tanzania. Arms, legs, hands, genitals, and entire heads are sent to the Congo and Nigeria.

I want to know how this "tradition" got started, and why no one in the West had heard about it until two years ago. While I keep fact finding, please pass this story around. Innocent people are being murdered for profit, at the expense of what remains of the true pagan religions of the region.

Thing 38: Screencasting

2009-06-15T14:58:00.000-07:00

I used Jing and SnagIt to show you my Google home page.
We often use SnagIt at work to take screenshots for library instruction or to show technical support or systems what is going wrong with our various services. It is a helpful tool in that sense. It also allows you to save images in a lighter file format than JPG.

Thing 46: Web Junction Minnesota

2009-06-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

I am surprised that more librarians are not signed up to Web Junction Minnesota. It provides an excellent social networking opportunity for librarians all over the state. We also can have the opportunity to share resources with each other by uploading documents for members to see.

In the future, I may use the discussion boards if more people sign up.

It would be great to have links to all of the Minnesota library websites on Web Junction. Videos and photos of other peoples' libraries, library events, library instruction, etc. would also be nice to have.

Thing 45: Cloud Computing

2009-06-15T12:17:00.000-07:00

What do you see as the advantages of joining “the cloud” by using a Web OS? Disadvantages?
Being able to access your personalized desktop and working files from anywhere is extremely convenient. At the same time, the security of a network can be compromised at any time, or a web service can go out of business or start charging fees, and so you cannot depend on the Internet for everything!

Do you currently do any computing in “the cloud” (i.e. GoogleDocs, Zoho, etc)? What do you think? Has it helped your productivity?
Currently I am not using any cloud computing tools. I am able to achieve a great deal through my email service and other current Internet services.

What other cloud applications are you using or planning to investigate?
At work we are investigating wiki applications for institutional use. Some of those have multiple features like Google Docs or Zoho.

Thing 44: The Economy

2009-06-15T05:57:00.002-07:00

Although I do many things online, I am hesitant to provide a great deal of financial information through untested financial websites. I looked over the features for the Banking 2.0 websites, and thought Mint.com would be the most useful for me. I looked over their Privacy and Security page, was satisfied with what I saw, and decided to go for it.

I liked the Mint.com website because it could turn your incoming earnings and monthly expenditures into a pie chart to show how much you spent of your earnings, and how much you really saved. This will help you to budget your money better, especially if you plan on making a significant purchase, or if you are planning for retirement. You can also track your expenditures by month so that you can calculate how much you spend and save each year. Based on your spending/saving patterns and credit history, they will reccommend the best credit cards for your spending habits, as well as reccommendations for bank accounts, CDs, and brokerage firms.

Some of my favorte money management/money saving/shopping tips:

1. If you must drink more than one cup of coffee per day, bring a travel mug with you. If you need to refill at a coffee place or a gas station, quite often you will get your coffee for the refill price rather than the original price.

2. Tea is cheaper than coffee. If you have a hot/cold water dispenser at work, a tea bag can make at least three rounds.

3. If you need a fancy coffee from Starbucks or Caribou, save on the goodie. I get my goodies from the supermarket and always bring them along with me. A muffin from the supermarket ends up being half the price as a muffin at a fancy coffee place.

4. Buy groceries on special, and don't fool yourself into buying healthy food that you will not eat.

5. Bag lunch.

6. Crock pot meals are economical and delicious.

7. Reuse lunch bags, or get a reusable insulated lunch bag.

8. Carpool, take public transportation, or walk.

9. Walk if where you need to go is a mile or less away.

10. The public library is my best friend for home entertainment. I get movies, music, and of course all of my books from there.

Thing 43: Online TV and Video

2009-06-14T16:18:00.000-07:00

I do not own a television set or a DVD player; I watch all of my TV and movies through the computer, so I am always searching for free television and movie sites. I have not used Hulu before, though, so I signed up for an account.

Hulu is going to keep me aware of the new television shows that come out so that I can get a taste of them. I was happy to see that there is a new "Welcome Back Kotter"-inspired show out called "Yo Teach!"; I put some clips in my queue and asked Hulu to send me email notifications when they had episodes available to watch.

Having on-demand access to TV shows and movies on the Internet has changed my viewing behavior a great deal. For one thing, like I said, I do not own a television. Second, I am less likely to go to a movie theater now that there are sites like The Only Device out there, where I can watch brand new movies like "Up" or "Star Trek"...for free...

For people who watch a lot of television or like the experience of going to a movie theater, I do not think that free Internet video entertainment will impact them much. I think people like the experience of "flipping through the channels". Traditional television as we know it will stay in business because many Internet/Cable/Phone providers now bundle their services, forcing you to pay for basic cable even if you do not own a television.

The biggest impact that free Internet video entertainment has had on my partner and I is that we share a lot more video links with each other to brighten each others' day; we also put the laptop on the kitchen table while we are cooking together.

Thing 42: Music 2.0

2009-06-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

I had a Pandora account for a while on my old computer. Pandora gives you the opportunity to "create your own radio station". The way it works is that you tell Pandora what groups/artists/songs/musical pieces you like, and Pandora will not only try to locate what you requested in its database, but it will also try to find music in its database with a similar sound to what you enjoy. I did not ressurect my Pandora account because the variety of music was very limited, and the tracks that Pandora had from famous artists were rarely the hits. One could argue what I expect for free, and the truth is...I expect a lot!

Today I created a last.fm account and profile. I like the layout of last.fm much better than Pandora. I did a search for "Hans Zimmer", and not only received a brief bio of the artist, but right off the bat a list of free tracks available for download into my music library, as well as comments ("shouts") as to which tracks were good, and recommendations from Last.fm on similar artists. Also fun was watching a slideshow of Hans Zimmer photos while listening to the music. So I started to create a library, and discovered that I can also add tracks from other sources to this library as well. I will have fun playing with this new toy for a while!

Some music from my youth...

Bronski Beat

Erasure

Ofra Haza

It is amazing what you will find there!

I also took a look at blip.fm. You can send music recommendations to your Twitter or LiveJournal account from blip, but you have to upload your own music from publicly hosted mp3s over the Internet. To be honest, this is a pain! I am surprised that blip does not allow you to send music or videos to Facebook, but if you have a Ping.fm account linked to Facebook, that trumps all.

Thing 41:Mashup Your Life

2009-06-12T07:50:00.000-07:00

Exactly what I need--a website that combines the content from all of my web services in one location. By using Ping.fm to post, this seems like it would be an ultra-efficient system. Unfortunately, very few of the personal mashups include all of the services that I use (LiveJournal is an oldie but goodie--I will be running for a LiveJournal Advisory Committee position, BTW-post coming soon), and not all of them allow for additional social networking. Some of the mashups are also quite new and not well-known, so most of my friends or professional contacts have yet to discover them.

I tested Superglu. Great for reading your own blog posts, but not so great for social networking or Twittering. I also tested FriendFeed, as this would allow me to create a site where a select group of people could read and comment on my posts from one location, but none of my friends have a FriendFeed account, and I am not sure how many would want one. Profilactic also looks like a good site for the same reason. I will have to advertise these sites to my friends and professional contacts and see which one they like best...that will be the best way to decide which mashup I should use and promote.

Thing 40: Mashup the Web

2009-06-12T06:04:00.000-07:00

I love these mashups that include searching capabilities. LibWorm is going to be a BIG help to me for current library-related research. Ping.fm will also be a major time saver for posting news to all of my social networks and blog sites. What is good about Ping.fm is that you can customize the connections to your social networks and blog sites by limiting what type of posts you want sent there (status updates, microblogging, and blogging). I will be able to post to Facebook and Twitter at the same time using Ping.fm, thus bringing my Twitter account back to life. :)

I was amused but confused by Visual Headlines. The site advertises that it can retrieve photos that accompanied major news headlines. Instead, it retrieves some pretty useless photos that may share the same keywords as the news headlines--not actual photos of world events or people featured in the news. This site needs a lot of work--Social Studies teachers, beware.

Another site that irritated me was Polyvore. Having no interest in piling a collage of clothes together, I wanted to create something in the field of "Art and Expression", but that function was not available for mere mortals with a free account. Unless you do a lot of online shopping and want to share photos of items with mall buddies, I don't really see much use of this tool in the library; Google Images can achieve the same results if someone is looking for a cardigan sweater or sandals.

I discovered a site called Webmashup.com, where you can search for mashups that people find, post, and review. There are some great mashups here. BreakingNewsMap, for example, allows you to find out where a news story took place on a large Google map. You can search for news articles on any topic, and the mashup will bring you to the city/country on the map, provide a hyperlinked caption to the news article, as well as photos of the event or featured person. Much more useful than "Visual Headlines".

Thing 39: Digital Storytelling

2009-06-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

http://voicethread.com/share/539708/

Can you see a use for VoiceThread in your library? At home?
I can definitely see VoiceThread as a teaching tool to discuss different topics presented by using images. I am not sure how I would use it at home, though.

VoiceThread worked pretty smoothly for me, although I did not use the voice function because I was at work!

Thing 37: Photo Tales

2009-06-12T04:13:00.000-07:00

I finally figured out how to use the camera on my cell phone, and decided to use the photos of my old man to test different online photo sharing websites.

Here is a brief slide show from BubbleShare.com:

BubbleShare: Share photos - Easy Photo Sharing

Although BubbleShare is easy to navigate and setting up an album is a snap, they had a link for audio and gadgets on only one page, which you need to leave as you follow the steps to upload photos and create your album. I couldn't find that link again once I left it!

The old man said I should make a photo album with music. So I tried Animoto, which claims to allow you to "make music videos in minutes" with your photos...they were right to an extent, although you have to pay in order to create a full-length video...the free version only allows you to make a 30 second version:

Take it away, Elvis!

Any photo album tool would be excellent for libraries who want to show off photos of events, book displays, or staff parties on their website or blog. Plus they are a lot of fun.

Back to Your Regularly Scheduled Program

2009-06-09T16:48:00.000-07:00

Currently I am doing research on EBooks, and tracing the history of how EBooks and Ereaders were invented. It really is fascinating. The person who invented the first EBook had no intention of doing it for personal gain or profit...he simply wanted people to get information for free. The person who thought up the prototype for a laptop/tablet PC had no intention of doing it for personal gain or profit...he simply wanted children to have an educational tool where they could learn problem solving and critical thinking skills through digital media.

If only these men knew how the educational technology industry boomed, and if only they knew that there is no tangible proof that electronic resources have any pedagogical value beyond traditional teaching strategies and materials. This is what I am really trying to find out--if EBooks have any pedagogical value beyond traditional print books, and if reading from an EBook affects reading comprehension and retention.

In any case, this EBook research has caused me to take a hiatus from 23 More Things on a Stick. In the next few days, I will get a taste of my last ten Web 2.0 things and make the June 20th deadline. :)

History Repeats Itself...

2009-05-20T08:14:00.001-07:00

Especially if you put people in jail for telling the truth about history.

Don't get me wrong. For centuries the Russian people have done great things. It cannot be denied that they defeated the Nazis and made them eat dirt. It cannot be denied that 25% of the Russian population died in World War II. And for people to want to take down Soviet World War II memorials, well...they should remember that they, their children, and their grandchildren wouldn't be here if it weren't for those Soviet soldiers who fought the Germans and often died terrible deaths as prisoners of war.

At the same time, Stalin killed far too many of his own people before, during, and after World War II. Not only were mass graves of Jews filled by Ukrainian Nazi wanna-bes, but also by Russian soldiers. Stalin also had a lot of Russians, Ukrainians, and other folks killed too during that time. 8 million orphans roamed across the Soviet Union in search of peace, land, and bread.

There were a lot of non-Russian folks living under Soviet control who thought the Nazis would rescue them from oppression. If you want to pretend like that never happened, and put people in jail for saying it did, then history is just going to repeat itself over and over again. It doesn't make things better when you shut your gas off so the Ukraine doesn't get any, and so forth and so on. This is not justice, and certainly not a strength to crow about.

The Conspiracy Continues

2009-04-15T13:51:00.001-07:00

"Obama gave Bush's education policy a third term."

Facebook Flunkies?

2009-04-13T19:20:00.000-07:00

According to a study, students who use Facebook get lower grades than non-Facebook users.

The article does not point out how many students were included in the study, the number of years they were in college, courseloads, whether students worked as well as attend classes, etc.. I suppose we will have to wait for the annual meeting of the American Education Research Association on April 16 for the whole story.

Thing 36: Comic Relief

2009-03-29T17:40:00.000-07:00

Man...how many blogs can I make? Today I started a comic strip blog using StripGenerator!

There is just not enough coffee today that can wake me out of this snowy stupor. I will have to come up with names for the snowman and the little hedgehog.

If you can't read what the hedgehog says, you can click on the comic to read it directly from StripGenerator.

With a little luck, I might be the next Steven Spielberg in using Xtranormal Text-t0-Movie as well. The screen test for the potential actors is very exciting, as you can see!

Thing 35: Book 2.0 Tools

2009-03-28T18:18:00.000-07:00

What are you observing in your library about books and reading?
There is still a demand for books in my library. More than once I have observed students browsing the new fiction shelves, as well as writing papers using actual books (ones that I would have recommended, as well!). Not only that, but the library is home to book discussion groups of all kinds, and they are all well-attended.

Do you think these Book 2.0 tools hamper or enhance one's reading experience?
I can see the "Book 2.0" tools only enhancing one's reading experience. Many of the sites allow us to find new books, talk about books we are reading (or have read), and see what other people are reading. Contrary to popular belief, most readers are very social and would love to talk about their favorite books if they only had a chance.

Which of the sites/tools did you visit? What are they appealing features? Any features seem unnecessary or just there "because"?
I finally caught up with my friends and started a LibraryThing account. I always wanted a LibraryThing account not only to keep an inventory of my personal book collection, but also to find out what other people are reading. I also bookmarked the BookCrossing site and BookBrowse. I am disappointed that there is no BookCrossing site in St. Cloud! I can see myself visiting BookBrowse quite often, as it gives regular updates on upcoming fiction and non-fiction, as well as book reviews and opportunities to post comments about books and discuss them. I didn't see any unnecessary features on these sites, even though I might not have time to try them out right away. Being a heavy reader and a collection management librarian who does some selection for the collection where I work, I can see myself visiting many of these Book 2.0 sites. I might even add weRead to my Facebook account, but not now, or I will be on the computer far too often! I think I will add the GoodRead application to Facebook, though, as I would like to know what my friends are reading...it gives us something to talk about...:)

I humbly confess that I maintain a system of keeping wishlists and a count of what titles I have read in an old fashioned "book journal". It still remains the most convenient way for me to track what I have read in a year.

Thing 34: Online Answer Sites: Competition for Reference Librarians?

2009-03-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

In the article "Evolution to Revolution to Chaos? Reference in Transition", Stephen Abram quotes from Barbara Quint "that Google answered as many reference queries in half an hour as all the reference librarians in the world did in 7 years".

That may be so, but it doesn't mean that Google gave all of those people a good answer, or the right answer. And though they would be ashamed to admit it, there are many people who search Google and never find their answer!

"Answer sites" are even less helpful than search engines, as they are not designed to refine a question or filter through the answers. It seems as if they are more designed for leisure reading rather than education. SnappyFingers is a good example of this type of answer site. For the heck of it, I typed "dog" into the search window, and the first few sites retrieved were commercial sites that just so happened to have "dog" in the product's name. Then there were questions and answers about particular breeds of dog, or dog-related issues. What if I wanted to know what a dog was? I would be quite confused. And I can't smack the computer like I would a vending machine if I didn't get the right answer for the time and effort I had spent.

Although it is true that many people these days exist in self-created bubbles of technology, where they can sit for hours chatting with friends, watching movies, preparing a report for the next day's meeting at work and surfing the net concurrently, not everyone is glued to their computers, and nor should they be. One of the reasons reference librarians still exist is for the human support that people look for in unfamiliar environments. To this day, the library remains an unnatural environment for many people. They are bewildered by shelves, computer labs, signs, stairs leading to who knows where. They need assurance that they are in the right place, plus a nudge in the right direction to find the information that they are looking for. In an academic library, the reference librarian will not only answer a question at the Reference Desk, but will show the patron how they located the answer. They will also answer questions for students or faculty if they are having trouble using the library databases, catalog, or the library website itself. And many times, patrons will also seek out the Reference Librarian to answer technology-related issues as well. No online or virtual resource will replace a Reference Librarian, because when a person is frustrated or confused, their brain will shut off to technology. They would like to speak with a human being who also has experienced this same level of confusion.

There are many questions, however, which Reference Librarians may never be asked. Not everyone feels comfortable asking for information at the Reference Desk regarding sensitive medical issues, or sexual orientation or gender identity issues. It is too public, for one thing, and for another thing, if the patron is not comfortable with the subject themselves, they may not approach the Reference Librarian for fear of judgment or rejection. People who do not speak English as their first language, or who come from particular ethnic or religious groups, may also be hesitant to approach a Reference Librarian for fear of not being understood or fear of judgment, or rejection. And so people who need information for sensitive personal issues will tend to search on their own for this information. In these cases, then, it is important for libraries to provide quality resources on those subjects, for no other reason than to save lives.

I revisited SnappyFingers to see what type of websites I would retrieve if I did searches for "gay" and "lesbian". Neither term pulled up results from authoritative LGBTIQ websites or even Wikipedia. In both cases, half of the results retrieved were quite childish--people on their personal blogs who insisted that they weren't gay or lesbian. The one definition that SnappyFingers retrieved for lesbian used terminology no longer used to describe lesbians, or even gay men. So these "Answer Sites" are like search engines that had lobotomies.

Reference Librarians will have jobs for many years to come--especially if they can continue to advise people on their information options. How awesome it would be if someone conducted a search on Google, clicked on a potentially inappropriate resource, and a pop-up window with the Reference Librarian on duty would appear, asking "Are you sure you want to visit that site? Here are other resources you should try--", and the Reference Librarian would provide a link to an ebook (or book in Reference or the catalog), a more authoritative website, or a journal article. That would be power. I always call librarians "the information mafia", as it is we who often control the flow and quality of information that people receive. We should be watching.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

2009-03-20T13:18:00.000-07:00

Never mind whether or not Travel 2.0 would be good for my library...I think Travel 2.0 is good for me, particularly My Kugelhopf. This blog alone, with its fabulous food and travel photography and recipes, makes me want to go somewhere.

In any case...Travel 2.0 makes for good entertainment, although I would hesitate to say that everything posted on a blog about a place is fact, unless the purpose of the blog is to give specific travel related advice.

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

2009-03-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

Google Maps Mania is awesome. Bloggers from around the world posted street views from Google Maps of their cities. Who knows what you will see there!

I had no idea that Google Maps had so many features. I could customize a Google Map to locate places of interest, so that is what I did...I wanted to look for the nearest Indian restaurant. Here is a bird's eye view of what, according to Google, Minnesota has to offer in the way of Indian (light blue dots), Japanese (dark blue dots), and Asian (brown dots) restaurants. Before you go up north to eat any Indian food, however, keep in mind that a search engine only recognizes keywords, but cannot necessarily pair a keyword up with the information that you want. All of the light blue dots on the map are either tribal colleges, tribal offices, restaurants with the name "Indian" in them, or mistakes (Panda Buffet is a Chinese restaurant). So Google played with me while I was having a serious samosa craving!

100 Things to Do with Google Maps Mashups is going to give me a lot to play with the next time I plan a trip or expect a package. Calculating taxi fare using TaxiWiz.com is also going to be very useful.

In regard to what Google Maps Mashups would be useful in my library...any one of these, as you never know what type of reference question someone will ask. In response to "Where's the bathroom?" I could direct someone to safe2pee.org...

A cool website that uses Google Map technology is The Kremer Collection site, which allows you to get closeups of paintings in the collection. The site also provides historical information about the paintings. You will be able to count every feather on the ducks of this painting:

Thing 31: More Twitter

2009-03-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

At work the librarians were discussing the possibility of setting up a blog where we could post about our professional development activities, such as conferences and workshops. One librarian suggested that we use Twitter for this. I think that would be a great idea, if we could have those tweets sent to everyone's email or something. Not everyone wants to log into yet another website to access information at work.

It would be terrific to tweet about new additions to our library catalog, such as the librarian who blogs for Tame the Web demonstrated. I am not sure if our ILS would be able to handle it, though.

In any case, I am still figuring out how to make Twitter for my daily information gathering activities. I bookmarked the 23 More Things on a Stick Wiki to keep trying out those features.

Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and de.li.cious

2009-03-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

The ZapTXT tool would be a big help for me to weed through my RSS feeds for news, book reviews, and websites. In theory, it is much better than "Feed My Inbox", which will send all RSS posts to your email inbox without limitations. You tell ZapTXT to look for certain keywords in the RSS posts from any feed, and ZapTXT will either send you an email digest, daily emails, IMs, or text messages in regard to the news that you want. It also looked very simple to set up.

In reality, there is something wrong with ZapTXT. On the home page, ZapTXT asks you to identify the websites, RSS feeds, and keywords that you would like to use. You click "Next", and you will go to "Zaptask Setup", which will allow you to set up your profile (username, password, email address, and how you would like to be contacted regarded RSS posts). In the ZapTXT Setup window, ZapTXT kept telling me that it found feeds that matched the URLs that I entered, but in reality it did not show any feeds, and would not let me go forward to create my profile without selecting a feed to monitor. So that was quite frustrating.

I liked the list of RSS Feeds from USA.gov. More RSS feeds to add to my personal blog, yay (which I wish I could sift through and only pay attention to those which interest me!).

On the de.li.cious front, InSuggest is fabulous for web research. I have added a few websites to my de.li.cious bookmark account since then. What I cannot figure out is how to organize my bookmarks into folders, as you can only sort the bookmarks chronologically or alphabetically. That is the one thing about de.li.cious that I do not like. I also have not taken the time to add contacts to my de.li.cious account to share bookmarks...maybe I will do that later, as I meet more people in academia with common interests.

Good News and Bad News Around the World

2009-03-20T06:46:00.000-07:00

Good News: Obama will sign the UN Gay Rights Declaration.

Bad News: The Pope Tells Africa That Condoms Are Wrong in the Fight Against HIV/AIDS

In Spite of Bad News: In response to the Pope's decree, Spain is going to send condoms to Africa.

Are Newspapers Becoming Extinct?

2009-03-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

Ten Major City Newspapers Going Bankrupt

When was the last time you read a print newspaper? Sunday, perhaps? Before you had Internet access? Never? Print newspaper sales are dropping like flies now that many people have free online news subscriptions.

Some people argue that a dearth of print newspapers will signal the end of democracy and free speech as we know it. Others believe that the death of print newspapers will actually open up an opportunities for a wider variety of smaller online news sources, many of which would have a special focus.

What do you think? I humbly confess that I have not purchased a print newspaper since I signed up for a free online New York Times subscription. I also read The St. Cloud Times online for free as well. I do not know how the dominance of online newspapers will affect libraries, though, as newspapers facing budget cuts may decide to charge a subscription fee for all the news that's fit to print--and for an institutional subscription, that could mean big money.

De.li.cious is so..delicious. :)

2009-03-03T18:44:00.000-08:00

I finally updated my de.li.cious account. I had a ton of bookmarks saved on my laptop's Internet browser, and instead of having to input each URL individually, I was able to create an HTML file from my browser and upload this file into de.li.cious. That was a big time saver! In less than a minute, de.li.cious tagged my bookmarks (I asked it to do this for me) and showed me how many other people have this bookmark in their collection. If I want to, I can view the bookmark collections of those other folks (if they keep their collections public).

Now that I am collecting bookmarks on research strategies and research methods, I will have to add those (they are on my computer at work), and would like to see who else is collecting bookmarks on those topics.

wis.dm

2009-03-01T10:02:00.001-08:00

I Googled "social networking sites" last night, and discovered wis.dm, a social networking site where people can ask questions and have them answered. Although there is no chat feature available through this site, the questions that people ask on this website lead to some interesting discussions. It is a highly addictive website!

Thing 30: RSS Feeds and De.li.ci.ous

2009-02-28T20:27:00.001-08:00

I subscribe to RSS feeds through LiveJournal for BBC News, Librarian's Internet Index, The Straight Dope, Margaret Cho's blog, and a travelogue written by my friend from Israel. Some people use LiveJournal or their other blogs strictly as RSS readers. I should figure out how to set up RSS feeds through Blogger. I get RSS feeds from the NYTimes through Twitter as well.

I created a de.li.ci.ous account last year to organize my bookmarks for LGBT and culinary websites. I still have a long way to go on that project, as I continue to find excellent websites...they are bookmarked on my home and work computers, and I catch up with entering them in de.li.ci.ous as I have time. I don't keep up with de.li.ci.ous that much because I do not experience as much social networking as I would like. I expected that fellow de.li.ci.ous users would use the site to share websites with others, chat about them, and talk about their research, but this was not my experience. This leads me to believe that most de.li.ci.ous users are using the service simply to organize their bookmarks, in spite of the extra features of the site. I did read the article about The Several Habits of Wildly Successful de.li.ci.ous Users, however, and will give it another shot.

Is An Anti-Racism Conference Racist?

2009-02-28T05:48:00.001-08:00

US May Boycott Anti-Racism Conference

The United States, Canada, and Israel might boycott an anti-racism conference because they feel that it unfairly targets Israel as a racist state, and Zionism as a racist policy.

For the record--the UN has gone back and forth on its position on Zionism. I do not normally cite from Wikipedia, but you can find a condensed history of the UN's changing point of view of Zionism here.

If Israel is to be called a racist state, then what about France, whose school history textbooks tell all French schoolchildren (including those descended from Arabs, Africans, Vietnamese, and Tahitians) that their ancestors were the Gauls, and that the French brought civilization and light to the world? If Israel is to be called a racist state, then what about Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations who publish school history textbooks that teach children not to trust Jews, Christians, or other "non-believers"? If Israel is to be called a racist state, then what about Japan, where the government severely restricts immigration from other nations and does not allow immigrants without Japanese ancestry to become full citizens?

Let's be fair, folks, no matter what our political opinions are on the Occupation.

Thing 29: Google Tools

2009-02-27T10:27:00.000-08:00

This week I taught my students about online search strategies for Google. Over the weekend they will be using Google Scholar to find articles for their research topic. For my students, I am going to post the link to

Google Alerts On Your Research Question Or Topic

so that they can get updates on the latest news or scholarly articles on their topic.

I personally have used Google Alerts for many research topics, and have found it incredibly convenient as I check my email more frequently than any other website.

Alerts.com is a new service for me. I checked out the Craigslist Alerts through this site, as I am interested in buying a car but don't always have time to check Craigslist every day. Now I will get Alerts sent straight to my email every day for potential cars.

Critical Thinking Gone Out the Window

2009-02-26T10:01:00.000-08:00

Growing hate groups blame Obama and Latino immigrants for the failing US economy.

This is a terrific article, referencing the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Year of Hate" report as well as FBI statistics and observations from a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. If you don't believe that this increase in hate crimes is taking place, look up those reports and statistics!

In any case, these hate groups are violating some major guidelines of critical thinking:

Guideline 1: Ask questions; be willing to wonder. Why are the people in hate groups so willing to believe what they are taught? How is it solving their problems?

Guideline 2: Define the problem. If the people who join hate groups followed Guideline 1, they would soon have to follow Guideline 2. The problem may not be immigrants, but immigration policy itself. The problem may not be immigrants "taking" jobs, but Americans "rejecting" them, or Americans simply not qualified to do those jobs. If they could define the problem with more clarity, these people would busily be engaged in overthrowing the government, not attacking minorities!

Guideline 3: Examine the evidence. The US economy was failing before Obama got into office. In fact, the US economy has been failing since the 1980s!

4: Analyze assumptions and biases. The hate groups are making a big assumption that Latino immigrants are "taking" American jobs and not paying taxes. The hate groups do not like Latinos to begin with, and as a result they are allowing their bias to dictate their beliefs.

5: Avoid emotional reasoning. It would be interesting to do a study on the members of hate groups to determine how many of them have been cited for violence due to anger. Also, are these people in hate groups spewing hatred simply because it makes them feel good?

6. Don't use either/or thinking or overgeneralize. Do white supremacist groups believe that all "white" "Aryan" people are naturally good, while all "non-white" people are naturally bad?

7. Consider other interpretations. What type of information about the economy, immigration, and up-to-date government legislation does the average person receive? Adults make choices as to what they will believe as true or not.

No More Happy Hour?

2009-02-24T17:18:00.000-08:00

The latest Yahoo! News headline to catch my eye: "More evidence links alcohol, cancer in women." According to the article, 1.3 million British women at breast cancer screening clinics were surveyed about their drinking habits over the course of seven years. Researchers compared women who regularly consumed two or fewer drinks a week with women who drank more. According to the study, each additional drink increased the risk of breast, rectal, and liver cancer. If smokers drank, according to the study, only then were they at higher risk for esophageal and oral cancers.

What I did not like about this article was that it did not indicate who did the study. Because this is news, the research study is probably too new to appear as a research article indexed in a database. It would have been helpful to at least find out if the study had been published in a journal or not.

I am curious to read about the research design of this study, as well as why alcoholic beverages put the body at higher risk for cancer.

Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

2009-02-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

I set up an iGoogle customized home page for myself, but a few days later was no longer allowed to access it because I do not have a gmail account. Why would I need to have a gmail account? For customer support from Google in case something goes wrong? Would I get better customer service from them if I did have a gmail account? It seems a bit silly to have to maintain a 3rd email address just for the customized home page. Most of the features on the customized home page I already have on my desktop, and it seems to be very repetitive.

These days I am suffering from technological overload. Every day I check and/or use the following: work email, personal email, online course management system, library catalog and databases, Microsoft Office software, search engines, LiveJournal, Blogger, Facebook, Pandora, and now Twitter. That is at least twelve pieces of technology every day.

I am grateful to have the opportunity to learn about new Web 2.0 tools. To be fair though, they should not force me to set up more email accounts than what I already need, and they should not already replicate what I can do through tools provided through my browser or my desktop.

Thing 27: Twitter

2009-02-22T10:45:00.001-08:00

Twitter is described as a "social networking and micro-blogging service". Micro-blogging is right--I set up my Twitter account today, and discovered that "tweets" are limited to 140 characters! In fact, you can watch the number 140 in the upper right hand corner of your "tweet" quickly decrease as you chirp along. Otherwise, Twitter is similar to Facebook.

One of my friends has a Twitter connection to his cell phone, so that he can tweet frequently about what is happening in his life without having to use his computer and without having to actually talk to people. This particular friend is living in Israel right now, doing military service, and of course we are all concerned about him and want to make sure that he is alive. To read his tweets is a comfort. I receive his tweets as an RSS feed on my personal LiveJournal account.

Another one of my friends uses Twitter to take notes for longer pieces of writing (more detailed blog posts or presentations). He used Twitter to follow the presidential campaign and elections, and he also uses it to tweet about court cases in the news.

I can see myself using Twitter more for quick journalistic purposes, and less for social purposes...I have Facebook for that...in any case, I will be tweeting on Twitter tonight while I watch the Oscars. (My Twitter name, BTW, is voxpopulare in case you would like to follow my tweets.)

Thing 26: Ning!

2009-02-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

A "ning" is an online platform where people can create their own social networks. I suppose it is a hybrid term to mean "networking ring", although "ning" also means "Peace" in Chinese. The Palo Alto company probably cashed in on this fact to woo liberal, New Agey Gen Xers to their site.

If it were not for 23 More Things on a Stick, I would have never achieved the state of "ning". The structure and features of the site are similar to Facebook; I like the ning's features better because they are larger and easier to read. So far I have uploaded a gadget to my ning page, commented on someone else's ning, added two fellow librarians to my ning, and joined one of the forums. I will not use the ning for blogging at this point...I currently have my Blogger account, as well as a LiveJournal account for personal blogging, and I don't have much time to keep a third blog. Ning, like Facebook, will most likely be used for short correspondence. Unlike Facebook, however, I might use Ning for professional networking rather than personal.

Outside of 23 More Things on a Stick, I can see myself creating a specialized ning network for my film festival work, in order to communicate with people on my film review committee as well as potential filmmakers and other festival organizers.

Does Talcum Powder Cause Cancer?

2009-02-19T17:12:00.000-08:00

Talcum Powder and Cancer

A friend had emailed me this article, and it made me quite paranoid because we both powder ourselves liberally. I decided to check whether or not the author of this article had cited from any real research studies, and if what she had cited was correct.

The first study of a potential link between talcum powder and cancer was originally published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It did show that a significant percentage of women who used talcum powder were at higher risk for developing ovarian cancer than others. Researchers involved in this study, however, did not want to make the claim that talcum powder caused cancer because they did not feel that the study asked enough questions of the patients in regard to the age when they started talcum powder usage, what brands of talcum powder were used, and whether the women were menopausal or pre-menopausal.

This second study published by Epidemiology, according to the abstract, also shows that use of talc increases the risk of ovarian cancer. I wish I had access to the article, because the researchers had looked at other factors such as smoking, endometriosis, tubal ligation, etc.

The third study that I found showed no correlation between talc use and ovarian cancer! According to the abstract of this study, hospital based studies showed no increased risk of ovarian cancer and talc use, while population studies did. The researchers believed that, in population based studies, the researchers already had a bias as to a particular type of women to target for the study.

I could go on, but...I am just going to take a powder.

Thing 25: Blogger's Toolkit

2009-02-14T20:26:00.000-08:00

I am having fun with the Apture tool on my blog. Unfortunately, it will only make those splendid pop-up windows if you link to Wikipedia, YouTube, or other sites which may or may not be sound for research purposes. I also am setting up Shoutmix on my blog for chat, and I am also going to try out CloudShout as well as one of the text-audio converters.

Although I do like gadgets, my blog posts tend to be lengthy, and so I will not post every single type of gadget to my blog. I will only post ones that would be of value to my students and outside readers who may want to get to know me better.

Censorship

2009-02-14T19:27:00.000-08:00

Do people follow the guidelines of critical thinking when they censor or ban books?

Heinrich Heine, a famous German Jewish writer, had once said "Where they burn books, they will ultimately also burn people."

The American Library Association has developed an Intellectual Freedom Manual to teach librarians how to address the freedom to think through collection development and reference services. Public and school librarians are often faced with requests to remove books from the collection, for various reasons. Sometimes the patrons win. Here are two recent examples:

Court Declares Vamos a Cuba OK to Be Removed from School Library Shelves
(Reason? The book is a positive depiction of life in Cuba, from a child's perspective.)

Teacher Wants to Expel Huck Finn
(His reason? "We have a black president now, a really articulate guy, yet all of the books we have students read in class show blacks as uneducated and unarticulate.")

How Medical Conclusions Are Made

2009-02-14T12:11:00.000-08:00

Autism ruling fails to convince many vaccine-link believers.

According to a CNN report, "special court", composed of "special masters", decided that there is no link between autism and infant vaccines that contain "thimerosal", a mercury-based preservative.

I was a bit disturbed by this article, for the following reasons:

1. I would like to know who these "special masters" are who made this determination. The federal government's US Department of Health and Human Services appeared all too ready to accept this determination, based on "three or four" studies.

2. No information is given about studies conducted to determine whether or not a correlation between autism and thimerosal exists. How do we know that the results of those studies are even sound, or that the research samples were large enough to make a determination?

3. The studies to determine a correlation between thimerasol and autism were only conducted when parents of affected children sued the US Department of Health and Human Services. According to the article, the parents were unable to sue to the manufacturers of these vaccines directly. Regardless of this, is it not the responsibility of the manufacturers and the federal government to test all substances that enter the human body prior to putting them out on the market as safe, trusted, FDA approved substances?

4. The last part of the article:

This week's ruling brought a different outcome from the Hannah Poling case. In November 2007, the Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation concluded that the Georgia girl's illness that had predisposed her to symptoms of autism was "significantly aggravated" by the vaccinations she received as a toddler and that her family should therefore be compensated.

But Thursday, Special Master George L. Hastings Jr. wrote in his ruling in the Cedillos case, "The evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating such a link" between autism and vaccinations.

What was the difference between the Poling case and the Cedillos case? Nothing in the article revealed any difference in the information provided. Why, then, did those decisions contradict each other?

To begin with, autism is such a complex disorder that medical professionals cannot even decide on a definition for the disorder or its symptoms, as they fall into a wide spectrum of variation. Second, no one knows for sure what exactly causes autism. Third, because not all autistic children display all of the the same symptoms of autism with the same level of severity, nor do those symptoms appear within the same age range for each child, the number of official diagnoses vary from year to year. Some children are only diagnosed with autism when they are already in primary school, while others are diagnosed as early as six months old.

So before any more guidelines to critical thinking are violated in the study of autism, here are my humble suggestions:

1. Scientists, psychologists, and pediatricians must go back to the drawing board. First, they must ask more questions about autism in order to determine what autism actually is. It may not be one disorder, but a group of related spectrum disorders, such as Asperger's Syndrome (which has already been isolated as distinct from autism, although it has many similarities to autism). Second, they have to do more studies on what could cause autism so that future parents could receive this education, even if they do not have a history of autism within their families.

2. Pharmaceutical companies must take all human factors into account when creating vaccines and medications, and they should review the history of medicine! Since the nineteenth century, it has been well-documented that the ingestion of mercury has caused various types of damage to the human nervous system (hence the expression "mad as a Hatter", as people who worked in hat factories had used mercury to treat the fabrics to make the hats, and they had been permanently brain damaged from overexposure to mercury). Old fashioned thermometers used to contain mercury to measure temperature, but no longer do because a person could get brain damage or even die from the amount of mercury in a thermometer should it crack in their mouths. Thermometers used to measure internal temperatures of foods also do not include mercury for this reason. Why oh why, then, did a pharmaceutical company decide to use a mercury based preservative in a vaccine for infants and toddlers, whose nervous systems are still developing and often at risk for damage from high fevers or other phemonena? The federal government has told people what type of fish they can and cannot eat, and in what amounts, based on the amount of mercury found in recent catches of those fish. Why oh why, then, is the federal government saying that it is still OK to produce a vaccine for infants and children that contains a mercury based preservative?

23 More Things on a Stick

2009-02-12T13:54:00.000-08:00

For those of you familiar with the Minnesota State Fair, there are many many things you can eat on a stick.

For librarians, there is an online program in Minnesota called "23 More Things on a Stick" to help us learn more about Web 2.0 technologies. Over the next 17 weeks, I will be learning how to use different Web 2.0 tools. Some will be "old hat", and some will be brand new, and I will be posting entries about these Web 2.0 tools as I learn about them.

Barriers to Critical Thinking

2009-02-09T16:35:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday evening, there will be a panel discussion on campus on a topic whose name alone stirs up a great deal of controversy. Some people will call it the Israeli Occupation, some people will call it the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some people will call it a massacre, some people will call it revenge, some people will call it just desserts. It is very easy for people who live thousands of miles away from the Middle East to sit back in their armchairs and name things.

In any case, a passage from the original notice posted to a faculty listserv regarding this panel discussion caused a great deal of controversy in its tone:

Since the Palestinians elected the Islamic Movement Hamas in 2006, Israel has sealed off Gaza from the outside world, and has been starving it ever since. Just before the inauguration of Barak Obama, while the world was celebrating Christmas, Israel assaulted Gaza from air, sea and land spreading death and destruction on a largely disarmed, starved and scared population for 23 days. In the US media, this war crime went largely unreported, although US taxpayer funds it and US politicians provide cover for it. This panel aims to educate the public, mourn the dead, and express solidarity with those who survived.

A faculty member, concerned about the tone of the email, asked the following question:

Will the panel provide the other sides of the story?

The response he received offlist:

"You have the whole world demonizing the Palestinians for you, and am sure you do a great job yourself. You don't need me to do that for you."

This caused someone else to post the following:

The poster attached to the scsu-announce is obnoxious, insensitive and vulgar....all words used when swastikas were found on campus last year. The juxtaposition of the recent violence in Gaza with actual historical photos of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe is completely inappropriate. If the HURL professors want to speak on behalf of Palestinians and Gaza and Hamas...so be it, but their suggestion that Israel, Jews, are equal to Nazis....is completely out of line and does not belong in a university which is supposedly on guard for such vulgar manipulation of discourse.

The announce list should not be a means of such mean-spirited views.

I have stood with two of these professors in solidarity....I will not be silent. Their opposition to Israeli policies is obvious, the use of Nazi photos goes far beyond that opposition.

Which finally led to the poster of the original announcement to respond:

This is not the space to respond to Dr. Edelheit's attack on the forum Gaza 2009. The accusation of the connection of this panel with the swastikas found on campus last year is unfounded,and inappropriate. There are no Nazi photos in the flyer. There are photos of two ghettos that were both sealed off, starved, and disarmed.

Peace comes only with proper historical understanding of injustice, and no other place is more equipped to do that than a university. If we are interested in pursuing peace, we should try to understand the situation from the perspective of the most helpless victims. Closing discussion only prolongs the injustice. We welcome all views and questions in this forum.

With the exception of one poster, who asked a simple one sentence question, all other posters involved accused each other of terrible things, made assumptions about each other's political beliefs, and ended up closing dialogue before it could even begin. If participants in the panel discussion perpetuate such behavior, are they truly engaged in educating students about what is happening in Gaza right now, or are they going to mis-educate students into prejudice and one-sided information?

For the record, I am not against the creation of a Palestinian state. I am, however, against faculty setting a bad example of ad hominem for students.

The Film Hunter

2009-02-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

I volunteer for a local film festival. My job is to locate films for the festival as well as to review them. Although it sounds like great fun (which it is), finding the films, filmmakers, and production companies takes perseverance, as well as some dirty tricks.

First, I locate the contact information for production companies that make or distribute films containing the subject matter that would be appropriate for the festival. After visiting their websites, I contact those companies to ask them for "screener copies" of films that we would like to review. This is the easiest part. Unfortunately, public performance rights to show these films is not cheap, and so I must also rely on other venues for potential films.

My next stop to find new films and potential filmmakers are video websites. Video Menu and Reelseo provide many links to video sharing websites aside from YouTube. The research fun starts here, as I must use different keywords to search for potential films and filmmakers that cover the topics that our film festival celebrates. Quite often I find shorts this way, or promo trailers from independent or student filmmakers. I locate their websites, as well as their email addresses, and ask them for screener copies of their work to review. They are very happy to share what they have. If the reviewing committee wants to show these films, quite often they are free or at little cost to us.

Third, I subscribe to email lists, Facebook sites, MySpace sites, and LiveJournal sites for film festivals that show similar films. I find out what these film festivals are showing, look up those film makers or distribution companies, and request screeners. This is my dirty little film research trick, but I am sure that all other film hunters must do this as well.

Finally, I talk to a lot of people about my "job" as a film hunter. You would be surprised how many people say "You know, I have a friend who just made a film..." or "I have a friend in film school..." I leave no stone unturned; I get the friend's contact information and get a screener. This is a research strategy as well!

Subject Headings Gone Wrong

2009-02-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

During her presentation on subject headings, Professor Gross brought up the fact that many subject headings to describe ethnic groups or the LGBT community are often dated, inaccurate, and offensive. Librarians such as Sanford Berman have worked hard to create and revise subject headings that describe the LGBT community as well as modern phenomenon ("krumping", for example). Their work is thankless and rarely recognized by anyone except librarians, but without it, people would have a difficult time using the library catalog to find books that address new trends in culture, technology, and other areas. Poor subject headings in the library catalog restrict people's access to books on the shelves.

There is one subject heading that has always bothered me. This is the subject heading "Cookery". While inoffensive compared to "sexual minorities" or "drug addicts", people are less likely to do a subject search using the term "cookery" than they would for "homosexual" or "queer". At the same time, more people use public libraries to borrow cookbooks than LGBT materials. Why has "cookery" remained an ignored, archaic subject heading, not changed to "cooking" by the Library of Congress?

Some people have justified the use of "cookery" as a subject heading because they are under the impression that "cuisine" only refers to French cooking, or fine dining. "Gastronomy", a more encompassing term, refers to the art and science of cooking but would not necessarily be appropriate for a book that only contained recipes and no culinary lore or food science. It is also another one of those "frou frou" terms which many Americans think is solely associated with fine dining.

For the past eight years, I worked as a librarian at a culinary school. I assisted chefs and culinary students with their research, and showed them how to use our library catalog quite often. Not one of them ever used the term "cookery" in a keyword search, and not one of them would use the term in their everyday or academic discourse about working with food. As the cataloger for our collection, I made the merciful decision to modify the LC subject headings to say "cooking" instead of "cookery". It became a lot easier for people to find the books they needed, and more people used the catalog to search on their own. One day, I will take up this fight with the Library of Congress.

The United States of Africa

2009-02-02T18:51:00.000-08:00

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, elected president of the African Union, calls for the 53 African nations to form the United States of Africa.

If Gaddafi is serious about this, he is going to have his work cut out for him. Although it is possible that forming an African coalition like the European Union may improve the economy of African nations in the long run, will it make peace between rival nations and rival tribes?

Finding My Favorite Girl Scout Cookies

2009-01-31T17:37:00.000-08:00

It is Girl Scout Cookie season, and one of my colleagues brought in the order form for cookies. Of course, I decide to buy some as a gesture of goodwill. I was incredibly eager to get some more "Thanks-A-Lot" cookies, as well as my annual supply of Caramel deLites.

A glance at the order form revealed the following: no "Thanks-A-Lot" cookies, and my Caramel deLites were called Samoas. I hadn't heard Caramel deLites called Samoas since the '70's. I was under the impression that the Samoan community had gotten offended somehow, and so the Girl Scouts changed their name.

Something about all of this conflicting information bothered me. If the Girl Scouts of America are a national organization, wouldn't the cookies that they sold be the same in all 50 states?

I Googled "girl scout cookies" in the attempt to solve this information emergency. Not only did I learn about the history of Girl Scout Cookies, but I also found out that Girl Scout Cookies are only allowed to be baked by two licensed baking companies--ABC/Interbake Company (the company that makes my "Thank You" cookies) and Little Brownie Bakers (who still call Carmel Delites Samoas). This means that next year, I will have to order my Girl Scout Cookies from a troop selling cookies from ABC/Interbake (as each individual troop has the freedom to choose their Girl Scout Cookie baker).

The Story of Middle English

2009-01-29T17:47:00.000-08:00

I studied Middle English in college. From 1066-1500, the English language had no standardized spelling or grammar rules because different ethnicities within England spoke different versions of the language we now know as English, the nobility spoke French, and the clergy only considered those who could read and write Latin as literate.

If you want a taste of Middle English, you can visit the much abridged online version of the MED (Middle English Dictionary) here.

Some English scholars believe that modern English began with the Chancery Standard, developed by King Henry VIII to ensure that the nobility used English as opposed to French or Latin. After the development of the Chancery Standard, all court business was handled in this form of English. In 1470, William Caxton brought the Gutenberg Press to England, and the Chancery Standard was used in mass produced books as well as hornbooks used to teach children how to read.

Other English scholars believe that modern English began in 1755, when writer Samuel Johnson wrote his dictionary.

How Does That Go?

2009-01-27T13:23:00.000-08:00

Did you ever have the melody of a song in your head, and have a heck of a time pairing it with a song title? Or what about just one song lyric from the chorus?

Although it is not yet possible to whistle a tune to a website and have it match the melody to a song title, it is possible to research song titles by lyrics.

Here are some strategies to find your song:

1. Google it. Put quotation marks around the song lyric in question, and do your search. Websites that contain that particular song lyric (sometimes including audio) might pop up. If you know who wrote the song or performed the song, you can also Google the person's name and the song lyric in quotation marks, OR Google the person's name and "discography". (Many online discographies include audio clips of the songs featured on each recording.)

2. Google the term "song lyrics", and find websites that contain databases of lyrics from thousands of songs.

Spice Research

2009-01-26T10:40:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest research challenges that I face is tracing the history of spice usage and spice trade in northern Europe. There are many reasons why this work is so difficult:

1. Throughout most of history, the people who knew the most about spices were often illiterate. They were either cooks or traditional healers, and their employers did not always think that their work was important enough to record.

2. Spices were incredibly expensive throughout most of history, only used by the wealthy. Many merchants often kept their account ledgers and inventories in code, so that no one except that merchant family would know for sure what type of spices they handled, or how much money they had earned from those spices.

3. Biologically accurate plant illustrations did not appear in books until the invention of the Gutenberg Press in the mid-15th century. The average northern European would not be able to identify most plants from a book published in the Dark Ages or Middle Ages. Here are some examples of spice drawings from that time:

This is an Arabic translation of a classic Greek herbiary. Not only do all of the plants look like dandelions, but there are no standard words to describe leaves, stems, roots, or other parts of the plant. It was very easy to mix up plants, especially foreign exotic ones. This was a big problem for doctors, as plants, herbs, and spices were used as medicine. People had to rely solely on the text for whatever factual information they could find.

Here is another one, from a German health encyclopedia. As late as 1491, reference books still contained unidentifiable plant drawings. Some of the plants are even imaginary. (The drawing to the left is the "Tree of Life", if you ever run into it...complete with serpent.)

4. The Church has hidden away some of the best material on spices. Contrary to popular belief, many priests and monks of early Christian Europe were not far removed from their pagan roots, and they still indulged in the intake of spices as aphrodisiacs. Meanwhile, wars were fought over the consumption of gingerbread and highly spiced fermented beverages such as glogg and wassail.

Even the modern history of spice is highly secretive. In Cardamom: The Genus Elettaria by Indian botanists P.N. Ravindran and K.J. Madhusoodanan, I am left hanging by this fact:

"Cardamom was introduced in Guatemala only in early 1920s from Sri Lanka or India with the help of a New York broker and was planted in the vicinity of Coban in the Department of Alta Verapaz" (Ravindran, 2002).

Who was this spice broker? Must I travel to Coban to find his name? I cannot trace the name of this broker anywhere else in the literature, but I do not doubt the information, as India is the home of cardamom, and southern India is home to many cardamom research institutes.

5. There is no "paper trail" of previous research done on particular spices. Internet research on spices is the worst, as very few "facts" are cited, and some end up not being true at all if you do the grunt work of hitting the books.

Obama's People

2009-01-23T14:09:00.000-08:00

Obama's People is a photo exhibition of Barack Obama's top 52 advisers. This is probably the most diverse cabinet of presidential advisers in the history of the United States, and it made me ask many questions. My IM 204 class and I did some fact-finding on a few of the advisers:

James E. Clyburn: Majority Whip: The first South Carolinian and second African-American to hold the position of Majority Whip. Clyburn was a major figure in the Civil Rights Movement, and served as Congressman of South Carolina. His career in politics started at 12 years old, when he was elected president of his NAACP youth chapter. In 2005, Nancy Pelosi invited him to serve on the Democrat's Faith Working Group.

Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff: Emanuel's Jewish roots and tough, mercurial personality precede him. Now that he is in Obama's Cabinet, he is doing his best to keep a calm demeanor although he will always remain a challenger and instigator. This is the main reason why Obama has selected Emanuel for this position; to have an unwavering Devil's Advocate when discussing important issues, and to serve as the unrelenting front guard for items not up for discussion.

John Favreau: 27 years old: Speechwriting Director: aka "The President's mind reader." Though the young Favreau may be a highly perceptive wordsmith, he did not realize that a photo of him grabbing the breast of a cardboard Hillary Clinton had surfaced on Facebook.

Patrick Gaspard: Political Affairs Director: Born in Haiti. Prior to working with Obama, Gaspard was a community organizer for school reform and labor issues. He had worked on the campaigns for Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean, and New York City Mayor David Dinkins--New York City's first African American mayor. Very little information has been published about Patrick Gaspard, although as field director of Americans Coming Together (ACT), a 527 "Get Out the Vote" group, he was unaware that convicted felons were hired as canvassers, and that ACT also violated some campaign finance laws.

Eugene Kang: 24 years old: "Special Assistant to the President". There is still not yet enough public information available on what exactly Eugene Kang is going to do. Kang has a Facebook page if you want to add him, though. He organized a great deal of information for Obama during his campaign, and mobilized many Asian American communities into voting for Obama.

Valerie Jarrett: Senior Adviser: "the other half of Obama's brain". Jarrett comes from an incredibly prominent African-American family, full of firsts. She has lived all over the world, worked in corporate law, and then headed to the Chicago Mayor's office as chief of staff. As chief of staff to Chicago mayor Richard Daley, she had hired Michelle Obama (then Robinson) as assistant to the mayor. It is uncertain what her political views are, although she is a divorced parent and voted by journalism website muckety.com as one of Chicago's "100 best networked".

Reggie Love: 26 years old: Personal Aide and "kid brother". Love played football and basketball while going for his degree in Political Science at Duke University, tried out for the Green Bay Packers in 2004 and didn't make it, tried out for the Dallas Cowboys in 2005 and didn't make it...so he went to work for Barack Obama!

Desiree Rogers: White House Social Secretary: First African American to be named White House Social Secretary and longtime personal friend of the Obamas. I originally thought that "Social Secretary" had to do with Social Services of some kind, but no...Desiree Rogers is going to be the official event planner and party planner for the White House. This is an important position? What about the White House Chef?

Eric K. Shinseki: Secretary of Veterans Affairs: Retired General Shinseki is a Vietnam war veteran who had seen combat firsthand, and has done some incredible things in his position. Shinseki clashed quite frequently with Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz on the number of US troops needed in Iraq--Shinseki insisted that they would need "something on the order of several hundred thousand soldiers".

Hilda L. Solis: Labor Secretary: Solis has voted NO on major illegal immigration bills, and remains a powerful voice in government for Latinos. The bills she has worked on in the 110th Congress show a commitment to Latino representation, domestic violence, and environmental issues. (For the record, she does not support a constitutional amendment to define marriage as a bond between man and woman, either.)

Mike Strautmanis: Chief of Staff: Long time personal friend of the Obamas who worked for Michelle as a paralegal before getting involved with politics. Strautmanis has a son with autism, and is working on a disability policy that specifically addresses the needs of autistic people.

Cass Sunstein: Information and Regulatory Affairs Commissioner: Law professor who has written some good stuff about why Americans should celebrate paying taxes and how every US citizen who graduates from high school and has no criminal record should get $80,000 to invest in his or her future.

Mona Sutphen: Deputy White House Chief of Staff: Co-wrote the book The Next American Century: How the US Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise.

How Do They Figure?

2009-01-06T17:11:00.000-08:00

One of the responsibilities that I have at work is to educate faculty about license agreements for books, DVDs, and software. Many materials have license agreements which state that they cannot be loaned, copied, or downloaded in any fashion. For some materials, there is an additional cost for a license agreement which would allow circulation or downloading of an item. Depending on the item, this cost can range from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. This led me to ask the question: how are the costs for public performance rights, classroom performance rights, or circulation rights calculated?

I figured the U.S. Copyright Office would be a good place to start. There I found links to other organizations that handle copyright and trademark issues, including the Copyright Clearance Center. The Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) will tell you exactly how much it costs for permission to distribute copies of an article or a book chapter to a class, so I figured that they would have an answer to my question.

The answer was not obvious, so I emailed CCC to get more information. I am still waiting after two days, and still searching for the answer.

My Friend Michael

2008-12-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

Michael McGrorty and I went to library school together. He too faces many research challenges, and often tests other librarians to find out if they can think outside the box when handling his difficult research questions.

"I'd like to tell you that I'm doing some research right now, but the fact is, I'm always doing research. Because I'm a researcher. Some of you might know what that means--it's like being a librarian, only you have to get the actual answer. [Insert laugh here] Once I tried telling my boss, "Look over in aisle five," and he told me to research the term "unemployment." [laugh again, if you've got a spare]

"I was a researcher before I went to library school. Library school taught me a million new sources of information--priceless stuff for research. It also taught me how weak researchers could be in the area of data collection and, most importantly, in discriminating among many sources.

"I didn't know researchers often leaned heavily on bad sources or just did lousy work until I saw what a good librarian could provide--and that every researcher should be a good librarian. On the other hand, I didn't know what a weak librarian was until I had a few reference courses and saw that, like any other trade, half the practitioners were below average.

"My problem is that I am living in a statistical anomaly: somehow I get all the bad ones. My requests for library assistance are very often deflating. I think the reason for this is that I want very badly for colleagues to be sharp--to make me proud of them and our work. Too often this just aint the case, friends. Let me tell you how it's boiling down in River City.

"I'm working on a project which requires me to make contact with librarians in all fifty states plus some other localities; like most of my work it involves laws that are similar everywhere but which differ in their particulars. I have to formulate strategies for dealing with the differences. Think of something like benefits for the homeless or unemployment insurance--a thing of many variables with some significant similarities. The librarians are in state agencies. As usual, I am using them as they are supposed to be employed: as initial sources and links to needed documents, statutes, statistics--all that sort of thing.

"My requests take the form of emails (when possible), and letters. I have not yet reached the phone call stage. Let's make up a question similar to what I'm asking:

"Dear Librarian, I am doing research on the application of federal blowtorch standards through the blowtorch licensing agency of your state. Of course, the federal government and your state have similar standards, and in fact your state enforces federal rules. I am seeking statistics on the following:

1. Blowtorch injuries for the past five years, as required by California statute.

2. Number of investigations for these injuries, and also for preventive inspections by the appropriate agency.

3. Final penalty assessments for injuries and failed inspections.

"Please note that I have not been able to discover any other source for this information; I was told by the enforcement agency that the State Library was the sole repository of the information and records I require. Please consider this a request under your state's version of FOIA, and inform me if other steps need to be taken to receive the information described. Many thanks, et cetera."

"Okay, now you've read the prelims. In our next posting we will show you how to get gray hair in a real quick hurry."

Dr. Google

2008-12-26T10:45:00.000-08:00

Disturbing research article about doctors who admit to using Google to diagnose their patients. Based on the survey, 58.8% of the diagnoses from Google end up being correct.

Ironically, I discovered this article while searching for another article about a doctor who received prison time for a misdiagnosis based on his wonderful Yahoo! and Pub Med research. I read that article last month, and forgot to save the link! ):( Is it possible that this article has been expunged from public record, now that Google has become an all-powerful cureall?

Perhaps it is possible that the pro-Google diagnosis study depends more on the doctors' skill in prescribing treatment, rather than making the diagnosis? Do those doctors only use Google to confirm what they have already discovered?

Europeana.eu

2008-12-24T18:36:00.001-08:00

In 2010, the European Union will have a fully functional digital library of over 10 million volumes. Currently they have a test site, with images of artwork from the Louvre, the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Institute for Art History.

In any case, the best part of the website is the link to the Louvre. All of the interactive features, including short animated films about incidents that took place at the Louvre, made this website the best art museum website I have ever seen.

Definition of Multiculturalism

2008-12-22T12:55:00.000-08:00

The origin of the term "multiculturalism" may be the stuff of academic legend.

In preparing for my presentation on multiculturalism, I wanted to find out when the term was first used. Many websites cited a book for language arts teachers, which cited a book review published in 1941. The reviewer stated that the book he (or she) had read brought up the strengths of a "multicultural" society, where citizens respect each other no matter what their ethnicity, religion, etc.. I thought that was pretty good stuff, and proceeded to go on a wild goose chase.

You see, none of the sources that I read identified the title of the book or the book reviewer. Not only that, but three of the five sources had incorrectly identified the source of the book review. Three sources said that the review had come from a 1941 issue of The New York Herald. Unfortunately, that publication no longer existed in 1941--since 1923 it had been The New York Herald Tribune after a merger.

Once I had identified the correct source of the book review, I had to locate it. Just my luck, The New York Herald Tribune is not indexed electronically in any library. You actually have to contact a public library in Texas that has a morgue of back issues. Even the public libraries in New York do not have copies!

I didn't have time to call the library in Texas, plus I did not want to pay for the review (if it even existed) to be photocopied and snail mailed to my office. I was getting pretty steamed; why should I pay for the sloppy research of others?

A sip of coffee shook a library-related memory from a dusty corner of my brain. Way back in ninth grade, long before electronic databases and the Internet, our school librarian taught us about the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. The Reader's Guide is an index to articles and book reviews published in newspapers and magazines from 1900 to today. It is published in heavy green volumes that wait patiently for librarians to remember them. If the Reader's Guide didn't have a listing for this book review, I was sunk.

If there was anyone who would know where the Reader's Guide was located, it would be the Reference Department. I went downstairs and asked Professor Hill, veteran Reference librarian, to show me the Reader's Guide. "Bless your heart," he sighed, and we dashed to the Ready Reference section where the entire Reader's Guide collection stood at attention like soldiers. I was on a mission now--find that review!

I will remind you that I did not know the title of the review, nor did I know the title of the book being reviewed, the name of the reviewer, nor the month and day of publication. Based on the quote from the review, I deduced that the book in question could have been about war, aggression, peace...the Reader's Guide is indexed by subject, so I had to search for the review that way. I did not find it, but I found a whole lot of articles from the New York Times which would have fit the bill perfectly.

In any case, I put in an ILL request for the language arts book that started this whole mess. The book is called America in So Many Words: Words That Have Shaped America by David K. Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf (Houghton Mifflin, 1997). In this book, Barnhart and Metcalf provide etymologies for distinctly American words that became part of global discourse on social and political issues, but they did not provide works cited for their entries. For the serious researcher, this leads to a dead end and banging one's head on a desk.

As academics, we must provide a paper trail for our research. If we do not, history becomes stuff of legend that is easy to misquote yet nearly impossible to prove. If I learned anything about multiculturalism this semester, that would be the big moral lesson for the week.