1752 Is it something I said?

Today I left a comment at a very nice Christian book site called Buried Treasure. The blogger is an official prairie muffin and has written a nice entry on Agrarian Picture Books. Wow. My kinda site. So I left a comment. Here's the reply.

"Spam Karma: Your comment looks suspiciously like spam and has been moderated. It will be displayed once the admin approves it."

Since when did Christians believe in Karma?

1751 Just about a good idea

Today I was browsing through LIS news feeds and came across About Children's Books. I think all the About.com sites were originally good ideas, but they are extremely aggrevating to read. The page is packed, jammed, smashed with advertising, some of which bounces and moves as you scroll, and you get one paragraph of information--always good, but not worth the struggle. I get queasy reading. I'm often amazed at the writing ability of the specialists who host these pages. Maybe they write a weekly essay and then chop it up into 7 parts? I only subscribe to one About.com feature, and often they build up in my mail box and I eventually delete them just because they are a good idea gone just about bad.

1750 Google Print

Google Print. You won’t find a better wrap up than Charles Bailey’s bibliography. Still no comment by the American Library Association, however. He's good. He'd find it. They are busy with bigger fish, you know--Bush, torture, Patriot Act--all that library stuff.

1749 He's so good to me

Yesterday he went out and bought me tapioca pudding from the Chef-o-Nette and a bag of corn chips. Don't know if it is the pneumonia or the medications, but I've had some food cravings. Then he willingly hid the corn chips after I put some in a small bowl, so I wouldn't eat them all at one sitting. Then this morning he refilled the bowl for me so I wouldn't have to go to his office and take it apart looking for the bag. He is such a blessing.

1748 A frenulectomy

What's that? Check my sewing blog for an explanation why I have nice teeth.

1747 Women who have abortions

are more likely to die within 12 months than women giving birth? And a violent death (suicide, homicide, accident)? I wish I knew more about statistics, ratio and risk after reading this report based on statistical data from Finland. Finland has liberal abortion laws and socialized medicine, but not the privacy laws that the U.S. has which has prevented this study being done here. (But if you want to study equine orthopedics [horse bones] which would cause pain to horses, Finnish vets come here due to their animal welfare laws.) Even non-pregnant women were more likely to die than women who carried to term or miscarried. It's an amazing story. Have to think about that. About how much God wants his little ones to live.

1746 I voted today, did you?

Yes, I drug my self from my sick bed (in the passenger seat) with my husband driving to the local Catholic cathedral, looked for the one 12" American flag, walked down 16 curving steps into an outdoor reception area, and found the upside down "vote here" sign with the arrow going the wrong way.

Vacation Disaster Avoidance

Here's some good advice on vacation and time share planning. I'm not going anywhere soon (except out to vote), but you might be. She also has lovely photos of Hawaii, Ohio and Arkansas--they love to travel.

1744 Three signs your marriage might be in trouble

When I sit down to blog, I have no idea what I'm going to say (except for those entries drafted while I read the paper). Today I was innocently writing about an apron pattern, and ended with 3 ways to know a marriage is in trouble.

1743 WMD in Iraq

This advertisement was attached to the most recent Novak-Evans Report. I have not gone to Iraq to check this out, but I hope someone beside Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame have. Their reporting is a bit dicey.

WMDs Found in Iraq!

1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium

1,500 gallons of chemical weapons agents

17 chemical warheads containing cyclosarin (a nerve agent five times more deadly than sarin gas)

Over 1,000 radioactive materials in powdered form meant for dispersal over populated areas

Roadside bombs loaded with mustard and "conventional" sarin gas, assembled in binary chemical projectiles for maximum potency

This is only a PARTIAL LIST of the horrific weapons verified to have been recovered in Iraq to date. Yet Americans overwhelmingly believe U.S. and coalition forces have found NO weapons of mass destruction. The question is: WHY do they believe this lie?

Richard Miniter explains why these and other popular media factoids and urban legends are not only wrong, but severely damaging to our war effort, in Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror.

1742 Book Club tonight

We're doing Spin Sisters by Myrna Blyth. But I'm not there. Went to the doctor today for this cold that has lingered longer than usual and I have pneumonia, first time since I was in grade school. So I'll just snuggle up with a good cat instead of a good book. After a breathing treatment and 3 medications, frankly, I feel much, much worse.

1741 Bone tired, always?

There are good, solid medical reasons to be tired all the time. Various sleep disorders, narcolepsy, shift-work disturbances, post polio syndrome, stroke, post-head injury, Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, hypothyroidism, ADD and Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) to name a few. No matter how much you sleep, you're always tired. And if you can't get the right kind of sleep, you're not going to ever have energy.

Go to the library (or to Google) and research Provigil or Modafinil. It works miracles for some, does nothing for others. Check it out. Ask your doctor--always.

I feel their pain

After the Suze Orman show on MSNBC, I didn't change the channel and a feature came on about a couple with a six figure income living in Buffalo who were having a struggle making it financially. They've already borrowed against their home equity. The wife is a SAHM with an MBA who is still paying off her college loans and has three children. The house and cars were very nice--not palatial, but better than anything I've ever owned. They appeared to be in their early 40s.

Then today USAToday featured the Hetmers of Rockwall, TX, another family (blended) with a six figure income, wife has two jobs and the husband has a sales job that has a base of $30,000 and then he works on commission. He'd been making about $130,000, and this is a new job, probably a step up. They can't borrow against their home equity, because they have none, and have an interest only mortgage. She too is paying off her college loans, and now has decided that her college age son should borrow her half of the costs (his father pays the other half), so they'll have two generations of college loans in that family. She is about 41.

What do you want to bet that neither family tithes their income to a church or synagogue? And yet that's about the best way to stay out of debt that I know of. I don't know why it works, but it does. If you start early enough, you won't have any excess cash to fritter away on eating out or shopping as a hobby. Later, when it's a habit and not a hardship, it will help you focus on what's important in life.

Back to Suze Orman (soapbox alert). I enjoy her show and her dramatics. It's well-paced with good advice. But I wish she'd slap some of these "living together" couples up side the head instead of giving them advice on investments. Living together without marriage screams "lack of commitment," so why should they be mingling funds just because they are mixing body fluids? Marriage isn't always a good financial base, but shacking up never is.

1739 Liberals have all the interesting advocacy programs

In government, the conservatives have all the new and innovative ideas, but in organizations, clubs and workshops, the liberals have cornered the market. I was reading the local freebie paper Saturday at the coffee shop and noted these meetings about town.

CURE [Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants] life skills workshops

8 week course on justice/public policy

Bicycle advocacy group for transportation

Green Party monthly meeting

Earth Institute--Simple living, voluntary simplicity and "deep ecology."

Impact Safety program--self defense for women and children

Mercy for animals--rights of all animals

Arts Relief--art supplies for hurricane victims

Surviving the Violence luncheon

Spirit of the 60s Coffee House

Abortion Access Fund

Health, peace of mind, and mental clarity workshop

Choices for victims of domestic violence

Equal justice

Jewish GLBT

1738 Did Bush get instruction before the Latin America trip?

Generally, when you greet friends and relatives in the Latin culture, here's what you do. When a male greets a female or when a female greets a female, they will gently touch both arms while moving their bodies to about 6 inches apart, then they cock their heads, put their cheeks together, and make a light kissing sound. Their lips don't actually make contact with anything. All this will take about 1 or maybe 2 seconds. For men greeting men, in most areas, it is completely customary to give each other a hug. This may seem unnatural for many people outside of the Latin culture, so you may have to practice hugging a few times before you gain any close friends or relatives that live in Latin areas.

Spanish lesson

1737 The poulets have come home to roost

says Dr. Sanity, "and we should not be glad of it, because this could mean the beginning of the end for a free Europe." She's gathered some comments from other blogs here.

1736 Nothing's changed since I was in school

Actually, a lot has, but not this--students don't like to be called on. Usually, because they aren't prepared. In fact, I'm a little surprised anyone had to study this. But 200 introductory psych students were questioned about "being called on."

"The “top five” behaviors that 125 introductory psychology students said they use to avoid being called on (each endorsed by over 50 percent of the sample) included:

• Avoid eye contact.
  
• Look like you are thinking of the answer (but have not come up with it yet).
  
• Act like you are looking for the answer in your notes.
  
• Act like you are writing in your notes.
  
• Pretend to be reading something course-related.

Other responses included dropping a pen or notebook to look busy, hiding behind the person in front of you — and even a write-in response: pretend to be asleep. Constructive, preemptive participatory behaviors — such as raising one's hand to say something related to the topic or to ask a question about the topic — were endorsed by less than 20 percent of students."

This doesn't sound terribly imaginative of either the students or the authors, but the authors do have some suggestions on getting a discussion going.

1735 More negative news about alcohol advertising

"A study slated to appear in the January issue of Psychological Science suggests the mere presence of alcohol-related images -- including those in advertising -- encourages aggression even if people aren’t drinking." That's all I know, because the issue isn't available yet.

1734 Who owns the computer system on which you're reading this?

Ad Age reports something surprising (to me) about blogs--551,000 years of paid work time is being spent on blog reading! Yikes. Turn me off right now and go back to work, you slacker! And if you're listening to AMC on headphones or a tiny TV stuck in your desk drawer, turn that off too.

A report last week by Advertising Age Editor at Large Bradley Johnson noted that about 35 million workers -- or one in four people in the U.S. labor force -- spend an average of 3.5 hours, or 9%, of each work day reading blogs. This blogification of workplace time is no minor concern -- the total losses across the national work force are estimated to be the equivalent of 551,000 years of paid time that is being spent on blogs via the employer's own computer systems.

Another important point was that the time spent reading blogs on the job was in addition to the time already spent surfing the Web in personal pursuits. The debate appears to be one of reasonable limits. At what point, or at what length of time, does the use of company assets for personal activities become unreasonable? And is the problem likely to become an even greater one as more and more TV content goes online, becoming easily accessible from one's office computer? Do employers need to find new ways to police their computer systems?

AdAge.com

1733 Free marketing and promotion advice

for librarians (but would work for various agencies who are clueless) in ten parts is currently running at Ex Libris. I can't say as I think much of the author's example [Tia Dobi] of the DoD as selling a product for "killing," but once she gets off her liberal soap box, she has some good things to say about how and how not to market libraries.

There are some people who by personality and profession are not inclined to use public libraries--my family, for instance. My daughter and I were together Friday evening for dinner. She brought it in because I've been ill and she stayed until about 9:30. She was explaining to me the plot and intricacies of her latest read--The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. Big, big book. She looked at her watch and said, "Oh Barnes and Noble will be closed. I want to buy 1776." "Don't you ever use a library?" I asked. (I'm totaling up in my head not only the pages, but the cost--it's a mom-thing). "Never. I like to own my books."

OK. I can accept that, but what if libraries had a decent advertising campaign at anytime except when they want to pass bond issues? What if their staff smiled and acted like they were happy to see you, the way boutique clerks do? What if they stopped talking to each other, and asked if you needed help? What if they bought more than 5 copies of books on the best seller list for 2 years? Do librarians think people are immune to advertising? Why is it that magazines, TV and newspapers actually support their product with advertising and appealing to their niche market, if it won't work on the homogeneous general public within driving distance of the public library?

Then there's my husband. He always has a beautiful, fancy library card because he uses the library so rarely, he is always issued a new one each time he shows up. Mine is about 30 years old and has a glued bar code on it because I stop by about once a week. But even that is way down from what it used to be before the internet, databases on-line, and Google.

Come on, librarians, toot your horns a bit.