…detected one scummy spammer. Got ‘er. Deleted. Dead ‘un.
I’m not sure I wouldn’t have figured it out from her initial post, eh? So much for the efficacy of the spamfilter.
After catching 43 of our innocent members, our spamblocker has finally…
by CJ | Apr 13, 2010 | Journal | 29 comments
29 Comments
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Just wait until the spam filter finishes evolving and decides all organic life is spam.
I agree. Its appetite is troubling.
V-ger? Nomad? Berzerkers?
Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!!!!! And my sonic screwdriver is out of batteries…
SPAM BLOCKER WORKS! This could turn into a Monty Python moment! 😉
I forgot! This week is National Library Week. 😆 I promise I won’t rock my hobby horse on the importance of libraries! 🙂 😀 😆
Well, if there weren’t libraries, kids with my limited childhood budget couldn’t afford to read, and that holds true through history. Nowadays libraries may be online, as in Project Gutenberg, but they’re still affording access to books you never knew existed.
My family valued books. When we were so short of cash we once had to make a packet of weiners go a week, my parents got me the World Book Encyclopedia on the installment plan, and it was a sad day in the mid-60’s when my parents donated it to a library fund, as outmoded,while I was at college. Whenever I was sick, I had read it non-stop, and knew every picture. I started with A and just kept going, and regarded it as a great and special treasure. Right along with it was my library card: I’d go to the Carnegie Public Library on Saturdays when my dad had to go in to the office a couple of blocks away. I’d stay there for hours, using the stereopticon on the huge collection of 3-d photos they had; and checking out books. I read my way through the children’s library. They brought books out of the basement for me to read when, at 7, I broke my arm—Frank Baum’s Oz books. And after that, I’d read through all the children’s library and was given an adult card. Which I used to find all the lurid historicals, and Robert E Howard. I used to wait until the older librarian had headed for a restroom break and then I’d dart to the desk and check out Howard—again. The older librarian wasn’t much on those books.
In some ways, owning your own collection and reading only what you buy can give you too narrow a focus as a kid, without the opportunity I had, being left to prowl for hours and hours. I’d start on a shelf and investigate all the books, and then move on to the next shelf. Only the internet can rival the access I had. Big danger for a kid in becoming too tightly focused on type and style of entertainment. Only one flavor makes Jack a dull boy.
Can we get an “AMEN!!!” on the use of libraries (says the librarian). Sadly, many folks these days are starting to regard libraries as quaint and outmoded, because everything is available on Teh Intarwebz, doncha know? And how many of those folks know how to check for reliability on their info, or do they just take the first thing Wikipedia serves up, or whatever Amazon provides?
I am going to meekly raise my hand and say that yes, I do think libraries are outmoded. There is just no reason to go to one anymore unless you enjoy the experience. Also, Wiki is not to be underestimated. Errors in books in print are there until a new edition is out, Wiki is edited and updated more or less live. Sure, it is subject to vandalism, but it is real-time. That is hard to beat. And really, who is going to bother going x number of miles to the library when you can just go upstairs to the computer? Dewey Decimal System? No, thanks. Google? Yes, please. The writing is on the wall.
To emphasize this, and so you know it’s not just me, where I live, the library has been trying to raise property taxes for operational funds (via referendum) above what is allowed by state law. They have tried 12 times in a row and lost. Someone is not getting the message.
I am not going to do a very good job making friends here with posts like these am I lol. Please don’t be offended. I spent many hours in Gail Borden Library myself back in the pre-internet days, for school work and just to hang out, and do have fond memories; I’m just not seeing a place for them in the future.
Project Gutenberg is like a library revival for me. I’ve been burning through a lot of books I wouldn’t have read otherwise because of it. I am going through all of Elizabeth Gaskell’s stuff. Pretty light, but occasionally she has a good observation. My childhood experience with the library wasn’t terribly exciting. There were three types of books I was interested in as a kid: Where’s Waldo, Greek mythology, and anything to do with learning about other countries or public figures like MLK or Lincoln. I occasionally read a novel (Doctor Who Target books, Dangerous Island or My Side of the Mountain were favorites) but I didn’t really get into reading fiction until about sixth grade when I started to read whatever my dad was reading. I have next to no experience with kids books or YA books. That was also about the time I stopped going to the library much. Instead I’d do chores and be paid in books. I didn’t get cash for chores. Just the understanding that next time we were in the city I could pick a paperback out. I read an ungodly amount of Star Trek novels, but that was also the time I got into Katherine Kerr, David Duncan, Simon Green, Piers Anthony, LE Modesitt Jr, Robert Heinlein… can’t stand 90% of what I used to read, but whenever I look at one of the surviving ones on the shelf I can picture myself mowing the yard or cleaning the garage for them.
Well, the Internet is fine if all you want are facts…. But what if you want to read a book, a particular book? One of CJ’s earlier novels, too far down the back list for the publisher to bother doing an epub, but not far enough for CJ to get the rights back to do it herself? Buy it off Abe? Oops, no money available.
But the Toronto Public Library (Ontario) has web access, and I can reserve any circulating book and have it delivered to my closest branch. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread or home delivered milk! And their circulation has gone through the roof!
So we need both – the collection of books, and the web for easy access to them…
Everyone’s opinion is welcome, and you have a point: research that used to take me half a day or more and a drive to the library takes me a minute and a few keystrokes,aand I haven’t personally darkened the door of the library in years,—but don’t forget that the basic informational search techniques go back to the guy who had to have scrolls pigeonholed in order; that libraries are more than a book-lendery—-they do communications, research, authentication, storage, as well as organizational systems and retrieval technology; and they’re all linked.
Plus the good ones work with kids, do community projects, lecture series, and all sorts of educational work.
Could we do with fewer of the book lenderies to focus the funds instead on big bricks and mortar libraries wired to the max, around the world?
Tyrannies are justly scared of such entities. People exchanging ideas are dangerous. Just ask the lords of the late middle ages who suddenly found someone had thrown open the doors of the preserved works of the ancients, via Monte Cassino monastery and other mediaeval copy-shops who’d preserved most of what we know about the ancient world, science, math, philosophy that wasn’t in line with current belief. It was a revolution that swept the old lords away.
So, yes, there should be libraries, in case, for one thing, we ever have an electromagnetic pulse that screws the internet in the blink of an eye. If there’s a hope of resurrecting it, its in the big libraries.
I agree that Dewey Decimal is wheezing. It’s just one step on the continuum, imho, and we don’t yet have a perfect search system, or why would google return me Renaissance Hotels when I’m looking for Renaissance. (I want a search I can plug some restraints into to eliminate the chaff.) Serendipity rules, at the moment, and we are not yet doing search as it will be, far from it.
The storing and retrieval of knowledge is major. I’m not ready to relinquish, say, a city library in favor of a state library: or, heaven defend us, a national one, wherein censorship could walk barefoot. I think we have to go on supporting the little libraries to prevent some government getting all the things down to one vulnerable institution.
And I’d like to give some other kid the break I got. I think it’s still available in the best local libraries. I just think they need some better press.
I’m with pholy. Since I’ve become kindleized I no longer buy books (certain authors excepted) and instead check out new works and authors by borrowing from the library. Tulsa City-County Library has a great online presence allowing me to request anything at all and have it delivered to my closest branch. They email me when it’s there. I just bought the PB copy of Regenesis but I first read it as an HB from the library.
I was patiently lurking until the counter went to 500000
visitors.
Carnegie Grant Libraries was just too much to resist. I
explored the bowels and found behind the childrens section
the magazines and newspapers were available to researchers.
I also sneaked upstairs into the adult section to read things
I couldn’t borrow (no adult library card).
I was doing all right until my uncle caught me reading his
3 volume history of ww2 and told me I couldn’t read it. So I
read some of it aloud to him. Then the grown-ups started being
careful around me. I hope to live long enough to see a non-
destructive method recover the scrolls of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
There is a Chinese proverb that applies to the librarian scholar as well.
It is much safer to kick a Tiger in his den than to disturb
a scholar, for he can overturn your empire with a stroke of
his pen.
I keep my fingers crossed about the Net. When Luther hung
his work on the church door it wasn’t much of a problem.
When someone took it to the printer it was a bomb going off
in the society.
The Net has that kind of potential energy (like an atom),
all it takes is the right innocuous trigger and we will be
living in interesting times again.
I’m a book person — I love the volumes thmselves, as well as the content. That said, I can also see a place for ebooks, both to own and to borrow (from individuals and libraries). Ebooks have significant advantages, importantly direct support of authors likes CJ and Jane (a new and exciting distribution method), plus the opportunity to read more widely at a reduced cost.
@Brent, libraries all over are hit hard. In Ohio, the governor reduced the amount of library funding by 33%. Our local library had to cut staff, go on shortened hours & days, and has cut some services. However, they have not asked for taxes to be raised, unlike the city school district, which had tried 3 times to get a bond issue passed in the last 3 elections. The last time, the election was a dead even tie, and they appealed and asked for a recount, and somehow, mysteriously, a ballot was found in a provisional envelope where it didn’t belong. Now, I know both the Director and the Assistant Director of the Election Office in our county, neither of them would be likely to “stuff” a ballot into a provisional envelope and then have it magically appear. The City School Board must feel that “deus ex machina” is real, since they just got their levy passed. My parents are furious, and there has been more than one ‘tea party’ held as well as a lot of debate and invective passed at the City Council meetings. The Prosecuting Attorney says that we can’t sue to have the levy reversed, a judge from a neighboring county who was brought in agrees with him, and I’m betting that the PA doesn’t live inside the city limits and doesn’t send his kids to the city schools, and the judge is in a different county altogether.
My library has been one of my favorite places in the entire city – much more so than say, the jail, the police station, the greasy spoon where my sister-in-law works, and other scenic places in town. They’ve been my refuge and my haven for over 54 years, since my mother taught me to read at age 3.
Oh dear, where to begin on libraries? Here I am limiting myself to non-fiction books. 1st & personal history: I was lucky enough to live many years in a college town (Durham, NH), where the public library and the university library were the same thing. I had hundreds and thousands of books to explore whatever took my fancy (archaeology, anthropology and history especially for me). It made me who I am.
I now teach undergraduate anthropology and other, mostly related subjects to students who are working adults and parents for the most part. They almost entirely use the internet to research their papers. There is a lot of good stuff on the internet and, despite academic slams on Wikipedia, I have used it myself to look up single “facts” related to the point I want to make. But, and here is my main point: individual web pieces are almost always short and limited (completely ignoring whether or not they are accurate and what their bias is). A thematic, non-fiction book will examine a topic in depth and all its interrelations. I lament that my students don’t have the time (they are very busy adults and school is but a fraction of their lives) or realize the joys of reading a full book on a topic (let alone several to compare what is being discussed). Looking up individual facts or brief accounts of something on the internet is not the same as exploring a well-fleshed out argument complete with evidence and counter-evidence. Not to mention missing the joys of reading a good biography, travelogue, etc. I think at times we get so accustomed to the rapidity with which the internet returns information to a well-worded query that we get impatient with the time that goes into reading a full book. Most of my reading these days is non-fiction books on linguistics, archaeology/history, astronomy & physics or art history. Interestingly, I find most of them by searching through Barnes & Noble on line and then ordering them. Go figure!
But, to echo CJ, libraries are more than just a place to get a book…..there are classes…including computer how to…there are computers, which on week ends are occupied by kids doing research papers…..I know several people who cannot afford computers, internet etc. who use the library for all their computer needs….libraries sponsor different book clubs and foster an atmosphere of reading for pleasure. Even our little town library stocks a wide selection of DVDs and CDs……..maybe the day is coming when you will be able to take out a kindle or an ipad with a selection of ebooks loaded into it.
I got my very own library card when I was 7…… it seemed like magic to me that there was a place filled with books waiting for me to read them…… I don’t do it very often now, but I still love to go into the stacks and explore…..hold a book in my hands and know that inside is a world where I can see by a different light. 🙂 😀 😆
I’m from a small oklahoma town called Rush Springs. I’m lucky enough that the towns fore fathers treasured books beyond anything else. The Rush Springs Library Society is older then the actual town,and it boosts quite a collection for only a town of 1200 people. When I got out of school for the day I would walk across the street to the towns library and stay till my mother would fetch me when she got off of work. The Library was the first and only access to the Internet when I grew up, and they have to cycle out the books on the main floor for public check out due to the Society buying almost every book that comes out yearly. I actually read my very first Foreigner book at that library. The library had and still has summer reading programs and after school programs, they also invite traveling authors to do talks and sign books every month. When I moved away to college to a regional college, I was shocked to find out my small home town library out classed a college’s collection.
Really, from Rush Springs? I know Rush Springs! Watermelons, really great watermelons—and a neat town!
I have to say that my version of CJ’s encyclopedias was an old dictionary and an atlas. The dictionary was full of really interesting things (like pictures of clipper ships with all the sails and rigging labeled), and a bit out of date (some of the flags listed in the entry were no longer being used), but it was fun to thumb through from definition to definition. And the atlas was even more interesting, with countries that no longer existed or had been renamed. I knew Peru as “the purple country in the northern part of South America.
As to libraries, I practically lived in one when I was younger. I stopped going to it for a while, but got a library card again a few years ago. Now I use it to try out new authors instead of buying the book. I am much more willing to do that than to spend the money to see if I like someone I haven’t read before.
Oh, and I used the library recently to check out a copy of Bride or Prejudice for a girl’s night out. None of the local video rental stores had it, but the library did.
I rarely have the time or energy to go to the library for myself now; I order many books online (after hearing about them on NPR or the NYT web site). I make the trip when my 8 year old starts begging for the latest Clone Wars or Magic Treehouse book.
But even now, closing my eyes, I can conjure the sounds and smell of my small town (Nephi, Utah) childhood library. I could have lived there I loved it so much. The librarian let me volunteer two hours a week dusting the shelves; it gave me a chance to explore every nook and cranny, including the archive room. I learned so much reading pioneer diaries and turn of the century histories, looking at maps and old newspapers. The internet cannot replicate what was such an immersive experience.
Yes Watermelons….I cant fathom the amount of watermelons I hauled out of fields…I hauled so many I dislike watermelon to this day lol.
I knew I was taking a chance with anybody from Rush Springs! But they are outstandingly good watermelons, great big ones, feed a family of 4 and guests type watermelons. When Evilwezal talks about hauling watermelons, it’s not a job for the faint-hearted. 😆
100lbs+ is the normal ones, these are not the icebox watermelons you seen in your grocery store lol.
Oh, but they are so much better than what you get in the icebox at the grocery store! They’re so big, these huge, dark melons, that the standard for chilling them down at a picnic is to sink the big guy in a creek and let them cool that way, or put them in a big washtub and pile ice on them for the day.
Eating them is an environmental experience. You have a slice 3x wider than your head, and daintiness is nowhere in sight. You will need some water for washing up after! Flavor—way more intense than these pale 10 lb-ers. You can make marmelade out of the rind, especially if you have a native American friend who’s willing to reveal the closely guarded location of the family piemelon patch to blend with that and orange rind. Mmmm. I’ve never had better marmelade.