“We watch people dragged away and sucker-punched at rallies as they clumsily try to be an early-warning system for what they fear lies ahead.” –Â Unwittingly prophetic me, March, 2016. Sometime after last November, I realized something very strange was happening with my clothes. My slacks had suddenly shrunk, even if I hadn’t washed them. After […]
I’m up, up, up in the air, flying over the Southwest as I head to Albuquerque and then Santa Fe for a quick visit with my mother. Sandy was able to visit her in January during a business trip, and now I’m the one with the precious combination of time and opportunity. I would be […]
News sources report that Gloria Won, a health librarian at UC San Francisco, played a key role in alerting LibraryLand that POPLINE, a federally-funded health database, was blocking the word “abortion.” Won, noticing that her search results weren’t retrieving anything for “abortion” (an odd result in a database for “reproductive health”) had written POPLINE. The […]
At first, when I couldn’t find a post I had made on Chowhound yesterday morning before I left for work, I chalked it up to my own sloppy surfing. I have been acutely focused on Friday’s talk, as many people from MPOW are coming, which I am finding very stressful to the point of frazzlement […]
Over the weekend I wrote about the threat to small and independent publishers from proposed postal rate hikes, which if not challenged will go into effect July 15, forcing subscription hikes and possibly causing some publications to fold. Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times published an editorial co-authored by Teresa Stack, president of The Nation, and […]
My take on things? The same freak-out fanatics who got everyone in a tizzy about the Internet at large are now targeting Flickr and similar social software environments. Read Michael Stephens’ sensible but passionate discussion of this issue. Bookmark to:
This is hardly news at this point, but it seems unseemly not to note the silence broken by the four librarians from Library Connection, a consortium in Connecticut, who had been choked by Patriot Act gag orders. More at the ACLU’s website, where you can download this poster as well. (Thanks, Jessamyn!) Bookmark to:
“The Montana State Library has canceled a showing of a movie critical of the U.S. Patriot Act after people complained about the American Civil Liberties Union being involved. … The State Library said it originally thought the film, ‘The ACLU Freedom Files,’ would be a good pick for its monthly seminar series because parts of […]
As reported in Editor and Publisher, a nurse at a VA hospital in New Mexico has been accused of sedition for criticizing the government’s handling of the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina. My goodness, the gummint must be panicked if it needs to start slopping around terms such as sedition–“an insurrection against constituted authority : […]
Please keep up the pressure on your Members of Congress by spreading the word about National PATRIOT Act Call-In Day – January 25, 2006. What to do On Wednesday, January 25th, please call both your Senators and your Representative and ask them to support the Senate language reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. The Senate bill better […]