The Social Function of Libraries and Archives
Back when I went to “Library School”, we all had to take a course titled “The Library and Society”. One day in class I said out loud, “One under-appreciated social value of libraries is that they provide employment to the otherwise unemployable.”
See comment by Cindy Scroggins ff.
Of course, this observation does not apply to Cindy or to Aaron Winslow or to me or any of the other librarians or archivists who contribute to or otherwise participate in the clusterflock experience.
the comma
I donated blood yesterday and I really wanted one of those stickers that said, “Be nice to me, I survived the finger prick.”
It would have been fun to add one comma, “Be nice to me, I survived the finger, prick.”
dear clusterflock
What’s for breakfast?
New Survey Says Polls are Meaningless Waste of Time
New York, NY — Most opinion polls are useless pieces of crap—that’s the conclusion drawn from a new survey released on Thursday. The margin of error for this damning assessment is plus or minus seventy-five percentage points.
Survey respondents were asked to answer wide-ranging questions about the U.S. economy, the 2008 presidential election, and general world affairs. These issues were carefully mixed with queries related to opinion polls themselves. The results paint a disturbing picture of what we think we know about what we think we know.
Vintage Microwave
Stephen reviews “A selection of curiosities from the free section of Craigslist”:
I am moving and sadly cannot take these chairs.You say you are sad, but you are moving because you want to get away from these chairs. These chairs are destroying you. They have held you hostage for years, threatening your family with their aggressive, visceral ugliness. Your entire post suggests Stockhom Syndrome, but don’t worry, we’ll get you through this.
There are 4 of them.This is worse than I thought. I’ve contacted the authorities. Your neighborhood is being evacuated right now. Take your birth certificate and passport, leave everything else behind. Leave the back door unlocked.
They are grey mohair.That almost sounds respectable, doesn’t it? Mohair. Get out of the house, now.
They roll.We appreciate the warning. This is an ugly that may be difficult to contain. Homeland Security is cordoning off all of San Francisco.
Ponoko
Ponoko is the world’s first personal manufacturing platform. It’s the online space for a community of creators and consumers to use a global network of digital manufacturing hardware to co-create, make and trade individualized product ideas on demand.
Regular Everyday Normal Guy
,,,,,,
I am not, alas a commic genius I periodically mistype
Tree in the Forest
I am not sure if I posted this before but I came across it again and thought I would share.
solitary bees, 12
This was my grandparents’ house. I grew up in town. My parents moved here after they died. I inherited this place after they passed away. I didn’t see them for a long time when they lived here. My parents or grandparents actually. My grandfather was kind of an asshole. I won’t go into it too specifically but my mom would tell me stories that still make me angry and imagine him internally like I’m watching a movie of people I recognize doing things I never saw them do.
i should be dead: the moving picture edition
(via Neatorama)
According to
calculations based on the Mayan calendar and the atomic weight of selenium, Deron will be 39 (for the first time) on March 29th. Huzzah for Deron!
The Days of Yore
mmm…heart attack
The Worst Artery Cloggers in America. Doesn’t this look wonderfully delicious?
“oh lord, stuck in Lodi again”
When I saw this story, about a stripper who invited a customer to go gambling, on our local CBS affiliate last night, they were clear to point out that the stripper worked at the only strip club in all of Lodi:
As they were traveling, Blank allegedly pulled over suddenly, claiming she needed to call her kids, but two men armed with shotguns emerged from a nearby vineyard. Fearing for his life, the victim got out of the vehicle and fled.
Authorities later arrested Blank and charged her with felony kidnapping and robbery charges. Investigators suspect that there would be other victims that do not want to be connected publicly to a stripper.
Filipino Playboy
It’s like non-alcoholic beer.
The Philippines will get its own edition of Playboy magazine — only without the nudity that made the US version famous, the editor-in-chief of the local edition said Thursday.
cross cultural references
Kifissia, a suburb of Athens, where people’s grandiose turn of the last century summer houses have been converted into expensive shops. When i first moved there in ’76 it was a village at the end of the metro line where people came for weekend strolls not consumer fixes, it was very leisurely and Greek in those days. It’s name means; ‘there where it blows’. Taken with me Yashica D
N/A Beer
The guy who invented non-alcoholic beer is a genius. Think about it, not even the people buying it really want to drink it.
Placeography
Placeography is a wiki where you can share the history of and stories about a house, building, farmstead, public land, neighborhood or any place to which you have a personal connection. If you don’t have a place to contribute, please enjoy learning about others.
the campaign against excess packaging
(thanks, Donald)
solitary bees, 11
I can get you anything you need.
Solving the World’s Water Problems
Dean Kamen, the inventor behind the Segway, demonstrated a water purifying machine last week on the Colbert Report that will purify almost any water source.
Dolls Get Breast Implants in Miss Bimbo Game
A web site that encourages girls as young as seven to give virtual dolls breast implants and put them on crash diets has caused concern among parents and children’s activists.
Big Phat Liar
Last week the LA Times reported a breakthrough in the murder of Tupac Shakur. Turns out the evidence they received was based on fake FBI reports conjured by a young Walter Middy.
The con man, James Sabatino, 31, has long sought to insinuate himself, after the fact, in a series of important hip-hop events, from Shakur’s shooting to the murder of The Notorious B.I.G.. In fact, however, Sabatino was little more than a rap devotee, a wildly impulsive, overweight white kid from Florida whose own father once described him in a letter to a federal judge as “a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.”
As I have publicly
mocked the appearance of human feet, I should not be drawing them, should I?
