Since the subject of international border crossing shenanigans for travelers has come up in the news, I found this tidbit on Boingboing.com: How to legally cross a US (or other) border without surrendering your data and passwords The combination of 2014’s Supreme Court decision not to hear Cotterman (where the 9th Circuit held that…
10 Investigative Reporting Outlets to Follow January 13, 2017 This post first appeared on BillMoyers.com. We’ve just started a new series highlighting some of the best, in-depth investigative journalism that is uncovering real news, revealing wrongdoing and fomenting change. As a compendium, here are 10 investigative reporting outlets that are worth following if they’re not…
2017 isn’t ‘1984’ – it’s stranger than Orwell imagined John Broich, Case Western Reserve University A week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s “1984” is the best-selling book on Amazon.com. The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about…
Today, January 27, is Holocaust memorial Day. An appropriate day to re-post this bit about my visit to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. a few years ago. Let’s read and remember and understand that by the time the bad guys (of any stripe) start the expulsions, legalize the executions, and dig the mass…
Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall educate people, answer any question, and read to children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my reference desk. I am the candle in the darkness. I am the watcher…
In 1961, America was all about the mission. A directive that sounds simple was but was anything but. The Space Race between the USA and the USSR was on. Both sides were engaged in a game of technological Can You Top This? and the Russians were winning. Cold War America was held in the grip…
Bad news: 451 degrees F is not, in fact, the temperature at which paper bursts into flame. (It’s actually between 440 and 470 degrees F depending on the type of paper). Good news: Ray Bradbury’s novel about censorship, mass media, and induced apathy in the modern world is as accessible and spooky as it was…
Writing is a set of permanent thoughts, or, as a famous Gelfling once said, “words that stay.” I tell my students that a book is just about the most effective method of data storage and transmission ever devised. It’s a set of transcribed thoughts organized by page number and cross-referenced both by sequential progression…
I’ll just say that if you couldn’t make it to NYTSL’s Spring Program last night, you missed an excellent discussion. The program was “”Disaster Recovery and the Digital Library”, and as such, it brought a bit of real world application to the often abstract world of disaster planning. NYTSL’s guest speakers were Frank J. Monaco,…
I hate memorial Day. Specifically, I hate the jingoism, the militaristic bullshit and the monumental levels of hype one hears pretty much on every television, radio, and in every newspaper and magazine, and on God knows how many internet sites, for these 24 hours. Statism is bad when it’s tolerable, it’s disgusting when it’s prostituted…