Sometimes people on the left respond to the “war on terror” by saying words to the effect that “war is terrorism,” to point out that killing innocent people is killing innocent people, whether it is done by a state or by a terrorist group. The main weakness to that argument is that it has an … Read more October 6th, 1976
Introduction [Book information] June 10, 2009: James von Brunn logged off his Packard Bell computer, grabbed his keys and strode out the door of his son’s Annapolis apartment. He had moved in with his son and future daughter-in-law two years ago where he paid $400 a month in rent and spent most of his … Read more A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation into Cyberspace
An item in the New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” section in the last issue is about the difficulty of keeping track of a valuable information object over time: a concert ticket. How do people remember where they put it? This one has to do with a long awaited reunion show by Pavement, in Central … Read more Organizing personal info in an age of change: Tickets to a Pavement concert
John Allen Paulos is a mathematician who writes books about numeracy for a popular audience. The New York Times Magazine published a brief but insightful essay by him about the dangers inherent in relying on numbers without looking at how they are arrived at (my basic issue with Wolfram Alpha). Here is the starting paragraph … Read more “Metric Mania”
A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation into Cyberspace Author: Adam Klein Price: $25.00 Published: June 2010 ISBN: 978-1-936117-07-9 A Space for Hate speaks to the media and information topic of hate speech in cyberspace, but more specifically, how its inscribers have adapted their movement into the social networking and information-providing contexts of … Read more New book: A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation into Cyberspace
Lawsuit Challenges Police and Secret Service Crackdown on Journalists Covering Protests at Republican National Convention CONTACT: press@ccrjustice.org May 5, 2010, Minnesota and St. Paul, MN —Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) with co-counsel De Leon & Nestor and Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, filed a federal lawsuit against the Minneapolis and St. Paul police … Read more Goodman vs. St. Paul
Today’s New York Times has an informative little item comparing the environmental impact of producing an ipad versus that of a paper book: “How Green is My iPad?“
Welcome support for intellectuals who are making the choice NOT to go for a Ph.D.: The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2009.
This post is a presentation of two lists of priorities – first, priorities of the Social Responsibilities Round Table (SRRT), and second, a list of the kind of issue that I think SRRT ought to emphasize instead. The first list is as complete a list as I was able to compile of the subjects of … Read more Two sets of priorities
From Salon: “Is the Internet melting our brains?” “No! The author of “A Better Pencil” explains why such hysterical hand-wringing is as old as communication itself.” By Vincent Rossmeier. From The Australian: “
This is not library-related, but I would like to pass on a link to an article on the career of the late Polish intellectual Leszek Kolakowski by Tony Judt, in the New York Review of Books. I read a book of his in college (titled, simply, Religion) that influenced my thinking. I admired Kolakowski for … Read more Leszek Kolakowski (1927-2009)
Yes, I know I’m supposed to be user-centered and all that, but I think the great wave of populism we’re seeing now is going to lead to bad things. Some friends say it’s a time of opportunity, that maybe the blind rage of the common man can be directed toward support of progressive policies. Perhaps, … Read more “Most People”
The Baffler is coming back! The Baffler was my favorite magazine during the years it was being published. Thomas Frank has announced he is bringing it back, and is involving some really great people. This is great news, especially for smart, critical, non-trendy Gen-Xers, whom I think the magazine really spoke to.
It’s easy to think that politics has no place in the production of reference materials and that objective reference works are by nature apolitical. Yes, solid reference sources tend to work against ideologically and rhetorically-based thinking and in favor of fact-based reasoning and questioning, that is true, but one should not conclude from that than … Read more Group Storms Greek-Macedonian Dictionary Promotion
New from Litwin Books Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist Author: Chaim Leib Weinberg Translator: Naomi Cohen Editor: Robert Helms Price: $28.00 Published: May 2009 ISBN: 978-0-9802004-3-0 Printed on acid-free paper This story, told by one colorful figure among the anarchists of Philadelphia, does not tell the entire story of … Read more Forty Years in the Struggle: The Memoirs of a Jewish Anarchist
The following obituary for Franklin Rosemont was written by Séamas Cain, a writer I know here in the Duluth, Minnesota area. Franklin Rosemont, surrealist poet, artist, historian, street speaker, & labor activist, died of an aneurysm on Sunday, April 12th in Chicago, Illinois. He was 65 years old. With his partner & comrade, Penelope Rosemont, … Read more Franklin Rosemont has passed on
Since the second half of last year I’ve been reading a lot of financial news, where the major theme of the financial crisis is the “crisis of trust” – banks not wanting to take the risk of extending credit to counterparties. But we’ve been living through a worsening crisis of trust in another sense for … Read more The Other Crisis of Trust (and a question about what it means for Info Lit)
Puzzle Me, Puzzle You: “My Account” “Your Account” Which is it? The autonomous liberal subject wants to know. Whichever it is, it’s somebody’s account – mine, yours, Jacques Lacan Jr.’s, the Egg Man’s, the Walrus’s – and the password is not to be shared. I want to ponder it but I think I’ll just Be … Read more Whose space?
This link is flying around the internet and being talked about on NPR: The Beloit List. It is a list of facts about the Millennial generation’s cultural situation that is supposed to show how amazingly unaware “they” are of things that “we” older people take for granted. I’m only linking to it to mention that … Read more About that Beloit List
Carol Kreck, a librarian, was arrested and removed from a public campaign event for John McCain in Denver yesterday. She was in front of the Denver Center for Performing Arts, and was charged with trespassing. Can you trespass on public property? Here’s the video and some more info…