Articles & Nifty Links

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.”

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.

Xeni Jardin writes on the nature of what, in her experience at BoingBoing, gets filtered out of which websites, and why and how.  Meanwhile, Lily Pregill (NYAM’s Special Projects Librarian who works across the hall from me) points to an article in the current issue of Harvard Magazine, entitled "The People’s Epidemiologists" by Madeline Drexler.  Good stuff on both counts.

I know I’m a day late and dollar short with this, as I am with everything I write here, but it’s Wednesday and this caught my eye.

Linking to the NY Times is always problematic because of their new NY Times Select subscription package, but this makes linking to non-subbed articles a lot simpler.  In fact this tool is so darned useful that i stuck the link in the Reference Resources TypeList, so take a look at it.

And so, instead of pulling a whole story down from the Times (violating copyright in spirit if not in letter) or hoping that the link I post today is still good two weeks from now as the story gets archived behind a firewall, I can just post this link to this story about how a slightly revised Patriot Act just got passed in the Senate by a 95-4 vote. The good news is that there are new curbs on who can be spooked and under what conditions–not to mention limits on spooking library patrons–but the bad news is that the new limits aren’t all that great.

Oh, and "spooking" is "to spy on," for the three readers who didn’t already know. Enjoy!

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 words instead of one to get more relevant links
• Surrounding
  your search terms with quotation marks when you are looking for an
  exact name or phrase (such as "To Kill a Mockingbird")
• Combining quotes with extra words ("Kill a Mocking Bird" and Harper Lee)

 

[Read more…] about Google Search Tidbits

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 a regulation that bars most public access to
birth and death certificates for 70 to 100 years. In much of the
country, these records have long been invaluable tools for activists,
lawyers, and reporters to uncover patterns of illness and pollution
that officials miss or ignore."

The rest is here.  Not to belittle the Bush White House in its efforts to promote secrecy to heights never before known to God or man, but the government’s proclivity to secrecy over unethical, amoral, or just embarassing tidbits, we need to remember, is not something that began in 2004 or even 2001.  It’s been going on a long, long time; the scope of what is considered secret and the extent to which the executive branch of government will go to to keep it so has merely become ridiculous recently.

Granted, there are some things that We The People do not need to know to function–troop movements, our elected representatives’ sexual exploits, and who the vice president has shot recently are examples that come readily to mind–I just happen to think that the fact that a few million of us have our email and phone conversations digitally recorded and evaluated by the NSA to no apparent good result is probably not among them.

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: having spent far too long in the technology industry (in one capacity or another, I must say that if anyone ever comes up to me at a party and tells me about a new technology "solution", I’m going to beat them to death with my shoe. I hear that word and I see red. An urge to kill rises, and one day I’m not going to be able to control myself. Software (and many kinds of hardware) is not a solution . . . more often than not, it’s the problem that requires the solution. So while I respect Mr. Clarkson’s opinion, I think the worst words are invariably buzzwords. They’re great ad copy but they rob real words of any meaning they contained.

Well.  I’m glad I got that out in the open.  It’s Friday.  Time to drink.  (59 minutes and counting …)

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 days. This new Reuters article, Every inch of Netherlands viewable online, offers a profile of Funda.nl
a database that lists 75 percent of the Dutch property for sale and
gets 2.6 million visitors every month. It will soon provide 15 million
photographs growing it to 21 million images by year-end."

I’ll point out for those who haven’t figured this out yet (all six of you and you know who you are) that these are tools that until very recently were available only to the military. Even then, an object the size of an airplane hangar or a ICBM silo was just big enough to capture in any detail. Not anymore.  Imagine seeing how a plot of land you’re considering buying in another city (or another state or another country) is affected by local roads, access to other towns, or changing coastlines in five minutes with a mouse click or two. Imagine planning a town (or even a city)  from the ground up in advance based on the topography available through this medium. Imagine what will happen in the not-too-distant-future (somewhere in time and space) when the imaging and metadata tools get even more powerful.

I’m nowhere near smart enough to imagine all the ways this infrastructure can be used (an awful thing for a guy who writes scifi in his spare time to admit), but I have faith that plenty of others are that smart and will come up with amazing stuff.

Will Femia, author of the "Clicked" blog on MSNBC.com, declares today that:

"Lessig is wrong — Lawrence Lessig
is a champion of the Creative Commons movement and an advocate for
loosening copyright restrictions.  His current battle is over the
digitization of books.  Google wants to scan books into a database to
make the text searchable.  You wouldn’t get the whole book in a search,
just an excerpt.  Ignoring whether this is a good idea or a handy
utility, this blogger makes a good argument against Google’s plan.  For
what it’s worth, there is a larger issue at play as well, which is
whether search engines and other services that surface material from
the Web (like RSS aggregators) are taking advantage of the original
content holders."

There’s more to it than this excerpt, so check out the whole thing if you have the time. Actually, you should probably make the time regardless.  This issue will not go away any time soon.

I think "Ick!" says whatever the title doesn’t:

Human Skin-Bound Books in Many Libraries

Apparently this was a big thing in the 19th century.  Enjoy! (or, well . . . whatever.)

Also new in 2006: it’s now a federal crime to send someone an annoying e-mail anonymously. I’d pay to hear a few FBI agents talking about how’d they go about enforcing this one. I doubt it would stand any realu judicial scritiny (or, I hope it wouldn’t) but it could just be seen as the logical conclusion of a country run by people who all think they’re special (or at least all think they deserve special consideration for something by someone), who have lost any sense of dignity and are on the verge of losing their sense of humor.  On the other hand, the law apparently says that it’s okay to flame someone as long as you use your real name, so perhaps this is a mid-term election stunt of some kind.

At any rate, the new law is described here, so take a look for yourself.

Personally, yes, I think cyberstalking is a major problem.  Anonymous e-mail that someone may take offense at is another story.  Criminalizing it is one of those very tricky propositions that looks great on paper but is probably a lot less effecacious both in terms of prevention and enforcement in real life. The article notes that the version of the bill that passed was its second incarnation: an earlier version of the bill had a higher standard of proof of damage (one had to use an "interactive computer service" to cause "substantial emotional harm.") Criminalizing merely obnoxious e-mail is impossible to enforce unless the FBI plans to filter literally every email that passes between two American citizens. They can’t really do that, can they?

Well, can they?

None of these (late again!) tidbits have anything strictly to do with library science, library management, library work, reference work, or other facets of Libraryland’s inner workings (when will I learn to be on topic with this stuff?) but they all have to do with library-related stuff that I think about from time to time.

Another bit about Google; yes, I am obsessed with Google. I am obsessed with what Google’s continued growth and ambition means for libraries and librarianship. I am obsessed with the precedents that Google’s operations and plans are setting for those of us who deal with data management on a daily basis and with its implications for the methods and goals of research for everyone. This particular article comes from author Douglas Rushkoff, whose work I’ve read (and enjoyed) and who I have real respect for. I don’t agree with his final point, that Goggle somehow has sullied its otherwise sterling reputation as a genuinely new internet company by buying five percent of AOL. From what I can find, it wasn’t this purchase that made them a competitor to Microsoft–they were always competitors of Microsoft. Every tech company that is not Microsoft competes with Microsoft in some way, shape or form–that’s a message the Bill Gates has sent to the world loud and clear over the past twenty years. If it isn’t, then why has Microsoft bought so many new and interesting companies and technologies and done its best to integrate the newest tech into their own products? (Please don’t try to tell me it’s all about making Windows the best OS ever–it hasn’t been the case for over a decade.) That’s what Bill repeatedly calls "innovation." (I call it "eating the opposition.") But the point is the same–the relationship between huge mega-companies in the tech field is complicated and ever-shifting, with each year bringing events that nobody very  accurately anticipates. If Google feels that owning a bit of AOL gives them an edge in the marketplace, and they’re using their own funds to do it, that’s good enough for me.

That’s not to say this is necessarily a great strategy for Goggle, mind you. I still can’t figure out how they intend to make this new purchase work for them–I don’t know what AOL has they can genuinely make use of (except enormous cash flow, which is not a bad thing.) Must be why I’m not a MBA.

Another speech from Bill Moyers: read everything Moyers ever wrote, said, or otherwise spoke of. You won’t go wrong.  Even if you hate him and everything he stands for (social justice, equality, integrity) you will learn from his work. I promise.

Finally, we have this bit from Andrew Tobias’ website. Please don’t tell me this is off topic. Integrity in data formulation is always on-topic for a library blog. This is a big deal, folks. A. Very. Big. Deal.

Update: Here’s a follow-up to Friday’s article on Andy’s site, and here is a link to a GAO report on the veracity of our election process. A. Very. Big. Deal.