I Return With Porn

...Not really. I mean I don't personally have porn, but I do have an article about libraries deciding not to filter out pornography that I figured was a perfect way to get back into the groove.

I have been neglecting the blog, which is sad, but I have been doing so because I have been finishing up my first year of my library technician program. My last presentation (French, about kung fu) was yesterday and I am now free as a bird, or at least until my security clearance for my summer job goes through.

The thing about the porn is probably less exciting than you think, but hey, let's get some search results from sensationalism, shall we? From the Salon article:

If you found this article while searching for porn that fetishizes bookish bespectacled women, you're going to be sorely disappointed. In this rare case, we're talking about porn in libraries, not librarians in porn. That's because earlier this week, the Los Angeles City Council voted against filtering out all porn on library computers. Just the day before, the Brooklyn Public Library publicly defended patrons' right to watch any legal adult content of their choosing. The first case was prompted by an incident in which kids were exposed to pornography being watched by an adult on a library computer; and the second followed a physical altercation between a man watching porn on a library computer and another man waiting to use said computer.

The Rosetta Disk

The Rosetta Disk is the physical companion of the Rosetta Digital Language Archive, and a prototype of one facet of The Long Now Foundation's 10,000-Year Library. The Rosetta Disk is intended to be a durable archive of human languages, as well as an aesthetic object that suggests a journey of the imagination across culture and history. We have attempted to create a unique physical artifact which evokes the great diversity of human experience as well as the incredible variety of symbolic systems we have constructed to understand and communicate that experience.

News from the Rosetta Project of interest to archivists and others! I like how it's not platform-dependent.

For the extreme longevity version of the Rosetta database, we have selected a new high density analog storage device as an alternative to the quick obsolescence and fast material decay rate of typical digital storage systems. This technology, developed by Los Alamos Laboratories and Norsam Technologies, can be thought of as a kind of next generation microfiche. However, as an analog storage system, it is far superior. A 2.8 inch diameter nickel disk can be etched at densities of 200,000 page images per disk, and the result is immune to water damage, able to withstand high temperatures, and unaffected by electromagnetic radiation. This makes it an ideal backup for a long-term text image archive. Also, since the encoding is a physical image (no 1's or 0's), there is no platform or format dependency, guaranteeing readability despite changes in digital operating systems, applications, and compression algorithms.

Also, it looks really cool.

Reading the Cereal Box

Puffin has had a brilliant idea: publishing excerpts from Roald Dahl books on cereal boxes. Just good bits to draw them into the story! Maybe that'll get kids to want to read. And maybe it'll sell more books for Puffin, but let's concentrate on that 'kids reading' aspect, shall we?

Page 99 Test

Via The High Definite, the Page 99 Test. Based on the Ford Madox Ford quote, "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you," this website provides the 99th pages of various published and unpublished authors.

Until today I had never heard of neither the 99th page rule nor Ford Madox Ford, who has an awesome name.

The Hobbit vs. Where the Wild Things Are

Once upon a time, back when the 30th anniversary edition of The Hobbit was planned, Maurice Sendak of Where the Wild Things Are fame was asked to illustrate Tolkien's work. It did not work out due to a couple of bits of bad luck.

I wish it had happened; the illustration shown in the article looks wonderful.

"Vote for the Internet"

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for widespread, cheap internet usage. But I can't say I'm for the "Vote for the Internet" movement, because really, I think there are maybe some more important issues. I guess if that's the only concern you have, go to it?