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First, the good news (although it’s all good news from the Academy’s perspective): NYAM was mentioned in the NY Times this morning in the "Dining In" section, in an article titled "A Taste of Roman Cooking, Before Tomatoes". The story deals with the restoration of the Apicius, which dates from the ninth century and was acquired by the Academy in 1929.  In a word, it’s the oldest cookbook in the western world, and it’s available for viewing in our rare book room by appointment.

A slightly less mouth-watering article in the October 9 issue of the New Yorker (no link to this, apologies) mentions us in a story titled "The Score: How Childbirth Went Industrial" (p. 62, first column). The author mentions the 1933 study of maternal deaths in childbirth done by the Academy.

[Read more…] about NYAM in the News

A report from CNET news says that the most reliable search engine could be your librarian. At the risk of being obnoxious, might might say "no kidding," but in light of yesterday’s post I’ll try to behave today.

Not in the news but absolutely worth reading regularly is The Corpuscle, one post from which a co-worker literally just pointed out to me.

Two other articles which aren’t in the news (at least not that I’ve seen) but go very well with each other are this article by William Rivers Pitt and this article by Robert Harris .

And the most recent NYAM Grey Literature Report (Vol. 8, No. 5 ) is now available here.  Some of the more interesting articles referenced in this edition are "Older Americans Update 2006: Key Indicators of Well-Being," "Regulating Guns in America: an Evaluation and Comparative Analysis of Federal, State and Selected Local Gun Laws," and "Protecting Children from Sexual Violence in Disaster & Emergency Situations."

Keep in mind that all of the resources found in current and past Grey Lit reports are searchable through the Academy’s online catalog (remember to limit your search to Grey Literature).  To subscribe to the report, just complete the online registration form.

If you’re Jewish (like me), then tonight is the close of Yom Kippur, or "Day of Attonement". The idea is that you set aside the day to make good on your intention to be a better person in the coming year. You fast, you pray, you plan to make amends in the future, and you  regret your more pointed moments of cruelty, stupidity and envy towards those you harmed in the past year.  But it’s important to note that the Torah does not tell you to lament your human failings forever–rolling in the muck is not the best way to get clean. You make amends for your crimes and you move on. You have to.  It’s the law.

I’m not much for religion (I was raised by atheists) but I approve of Judaism’s structure. Its origins were more pragmatic than spiritual. I’m about half-way through The Bible Unearthed which is a brilliant historical account of the political reality that the kingdom of Judah faced roughly 2500 years ago. They borrowed a lot from the mythologies of their neighbors, made up a few things to fill in the blanks and the rest, to borrow from Robert Harris, is ancient history. Religions are like that–they tend to offer some kind of spiritual salvation in exchange for physical loyalty to mostly made-up rules, customs, dietary rules and ceremonies.  Spirituality, on the other hand, is a bit more open-minded.

In my experience, spirituality in general and the Ten Commandments in particular, when you distill them down their essence, all come out to one basic rule: "Do not be an asshat to those around you."  Granted, this is merely my reading of the Big 10, but it’s a rule that’s served to help get me through the wacky world in which I wake up every day.  One day I’ll not wake up in it, and there’s no way for me (or anyone else) to know just which that day will be, so I play the odds and figure that every day when I wake up here, I try to follow this one essential rule.

Hillel is supposed to have said it a little more precisely: "Treat others as you would wish to be treated by them.  Everything else is commentary."

So don’t be an asshat to those around you. That means when you’ve done something to hurt someone else, apologize and offer make amends.  If someone else shows you that same courtesy for past harm, accept their apology.  Don’t be lazy, either in the mental or physical sense.  Expect to work for a living. Expect to pay your debts and bills.  Expect not to buy more than you can afford.  Expect that the people around you regardless of distance are not slaves, servants, robots or possessions. They are people. Treat them as such.  Be honest in personal affairs and in business affairs. Accept that you too are human and will do stupid, nonsensical things for bad reasons sometimes.

The articles I’ve clipped beneath the cut say all this much more eloquently than I can at the moment, but they also illustrate the amazing capacity that humans have for being asshats to those around them.  Read the articles.  And let’s all try to fix what problems we have now and do better in the future.

[Read more…] about Yom Kippur 5767

Are you familiar with the term "Mouseprint?  Bob Sullivan is–or, he is now–it’s the fine print that’s so damn tiny only a mouse can read it.  Sullivan took a look at a website (appropriately named Mouseprint.org) that serves as a mouseprint magnifying glass , as it were, and it makes for fun yet grim reading.  Truth in advertising my foot.

Something else that’s kind of fascinating in the sheer potential for misinformation: Mr. Bush has just signed a law to "create an online database for  tracking about $1 trillion in government spending on grants and contracts." The ostensible explanation is to make the budget subject to greater public scrutiny, but depending on how it’s designed and built it could just be an enormous smokescreen; or, at least, a database with a strangely malleable content depending on such things as election year calendar or scandal gossip. (If they can falsify electronic voting, they can falsify this too.)  We shall see.

I’ve been invited to write a few paragraphs about some cool electronic resource for the next edition of the NYAM Newsletter.  And unhappily, I have a bit of a problem with that. Granted, I have the time and the talent and the motivation, but the problem persists and it’s been there for as far back as I can remember.

My trouble is simple: I can’t decide on just one thing to write about. The world is too big, and I’ve always been interested in, well, all of it. You can blame at least part of the attitude on Cerebus the Aardvark, by the way.  When asked how much money he’d want if he could name any price for his services, Cerebus replied "All of it!"  It’s a physical and economic impossibility, but it sums up how I feel.

So I deal with the limited time and space (mostly time) here by sorting through who knows how many blogs, web bites, e-mail announcements, and seeing how any given item makes me feel. I get really into some weird stuff that’s extremely useful in passing (Library Thing is a good example of that) but doesn’t warrant a lot of my attention. Something like George Ure’s website Urbansurvival.com is another matter–I’d live there if I could. Ure sees himself as a financial reporter with a website rather than just another blogger, and the attitude shows in his writing. He catches everything the mainstream media misses, and it misses, in my estimation, almost everything worth reading. Andy’s website is another one in that category although he’s more direct in his politics than Ure.  Andy’s got my constant attention for a slightly different reason, however. First, he’s Treasurer of the DNC.  Second (and more important to me personally) he has answered nearly every single e-mail I’ve ever written to him and he’s posted my comments a few times.  To my mind, he’s a god. Mike "Mish" Shedlock’s not a god, but his economics blog is worth the time to read just the same (pay particular attention to the external link list on the right margin–good, good reading to be found there.)

And now, for something completely different: Doug Ritter’s Equipped to Survive website and blog and The Liberty Dollar website. The liberty dollar is just plain neat from an underground market perspective.  I wouldn’t use it to invest in silver (not when silver coins are half the price of a single liberty dollar, according to Kitco.com, another good source of info on the gold and silver markets). I also don’t think it’s ever replace the greenbacks that you and I use for daily over-the-counter purchases, but, well, take a look if you are at all inclined.

Back to Libraryland: if you don’t subscribe to ResourceShelf’s weekly e-mail newsletter, you’re missing out on a ton of new items that are available from Gary Price and his editors.  I’m also partial to Wikipedia as a place to go for general information on pretty much anything–it’s been rare that I typed in a reference to it couldn’t match with some kind of entry.  Just be aware that some of the information contained therein is, uh, disputed.

So you see my conflict.  I think it’s all interesting.  It’s all worth knowing, or at least worth knowing about.  It is, as I (and Cerebus) said, "All of it."

Here’s an article written by Jeffery Beall for Library Journal (aka the general public), titled “Stop the War on Metadata.” Think of it as a counter to the news about Hampton University. (Thanks to Margaret Mauer of Kunt State for the link.) Excellent reading.

Enjoy!