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Jon Frater

News Flash: Junk Food Makes Kids Fat (Duh!)

August 14, 2006 by Jon Frater 1 Comment

The reputation of the reporting news agency aside, two words fit here: no kidding.  (Buy the book.)

I like the idea very much. It’s the execution I have doubts about. I mean, the human brain is hands down the best computer ever to see the light of day. The one thing that mechanical brains have on us is speed. But in terms of managing disparate, highly variable (and varied) inputs, people win every time. A human driver can get out of most problems that he gets into without resorting to calling police or actually damaging the car, himself, or his passengers.  But historially robots are not great at that particular kind of problem solving. For it to work propoerly, a robot needs to exist in a very specific environment: a clean, clear hallway with an evenly tiled floor, as opposed to a typical city street. I can see a robot car following a highly distinctive pattern of starts and stops, for example, a tram that goes in straight (or mildly curving) lines down a number of streets in sequence and never does anything else, stopping at predetermined points along the way for a set time to pick up and drop off passengers. But such a system requires that the track never break, the passengers never dawdle or crowd each other, and the position of the stops never change. But the world, outside of very highly selctive environments (say, the monorail at Disneyworld or a internal track at an airport passenger terminal), does not generally work that way.

So, yes, I like the idea. I have questions about the feasability and expense. And the necessity, for that matter. Why not just reinstate the public transportation systems many cities in the U.S. abandoned in the 1930s and 40s? It’s the same basic idea.

On to library stuff: the latest edition of the NYAM Grey Literature Report (vol. 4, no. 8, July 2006) is now available here.

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

Worldcat.org is Now Available!

August 9, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

As the headline said:

Worldcat.org is now available (yea!)

Very little to write about today, as we’re in the process of picking out shelf list cards and processing the tomes we unearthed from MLCNY last year, and there are quite a lot of them. I’m told that NYPL is taking some of them off our hands, but there are more available. On the chance that you may be interested in acquiring some of this material, I invite you to email me. I’ll make sure your request gets to the correct people.

In other news, my crash course in reference training is about donbe, so I’ll start doing shifts on the desk next week.  (Yea me!)

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

Avoid Milk? Yes!

August 2, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I don’t know Mark Hyman personally, nor have I read his
book, but I do subscribe to his e-mail listserv and he seems to know what he’s
talking about when I can follow his reasoning and the science behind it. At any
rate, it’s just plain fun to read a MD ream the agriculture industry, food
processing industry, medical research establishment (as if there is a such a
single unified entity as that) and U.S. government. (There’s a link to his blog at the end of the article, which is behind the cut).

Enjoy!

[Read more…] about Avoid Milk? Yes!

Filed Under: Science

Heat WAVE!!!!!

July 31, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

This just in:

MAYOR BLOOMBERG DECLARES HEAT EMERGENCY FOR METRO NYC

Over the next few days, we expect excessive heat
and humidity in The New York Metro region. Please plan your
activities with protection in mind.
 
If needed, you can find a NYC cooling
center here.
 
We can also take steps to reduce energy usage,
as described here.
 
The
NYC Office of Emergency Management offers the tips listed below during a heat
wave:
  • New Yorkers should, whenever possible, stay out of the sun. When in the sun,
    wear sun screen (at least SPF 15) and a hat to protect your face and head. Dress
    in lightweight, light-colored, loose-fitting clothing that covers as much skin
    as possible.
  • Drink fluids – particularly water – even if you do not feel thirsty. Your
    body needs water to keep cool. Avoid beverages containing alcohol or
    caffeine.
  • Avoid strenuous activity, especially during the sun’s peak hours – 11 a.m.
    to 4 p.m.
  • Cool down with repeated cool baths or showers.
  • Never leave children, seniors, or pets in a parked car during periods of
    intense summer heat.
  • Make a special effort to check on neighbors, especially seniors and those
    with special needs.
  • Report open fire hydrants by calling 311.
  • Recognize the symptoms of heat-related illnesses including heat exhaustion
    and heat stroke:

    • Heat exhaustion: Symptoms include heavy sweating, weakness,
      headache, weak pulse, dizziness, exhaustion, fainting, nausea or vomiting, and
      cold, clammy skin. Body temperature will seem normal.
    • Heat Stroke: Symptoms include flushed, hot, dry skin, weak or rapid
      pulse, shallow breathing, lack of sweating, throbbing headache, dizziness,
      nausea, confusion, and unconsciousness. Body temperature will be elevated, and
      victim should receive immediate medical attention.
Stay cool!

Filed Under: NYAM Bulletins

OCLC Bulletins

July 18, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Just a couple of articles from picked from OCLC Abstracts this morning:

OCLC, LIBER Exchange Bibliographic records to Support Digital Preservation Efforts

Google’s Anti-social Downside

Enjoy!

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

The Loeb Classical Library

July 7, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I don’t subscribe to the Weekly Standard and it’s literally been over a decade since I dealt with the classics (as they were called in more than one college English class) but I have nothing but respect and admiration for those who do (enjoy the classics, that is; I don’t know anyone who subscribes to the WS, so I don’t know what I think of their subscribers as a group.) At any rate, Tracy Lee Simmons wrote a great review of the Loeb Classical Library.  Here’s the excerpt:

"A Loeb Classical Library Reader

Harvard, 240 pp., $9.95

THEY DO CATCH THE EYE, those handsome, pint-sized green and red
books keeping their own elite company in the more recondite or
otherwise up-market bookstores.

Their simple covers don’t flash, though they fairly sing–sotto voce–their
authority. They may look quaint, but these midget volumes have become
the missals of the bookish classes. Generations have known them as "the
Loebs," though they belong to what is properly called the Loeb
Classical Library, and, within the English-speaking world, they are
deemed an essential accouterment to the life of the mind. For within
them we can find, in all their antiquated Greek and Latin glory, those
exquisite feats of the ancient Greeks and Romans in poetry, drama,
philosophy, and history–not to mention architecture, agriculture,
geography, engineering, mathematics, botany, zoology, and even
horsemanship and hunting.

Although they don’t strike us as the stuff of bestsellers, their
ubiquity surprises. One finds them equipping almost every public and
institutional library in the land, as well as residing in not a few
household libraries amassed by those with yearnings for intellectual
nourishment of the genuine kind. They look far more erudite than a set
of Penguins. They certify seriousness. Employing the royal "we" in a
way only she could do, Virginia Woolf, a creditable amateur classicist
herself, who once called Greek "the perfect language," said, "We shall
never be independent of our Loeb." And she meant it.

The source of the Loeb Library’s cachet may be shrouded from us in a
trifling age, but that of their popularity isn’t hard to discover:
Along with the original Greek and Latin texts printed on the left-hand
page as each book opens–texts, to say the least, of circumscribed
value to most people–on the right-hand side we find crisp,
unembellished English translations. The Loebs are the world’s classiest
crib, a trot for grownups. They are classics with a safety net. Here
was an excellent innovation for those who have mentally mislaid the
mastery of the classical languages they gained in schooldays. Here was
also a perfect device for those who never learned them, and they make a
somewhat larger crowd these days.

Despite the sense many of us have that the Loeb Classical Library
has always been there, it has in fact existed for only just under a
hundred years. The series was founded in 1911 by James Loeb, a
gentleman of parts who was both a classicist and a successful
businessman, and his goal was straightforwardly democratic in spirit:
To make the finest, most consequential literature of the classical
Greeks and Romans accessible, if not to the huddled masses exactly,
then certainly to the hundreds of thousands of an emerging educated
class whose schooling had not embraced the old classical curriculum
when they opted for the applied sciences or an earlier form of
Humanities Lite."

Read the whole thing here.

Filed Under: Reader Advisory

Taxpayer-Funded Secrecy

July 6, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

The good news is this: an article discussing the peer review process in Nature.

The bad news is this: your tax dollars are being used to roll back the Freedom of Information Act. Granted, it’s at the research phase right now, but I find it difficult to believe they would have funded it had they not a strong wish to actually go ahead with it. Anyway, here’s an excerpt:

‘Tax Dollars to Fund Study on Restricting Public Data
by Richard Willing, USA Today

The federal government will pay a Texas law
school $1 million to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of
sensitive data available to the press and public through
freedom-of-information requests.

Beginning this month, St. Mary’s University
School of Law in San Antonio will analyze recent state laws that place
previously available information, such as site plans of power plants,
beyond the reach of public inquiries.

Jeffrey Addicott, a professor at the law school,
said he will use that research to produce a national "model statute"
that state legislatures and Congress could adopt to ensure that
potentially dangerous information "stays out of the hands of the bad
guys."

"There’s the public’s right to know, but how much?" said Addicott, a former legal adviser in the Army’s Special Forces.’

How much, indeed?

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

Articles, Space Travel, and Fertilizer Bombs (Oh My!)

July 6, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I’m putting the finishing touches on my article for the Journal of Electronic Resources in Medical Libraries’ eJournal  Forum and the deadline is Monday, which means that before then I need to actually finish it, then send my proof to the other co-authors to see what needs fixing, and then over the weekend finish the second draft. (Wish me luck!) That done, I might actually post here two (even–dare I say it? three) times a week.

While that’s going on, if you care about the possibilities of practical space travel for those of us without $20 million to spend on a ticket to the stars, take a look at Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Blog.

And when you’re done with that, you can take a look at this. This bit was written by Chip Ward, who is the assistant director of Salt Lake City’s public library system on the subject of the Pentagon’s intention to set off what might be the biggest fertilizer bomb in history as a faux nuclear test in an area that has seen continual nuclear testing since the 1950s. I don’t understand the logic behind the government’s plans to do much (that goes double, nay, triple for the Pentagon) but the article is worth a read.

If, on the other hand, you want a proper window into anything the Pentagon has in mind, do a fast Google search for anything written in the past few years by Karen Kwitakowski, a retired Air Force Colonel who use to work  there, and now writes for Military Week.

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

TechKNOW and Books to Buy

June 29, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

Firstly, here’s the new issue of TechKNOW, out of Kent State U.  I stuck more stuff I stole from Alterman behind the cut.

BTW, speaking of Alterman: I think the guy’s a snob, but I’ve never met him and my opinion really doesn’t count, anyway. The fact is he’s a great writer, and he wrote a terrific article for this book which has been on the shelves for a while now. (Buy the book.) The publishers are the same people who published this book, which you should also buy. (Buy this book, too.) Finally, I met this author at her book release party a couple of weeks ago and this author, who just got back from the Daily Kos road show in Vegas, a month or so ago at his book release event, and you should buy these books too.

(The fact that these books are published by my brother-in-law does not in any way mean that they’re not worth shelling out money for.  Remember (I say as I flick the ‘on’ switch to my MIB neuralizer), the small press is good . . . the small press is good . . . buy these books . . .)

[Read more…] about TechKNOW and Books to Buy

Filed Under: Reader Advisory

Presidential Signing Statements 2001-2006

June 28, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

This appeared on Eric Alterman’s  blog at MSNBC today. I am reproducing it here it in its entirety:

Mr. Alterman:
I have been
reading media and legal materials (including your piece, “Think Again:
Signing the Constitution Away,” at the Center for American Progress), here,
about the unitary executive and the Bush administration’s use of
presidential signing statements.  I think this is an important topic.

Therefore,
I have collected all presidential signing statements from January 19,
2001, through June 12, 2006, and posted a temporary webpage that
provides full text of all the bill signing statements issued by
President George W. Bush.  By setting out the full text of the signing
statements, this Web page should remedy complaints that the statements
are difficult to find.  To help readers verify text, the Web site also
provides links to the full text of the same documents at the White
House and Government Printing Office (GPO) Web sites.

The Web site also provides links to the full text of the laws that are the subject of signing statements.

I
am contacting law schools, scholars, attorneys, and commentators,
hoping to find a permanent home for this Web page.  Please feel free to
pass the URLs to others who may be interested in either: (1) giving
this information a permanent home on the Web, or (2) using the
information (including stealing and distributing it).

The main URLS are:

  • Full Annotated Text of all PSSs
  • Full Unannotated Text of All PSSs
  • Index to PSSs

I
hope that the Web site will: (1) help scholars and commentators write
intelligently and authoritatively about presidential signing statements
and the unitary executive, and (2) save attorneys a great deal of time
rooting these statements (and the laws to which they apply) out of the
GPO and White House websites.

The site is not pretty, but it is useful.

In sum, I want to give this information to someone else.  My offer is free to any taker.

Thank
you for your time.  I enjoyed your article and have linked to it on my
site.  I appreciate your writing well on such an important topic.

—Joyce

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

House of Morgan & Online Libraries

June 23, 2006 by Jon Frater 1 Comment

The Morgan Library got some very spiffy coverage in the Music section of the NY Times this morning, and that’s extremely cool.  But what was even cooler to me was clicking on my daily dose of LRC and finding this article on online libraries by George Giles. Giles is a libertarian (as are many who post on LRC) so his politics may not be to your liking, but the sites he links to seem quite substantial and cover everything from math to science to the goings on at Oxford and MIT to Marxism (I personally didn’t know there was a Marxists.org but i can’t say I’m surprised.) And I’m heartened to see he listed WebMD and the NIH among his selections. It’s all worth looking at in some detail.

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

The Science of Superman

June 21, 2006 by Jon Frater Leave a Comment

I taught my class on E-Journals this morning at the NYAM Library Open House (and got a great reception from the 10 people who showed up–yea, me!) so I thought I’d devote today’s space to something genuinely nifty if not exactly library-related.

Alan Boyle’s Cosmic Log on MSNBC.com is too cool to not be part of any science freak’s daily reading (weekly reading at the least) and since today’s post is all about the Science of Superman, there’s even less reason not to visit today. There are no doubt more hard-core websites on both these subjects (of science and Superman) but this one is eminently accessible and fun to read, which makes it okay in my book.

Meanwhile, I’m bumping up against my deadline for an article on the Academy’s Grey Literature Report, which is one reason I’m posting here so seldom just lately.  My absolute drop dead delivery date is July 10, so I’m hoping to get a real draft complete by June 30. Wish me luck!

Filed Under: Articles & Nifty Links

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