Context
I was reading PUBLIB today. I've commented on it at least twice before, here and here. In this post the writer is trying to use the nationwide network of PUBLIB subscribers to find as many people in Ohio as she can to advocate for continued funding for libraries in that state.
Commentary
Even though I'm a librarian, I don't usually advocate for increased spending for libraries. Increased use of libraries, sure, but seeking more funding seems a little too self-serving to me, like I'm saying, "Please support my livelihood!"
Upon further consideration, I don't usually advocate for higher government spending anywhere. I know that if I were official receiving these calls I'd be awfully tempted to ask, "OK, where would you like me to cut funding in order to increase it for your pet cause?" I'm not an absolutist when it comes to governments having balanced budgets, but I do know there's no such thing as free money and I hate to advocate for something without considering the adverse effects it may have on other people's lives.
Of course, if a politician really did ask me this question I'd give the President Clinton answer (as quoted in this article, down towards the bottom): "Don't cut anything. Tax me more." It really is ridiculous how little I pay in taxes, given how much I make. When I was looking up this quote on the internet, I was flabbergasted to discover that several states (but not Louisiana) really do have Tax Me More provisions and the Treasury Department takes donations as well. I guess it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is. That's right anti-tax folk, I said "my" money.
What did you see today?
6/23/2009
6/11/2009
I saw poorly written blogs
Context
One of the e-mail lists I’m on pointed me in the direction of the Learngasm blog, which includes this entry. The 100 links on it looked interesting so I thought it would take me forever to go through all of them, but that turned out to not be the case. Most of them were poorly written, so I rejected them as wasting my time.
Commentary
There is almost no content in the world that I will wade through poor writing to get at. Living in the 21st century, I find there’s usually enough good writing available on any subject that I can afford to filter this way, so I feel blessed.
So what counts as poor writing? Well, it's similar to poor teaching, which I define this way: any educational experience that is more strongly focused on the teaching than on the learning is of poor quality. My hope is that you’ve never had this happen, but I’ll bet you have: you’re in a class and you quickly discover that the instructor’s goal is just to get through a certain amount of material. Whether you actually understand it is not part of the equation. I think the same dynamic is often at work when people write. They’re seeking to communicate something, but mostly they appear more concerned with getting it off their chest than in ensuring that the message is received.
What are the hallmarks of this kind of writing? Undefined acronyms and references ("My school.” Which is where? What kind of school? What do you do there?), stream of consciousness sentence and paragraph structure, and my personal bugaboo, misspellings and grammatical errors.
“Oh, Lynn,” you might say, “that’s not fair. Grammar and spelling rules in English are really hard to learn. You can’t expect someone to observe all that minutiae.” Whether the rules are hard or not is debatable, but the fact of the matter is they are the conventions we use in order to understand each other. When I teach my Introduction to the World Wide Web, I tell the students that transfer protocols (http, ftp, SMTP) are agreements between computers to share information the same way so they'll understand each other. Rules governing grammar and spelling are the same sort of thing, and disregarding them amounts to breaking a covenant with your reader.
"Aha," you might rejoin (Wow, you're really being feisty about this issue!), "but you break grammar rules all the time. Why, I can see you're just itching to start a sentence with a conjunction like you always do." OK, but I learned in school that breaking grammar rules on purpose isn't poor writing, it's stylized writing. The author who does this is actually creating a new covenant with his/her readers, like when a poem is written in dialect so readers will experience the lyrical qualities of unfamiliar sounds. If I come across something like this I still may choose not to read it, but I will have some respect for the writer's cleverness, creativity and courage.
On the other hand, even if I concede to the clueless blogger that the conventions are hard to learn and apply, that makes the abdication of responsibility even worse. It's like she/he is saying, "It's too difficult for me to figure out whether to use 'there,' 'they're,' or 'their' in this sentence. Instead I'll just type whatever comes to mind. The reader can expend the effort to figure out what I mean." Thank you, but I must respectfully decline.
What did you see today?
One of the e-mail lists I’m on pointed me in the direction of the Learngasm blog, which includes this entry. The 100 links on it looked interesting so I thought it would take me forever to go through all of them, but that turned out to not be the case. Most of them were poorly written, so I rejected them as wasting my time.
Commentary
There is almost no content in the world that I will wade through poor writing to get at. Living in the 21st century, I find there’s usually enough good writing available on any subject that I can afford to filter this way, so I feel blessed.
So what counts as poor writing? Well, it's similar to poor teaching, which I define this way: any educational experience that is more strongly focused on the teaching than on the learning is of poor quality. My hope is that you’ve never had this happen, but I’ll bet you have: you’re in a class and you quickly discover that the instructor’s goal is just to get through a certain amount of material. Whether you actually understand it is not part of the equation. I think the same dynamic is often at work when people write. They’re seeking to communicate something, but mostly they appear more concerned with getting it off their chest than in ensuring that the message is received.
What are the hallmarks of this kind of writing? Undefined acronyms and references ("My school.” Which is where? What kind of school? What do you do there?), stream of consciousness sentence and paragraph structure, and my personal bugaboo, misspellings and grammatical errors.
“Oh, Lynn,” you might say, “that’s not fair. Grammar and spelling rules in English are really hard to learn. You can’t expect someone to observe all that minutiae.” Whether the rules are hard or not is debatable, but the fact of the matter is they are the conventions we use in order to understand each other. When I teach my Introduction to the World Wide Web, I tell the students that transfer protocols (http, ftp, SMTP) are agreements between computers to share information the same way so they'll understand each other. Rules governing grammar and spelling are the same sort of thing, and disregarding them amounts to breaking a covenant with your reader.
"Aha," you might rejoin (Wow, you're really being feisty about this issue!), "but you break grammar rules all the time. Why, I can see you're just itching to start a sentence with a conjunction like you always do." OK, but I learned in school that breaking grammar rules on purpose isn't poor writing, it's stylized writing. The author who does this is actually creating a new covenant with his/her readers, like when a poem is written in dialect so readers will experience the lyrical qualities of unfamiliar sounds. If I come across something like this I still may choose not to read it, but I will have some respect for the writer's cleverness, creativity and courage.
On the other hand, even if I concede to the clueless blogger that the conventions are hard to learn and apply, that makes the abdication of responsibility even worse. It's like she/he is saying, "It's too difficult for me to figure out whether to use 'there,' 'they're,' or 'their' in this sentence. Instead I'll just type whatever comes to mind. The reader can expend the effort to figure out what I mean." Thank you, but I must respectfully decline.
What did you see today?
6/10/2009
I saw routing flags
Context
Because Shreve Memorial Library has 20 branches and uses a hub-and-spoke model to move materials around(similar to this one, but we try not to lose your luggage ;-)), we have pre-printed, color-coded routing flags that we stick in and sometimes on materials that say where they're going. The problem is, once the item arrives at its destination, the flag becomes temporarily useless. Nobody is trying to send things from the Main Library to the Main Library, after all. So each branch, when they've received a sizable number of these things with their name on them, bundles the flags up and sends them back to the Main Library hub. Our Interlibrary Loans Department is normally responsible for routing both the traveling material and the flags themselves.
I occasionally receive items (correspondence or pieces of hardware I need to look at) with Main Library flags attached to them. Since I receive so few I don't bother to give them to Interlibrary Loans; I just drop them off at the next branch I happen to visit. So I was looking at the three or four flags sitting on my desk awaiting redistribution today.
Commentary
I am not much of an environmentalist. I like to think this is not a character flaw on my part, but just a question of some other aspects of life taking higher priority. However, I do like the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra and try to apply it when I can. That's why I like the routing flags; they are single scraps of paper that can be reused over and over again.
So there's something that some of my coworkers do that drives me straight up a wall: they write my name and/or my floor on the flag, which renders it un-reusable. Oh sure, I'm going to be sent more mail at some point in the future, but no one's going to hold on to the routing flag with my name on it waiting for that eventuality. The floor designation's unnecessary anyway; it's Interlibrary Loans' job to know where everyone is in the Main Library. And if you want to attach my name, use a separate piece of paper; don't invalidate the routing flag! See, I told you I get up in arms about this.
So as I was looking at the unsullied, still-reusable flags on my desk, I was wondering why people don't just "do right" in this respect. It's something I frequently wonder about and I've come to the following conclusion: it's because they don't see the world the way I do. There is some quantity of people that don't look at an item that can easily be reused and say to themselves, "I should do everything I can to make that happen."
My first instinct in situations like this is to ponder what I can do to make people change. 45 years of life experience have actually taught me the answer: nothing. The good news is, recent religious exploration has convinced me that it's not only impossible to make everyone conform to my view of the world, it's not even desirable.
God is vast and vastly creative. No one person can perceive, appreciate and participate in all that He is doing. So our different ways of seeing the world are a gift we can offer to the Lord and to each other. For example, when I interact with a friend who thinks airline travel is immoral because of the ecological impact, I get to learn that just owning a Prius isn't enough to call myself an environmentalist, and she gets to see that people can hold other priorities in good faith, like wanting to build community through travel. Everybody gets to grow!
Share with me what you saw today!
Because Shreve Memorial Library has 20 branches and uses a hub-and-spoke model to move materials around(similar to this one, but we try not to lose your luggage ;-)), we have pre-printed, color-coded routing flags that we stick in and sometimes on materials that say where they're going. The problem is, once the item arrives at its destination, the flag becomes temporarily useless. Nobody is trying to send things from the Main Library to the Main Library, after all. So each branch, when they've received a sizable number of these things with their name on them, bundles the flags up and sends them back to the Main Library hub. Our Interlibrary Loans Department is normally responsible for routing both the traveling material and the flags themselves.
I occasionally receive items (correspondence or pieces of hardware I need to look at) with Main Library flags attached to them. Since I receive so few I don't bother to give them to Interlibrary Loans; I just drop them off at the next branch I happen to visit. So I was looking at the three or four flags sitting on my desk awaiting redistribution today.
Commentary
I am not much of an environmentalist. I like to think this is not a character flaw on my part, but just a question of some other aspects of life taking higher priority. However, I do like the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra and try to apply it when I can. That's why I like the routing flags; they are single scraps of paper that can be reused over and over again.
So there's something that some of my coworkers do that drives me straight up a wall: they write my name and/or my floor on the flag, which renders it un-reusable. Oh sure, I'm going to be sent more mail at some point in the future, but no one's going to hold on to the routing flag with my name on it waiting for that eventuality. The floor designation's unnecessary anyway; it's Interlibrary Loans' job to know where everyone is in the Main Library. And if you want to attach my name, use a separate piece of paper; don't invalidate the routing flag! See, I told you I get up in arms about this.
So as I was looking at the unsullied, still-reusable flags on my desk, I was wondering why people don't just "do right" in this respect. It's something I frequently wonder about and I've come to the following conclusion: it's because they don't see the world the way I do. There is some quantity of people that don't look at an item that can easily be reused and say to themselves, "I should do everything I can to make that happen."
My first instinct in situations like this is to ponder what I can do to make people change. 45 years of life experience have actually taught me the answer: nothing. The good news is, recent religious exploration has convinced me that it's not only impossible to make everyone conform to my view of the world, it's not even desirable.
God is vast and vastly creative. No one person can perceive, appreciate and participate in all that He is doing. So our different ways of seeing the world are a gift we can offer to the Lord and to each other. For example, when I interact with a friend who thinks airline travel is immoral because of the ecological impact, I get to learn that just owning a Prius isn't enough to call myself an environmentalist, and she gets to see that people can hold other priorities in good faith, like wanting to build community through travel. Everybody gets to grow!
Share with me what you saw today!
6/03/2009
I saw my iGoogle page
Context
I have an iGoogle page. Mainly I use it as a quick link to this blog and for sharing a calendar with my husband. I also have links to some other websites with hard-to-remember addresses that I use regularly and a couple of RSS feeds. There are a lot of other things I could add to the page, but in the three years I've had it I've made very few changes.
Commentary
As mentioned previously, I am not a quick adopter of technological innovation. In fact, if I'm completely honest with myself I have to say I'm not a person who changes easily, period.
I'm not change-averse; I'm change-cautious. Or maybe change-skeptical. Change-intentional? I like to have a good reason to change, OK? And just, "it's new!" doesn't qualify as a good reason in my book. So looking over my iGoogle page caused me to wonder, "Do I need to add anything new here?" And the answer was no, I didn't feel like it lacked for anything important. Which got me to thinking about what does cause me to change. What is a good enough reason? The answer that immediately popped into my head was: "Other people."
I was flabbergasted. If you asked anyone who knew me to make a list of my personality traits, "people-pleaser" wouldn't make the top 200. And since "argumentative," "stubborn," and um, "forthright" would probably be in the top ten, I have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone who tries to make me to change something.
Nonetheless, other people are usually involved when I decide to change something. The scenario usually goes like this: I see someone in need. In examining the situation, I see a change that I could make that would likely improve matters. The change gets made.
For example, the reason I share a calendar with my husband on iGoogle is because I used to hand him a paper calendar every month and that became really difficult for him to keep track of. Plus my schedule is often kind of up in the air, so I had to hand him frequent updates and even though his schedule is usually fairly regular, I had a hard time remembering it, and blah! It all just became much easier with a shared web solution.
Realistically, of course, I'm often solving my own problems at the same time, but I find it harder to see my problems. Forest for the trees, I suppose. Paradoxically, I seem to need to see another person's problem with my own eyes in order to respond, rather than just believing them when they tell me about it. So I guess it's a good thing to keep my eyes open.
What did you see today?
I have an iGoogle page. Mainly I use it as a quick link to this blog and for sharing a calendar with my husband. I also have links to some other websites with hard-to-remember addresses that I use regularly and a couple of RSS feeds. There are a lot of other things I could add to the page, but in the three years I've had it I've made very few changes.
Commentary
As mentioned previously, I am not a quick adopter of technological innovation. In fact, if I'm completely honest with myself I have to say I'm not a person who changes easily, period.
I'm not change-averse; I'm change-cautious. Or maybe change-skeptical. Change-intentional? I like to have a good reason to change, OK? And just, "it's new!" doesn't qualify as a good reason in my book. So looking over my iGoogle page caused me to wonder, "Do I need to add anything new here?" And the answer was no, I didn't feel like it lacked for anything important. Which got me to thinking about what does cause me to change. What is a good enough reason? The answer that immediately popped into my head was: "Other people."
I was flabbergasted. If you asked anyone who knew me to make a list of my personality traits, "people-pleaser" wouldn't make the top 200. And since "argumentative," "stubborn," and um, "forthright" would probably be in the top ten, I have a certain amount of sympathy for anyone who tries to make me to change something.
Nonetheless, other people are usually involved when I decide to change something. The scenario usually goes like this: I see someone in need. In examining the situation, I see a change that I could make that would likely improve matters. The change gets made.
For example, the reason I share a calendar with my husband on iGoogle is because I used to hand him a paper calendar every month and that became really difficult for him to keep track of. Plus my schedule is often kind of up in the air, so I had to hand him frequent updates and even though his schedule is usually fairly regular, I had a hard time remembering it, and blah! It all just became much easier with a shared web solution.
Realistically, of course, I'm often solving my own problems at the same time, but I find it harder to see my problems. Forest for the trees, I suppose. Paradoxically, I seem to need to see another person's problem with my own eyes in order to respond, rather than just believing them when they tell me about it. So I guess it's a good thing to keep my eyes open.
What did you see today?
6/01/2009
I saw a discussion of repatriation attempts during the Holocaust
Context
I am reading the proceedings of Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference in a volume entitled Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust. You can purchase this book through the Yad Vashem website, but I'm not sure how many mainstream booksellers have it. I got my copy at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Currently I'm reading a report on attempts by President Roosevelt and others to repatriate European Jews during the Holocaust period. The only successful massive migration took place after the war, when Britain loosened restrictions on entering Palestine. Shortly thereafter, the state of Israel was born.
Commentary
I bought this book after touring the Holocaust Museum because frankly, I was depressed. For as long as I've been aware of the Shoah (the TV miniseries The Holocaust was my first exposure) the question has tortured me: why didn't anybody do anything? So I needed to cling to the idea that someone tried.
I didn't actually start reading the book until ten years later, which is probably a good thing. Notice that the title isn't "Successful Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust." It's interesting reading, but not exactly inspirational.
I find myself particularly puzzled by this chapter on repatriation, because it keeps being couched as a solution to the Jewish "problem". What I keep asking myself is, "How did this happen?" Germany (and Poland and Hungary, etc.) was the Jews' home; how did they become a "problem" that needed solving? The answer is as simple as it is chilling: they became a problem because the dominant culture decided they were. From that point on, no amount of "See here now, old fellow, you're being irrational," could save a single person from the concentration camps, so the rest of the world was forced to adopt the "solving the Jewish problem" approach.
Which brings me to the Palestinians. It is considered something of an internet truism that once you bring comparisons to Nazism into any argument you've lost it (quick capsule of this idea here), but I'm going to claim my right as an historian (B.A. 1987, Rice University) to say that no situation is ever completely unprecedented, and valid historical comparisons are educational regardless of the emotional content behind them. So, onward!
For various reasons, the state of Israel has decided that Palestinians are a problem and that they don't want them anywhere near Israeli citizens. This is remarkably similar to the early rhetoric the Nazi regime used about the Jews.
Just to be clear, here's what I'm not saying: I don't believe the Israelis have any intention of sending the Palestinians to concentration camps and exterminating them. I'm also not saying that Israel doesn't have legitimate security concerns about at least some of the Palestinians living in their midst.
But here's what I am saying: if you time-warped a person from the Warsaw ghetto to some of areas Palestinians live in today, he/she would see some points of commonality. I'm also saying this: very few people start off intending to be an oppressor. They start off defending themselves from a perceived threat. From there it takes very few steps to decide that it's appropriate to do whatever you have to in order to "solve your problem."
What did you see today?
I am reading the proceedings of Second Yad Vashem International Historical Conference in a volume entitled Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust. You can purchase this book through the Yad Vashem website, but I'm not sure how many mainstream booksellers have it. I got my copy at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Currently I'm reading a report on attempts by President Roosevelt and others to repatriate European Jews during the Holocaust period. The only successful massive migration took place after the war, when Britain loosened restrictions on entering Palestine. Shortly thereafter, the state of Israel was born.
Commentary
I bought this book after touring the Holocaust Museum because frankly, I was depressed. For as long as I've been aware of the Shoah (the TV miniseries The Holocaust was my first exposure) the question has tortured me: why didn't anybody do anything? So I needed to cling to the idea that someone tried.
I didn't actually start reading the book until ten years later, which is probably a good thing. Notice that the title isn't "Successful Rescue Attempts during the Holocaust." It's interesting reading, but not exactly inspirational.
I find myself particularly puzzled by this chapter on repatriation, because it keeps being couched as a solution to the Jewish "problem". What I keep asking myself is, "How did this happen?" Germany (and Poland and Hungary, etc.) was the Jews' home; how did they become a "problem" that needed solving? The answer is as simple as it is chilling: they became a problem because the dominant culture decided they were. From that point on, no amount of "See here now, old fellow, you're being irrational," could save a single person from the concentration camps, so the rest of the world was forced to adopt the "solving the Jewish problem" approach.
Which brings me to the Palestinians. It is considered something of an internet truism that once you bring comparisons to Nazism into any argument you've lost it (quick capsule of this idea here), but I'm going to claim my right as an historian (B.A. 1987, Rice University) to say that no situation is ever completely unprecedented, and valid historical comparisons are educational regardless of the emotional content behind them. So, onward!
For various reasons, the state of Israel has decided that Palestinians are a problem and that they don't want them anywhere near Israeli citizens. This is remarkably similar to the early rhetoric the Nazi regime used about the Jews.
Just to be clear, here's what I'm not saying: I don't believe the Israelis have any intention of sending the Palestinians to concentration camps and exterminating them. I'm also not saying that Israel doesn't have legitimate security concerns about at least some of the Palestinians living in their midst.
But here's what I am saying: if you time-warped a person from the Warsaw ghetto to some of areas Palestinians live in today, he/she would see some points of commonality. I'm also saying this: very few people start off intending to be an oppressor. They start off defending themselves from a perceived threat. From there it takes very few steps to decide that it's appropriate to do whatever you have to in order to "solve your problem."
What did you see today?
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