explodedlibrary.info

reluctantly announcing a hiatus

I've really been enjoying blogging during the past few weeks. I don't know why - maybe it's because I've got my system with TypePad and Net News Wire working well for me, maybe it's that I have a better idea of what I'm meaning to do. But in just ten days, I'm taking a one way ticket back to Australia. Moving is always a hassle, but when it involves crossing the Pacific, there are additional complexities and challenges.

I can see that my remaining days in the US will be a sprint to tie up as many loose ends as possible before I leave - at both home and work. So it seems very unlikely that I'll have time to read other blogs, or update my own blog, until I'm settled in Australia. It's too bad, because I had a few ideas of things to write about. Well maybe I'll scribble them down in a draft and something will come of them later.

has the home computer become a major threat to marriages?

Read about it in the Times of India reprint of this Sunday Times article.

My thoughts on this: yes and no. I think that excessive computer usage can sometimes damage strong marriages or push weak marriages over the edge. That's not a good thing, but it's possible that without the computer, the marriage would have lingered on for a few more years before ending for a different reason. Which is the better outcome?

If a marriage is going through a rough spot, and the couple would like to save it, spending lots of hours alone on the computer is never going to help.

On the other hand, it's possible that computer use, when it's done together and used to facilitate communication, could help a marriage. The couple that surfs together stays together?

Another factor could be that this technology is still new and our values, such as how we view fidelity, have not yet caught it up with it. Maybe it's only a matter of time before everybody will just know that of course, flirting with somebody else online is just as bad as flirting during a clandestine date. Or that emotional intimacy is a powerful thing - and it doesn't matter whether this occurs online and offline.

ranting against French secular fundamentalism

I realize that I have a love/hate relationship with the French. In the mid-1990s, I hated them, like most other Australians, when they resumed their nuclear testing in the South Pacific. Their arrogance was so shameless and infuriating! It took me a few years to forgive them for that. Then last year, I decided to subscribe to the English language version of Le Monde diplomatique on the web. I greatly enjoyed reading that alternative perspective on world events. (This is hardly relevant, but I'll never forget watching Amelie in the cinema and being in a crowd that spontaneously clapped at the end of the film.) The high point of good feelings towards the French occured during those evil months just before the Iraq war, I was so proud of the way that at France and Germany resisted the US and the UK in the UN security council. The more that the Neocons hated the French, the more I loved them. When they childishly campaigned to have French Fries renamed as Freedom Fries, I developed a preference for Evian water and French wine.

But now things are changing again. I am absolutely appalled by the French Government's plans to ban the wearing of head scarves by Muslim schoolgirls. Do they think that this help French Muslims to be better integrated in French society? It will do the opposite, and will drive Muslims out of public schools into private schools.

I worry that the following is going to be a little controversial, but I'm a blogger, not a politician or journalist, so I'm just going to write what I'm thinking. ...

I've finally deciphered the code! Now I understand Bushspeak

For a such long time I did not see rhyme or reason in any of the words coming out of the Bush Administration. But now I've learned to find the truth in them. It's so simple - just turn the words on their head!

Clear Skies = Dirtier Skies
Mission Accomplished = Mission not yet accomplished
No Child Left Behind = All Children Left Behind (as we create more unfunded mandates)
Prescription Drug Benefit for Seniors = Prescription Drug Benefit for Health Insurance Companies
I've done more for human rights than every other President = I've done less for human rights than any other President

I'm sure that there are plenty of other examples.

It was thinking about this which gave me the initial insight:
Bush said that the UN must allow the US to invade Iraq or the UN will fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society. In fact, only by rubber-stamping the US' every demand would the UN fade into history as an ineffective, irrelevant debating society.

Ultima III and Ultima IV

Why are retro classics like the early Ultima games popular? Is it just nostalgia - adults pining for what they enjoyed in childhood/adolescence? Is it because mobile phones, PDAs and mp3 players offer a similar a similar gaming environment to the Apple ][, Commodore 64 and TRS-80? Could it be that these some of early games compensated for their technological limits by having better gameplay? Or has this renaissance been caused by the strengthening of the open source movement?

If you're curious, try Lairware's remake of Ultima III (this particular version is for the Mac only). It's shareware. Registering it for $15 will let you finish the game, but you can waste days on this game before you get to that point. It's very polished.

There's also xu4, a freeware version of Ultima IV for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows and other platforms. Ultima IV is a bigger and better game than Ultima III, one of the best games of all time, imho. xu4 is not yet playable to the end, but they're getting there. The personality quiz at the beginning of the game is reason enough to give it a try.

There are a lot more resources on retro-gaming, even other new versions of these games. Not to mention all the sites about running emulators of old operating systems on modern ones.

This Modern World on dangerous reference books

I don't have anything new to say on the topic of almanacs, but I wanted to link to This Modern World's take on this absurdity.

It makes me wonder - by dignifying the suspicion about almanacs etc. with a response, am I playing into the hands of those who cast these aspersions? It's hard to know, but I think that one of the few defences against the Bush Administration's Big Lie tactic is for many people to challenge the falsehood early, loudly and unambiguously.

has the intellectual property world gone mad?

I don't really have anything to add to this - I'm speechless.

There is something very wrong with the copyright industry when we have this discussion [about English postal workers humming/whistling tunes] as part of the question of what needs licensing. Displacement of Concepts has an analysis of this post by Cory Doctorow who saw this article from last February ("We Can Work It Out" - Kim Howells Invites Musicians To Work With Government On Delivery Of The Licensing Bill), which Cory describes as: A new business-licensing scheme in the UK will allow... [bIPlog]

does the marketing by Lexis and Westlaw have an effect on librarians?

One of the things about my job that I'll sometimes miss is being courted by the two mega legal publishers, Westlaw and Lexis. Law librarians get presents from them all the time. During the two and half years in my job in an academic law library, I've received numerous travelling cups, t-shirts, fancy pens, a flashlight, a clock, and several other things which I'm forgetting. I've only been to one AALL conference in that time - but librarians going to those can pick up even more goodies. I got a toy moose which my niece loved when I gave it to her. Then there's all the free food - from the pastries when our Westlaw or Lexis rep visit, to the huge box of chocolates we received in December.

As an academic law librarian I am of two minds about legal publishers, especially the Big Two.

trivia about me and this blog; LiveJournal community for the private journals of public bloggers

I would be an absolutely atrocious cataloguer because I seem to have no consistency about what I call things. I can't even maintain consistency in the name of this blog. Is it the exploded library, explodedlibrary, or explodedlibrary.info? I use all three permutations regularly - I guess that it depends on my mood. So if you link to me, don't worry about getting the name right, because I don't.

This isn't meant to be anonymous blog. When I first started blogging on Radio Userland, I didn't know how to make the blog anonymous. So that's how it started - and when other bloggers first welcomed me, they always included my name.

There have been, and continue to be debates about anonymous blogging. It's not for me because I would live in fear of having my true identity discovered. And it would be much more difficult for the benefits of blogging to spill over into my real life if I was anonymous.

more about the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004

Wired News has another article about the stealth passage of elements of the Patriot Act II.