Blog
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Google Search Tidbits
Making Your Web Searches Smarter By Michael Masterson Recently, The Wall Street Journal ran an article about "hidden features of Google and Yahoo engines" that make research on the Web faster, easier, and more rewarding. Neanderthal though I am with regard to technology, I was actually aware of several of them: Using two or three
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The Life & Death of Public Records
This bit comes from Terry Allen from In These Times, and it’s titled "Information Is Power." It begins thusly: "Sometimes it’s the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is
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David Englin Speaks
This is not strictly a matter for librarians (not all of them anyway), but in the spirit of Presidents’ Day, here’s a recent speech delivered on the floor of the Commonwealth of Virginia House of Delegates by David Englin (D-45). He quotes President Washington, whose birthday we celebrate today; and nothing in his speech, I
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Russ Feingold in MARC
This might not be perfect, since it’s been some time since I did any original cataloging for web pages, but here it is (apologies in advance for the MESH). Suggestions are welcome. One hopes you click on the link below to read the actual statement, too. 100 1 Feingold, Russell D.245 10 $a I
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In The News
And now, a bunch of pretty decent links: This week’s favorite line from Techsploitation Chick: "The[rehashed dot.com companies such as] Zupits suck up funding, while true visionaries innovate for free." Not a bad thing to keep in mind in this age of big companies who want us to use their metadata in ways they determine
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Still More Vonnegut
I’m not interested in turning this into the "All Vonnegut All the Time" blog, but this week, it seems to be shaping up that way. Not that I’m complaining: I’ve been reading the gentleman’s work my whole life and am amazed and encouraged by the fact that so much of it is still in print.
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Vonnegut’s Blues for America
Another quote from Kurt Vonnegut’s latest: ‘The blues was a gift so great that it is now almost the only reason many foreigners still like the USA. Foreigners love us for our jazz. They don’t hate us for our purported liberty and justice for all. They hate us for our arrogance.’’ I stuck another excerpt
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The Worst Word
Jeremy Clarkson opines thus in The Sunday Times: ". . . the worst word. The worst noise. The screech of Flo-Jo’s fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the world, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby when you’re hungover, is ‘beverage’." It’s a fun article, but I am forced to disagree:
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Real Estate and Satellite Images
Found this on SearchEngineWatch.com: Hot:Real Estate Industry Uses of Satellite/Aerial Imagery. It’s a longish post with about a million hyperlinks, but it’s worth it if you have the time. The databases that are being developed in this area are huge: "The combo of online maps, satellite/aerial imagery, and real estate are a hot combo these
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We Are Right and They Are Wrong
Kurt Vonnegut had this to say in the Guardian this past Saturday: "The title of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s