It’s probably not wise for a bibliophile to admit, but I’ve never been much of a fan of Dorothy Parker or Lillian Hellman. That said, this article by Marion Meade in the latest Book Forum was fascinating all the same. Enjoy!
Archives for March 2006
Pastafarianism.
Worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Worship It! Now!
All right, fine, don’t worship it . . . but don’t dismiss it out of hand, either. Faith is one of those wacky things of which only humans are capable, and it’s a delicate balance between making sense of the universe in which we live, and coming off as stark raving mad. That goes for all of us professing belief in God, Jesus Christ who was his son and died for our sins, except for Jews who don’t, and Muslims who do but believe in His Prophet Mohammed, more, Evolution (note the capital E there), Quantum physics, General and Specific relativity, Buddha, Zen, various Hindu deities, Orishas, Lwas, Science, Satan, or what have you. I didn’t care for Hebrew school much (washed out after two and a half years) but I did come away with this notion: Faith is good, idolatry is bad. Questioning authority is good, blind obedience is bad.
Either we’re all crazy or we’re all sane. If my observation is worth anything, then God’s Children, we surely all are, but some of us are consistently more childish than others.
My point here is that religion is inherently funny. Laughter is inherently spiritual. Spirituality is inherently mind-expanding.
Just my two cents. </sermon>
Emily Dunning Barringer, M.D.
From Bowery to Hollywood: Emily Dunning Barringer, MD, Fellow of
the New York Academy of Medicine – an exhibit at the New York Academy of
Medicine Library
the New York Academy of Medicine – an exhibit at the New York Academy of
Medicine Library
In 1903, Emily Dunning Barringer, MD became the first woman to serve as an
ambulance surgeon in New York City. She was also an advocate for women’s health,
with a particular interest in venereal diseases and the plight of female inmates
in New York prisons. With the coming of the second World War, she worked
tirelessly to allow women physicians to serve as commissioned officers in the
armed services.
In 1950, she wrote an autobiography, "From Bowery to
Bellevue", about her experiences as an ambulance surgeon in 1903. Two years
after the book’s publication, a movie version, "The Girl in White", was
released.
This exhibit explores Dr. Barringer’s real and reel lives; journal
and newspaper articles, photographs, and books explore her professional life,
while posters, ads, and memorobilia provide insight into the marketing of the
film.
The exhibit is on display in the Library, 3rd Floor of the New York
Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York NY. The display is available
for viewing Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 9am to 5pm and Wednesday
from 9am to 7pm.
ambulance surgeon in New York City. She was also an advocate for women’s health,
with a particular interest in venereal diseases and the plight of female inmates
in New York prisons. With the coming of the second World War, she worked
tirelessly to allow women physicians to serve as commissioned officers in the
armed services.
In 1950, she wrote an autobiography, "From Bowery to
Bellevue", about her experiences as an ambulance surgeon in 1903. Two years
after the book’s publication, a movie version, "The Girl in White", was
released.
This exhibit explores Dr. Barringer’s real and reel lives; journal
and newspaper articles, photographs, and books explore her professional life,
while posters, ads, and memorobilia provide insight into the marketing of the
film.
The exhibit is on display in the Library, 3rd Floor of the New York
Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Avenue, New York NY. The display is available
for viewing Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, from 9am to 5pm and Wednesday
from 9am to 7pm.
Nicked From Andrew Tobias
WORST ADVICE EVER
“I before E
except after C.”
Oh, yeah?
The
feisty foreigner seized the beige reins in one vein-bulging hand and – weirdly
adorned in leis (a veil of distraction so no one would remember his face?)
feigned disinterest no more. The heist
of his neighbor’s heir’s freight had begun.
What they
should have taught us: “I after C must follow E . . . but not literally.” (Not literally, because I’s
frequently follow C’s without an intervening E – city, cicada, scintillate – and sometimes even when an E follows – efficient.)
No wonder Johnnie can’t spell.
MORE FREE AUDIOBOOKS
Lynn Gongaware: “LibriVox – recorded by volunteers from the
public domain.”
New Projects
For the record, I agree with the sentiment that children and pornography don’t mix. Heck, adults and pornography don’t mix half the time. Having said that, I’m convinced there has to be a better method of keeping the two away from each other (kids and porn) than this. (Dare I suggest more involved parenting?)
While we’re on the subject of Google (again), take a look at this relationship chart of the biggest search engines. It’s an interesting way to think of the gestalt of who pushes data to whom and for what reason. Not a bad way of getting an instant reality check on why some results appear more or less frequently than others depending on who’s pushing and/or paying for what. I put this one in the Reference Resources TypeList for safe keeping, so if you can’t be bothered to bookmark it, it’s here if you need it.
New projects are making their needs felt: I’m working on an article about the Academy’s Grey Literature Report and I’ve got a deadline that isn’t approaching too quickly, but it’s sooner than I’d thought (thank God for desktop calendars) so that’s being dealt with. I’m also expanding the list of E-journals (a whole bunch of BMC titles and plenty more) into our Serials Solutions account, but that’s not as pressing. And, I just did the quarterly batch activation of XML targets for Link Finder Plus, which means I’m going to have to spot test a few of them early tomorrow. (I like to wait a day or so just to make sure everything has passed through the pipeline, which is probably a tiny bit paranoid on my part.) This all while keeping up with 4-6 MARC records a day to keep from either getting rusty or falling too far behind in the Grey Lit.
I’m back to work.
The Google Side of Your Brain
I’m not usually a USA Today reader, which is why I managed to miss this article by Elizabeth Weise from December 18, 2005. I think the title says it all: "This is the Google Side of Your Brain." On the tiny chance that I’m not the only person on the planet who hasn’t read this yet, her main question is whether we’re outsourcing some portion of our collective memory to entities such as Google, which has a reuptation of being able to hand you the knowledge tidbit were searching for. It’s a great read.