James LaRue - myliblog

Recently I had lunch with a friend, a very successful businesswoman, who went off on a rant. She said three things that made me laugh. First she quoted some of the wackier comments of the current GOP presidential candidates (particularly Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, and Ron Paul). There were some doozies. Then she said she blamed Ronald Reagan. Again I laughed. "No, really," she said. "Reagan cut funding for mental institutions. So there are more crazy people on the streets. "And you know," she said, leaning forward, eyes wide, "we find crazy people very attractive!" I laughed again. But the more I think about it, the more I think she's right. I don't watch TV much, but at a hotel one night I surfed around until I found some kind of game show. Ladies were licking bugs off the windshield of a car. For money, I think. I hope they got money. And when they completed that task, the gleeful emcee said, "OK, but will they...?"...

On Friday, August 12, 2011, Denver District Judge Michael A. Martinez granted a permanent injunction against Douglas County School District's "Choice Scholarship Program." A link to that decision is here . It's 68 pages long. I read it through this morning and found it fascinating and instructive on many levels. No doubt the DCSD will appeal it, but the decision, and the judge's language, is both clear and definite. The voucher program demonstrably violates Colorado's Constitution, and it seems to me that that was precisely its intent. The judge concluded that the likelihood of the plaintiffs prevailing is very high; the likelihood of DCSD prevailing is very low. I haven't written or said much about this lately, because I think the original complaint pretty much said it all. (Please note the exact language of the Constitution therein.) Finally, it was a straightforward legal question, and I really didn't see how the voucher program could possibl...

Taken with my little Palm Pre, then rotated and cropped in Gimp. Found art.

I know, that sounds a little insulting. But it's true. Click here to see graphs and everything.

I burned a copy of Fedora 15, then loaded it first on my desktop machine, and now on my Acer netbook. A few brief comments. First, it did load, relatively quickly, on both machines. The desktop image is lovely, and it's all very spare. I got it to talk to both wireless cards without incident. Second, on the Acer I had to go into the System Settings (much easier than older Gnome 2) and fiddle with the touchpad to enable one tap clicking. The default resolution is right on the Acer too -- I had to fiddle with the display on my desktop. (1024x768 seems to be the standard laptop). But the Gnome 3, or Fedora 15, fonts are too skinny. Third, it was a little jarring to try to move around from one active program to the next. Instead of just clicking on a panel, you have to click on Activities, then a sort of panel on the right, then the item. That replaces one click with three, which seems LESS efficient. Fourth, but it's fun to learn new things, stretch the brain. For now,...

Click here to listen to two of my favorite people speaking with deep passion and warmth -- and a lot of high mutual regard -- about the wonderful profession of librarianship.

This image (thank you Rochelle Logan!) details my attempt to describe to my public library board of trustees, and the public generally, just what we do. Not what we say we do, or think we do. What we can actually measure. Note: you may have to click on the image to make it large enough to see clearly. I began by sorting (by descending volume) of all the statistics my library (the Douglas County Libraries in Douglas County, Colorado) gathered in the year 2010 (January-December). There are seven broad categories of use that far overshadow everything else. AFTER these stats, it's a drop of an order of magnitude (a factor of ten). This is what my library DOES. I've carried this around for awhile, and think the only big things missing are these: * wireless use. This is growing very rapidly. it might be as big as PC use. (It turns out we have captured this. It's about 4,000 to 6,000 a month, so 48,000 to 72,000 a year. Right now, that puts it midway between the 7 things...