Random Thoughts Anew

[downer]

It is very sad when friends pass away, but I it might help if their Facebook pages indicated this in some permanent way.  Seeing multiple people wish "happy birthday and many more!" to someone who passed away months ago is a bit jarring.  I would think they would notice the previous posts about the deceased (including obituary posts) or even the "happy heavenly birthday" messages from today! Of course, they may interpret that as hoping that the deceased's birthday will be heavenly.  Who knows.  I guess it just shows that they aren't very close friends? Should someone tell them? Maybe they just forgot.  It's a little awkward, but maybe they'd like to know to edit or delete their posts.

Not Facebook, but I've seen message boards that created permanent memorials to deceased forum members.  It seemed like a nice gesture.

For FB, the family needs to get their profile taken down.
https://www.facebook.com/help/1518259735093203
Maybe contact the family if you know them.

[mamselle]

^ Unrelated.

The more I ponder the rabid, adolescent fixation of certain elements of the political spectrum on crude, polarized, "back-to-1776" "upend the elitist hierarchy" aesthetics and disruptiveness,  the more I blame the unlicensed trolley drivers, eager for tips, in colonial cities like Philadelphia, Boston--not Williamsburg so much, they have a better handle on messaging--etc.

They will say anything (I've heard most of them) to create a dramatic narrative in their 2-minute drive-bys, they totally obliterate nuance and graded contexts for their (mostly wrong) hare-brained tales--and this all started around the time of the Bicentennial, when the trolley companies got city governments to delete the tests required for licensed drivers who gave commented tours, so they could hire them and get them on the road sooner, and start collecting fares faster.

Anyone visiting such towns got high-flying gibberish built on the drivers' imagined, high-profiled conflicts between various factions in the 17th/18th c's (and few understand the graded developments between those eras) and an excited view of the rough-clad heroics of the "patriots " versus the Royalists--which did not spring up overnight and were held in check by civility and a long-abiding sense of shared heritage, even after the cracks began to appear...so that only a third were avidly in favor of direct action, and another third--sometimes within families--opposed.

But--complementing those woefully written partners in this enterprise, the American History course texts of the 1940s-70s/80s--the aging hippy-shaman-Sam Adams wannabes of today came up through that era, made trips to those cities, got infected by those narratives, and internalized those exhalted views of teen-age rebellion as valorous on their vacations.

So, that's why I blame the trolley drivers.

M.

[Juvenal]

Yeah, I miss "Prytania,"  Even back in her day-trading days.  We know what happened after that.

I think we have a few here, back a couple years, for Pry3, InfoPath, and maybe Fiona...

There were a few more on the CHE iteration of the Forum, too.

M.

[apl68]

We've done some weeding in the Western section of our library's popular fiction.  I found a number of anomalies--books that are not genre westerns.  Mostly they were romances with western settings, which should have been cataloged and shelved in the romance section.  But they had covers with western scenes, and often subtitles along the lines of "A Western Story," so westerns they were.  Shelving these romance titles in the western genre section would certainly explain why they went so long without being checked out.  In addition, there were a couple of more literary works or anthologies with western settings--"westerns" in a broad, technical sense, but not genre westerns at all.  And the novel Midnight Cowboy, on which the notorious movie of that title was based.  Which, from what little I know about it, isn't remotely a western, but it has "cowboy" in the title. 

I put it all down to excessive literal-mindedness on the part of the catalogers who used to work here some years back.  That and the fact that this library both went many years without having a single professionally-trained staff member, and has never been part of a larger system that had professional management or catalogers.  That isolation led to all sorts of odd practices.  Once in a while I still find something peculiar left over from those days.

[marshwiggle]

We've done some weeding in the Western section of our library's popular fiction.  I found a number of anomalies--books that are not genre westerns.  Mostly they were romances with western settings, which should have been cataloged and shelved in the romance section.  But they had covers with western scenes, and often subtitles along the lines of "A Western Story," so westerns they were.  Shelving these romance titles in the western genre section would certainly explain why they went so long without being checked out.  In addition, there were a couple of more literary works or anthologies with western settings--"westerns" in a broad, technical sense, but not genre westerns at all.  And the novel Midnight Cowboy, on which the notorious movie of that title was based.  Which, from what little I know about it, isn't remotely a western, but it has "cowboy" in the title. 

I put it all down to excessive literal-mindedness on the part of the catalogers who used to work here some years back.  That and the fact that this library both went many years without having a single professionally-trained staff member, and has never been part of a larger system that had professional management or catalogers. 

It's also due to the fact that art (music, literature, etc.) "genres" represent a categorization that is approximate. Reality in its infinite variety is much more broad than that. There are always going to be works that defy any clear-cut fit into existing categories.

The distinction between categories like "science fiction" and "fantasy" is pretty blurry in some cases, since the very nature of both involves all kinds of alternate worlds that can be different from ours in virtually any way imaginable. And as Arthur C. Clarke said,
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[apl68]

We've done some weeding in the Western section of our library's popular fiction.  I found a number of anomalies--books that are not genre westerns.  Mostly they were romances with western settings, which should have been cataloged and shelved in the romance section.  But they had covers with western scenes, and often subtitles along the lines of "A Western Story," so westerns they were.  Shelving these romance titles in the western genre section would certainly explain why they went so long without being checked out.  In addition, there were a couple of more literary works or anthologies with western settings--"westerns" in a broad, technical sense, but not genre westerns at all.  And the novel Midnight Cowboy, on which the notorious movie of that title was based.  Which, from what little I know about it, isn't remotely a western, but it has "cowboy" in the title. 

I put it all down to excessive literal-mindedness on the part of the catalogers who used to work here some years back.  That and the fact that this library both went many years without having a single professionally-trained staff member, and has never been part of a larger system that had professional management or catalogers. 

It's also due to the fact that art (music, literature, etc.) "genres" represent a categorization that is approximate. Reality in its infinite variety is much more broad than that. There are always going to be works that defy any clear-cut fit into existing categories.

The distinction between categories like "science fiction" and "fantasy" is pretty blurry in some cases, since the very nature of both involves all kinds of alternate worlds that can be different from ours in virtually any way imaginable. And as Arthur C. Clarke said,
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

That's all true, but assigning books to these genre sections usually isn't rocket science, so to speak.  You're right that there are times when what section to put an item in can be a judgement call.  But putting a romance with cowboys in it in the western section, instead of in romance?  Putting Midnight Cowboy, which is about prostitution and con artistry in contemporary New York City, in the western section because it has "cowboy" in the title?  Those were complete non sequitur choices. 

At least they didn't catalog it for one section and then decide to shelve it in another without changing the spine label first.  We used to have books like that.  I'm not sure they entirely understood what assigning call numbers was all about in the first place. 

[mamselle]

Don't new book purchases come with recommended call numbr breakdowns anyway?

Pretty sure I saw some in my 3-month temp stint at a school library in the...uh...80s/90s? (The joys of barcoding had just arrived,, we were hired to link up the old books...)

M.

[secundem_artem]

What momentary episode of fever swamp dementia motivated you to take the door off the fvcking stove and further, to take the damn thing apart???  And now, you can't get it back on.  Were you high???  What the AF were you thinking???

[AmLitHist]

What momentary episode of fever swamp dementia motivated you to take the door off the fvcking stove and further, to take the damn thing apart???  And now, you can't get it back on.  Were you high???  What the AF were you thinking???

I know you're furious, Artem, but this made me laugh (only because it sounds just like stuff that happens around here).

Viz:

Instead of asking his buddy who runs the mower repair/self storage place to help load Kid #1's self-propelled mower into his Blazer yesterday, nope, HE could do it himself.  (He's over 60, with tons of back and knee and assorted other problems, plus, currently in a hard boot waiting for surgery to repair a shredded and detached tendon.)  Of course, he did go ask for help, after getting the mower part-way loaded, then losing balance/control of it and falling full force on his knees (the right one of which is scheduled for replacement after the foot gets fixed).  Oh, and he also got a nasty gash in front of his ear when a bolt on the mower caught him.

Some days I just give the hell up, not least because all those years ago when he could and did do such things every day, he'd look for excuses NOT to do them.  Now that he can't do them. . . . . SIGH.

[jimbogumbo]

Oof! The Ontario Teacher's Plan had $420 million in FTX.

[marshwiggle]

Oof! The Ontario Teacher's Plan had $420 million in FTX.

Serves them right. Crypto is, at best, an idea for very limited applications. As an investment, it's just another Ponzi scheme.

[jimbogumbo]

Oof! The Ontario Teacher's Plan had $420 million in FTX.

Serves them right. Crypto is, at best, an idea for very limited applications. As an investment, it's just another Ponzi scheme.

I agree with part 2. Serves them right? No. We all rely on financial plan managers to make the right decisions, as that is the only game in town. I at least have some choice; when it's a pension plan the participants are at the mercy of the plan managers.

[marshwiggle]

Oof! The Ontario Teacher's Plan had $420 million in FTX.

Serves them right. Crypto is, at best, an idea for very limited applications. As an investment, it's just another Ponzi scheme.

I agree with part 2. Serves them right? No. We all rely on financial plan managers to make the right decisions, as that is the only game in town. I at least have some choice; when it's a pension plan the participants are at the mercy of the plan managers.

But pension plans should be choosing safe investments. If they chose managers who promised aggressive growth, then they were setting themselves up for a fall.

[ciao_yall]

Oof! The Ontario Teacher's Plan had $420 million in FTX.

Serves them right. Crypto is, at best, an idea for very limited applications. As an investment, it's just another Ponzi scheme.

I agree with part 2. Serves them right? No. We all rely on financial plan managers to make the right decisions, as that is the only game in town. I at least have some choice; when it's a pension plan the participants are at the mercy of the plan managers.

But pension plans should be choosing safe investments. If they chose managers who promised aggressive growth, then they were setting themselves up for a fall.

The people who will end up paying for this are the pensioners, who planned for this money in retirement. And/or the taxpayers who will have to bail out the fund.

[jimbogumbo]

A piece of random commentary from a different online community I frequent.

"Son Pete, who loved dinosaurs, piled green peas on his plate because I told him that Parasauralophuses loved peas."