Buffalo Wings and Toasted Ravioli

What I've heard about the Mac is true–it makes you want to experiment with all of the cool multimedia apps it comes with. I'm starting to think about adding an occasional video blog to Check This Out! In the meantime, I've been playing with Comic Life. Here is a test.

PC160061

Originally uploaded by jmilles.

Playing around with Flickr when I should be working on a report. This is my most viewed photo on Flickr.

What does it say about the state of librarianship education, or the library profession, that they begged the US News and World Report to once again include library schools in their notoriously flawed and misleading rankings? Law schools have railed against the rankings for years, while feeling compelled to participate; some schools have gamed the rankings, making them even more suspect. So what are the library schools thinking of, begging to be let in for the same treatment?

Mark Liberman at Language Log noted a couple of days ago:

In case you missed it this morning, Scott Simon interviewed Edward Hirsch on Weekend Edition, and together they read William Matthews' Four Subjects of Poetry:

1. I went out into the woods today, and it made me feel, you know, sort of religious.
2. We're not getting any younger.
3. It sure is cold and lonely (a) without you, honey, or (b) with you, honey.
4. Sadness seems but the other side of the coin of happiness, and vice versa, and in any case the coin is too soon spent, and on what we know not what.

Which led to Roger Shuy's four subjects of linguistic analysis:

1. I've analyzed a whole bunch of language phenomena and what I've found corrects/amplifies/changes completely what the rest of you less enlightened folks have to say about this subject.

2. I've discovered a spanking new language phenomenon and so, ta-da, here it is in all its glory.

3. I've gone to great pains to compare language phenomenon #1 with language phenomenon #2 and I found:
a. one of the two is more accurate or useful or pleasing or relevant than the other one, or
b. the two are either the same or so similar that it doesn't really make any difference.

4. I've discovered that a certain older language issue is still relevant today, so take that, you modern whipper-snappers.

Which led in turn to Kerim's four subjects of anthropological research:

1. These people are really, really, oppressed, but look! They have agency!
2. Identity is political and transcends national boundaries.
3. These people used to have a tradition, but they’ve adapted it to better fit with their current lifestyle and now it is a different tradition.
4. There are no signifieds, only an endless chain of signifiers representing the illusion of self resulting from desire-as-lack.

So here goes–my four subjects of law library research:

1. We surveyed one of our research classes and they want us to emphasize print sources.
2. We surveyed one of our research classes and they want us to emphasize electronic sources.
3. A current management theory, summarized in ten pages or less, applies to law libraries.
4. Technology will change everything, but there will always be a need for law libraries.

Betsy has asked me to keep an eye on things while she is out of town, so I guess I've been passed the outrage torch for a few days. It's so hard to keep up–new Bushite scandals seem to crop up by the minute. Here's the latest, via Shakespeare's Sister:

Phone Jamming Records Point to White House

WASHINGTON
- Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire
Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House
and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records
introduced in criminal court show.The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn't accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin's trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Lots more at the link.

So, does this mean Bush was authorizing phone-jamming schemes to block Democrat voters? Who knows? Who cares? We've gotten to the point with this "president" that just about any story sounds plausible. I'm sure this will be sneered away as tinfoil hattery, but christ, if it were true, would it even matter? Would anything happen to this criminal that's drunk-driving our country off a cliff and into the LaBrea tarpits?

And, more importantly, will pooh-poohing of Bush's involvement in this crap erase the fact from the minds of the public that Republicans were scheming and carrying out plans to stop Democrats from voting?

If we don't have free elections in this country, we have nothing.

Copied in whole from Shakespeare's Sister:

Plain and simple:

"Gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry and have access to the same rights, privileges and benefits that straight couples currently enjoy." Feingold went on to add, "[This] kind of discrimination … has no place in our laws, especially in a progressive state like Wisconsin. The time has come to end this discrimination and the politics of divisiveness that has become part of this issue."

No parsing. No punting. No squirming.

No states’ rights. No civil unions.

Gays should be able to marry.

Discrimination has no place in America.

I’m going to cry.

How evil is it to neglect my new blog for more than a week?

You Are 12% Evil

You are good. So good, that you make evil people squirm. Just remember, you may need to turn to the dark side to get what you want!

How Evil Are You?