Saturday, July 19, 2008

Final post

To my small group of readers, this will be my final post on this blog. I may start a new one at some point, but right now I just don't have time to keep up with it. Thank you all for reading and (hopefully) laughing at my cynicism about the world. Let me know what you think and if I decide to start a new blog I'll be happy to email you the name...

Saturday, July 12, 2008

I rant a lot about journalism. So many articles in many newspapers in this country are just one step up (if that) from tabloid journalism. This problem becomes even more obvious when you notice that a major bank fails in this country - IndyMac was taken over by Federal regulators on 7/11/2008 - and the major newspaper here barely mentions it. The same day the major newswires are producing a number of articles on the problems with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac - more fallout from the real estate bubble - and this only gets a short article in the local paper.


I begin to suspect that the problem here is one of misunderstanding who makes up your core audience. The population of the metro area here has grown by about 1 million people in the last 30 years. That kind of increase brings in a larger pool of educated people, yet the local paper seems to continue to aim it's coverage at the least educated; in effect they "dumb down" the news. Case in point is the lack of coverage on the IndyMac debacle. Not front page news but buried in the business section after 7/12. Can't let people know what's going on when it's far more important that they know about the new Batman movie or the that the local gymnast broke her leg and can't go the the Olympics. Don't do any real research or find an actual news story because that might require work.


I guess I shouldn't be surprised, after all some of the local reporters don't do their own research anyway, they just call the library. Then they have the nerve to complain that the library only directed them to sources and didn't just give them the answer. It makes me wonder if "journalists" in this town are just a bunch of 8th grade drop outs who still think that a "homework help" line will do the homework for them so they don't have to bother.

Update on the Tequila is the new wine

I ran across an article from AP yesterday saying that bourbon was gaining popularity worldwide. So I guess that means that Bourbon is the new Tequila which was the new wine which was probably the new beer right????

Friday, July 11, 2008

Interesting story about creating petroleum products from agricultural waste - http://www.hcnonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19786825&BRD=1574&PAG=461&dept_id=639295&rfi=6



The story claims that the inventor is able to take regular farm waste - cracked soy beans, cotton, etc. - and turn it into crude oil. The most interesting part is that the oil then burns at 100% efficiency - i.e. there are no discernible waste products after burning.

Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about a number of things. If this oil can truly burn at 100% efficiency, I will have to revise my view of chemical reactions or retake some science courses. I can admit that my science background is a bit dated. I haven't taken any kind of chemistry class since my first year of college 17 years ago. I do have a more recent background in physics - 4 hours short of a minor - but again I haven't studied that in 6 years. I mention this because I recall vaguely that nothing burns at 100% efficiency - there is always something lost to waste and heat even if it's a very small amount.

That said, I find this inventor's experiment intriguing. What it appears he has done is speed up the process of decomposition for specific forms of organic material. Crude oil as pumped from the ground is generally made up of organic material that has decomposed. Wikipedia's article gives a good basic synopsis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum

So if what this inventor has done can be independently repeated, we could have a partial solution to our current energy woes. However, I think this leads to an additional problem - we haven't weaned our dependency on oil. What good will it do if suddenly we're using all this "farm waste" to create fuel? Will we suddenly be facing a shortage of food as farmers grow "waste crops" to produce petroleum? What kinds of new pollution will result as a part of the refining process to create this petroleum and what new by-products will start to appear?

The other think I'm pondering is this: Could this experiment not be a modern day successor to the early 1900s "automobiles that run on water" demonstration - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car and http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/car-runs-on-water-inventor-to-be-kidnapped-by-exxon-177716.php

The reason I wonder is that I live by one simple rule: If it's too good to be true it probably isn't.

Saturday, July 5, 2008

Living in the past

Random thought about Fourth of July in this country. While I think it's a great time to get together with family and celebrate, I get really sick and tired of the people who feel they need to set off firecrackers, fireworks, etc. hour after hour into the night. I come from a state which has banned almost all handheld fireworks - bottle rockets, and any others which can fly - due to the increased chance of injuries. They also enforce the law and I've seen many people get cited for having illegal fireworks which were then confiscated.



Then I moved to Florida and I feel like I stepped into the 10 year time warp. I came to a state that still allowed drive up windows on liquor stores, had radio stations that played '80s music like it was still 1985 - the same 10 songs on the play list, play 2 songs, 18 commercials, 5 minutes of inane DJ chatter, a few more commercials, 3 songs, etc. In addition, they had the same STUPID morning shows which had the "Thursday Morning" psychic, and that kind of drivel -and Florida allows an obscene number of different fireworks packages to be purchased regardless even when the state is having a huge drought. Totally bizarre. Plus, the majority of jobs in this state seemed to be service oriented -restaurants, gas stations, clothing and other mall stores - or tourism related. There was no apparent "big business" in Florida. Skip ahead a few years and .... it still seems like nothing has changed.

The drive-up windows at some liquor stores such as ABC Fine Wines and Spirits, have closed down, but that wouldn't have happened if not for a newspaper article pointing out how much drive up alcoholic beverage sales contribute to drunk driving. Closing the windows was a huge improvement considering how ABC allegedly used to hand out a cup with ice and a swizzle stick in it to anyone asking at the counter or through the drive up. They had stopped the cup of ice policy by the time I worked there in 2002 - not that the same people didn't CONSTANTLY ask for it and whine when we wouldn't provide it -, but the drive up windows (in Tallahassee) didn't close until at least 2003, right around the time for Florida A&M's homecoming game as I recall.

My point being this state is backward in a great many ways. Those of us that have moved here from elsewhere in the US, probably came for the weather, I know I did. In my case, I also came to attend one of the top Master's programs in my field. I love the weather here - including the occasional hurricane - and want to be in Florida. Unfortunately, unless some things change, such as moving the economy away from tourism, I won't be able to stay. There just aren't enough jobs for those of us who got our Master's degree and expect to be paid as such in this state, and I find that unfortunate.

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Pregnancy Pact Fallout

Now it's being contested that there was no actual pregnancy pact in the Massachusetts high school. See this article from the Boston Herald http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view/2008_06_25_Preg_pact_story_unravels/srvc=home&position=0



I find this disturbing on a great many levels. First, the journalist of the original piece is still insisting that she is correct. While I can understand her motivation, I want to ask a question "Are you just trying to maintain your 'journalistic integrity' by refusing to admit you may have misinterpreted an off-hand remark?" One of the benefits and curses of having a very free press is that often remarks that were made for specific individuals in an attempt to be humorous get completely taken out of context and turned into "news" stories. It's like the revenge of the National Enquirer set. Based on the above link and other related stories, it could appear that one of the social workers may have been trying to be funny when she said that the girls all made a pact to get pregnant by the end of the school year.



Second, the backlash, deserved or not, is going to dominate the news and take away from actual news stories that people need to know about. For example, when was the last time that current information about the war on Terror in Afghanistan made the news? Have we caught that Bin Ladin character yet? No? Don't care? Well, that's sad, because that is actual news from a war that affects everyone, not just those of us in the US.

There's a reason that the American news is ridiculed, it's that we have no content in our news. It's just one sensationalistic story after another - such as the continuing coverage of the b-list (or lower) celebrities like Britney or Paris - while some people care about what happens to people who are famous for their meltdowns or what their grandparents did to make money, it is NOT news when they break a fingernail! Interrupting a news broadcast about Afghanistan to show Ms. Hilton going to jail is absurd.

Finally, when there is a retraction due to shoddy journalism, it's buried on the back pages of a newspaper or footnoted at the end of the broadcast. And those two conditions only occur when the "news journalists" ADMIT they may have erred. All too often, the mistakes are just ignored in the hope that they will go away.

It's unfortunate that so many "news" sites, magazines and TV shows seem to run this kind of sensationalized story in an effort to improve hits, ratings or sales. Sensationalizing the news can only reduce the quality of the news source to one step, if that, above the supermarket tabloid.

Regardless of the outcome, it's still painfully obvious that whatever we are teaching our teens about sex and babies, it's horribly flawed. I feel that the basic understanding here must be that teens are going to have sex, REGARDLESS of what we teach them about it. No amount of abstinance pacts, abstinance only sex ed, contraceptive use sex ed in the classroom is going to change that. Scaring them does not seem to work either, just look at the rates of STDs in this county. So what is the solution? Perhaps parents should make the effort to talk to their kids about uncomfortable subjects. Surely talking to them can't do a worse job with sex ed than politically dictated sex ed does. The advantage to having the parents do the talking means that the schools/teachers will no longer have to listen to as much complaining about the lousy job they did preparing a daughter to get pregnant by her hook-up boyfriend.

Thursday, June 19, 2008

Decline of North Eastern Civilization

Time is running a story about a pregnancy boom in a Massachusetts high school - http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1815845,00.html
Apparently the gist is that a group of young ladies - most of whom are around 16 years old - made a pact to try to get pregnant before the end of the school year. While I feel that this story would be disturbing to many people, there is a point to be made here. Having this large a group of unwed pregnant teens can only point to the failure of the "abstinence only" sex ed program currently espoused by a certain political party. I find it very hard to look at it any other way. When you don't bother telling the kids anything except "don't do it because I said so" can you honestly have any expectation of them obeying you? I think not.
Children of any age are currently more wily and sophisticated than many of their parents were at the same age. Why? Because they have access to a great deal more information both good and bad at a younger age; they are constantly bombarded with information while seldom having time to burn off the excess energy - at least this is true here in Florida where many schools have canceled recess to add an additional PE class due to state mandates - and they interact with their environment in a completely different way than their parents or even some of their older siblings. Kids need to be given credit by adults for knowing a lot more than they let on.
As for the situation in Massachusetts, the parents are also to blame. There is no excuse for being so uninvolved in your children's lives that they can go out and make a silly pregnancy pact. Parent's need to quit blaming the schools - teachers are often underpaid, under appreciated and yet expected to put up with a ridiculous attitude from parents who won't even consider taking a tax increase to give teachers a raise - and teachers for their own lack of involvement in their kids lives. Be a better parent, take an interest in your child and quit trying to blame all your problems on everyone else because those of us without children are getting tired of watching our tax dollars go to raising your grandkids.

6/21
Check out this story from USA Today Online where no one else seems to know about this alleged pact. http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/06/mass-school-off.html

Friday, June 13, 2008

Random Rants

What do you get when Friday the 13th and a full moon seem to come at the same time? Random bouts of weirdness, like the guy falling asleep while receiving a verbal warning from staff about sleeping in the library. Do you not think you're going to get in trouble?

Another weird one, RIAA - the group that is suing people for illegal music downloads - drops a case just before the judge can decide on the defendants motion for dismissal, then refiles with another judge a new case, same defendants, but "convienently" forgot to inform the new judge that the cases were related. This despite the fact that this particular case has been dismissed twice before and was not allowed to be refiled. Read more about that particular action here: http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/06/riaa-files-new-action-against-cassin.html I particularly like the comment referring to how the RIAA is looking for the "real" infringers. Sounds like someone else who was looking for the "real" killers...

Funny thing about RIAA cases, when they are pressed to reveal how they have determined that a particular person using a particular computer has downloaded and therefore cost the record company and artist six figure amounts of money, they tend to obfuscate the issue with unrelated information. The thing that seems to keep coming up in these RIAA cases is that the RIAA - which is NOT supported by all recording artists by any means - is on a witch hunt.

Finally, as noted here http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/12/Yahoo_ends_talks_with_Microsoft_nears_Google_deal_1.html
Yahoo is dissing Microsoft for Google. Can we file this in the how far has Microsoft fallen since the antitrust case?

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Back with some mild ranting

I'm still wondering about the whole "Y is the new X" thing. Who thinks up stupid things like that? Very non-creative people I suppose.

Today I ran across our copy of New York Magazine, the one with Lindsay Lohan recreating the Last Sitting. Naturally, one of our patrons felt the need to cut the pictures out with scissors, thus defacing the magazine. Granted I am assuming it was a patron and not someone who works here because after all aren't librarians supposed to believe in freedom of expression? Now back to the rant...

I'm not so certain I care that the pictures were cut out. Go to New York Magazines online site and you can see them, plus a couple that did not get put in the magazine. Big deal. I don't like the vandalism, but I think it proves something I believe. IF you want to prevent crimes like theft, vandalism, etc. you have to establish a visible presence at your work area. This means that librarians have to (ohmigawd don't say it) WALK AROUND! Get off your lazy butt and take a walk around your reference area when you're on the desk. It's just like any other business, if people see you, you make eye contact, maybe talk to them a little, offer to help, they are much less likely to damage/destroy/steal material. Why? Because as you walk around and do those little things they get UNCOMFORTABLE. Duh!

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Trendwatching for 2008

Recently received a link to a list of things (http://influxinsights.com/blog/article/1724/jwt-has-80-things-for-us-to-watch-in-08.html) to watch for in 2008. Obviously I'm a little behind since it's late February and the list was created in December, but I feel the need to make comments on a few of these issues.

2. Antibiotic Backlash - this has been in the news before mainly due to antibiotic resistant strains of diseases cropping up. Is this a new issue? I think not.

4. Beijing 2008 - They're holding the Olympics in China so we'll go through the inevitable fads of so-called "culture" that usually have nothing to do with the country in question - Crocodile Dundee anyone?

7. British actress Kira Knightley - already overexposed in the entertainment world.

49. Nollywood - can we come up with something better than another Hollywood knockoff - Metro Goldwyn Nigeria, Nigerian Artists, SOMETHING????

69. Tequila as the new wine - tequila connoisseurs will have a field day with this. Simple facts about distillation - any liquor can be distilled/aged into a fine sipping beverage suited for cocktail hours, dinner, or after dinner drinks. This has already happened with scotch (single malt), rum and whiskey (single barrel or single batch or small batch). Does this mean next year watch out for Gin or Vodka as the new tequila?

Further rant on #69 - what is it with calling everything the new X (the new black, the new wine, etc.) It's an absurd premise and a lousy comparison device. Simply put, call the item the new trend in it's field - Tequila will be the big news in alcoholic beverages rivalling wine for it's versatility and be done with "the new" fad.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Funny stuff

So it must be the full moon, early spring and something else I can't quite put my finger on because I am getting the weirdest issues at work this week. First was the regular patron who came in and sat down at a table already occupied by a studying student. The student came to me and asked if I would have the other patron move as the student was doing school work and was being disrupted by the regular patrons loud phone conversation. Upon asking VERY POLITELY if the intruding patron would move, I was called racist and told that the FBI would be checking up on me.
Second fun incident: I woke a sleeping patron to give her a copy of the library rules and explain that she could not sleep in the library. Patron's response "What kind of library is this?" before storming off...
I can't help but laugh at both incidents because they are so typical of our patron base. Working downtown in a large public library has it's moments of genuine weirdness and this is shaping up to be the week for them.
I also ran across a couple of neat library memes that I will probably be participating in soon. I have some great ideas for both of them.