It's the final working day of the year. The library is in a festive mood despite the inundation of problem book trolleys from the stock check. We spent the last bit of staff allocation on Secret Recipe cheesecake (one slice for each person) and I've got the 70s music of the soundtrack from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert on the radio inside the library office.

Goodbye 2005, welcome 2006...

Stock check at our library this week.

Amazigh (Berber) language script revived/being used in schools, with native tongue instruction.

Moroccans learn to write Berber
By Martha Dixon BBC News, Morocco

And earlier, a report on Nature study on accuracy of Wikipedia science entries. Must take a look at the original article. Like the Guardian report, criticisms were mainly for style of writing and omissions. The Nature study compared Wikipedia with Britannica.

Wikipedia survives research test

Is it really his or her life?

A hoax...

Based on an Untrue Story
By PAT H. BROESKE
Published: November 27, 2005, NYTimes
On Clifford Irving, a writer who published a hoax autobiography of Howard Hughes. Now a movie is being made about him (Irving) and he's not too impressed with its (the movie's) veracity...

And an obituary:

Margaret Osmond, 98; librarian who lived flamboyantly
By Gloria Negri
November 29, 2005, Boston Globe [Referral from librarian.net]
A public librarian who knew her patrons and her books

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In other news, a real good haul from Jessamyn West (librarian.net) today (including the link above)

A kid who is collecting library cards - how cool is that? Unfortunately our library doesn't have any so I can't send him one from us. And I want to keep my own few AADL and Christchurch City Libraries one.... but maybe I can get him one from the Singapore National Library...

The other find was another librarian blog - That Rabbit Girl. A Chicago librarian who writes great columns (at least, the beginnings and skimmings look interesting). She has a column called "Ask the Librarian" in a Web publication called Gaper Blocks.

The old 1993 manifesto is also interesting. I was attracted to this one:
9. The media image of the librarian is a travesty. The real situation is ten times worse.

Of course, the premier (in both senses) manifesto for reference service librarians is the one by Samuel Green back in 1874 or something like that...

On videogame programmes in academia. One of the more interesting articles. Includes Carnegie Mellon, other unis. Response and reception from industry.

"Just imagine that a movie studio showed up at a cinema school and said, 'You know, we need three times as many directors and screenwriters as we are able to get now.' That's where we are."

Video Games Are Their Major, So Don't Call Them Slackers
By SETH SCHIESEL
Published: November 22, 2005

Oh, and Kakiseni had a funny article of Jit Murad and another comedian slanging each other - they both have shows running at the same time.

More of the same on Google's plan to digitize library books, but with a few more details - seems no one knows HOW they are actually doing the large scale - massive new technology or massive number of workers to flip pages? And the fact that Harvard Library director was previously with the university press (publisher).

At Harvard, a Man, a Plan and a Scanner
By KATIE HAFNER
Published: November 21, 2005

Altho' Google does have a stated plan to organize all human knowledge, I was still a bit surprised upon discovering that well, it looks like they are trying to do just that. Was preparing slides for an information literacy workshop, and under search tools for different types of resources, you could put a Google engine for every one - Books: Google Print. Articles: Google Scholar. Web sites: Google search engine. Voila. All they need is a subject directory as well.

On African women, "...who somehow manage to carry that entire continent on their backs."
Waiting for Their Moment in the Worst Place on Earth to Be a Woman
By HELENE COOPER
Published: November 16, 2005, NYTimes

In other news, while Malaysia groans about quality and meritocracy, the U.S. asks about content. Reform School, Contd.
How to reinvent higher education.
Updated Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2005, at 6:53 AM ET, Slate.com

A young Afghan from California writes about Yale and community college. He also has a book published - "Come back to Afghanistan".

And finally, something about U.S. presidential libraries:
All the Presidents' Papers
How do presidential libraries decide which records to release?By Daniel Engber
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005, at 6:51 PM ET

Today's haul from the NYTimes (why are we still all reading it, tho' we're gone from college and half a world away?)

Librarians and Who's Who:
Who Are You? Why Are You Here?
By WILLIAM L. HAMILTON
Published: November 13, 2005
Nice article about this "reference"

On Casa Amadeo:
Honoring Pop and His Palace of Latin Soul in the Bronx
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: November 14, 2005

I was cataloging (expanded) a book today, which appeared to be a tough customer. Could not find the record in any of the usual places - Library of Congress, British Library, OhioLink, NLB, NLA - with any of the usual clauses - title, author, author/title. There was an earlier edition cataloged at NUS, which appeared to be where the assistant had copied the record from.

The first subject heading given for this first ed. was "Knowledge, Sociology of". Epistemology, in other words. However it did not look quite right for the item I had.

Finally I look at the book itself more carefully. The blurb on the back cover tipped me off - aiyah, it's related to writing! Reading the Preface again a bit more carefully showed this to be true. For composition students. You'd be hard pressed to tell from the table of contents, tho' now I think about it, these are authors that writers love - Gloria Anzaldua, Bell Hooks, Walter Mosley - or at least, I first heard about them in a teaching of writing class. Jane Tompkins and Nancy Sommers were there too, tho' others like Thomas Kuhn and Sherry Turkle tended to throw you off the scent.

In any case, then it was a simple matter of assigning 808.0427 and College readers, because that's where all the readings for writers go. Yes, it is about different types of academic disciplines, but in any case, our library doesn't really have stuff like that, and it will be better off and more likely found with its fellows in the composition section.

If it doesn't exist, can it be endangered?

Everyone loves a mythical lake monster. And no, this isn't about Nessie.

Hunting Season Opens for Mythical Creature
By KARL RITTER, Associated Press Writer Fri Nov 11,12:35 AM ET

I did a bit of inquiry, and found that there is a pseudo-science (at least, it sounds like one) called cryptozoology - the study of hidden creatures. I don't see why it couldn't be a true science or discipline, in a sense - after all, scientific expeditions to trawl Loch Ness, etc. have been carried out (and haven't found anything I think). It would be a mixture of history, anthropology, and natural science for most creatures. The problem is probably most of those who subscribe to this cryptozoology would be of the non-scientific kind (which is ok for them, but detrimental to being taken seriously by skeptics).

In any case, a good site for those interested in such things is the PBS site for a NOVA programme:

NOVA Online: The Beast of the Loch Ness
There's a write-up on "fantastic creatures" in general, including those which were eventually found, and a great 3-pager on Nessie, including a treatment of the "surgeon's photo" which is supposed to be a hoax, and the sonar-equipped expeditions to find the creature.

The episode for television follows a 1997 sonar expedition.

Marjorie Williams, reporter. "The Woman at the Washington Zoo."

Articles on her life and her book from the NYTimes (After a Death by Cancer, a Reporter's Life Force Glows in New Book By TODD S. PURDUM Published: November 8, 2005) and Slate.com (Marjorie Williams: A journalist who made feminism matter.By Meghan O'Rourke Posted Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2005)

"Marjorie Williams, a writer for The Washington Post and Vanity Fair and one of the most penetrating and original journalists of her generation..." (NYTimes). Her husband is a senior writer at Slate.

While we're at it, Slate has a nice diary feature on "Book Hunting in Britain". Day 3 includes a visit to Chatsworth House and the present-day Duchess of Devonshire, one of 6 Mitford sisters, and Day 4 is called March of the Penguins and is about the Penguin press and a bookseller from an "undercover literary family"- his parents worked for M16 - in London who started collecting Penguins before they were considered of collectible value (and exhibited, for instance, at the Victoria and Albert.

The writer makes a snide remark at, or merely an observation of, the V&A: "In America, we have self-storage. In Britain, they have the Victoria & Albert Museum..."

The Library of Congress has webcasts for librarians and others! Free but you need RealPlayer.

History's Most Underrated Inventions [9 of them]
by Tamim Ansary
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Features/Columns/?article=UnderRatedMain

4% of survey respondents (presumably working adults in the U.S.?) said they checked their email in the bathroom! (See quote below).

In other news, Star In.Tech yesterday reported on broadband penetration in Malaysia - results of an MCMC survey ("Household Use of the Internet survey 2005") on reasons for non-adoption. Highest two reasons were: 1) did not see the need/satisfied with dial-up & 2) not aware of broadband. Only 3rd was price (which is my reason. For the amount of usage at my house, I'm waiting for the price to come down).

Where art thou, broadband users?
BY EDWIN YAPP Wed Nov 9 2005 thestar.com.my/Thur in the print edition

Quote from the NYTimes email story:
"In a recent survey by America Online and Opinion Research Corporation, 41 percent of the respondents said they checked their e-mail in the morning before going to work. More than 25 percent said they had never gone more than a few days without checking e-mail, with 60 percent saying they check it on vacation. Four percent looked at e-mail in the bathroom."

Got 2 Extra Hours for Your E-Mail?
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
Published: November 10, 2005

Had lunch today, and then it started to pour. So I ordered a cup of teh tarik and sat back to wait for it to stop.

Back at the office (library): a fantastic - well, at least I found it quite funny, esp. below - writeup on Mawi, the phenom who may or may not actually be able to sing. I haven't heard him myself so I can't say. Nevertheless, I particularly like this writer's descriptions of different types of singers, esp. "penyanyi kayu" (the wooden singer)...

"Kalau dulu, industri muzik mempunyai label-label tertentu untuk penyanyi-penyanyi yang ada di pasaran, seperti penyanyi “penyanyi piring hitam” yang hanya sedap didengar di radio tapi hancur kalau membuat persembahan “live” dan terpaksa membuat persembahan “lipsynch”; “penyanyi majalah” yang sering menghiasi majalah kerana kecantikan dan ketampanannya; “penyanyi back-up” yang mempunyai suara yang menakjubkan tapi tidak mempunyai wajah yang menawan; “penyanyi kayu” yang hanya berdiri tegak menyampaikan lagunya; “penyanyi kelab malam” yang versatile dalam persembahannya; dan “penghibur” yang boleh menyanyi, menari dan berkomunikasi dengan audien."

I also thought this was hilarious:

"Apa sebenarnya yang membuatkan manusia di bumi Malaysia ini tergila-gilakan Mawi? Apakah kerana senyumannya yang selamba, mata kuyunya, hidungnya yang mancung mencakuk, keningnya yang lebat, kulitnya yang keputihan, rambutnya yang pendek mencacak, atau suaranya yang parau kejantanan? Mungkin itulah yang membuatkan banyak perempuan menjadi gila, hingga sanggup mengejar Mawi sampai masuk ke dalam masjid dengan “hotpants” sewaktu Mawi pulang ke Johor."

Read the whole thing, plus comments from the rakyat, on Kakiseni:

Hari-hari Mawi
Adakah artis itu milik masyarakat, badan korporat, parti politik atau diri sendirinya?
by Zulkifli Mohamad 27-10-2005

A guy donates software (matching gift programme with his IT company) to Shakespeare festival; it helps them operate. Lights, inventory, communication... use your job knowhow and give a hand to your hobbies!

Of course the librarian interest part is partly in organization:

"Now costume designers can look at images online rather than rifling through racks; costume inventories are so precise that if an understudy jumps into a role at the last minute, the software knows if the correct size costume is on hand."

In Oregon, Brushing Up Their Shakespeare, Helped Along by Software
By KATIE HAFNER
Published: November 8, 2005

Looking into the free stuff again. Directory of open access journals:
http://www.doaj.org/

The DOAJ also covers PLoS (Public Library of Science) and BioMedCentral journals. Others? Will have to do a proper search at some point.

Librarian at a Philadelphia seminary finds a Beethoven manuscript. The piece is "Grosse Fuge", originally written for string quartet, here a four-hand piano version. The scribbled, "self-edited" manuscript (and others) is important because it gives "insight into [the composer's] working methods" and is also from late in his life, when he was already deaf.

It expected to fetch $1.7 - $2.6 million (USD) at a Sotheby's auction. The money goes back to the seminary.

A Historic Discovery, in Beethoven's Own Hand
By Daniel J. Wakin
Published: October 13, 2005

Article about New York corps de ballet, including musings on what makes a great ballet dancer.

The Corps Standouts, from Tip to Toe
By GIA KOURLAS
Published: October 14, 2005

" ... what matters most is the whole package, specifically the hard-won combination of musicality and line, a slippery concept that connects a dancer's movement to his or her core. It means that every muscle and bone - from the toe to the fingertips - is working in exquisite harmony.

Proportion, highly arched feet, and long, straight legs figure into the equation, but the dancer with the extra-special something is able to radiate that internal power without thinking about how to do it."

There is a point in here for musicians too.

A great librarian blog... A look at the life of a librarian in a public library.

The blog itself is Feel-good librarian: http://feelgoodlibrarian.typepad.com/

There's also interview/article with/about her in Library Journal
LJ Talks to the Feel-good Librarian, October 1, 2005

I love the ALA "READ" posters, though I wonder what they do with the old ones. It's very cool - they have all sorts of celebrities and famous people, sometimes holding a particular book they chose, with the word "READ" emblazoned across the top or side. New includes Aishawrya Rai, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley. The Julia Stiles one is quite nice.

There's a very nice LOTR one with Frodo sitting at the foot of a tree, emerald grass all around. But that doesn't seem to be in the list anymore, or the WWF(E) wrestlers, which I noticed back in 2003 and thought it would have been a very good one for the Makheto High School library as the guys in the village were all crazy about wrestling and watched Smackdown every Wednesday and Sunday.

Current ALA Celebrity READ catalogue... more posters can be found in the other categories as well (sports, TV, teen, etc.)

There are actually people interested in books that don't exist...

The Invisible Library
http://www.invisiblelibrary.com/

Books that only appear in other books - now why would that be interesting? Hoaxes or fake books are also included, which seems a bit more practical or at least historical. But imaginary books... something Jasper Fforde (author of "The Eyre Affair" etc.) would like, perhaps.

Joan Didion, new work. "The Year of Magical Thinking". Grief, crisis, marriage.

The End of Life as She Knew It
By Michiko Kakutani
NY Times Published: October 4, 2005

Rambling Librarian :: Incidental Thoughts of a Singapore Liblogarian

Singapore librarian Ivan Chew has a great post on what is a librarian, or what does a librarian do? (Dated Thursday Sept 29, 2005)

The book sponsorship programme for our church library started off great today. Almost all but 2 sheets were filled, and over RM 700 was collected! (Tho' about half the amount was given by the Chairman of the Board). I'm glad it is working well. My thinking was that people are generous and would like to give - you just have to give them the chance.

By the end of the month hopefully it will all be filled.

Things are moving with the library, mainly due to the dedication of 2 aunties and also my dad is keen to keep things going. We have not yet got everything organized, but there have been recommendations from the pulpit, borrowing by the adults and kids. I am going to get an accession book this week and start accessioning new books and also have to finalize a user-friendly classification scheme. The ladies' fellowship (newly being revived) is supposed to help with book-wrapping (in plastic to protect the books) in two weeks time.

Now that I am not working Saturdays anymore, I can go to church on Saturday evenings and work in the library during youth meetings (when the premises will be open). Must remember about the bulletin board, too - want to get one for the library, and have people post recommendations and stuff.

Dangling Particles
By LISA RANDALL

NY Times, Published: September 18, 2005

Physics professor writes on the difficulty of writing about science - misleading terms ("ambiguous word choices" or terms that in normal conversation mean one thing, but when used by scientists mean something much more specific and possibly quite different), the inherent complexity of scientific research and subtleties not entertained in the press.

For the latter problem, she suggests more emphasis on the "mathematical significance of results", which would also be easier if the public were not so afraid of math, and accepted science as complex rather than as a simple story. Whose prerogative it to achieve this? She doesn't say.

Examples include relativity, string theory, evolution, global warming/climate change.

Many have asked me why I came back to Malaysia after being the U.S. for 6 years.

There are a variety of factors or reasons, which I will try to list below:

Intellectual - Ideologically, I refuse to believe that "the good life" is to be found only in developed countries, or that material well-being necessarily leads to a better life. I still hold this to be true, and have acted accordingly, tho' after being there and finally understanding what the "higher standard of living" means, I can say that what is valuable over there is not so much the more comfortable life that one can have if you are well-off enough, but the opportunities that are afforded from living in such a society.

To be on the cutting edge of whatever your field is, to be able to move forward, to develop, and to also be in a society that values the whole person, with life being accepted as multi-faceted rather than just work or the narrow minded pursuit of wealth. That is valuable. So there is something that you have to "give up" from choosing not to be there. In the end, though, it is my little stand against the self-centred pursuit of material wealth that is so prevalent in the world today.

Challenge - Furthermore, on the other hand, there is another realm, another chance to be on the forefront, that is present only in the developing countries, not in the developed, and that is the chance to make a significant difference in your field - to lay down the structures and shape the society.

Plan - I think I am headed for an underdeveloped country (not Malaysia), hopefully soon, and for some substantial amount of time. The specifics are as yet undecided, but it seems to me that so much of the world needs so much in terms of resources, that I should use whatever I have over there instead of where there are more resources available. Better distribution/use of human capital and all that.

Timing - I figure I should spend some time with my family after being away for so long, since my parents do seem happy for me to be around, and I am also sorry for having been away for most of my younger sibling's growing years, and would like to be around for her for awhile at least.

Transition - If I'm going to go live in an underdeveloped country, it would probably be best to start moving down the scale as soon as possible. The longer I stayed in the U.S., the harder it would have been to adapt to other situations. Malaysia is like a stepping stone in between. I also wanted to re-learn how to live with other people (after only having to take care of myself and my own interests for so long - makes you rather self-centred), and how to live in a different type of society and understand different mindsets, after being steeped in the rhetoric of American civil society and the liberal arts tradition for the past few years. Americans tend to think that the rest of the world thinks the same way they do, or should.

Spiritual - I just don't feel that my life's purpose is to be sitting pretty (albeit doing good work, I would hope), in one of the developed countries.

Quasi-patriotic - And if I am to be going to some underdeveloped country to help out, I want to be sent from Malaysia rather than from the U.S.. This country (Malaysia) is well enough along to be sending workers to other places. We no longer need to be just receivers. We need to be givers. We are still needy in many ways, but we are at a point when we can begin to make an impact beyond our homeground, and we should be trying to. I would like to go as a Malaysian and show that Malaysia can make a difference in the world.

Emotional - Tho' I loved my apartment and my university and life as a graduate student in small-town USA, I was rather getting tired of eating dinner alone, and the independent, individual existence. I could see myself, 5 years from now, as a successful, fulfilled executive coming home to a comfortable apartment, and making myself dinner and turning on the tv, and somehow it was an intellectually attractive but not very heartwarming picture.

The first and last are push factors, and all the ones in between are pull factors.

I wonder how others feel. I do know that a number of my own friends have returned, though probably many more don't. Some are pressured by family, but I am sure others do it on their own free will as well. The Star has a Malaysians Abroad column. It would be interesting to read about Malaysians Who Returned as well. Though then again, many come back and then return abroad again, which happened in that government scheme to try to bring back specialists etc. Hah - that would be even more interesting to read about, wouldn't it? :)

This is really cool!

My Home Library by Children's Laureate Anne Fine has marvellous illustrated book plates that say "This book belongs to the home library of..."

They are lovely and FREE for download!

They have appealed for designs for libraries who want to put "donated by" plates, so need to check back in awhile and see if any of those have been put up!

http://www.myhomelibrary.org/home.html

Zounds! Librarian blogs galore... a listing from the Open Directory:

http://dmoz.org/Reference/Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Weblogs/

Language born of colonialism thrives again in Amazon

By Larry Rohter, NY Times
Published: August 28, 2005

Pidgin language concocted by Jesuit priests (from "Indian, African and Portuguese" changes significance, now an indigenous creole versus official Portuguese.

"Nheengatú, which is pronounced neen-gah-TOO and means "good talk," is now a language that is permitted to be taught in local schools, spoken in courts and used in government documents. People who can speak língua geral have seen their value on the job market rise and are now being hired as interpreters, teachers and public health aides."

"But the persistence and evolution of Nheengatú is marked by contradictions. For one thing, none of the indigenous groups that account for more than 90 percent of the local population belong to the Tupi group that supplied língua geral with most of its original vocabulary and grammar."

All Ears for Tom Cruise, All Eyes on Brad Pitt
NYTimes Op/Ed by Nicholas Kristof - July 26, 2005

Yikes - too late to get the link before it went premium. This is an op-ed on how the US media is at fault for not reporting more on the situation in Sudan.

Been busy at work.

Buddy movies...

Owen Wilson defends Ben Stiller in the New Yorker - The letter

(Followed a link from Slate story on Owen Wilson and Wes Anderson writing partnership)

43 ways to save the world
Jun 29th 2005 From The Economist print edition
"The Gates Foundation’s latest largesse has just been announced. It will pay for some intriguing and original research. But will it translate into healthier people?"

43 winners of research funding targeting diseases in developing countries from Gates Foundation, Wellcome Trust, and Canadian government announced. Half a billion dollars.

From Salon.com:

"Greedy weirdos and good-hearted men"

"Writer and radio personality Sarah Vowell tells Death Cab for Cutie's Christopher Walla about the ghosts haunting her new book, "Assassination Vacation," and why life is brighter since her turn in "The Incredibles""

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2005/04/26/walla_vowell/

The Incredibles Collector's Edition DVD has "Vowellet", an essay by Sarah Vowell - basically a short video about her and her writing / obsession with dead U.S. presidents. Well-written.

Episode III: the backstroke of the West
http://winterson.com/2005/06/episode-iii-backstroke-of-west.html

And we thought Malaysian translations were bad...

--------------------------
Light bulb jokes - different Christian denominations
http://hedonese1.blogspot.com/2005/06/light-bulb-jokes.html

I need to write down the SI equivalents sometime...

---------------------------
And a very entertaining exchange on Kakiseni.com, sparked by a choral show:
http://www.kakiseni.com/events/music/NzE2MQ.html
Budding romance?

A joke, courtesy of ML, but fwded from where, I'm not sure. It's pretty good.

A priest and a pastor from the local churches are standing by the side of the road, pounding a sign into the ground that reads:
The End Is Near - Turn Yourself Around Now Before It's Too Late!
As a car speeds past them, the driver yells, "Leave us alone, you religious nuts!"
From the curve they hear screeching tires and a big splash. The pastor turns to the priest and asks,
"Do you think the sign should just say 'Bridge Out?' "

When Death Means the Loss of an Archive

Joe Nash's collection on black dance in the US might be dispersed as he left no will...

"We run into this all the time in the archive business," said Vicky Risner, who is in charge of acquisitions for the music division of the Library of Congress. "People deny they're going to die."

NYTimes by Daniel J. Wakin Published: May 18, 2005

NYTimes story on Mayan women's poetry:

"Now after 30 years' work, 150 Mayan women from Taller Leñateros (Woodlanders' Workshop), a paper- and book-making collective founded by Ms. Past in 1975 in the Chiapas city San Cristóbal de las Casas, have produced what may be the first book of Mayan women's poetry created almost entirely by them, and translated into English."

"As she listened to the women, Ms. [Amber] Past said she realized that they sometimes spoke in poetry, in couplets and in gleaming metaphors.

"I was so deeply moved hearing in these mud huts these breathtakingly beautiful verses, sometimes echoing verses and phrases spoken or written 500 years ago," she said. Some words resembled ones in the Popol Vuh, the Mayan creation story."

The book is called "Incantations".

The Poetic Hearts of Mayan Women Writ Large By Dinitia Smith Published: May 11, 2005

Wow! Check out Google Answers (answers.google.com) and Google Scholar (beta - scholar.google.com).

Google Answers is a paid answers (reference) service, kinda like what we were doing at the Internet Public Library (for free :)). I remember it coming up in reference class, and looks like it is still going. Wonder what the business model is like. Anyway, look at the questions and answers - they are pretty interesting.

I notice that sometimes the question is answered as a comment by another researcher... Then the person doesn't have to pay any money, I guess? That is kinda cool, anyway.

Google Scholar - you can search scholarly journals and so forth. I tried one or two and it links to citations in PubMed (which is free) and Ingenta (paid) and so on. If you're lucky, you get the pdf from some university site. Otherwise, it's pay-per-article with Ingenta or whatever. It could still be a valuable service, to find out what's "out there" and do search-across (federated search??), though you'd have to look in your library's subscribed databases to get the full-text. A good last resort, I guess, if nothing is coming up from the library sites.

Been away. 2 Yahoo! stories:

Neb. Town's Only Resident Opens Library
Thu Apr 7, 3:29 AM ET Associated Press
(Courtesy of ML)

Elsie Eiler, 71-year-old tavern owner, opened an honor system library - ""Rudy's Library" in honor of her late husband, who left behind a collection of thousands of books, from Shakespeare to science fiction to Westerns."

American Novelists Beg for Oprah's Book Club Help
Thu Apr 21, 4:36 PM ET Reuters

"Paula Sharp, an author of four novels and a member of Word of Mouth, said, "Oprah got so many people to read contemporary fiction, in a way nobody else has ever done."

"Getting people to read is about the most important contribution that anyone can make to American society," Sharp told Reuters. "It's a stunning achievement to get 500,000 people to go to bookstores."

"The legacy of a pope who changed history
Apr 2nd 2005 From The Economist Global Agenda: John Paul II, spiritual leader to the world's one billion or so Catholics, has died. He will be remembered as a pope who resisted pressures to “modernise” the church's values—and a man who changed history by precipitating the fall of Soviet communism"

A considered article on the Pope's choices and actions, but what an epitaph:

"On the other hand, Pope John Paul would not have been true to his own deepest beliefs if he had been concerned, first and foremost, with how things seemed in the eyes of the world. He regarded himself as accountable to God; and how he fared by that measure is not something that any human being, whether believer or atheist, may presume to judge."

Wharton on blogs

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1172.cfm

Fearsome memory techniques

Forget Me Not: How to win the U.S. memory championship. By Joshua Foer Posted Wednesday, March 16, 2005, at 9:57 AM PT http://www.slate.com/id/2114925/

On the university and education...

"In ''Harvard Rules,'' Bradley describes the case of Joe Green, an undergraduate disillusioned by his experience as a student representative on the committee evaluating the Core Curriculum. ''Green kept thinking about a question one of his professors had put to him: 'If you could either go here and get no diploma, or not go here and get the diploma, what would you do?' '' Bradley writes. ''It bothered Green that he couldn't easily answer the question.'' It should bother the president of Harvard, too. The answer, in the end, is the difference between a great university and a brand name."

The Tempest in the Ivory Tower By RACHEL DONADIO Published: March 17, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/books/books-harvard.html?pagewanted=1

Iraqi Librarian Becomes Cultural Hero in 2 Children's BooksBy EDEN ROSS LIPSON Published: March 17, 2005

"It is hard to imagine how startled Alia Muhammad Baker, the chief librarian of Basra, Iraq, has been to discover that she is the hero of two American children's books. Ms. Baker, who rescued 30,000 books just days before the city's main library was burned during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, has sent e-mail messages recently to thank the authors for "showing us Iraqis as an educated people" and says she was surprised but also happy that the books "describe the truth.""

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/books/17libr.html

Interesting observation:

"Sometime over the past generation we became less likely to object to something because it is immoral and more likely to object to something because it is unhealthy or unsafe.

So smoking is now a worse evil than six of the Ten Commandments, and the word "sinful" is most commonly associated with chocolate."

Saturday Night Lite By David Brooks Published: March 12, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/opinion/12brooks.html?ex=1111381200&en=5e1cc2602df9a75d&ei=5070

Muhammad Yunus, Banker to the World's Poorest Citizens, Makes His Case
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewfeature&id=1147

"... Muhammad Yunus [is] managing director of Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and a pioneer in the practice of microcredit lending. Grameen Bank received formal recognition as a private independent bank in 1983 and, as of this month, had dispersed close to $5 billion in loans to four million borrowers. Grameen's strategy is to offer miniscule loans to very poor people, giving them the means to generate income and work their way out of poverty."

Oneworld.net, besides having news and opportunity postings, also has a great resource section for Internet skills, multilingual computing, all sorts. (They also offer OSS content management, knowledge management and portal solutions for nonprofits).

http://www.oneworld.net/


A review of a new edition of The Silmarillion retells Tolkien lore and looks at this book's place in the Middle-earth canon and cosmos:

"Perhaps that is why Tolkien's myths feel so familiar in their foreignness: They tap into a collective, unconscious sense of loss -- loss of the once oral tradition of storytelling and mythmaking..."

Sense of loss, yes... though not oral tradition necessarily. Other things too.

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/02/18/silmarillion/

On the Silmarillion (and could be said of other books as well?):

"It's a book that everyone wanted but seemingly no one wanted to read all the way through."

On the Bible - this was interesting:
"...something else [John] Gardner [professor of medieval literature and not a Tolkien fan] said...: "Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when he's good, nobody can touch him."

"Throughout sub-Saharan Africa the death of a father automatically entitles his side of the family to claim most, if not all, of the property he leaves behind, even if it leaves his survivors destitute."

AIDS and Custom Leave African Families Nothing
By SHARON LaFRANIERE Published: February 18, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/international/africa/18property.html?pagewanted=1&8bl

An article on New York theatre intermissions:

The Show Between Acts By RANDY KENNEDY Published: February 18, 2005
http://theater2.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/theater/newsandfeatures/18inte.html?8dpc

I still haven't got around to reading the one about the origami science guy.

In other news, here's some sites from which to get the Bud Light Real Men of Genius mp3s: http://budlight.whipnet.com/
http://www.ksilebo.com/realamerican/
Haven't tried any of them yet. Been hearing the dog clothing manufacturer one, and the stock tips one, both of which are pretty funny...

Article on Central Market from Kakiseni.com:

Trinkets Sdn Bhd 27-01-2005
http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/features/MDYxNw.html


Review of Hamlet in B.M. by - *coolness* - Jit Murad, on Kakiseni.com:

To Bitch or Not to Bitch 14-02-2005
http://www.kakiseni.com/articles/reviews/MDYyNQ.html
We went to see this courtesy of Mei Li

For Mongolians, E Is for English, F Is for Future
By JAMES BROOKE Published: February 15, 2005

"...part of a nationwide drive to make [English] the primary foreign language learned in Mongolia, a landlocked expanse of open steppe sandwiched between Russia and China. "We are looking at Singapore as a model," Tsakhia Elbegdorj, Mongolia's prime minister, said in an interview...

Its camel herders may not yet be referring to one another as "dude," but this Central Asian nation, thousands of miles from the nearest English-speaking country, is a reflection of the steady march of English as a world language...

"I need 2,000 English teachers," said Puntsag Tsagaan, Mongolia's minister of education, culture and science. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/international/asia/15mongolia.html?pagewanted=2&hp

Jared Diamond has a new book - "Collapse"

The NYTimes review by Gregg Easterbrook:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/books/review/30EASTERB.html?oref=login

"Bright, funny, and well-read, Emily had dropped out of a Ph.D. program in history. She was single and working as a librarian. Tentatively I asked her, "But you are so bright and you have such a passion for history, why did you ever drop out of graduate school?"

Her response: "Early on, I realized that academe has no office culture. I know office culture is always seen as a joke but I realized that as a single person, I was going to need some interaction at work. Academe couldn't offer me that -- but a library could."

It took me a while to mull that one over: Librarians are more socially outgoing than academics? Admittedly, there was a little envy on my part, too: If I was so smart, how come I hadn't figured out, as Emily had early on in her graduate career, that I wasn't going to be spending large chunks of my academic career sipping sherry with my colleagues while we discussed a range of issues?"

A Ph.D in History who decided to leave academia, writing in the Chronicle of Higher education
http://chronicle.com/jobs/2005/01/2005012601c.htm

new blog features

and I didn't know about them til' now!

This is something I emailed... finally got round to changing the date/timestamp to M'sian time... which is when I found out about the easy new features and settings.

For someone living out of things, still, I've downloaded Firefox and am interested in Picasa... but we shall see... I have no desire to spend so much time booting up my computer and then sitting at the table and fixing plugs and so on... Lazy! It seems like not worth it... for dial-up. But that's why I came back, wasn't it... partly... away from the conveniences... it's tough to be half-in, half-out, though. Not like it's totally not available. Just not affordable. Or not commensurate with my projected use... talking about broadband, of course. Will just have to adjust to a different type of digital culture, I guess!

"According to blog search-engine and measurement firm Technorati, 23,000 new weblogs are created every day—or about one every three seconds. "

From 10 TECH TRENDS Why There's No Escaping the Blog
Freewheeling bloggers can boost your product—or destroy it. Either way, they've become a force business can't afford to ignore. By David Kirkpatrick and Daniel Roth, From the Jan. 10, 2005 Issue
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,1011763-2,00.html

ETS (who do the SATs, GREs, etc.) comes up with an information literacy test... educational institutions want to know if students are up to scratch.

Measuring Literacy in a World Gone Digital By TOM ZELLER Jr. Published: January 17, 2005

"The Information and Communications Technology literacy assessment, which will be introduced at about two dozen colleges and universities later this month, is intended to measure students' ability to manage exercises like sorting e-mail messages or manipulating tables and charts, and to assess how well they organize and interpret information from many sources and in myriad forms....

...Knowing where and how to find information, they agreed, was just the beginning. Interpreting, sorting, evaluating, manipulating and repackaging information in dozens of forms from thousands of sources - as well as having a fundamental understanding of the legal and ethical uses of digital materials - are also important components."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/17/technology/17test.html?ex=1106888400&en=fe1369fd2fd3ccc2&ei=5070

It starts out with a general statement about research:

"There was a time when researching a high school or college term paper was a far simpler thing. A student writing about, say, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, might have checked out a book on the history of aviation from the local library or tucked into the family's dog-eared Britannica. An ambitious college freshman might have augmented the research by looking up some old newspaper clips on microfilm or picking up a monograph in the stacks.

Today, in a matter of minutes, students can identify these and thousands of other potential resources on the Internet - and, as any teacher will attest, they are not always adept at sorting the wheat from the chaff."

Free full-text journal articles! Found it while looking for Information Outlook (the Special Libraries Association monthly publication)

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/tn_ref

Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera (full-text) online
http://www.literatureproject.com/phantom-opera/index.htm

The parent site:
http://www.literatureproject.com/
Who are they? They also offer ebooks and text-to-speech

While we're on the subject of 19th century romances, here's a site dedicated to the numerous (yes, there was more than one) books/tales of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Showing here (also full text and also free):
http://www.blakeneymanor.com/