747 This world is not heaven

So wrote Peggy Noonan in her very critical review of the President's inaugural address. Yesterday she was the "color commentator" on the FoxNews coverage of the event, and when her co-host Shepard Smith asked her opinion of the speech she just stammered and sputtered and said she'd have to have some time to think about it.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial today she called it: a foreign policy speech; romantic longing to carry democracy to foreign lands; God-drenched; on a mission; over the top; suffering from "mission inebriation." She also said it made her yearn for nuance, that it "put the world on notice," and told it to "shape up." She then closed with a suggestion that "they" [the administration?] ease up, calm down, breathe deep, and get more securely grounded.

Noonan is a strong Bush supporter--gave up her job to work on the campaign. If his supporters say this, imagine what his detractors must be saying.

James Taranto writes at Best of the Web today (Jan. 21) directing comments to Noonan's concern: "The lesson Bush drew from Sept. 11 is that "realism" is unrealistic--that the "stability" that results from an accommodation with tyranny is illusory. To Bush, there is no fundamental conflict between American ideals and American interests; by promoting the former, we secure the latter. Maybe he'll turn out to be wrong, but for now the burden ought to be on those who, in the wake of Sept. 11, hold to a pre-9/11 view of what is "realistic."

Noonan is right that "ending tyranny in the world" is a fantastically ambitious aspiration, one that isn't going to be realized anytime soon. But Bush didn't promise to do it in the next four years or even in our lifetimes. He said it was "the ultimate goal" and "the concentrated work of generations." "

746 Happy Anniversary

Three years ago today we moved into the condo. The complex was built in the late 70s, one of the earlier ones in a city not accustomed to this type of housing. We were definite in our ideas; one floor, new, 3 bedrooms, and not a destination location. Oh well. We love it anyway. Three floors, not new, 2 bedrooms, a destination location, and a fabulous view. Haven't missed our house even one day. He's a better artist than this, but it's the thought that counts.


Condo 3rd anniversary card

745 The Inauguration Costs

While watching someone sing about eagles soaring (written by John Ashcroft), I'm calculating the inauguration costs. Such complaints from both liberals and conservatives! So since WaPo says Clinton spent $33,000,000 in 1993, I ran that figure through one of those "What is it worth now" calculators. Using the CPI it would be $42,030,000 in 2005; using the share of GDP figure it would be $54,450,000--there were several other indicators, but all were more than $40,000,000. No matter how it is sliced, it is a lot of money for a party. And even if he gave it all away, liberals would say he was grandstanding. (Pause) [Wow. In that white outfit Laura Bush is one dynamite librarian and First Lady!] Hail Columbia, here comes the Veep.

We've been invited to a fund raiser/dinner/silent auction for a good cause, and they want $25.00 a ticket per person. I don't know what the total party will cost--but in Ohio retiree dollars, probably about the same as the inauguration with a lot less glamor and not so good food.

Gotta run. Here comes the President.

Later: The speech in a nutshell. “We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.”

Still later: I've been listening to and watching the past inaugurals on c-span for a couple of hours. I think those accusing G.W. Bush of being too religious or too Christian need to sit down and listen to Kennedy and Johnson, or some of the prayers said in the past at these events. Makes Bush sound like he could give lessons in political correctness. Also, much invoking of God in our destiny and blessings and claims for liberty for all men everywhere.

Kansas City Star

744 Dear Adelle

Every time I try to call you, Adelle, to talk about my bill [press one, listen; press two, listen; press one, listen--I get this message, "The mailbox is full; please call later." So I can't even leave you a message to say, I really doubt that Medicare is going to respond to your claim in less than 30 days. I mean, lady, get real! It is the government. So here's what I've done. I pressed the number for "appointments" (press three) and I got a real live person immediately. She was very helpful and told me not to worry until I get something labelled, "Final Notice." She has also put it in my file that I talked to her, not you. I told her to add that I tried several times last week too. You have a good day, Adelle, where ever you are, and you might expand that mailbox just a bit.

743 Stirring The Social Security Pot

There is a group who already has its collective mind made up and set in concrete--the Bush-haters are not going to like or support any plan for revamping the failing Social Security system that comes during a Bush administration. Another group won't pay attention or care. Then there's the lump in the middle--the rest of us who are looking at and sifting the information and weighing the options. I see a lot of discussion among Conservatives, who are known for not blindly following their President or party. The Wall Street Journal columnists, for instance, have been very cautious and have suggested the down side of personal accounts.

Two problems appear that worry everyone: what happens to those programs that now dip into the pot of money we regularly give the government which have nothing to do with retirement; what happens if you retire with a combination account and that part of your life span is in a stock market down swing?

We already have President Bush's retirement plan at our house (at least as I understand it): we have a mix of Social Security, private 401k, SEP IRA, a teacher's annuity (403b)*, a teacher's pension and miscellaneous IRA accounts and savings our executor will have to figure out someday. Because a teacher's pension is considered a government plan, I am not eligible for Social Security--not mine and not the wife's portion of my husband's. This is called a government offset, and as I have poked around in the articles about Social Security, anything you might receive from SS in the new plan will be "offset" by your private defined contribution. There is little advantage here for the retiree, unless you are allowed to pass it along to your heirs, or the offset stops at a point and you can enjoy the nest egg you kept warm. As it is, many retiree households are already dependent on defined contribution plans for pension coverage--maybe half, according to a December WSJ article.

There are way too many details not worked out (that would be done by Congress and the people who cut down trees) to make firm opinions about this plan. But I do worry about the half a sentence that slips through unnoticed in the law which will be used to launch ships or save owls or infringe on freedoms by bevies of lawyers and future legislators. Sometimes the devil you know is better than the demons you don't know.

Die young and get nothing under current plan

What would a “small” increase (to save the system) in current payroll taxes cost the average worker?

How would PRAs really work?

*401(k) plans are retirement plans that some private corporations offer their employees. A 403(b) plan is similar to a 401(k) but it is offered to employees of some non profit organizations. In both of these plans the individual chooses to deduct part of their paycheck and place it into an investment portfolio they formulate. These plans allow individuals to select among different types of investments, depending on how much risk they are willing to assume. The contribution into the account reduces the individual's taxable income. Employers may choose to match a portion of the employee's contribution up to 50 percent. These investments grow tax free until the money is withdrawn during retirement.

If you are employed or self-employed you may open an individual retirement account (IRA) and contribute up to $3,000 a year (or your earned income, if less). Married couples can contribute up to a total of $4,000, even if one spouse is not employed outside the home. Depending on your individual circumstances, you may be able to deduct part or all of your IRA contributions on your federal income-tax return. All investment earnings in your IRA compound on a tax-deferred basis. You pay tax on your earnings and contributions that were deductible when you actually withdraw the money from your account. If you withdrawal money from your traditional IRA before age 59 1/2 it may be subject to a 10% early withdrawal penalty and income tax. FinanceListings definitions

742 Happy New Year!

I found a Russian blog today. I’m so excited. I could actually read it.

Дорогие друзья, с новым годом!
Желаю вам здоровья, успехов, любви и счастья!

It’s such a beautiful language.



I'm not endorsing the site--my Russian is too rusty. He appears to be in London and is a doctoral student working as an editor. Great photographs.

741 Spelling lesson

Putting on my coat 45 minutes before my doctor's appointment, I said to another regular at the coffee shop, "Do you know how to spell "ophthalmology?" He hesitated a moment, then said, "Well, I'm not a very good speller, but I do know that one. O-p-t-h-a-l-m," and then he hesitated, "then it's either an "a" or an "o". "You were in trouble on the first syllable," I said. And I spelled it. "Think of 'my eyes are off, so I'm going to the ophthalmologist.'" This phth is actually more often pronounced as p-th, and is called a medial cluster. It doesn't appear in many English words, which is probably why it is so often misspelled. Diphtheria isn't very common anymore, thank goodness; Ben Franklin tried to rid our language of diphthongs, and who uses naphtha soap anymore? So other than having an appointment with an ophthalmologist, you have little use for the medial cluster.

Next to ophthalmology, the most frequently misspelled word I came across when helping people find information in the veterinary medicine library, was Salmonella enteritidis . It is the reason you don't want to eat raw cookie dough. Years ago, you only got it from cracked eggs; now the chicken has it and transmits it directly to the egg. Don't order your eggs, "over easy."

(See how much fun it is to read a librarian's blog?)

When I got outside, rain and sleet had fallen on the two inches of snow, so I had to scrape the car windows. As I was doing that, I heard a siren in the distance, coming from the direction of the main artery I was planning for the 1.5 mile drive to the ophthalmologist's office in a large medical complex. (I was planning on 15 minutes just to get into the parking garage.) When I got to that road, I could see a huge back up, so I turned around and took another route, which happened to go past my house. By that time, I was white knuckled, so I pulled into my own drive-way and called the office to cancel. My eyes may be off, but my brain knows when not to be on the streets.

740 How it used to be--1992

Billy Frolick writes an interesting bit of whimsy in the January 17 New Yorker about an 8th grader (written in first person) who has to choose a year from U.S. history and live for a week as if it were that year. He chose 1992. It is quite amusing, and informative, but probably not if you reached adulthood after 1995 (and I don't get many readers under 30). As a librarian, I smiled when he said he needed to go to the library to do some of his research instead of using the internet.

There's a good overview of what is happening to scholarly publishing and how it has changed since 1992 at the Social Science Research Network beginning with the procedure for writing and submitting to a refereed journal (which is still done), and the possibilities of putting it all out there today, where the authors primarily are making those decisions. Or as the author says, "You only need to know what you're looking for." The author, David Warsh, is a good example: the full version of what I read at another site, is located here.

As I noted in 736 free isn't always cheap, and I might add quantity is no guarantee of quality. Although "working papers" and departmental "pre-prints" have been around many years, the internet access has only added to the confusion. I think librarians will still be needed for many years--maybe now more than ever.

739 After dinner games and old TV shows

A few months ago we went out for dinner with Ned and Rosalee and then went to their house to play Boggle. It is a word game with a 3 minute timer. The words need to be at least 3 letters. Three minutes, three letters--sounds about like my attention span, so I went out an bought one for our house. My husband mentors a 4th grader in an urban school and has taken the game with him a few times.

So tonight we played Boggle after supper. We played 5 or 6 sets and I won. We had to get out the dictionary and even though we made up some words, when we checked, they really were words, like "thew." (He made that one up--I didn't think it was a word, but it was.) When I came up with "nosh" he thought I made it up. I told him it was like being at a party and hanging around the snacks eating all night, but having always been thin, he didn't believe me. So we had to look that one up too.

If the players pick out the same words, those are dropped from the score. But I won 68 to 18. I don't think you have to be particularly good with words since most of these are 3, 4 or 5 letter words, but you do have to think upside down, backwards and at an angle.

Also, for the exciting life of a retiree, this week I bought a Dick Van Dyke DVD from 1962--6 episodes for $2.00. I didn't remember any of these, and thoroughly enjoyed it. That was really a well written, beautifully acted show. Since I never watched TV much until I was married (my parents didn't own one), this series is one of the earliest I remember. My father-in-law worked for RCA, so my husband grew up with TV and remembers even the test patterns.

738 FOBT vs. colonoscopy

One of my Canadian readers (you know who you are) got here because I'd left a comment at his blog when he wrote about the FOBT. Now we regularly visit each other's blogs for topics other than fecal occult blood testing. However, today in the WSJ it was reported that those quicky smear tests done in a doctor's office failed to detect advanced precancerous lesions 95% of the time. That's code for, "they are worthless." Now, the home tests score a little higher. They get it right about 23% of the time. I haven't looked up the article in the Annals of Internal Medicine (one of my favorite journals, btw) to see if that was early or advanced. However, the colonoscopy can actually prevent cancer by finding polyps in the early stage so they can be removed. The sigmoidoscopy is in the middle manager range, but why would you even bother when you can go right to the top--or the bottom, as the case may be.

737 Bad hair day

I saw a woman at Meijer's today with my hair style--the one I had in 1966! I was so shocked, I braked the grocery cart and stared. It was one of those beehive thingies with the French twist in the back. I didn't know there were hair stylists alive who still knew how to do that. I rarely keep a hair style longer than a year. The one I have right now (different than the photo which was 2003) is about a year old, and I'm really bored with it.

When I was growing up, after I gave up French braids, my mother always cut my hair--she also permed it. Whew! Did those things smell. Then when I was in 8th grade we went to Rockford and I got a professional hairstyle, a snazzy two piece, lime-green and white, sleeveless dress with a straight skirt (my first), and white linen high heels, and poof, I had grown up overnight. In my memory, I was always letting my hair "grow out." However, I remember a haircut before the Christmas dance when I was a junior in high school, a hair set the morning of my wedding day, and a haircut and set to have my senior photo in college taken. I'm sure there were more trips to the "beauty parlor" than that, but it must have been "growing out" most of the time, because my old photos show a lot of pony tails and shoulder length hair.


8th grade Chicago trip

My husband had beautiful red curly hair when we met. However, very short hair was popular for men, so I had to take his word for it that he had curls. He said it was so wild and unruly when he was a child, he'd be sent out of class to comb his hair. Living through our children's teen years took care of most of his hair, and then about 10 years ago it lost most of its color.


On the beach

This painting of us on a beach of Lake Erie 30 years ago is by Ned Moore, one of the best watercolorists in Ohio. My husband still had his red hair, and my hair, as usual, was growing out, in braids almost to my waist. It is one of my favorites.

736 When free isn't cheap

No matter what your profession, you probably are inundated by information--most likely from some type of aggregator or news service which was supposed to make that sort of thing easier by sending only the abstracts and links you care about to your mailbox. It doesn’t, really--make it easier, that is. It’s too tempting to subscribe to several, and end up with 57 unread messages everyday, so I still rely on my links and my list of bookmarks (I’m power hungry, I suppose).

William Watson describes what he does with one of his services--I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not the only one looking for the free information and skipping it when asked to pay. I’ll register for a paper (NYT, WaPo, LA Times, Chicago Trib) if it is free, and I’ll pass up the current issue of a journal if the archives are free. Library journals (of the profession pushing “information should be free” mantra) are almost never free. Even liberals want to be paid.

Anyway, Watson writes in this article:
“The way the SSRN works is if you like the abstract they've sent you, you can follow a handy link and download the full study. Most of the time the download is free but some of the institutes want money, usually $5 U.S. per study.I sometimes pay the five bucks but I must confess - truth in column writing requires it - that what I usually do instead is google the author's personal Web site to see if the paper is posted there. It usually is and - bingo! - the download is free. Think of it as Napster for nerds.”

And so he goes on to say open access is fine if you believe that journals with operating costs (like editors) provide no useful function, and that cheap drugs (he’s Canadian) are nice if you believe pharmaceutical research costs nothing. Free rides are not always free, is what I think he’s saying.

735 Washington Post gets it wrong he says

Kenneth Anderson comments, "The Washington Post, in its Sunday, January 16, 2005 editorial opposing the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as attorney general, gets it wrong on the Geneva Conventions. My guess is that the editorial writers have never actually read the relevant article of the conventions, but instead have simply relied on press releases from various rights groups that tell the WaPo what it wants to hear. . ." After quoting the incorrect editorial, he continues:

"The Bush Administration was - and is - NOT in violation of Article 5 of the Third Geneva Convention. Read it. It does NOT say that a "competent tribunal" shall determine whether any doubt has arisen with respect to the POW status of a detainee. It says, rather, that "should any doubt arise" as to whether a detainee is entitled to POW status, then the person shall be treated as a POW until a competent tribunal shall determine his or her status. The question of who is entitled to determine whether any doubt has arisen is left open - it does not say that this matter must be determined by a competent tribunal. It leaves open the possibility that the President or the Secretary of Defense may determine, even for an entire group of detainees, that no doubt arises and hence no tribunal is required."

The content of Anderson's blog is Law of War and Just War Theory.

On January 7 Anderson noted: "I particularly reject Mark Danner's quite slippery op-ed piece in the NYT of yesterday, Thursday, January 6, titled "We are all torturers now." Cute, but sorry: we're not. What Danner does, quite inexcusably, is mingle the undeniable abuses of Abu Ghraib with the fact that the White House counsel sought, in the context of the interrogation of a known senior Al Qaeda chief, the outer limits of what could permissibly done in the way of questioning. I don't know, quite frankly, why one has a lawyer if not to ask what the outer limits of legal behavior are."

Noted at Pejmanesque.

Are all Bush's Hispanic nominees having a problem with confirmation or just the top rung? Apparently, Dr. Rice is a foot shuffling mammy to Bush haters and Hispanics are just illegal wetbacks not smart enough to check with lawyers.

734 Miss Universe of 1957

A newsletter about collectibles and antiques comes to my e-mailbox. I read it mainly for the old recipes, but also I enjoy the little stories people tell about finding things, or trying to find the rightful owners of photographs and Bibles they've purchased at a sale. Jan, a reader, writes about finding some old Miss Universe brochures when cleaning out her aunt's house.

"My husband's aunt died and we were in charge of having an estate sale of all her belongings. I found so many wonderful things to keep that I pulled out of the house before the sale. One of these was a stack of Miss Universe program brochures from 1953 to 1959. This lady and her sisters were hostesses at the Miss Universe pageant in Long Beach, CA, and my husband remembers, as a young boy, these beautiful girls from all over the world staying at their house for a week during the pageant. Anyway, my hobby is selling on E-bay, and just for the heck of it one day I offered one of these brochures for sale. I was amazed that it went for over $100 - people were bidding like crazy for this program brochure that originally cost 25 cents at the pageant.

One day I offered the 1957 program brochure on E-bay as an auction. I got an email from a woman in South Dakota, and she asked me: "My mother was in the Miss Universe pageant that year. But she would never talk about that time in her life - it is like a closed chapter - and we would love to know about it. I don't suppose her picture would be in that book." She gave me her mother's maiden name, and I told her, "Sure, her picture is here, on page such and such." She was so excited to hear this and she won the auction and I sent her the program. I received an email from her telling me how delighted her sisters and she were to finally have this artifact from their mother's past!... Jan" The Collectors Newsletter #287 December 2004

Just out of curiosity I went online and looked at the Miss USA for 1957 and according to the website the Miss USA for 1957 was disqualified because she was underage, married for the second time and had two children! She was replaced by the first runner-up. No wonder she didn't talk about it!


Miss USA 1957 (for a day) of Miss Universe Pagent

Now it is possible that all the candidates of Miss USA are folded into that brochure, but apparently the 1957 event was quite a scandal. But I don't know why any candidate other than Leona Gage (Mrs. Ennis), the disqualified Miss USA, would not tell her daughters about it. There are several horror movies of the early 1960s with an actress named Leona Gage, and a book for sale at a used book site called My Name is Leona Gage, Will Somebody Please Help Me? It was published in 1965, and if the blurb on this paperback is true, life didn't go well for Mrs. Gage Ennis. "Her beauty attracted brutality; her love, rejection; her tenderness, contempt. Suicide, birth, stardom, drugs, beauty, madness- here is the fantastic true story of Leona gage." For someone who only had 48 hours of notariety, she was still apparently well known enough in 1965 to warrant a book. In 1999 someone was looking for her on a genealogy site--wanted to write a story about the 1957 pageant.

So it is possible that because the 1957 pageant was so famous, the bidders on E-bay weren't even who they said they were, but were doing a bit of a scam on Jan--maybe hoping she'd just give them the brochure. The names of all the contestants who placed are on the web, so it wouldn't have been difficult to provide a name for "good old Mom."

Update: Leona Gage died October 9, 2010. She was 71. Link.

733 Saying Good-bye

Vinni, one of my "faithful bloggers" linked over at the left of the page, has had to say good-bye to an old friend. He's sad, but it was time. She had a few years on him and some risky behavior. But check out that photo.

732 Read the labels for an education

Do you suppose the nerdy/artsy/fartsy types who design and edit webpages really do have a sense of humor? This little blurb just delighted me:

Prunes, or "dried plums" as growers now prefer to call them, have long been the butt of jokes.

About dried plums

When I stopped laughing I got down to the serious content of this blog--information contained in labeling.

This week I bought a package of Sunsweet "gold label" Lemon Essence Dried Plums in a foil, resealable bag. They are truly delicious.


However, the nutrition information of the label is really interesting. A serving size is 1.5 oz (7 dried plums), so I'm guessing 5 would be about an ounce. According to the package, an ounce of dried plums (5) has 16 times the antioxidants of an ounce of banana; 8 times the potassium of an ounce of apple; 6 times the B vitamins in an ounce of orange; 83 times the vitamin K in an ounce of banana (obviously not a good source of vit. K) and 5 times of fiber of an ounce of apple. I don't know about you, but 5 dried plums is plenty, but I've never eaten just an ounce of apple--I want the whole thing--same with a banana or an orange. I mean, did God outdo himself with the lowly little plum, or what?

Not only that, but the label says the dried plums will fit my active life style! They will go in my briefcase or purse and never bruise like an apple, they are always in season since they are dried, and always ready to eat. WOW! Plus, you can go to www.AmazingSunsweetTestimonials.com and read, well, amazing testimonials about prunes--I mean dried plums.

731 Real estate values

I love to read real estate ads. The hyperbole, the squish words--vintage, curb appeal, redefines elegance. Today I saw a photo of a vintage house in a university town (Ann Arbor) that looked like a clone of our first home in Champaign, Illinois not far from the university. It even had a bump out dining room window. It was selling for about $450,000, and the ad said it had been magnificently updated.

With David's family Christmas letter, he included a photo of our old house--the one that looks like the Ann Arbor house. He was in Champaign last year to give a lecture, and had stopped at the house for a photo op. He and wife Gina had been our upstairs tenants and neighbors and friends. The house was probably 50 years old when we bought it, and time has not been kind. We added a second front door so the upstairs tenants had a private entrance, and we painted it charcoal gray with white trim (a popular color scheme in 1964). It had lovely wood work the color of my grandmother's home of the same era, with glass door book shelves, huge windows in the kitchen, a dining room with a built in china cabinet which was the largest room in the house, a basement with a dirt floor, and a gravel driveway with no garage.

The photo showed a home that looked like it hadn't been painted since we did it in 1964; the formerly gracious front porch had lost its columns and railing; ugly oversized windows had been put in the front, second floor room; the bushes were overgrown; and a mattress was leaning against the side of the house.

It was a plain, utilitarian house with painful, unhappy memories, but because it was an income property (I was 22 when we bought it), it put us on a solid financial footing that carried us through the ups and downs of the next forty years.

I salute you, little duplex on White Street. You deserved better.


White St. House in 2003


White St. House in 1964

730 Movie review of "Coach Carter"

Glenn Beck the past few days has been predicting the outcome of professional sports games by using the arrest records of the players. He thinks that if you want to get the job done in a contact sport, hire a crook (obviously, he is joking, but he's always a little over the top). For the Jets and the Steelers, he thought the Jets had a stronger criminal element because they had more assaults against women; the Steelers sort of wimped out with some marijuana and drug charges. Tough choice between guys who beat up women and guys who fry their brains.

A new movie, "Coach Carter," reviewed in today's WSJ is about a coach who is preachy and tough. He demands shirts and ties, push-ups and "Yes Sir." It's not an award winner, but the reviewer hopes student athletes and their parents will absorb the positive message. Boston Globe review here. Trailer here.

Maybe an OSU Alumnus will buy tickets (or rent the whole theater) for Maurice Clarett and his mother.

729 More wine words

Some weeks ago I wrote about the lovely descriptive vocabulary of wine connoisseurs. Last night, in keeping with my New Year's resolution to try to eat better using the government's new guidelines, I served grilled salmon, braised cabbage lightly buttered and salted, 1/6 of a cantaloupe with white grapes, sugar-free lemon pie with a cranberry/orange sauce, and a Pink Catawba wine (ca. $4.00 a bottle). I thought it was the best wine I'd ever had, and you can't beat the price. The pie was great, too.

In today's WSJ, the wine reviewer really outdid himself with a vocabulary to describe the $60/bottle wine (forgotten the name since as you can see, I don't buy expensive wine).

majestic
touches our soul
big, muscular
lemony acidity
rich earthiness
tastes brick red
tightly wound
complex and explosive
depth
lovely and complete
rose petals and finesse
hard as a rock
dry finish
massive, tough
soulful
intense and haunting
vibrant
bountiful

Sounds like it could be the manuscript for Paula's romance novel, instead of a bottle of wine, doesn't it?

728 Biased book reviews

I used to write book reviews for Choice magazine, and other less well-known publications, usually in the areas of animal health, and I used my name and position to establish my authority for recommending (or not) the title or software. In today's Wall Street Journal, James Bowman takes on two of the biggest, most influential (in library circles) review vehicles in the publishing world which is disgorging 500 books a day. Both shield the names of the reviewers. I write about this at my group blog journal of nbruce. As I've noted here before, research has shown that librarians are liberal, 223:1. I'm guessing a lot of the anonymous reviewers for Kirkus and Publishers Weekly are librarians or are writing for librarians.