Friday, December 16, 2005

Holy Smokes!

What a day. First, the New York Times story that, as Times columnist David Brooks said on Lehrer tonight, is the kind of story that "makes your eyeballs drop out." And then the vote. Enough republicans to ensure that the reauthorization won't fly, not today.

Now what we all want to know is why the Times held the story for so long.

To drag this back to the topic of this profession of ours, I'm becoming more and more convinced that, though librarians need to be activists when it comes to scholarly communication, we have just as important a role in understanding and responding to media of all kinds. The fourth estate is in pretty shabby condition these days, and it's too important to ignore.

Barbara
PS: Russ Feingold is my hero.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Patriot Act Showdown and More...

Looks as if renewing the Patriot Act is running into some significant bipartisan opposition. Now that there's the threat of a filibuster there seems to be some interest in putting off the reauthorization vote since they may not get enough votes in the Senate to overcome the resistance.

Hey, the House just agreed with John McCain that we shouldn't torture prisoners. At this rate I'm beginning to think anything can happen.

And now for something completely different - Nature has just reported that the Wikipedia has some mistakes in their articles on science. The real surprise is that they found the Encyclopaedia Britannica has nearly as many.

Barbara