tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70606354365789183662024-03-15T20:10:11.817-05:00Words, Ideas, and ThingsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger126125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-85965906871972761452014-06-25T13:20:00.000-05:002014-06-25T14:49:13.705-05:00On Living Life and Accepting Death<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj59E5hA8bnSE18g4kJu1c6NPOIGN_oAWasMTrIb_cZiXL_0Ej13S6TYyzvx41_uvzIYXv-_3xesO8m_LhOnWvEhACZMlOB9pMpBSi73MhbSBxXQvPq4iWmJp-VLBvhXNrxBGrRRwZy50M/s1600/3194644538_3faaccb194_b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj59E5hA8bnSE18g4kJu1c6NPOIGN_oAWasMTrIb_cZiXL_0Ej13S6TYyzvx41_uvzIYXv-_3xesO8m_LhOnWvEhACZMlOB9pMpBSi73MhbSBxXQvPq4iWmJp-VLBvhXNrxBGrRRwZy50M/s1600/3194644538_3faaccb194_b.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"> photo by Lari Huttunen (cc by-nc-nd 2.0) </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I don’t believe in an afterlife, which means I do believe in death. It shouldn’t be such a strange thing to believe life ends in death, but most people believe or at least hope for more. Death denial is an understandable impulse; sometimes it even extends to family pets, but less often to other animals. We want ourselves and those we care about to carry on. We won’t. They won’t. <br />
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
Does the reality of death mean life doesn’t matter? No, it means life is the only thing that matters. You get once chance to exist and it’s happening now. Now is the time to love, the time to learn, the time to create, the time to enjoy yourself and choose to either bring comfort or suffering to others. </div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
What about jerks who prosper in life and kind people who live hard lives? Doesn’t the reality of death mean the world is unjust? Yes. That may sound harsh, but how kind is it to tell people that the suffering and deaths of their loved ones is for the best? It can be disheartening to know we can’t make everything better, but what we can do matters all the more because there’s no other help on the way. </div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
Besides, popular alternatives tend to be worse. At least suffering and injustice end along with life. Mainstream Christian and Muslim beliefs promise unending joy for a select few and unending suffering for most people. That’s solving a house fire with an atom bomb.</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
Why not just have as much pleasure in life as possible and forget about other people? Well, there’s nothing wrong with pleasure. Pleasure is great and it comes in many satisfying forms! As a loved one says: “No time enjoyed is entirely wasted.” As for ignoring the suffering of other people, moral philosophers have tried in vain to find a reason for completely selfish people to care about others. You have to start with caring a little. Thankfully, most of us do. We don’t have to solve whole categories of suffering on our own; we can cooperate with others, working within the limits of our imperfect empathy and our incomplete understanding to make our lives a little better.</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
“If I can stop one heart from breaking,<br />
I shall not live in vain;<br />
If I can ease one life the aching,<br />
Or cool one pain,<br />
Or help one fainting robin<br />
Unto his nest again,<br />
I shall not live in vain.”</div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; -qt-paragraph-type: empty; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="-qt-block-indent: 0; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0px;">
— Emily Dickinson</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-27208598583051439852014-05-16T09:07:00.000-05:002014-05-16T09:40:47.075-05:00Quote of the Day: Jensen on Library Neutrality"Take a simple example involving the common assumption in the United States that the capitalist economic system is the only rational and morally defensible way to organize an economy. There can be, and often is, much debate about how to structure and administer a capitalist economy, but the system itself is rarely contested, despite centuries of resistance to capitalism around the world and considerable intellectual work underlying that resistance. Now, imagine that a librarian wants to produce a display of the libraryʼs resources on economics to encourage patrons to think about the subject. In many libraries such a display would include no critiques of capitalism, but simply literature that takes capitalism as a given. Such a display that ignores critical material likely would produce no controversy (except perhaps a few complaints from anti-capitalists about the absence of critique, who could easily be dismissed as cranks). It is unlikely that school boards or city councils would take up the issue of the obvious bias against socialism and other non-capitalist economic systems. Consider what might happen if a librarian charged with this task actually produced a display that carefully balanced the amount of material from as many different perspectives as s/he could identify. In many places, that display would be denounced for its 'obvious' socialist politics. Now, imagine that a librarian, observing the way in which Americans are systematically kept from being exposed to anti-capitalist ideas in the schools and mass media, decides to organize materials that compensate for that societal failure by emphasizing critiques of capitalism. That librarian could be guaranteed not only criticism and charges of political bias, but likely disciplinary action.<br />
<br />
My point is simply that all of those decisions have a political dimension, which is unavoidable. My concern here is not which one is the right decision, but that the librarian whose display is in line with the conventional wisdom likely will escape criticism while any other choices will raise questions about 'politicizing' what should be a professional decision. Unfortunately, this neutrality game will derail rather than foster serious discussion of the issues."<br />
<br />
- from "The Myth of the Neutral Professional" by Robert Jensen in <a href="http://www.progressivelibrariansguild.org/PL_Jnl/contents24.shtml"><u><i>Progressive Librarian</i> Issue #24</u></a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-42782973489477962182013-12-02T23:52:00.000-06:002013-12-02T23:53:39.470-06:00Quote of the Day: Barack Obama on Special Interests<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDq5KpmL8uNOzWOVZJLGHDmk0VXzhAhTgfZXiVeKIPi17prvG7_jfSH16SuV-ebJ3MNmTLIh_umx8etUDy18uCoHvSJ9Me3G1XBev8PT3ay30J_yJIQMqrFohvJjG3VgZk97w_jrIgUeo/s1600/audacityofhope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDq5KpmL8uNOzWOVZJLGHDmk0VXzhAhTgfZXiVeKIPi17prvG7_jfSH16SuV-ebJ3MNmTLIh_umx8etUDy18uCoHvSJ9Me3G1XBev8PT3ay30J_yJIQMqrFohvJjG3VgZk97w_jrIgUeo/s320/audacityofhope.jpg" width="210" /></a>"I've never been entirely comfortable with the term 'special-interests,' which lumps together ExxonMobil and bricklayers, the pharmaceutical lobby and the parents of special-ed kids. Most political scientists would probably disagree with me, but to my mind, there's a difference between a corporate lobby whose clout is based on money alone, and a group of like-minded individuals<span class="st">—</span>whether they be textile workers, gun aficionados, veterans, or family farmers<span class="st">—</span>coming together to promote their interests; between those who use their economic power to magnify their political influence far beyond what their numbers might justify, and those who are simply seeking to pool their votes to sway their representatives. The former subvert the very idea of democracy. The latter are its essence."<br />
<br />
<span class="st">— Barack Obama, <i>The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream</i>, 2006, p. 116.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-67207651952230290402013-11-20T00:50:00.000-06:002013-11-20T10:43:39.218-06:00Quote of the Day: Barack Obama on Reading Critically<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUm3Alelmx9R7BcZx3wGTuvDdRyiih-LRvR79ldaffbOOhzO6wErucw66-1DMQAlvkcmRrhs1qA-y9HymrpEZID_cOzVExYKaBuLm1k038ZH-Uz24iyMMXBJ5yZuhPUVObUBK51DLZzTo/s1600/HeartOfDarkness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUm3Alelmx9R7BcZx3wGTuvDdRyiih-LRvR79ldaffbOOhzO6wErucw66-1DMQAlvkcmRrhs1qA-y9HymrpEZID_cOzVExYKaBuLm1k038ZH-Uz24iyMMXBJ5yZuhPUVObUBK51DLZzTo/s320/HeartOfDarkness.jpg" width="183" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 1950 edition.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
‘“Sister Regina,” Marcus said. “You know Barack, don’t you? I’m trying to tell Brother Barack here about this racist tract he’s reading.”<br />
<br />
He held up a copy of <i>Heart of Darkness</i>, evidence for the court. I reached over to snatch it out of his hands.<br />
<br />
“Man, stop waving that thing around.”<br />
<br />
“See there,” Marcus said, “Makes you embarrassed, don’t it—just being seen with a book like this. I’m telling you, man, this stuff will poison your mind.” He looked at his watch. “Damn, I’m late for class.” He leaned over and pecked Regina on the cheek. “Talk to this brother, will you? I think he can still be saved.”<br />
<br />
Regina smiled and shook her head as we watched Marcus stride out the door. “Marcus is in one of his preaching moods, I see.” I toss the book in my backpack.<br />
<br />
“Actually, he’s right,” I said. “It is a racist book. The way Conrad sees it, Africa’s the cesspool of the world, black folks are savages, and any contact with them breeds infection.”<br />
<br />
Regina blew on her coffee. “So why are you reading it.”<br />
“Because it’s assigned.” I paused, not sure if I should go on. “And because—“<br />
“Because…”<br />
<br />
“And because the book teaches me things,” I said. “About white people, I mean. See, the book’s not really about Africa. Or black people. It’s about the man who wrote it. The European. The American. A particular way of looking at the world. If you can keep your distance, it’s all there, in what’s said and what’s left unsaid. So I read the book to help me understand just what it is that makes white people so afraid. Their demons. The way ideas get twisted around. It helps me understand how people learn to hate.”’<br />
<br />
— Barack Obama recounting a college experience in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/88061.Dreams_from_My_Father"><u>Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance</u></a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-34288452249763828612013-11-03T00:59:00.000-05:002013-11-03T08:45:58.228-06:00How We Know Abstinence-Only Education Doesn't Work<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXzxSZ-WiLr7cTat3ho0bBO7xGYlaYzkLFKuJ2F-3HFcuahyWGnbwj9WmUTKdOtyWR_5S6tFjJiJzmWGG5QH1hqlBmBvUofl3G9fFLIng-XKlbBGcCyoLyii2_EyI4hPZHXkt1H89Div0/s1600/sexed.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXzxSZ-WiLr7cTat3ho0bBO7xGYlaYzkLFKuJ2F-3HFcuahyWGnbwj9WmUTKdOtyWR_5S6tFjJiJzmWGG5QH1hqlBmBvUofl3G9fFLIng-XKlbBGcCyoLyii2_EyI4hPZHXkt1H89Div0/s320/sexed.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Abstinence-only education does not reduce teen pregnancy. If it did, decades of research would have demonstrated this many times over. Instead, research results have been overwhelmingly inconclusive or the opposite of what its advocates would like to see.<br />
<br />
A method of "education" characterized by <i>limiting </i>what is taught had better yield clear practical benefits. At least then there might be a trade-off between knowledge and behavior. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Rise of Abstinence-Only Education In the United States</b></div>
<br />
Federal funding for abstinence-only programs began in 1982 with the <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3098594/Blog%20Files/Adolescent%20Family%20Life%20Act.pdf"><u>Adolescent Family Life Act</u></a>, which was part of the previous year's omnibus spending bill (blue "AFLA" line on the chart below). This sent millions of dollars annually to programs aimed at preventing "adolescent sexual activity and adolescent pregnancy." These programs were encouraged to partner with "religious and charitable" organizations, which led to such a degree of religious involvement that a case went up to the Supreme Court by 1988. In <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/487/589/case.html"><u><i>Bowen v. Kendrick</i> (487 U.S. 589)</u></a>, the Court decided that the Act was not unconstitutional on its face, but did note that there appeared to be "impermissible" specific applications, which it called for other courts to examine. <br />
<br />
In 1998, <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3098594/Blog%20Files/Excerpt%20from%20Public%20Law%20104-193.pdf"><u>a major welfare reform</u></a> dramatically increased funding for abstinence-only programs (red "Title V" line on chart below). This bill defined an abstinence education program as one which:<br />
<ol>
<li>Has as its exclusive purpose, teaching the social, psychological, and health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity</li>
<li>Teaches abstinence from sexual activity outside marriage as the expected standard for all school age children</li>
<li>Teaches that abstinence from sexual activity is the only certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and other associated health problems</li>
<li>Teaches that a mutually faithful monogamous relationship in context of marriage is the expected standard of human sexual activity</li>
<li>Teaches that sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects</li>
<li>Teaches that bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society</li>
<li>Teaches young people how to reject sexual advances and how alcohol and drug use increases vulnerability to sexual advances</li>
<li>Teaches the importance of attaining self-sufficiency before engaging in sexual activity</li>
</ol>
In 2001, additional federal funding began flowing from the <a href="https://www.cfda.gov/?s=program&mode=form&tab=step1&id=2669b7b6ff9d8ca773891d1d70ac1a61"><u>Community Based Abstinence Education</u></a> program (purple "CBAE" line on the chart below). The overall progression has been from low funding in the 80s and early 90s, medium funding in the late 90s, peak funding in the 00s, and back down to medium funding through at least 2014, thanks to $50 million per year allocated <a href="http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/high-school-notes/2011/12/28/abstinence-only-education-debate-resurfaces"><u>as part of the Affordable Care Act</u></a>. In other words, the red line holds steady for three more years than this chart depicts:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFGIHpniEWupNTC4icfP_xDXBDgxP7FfPXOrFml98pQbjsDtzZ2_1P2qV-W4dqDPXG9miZ5xDE-mpJPYHk5EFc_PWawd2OwX5AqZGtOMLVcQuEkfkk188Ku9TeCmRY_CBCOZXwHqfVJKw/s1600/7+Federal+Abstinence-Only+Funding+Graph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFGIHpniEWupNTC4icfP_xDXBDgxP7FfPXOrFml98pQbjsDtzZ2_1P2qV-W4dqDPXG9miZ5xDE-mpJPYHk5EFc_PWawd2OwX5AqZGtOMLVcQuEkfkk188Ku9TeCmRY_CBCOZXwHqfVJKw/s640/7+Federal+Abstinence-Only+Funding+Graph.jpg" width="492" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=page.viewPage&pageID=1340</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Two decades and well over a billion tax dollars later, there is no scientific evidence that programs matching the 8-point definition are effective at reducing teen pregnancy.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>An Official Investigation</b></div>
<br />
As part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Congress authorized funds for a scientific study of Title V abstinence-only programs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) contracted this study out to <a href="http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/About_Us/"><u>Mathematica Policy Research, Inc</u></a>. After years of study, Mathematica submitted its final report to HHS in April, 2007: <u><br /></u><br />
<a href="http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/"><u>http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/</u></a><br />
<br />
To maximize the opportunity for positive, reliable results, this study focused on four school programs that were <b>especially intensive</b> and could be <b>especially well documented</b>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"All programs offered more than 50 contact hours
and lasted for one or more school years, making them relatively intense among
programs funded by the Title V, Section 510 grant." (Trenholm, 2007, p. 2)<br />
<br />
"These four programs are called 'impact sites' because they had program features and staff capable of supporting a rigorous, experimental-design impact evaluation." (ibid., p. 7)</blockquote>
Over twelve-hundred students were involved in these four programs, with over eight-hundred students in control groups. To measure differences over time, follow-up surveys were given from 42 to 78 months after the surveys given at the beginning of each program (ibid., p. 19). It was just the sort of broad-but-detailed study that would have stood up to scrutiny from critics of abstinence-only education. Some conclusions:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"None of the individual programs had statistically significant impacts on
the rate of sexual abstinence, whether measured as either always remaining
abstinent or being abstinent during the last 12 months." (ibid., p. 30)<br />
<br />
"Program and control group youth also did not differ in the number of partners with whom they had sex." (ibid., p. 31)<br />
<br />
"Programs did not affect the age at which sexually experienced youth first engaged in sexual intercourse" (ibid., p. 31)<br />
<br />
"Forty percent of program group youth reported that they expected to abstain from sex until marriage compared with 37 percent of control group youth, a difference that is not statistically significant" (ibid., p. 32)<br />
<br />
"Across the individual programs, estimated impacts on unprotected sex, measured either at first intercourse or in the last 12 months, were likewise small and statistically insignificant" (ibid., p. 34)<br />
<br />
"Ten percent of youth in both the program and control groups reported having been pregnant or gotten someone pregnant, and roughly half of them (five percent overall) reported that they had had a baby." (ibid., p. 35)<br />
<br />
"[P]rograms raised the proportion of youth who reported that condoms never prevent HIV from an estimated 17 to 21 percent; the proportion who reported that condoms never prevent chlamydia and gonorrhea from an estimated 14 to 20 percent; and the proportion who reported that condoms never prevent herpes and HPV from an estimated 15 to 23 percent." (ibid. p. 46)</blockquote>
Yikes! These golden examples of abstinence-only education programs failed to alter behaviors or even attitudes. They did, however, increase the number of teens who believed condoms were useless for STI protection.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>State Studies</b></div>
<br />
A number of states have run evaluations on their own abstinence only programs. Unfortunately, these state studies haven't generally been models of scientific rigor. No control group, or no follow-up, or both! Although abstinence-only education failed to come out looking good in any of the studies, opponents of abstinence-only education should not rely on desired results that come from shoddy methods. Advocates for Youth put together a summary of these state studies here:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/stateevaluations.pdf"><u>Five Years of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Education: Assessing the Impact</u></a><br />
<br />
Two of these studies <i>did </i>include both a control group and a follow-up. California's 17-months-later follow-up found that program students were no less likely than control students to have become sexually active, pregnant, or infected (Kirby, 1997). The program was cancelled based on these results. Missouri's smaller study had similar findings (Hauser, 2004).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Abstinence Until Ready</b></div>
<br />
In 2010 a rigorous scientific study came out that showed a positive effect for abstinence education:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=382798"><u>Efficacy of a Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention Over 24 Months: A Randomized Controlled Trial With Young Adolescents</u></a><br />
<br />
But there's a catch. This abstinence program deliberately <i>did not </i>match up with federal standards for abstinence-only education:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It
was not designed to meet federal criteria for abstinence-only programs.
For instance, the target behavior was abstaining from vaginal, anal,
and oral intercourse until a time later in life when the adolescent is
more prepared to handle the consequences of sex. The intervention did
not contain inaccurate information, portray sex in a negative light, or
use a moralistic tone. The training and curriculum manual explicitly
instructed the facilitators not to disparage the efficacy of condoms or
allow the view that condoms are ineffective to go uncorrected.
The
results of this trial should not be taken to mean that all
abstinence-only interventions are efficacious. This trial tested a
theory-based abstinence-only intervention that would not meet federal
criteria for abstinence programs and that is not vulnerable to many
criticisms that have been leveled against interventions that meet
federal criteria." (Jemmott, 2010)</blockquote>
The study's authors suggested a role for this kind of modified abstinence education program: an improvement over federally-defined abstinence education in communities that will not allow comprehensive sex education. It still lacks much of the information of comprehensive programs, but at least it doesn't encourage false and fearful beliefs...which evidently don't help anyway.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Correlations</b></div>
<br />
Good news! Teen pregnancies, teen abortions, and births to teens have been falling:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ctwQYZbvp81hwAENkaoujahiv_WxSRdx6aBZqz_U8eG1YvBSVCwAeAI1R12goolJP04wn_8KYxce1_XXEitsicWLML9-nTH-zKeH4WEJeOOwJzWBHLLaCxWzuEp9_y1BspbBg0uYv8c/s1600/rates.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0ctwQYZbvp81hwAENkaoujahiv_WxSRdx6aBZqz_U8eG1YvBSVCwAeAI1R12goolJP04wn_8KYxce1_XXEitsicWLML9-nTH-zKeH4WEJeOOwJzWBHLLaCxWzuEp9_y1BspbBg0uYv8c/s400/rates.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Can this be attributed to abstinence-only programs? Perhaps the studies above are accurate within their particular contexts, but are missing out on big picture trends. <b>If the states that require or emphasize abstinence-only education are generally the states with lower pregnancy rates, then it might be worth looking further into abstinence-only education</b>. Someone did, in fact, look for this pattern.<br />
<br />
Using information on state laws and policies in 2005, researchers assigned each state with relevant laws or policies a level from 3 to 0 (Stanger-Hall, 2011):<br />
<ul>
<li>Level Three - abstinence-only education, according to federal guidelines.</li>
<li>Level Two - abstinence stressed, but discussion of contraception methods not forbidden.</li>
<li>Level One - abstinence covered as part of comprehensive sex education.</li>
<li>Level Zero - abstinence not specifically mentioned in sex education.</li>
</ul>
How did the states do?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvOk-4I-7ZTr2HflUsfQ2s-ZUq6n0R82t4lY7DdS15nZ5NCrf-eB_waU5YFK10cAKI-gSdwGGN1l8atkaYLvMJyLxog8f5JLeQPHr0noNMATikm4XfTjkxX-jKE7owZVUhWVLxJO91z24/s1600/pregnancy-chart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvOk-4I-7ZTr2HflUsfQ2s-ZUq6n0R82t4lY7DdS15nZ5NCrf-eB_waU5YFK10cAKI-gSdwGGN1l8atkaYLvMJyLxog8f5JLeQPHr0noNMATikm4XfTjkxX-jKE7owZVUhWVLxJO91z24/s400/pregnancy-chart.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
So much for abstinence-only showing promise in the big picture. Here are comparison charts for pregnancies, abortions, and births (ibid.):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1OBKrE7sRa4aR8hPRJVnCpJlavUid7mbVwIBHezOM_jx17PbEFGeBOLz7GgQb07zh31kLJOCwSwsiqJAIggKG4z6twQzKdxlTohEZVbDw2UErTnFRrlYgdgKMGZV4UJCUQJbkhw1IMTc/s1600/charts.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1OBKrE7sRa4aR8hPRJVnCpJlavUid7mbVwIBHezOM_jx17PbEFGeBOLz7GgQb07zh31kLJOCwSwsiqJAIggKG4z6twQzKdxlTohEZVbDw2UErTnFRrlYgdgKMGZV4UJCUQJbkhw1IMTc/s640/charts.png" width="298" /></a></div>
<br />
As far as teen pregnancy goes, abstinence-only education may actually be worse than sex ed that <i>never mentions abstinence as an option</i>!<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Conclusion</b></div>
<br />
Other issues aside, abstinence-only education does not improve teen abstinence. Its advocates should at the very least be seeking to reform it to be more like the "Theory-Based Abstinence-Only Intervention" mentioned above that went against federal guidelines and showed promise. Personally, I suspect the focus on postponing all sex until marriage is so unrealistic (and not even a worthy ideal) that teen audiences are lost to the positive message that it's OK to wait until both people are ready to make a considered, responsible choice.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>References</b> </div>
<br />
Kirby, D., Korpi, M., Barth, R.P., Cagampang, H.H. (May/June 1997). The impact of the postponing sexual involvement curriculum among youths in California. <i>Family Planning Perspectives, 29</i>(3). Retrieved from <a href="http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2910097.html"><u>http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/2910097.html</u></a><br />
<br />
Hauser, D. (2004) Five years of abstinence-only-until-marriage education: Assessing the impact. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/stateevaluations.pdf"><u>http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/storage/advfy/documents/stateevaluations.pdf</u></a><br />
<br />
Jemmott, J.B., Jemmott, L.S., Fong, G.T. (2010) Efficacy of a theory-based abstinence-only intervention over 24 months: A randomized controlled trial with young adolescents. <i>Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 164</i>(2), 152-159. Retrieved from <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.267"><u>http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/archpediatrics.2009.267</u></a><br />
<br />
Stanger-Hall, K.F., Hall, D.W. (October 2011). Abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates: Why we need comprehensive sex education in the U.S. <i>Plos ONE</i>. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0024658"><u>http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0024658</u></a><br />
<br />
Trenholm, C., Devaney, B., Fortson, K., et al. (April 2007). Impacts of four Title V, Section 510 abstinence education programs final report. Retrieved from <a href="http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/"><u>http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/abstinence07/</u></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-90379731815645170692013-10-25T08:58:00.000-05:002013-10-25T08:58:19.009-05:00Quote of the Day: Neil Gaiman on the Power of Fiction"I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?<br />
<br />
It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.<br />
<br />
Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different."<br />
<br />
<span class="st">— Neil Gaiman, <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming"><u>as quoted by The Guardian on October 15, 2013</u></a></span>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-55075725353959193482013-09-21T18:31:00.000-05:002013-09-21T18:31:09.368-05:00When Librarians Go To War: The ALA War Service 1917-18<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[T]o make better men of the soldiers as well as to make better soldiers of the men."<sup>1</sup></blockquote>
World War I lasted from 1914 to 1918, with the United States finally entering the war in 1917. In April of 1917, the American Library Association<span class="st">—a small organization at the time with a $24,000 yearly budget</span><span class="st"><sup>2</sup>—</span>offered to provide professional library services to U.S. military camps <i>and to raise the funds to do so</i>! By the end of the war, the ALA had collected millions of dollars and book donations, built over thirty camp libraries, and employed hundreds of librarians. More importantly, the idea of<span class="st">—</span>and appreciation for<span class="st">—</span>free library services was spread to every corner of the nation, even to communities far from early library strongholds like Boston and New York.<br />
<br />
Today's libraries are well-established, but there are worries about public commitment to free library services. One lesson contemporary librarians can take away from the ALA's War Service is that tapping into public interests can enable services beyond what seems possible with the existing budget. Such initiatives can then boost community appreciation for free library services.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>A Bold Proposal</b></div>
<br />
Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress, first proposed the idea of the ALA providing books to military men in a private meeting with an assistant to the Secretary of War.<sup>3</sup> Between this meeting in April 1917 and the ALA's annual conference in June 1917, Putnam strategically promoted the idea and formed a committee.<sup>4</sup> With this backing in place, he distributed the committee's report at the conference. The report (unsurprisingly) concluded that what the Association had before it was "an extraordinary opportunity."<sup>5</sup> This sentiment was widely accepted and echoed. Soon afterward, Raymond Fosdick, the chairman of the War Department's Committee on Training Camp Activities, extended an official invitation. The American Library Association assumed responsibility for providing service to the nation's thirty-two domestic training camps.<sup>6</sup><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Bring Your Own Library</b></div>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4YLf2y5cwcViqfXPKpmyzHQjYoJi52jQN5i2rTyvh-IG9fi1dkNdPXdLcncfLxf7AbCd5S68SBnXnOmnPHFfnSwAXT87FccVdx12MyV8ahmOc2KjsixB2R3mnLtBWder3r8q1OX5Gk08/s1600/bookweek.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4YLf2y5cwcViqfXPKpmyzHQjYoJi52jQN5i2rTyvh-IG9fi1dkNdPXdLcncfLxf7AbCd5S68SBnXnOmnPHFfnSwAXT87FccVdx12MyV8ahmOc2KjsixB2R3mnLtBWder3r8q1OX5Gk08/s320/bookweek.jpg" width="211" /></a>Each camp was populated by thirty-thousand to fifty-thousand soldiers, for a total of over 1.3 million potential readers.<sup>7</sup> Government grants were not sought. Instead, the War Finance Committee of the ALA made plans to raise the money and collect supplies from private donors! The first step was to raise funds needed to run the main fundraising campaign. $50,000 was <i>temporarily</i> donated mainly from ALA's own resources, Baker & Taylor publishers, and the Rockefeller Foundation.<sup>8</sup> These seed funds would be paid back from the main campaign, which had a goal of raising a million dollars. The Carnegie Corporation approved a $320,000 grant in September 1917 ($10,000 per camp). By April 1918, the million dollar overall goal had been reached, with an additional $750,000 beyond that!<sup>9</sup><br />
<br />
For a second fundraising drive, the ALA joined the YMCA and five other private organizations involved in training camp services for a United War Work Campaign. The ALA didn't sit back content with general advertising for the combined effort; library-themed posters and bookmarks were created and sent out in huge numbers.<sup>10</sup> By a quirk of history, the first day of the United War Work Campaign turned out to be Armistice Day: November 11, 1918. The campaign raised $205 million anyway! The ALA's portion was 3.8 million, which allowed library services to continue until the ALA could hand off management to the various military branches in an orderly fashion from 1919 to 1921.<sup>11</sup><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWEMOdnBrJ6jIv2AHhQGnbaAzsjElj9fz1aZnMO-DizyghfuQ1zqLX4Og9pqEFvdWx9S_YNDk-rfPh6OHKWSMW3_dYAhI7iDPKMyRGzgUMWLizkn7JQWbtJ6SnsNPWAv1pL0aC-ECcnKM/s1600/bookswanted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWEMOdnBrJ6jIv2AHhQGnbaAzsjElj9fz1aZnMO-DizyghfuQ1zqLX4Og9pqEFvdWx9S_YNDk-rfPh6OHKWSMW3_dYAhI7iDPKMyRGzgUMWLizkn7JQWbtJ6SnsNPWAv1pL0aC-ECcnKM/s320/bookswanted.jpg" width="209" /></a>The ALA ran a book collection drive over the same period as the first money drive. By June 1918, over <i>two million</i> donated books had been collected and sent to domestic training camps.<sup>12</sup> Almost 300,000 had been shipped overseas, a riskier affair as several of the ships were sunk on the way by enemy submarines.<sup>13</sup> Troops also received about five million magazines,<sup>14</sup> not through ALA drives, but through a postal service program. Journals and magazines carried the following notice from the Postmaster General:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"When you finish reading this magazine place a 1-cent stamp on this notice, hand same to any postal employee and it will be placed in the hands of our soldiers or sailors at the front."<sup>15</sup></blockquote>
Why bother with fundraising when books and magazines were being donated in such abundance? There was also a need to supply library buildings, pay librarians in key leadership roles, and purchase non-fiction (mostly technical) books not covered by donations.<sup>16</sup> The ALA asked publishers to offer steep discounts on multiple copy purchases, and <i>all</i> major publishers agreed!<sup>17</sup> After the Armistice, purchasing focus shifted from technical books to vocational literature. Camp librarians put together recommended reading lists on a variety of career areas and placed "Back to the Job" advertisements around the camp to market these services.<sup>18</sup> In total, Carnegie and ALA funds were used to build forty camp libraries,<sup>19</sup> typically including small living quarters for a librarian, which allowed long operating hours of 7 am to 10 pm every day of the week in most locations.<sup>20</sup> The bulk of the fundraising and technical services work was, however, carried out by public librarian volunteers.<sup>21</sup> <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Subordinated Majority</b></div>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMnjN2pXVhAC9KNvgz76zKvVdp-C272TDPLU7tcSJkrqNdQVbWA8yr79O0Sgp_vKPM5TISp_axS6iyzie_DY1BqEXtDeFm-N3K-8EmD90oDt_qPQDLzNzfl6Pe00YmIKnhGRdrT5DvPQ/s1600/MaryJBooth.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSMnjN2pXVhAC9KNvgz76zKvVdp-C272TDPLU7tcSJkrqNdQVbWA8yr79O0Sgp_vKPM5TISp_axS6iyzie_DY1BqEXtDeFm-N3K-8EmD90oDt_qPQDLzNzfl6Pe00YmIKnhGRdrT5DvPQ/s1600/MaryJBooth.JPG" /></a>Sex discrimination was strong at the beginning of the War, but became increasingly challenged as the draft pulled men out of their hoarded leadership positions. The library profession's composition as a whole was about four women to every man,<sup>22</sup> but the ALA itself enforced an unwritten rule against women being paid for work in camp libraries. As protests to the ALA leadership and directly to the War Department grew, Herbert Putnam first <i>falsely </i>claimed that the ALA was only following military rules (as anyone could see by the women employed in private YWCA hostess houses). He then promised a greater role for women, but this was a transparent attempt to defuse complaints without actually doing anything. Finally, Putnam acted as if the protestors were <i>disparaging the work</i> done by the women who had been working in camp libraries (often running them in practice) without pay or status. He relented at last, gracelessly implying that he was only swayed by the voices of male librarians.<sup>23</sup><br />
<br />
By the summer of 1918, women were officially in charge of eight of the thirty-two camp libraries.<sup>24</sup> Blanche Galloway of the Pelham Bay Naval Station was the first woman to be paid for directing an ALA camp library. In September of 1918, Ms. Galloway spoke at the New York State Library Association's annual meeting:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The wonderful opportunities which the library has to help these young men from all stations and walks of life, the one great thing that makes it worth while is the fact that the library influence is a leveling <i>up </i>and never down. Every man who seeks help here is going to be able to do something better than he has done it before. This is the kind of democracy we are all proud to have a part in establishing."<sup>25</sup></blockquote>
It's crazy to think the ALA had held back Galloway and other passionate librarians; it's inspiring to know she persevered for the sake of her "young men."<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Value</b></div>
<br />
The increasing role of technology in early twentieth-century warfare made greater than ever intellectual demands on fighters. It was now "a war of mechanism and of exact science."<sup>26</sup><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"At one typical camp a single day's circulation included books on the following: French history, mechanics, topography and strategy in war, self propelled vehicles, hand grenades, field entrenchments, bridges, chemistry, physics, astronomy, hydraulics, electricity, medieval history, calculus, civil engineering, geography, American history, surveying, materials of construction, general history, masonry, concrete. About three-fourths of the books taken out were non-fiction."<sup>27</sup></blockquote>
This should make it clear that relying on second-hand, outdated gift books from civilians would not have been adequate to the task of making better soldiers of the men. Camp libraries<span class="st">—</span>and especially overseas book distribution<span class="st">—also addressed psychological needs. Major General Glenn of Camp Sherman gave library materials credit for "producing contentment" in men drafted into the new environment of military life.<sup>28</sup> Mystery and adventure novels were especially popular. The more elitist librarians liked to tell each other stories of patrons asking for high-brow literature, confident they were making better men of the soldiers.<sup>29</sup> As mentioned above, camp librarians took on the role of occupational counselors toward the end.</span><br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnBHA38Xc_g96sytfzaPS9QRt7XkcrLNTQn4l1dS4kss7zewQ3c2nE1LDTn9zT_zKUKzrqlnF-2tntMLg4kk4cR2cJfX35qYWsTBKW26My2CyPt17AHw9hH4GJ7ClgUW2UuTzGN-Fvxs/s1600/CampSheridanLibraryCloseup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfnBHA38Xc_g96sytfzaPS9QRt7XkcrLNTQn4l1dS4kss7zewQ3c2nE1LDTn9zT_zKUKzrqlnF-2tntMLg4kk4cR2cJfX35qYWsTBKW26My2CyPt17AHw9hH4GJ7ClgUW2UuTzGN-Fvxs/s200/CampSheridanLibraryCloseup.jpg" width="200" /></a><span class="st">Beyond reading material itself, libraries provided a quiet place to get away from the usual routine. According to one soldier at Camp Devens:</span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<span class="st">"Your alcoves are godsends. The barrack's social room in which 75 to 125 are talking and playing cards, where a piano and phonograph are rivaling one another, and where at any moment a basketball may knock your head sideways, is certainly no decent place to read, let alone trying to do any studying."<sup>30</sup></span><br />
<span class="st"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b><span class="st">Spreading an Idea</span></b></div>
<br />
Support for the war effort was high, as shown by the generosity of the donors and volunteers who made the ALA's War Service such a fantastic success. Soldiers' need for reading materials would have been a good enough motivation by itself; but even from the beginning, the ALA had an eye on promoting the value of professionally staffed free libraries. In a paper handed out at the Association's 1917 conference, Frank Hill and George Utley said, "if we succeed in this emergency in rendering national service, libraries are going to be a national and community force as never before." Otherwise, libraries would be "looked on as weak, dreary, go-sit-in-the-corner affairs that are not worth public support."<sup>31</sup> <br />
<br />
Public library services were familiar to soldiers from the more progressive, urban areas. This wasn't true for many soldiers from poor or remote regions. Camp librarians often had to explain that borrowing was free.<sup>32</sup> The war brought everyone together, then sent them back with raised expectations. The War Service was, in a sense, a public library advocacy campaign in disguise. <br />
<br />
Still, it's important to understand that the War Service's most clear-cut accomplishment was its direct effect on domestic military camps. Overseas support was relatively weak. The ALA's post-war "Enlarged Program" campaign was a failed, overconfident attempt to grow the Association's wealth and influence in the new style, but without the unifying effect of patriotic fever.<sup>33</sup> Two federal bills which would have brought national support to library services fell flat in 1919, with more of the same in the 1920s.<sup>34</sup> The ALA had caught a wave during the war and found that it couldn't do the same in peacetime. It would take more time and steady political alliances to bring about substantial nation-wide support for public libraries.<sup>35</sup> The War Service years were an exciting time in U.S. library history that showed what can be accomplished by paying attention to current events and jumping at new opportunities. It was significant part<span class="st">—</span>but only a part<span class="st">—</span>of a much longer process of transforming public library service from a luxury found in liberal cities to an assumed part of American life.<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Theodore W. Koch. <i>War Service of the American Library Association</i> (Washington, D.C: A.L.A. War Service, 1918), viii. </li>
<li>Arthur P. Young. <i>Books For Sammies: The American Library Association And World War I</i> (Place of publication: Publisher, Year of publication), 10.</li>
<li>Young, <i>Books for Sammies</i>, 10.</li>
<li>ibid., 11.</li>
<li>ibid., 12. </li>
<li>ibid., 13.</li>
<li>ibid., 38.</li>
<li>ibid., 20.</li>
<li>ibid., 21.</li>
<li>ibid., 23.</li>
<li>ibid., 87.</li>
<li>Koch, <i>War Service</i>, 18.</li>
<li>Young, <i>Books for Sammies</i>, 63.</li>
<li>Koch, <i>War Service</i>, 18.</li>
<li>Committee on Public Information, "Regulation for Forwarding Magazines To Men At Front," <i>The Official Bulletin</i> (Washington, DC), July 18, 1917. </li>
<li>Young, <i>Books for Sammies</i>, 20.</li>
<li>ibid., 27.</li>
<li>ibid., 55-56.</li>
<li>ibid., 25.</li>
<li>ibid., 46.</li>
<li>ibid., 94.</li>
<li>ibid., 126.</li>
<li>ibid., 34-35.</li>
<li>ibid.</li>
<li>N. Louise Ruckteshler. "Library Week at Lake Placid Club, September
23-28, 1918." <i>New York Libraries</i>.6, no. 5. (Nov. 1918): 134.</li>
<li>Koch, <i>War Service</i>, vi.</li>
<li>ibid.</li>
<li>ibid., 16.</li>
<li>ibid., 26.</li>
<li>ibid., 27.</li>
<li>Young, <i>Books for Sammies</i>, 19.</li>
<li>Koch, <i>War Service</i>, 22.</li>
<li>Young, <i>Books for Sammies</i>, 90.</li>
<li>ibid., 97.</li>
<li>ibid., 98.</li>
</ol>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Bibliography</b></div>
<br />
Committee on Public Information, "Regulation for Forwarding Magazines To Men At Front," <i>The Official Bulletin</i> (Washington, DC), July 18, 1917. <br />
<br />
Koch, Theodore W. <i>War Service of the American Library Association</i>. Washington, DC: A.L.A. War Service, 1918.<br />
<br />
Ruckteshler, N. Louise. "Library Week at Lake Placid Club, September
23-28, 1918." <i>New York Libraries</i>.6, no. 5. (Nov. 1918). <br />
<br />
Young, Arthur P. <i>Books For Sammies: The American Library Association And World War I</i>. Pittsburgh, PA: Beta Phi Mu, 1981.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-59960906362628922002013-09-15T07:30:00.000-05:002013-09-15T07:33:06.978-05:00Christian to Agnostic: A Short Explanation[I'm making this the latest post because a family member asked over the weekend. This was originally posted here on June 11, 2012 and written around 2008.]<br />
<br />
During my last year at Iowa State University, I stopped believing Christianity — or anything like it — is actually true. This came at the end of several years of study which began with the <i>opposite</i> goal: learning how to show others that Christianity is true. Talk about backfiring! Instead of finding more and stronger justifications for Christian belief, I lost even my starting justifications. All remaining evidence was compatible with Christianity being an entirely manmade religion, so I concluded that's probably all it is. I drew the same conclusion about other religions. If there is a God at all, it's not one concerned with setting us straight on religious matters.<br />
<br />
I was raised in the Churches of Christ sect. Early on, I was under the impression that everyone in the world believed the same things I was taught in Sunday School. Why wouldn't I? Everything from Biblical history to theology was presented to me as a matter of uncontroversial fact. If someone didn't worship God, that was only an <i>obedience</i> problem as it is with kids who don't mind their parents. I accepted God's offer of salvation with unquestioning faith. I believed God had forgiven my sins and would raise me to live in Heaven with other Christians forever. Prayer, praise, and scripture reading were not a burden but a joy.<br />
<br />
That joy started to sour when I was sent to an interdenominational Christian high school. You see, the Churches of Christ teach baptism as an essential step in accepting salvation; they even refer to baptism as "obeying the Gospel." By contrast, all the teachers and most of the students at my new school believed that only faith was necessary to be saved. This meant most of the Christians at school had not obeyed the Gospel and were still on their way to never-ending torment in Hell. Yet these were not apathetic or rebellious people; many were clearly striving to understand and submit to God's will. How could people serving God to the best of their knowledge deserve eternal torment? And the more I thought about Hell, the more I began to question its justice. I realized that no human — no matter how monstrous — could cause as much suffering as an eternity of hellfire. For a long time, I didn't doubt the <i>truth</i> of any of this, but I did start to see the next world as a far greater horror than even the worst temporary evil in this world.<br />
<br />
Just as high school opened my eyes to divisions among Christians, college life put me in direct contact with a wider array of religious beliefs. I went from only hearing debates about the meaning of Bible verses to hearing people claim the Bible wasn't inspired by God at all. So I did what I always do when challenged: study up! I already knew the book of Daniel contained detailed prophetic descriptions of Alexander the Great and the kings who followed him, so I started looking into arguments from supernatural prophecy. I was confident I could show that the Bible was more than a collection of human writings. But it didn't take long for my confidence to turn into disappointment. <br />
<br />
Daniel was supposedly written in the sixth century BC while the Jews were exiled in Babylon. Among other things, it describes Alexander's fourth century BC eastward conquest and the fate of the empire after his death. Even without names, the descriptions match up with secular history too well to be a lucky guess. Or at least, they match until the 160s BC when the prophecies become much more elaborate…then go wrong. See where I'm going with this? Many Biblical scholars believe Daniel was written during the 160s BC<i> as if</i> it contained ancient prophecies leading up to the ongoing Maccabean Revolt. The author simply wrote history and current events disguised as prophecy, then got the future parts wrong. This is a <i>mainstream</i> view in the Catholic Church, probably because their Bibles still contain histories of the revolt, which happened during the mysterious "intertestamental" period as far as Protestants are concerned. I was disappointed in my own Bible teachers for failing to know or failing to tell me about any of this.<br />
<br />
I needed to find prophecy immune to date-based skepticism, so I turned to messianic prophecy. Figured I'd start with Matthew and look up Old Testament references as I got to them. Big mistake. It turns out Matthew had little regard for the context of his quotes. The original passages concerning "Immanuel," "out of Egypt," and "Rachel weeping for her children" were written about specific situations far removed from the Gospel plot. I was amazed to find that the first few pages of Matthew mistreat the Jewish scriptures so badly no one could fault a curious Jew for picking up a New Testament and setting it right back down a minute later. Are the other messianic prophecies merely <i>less obvious</i> impositions of new meaning on old scriptures? My studies were inconclusive. With Christian preconceptions, it's easy to see Jesus in the Old Testament. But without those assumptions, all "messianic prophecies" can be reasonably understood as merely human Jewish hopes. For example, the servant described in Isaiah 53 can be understood as religiously faithful Jews who suffered through the Babylonian exile along with the unfaithful Jews who brought about the judgement. As a reward and justification for their suffering, God would end the exile and set Israel above all other nations forever. The exile ended, but the rest proved too optimistic. Later Jews reinterpreted the passage as a future event, then Christians used it to build a theology to justify the suffering of Jesus on the cross. This naturalistic interpretation is strongly in line with the overall historical context of Isaiah 40-55. I eventually had to give up on using prophecy to argue for a supernatural Bible.<br />
<br />
What would it take to show the truth of Christian belief over alternatives? Critical evidence, i.e. evidence which is compatible with Christian belief but <i>not</i> compatible with alternative beliefs. Take the book of Daniel. It fails to be critical evidence because it can be explained as history rather than amazing prophecy. However, Daniel <i>would</i> be critical evidence if compelling, secular evidence were found that Daniel's prophecies actually were written in the sixth (not the second) century BC. Skeptics who acknowledge the uncanny accuracy of Daniel between those centuries would be unable to maintain their belief that Daniel was written by human means.<br />
<br />
I continued looking for any critical evidence which favored Christianity over the alternatives. Instead, I kept finding critical evidence against the fundamentalist Christianity I was taught at both church and school. A quick rundown:<br />
<br />
I had believed first-century apostles finalized the Bible as I knew it and that any later ideas or writings were either superfluous or deviations from true Christianity.<br />
…but then I learned that the New Testament's table of contents was settled much later by distinctively Catholic Christians who also affirmed a larger Old Testament. I couldn't trust my sixty-six book Bible had <i>only</i> inspired books and <i>all</i> the inspired books without believing God whimsically guided fourth century Catholics to put the New Testament together right and AD-era Jews to put the Old Testament together right.<br />
<br />
I had believed the Gospels were independent witnesses to the life of Jesus, by the traditional authors.<br />
…but then I learned that the first three Gospels are textually dependent on each other like three homework essays showing signs of collaboration; scholars call this the "synoptic problem." Not such a big deal for Luke since the author admits to putting together earlier accounts, but I found it impossible to believe Matthew was written by an apostle of Jesus who only bothered mangling other accounts instead of writing his own.<br />
<br />
I had believed all scriptures were preserved word-for-word in their original languages.<br />
…but then I learned that the New Testament authors usually quoted an Old Testament with many subtle differences from the Old Testament I knew. For example, Matthew 21 depicts children praising Jesus during the triumphal entry. Jesus defends their actions to critics by quoting Psalm 8 as, "Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies You have <i>prepared praise</i> for Yourself." Yet Psalm 8 reads, "From the mouths of infants and nursing babes You have <i>established strength</i>." I realized either Jesus had a corrupted Old Testament or I did.<br />
<br />
I had believed the Bible accurately reports speech, though not necessarily everything a person said.<br />
…but then I learned that the Bible inaccurately reports speech even when accuracy would have been just as easy. For example, Mark 11:1-3 reports Jesus asking for a single donkey while Matthew 21:1-3 reports him asking for plural donkeys. This isn't an omission or a matter of translation into English; the words in Jesus' mouth are just different. If it's ok to mess with the speech of God incarnate, what else might have been adjusted?<br />
<br />
I had believed Biblical history was reliable and any secular history that disagreed was simply mistaken.<br />
…but then I learned that the Bible starts with fictional creation and flood stories. This might have been fine if they were treated as myths-with-a-message (like the Narnia novels or the Parable of the Vineyard Workers), but Eden and the flood are part of the main historical narrative. Luke even traces Jesus' genealogy back through David to Noah and Adam. I had to start worrying that other parts of the Bible might also be fiction presented as fact.<br />
<br />
As I was discovering problems with my fundamentalist view of the Bible, I heard about "progressive" Christians who get around all of the above by treating the Bible as a fallible human work: a book <i>about</i> God but not <i>from</i> God. This lets progressives write off gender roles as a cultural vestige and distance God from troublesome Old Testament morals such as enslaving foreigners (Lev 25:44-46), killing children as part of genocide (1 Sam 15:3), executing apostates (Deut 13:6-11), and taking virgins as sexual spoils of war (Deut 21:10-13, Num 31:17-18). Progressive Christians usually also deny Hell doctrine on the basis of incompatibility with a morally praiseworthy God. They've effectively reshaped Christianity to fit modern knowledge and moral sense. After all, there are still many wise, good, and possible things in the Bible after cutting out the foolish, evil, and false. I tried to adopt a progressive Christian view, but it was short-lived. I didn't see how a God interested in forming loving relationships with humanity or even in being worshipped as a good God would be so hands-off in allowing his character to be slandered by his own followers.<br />
<br />
I began to see Christianity as "just another human religion." That's the phrase that got stuck in my head and wouldn't go away. I identify with stories of other deconverts who said that once they were <i>capable</i> of seeing Christian faith as a product of mere human psychology and culture, they suddenly had great trouble taking off those new "glasses." (Or putting the Christian glasses back on, if you prefer.) Take prayer, for example. The doctrine that all prayers are answered "yes," "no," or "not yet" is hard to take seriously after seeing it as precisely the doctrine people would invent if no prayer were ever heard by a God. A false Christianity would also neatly explain why the Holy Spirit does not counteract the ever increasing schisms among Christians. Or why there seems to be needless suffering in the world even though an all-good, all-powerful God would ensure all suffering is for the best. And finally, why the best predictors of Christian faith are where and to whom a person is born.<br />
<br />
Though my beliefs had changed, I didn't want to be an unbeliever so I kept looking for reasons to think some form of Christianity is true. What if I had simply missed something? So I deliberately put my new skepticism at risk by continuing to engage with apologetics. I did come to see problems with many popular skeptical arguments and I also came to appreciate some of the more refined defenses of Christianity, especially those of Alston and Plantinga. But in the end these were only defenses of the <i>possibility</i> of Christian Theism, not critical reasons to believe any of it is true. Then I realized something which gave me confidence I wasn't missing some hard-to-find good reason for belief: if there is an all-powerful God who "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," it would be in God's own interest and power to make religious truth unmistakably clear so that "all men" are able — if willing — to respond to his offer of salvation. For this reason, I take the lack of clear critical evidence <i>for</i> Christian belief as strong positive evidence <i>against</i> Christian belief.<br />
<br />
Where does this leave me? Not too different in day-to-day terms. I found it doesn't take belief in God and an afterlife to believe in other people and this life. If it matters how I'm treated, I know it matters how I treat others. I can't rely on thinking God will right every injustice, but then I hadn't believed unending paradise and torment were just fates since high school. I now believe it's up to us to correct injustice and suffering in the world. It's also up to us to preserve our planet for those to come, with no scheduled remake of a new heavens and new earth. And if anything, I have an increased sense of humility from realizing the universe wasn't made just for us. No single religious image ever brought out the awe I feel looking at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field and trying to grasp the sheer scale of what it reveals in one tiny, seemingly dark patch of the night sky. Is there a God hidden beyond it all? Maybe, maybe not. Though I remain open to the possibility of a God who hasn't bothered to reveal its identity and desires to humanity, I lean toward a fully natural order because God-explanations have been steadily retreating in the face of natural explanations. I doubt we'll ever run out of unanswered questions, so there will always be room to project religious answers onto the unknown, but I'm comfortable waiting until there's good reason to believe those answers are correct.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-79464346292186963252013-09-06T20:47:00.000-05:002013-09-06T23:04:17.967-05:00Moral Training Wheels<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Finally, on the theistic hypothesis God holds all persons morally accountable for
their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be
vindicated. Good ultimately triumphs over evil, and we shall finally
see that we do live in a moral universe after all. Despite the
inequities of this life, in the end the scales of God’s justice will be
balanced. Thus, the moral choices we make in this life are infused with
an eternal significance. We can with consistency make moral choices
which run contrary to our self-interest and even undertake acts of
extreme self-sacrifice, knowing that such decisions are not empty and
ultimately meaningless gestures."<br />
<br />
<span class="st">— William Lane Craig, <a href="http://www.reasonablefaith.org/can-we-be-good-without-god"><u>"Can We Be Good Without God?"</u></a></span></blockquote>
A friend of mine recently scolded her cat for starting to play with an electrical cord. It wouldn't do any good to lecture the cat about how dangerous electricity can be, so an imposed association between electrical cords and punishment are needed to keep her cat safe when no one is watching. The same applies to toddlers. Adult humans avoid chewing on electrical cords because they don't want to be shocked. No stand-in motivation needed!<br />
<br />
When it comes to moral situations, some philosophers try to show that acting morally is in our own best interest, either all the time or often enough that we tend to come out ahead in life if we cultivate moral habits. Other philosophers (and many preachers) claim that acting morally is in our own best interest because we will be punished or rewarded in an afterlife. The quote at the top of this post is such an example: William Lane Craig believes that self-sacrifice is "empty" if it doesn't eventually turn into huge rewards for the person doing the sacrificing. <br />
<br />
In other words, there's a tendency to reduce morality to self-interest. I believe this is a mistake. While it's true that moral action often works in our own favor, <i>the essence of morality is other-interest</i>.<br />
<br />
But there's a problem: some people don't have much in the way of other-interest. How do we convince them to act in the interests of others anyway? Impose an association between harming others and punishment, or an association between helping others and reward. It's another kind of stand-in motivation.<br />
<br />
Punishment and reward are training wheels for human beings who can grow in understanding (to better achieve what they want and avoid what they don't) and who can grow in empathy (to better care about what others want). Training wheels might keep your bike from falling over, but you aren't truly riding until you no longer need them. When I read things like the quote at the top of this post, I see a desire for <i>perfect training wheels</i>: the appearance of moral justice without any need to act out of the interest of others.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-65389413814913712592013-08-15T10:45:00.000-05:002013-08-15T10:59:31.660-05:00The Terrible and Terribly Important Notion of Fiction GenresGenres are a marketing ploy. Genres are a barrier to discovery. Genres are a curse we can't do without.<br />
<br />
Let me back up a minute and give you some context. I'm interning at the county jail library this summer and fall. Well, "library" would be more accurate because it's a room of over ten-thousand books thrown together without organization. Staff members have kept some very popular authors and series set aside, but any inmate requests outside of those are unlikely to be filled. There's no way to locate or even confirm the existence of those items. My job is to do a lot of the grunt work in turning this pile into a collection.<br />
<br />
Inmates can request a particular title, author, or genre. They won't be able to browse the shelves directly. I knew that if I had a big "General Fiction" category, not many people are going to write: "Please find me some General Fiction novels!" How utterly boring! Might as well throw out every less popular author in that entire section.<br />
<br />
I needed to come up with enough genres to put an interesting genre label on everything, even titles not traditionally considered "genre fiction." After much agonizing, I came up with the following scheme:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4jiTgiY-XHe65mepvE4zQ-gpMlO6SPQoceZwF4jv8BQk7Lqf03b9zkoFb4oZu6CCYVtmZIwcFuWkw9JV2YW_RVG-Hcvvk5aD_EK613_NZ4eREOmxxAkJR7s8lN2ZADJrZHFhj8CtUrE/s1600/classics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI4jiTgiY-XHe65mepvE4zQ-gpMlO6SPQoceZwF4jv8BQk7Lqf03b9zkoFb4oZu6CCYVtmZIwcFuWkw9JV2YW_RVG-Hcvvk5aD_EK613_NZ4eREOmxxAkJR7s8lN2ZADJrZHFhj8CtUrE/s200/classics.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
A cheating category. Classics are, roughly, pre-20th century books that are still reprinted or re-translated. Sherlock Holmes and <i>Dracula </i>would fit, but they are so strongly expected in other genres that they don't count. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Traditional "Genre Fiction"</b></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg600kV0ps3MKuM2UGKC72VmTH8SRHwNr2lowT1OzN5PcHDOaBjxRXpFTPabDztFQ6B7ZBELarAqG5zsr-twod8Vt_Bu_jLGIbVT_nCBN5ZXmmv9XlrknRNLkZavcqptpWI-37qrY6Wpo/s1600/sf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg600kV0ps3MKuM2UGKC72VmTH8SRHwNr2lowT1OzN5PcHDOaBjxRXpFTPabDztFQ6B7ZBELarAqG5zsr-twod8Vt_Bu_jLGIbVT_nCBN5ZXmmv9XlrknRNLkZavcqptpWI-37qrY6Wpo/s200/sf.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Sure, these <i>can </i>be separate, but readership and the works themselves very frequently cross over. Plus, that's a rockin' dragon sticker. What goes here? Advanced technology, strange worlds, and supernatural things that most people agree aren't real.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirpP72fngvRRBqJkqyQ1A7X3mpc9tvzX9ui6QNle256c0XvNDpaxUq3f_SJr9mloDUe61hg_pM5h-Clht6qufbBlpb-BXwKUbOe_47dI2mGkDWkzmpkrIyS8X_M4H37JYHkWil2V8ii2Q/s1600/romance.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirpP72fngvRRBqJkqyQ1A7X3mpc9tvzX9ui6QNle256c0XvNDpaxUq3f_SJr9mloDUe61hg_pM5h-Clht6qufbBlpb-BXwKUbOe_47dI2mGkDWkzmpkrIyS8X_M4H37JYHkWil2V8ii2Q/s200/romance.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Anything explicitly labeled "romance" or from a romance imprint goes here, even if it has strong SF/Fantasy elements. Also included are books with descriptions that <i>exclusively </i>describe a romantic relationship, i.e. not just as a major element in a story focused on another kind of struggle. It's no accident that I picked a non-gendered sticker.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy6p_kqmGen2sFEg3Qn3WagZfVdN5gDCbZNI8e6W714EL37S0OUYDsUtABAzVY3c-pFqny519PokkjDknXr2cmBi8v2LJgXUMEuBlO7FWdsdNZxybjPOs_rZP16EVl79HBX6PIP2-Enbo/s1600/western.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy6p_kqmGen2sFEg3Qn3WagZfVdN5gDCbZNI8e6W714EL37S0OUYDsUtABAzVY3c-pFqny519PokkjDknXr2cmBi8v2LJgXUMEuBlO7FWdsdNZxybjPOs_rZP16EVl79HBX6PIP2-Enbo/s200/western.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Like romance, westerns are predominately identified by their marketing. Although there are many titles that mix romance and western themes, it's usually easy to tell romantic westerns from western romances. Unfortunately, this distinction tends to line up with marketing to men vs. marketing to women. This is one way that genre labels stifle discovery by exaggerating the separation between quite similar works.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDHiJqbrPPJjWCiy57wXkW93ZhOXKFr0Es-2NJ_ItbvgicJ4IDFfHs1fofimAjpS4fE_cGA2eQA18z8Vs5LKPZZCjgqHogKwR7RX-vScLz_e24jjrolpMH3v2R-hiVrHG5Gkyid2wQUoM/s1600/mystery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDHiJqbrPPJjWCiy57wXkW93ZhOXKFr0Es-2NJ_ItbvgicJ4IDFfHs1fofimAjpS4fE_cGA2eQA18z8Vs5LKPZZCjgqHogKwR7RX-vScLz_e24jjrolpMH3v2R-hiVrHG5Gkyid2wQUoM/s200/mystery.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Some mysteries are labeled as such, but it makes sense to be more inclusive than that. Whenever the plot centers on discovering the identity of a criminal, it's a mystery. SF/Fantasy mysteries still get dragon stickers.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>General Fiction and Literature </b></div>
<br />
With "genre fiction" out of the way, what can be done about the great big Miscellaneous category found in most bookstores and libraries? I broke it down into three parts...<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbR9TKJNtF3OZ1hS2FWBPk27nklnSJFU33eVVUAIow3O2W9CSrb_ISZluyn8nH-W7By515vCaScjIEMZitRyTZJ3T-Y2O1ICTx37RV7JyoSCkM6038EXz4Amm5ZnHnrWNnXvjhWZBQ1TM/s1600/historical.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbR9TKJNtF3OZ1hS2FWBPk27nklnSJFU33eVVUAIow3O2W9CSrb_ISZluyn8nH-W7By515vCaScjIEMZitRyTZJ3T-Y2O1ICTx37RV7JyoSCkM6038EXz4Amm5ZnHnrWNnXvjhWZBQ1TM/s200/historical.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
An arbitrary but popular line to draw is that fiction set during or before the World Wars counts as historical fiction. Unless it fits western conventions, or those for SF/Fantasy, or mysteries. Even with all of these exclusions, these shelves are bursting.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBa2sZL2YArO8YdorOROkUVtt3aG9fwK4VWthTZVZBvkTtQPuiXnl-OrrtU2IeLzUDftU9iZ-x3q2fmE765L6-BtmzeumfYMBBgqTuOVeXohTeMdhY_TqvghwMMDXjwZg_UEgajwPqyR8/s1600/thrillers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBa2sZL2YArO8YdorOROkUVtt3aG9fwK4VWthTZVZBvkTtQPuiXnl-OrrtU2IeLzUDftU9iZ-x3q2fmE765L6-BtmzeumfYMBBgqTuOVeXohTeMdhY_TqvghwMMDXjwZg_UEgajwPqyR8/s200/thrillers.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Thrillers is the section for spies, soldiers, and serial killers. Film versions of thriller books go under Action/Adventure. Crime fiction can go here if the reader finds out the antagonist's identity early on and the big question is whether the protagonist can <i>do </i>something about it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5cQ-l3uXZ81cXxCksJfzKYGFgYTgFamcOBJJRavf8gwRJyuC-VQwo1MiSV1cV6vFtJzOlKAyM6Qy27ZmetIJKTiKU0RsMmplUj0itITyJ1VT_sL_wb8JYgLpjQTvCJwurNMWTx7OCAM/s1600/realistic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjo5cQ-l3uXZ81cXxCksJfzKYGFgYTgFamcOBJJRavf8gwRJyuC-VQwo1MiSV1cV6vFtJzOlKAyM6Qy27ZmetIJKTiKU0RsMmplUj0itITyJ1VT_sL_wb8JYgLpjQTvCJwurNMWTx7OCAM/s200/realistic.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Technically, thrillers tend to be realistic in the sense that they are contemporary stories without fantasy or science fiction elements. Realistic fiction concerns relatively regular people in relatively common life situations, though not necessarily from the reader's own culture. Film versions of these books tend to go under Drama. Elements of romance, thriller, and mystery genres can be present, so long as they don't overwhelm the focus on complex contemporary characters.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>What About...</b></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLNK6shJpr1SA6Gj_9_rKnV7xz3zEYFJyoS9NPF-fLQupIqTwiA2WV6S7QadOj8MIaaFFqJnPLalLzJ-WUrLOsRXA03d9J_-FHtDUz4yQs8KewwHx4crZD128C9zsGvnB7yLeYn4lQEEo/s1600/cf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLNK6shJpr1SA6Gj_9_rKnV7xz3zEYFJyoS9NPF-fLQupIqTwiA2WV6S7QadOj8MIaaFFqJnPLalLzJ-WUrLOsRXA03d9J_-FHtDUz4yQs8KewwHx4crZD128C9zsGvnB7yLeYn4lQEEo/s400/cf.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
It might be OK for Barnes & Noble to have a Christian Fiction section, but it doesn't sit so well with librarians because it can imply that the other fiction either is less suitable for Christians to read or is insufficiently orthodox. State librarians are not in the position to issue or promote religious <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprimatur"><u>imprimaturs</u></a>. Plus, it pulls books away from from all of the other genre shelves where they might find a broader readership. <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/series/49073-the-chronicles-of-narnia-publication-order"><u>The Chronicles of Narnia</u></a>, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/series/50162-left-behind"><u>Left Behind</u></a>, and <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/series/46423-seasons-of-grace"><u>Seasons of Grace</u></a> are much more at home in SF/Fantasy, Thrillers, and Realistic Fiction respectively. <br />
<br />
That said, some readers are publishers and readers who favor books with strong religious themes. Other readers feel strongly about avoiding books from such publishers, either from religious disagreement or for the same reason a person who likes romantic fiction might distrust the quality standards of "romance mill" publishers. So, in addition to a primary genre sticker, books from such publishers or imprints (e.g. Harlequin's <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/shelf/show/heartsong-presents-romance"><u>Heartsong</u></a>) will have an "Inspirational" label:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl8p9aiJ4iiBDl8vJHEY0BGgqfSrKDmRhT_Ss0xQIkWsOAzFaMrG3YeNElADWFCIvoti9PSOmfnZJw83H80Kkkv8LO1j0W3byJszoeJHfyBoAdXj5wutw9CEGuQBsaUsRH6IQShj3jKZo/s1600/insp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl8p9aiJ4iiBDl8vJHEY0BGgqfSrKDmRhT_Ss0xQIkWsOAzFaMrG3YeNElADWFCIvoti9PSOmfnZJw83H80Kkkv8LO1j0W3byJszoeJHfyBoAdXj5wutw9CEGuQBsaUsRH6IQShj3jKZo/s200/insp.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<br />
Not the most apt term, but it's a widely-understood convention that further distances librarians from the legal and ethical issues of judging some works to be "Christian Fiction."<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Easy and Limiting</b></div>
<br />
The single best article I've read on fiction genres is Ursula K. LeGuin's "Genre: A Word Only a Frenchman Could Love" (<i>Public Libraries</i>, Vol. 44, Is. 1, p. 21 [<a href="http://www.ala.org/pla/sites/ala.org.pla/files/content/publications/publiclibraries/pastissues/janfeb2005.pdf"><u>PDF</u></a>]). I recommend reading the whole thing. LeGuin would prefer a world where all fiction is interfiled by author's last name, removing the prejudice of genre systems. But she knows her vision would be opposed:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Consumerism also rules. If the books aren’t labeled, if they aren’t shelved by genre, if they don’t have a little bitty label saying SF or M or YA, a whole lot of customers and library users will come storming the counter or the desk, shouting, 'Where is my fiction fix? I want a fantasy, I can’t read all that realistic stuff! I want a mystery, I can’t read all that plotless stuff! I want a masterpiece of grim realism, I can’t read all that imaginary stuff! I want mindless fluff, I can’t read all that literary stuff! Etc., etc.'<br />
<br />
To give each reader an annotated author-title list of whatever their fiction addiction is, so they can go find the books on the shelves, is a perfectly fair solution, offered by many libraries. But addicts don’t like it. They want books to be easy the way fast food is easy. They want to go to the shelf and stick out their hand and get a fix." </blockquote>
For my particular situation of no-browsing-allowed, sticking out a hand (so to speak) is the best supported scenario for discovering new books. Can public and school libraries do better? I'm having trouble finding references right now, but I've heard of libraries interfiling all fiction and using small, colored genre dots on the spines. The nice thing is that there's no need to pick a "primary" genre, so those readers of western romances and romantic westerns are more likely to notice similarly-themed works and go exploring outside of their traditional haunts. Heck, I've seen things like inspirational-historical fiction-romance and SF-mystery-thriller. These books could easily be picking up new readers through providing more genre information than traditional genre shelving supports.<br />
<br />
Library catalogs could also help, but usable catalogs are still the stuff of science fiction. For now, physical genre markers are still the best way of directing many people to titles they'll feel comfortable trying out.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-9894609805754794772013-05-16T17:04:00.000-05:002013-05-16T17:05:35.577-05:00Recipe: Maple TwistMy father's side of the family is Mennonite in the strongly traditional way many families in Boston are Catholic. When I see women in old fashioned dresses and bonnets, I think: cousins! But as readers of this blog will know, I've not stuck with the tradition myself. Still, there are three ways Mennonite heritage has left its mark on me: a cool-headed temperament, a simple "yes" or "no" for <a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%205:33-37&version=NRSV"><u>my word</u></a>, and warm <a href="http://www.shapingfamilies.com/2012/2/18/Recipe/Maple+Twists"><u>maple twist</u></a>.<br />
<br />
This is my go-to dessert when I need to bake something impressive in a few hours. Plus, the shaping part is fun!<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1. Make (Most Of) The Dough</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2 and 3/4 cup general-purpose flour (385g)<br />
3 tablespoon sugar (40g)<br />
1/2 teaspoon salt (3g)<br />
2 and 1/4 teaspoon yeast (8g)<br />
1 teaspoon maple extract (6g) [imitation is fine]<br />
1 egg</blockquote>
Mix this stuff and set aside.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>2. Warm Up Milk and Butter</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
3/4 cup milk (156g)<br />
1/4 c unsalted butter, melted (62g)</blockquote>
Use a microwave, or put the butter on the stove at the lowest setting and apply patience or foresight. Mix with the milk and make sure the resulting liquid is warm on your skin but not uncomfortably hot, otherwise your yeast will be sad.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>3. Combine</b><br />
<br />
Add the milk and butter to the mix set aside in step one. Knead until smooth.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Not smooth</i></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZEPK-bN_atzToImTBkOCZ9p7I85H1jU9yEfoTowxunbciq418AoR8Spbgyzm8LwJP9SmOK7ehhfFzEEq1EfECAeYamzi82ugTPZpt2Cdi8bVikIcbgqpWY3cIoI4x9yvlIpVO8k-Sf8w/s1600/rough.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZEPK-bN_atzToImTBkOCZ9p7I85H1jU9yEfoTowxunbciq418AoR8Spbgyzm8LwJP9SmOK7ehhfFzEEq1EfECAeYamzi82ugTPZpt2Cdi8bVikIcbgqpWY3cIoI4x9yvlIpVO8k-Sf8w/s1600/rough.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Smooth</i></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD2fNJ5nyQhxO3U-XfyBYLWnDak8rTPuXv17OXD1w1j80gPqPu7kr5lfxspDY5LNEglBD25vhTAbCFTtYwqnpjHknxDf9Jy5oumZA-gOnSDhIsDTfeZgpfWB6ZkX0_ghqp87vXoU_IkmY/s1600/smooth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD2fNJ5nyQhxO3U-XfyBYLWnDak8rTPuXv17OXD1w1j80gPqPu7kr5lfxspDY5LNEglBD25vhTAbCFTtYwqnpjHknxDf9Jy5oumZA-gOnSDhIsDTfeZgpfWB6ZkX0_ghqp87vXoU_IkmY/s1600/smooth.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Put the ball of dough into a greased container and cover it. <b>Let rise for an hour at room temperature</b>.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>4. Make Filling</b><br />
<br />
This can be done any time during or just after the dough rising hour. Mix together:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1/2 cup sugar (105g)<br />
1 teaspoon maple extract (6g)<br />
1 teaspoon cinnamon (2g)<br />
1/3 cup chopped almonds (28g) [or whatever you like]</blockquote>
<br />
<b>5. Turn One Into Three</b><br />
<br />
When the hour is up, <b>start melting</b> another 1/4 cup of unsalted butter (62g). You'll need it shortly.<br />
<br />
Now, take the dough ball out of its container and split it into three equal parts. Flatten out each part into a circle about 9 inches or 23 cm in diameter.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>6. Stack'm</b><br />
<br />
Put one of the dough circles onto a greased pan, brush it with the freshly melted butter, then sprinkle about a third of the filling on top.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju69u5xzXRJgUWZD4KCrT0-mUGhBamuMi480l1VH4AJvz_ShZku3SU8poiZGKH1EDYwzAGYqQubhY70KR9vX1VFmnNAizkyjWw8lGJ7_XO80jzjs9fY77nxnSApQGKQhAW2XvSjHrtQH8/s1600/one.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju69u5xzXRJgUWZD4KCrT0-mUGhBamuMi480l1VH4AJvz_ShZku3SU8poiZGKH1EDYwzAGYqQubhY70KR9vX1VFmnNAizkyjWw8lGJ7_XO80jzjs9fY77nxnSApQGKQhAW2XvSjHrtQH8/s1600/one.png" /></a></div>
<br />
Put the second circle of dough on top, butter, and sprinkle. Same for the third.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkKrypf9FS53fWEuvLQVSZq4n2OSb-BmxfWiafwDggeFU7-ohei-4ZEKnX9NElPePm_sJLUDOJn8Eqzbpie2HYEP00_JMuHcjqThdQhhPWimKyFvOl8uExWw2NhKD1iF6WKvOf4iOybE/s1600/two.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkKrypf9FS53fWEuvLQVSZq4n2OSb-BmxfWiafwDggeFU7-ohei-4ZEKnX9NElPePm_sJLUDOJn8Eqzbpie2HYEP00_JMuHcjqThdQhhPWimKyFvOl8uExWw2NhKD1iF6WKvOf4iOybE/s1600/two.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
If the whole thing has contracted a bit, just flatten it back to full size.<br />
<br />
<b><br />7. Slice'm</b><br />
<br />
Find a traditional, Mennonite shot glass...or anything around that size (I use the lid of my Thermos). Press your doohickey down in the middle of the dough to act as a guide and to hold the middle down.<br />
<br />
Find a traditional, Mennonite <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulu"><u>ulu</u></a>...or anything sharp enough to cut dough. Make a cut from the edge to maybe half an inch from the thing you're holding down in the middle.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAXr1DxI2g2fFDfzxY3itqIOvhuj_UwzsYRqa9e03fdgYxZa3iDEWl9qpXoBPDMVsIvDWuNFYuixCVs57ezBkn19GVASLl9MEXx85W6twsmPBajolmzaoVGXn1mqgphUS7Aq1o5D5XfkQ/s1600/three.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAXr1DxI2g2fFDfzxY3itqIOvhuj_UwzsYRqa9e03fdgYxZa3iDEWl9qpXoBPDMVsIvDWuNFYuixCVs57ezBkn19GVASLl9MEXx85W6twsmPBajolmzaoVGXn1mqgphUS7Aq1o5D5XfkQ/s1600/three.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Then do the same on the opposite side. And between each of these cuts, making four evenly-spaced cuts total.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzmT_ad0x5HnFF5qGhgkmhB5E3AWIutJtTKWQx48cVlPNjUR9e3eotz5alHEANYvVBQS8dmxmEJ3GYFRCEDKxUags1HHtHzJbgenKt3H3NGj0GPWPHYA2O1aZJwTIBm-KXnl_sAGRIx8/s1600/four.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHzmT_ad0x5HnFF5qGhgkmhB5E3AWIutJtTKWQx48cVlPNjUR9e3eotz5alHEANYvVBQS8dmxmEJ3GYFRCEDKxUags1HHtHzJbgenKt3H3NGj0GPWPHYA2O1aZJwTIBm-KXnl_sAGRIx8/s1600/four.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
Then cut between each of the original four cuts, making eight cuts total. Finally, cut between each of the eight cuts—but not quite so far—making sixteen cuts.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUxB_WuR3vXxwOFVhvCiizSJghMFO_Qrg5kYnXHKIk4keDJOoZa2Zlr_7v-90oZzF3pQbb8wJDOxaIZCjIvR0ZXSf2DLxIfvkZZbF5DsQaPmaCjq5f996l3KvF1Y9LZwCCw95vXmvD7PA/s1600/five.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUxB_WuR3vXxwOFVhvCiizSJghMFO_Qrg5kYnXHKIk4keDJOoZa2Zlr_7v-90oZzF3pQbb8wJDOxaIZCjIvR0ZXSf2DLxIfvkZZbF5DsQaPmaCjq5f996l3KvF1Y9LZwCCw95vXmvD7PA/s1600/five.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<b>8. Twist'm</b><br />
<br />
Pull each of the sixteen wedges out slightly then <i>twist</i>!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_2Omk0hyphenhyphenvrP5A8yk0a8WvVS-FFpUzT0oPsvZ8yQNcgs9EDCJU9c1JlDGzGlkOUNoOCWEq4ny1K5_CW1rHhQDDShE_0SMl4mr1QIivlU-FJT5k_T_Ls8mBgkRne4j43Oww-WTiKYKoS4/s1600/six.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim_2Omk0hyphenhyphenvrP5A8yk0a8WvVS-FFpUzT0oPsvZ8yQNcgs9EDCJU9c1JlDGzGlkOUNoOCWEq4ny1K5_CW1rHhQDDShE_0SMl4mr1QIivlU-FJT5k_T_Ls8mBgkRne4j43Oww-WTiKYKoS4/s1600/six.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
I like do about six or seven half turns with my right thumb and forefinger while I use my left hand to hold the last twisted wedge in place and apply light pressure to the doohickey in the center (left hand not shown here because it's holding the camera). <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOJAqO3aujbGzw2bwVEnTPgVHYhz5laQhH4XJ-J9yHKZBb5KbpXsnSpIXG63BScAJCJQVuxUg737h_FLQe7tiYZRPiAsCd49oEeYX60yL-zCO02rpRRWF7u8Lkbah7Pep_H-fHODt9sU/s1600/seven.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoOJAqO3aujbGzw2bwVEnTPgVHYhz5laQhH4XJ-J9yHKZBb5KbpXsnSpIXG63BScAJCJQVuxUg737h_FLQe7tiYZRPiAsCd49oEeYX60yL-zCO02rpRRWF7u8Lkbah7Pep_H-fHODt9sU/s1600/seven.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
A convenient way to keep the twists from contracting back toward the center is to bend each one around the last, forming a big spiral.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBPuv5Ca547MQXmnbSVmMpZN5eUFi52k2zv2gSeldMfdQZFSsimZg3zRVxE-PVJSz3_ulCJ2emEOz-dSwm98umrg_iEOa1-qbAPsYku7zd6e8Z_j_X0DIve0kKtAkLJpcD3pBYvx85Os8/s1600/eight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBPuv5Ca547MQXmnbSVmMpZN5eUFi52k2zv2gSeldMfdQZFSsimZg3zRVxE-PVJSz3_ulCJ2emEOz-dSwm98umrg_iEOa1-qbAPsYku7zd6e8Z_j_X0DIve0kKtAkLJpcD3pBYvx85Os8/s1600/eight.jpg" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<br />
<b>9. Bake</b><br />
<br />
Cover and <b>let rise</b> for another half hour. Meanwhile, <b>preheat</b> the oven to 375 F (190 C). <br />
<br />
Bake for about twenty minutes until golden brown. This is thick enough to justify using <a href="http://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/776/when-is-it-necessary-to-cover-food-with-aluminum-foil-during-baking-roasting/779#779"><u>aluminum foil on top</u></a> for part of the time.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>10. Drizzle</b><br />
<br />
While the twist is cooling on the pan or presentation plate, mix together:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
1/8 cup unsalted butter, melted (31g)<br />
1 cup powdered sugar (83g)<br />
2 tablespoons milk (28g)<br />
1/2 teaspoon maple extract (3g)</blockquote>
Apply icing liberally to produce the final result:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsp0ngUMT1HFPLs0ydQgfOV3o6Mrpv4wmQP7byaXSrXK8yOnsVswjXni2Ff1wcPfXE67qSxPzm-GmNHDBSbylT4ACktipEUGrlJ5Gy9csd7F3AVli8eRoP2GPvW1Q96D0CYYfPuooglg/s1600/done.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMsp0ngUMT1HFPLs0ydQgfOV3o6Mrpv4wmQP7byaXSrXK8yOnsVswjXni2Ff1wcPfXE67qSxPzm-GmNHDBSbylT4ACktipEUGrlJ5Gy9csd7F3AVli8eRoP2GPvW1Q96D0CYYfPuooglg/s1600/done.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-38666952936087355532013-04-14T10:57:00.000-05:002013-04-14T11:02:49.642-05:00Big Data and the Future of Collections Management[A presentation I gave for Collections Management class. You can follow the clicks in this embedded Prezi to simulate the experience.] <br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="400" src="http://prezi.com/embed/ge71t4dnyz45/?bgcolor=ffffff&lock_to_path=1&autoplay=0&autohide_ctrls=0&features=undefined&disabled_features=undefined" width="550"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
"Big data" is a big buzzword in business and technology circles. If
some had asked me a year ago to define big data, I would have talked
about credit card and credit score companies. I would have talked about
Google harvesting email content. I would have talked about social
networking graphs.<br />
<br />
[click]<br />
<br />
But this sharp increase in data <i>collection</i> is just the first step. The soul of big data is in its <i>use</i>. [click] And the magic of big data is that its use is [click] not predetermined.<br />
<br />
To
see what I mean, let's take a minute to think about scientific method. [click] Remember this from grade school?<br />
<ul>
<li>Form a hypothesis.</li>
<li>Design an experiment.</li>
<li><i>Then</i>: Collect data.</li>
<li>Analyze data.</li>
<li>Draw a conclusion.</li>
</ul>
Big data allows a different approach. [click] Data collection happens <i>first</i>. And here's the key: this data is more or less <i>complete</i>. There's no need to design an experiment to generate some data that's relevant to a specific hypothesis; we just work from <i>all the data</i>! This is a data driven approach to finding patterns, including patterns we never would have hypothesized.<br />
<br />
For example [click], when Walmart's analysts searched their sales history for interesting patterns, they found a connection between [click] looming hurricanes and the sale of [click] flashlights! Ok, that's not too surprising. They also found a strong correlation between hurricanes and [click] pop tarts! Who knew? Even individual pop tart purchasers may not have perceived they're part of a pattern; a wider perspective was required. So Walmart did the obvious thing, they waited for a hurricane and shipped truckloads of extra pop tarts to select stores. They sold like hotcakes! Or should I say, like pop tarts before a hurricane? [click]<br />
<br />
The authors of the book on which this talk is based wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Big data refers to things one can do at a large scale that cannot be done at a smaller one." p. 6</blockquote>
Let's see what another retail giant has accomplished with large scale data. [click]<br />
<br />
Target sometimes advertises by sending 'targeted' coupons to individual customers. It's like Amazon.com's personalized recommendations. Of course, the better the match between coupons and customer needs, the higher the chance that people will get in their cars, drive to Target, and buy things!<br />
<br />
Here's the creepy part. Target's analysts wanted to know if they could<i> identify pregnant </i>customers. So they started with customers who had registered for baby showers and searched for patterns in their purchase histories. It turns out that customers who purchase cotton balls and unscented lotion are more likely to be pregnant, especially if this is followed up by certain vitamins and minerals or over twenty other pregnancy-correlated items. In fact, this progression of purchases can even produce a projected due date! There's even a <i>story </i>about a father who came in to Target upset because his teenage daughter had received coupons for baby cribs. Target knew before he did!<br />
<br />
If big data is sounding powerful and a little scary, you've got the right idea. [click]<br />
<br />
Now we're ready to talk about big data in the context of public library collections management. [click]<br />
<br />
What's the difference between a library and a book store? One difference is that book stores are ultimately about making money, while libraries are ultimately about serving their patrons. As we saw with Target, big data <i>can </i>be used to trade away privacy for profit. It seems inevitable that retail stores will use big data in more and more invasive ways [click]. If this happens, all libraries need to do is maintain their reputation for privacy and their value will grow. It would even make sense for collection development policies to mention a preference for materials of confidential interest.[click]<br />
<br />
On the other hand, libraries are <i>very</i> well situated to take advantage of big data techniques. Unlike Walmart or Kmart transactions, <i>every </i>checkout is tied to a loyalty card...I mean a library card. I can't tell you what patterns a team of big data analysts would reveal in library data. But when we find our equivalent to pop-tarts or unscented lotion, we might order more or fewer of certain materials, rearrange items, or set up displays at more effective times.[click] [click]<br />
<br />
Obviously, there's some tension between maintaining privacy and using library data to its fullest. We could add a line to due date phone calls: "This is Lincoln Public Libraries. We are calling to inform you that you have an item due on Thursday... and you might also enjoy <i>Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy</i>!" Yes, that might scare people away. Thankfully, libraries don't need to rely on their <i>own </i>data to take a big data approach.
[click]<br />
<br />
We can use public data. Even without big data analysis, individual collection managers can (and should!) follow best seller lists, social networking trends, and top news stories. Big data analysis goes deeper. It might be possible to predict the next big things before they make their way to the top. Libraries could be ready to meet demands for the next <i>50 Shades</i>, not lag weeks behind retail stores. If a historically-themed movie is coming out, it would make sense to review materials on that subject, but only if public interest <i>really is </i>picking up; big data might be able to tell the difference. [click]<br />
<br />
In summary, big data is powerful and a little scary. It's not something for the average librarian to use directly, but I believe it is everyone's responsibility to steer the profession between the extremes of neglecting and overusing this technology. We need to adapt to big data, but we also need to adapt big data to our professional ethics.<br />
<br />
Thank you. [click]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-60512705260543645792013-04-03T19:46:00.002-05:002013-04-03T19:55:16.430-05:00On "Filtering and the First Amendment"Since Deborah Caldwell-Stone's <i>American Libraries</i> article "<a href="http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/04022013/filtering-and-first-amendment"><u>Filtering and the First Amendment</u></a>" covers similar ground to my earlier essay "<a href="http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/04/public-forum-doctrine-in-us-v-american.html"><u>Public Forum Doctrine in U.S. v. American Library Association</u></a>," I'd like to do some friendly nit-picking.<br />
<br />
<b>Quick Background</b><br />
<br />
In the United States, public and school libraries are bribed (rather than coerced) into filtering Internet access for minors. This is done through CIPA, the <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/guides/childrens-internet-protection-act"><u>Children's Internet Protection Act</u></a>. In 2003, the constitutionality of CIPA was challenged but upheld in <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-361.ZS.html"><u>U.S. v. American Library Association</u></a>.<br />
<br />
<b>Clarity</b><br />
<br />
Caldwell-Stone's article is helpful because misconceptions about the requirements of CIPA are indeed widespread:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Often, it is because the institutions and individuals responsible for implementing these policies misunderstand or misinterpret CIPA and the Supreme Court decision upholding the law. Among these misunderstandings is a belief that an institution will lose all federal funding if it does not block all potentially inappropriate sites to the fullest extent practicable, or that the Supreme Court decision authorized mandatory filtering for adults and youths alike. Another mistaken belief is that it does not violate the First Amendment to impose restrictive filtering policies that deny adults full access to constitutionally protected materials online." (Caldwell-Stone, 2013)</blockquote>
I appreciate the way she raises awareness that CIPA policies<i> aren't </i>legal requirements and that no library's filtering has been judged too lax to qualify. If a library doesn't want to filter, they don't have to filter! If a library wants to filter lightly, they can still collect CIPA funds.<br />
<br />
<b>Not So Clear</b><br />
<br />
My nit-picking concerns the last sentence of the quote above. Caldwell-Stone is correct that US v. ALA did not <i>authorize </i>mandatory filtering for adults, but the Supreme Court didn't <i>forbid </i>it either. Legally, it's an open question. Caldwell-Stone evidently feels strongly that such filtering violates the First Amendment (a very respectable position to have!), but it's easy for readers to be misled when legal facts and legal hopes are presented in parallel phrases.<br />
<br />
This bit is also problematic:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Does CIPA itself, or the 2003 Supreme Court opinion, actually authorize a library to limit an adult’s access to constitutionally protected speech? A close reading of the district court’s opinion reveals that it fails to address the Supreme Court’s directive: Libraries subject to CIPA should disable filters for adult users to assure their First Amendment rights." (Caldwell-Stone, 2013)</blockquote>
The Supreme Court gave no such "directive." There was no majority opinion (at all), and no such directive can be found in the plurality opinion. In fact, <i>none </i>of the six judges concurring in judgment said so. The Court's language is along these lines:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Assuming that such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties, any such concerns are dispelled by the ease with which patrons may have the filtering software disabled." (US v. ALA, Opinion of the Court)</blockquote>
Note the qualifier "assuming." The Court isn't taking a position on whether or not "such erroneous blocking presents constitutional difficulties." Suppose it <i>were </i>a problem for libraries to block constitutionally protected speech: easy disabling would be an antidote. Suppose it <i>weren't </i>a problem to block such speech: now it's an unnecessary antidote. Since this specific case didn't hinge on the constitutionality of "such erroneous blocking," the judges didn't<span class="st">—</span>and couldn't<span class="st">—</span>rule on the issue.<br />
<br />
Another concurring judge wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"If some libraries do not have the capacity to unblock specific Web sites
or to disable the filter or if it is shown that an adult user’s
election to view constitutionally protected Internet material is
burdened in some other substantial way, that would be the subject for an
as-applied challenge, not the facial challenge made in this case." (US v. ALA, Kennedy's concurrence)</blockquote>
It's entirely reasonable to conclude that a library with mandatory filtering for adults <i>might </i>be judged as violating First Amendment rights, just as a state denying same-sex marriage licenses <i>might </i>be judged (very soon, one hopes) to be violating equal protection rights. Then again, either of these situations <i>might </i>be judged to be constitutional. <br />
<br />
One last concurring judge:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Perhaps local library rules or practices could further restrict the
ability of patrons to obtain 'overblocked' Internet material. [...] But we are not now considering
any such local practices. We here consider only a facial challenge to
the Act itself." (US v. ALA, Breyer's concurrence)</blockquote>
Hopefully it's clear at this point that mandatory Internet filtering for adults is <i>not </i>clearly unconstitutional or constitutional. I applaud Caldwell-Stone for her explanations and her advocacy; I just wish she would separate the two a little more explicitly.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>References</b></div>
<br />
Caldwell-Stone, D. (April 2, 2013). Filtering and the first amendment. <i>American Libraries</i>. Retrieved from <a href="http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/04022013/filtering-and-first-amendment"><u>http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/04022013/filtering-and-first-amendment</u></a><br />
<br />
<a href="http://laws.findlaw.com/us/539/194.html"><u><i>United States v. American Library Association</i>, 539 U.S. 194 (2003)</u></a>.
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-61137273059747765572013-03-16T21:08:00.001-05:002013-03-16T21:09:37.142-05:00Quote of the Day: Moon on Parental Despotism"We need to take a hard look at the rights of the young to access information. It is an issue we have avoided for far too long. And what seems to have become our traditional stance—that it is up to parents to control the reading and viewing of their offspring—may be politically expedient but it isn't particularly principled.<br />
<br />
The arrival of compulsory education provided one escape route for those children whose parents seemed determined to establish a dynasty of ignorance. Some parents still struggle to protect their children from education but, by and large, society has come to accept education as among the rights of the young. Society usually does things for selfish reasons, however, and this may be no more than acceptance that the need for an educated next generation to continue or improve upon what we have wrought is so important that it must even supersede the rather despotic rights we have customarily accorded to parents.<br />
<br />
The question for us, though, is do we then accept that the child's or young adult's right of access to knowledge stops when the school doors close? Do we believe that education happens only in school, that libraries are not educational, that they are less important, less relevant than schools? If we do not believe these things, then how come we do not protest as strongly when an individual parent bars the door of the library (or the adult section) to his or her child as when the governor of a state stands in the schoolhouse door and bars entry to children who seek nothing more dangerous than an equal crack at a decent education?"<br />
<br />
<span class="st">—</span> from Eric Moon's inaugural address as president for the American Library Association at the conference in Detroit in 1977, as quoted in Lillian Gerhardt's critical editorial on page 9 of the Sept. 1977 issue of <i>School Library Journal</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-57236021944008164062013-03-06T01:45:00.000-06:002013-03-16T07:59:11.114-05:00Quote of the Day: Public Libraries as Literary Culture Incubators"The third and last class of objections to public libraries to which I shall direct your attention relates to the kind and quality of the books circulated. These objections, which are usually made by educated and scholarly persons, are based on an entire misconception of the facts in the case. The objectors do not divest themselves of the old ideas that libraries are established for the exclusive benefit of scholars; whereas the purpose of these [i.e. public libraries] is to furnish reading for all classes in the community. On no other principle would a general tax for their support be justifiable.<br />
<br />
The masses of a community have very little of literary and scholarly culture. They need more of this culture, and the purpose of the library is to develop and increase it. This is done by placing in their hands such books as they can read with pleasure and appreciate, and by stimulating them to acquire the <i>habit</i> of reading. We must first interest the reader before we can educate him; and, to this end, must commence at his own standard of intelligence.<br />
<br />
The scholar, in his pride of intellect, forgets the progressive steps he took in his own mental development—the stories read to him in the nursery, the boy's book of adventure in which he revelled with delight, and the sentimental novel over which he shed tears in his youth. Our objector supposes that the masses will read books of his standard if they were not supplied with the books to which he objects; but he is mistaken. Shut up to this choice, they will read no books. When the habit of reading is once acquired, the reader's taste, and hence the quality of his reading, progressively improves."<br />
<br />
Poole, WM. F. (1876). Some popular objections to public libraries. <i>The American Library Journal 1</i>(2), p. 48-49. [Paragraph breaks added for readability.]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-2880046687884538112013-02-25T22:51:00.000-06:002013-02-25T22:51:29.347-06:00Quote of the Day: Nietzsche On Complex, Historied Ideas"With regard to the other element in <i>punishment</i>, its fluid
element, its meaning, the idea of punishment in a very late stage of
civilisation (for instance, contemporary Europe) is not content with
manifesting merely one meaning, but manifests a whole synthesis "of
meanings." The past general history of punishment, the history of its
employment for the most diverse ends, crystallises eventually into a
kind of unity, which is difficult to analyse into its parts, and which,
it is necessary to emphasise, absolutely defies definition. (It is
nowadays impossible to say definitely <i>the precise reason</i> for
punishment: all ideas, in which a whole process is promiscuously
comprehended, elude definition; it is only that which has no history,
which can be defined.)"<br />
<br />
— From <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Genealogy_of_Morals/Second_Essay"><u>The Genealogy of Morals, Second Essay, Section 13</u></a>. <br />
<br />
(Hat tip to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1327289.Self_Examination"><u>John Budd</u></a> for bringing this quote to my attention.)Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-28355145520888156762013-01-24T05:49:00.000-06:002013-01-24T05:49:15.089-06:00Quote of the Day: Antelope as Document"An antelope running wild on the plains of Africa should
not be considered a document, she rules. But if it were to be captured, taken to a zoo and made an
object of study, it has been made into a document. It has become physical evidence being used by
those who study it. Not only that, but scholarly articles written about the antelope are secondary
documents, since the antelope itself is the primary document."<br />
<br />
— from <a href="http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~buckland/whatdoc.html"><u>What is a "Document"?</u></a> by Michael BucklandUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-73929544116610987422012-12-27T18:31:00.000-06:002013-01-10T12:07:18.867-06:00What Is The Semantic Web?The Semantic Web is<span class="st">—</span>or is hoped to be<span class="st">—</span>the next revolution in the way the Internet is used, just as the World Wide Web was a revolution in the way the Internet was used. To get some perspective, we need to look back at history.<br />
<br />
<b>Before the Internet</b>, computers existed as standalone machines, possibly with multiple monitor/keyboard terminals spread around a building. For long distance connections, wired circuits (think modems) had to be be brought up and then maintained throughout a session. Local networks existed, but each network vendor had its own incompatible system. There wasn't a <i>standard</i> way of communicating across networks.<br />
<br />
<b>The Internet</b> began as a U.S. Department of Defense project to connect research universities. By the end of 1969, networks at four universities were connected to each other. In 1983, the communication standard of this inter-network ("between"-network) was changed to the <a href="http://nostarch.com/tcpip.htm"><u>TCP/IP protocol suite</u></a>, which is still the basis of Internet communication today. With an IP address (e.g. 203.0.113.100) and a port (e.g. 25), a computer in California can connect to the email program on a computer in Germany and leave a message for a user there. Or, slightly more user friendly, a kid growing up in rural North Dakota could use the <a href="http://www.computerhope.com/software/telnet.htm"><u>telnet</u></a> application to connect to a domain name (genesis.cs.chalmers.se) along with a port (3011) to play a text adventure game running on a university server in Sweden. (They've changed the <a href="http://www.genesismud.org/pages/playnow"><u>address</u></a> a bit since I was in high school.)<br />
<br />
There was useful and fun stuff going on before the World Wide Web, but it was hard to <i>discover</i> new resources. It's hard to believe now, but it was common in those days to learn about Internet sites by reading about them in books. Paper books! Sure, there were <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gopher_%28protocol%29"><u>Gopher</u></a> servers with manually-maintained hierarchical categories of Internet resources, but these directories didn't keep up very well and the resources didn't usually link to each other.<br />
<br />
The <b>World Wide Web</b> began as an internal project at CERN, the particle physics research center on the border of Switzerland and France. Researchers needed a better way to organize their information in a busy environment with lots of job turnover, so <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee"><u>Tim Berners-Lee</u></a> proposed a solution for CERN intentionally designed to work on a global scale as well. He wrote:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"a 'web' of notes with links (like references) between them is far
more useful than a fixed hierarchical system. When describing a complex
system, many people resort to diagrams with circles and arrows. Circles and
arrows leave one free to describe the interrelationships between things in a
way that tables, for example, do not. The system we need is like a diagram of
circles and arrows, where circles and arrows can stand for anything." (<a href="http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html"><u>source</u></a>)</blockquote>
He was serious about the "anything" part, but we'll get back to that. As implemented, the circles came to represent <i>documents </i>and the arrows became <i>references to other documents</i>. Web pages linking to other web pages! The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext"><u>notion of document interlinking</u></a> had been around for decades, but the World Wide Web turned the idea into practical, worldwide reality. <br />
<br />
Linked documents sounds a little boring, but programmers have found ways to make web "documents" very interactive. Many other Internet applications have migrated into the web browser. Gopher was replaced by Yahoo (before Yahoo became a tabloid). Home users are more likely to use web mail than a standalone mail client. Twitter and Facebook have largely replaced <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irc"><u>IRC</u></a> and other instant messaging clients. Web services (and web mail, unfortunately) are used to transfer files instead of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ftp"><u>FTP</u></a>. It's a good thing that applications like Skype and BitTorrent exist, or people might forget there's a difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD6QPXERsjCFhmhyryQdVcB3V9mcktVywF_GoAU7WJRlYxUh2KzqPf03Rsqo6My62Kp4GgFtWyOtiKTD1Dj_gT6dR9d3N6fOQ1QZU6IF9CoZ0NctdYfnojo-Sp8DHqDiwdMJS0fIEO8Yk/s1600/semantic+web+logo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="W3C Semantic Web Logo" border="0" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD6QPXERsjCFhmhyryQdVcB3V9mcktVywF_GoAU7WJRlYxUh2KzqPf03Rsqo6My62Kp4GgFtWyOtiKTD1Dj_gT6dR9d3N6fOQ1QZU6IF9CoZ0NctdYfnojo-Sp8DHqDiwdMJS0fIEO8Yk/s320/semantic+web+logo.png" title="" width="320" /></a></div>
What's next?<br />
<br />
<i>Many great things happened after we started linking documents; what if we try linking finer-grained pieces of data in usable ways?</i> That's the idea behind the <b>Semantic Web</b>.<br />
<br />
Think of it this way: the World Wide Web allowed organizations and individuals to put their relatively static documents "out there" for the world to see. But what about database generated content like <a href="http://catalog.loc.gov/"><u>library catalogs</u></a>, or <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/"><u>online store pricing</u></a>, or <a href="http://www.weather.gov/"><u>current weather conditions</u></a>? Web crawlers might be able to retrieve and usefully interpret <i>some </i>of this data, but that usually requires special per-site programming that breaks if the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface"><u>API</u></a> or web formatting changes.<br />
<br />
<b>Getting Across Town, The Semantic Way</b><br />
<br />
Here is an example of a web-published bus route:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://lincoln.ne.gov/city/pworks/startran/routemap/weekday/route41.htm"><u>http://lincoln.ne.gov/city/pworks/startran/routemap/weekday/route41.htm</u></a><br />
<br />
An experienced bus rider can read this page and figure out how to plan a trip. A computer program would need help understanding how to parse all of this visually-structured data into precisely labeled information that it can reason about. Quick, what time does the last <i>southbound </i>bus leave "North Walmart" on Thursdays? It's not a trivial process to give that answer, even after we visually interpret the numbers as times in columns that correspond to bus stop locations on the map below. An even harder question might be: "I'm at arbitrary location X and want to reach location Y; what bus route gives me the shortest total walking distance?" In this case, a human on the right website might still have to manually look through all bus route pages, narrow it down to a couple of likely shortest routes, then spend more time comparing the tradeoff between walking farther to the first bus stop or walking farther from the last bus stop.<br />
<br />
What would be really neat is a way for bus services and street map services to publish their data on the web in a computer-friendly form that allows third party web apps to combine all of this information and calculate answers to such questions. Even better: a universal format so mash-ups from unexpected combinations of data sources are easier to make. I'm thinking of a music app that checks your GPS position and your destination so it can create a playlist that ends within thirty seconds before your final stop. Or an emergency flight plan app that cross references ticket pricing options with weather predictions. Or a recipe web site that lets you mark missing ingredients and shows their pricing from the five closest stores. Or a personalized book recommendation site that filters by currently available titles in local public libraries. Or imagine searching the web for information on a brand-name drug, and the top results use the drug's generic name without mentioning the brand-name.<br />
<br />
Many of these things are possible without semantic web technology; they just require more work to set up and don't tend to be very reusable. For example, <a href="http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/transit/"><u>Google Transit</u></a> can help with bus route planning, <i>if </i>a city has formatted their data specifically for this Google web app and joined the transit partner program. But what if a new business wants to reuse this information in a creative way? What if Google cancels the Transit service? It would preferable to have an open standard for open data. <br />
<br />
<b>Linked Data</b><br />
<br />
What's the plan, then? Open existing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_model"><u>relational databases</u></a> to the public? Not exactly. The <a href="http://www.w3.org/Consortium/"><u>World Wide Web Consortium</u></a> is pushing for another database model that's a more natural fit for the web: a graph-style data model. From the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_database"><u>Wikipedia article</u></a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Compared with <a class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_databases" title="Relational databases">relational databases</a>,
graph databases are often faster for associative data sets, and map
more directly to the structure of object-oriented applications. They can
scale more naturally to large data sets as they do not typically
require expensive <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Join_%28SQL%29" title="Join (SQL)">join</a>
operations. As they depend less on a rigid schema, they are more
suitable to manage ad-hoc and changing data with evolving schemas.
Conversely, relational databases are typically faster at performing the
same operation on large numbers of data elements."</blockquote>
In other words, graph databases are less efficient but more flexible (see also <a href="http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/02/death-of-relational-database.html"><u>The Death of the Relational Database</u></a>). For people who aren't math majors or computer programmers, "graph database" may sound like "graphical database." But what's meant is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graph_theory"><u>graph theory</u></a>: a bunch of nodes and connections between nodes, usually visualized as circles and lines. A <b>directed graph</b> adds direction to those lines, so you get circles and arrows. Recall what Tim Berners-Lee wrote in his original proposal for the World Wide Web: "The system we need is like a diagram of
circles and arrows, where circles and arrows can stand for anything." The World Wide Web is made of connections like this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat) --links to--> (http://www.catpert.com/)</blockquote>
Each <b>URL</b> (Uniform Resource Locator) is a circle and web links are the arrows. If you can imagine all URLs and all arrows between them as a gigantic diagram, you're visualizing the World Wide Web as one big directed graph.<br />
<br />
Now imagine that the circles can stand for anything, not just web documents. Imagine that the arrows can stand for any relationship, not just navigation links.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(rain gauge #2,388) --detected rain depth--> (3 cm)<br />
(rain gauge #2,388) --time since last emptied--> (60 min)<br />
(rain gauge #2,388) --location--> (Millennium Stadium)<br />
(Cardiff) --contains--> (Millennium Stadium)</blockquote>
A web app that has access to this information can now give an answer the question, "How much has it rained in Cardiff in the last hour?" "An average of 3 cm, as reported by 1 rain gauge." Or with more gauges it might be, "An average of 2.95 cm, as reported by 15 rain gauges." These <b>(something) --related somehow--> (something)</b> snippets of information called <b>triples </b>can combine together into complex graphs of data. And, like web pages, this can happen across servers. The rain depth information could be on one server that only knows the gauge is in Millennium Stadium, while another server knows that Millennium Stadium is in Cardiff. In fact, it makes sense to reference a separate server with lots of geographical knowledge rather than trying to maintain geographical info on a specialized rain gauge server. If the geography server is updated, the rain server automatically and instantly benefits! This is an example of the synergy that can happen with <b>linked data</b>.<br />
<br />
<b>Wait, <i>Where </i>Are These Factoids?</b><br />
<br />
Regular web links are in web pages and point to other web pages; we're used to that by now. But where are these <i>triples </i>located? They can be embedded into web page code in the form of <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-rdfa-primer/"><u>RDFa</u></a>. Graph databases called <b>triplestores </b>can also be put on the Internet and directly <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparql"><u>queried</u></a>, much as a SQL database could be if it weren't hidden behind an intermediary website. In either case, typical Internet users won't "see" the Semantic Web directly as they see the World Wide Web's documents and links. The Semantic Web exists as a programming-oriented sibling or add-on to the World Wide Web, not as a replacement. Applications use the Semantic Web to <i>enhance </i>traditional web services.<br />
<br />
<b>What Makes the Semantic Web "Semantic"?</b><br />
<br />
In philosophy, linguistics, and computer science, <b>semantics </b>has to do with <i>meaning </i>in contrast to <b>syntax </b>(which has to do with structure or format). Remember ad-libs?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The [adjective] outlaw [transitive past tense verb] a [common noun].</blockquote>
So long as these blanks are filled in with the specified parts of speech, the resulting sentence will be <i>syntactically </i>correct; it will have the right format for an English sentence. For example:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The lonely outlaw whistled a tune.<br />
The law-abiding outlaw drank a mortgage.</blockquote>
The second sentence may have proper syntax, but it's nonsense. Because of their <i>meaning</i>, certain words and phrases don't go well together, at least not in a literal sense. Something else to consider:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
This isn't a dog, it's a doberman pinscher.</blockquote>
Again, nothing wrong with the syntax, but a doberman pinscher is <i>a type of</i> dog. Another case:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
There were witch trials in Salem.</blockquote>
The truth of this sentence depends (in part) on <i>which </i>Salem is meant. It's a true claim when referring to Salem, Massachusetts. It's false for Salem, Iowa...and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem#Places"><u>many other Salems</u></a>. In standalone databases, ambiguities and mis-matched concepts like these aren't much of a problem. A database created for a certain purpose in a certain context has implicit restrictions on the meaning of its data. A Massachusetts newspaper database and a Iowa newspaper database are going to mean something different by just plain "Salem." What happens if we try to publish all of these databases on the web and expect the data to mesh well together? Chaos, unintentional humor, and a general lack of usefulness!<br />
<br />
For this reason, the Semantic Web <i>has </i>to be about more than just publishing everyone's data as <i>(subject) --predicate--> (object)</i> triples. Here's a flawed set of triples:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(witch trials) --took place in--> (Salem)<br />
(Tom) --born in--> (Salem)</blockquote>
Was Tom born in the same city that the witch trials took place in? We can't tell because we don't know if the two "Salem"s are the same, or which "Tom" is meant. To solve this problem, <b>URIs </b>(Uniform Resource Identifiers) are used, roughly like this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Salem_witch_trials"><u>http://dbpedia.org/resource/Category:Salem_witch_trials</u></a>)<br />
--(<a href="http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/eventOccursAt"><u>http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/eventOccursAt</u></a>)--><br />
(<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Salem,_Massachusetts"><u>http://dbpedia.org/resource/Salem,_Massachusetts</u></a>)<br />
<br />
(<a href="http://dbpedia.org/page/Thomas_Poulter"><u>http://dbpedia.org/page/Thomas_Poulter</u></a>)<br />
--(<a href="http://dbpedia.org/ontology/birthPlace"><u>http://dbpedia.org/ontology/birthPlace</u></a>)--><br />
(<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Salem,_Iowa"><u>http://dbpedia.org/resource/Salem,_Iowa</u></a>)</blockquote>
In this case, the "Tom" in question was born in a different Salem. If the URIs had matched up, it would have been possible to draw a new conclusion along the lines of <i>(Tom) --born where occurred--> (Salem witch trials)</i>. Why call these UR<b>I</b>s rather than UR<b>L</b>s? Because they don't necessarily correspond to a visitable web page, although it's considered best practice to make such a page available when possible. A URI can <i>identify </i>a resource (or a concept!) without necessarily providing a <i>location</i>.<br />
<br />
Did you notice that the URIs above come from both dbpedia.org and opencyc.org? There isn't a single, authorized web domain for the URIs used in linked data. Different organizations can contribute to the pool of URIs. What if two organizations use different URIs for the same thing? There's a triple for that!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(<a href="http://dbpedia.org/resource/Salem,_Massachusetts"><u>http://dbpedia.org/resource/Salem,_Massachusetts</u></a>)<br />
--(<a href="http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#sameAs"><u>http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#<b>sameAs</b></u></a>)--><br />
(<a href="http://sw.cyc.com/concept/Mx4rvViiFpwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA"><u>http://sw.cyc.com/concept/Mx4rvViiFpwpEbGdrcN5Y29ycA</u></a>) </blockquote>
What about mismatches between URIs for "doberman pinscher" and "dog." As you might guess by now, a predicate (i.e. middle URI) can be used to say that a doberman is a type of dog. Then, hopefully, any computer program trying to decide if a given specimen is a dog won't stop at finding out that it's a "doberman pinscher"; it will check to see if doberman pinschers are dogs.<br />
<br />
To answer the original question, what makes the Semantic Web "semantic"? All of this background work done by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_%28information_science%29"><u>ontologists</u></a> to <i>separate and combine</i> concepts and to <i>specify the relationships</i> among them. The Semantic Web isn't just about breaking data out of individual databases, but to publish data in terms of these shared vocabularies and relationship schemes. For data to be useful (and <i>re</i>usable) in a giant, global database, the information that was implicit in the context and structure of local databases has to become explicit. Triples format does this for structure. Ontology work does this for meaning.<br />
<br />
<b>When Will "Semantic Web" Be a Household Name?</b><br />
<br />
It probably won't ever be a term everyone knows. The semantic revolution is happening behind the scenes among scientific, business, and cultural heritage groups. If things go well, the Semantic Web will increasingly influence the average person's experience with traditional web sites and services. Even if today's technical implementation of the Semantic Web remains niche, I have no doubt that some of its motivating ideas will reappear in future technologies. <br />
<br />
<b>Related Reading</b><br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/"><u>W3C Semantic Web</u></a> (Standards Information)<u> </u></li>
<li><a href="http://www.cambridgesemantics.com/semantic-university"><u>Semantic University</u></a> (Introductory lessons)</li>
<li><a href="http://linkeddatabook.com/editions/1.0/"><u>Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space</u></a> (Online book)</li>
<li><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/21086"><u>Semantic Data Integration on Biomedical Data Using Semantic Web Technologies</u></a> (Book Chapter)</li>
<li><a href="http://challenge.semanticweb.org/index.html"><u>Semantic Web Challenge</u></a> (Yearly App Awards)</li>
<li><a href="http://linkeddata.org/"><u>LinkedData.org</u></a> (Guide to projects and resources)
</li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-2731559993515690512012-12-16T01:21:00.000-06:002013-03-16T08:00:43.170-05:00Lingo: Authority Control<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqOrbe6hdev9eWEAcwa1sMY8b_xfjIiH3VHQF2chFyvdLXvIZvojNRcgzFtWfS1lGGg2UcGZ-F14GUIV927yHULnihzkUPo2JvfkrfcdKpKoV9WmgDPqUnAEQJKC-XBGKGXOASySl4Ybw/s1600/notzelda.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqOrbe6hdev9eWEAcwa1sMY8b_xfjIiH3VHQF2chFyvdLXvIZvojNRcgzFtWfS1lGGg2UcGZ-F14GUIV927yHULnihzkUPo2JvfkrfcdKpKoV9WmgDPqUnAEQJKC-XBGKGXOASySl4Ybw/s400/notzelda.jpg" width="314" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kamikazestoat/425526222"><u>http://www.flickr.com/photos/kamikazestoat/425526222</u></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Some <a href="http://delicious.com/about"><u>Delicious</u></a> tags:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/legendofzelda"><u>legendofzelda</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/legend_of_zelda"><u>legend_of_zelda</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/%5Blegend.of.zelda%5D"><u>[legend.of.zelda]</u></a></li>
<li><u><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/loz">loz </a></u></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/thelegendofzelda"><u>thelegendofzelda</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/the_legend_of_zelda"><u>the_legend_of_zelda</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/tloz"><u>tloz</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/tlozelda"><u>tlozelda</u></a></li>
<br />
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/zelda"><u>zelda</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/zeldagames"><u>zeldagames</u></a></li>
<br />
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/zeruda"><u>zeruda</u></a></li>
<li><a href="http://delicious.com/tag/%E3%82%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%80"><u>ゼルダ</u></a></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">These are user-submitted tags to help other users find webpages on a given topic.</span><br />
<br />
Suppose I just found some interesting <a href="http://thejedhenry.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d56kz72"><u>Legend of Zelda alt art</u></a> and want to link it on Delicious. Which tag do I use? <a href="http://delicious.com/tag/legendofzelda"><u>legendofzelda</u></a> is popular, but so is <a href="http://delicious.com/tag/zelda"><u>zelda</u></a>. If I want everyone to see my link, I had better use both! Maybe this is good enough, but since there will still be people browsing through the other tags listed above, should I use <i>all</i> of them? How do I know I've even <i>found</i> them all? What if someone starts using the tag <a href="http://delicious.com/tag/zeldaseries"><u>zeldaseries</u></a> next week? <br />
<br />
Hey, maybe someone should clean up this mess by designating an <i>official tag</i> for the Legend of Zelda video game series. Or we call this the <b>authorized</b> tag. Here is a great three-part plan:<br />
<ol>
<li>Decide on authorized tags for every distinct topic on Delicious.</li>
<li>Make sure that all current and future Delicious links use the authorized tags.</li>
<li>Enjoy finding <i>all</i> links related to a topic under one tag (and nothing unrelated)!</li>
</ol>
In Library Science lingo, steps one and two are called <b>authority work</b>: the behind-the-scenes work that needs to be done to have neatly organized <b>access points</b> to resources. Access points can be titles, names, or topics. <br />
<ul>
<li>The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Video Game) -- a title</li>
<li>Miyamoto, Shigeru, 1952- -- a name</li>
<li>Sailing -- a topic </li>
</ul>
or a little older:<br />
<ul>
<li>Dracula (Novel) -- a title</li>
<li>Stoker, Bram, 1847-1912 -- a name</li>
<li>Vampires -- a topic</li>
</ul>
A close synonym to authority work is <b>authority control</b>. I prefer to think of authority control as the goal of authority work. In other words, we <i>do</i> authority work to <i>achieve a state</i> of authority control (as in step three above). But it's more common to combine the concepts:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>Authority control</i> is the process of bringing together all of the forms of name that apply to a single name; all the variant titles that apply to a single work; and relating all the synonyms, related terms, broader terms, and narrower terms that apply to a single subject heading." — Arlene Taylor, <i>The Organization of Information</i> (3rd edition), p. 44</blockquote>
It's not the most intuitive terminology. "Access point control" or "name deduplication" or "not having a pile of inconsistent labels" would all be better.<br />
<br />
<b>A Professionals Only Club?</b><br />
<br />
Delicious is not likely to change its tagging system. Authority control has great benefits, but it takes a lot of extra time and effort. Delicious is fantastic for what it offers: quick-and-easy bookmark tagging and decent (if flawed) bookmark discovery. <br />
<br />
Does this mean authority control is only in reach for professional librarians? Nope! I can think of a major Web 2.0 site that lets users participate in a kind of authority work: Wikipedia.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rR3cv9LTgkA/UM1YI3D_hgI/AAAAAAAABKU/GNUEy9EGJdg/s1600/things.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="308" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rR3cv9LTgkA/UM1YI3D_hgI/AAAAAAAABKU/GNUEy9EGJdg/s320/things.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pommes-1.jpg</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Quick! What are these called: <br />
<br />
...pommes, chips, French fries? ...pommes frites, slap chips, Belgian fries? <br />
<br />
Imagine separate Wikipedia articles for these variations and <a href="http://toolserver.org/~dispenser/cgi-bin/rdcheck.py?page=French_Fries"><u>many more</u></a>. Not desirable, to say the least. Wikipedia handles this situation by letting users decide on a single article title (e.g. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_fries"><u>French Fries</u></a>) and creating <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Redirect"><u>redirects</u></a> for alternate titles.<br />
<br />
Why does this work for Wikipedia but not for Delicious? Primarily because of the number of volunteer editors willing to do this kind of behind-the-scenes work for articles. Trying to keep Delicious links organized would be much more maddening with much less payoff.<br />
<br />
<b>Controlled Vocabulary Resources</b><br />
<br />
Not every library or website needs to come up with its own authorized titles, names, or subjects. Here are some (more or less) publicly available lists that can at least serve as a starting point:<br />
<br />
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html"><u>Library of Congress Subject Headings</u></a>. A very broad and inclusive set of subject terms. Academic libraries tend to re-use these for their collections. Example: <a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85121591.html"><u>Ships</u></a>. Smaller libraries often use the <a href="http://www.ebscohost.com/academic/sears-list-of-subject-headings"><u>Sears List of Subject Headings</u></a> instead.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names.html"><u>Library of Congress Name Authority File</u></a>. Example: <a href="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79068491.html"><u>Rice, Anne, 1941-</u></a>. Also see Getty's <a href="http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ulan/"><u>Union List of Artist Names</u></a>. Example: <a href="http://www.getty.edu/vow/ULANFullDisplay?find=mondrian&role=&nation=&prev_page=1&subjectid=500004972"><u>Mondrian, Piet <span class="page">(Dutch painter, 1872-1944)</span></u></a>.<br />
<br />
Library of Congress' <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/"><u>Thesaurus for Graphic Materials</u></a>. Check the three "Browse By" links on the left. Example: <a href="http://www.loc.gov/pictures/related/?fi=format&q=Nitrate%20negatives."><u>Nitrate negatives</u></a>. Getty's <a href="http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/index.html"><u>Art & Architecture Thesaurus</u></a>. Example: <a href="http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATFullDisplay?find=googie&logic=AND&note=&english=N&prev_page=1&subjectid=300265600"><u>Googie</u></a>.<br />
<br />
Individuals might prefer to use vocabularies like these rather than come up with their own blog tags, image tags, or music tags. You can look beyond the library and archives scene too. If I had a music review blog, I would probably use AllMusic's <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/genres"><u>genre name hierarchy</u></a>. Example: <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/style/americana-ma0000004415"><u>Americana</u></a>. Right now this doesn't do a lot of good on one blog, but the <a href="http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html"><u>growth</u></a> of Semantic Web technologies may mean better use of authorized vocabulary on the public web in the future. Or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization"><u>SEO leeches</u></a> might just mess that up too. Either way, you can always visit your library and take advantage of the authority control someone worked so hard to set up there!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-70142479234163888502012-12-07T22:57:00.001-06:002012-12-28T10:59:32.877-06:00Nicomachean Ethics (Pt. 2)[<a href="http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/11/nicomachean-ethics-pt-1.html"><u>Series introduction and table of contents here</u></a>.]<br />
<br />
<b>Book I, Chapter 4</b><br />
<br />
In my comments on Chapter 2, I described Aristotle's "grand goal" as the political art. That wasn't quite right. What he was saying back then and reiterates here in Chapter 4 is that the highest of goods is the same as <i>whatever</i> the political art's goal is. He sees politics as the most encompassing activity in human life, so its goal would be the most encompassing goal. And what is the goal of the political art? Happiness.<br />
<br />
All human activities are subordinate to politics and politics is aimed at happiness. Got it. Aristotle doesn't feel the need to argue for the answer of "happiness" because he takes it as universally accepted by both "the many" and "the refined." (Yes, he's just a tad elitist.) He does note that "the many" give a variety of explanations for what constitutes happiness, e.g. health, wealth, pleasure, etc.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Certain others, in addition, used to suppose that the good is something else, by itself, apart from these many good things, which is also the cause of their all being good."</blockquote>
"Certain others" being Plato and friends, obviously. It's interesting how Aristotle puts some distance between himself and this view. Before he elaborates, however, he goes off on another tangent about arguing <i>from</i> principles vs. arguing <i>to</i> principles. Why does he do this? I think it's because he wants to excuse himself from starting with Plato's principles. He actually names Plato as someone who understood these two different directions of argument. He's tip-toeing around his audience's reverence for his own former teacher. Aristotle is firmly on the side of arguing <i>to</i> principles, which might sound bad until you realize he's trying to be more of a scientist than an ideologue; he wants to use induction to discover what the true principles are from "things known to us" rather than "things known simply."<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Perhaps it is necessary for us, at least, to begin from the things known to us."</blockquote>
See, he's not being arrogant by going his own way from Plato. He's being extra <i>humble</i>.<br />
<br />
<b>Book I, Chapter 5</b><br />
<br />
There are three "especially prominent" ways of life:<br />
<br />
<i>The life of enjoyment</i>. This is what "the many" choose to pursue, though some rulers do as well. Aristotle calls this "the life of fattened cattle." These people think happiness and pleasure are the same.<br />
<br />
<i>The political life</i>. The "refined and active" live the political life by pursuing honor...or maybe virtue. Aristotle considers the possibility that honor is more of a reaction people have when they encounter a person with virtue, which would make virtue the primary goal. He's not quite happy with this result, however, since there are many cases where the exercise of virtue and happiness seem at odds.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"For it seems to be possible for someone to possess virtue even while asleep or while being inactive throughout life and, in addition to these, while suffering badly and undergoing the greatest misfortune. But no one would deem happy somebody living in this way, unless he were defending a thesis."</blockquote>
Funny! But I have to wonder if Aristotle is being overly dismissive of the possibility of being fulfilled and happy despite great suffering, because a person is so overwhelmingly interested in what they're accomplishing. <br />
<br />
<i>The contemplative life</i>. A footnote here says that Aristotle doesn't get around to explaining the contemplative life until Book X, Chapters 6-8. I've already seen how easily distracted he is, but this has to be some kind of record! Is "sophistication" a Greek word meaning "disorganized"?<br />
<br />
<b>Book I, Chapter 6</b><br />
<br />
Aristotle argues that <i>good</i> can't be a Platonic form (see the "Certain others..." block quote above) because, roughly:<br />
<ul>
<li>For something to have a Platonic form, its expressions must pertain to a "common idea."</li>
<li><i>Good</i> can pertain to both <i>what something is</i> and its <i>relations to other things</i>.</li>
<li><i>What something is</i> is an essential property.</li>
<li><i>How something relates to other things</i> is an accidental property.</li>
<li>A common idea can't be both essential and accidental.</li>
<li>Therefore <i>good</i> can't be a Platonic form.</li>
</ul>
He goes on to list other difficulties in understanding <i>good</i> as a single idea. But then he admits that maybe we can divide instances of <i>good</i> into "things good in themselves" and things that "are advantageous" so we can consider whether the multiplicities of <i>good</i> might only be a problem for the latter category (what philosophers today call "instrumental good"). Perhaps there is a single idea common to all things good in themselves. For example, what if the <i>idea of good itself</i> is the only thing that is good in itself? Aristotle calls this "pointless."<br />
<br />
In order to avoid pointlessness, it must be the case that all instances of things that are good in themselves outwardly manifest <i>good</i> in a common way, "just as the definition of whiteness is the same in the case of snow and in that of white lead." Aristotle believes that "honor, prudence, and pleasure" are good in themselves because people pursue these things for their own sake (even if they also pursue them in an instrumental sense). He doesn't see how the good of honor and the good of pleasure, for example, manifest in a common way, so <i>good</i> can't be a Platonic form even if we set aside instrumental goodness.<br />
<br />
Now Aristotle has a problem. Why the heck do we call all of these disparate things "good" if they don't share a common idea? <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"For they are not like things that share the same name by chance. Is it by dint of their stemming from one thing or because they <i>all</i> contribute to one thing? Or is it more that they are such by analogy?"</blockquote>
He doesn't have a ready answer. Instead, he points back at the Platonists and accuses them of having problems explaining how totally abstract forms and concrete human action interact with each other. Reminds me of physicalists in philosophy of mind who defend themselves by pointing out issues with Cartesian dualism.<br />
<br />
I wonder what Aristotle would have made of Paul Ziff's book, <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3244731-semantic-analysis"><u>Semantic Analysis</u></a>.<i> </i>It seems to me that Ziff answered the question by discovering that things are never good in themselves and it's the <i>other</i> category that can fold neatly into a single idea. <br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Quotes from: Bartlett, R.C. & Collins, S.D. (2011). <i>Aristotle's nicomachean ethics: A new translation</i>. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-1830978947159805492012-11-11T16:54:00.002-06:002013-03-10T19:45:19.054-05:00Nicomachean Ethics (Pt. 1)<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZtWlvta6rHQ-kRPKjYkdpvce49jtYnKkOKZmX2pKMbWutg2LI88T53UjSkgqnWwIg3M6CO1jNl8D51qiZtq-cVJqp0-kG_f_S5IEkP5TvdpkUKOSjeOMF77neGt3H8OnJBLiAoXSqAWk/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZtWlvta6rHQ-kRPKjYkdpvce49jtYnKkOKZmX2pKMbWutg2LI88T53UjSkgqnWwIg3M6CO1jNl8D51qiZtq-cVJqp0-kG_f_S5IEkP5TvdpkUKOSjeOMF77neGt3H8OnJBLiAoXSqAWk/s320/cover.jpg" width="213" /></a><br />
Time for a good old-fashioned blogmentary! In this series, I'm going all the way back to ancient Greek moral philosophy. Most of my previous readings in ethics have been more-or-less contemporary, with a side of Hume, Kant, and Mill. While I'm not a fan of confusing philosophy with history of philosophy, this Aristotle fellow keeps popping up in current, actively-defended philosophy. He's resilient! I decided it's high time to get acquainted with Aristotle's ethics beyond the popular quotes I've encountered elsewhere.<br />
<br />
So you understand where I'm coming from, I have a very <i>goal-oriented</i> view of morality. Descriptively, morality arises from deeply-held human values. Normatively, moral truth arises from a fitting application of decisions or policies to the way the world works. This means I have a decidedly practical rather than mystical view of morality. In the not-so-helpful language of metaethics, "cognitivism," "success theory," "anti-realism," and "hybrid expressivism" should put you in the right neighborhood.<br />
<br />
I will be using Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins' new (2011) translation, as pictured above. They pursued <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_and_formal_equivalence"><u>formal equivalence</u></a>—as opposed to dynamic equivalence—to provide readers with a less filtered experience of Aristotle's wording. Think NASB instead of NIV or CEV, if you're familiar with Bible translations (and their acronyms!). I have no set plan on how much to write per original text or even if I'll comment on the whole thing. So long as I find the material interesting and worth discussing, I will. Finally, I encourage you to pick up a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226026752/"><u>paperback copy</u></a> for yourself. The Kindle edition has a typo in the first sentence and takes away from the excellent footnotes on nearly every page.<br />
<br />
<b>Series Links</b><br />
<ul>
<li>Pt. 1 — Introduction and Book I, Chapters 1-3.</li>
<li><a href="http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/12/nicomachean-ethics-pt-2.html"><u>Pt. 2 — Book I, Chapters 4-6</u></a>. </li>
<li>[On hold indefinitely. Aristotle is so very repetitive.] </li>
</ul>
<br />
<b>Book I, Chapter 1</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good. Hence people have nobly declared that the good is that at which all things aim."</blockquote>
Quite an opening line. The first sentence calls out for elaboration. Given an art, inquiry, action, or choice, what is the good being targeted? The second sentence is, intriguingly, hedged. Aristotle isn't flat-out saying all things aim at "the good." He's putting a common view on the table and expressing some sympathy for the people who take that view. It's one thing to say all things aim at "some good"; another to say all things aim at the <i>same</i> good. Even if they do, is this common good so abstract that we can only call it "the good"?<br />
<br />
Aristotle immediately raises a difficulty with this noble declaration: how can all things aim at the same good when there are different <i>types</i> of things aimed at? As he puts it, "there appears to be a certain difference among the ends." Some ends are direct. The end of shipbuilding is the production of a ship. Other ends are indirect. The end of building warships isn't just the production of a warship, but of winning a war.<br />
<br />
When one end is pursued as a means to a more encompassing end, Aristotle calls the encompassing end "naturally better" and "more choice-worthy." I'm less sure. Take bread-making, for example. The immediate end is the production of a loaf of bread. A further end is to alleviate hunger. Does this necessarily mean the work of alleviating hunger is better than the action of baking bread? Bread isn't the only way to take care of hunger; opening a can of beans could do the job. A person might value bread-making in itself, over and above its use as a hunger banisher. In other words, bread-making might have both instrumental and final value. (Or instrumental and intrinsic value, if you're not hip to <a href="http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/3164346"><u>Korsgaard</u></a>).<br />
<br />
I'm wary about pushing all value for one activity into its encompassing activity because it can lead pretty quickly to single-value ethics such as Mill's grand goal of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism"><u>aggregate happiness</u></a> or Rand's grand goal of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_of_selfishness"><u>extending one's own lifespan</u></a>. While we may value such broad ends and engage in many activities that promote them, I think it's a mistake—an error in judging human psychology—to empty all other values into such pools. The error is especially clear in Ayn Rand's case: we need to live to experience life, but what makes our lives worth living is more than just the time spent.<br />
<br />
<b>Book I, Chapter 2</b><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"If, therefore, there is some end of our actions that we wish for on account of itself, the rest being things we wish for on account of this end, and if we do not choose all things on account of something else—for in this way the process will go on infinitely such that the longing involved is empty and pointless—clearly this would be the good, that is, the best."</blockquote>
Freshmen programmers who don't understand the need for a base case in recursive functions should be ashamed of themselves. The ancient Greeks knew this stuff! (They also put your middle school <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes#Eratosthenes.27_measurement_of_the_Earth.27s_circumference"><u>Geometry skills</u></a> to shame.) Anyway, I still think Aristotle is wrong to ignore the possibility of <i>multiple</i> ends in the "on account of itself" category. But since he thunders on past that, what is his grand goal? ...the political art. Huh? I didn't see that coming, but it does make sense of this edition's beautiful cover art. <br />
<br />
Aristotle lists activities such as economics, warfare, and rhetoric which can all be understood as supporting politics. Today we might say that all things are done for the good of society. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[T]he good of the individual by himself is certainly desirable enough, but that of a nation and of cities is nobler and more divine."</blockquote>
Why not say that the good of nations and cities is subordinate to the good it produces for individuals? It will be interesting to see how Aristotle handles situations where what's good for the state is very bad for some individuals. Or when what's good for individuals is <i>irrelevant</i> to what's good or bad for society.<br />
<br />
<b>Book I, Chapter 3</b><br />
<br />
This chapter argues for approaching political science in a rough—rather than an unduly precise—manner. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The noble things and the just things, which the political art examines, admit of much dispute and variability, such that they are held to exist by law alone and not by nature. And even the good things admit of some such variability on account of the harm that befalls many people as a result of them: it has happened that some have been destroyed on account of their wealth, other on account of their courage"</blockquote>
Oh what a relief! He admits there are problems when civic good or other virtues are pushed to the extremes without considering their effects. Maybe he was familiar with Greek tragedies? This <i>should</i> have prompted some reflection on his part. If your great all-encompassing good can have bad effects, isn't this a flashing clue that you have the wrong fundamental good...or at least not the only fundamental good?<br />
<br />
After some snappy characterizations of mathematicians and youngsters, Aristotle praises an attitude of patience when learning. He says his teachings are pointless for people who just follow their passions unreflectively, but of great benefit to people who "fashion their longings in accord with reason and act accordingly." This makes me ask myself, "When was the last time I allowed learning to shape my actions, and not just to justify them?" Honestly, not long ago, considering I participated in the political art just this week and made a different choice than I did four years ago.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-42200651941023357942012-10-13T20:54:00.001-05:002012-12-30T23:12:05.861-06:00Fantastic Fiction's Fading Heritage<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"It will be a terrible waste if the stories from the pulp era vanish because of this issue." (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. [SFWA], 2005, p. 9)</blockquote>
Because of the way copyright law is set up in the United States, it can be difficult or impossible to locate copyright owners for protected works going all the way back to the 1920s. Without a way to ask permission to reprint these "orphan works," they tend to fade out of culture and sometimes out of physical existence. Science fiction and fantasy literature grew into their modern forms in the 20s through 50s, but many of these genre-developing works are unpublishable orphans. No one is reading them or receiving royalties from their sale.<br />
<br />
This paper will look at how copyright law created the so-called "orphan works problem" and how the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America responded to the U.S. Copyright Office's call for comments on the situation.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Peer Pressure</b></div>
<br />
In 1866, most of the major European powers signed an international copyright agreement in Berne, Switzerland. The <i>Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works</i> (or simply the "Berne Convention") required its members to respect the rights of other member nations' authors <i>as if </i>they were domestic authors: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Authors shall enjoy, in respect of works for which they are protected under this Convention, in countries of the Union other than the country of origin, the rights which their respective laws do now or may hereafter grant to their nationals, as well as the rights specially granted by this Convention." (Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works [Berne Convention], 1979, art. 5)</blockquote>
The Convention disallowed any sort of requirement that authors register their works or stamp them with an official declaration before being protected by copyright:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The enjoyment and the exercise of these rights shall not be subject to any formality; such enjoyment and such exercise shall be independent of the existence of protection in the country of origin of the work." (Berne Convention, 1979, art. 5) </blockquote>
A little over 120 years later, the U.S. finally signed on when Congress passed the <i>Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988</i>. Why wait so long? One major issue was the "no formalities" clause quoted above. U.S. copyright term was also far shorter than the Convention's minimum of 50 years after the death of the author (Berne Convention, 1979, art. 7). In 1866, U.S. copyright worked like this (Peters, 1850, p. 436-439):<br />
<ul>
<li>28 years of copyright, from the time the title of the work was properly registered.</li>
<li>Plus a 14 year extension, if re-registered within six months of the original expiration date.</li>
<li>So long as the correct notices are given in the book and in a newspaper...</li>
<li>...and a copy is put on deposit with the government.</li>
</ul>
Immediate adoption of the Berne Convention would have been an abrupt change in both duration and scope of copyright protection. In the meanwhile, the U.S. did sign the <i>Buenos Aires Convention of 1910</i>, which provided mutual copyright protection in much of North, Central, and South America and <i>did</i> allow formalities. To accommodate the U.S. (and other nations refusing the Berne Convention), a compromise was created in the form of the <i>1954 Universal Copyright Convention</i>, which was widely accepted by the United States, Latin America, and Berne Convention members. By the 1980s, U.S. copyright worked like this:<br />
<ul>
<li>Protection for the life of the author, plus 50 years after death.</li>
<li>Registration "is not a condition of copyright protection." (Copyright Act of 1976, Sec. 408, 1976)</li>
<li>Registration may still be required before suing infringers.</li>
</ul>
It was no longer a big leap to achieve conformity with Berne Convention standards. In 1989, the United States officially joined the Berne Convention.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Trouble With "No Formalities"</b></div>
<br />
For most of American history, copyright formalities put a substantial burden on authors, with several opportunities to slip up and lose protection:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Given the complexity of these formalities, the cost of compliance was not trivial, and the consequences of noncompliance were severe. Failure to comply would result in copyright failing to arise (registration), being unenforceable (notice, deposit), or being subject to early termination, with entry of the work into the public domain (renewal)." (Sprigman, 493)</blockquote>
To a certain extent, the Berne Convention's push to remove formalities made sense as a way to more reliably protect authors' rights. It also fit with a popular European view that copyright is a kind of moral right which comes into existence the moment a work is put into a fixed form. Legal copyright would therefore serve to <i>recognize</i> and <i>enforce</i> a pre-existing moral copyright. Contrast this with the U.S. Constitution's utilitarian (goal oriented), positive (created by law) characterization of copyright: "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries" (art. I, § 8, cl 8). This allowed the U.S. government much more leeway on crafting law to promote these specified public goods. Requiring registration was a way to ensure that <i>some</i> official information was recorded about each copyrighted work; requiring renewal was a way to ensure neglected works would enter the public domain more quickly...or at least that the official information would be updated. The details of compliance were arguably too burdensome, but the removal of formalities has led to other problems.<br />
<br />
Despite continued growth in writing and publishing, now-voluntary copyright registration has leveled off (Sprigman, 2004, p. 496):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkIH0dELegTNUAa8oax2aBL5CIlsaOEyAydBPtQZpzB0NaG6rNEc3PyANqeAd9448FKucJ2xR1VIWWu2DTRTDf5XwjSKpzHK-6Kk7XHMwY_IN4yJpEAMF8262suvCPrGYhstEmVMZgvFY/s1600/registrationsgraph.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkIH0dELegTNUAa8oax2aBL5CIlsaOEyAydBPtQZpzB0NaG6rNEc3PyANqeAd9448FKucJ2xR1VIWWu2DTRTDf5XwjSKpzHK-6Kk7XHMwY_IN4yJpEAMF8262suvCPrGYhstEmVMZgvFY/s400/registrationsgraph.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
And now-voluntary renewals are on their way to extinction (Sprigman, 2004, p. 498):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2CpHle5AkL6hvlH0eQnYwW91AcYpQobT5X4vqpadePJRID09OHX_MJZGsVvChvGhW_F9UKwSEnbNOQPbJqClPR83IRJKxWea76YrgaXiDBuD0QrTh0jF4WaIac08R5hYYjkb8VBnvXQ/s1600/renewalsgraph.png" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="301" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2CpHle5AkL6hvlH0eQnYwW91AcYpQobT5X4vqpadePJRID09OHX_MJZGsVvChvGhW_F9UKwSEnbNOQPbJqClPR83IRJKxWea76YrgaXiDBuD0QrTh0jF4WaIac08R5hYYjkb8VBnvXQ/s400/renewalsgraph.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
This means a smaller and smaller <i>proportion</i> of the kinds of works that were traditionally registered are being registered. And of these, an even smaller proportion are being renewed. By comparison:<br />
<br />
Old Way<br />
<ul>
<li>Many works never under copyright because their creators did not consider them worth the trouble of registering.</li>
<li>Registration records exist for copyrighted works.</li>
<li>Renewal records exist for works under extended copyright. </li>
</ul>
New Way<br />
<ul>
<li>All works under automatic copyright, including poems in notebook, blog posts, personal song recordings, dance routine descriptions, etc.</li>
<li>Registration records might not exist for copyrighted works.</li>
<li>Renewal records probably don't exist for works under extended copyright.</li>
</ul>
What's the problem with this? The chance of relatively recent works becoming "orphaned" has greatly increased. <i>A work is orphaned when locating its copyright owner becomes prohibitively difficult or outright impossible</i>. Publishers can't reprint it. Creators can't seek permission to use it or adapt it into new works. And, of course, authors and their heirs miss out on potential income. When authors cannot be located, everyone loses.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Amazing Stories and Weird Tales </b></div>
<br />
In a sense, there are two orphan works problems. The removal of formality requirements in the late 1970s — as preparation for joining the Berne Convention — has caused a problem with contacting the owners of unregistered or unrenewed works. But there was <i>already</i> a problem with official information falling
out of date. A novel published in 1923 and renewed in 1950 is still
under copyright until at least 2018. The name of the person who renewed
it 62 years ago might not sufficient to discover who owns the copyright
in 2012.<br />
<br />
Think of these as the "no official records" and the "outdated official records" orphan works problems. One area of literature strongly affected by these problems is modern fantastic fiction, here defined as the science fiction and fantasy genres. A little history:<br />
<br />
Science fiction and fantasy both got their start in the age of universal public domain (i.e. before 1923). Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Rice Burroughs were especially effective pioneers of science fiction from the 1860s through the 1910s. Fantasy fiction goes back to folklore, but it began its transformation into modern fantasy from the 1850s through the 1910s in the works of George MacDonald, Lewis Carroll, and L. Frank Baum. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi29Lnv334apBEPp3Thbs1sJpqhtzYJw82LTElOp-7QpNgKVmiLJGF94TrOzMEEOJ9bRgOMpdJhXd1eigor3AdOkvGjuUK61pM1b8uPOyV0gzZ99HGKx2GRlTDcx01XOJFW6k8ua3waRTY/s1600/Weird_Tales_December_1926.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi29Lnv334apBEPp3Thbs1sJpqhtzYJw82LTElOp-7QpNgKVmiLJGF94TrOzMEEOJ9bRgOMpdJhXd1eigor3AdOkvGjuUK61pM1b8uPOyV0gzZ99HGKx2GRlTDcx01XOJFW6k8ua3waRTY/s200/Weird_Tales_December_1926.jpg" width="136" /></a></div>
Interest in these genres greatly expanded in the 1920s with the rise of pulp magazines offering monthly short stories on the cheap. <i>Weird Tales</i> began publishing fantasy and horror stories in March 1923. <i>Amazing Stories</i> began its run of science fiction stories in April 1926. Other pulp magazines hopped on the bandwagon and public interest in these genres continued to grow, spurred on by the publication of now-classic novels like <i>Brave New World</i> (1932), <i>The Hobbit</i> (1937), <i>The Sword in the Stone</i> (1938), <i>Foundation</i> (1942), <i>1984</i> (1948), and <i>The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe</i> (1950). These novels and certain pulp stories like those of H.P. Lovecraft have been nearly continuously republished, but copyright owners for many lesser-known works published from the 1920s to the 1990s are difficult or impossible to locate today.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"There are scores of dead writers whose work is gone and forgotten because there is no one able to take responsibility for the rights. I bought a story from the estate of Richard McKenna a few years ago. The woman from whom I acquired the rights was his aged sister-in-law or someone like that. If that woman doesn't pass the rights on to someone else and let anyone know about it, Richard McKenna's work will not be reprinted for what, another 30 years? Do you really think anyone will <i>remember</i> who he is then? They barely remember him now. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ln002uoEI4erf7-XBbesvV1ljkxkNaX0hboAA0WpSdO8WMKr9jembaq-PiyIAR8YDqvohRF3zCimo4CRGZTR0_-8YtdFVk3sRvZ1ayGWMCNWuTIJoK8ke93E6cUljxRVVJ3pLUeFE3I/s1600/gerald-kersh-nightshade-and-damnations.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8ln002uoEI4erf7-XBbesvV1ljkxkNaX0hboAA0WpSdO8WMKr9jembaq-PiyIAR8YDqvohRF3zCimo4CRGZTR0_-8YtdFVk3sRvZ1ayGWMCNWuTIJoK8ke93E6cUljxRVVJ3pLUeFE3I/s200/gerald-kersh-nightshade-and-damnations.jpg" width="118" /></a></div>
Gerald Kersh is another example. I spent two years trying to track down rights to no avail. Someone who is a Kersh aficionado tried for two years before me. I finally was able to publish a couple of short stories by him via quasi legal means that protect my company from litigation. Kersh was a terrific writer and his stories deserve to be read. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
That's why there is a problem." (SFWA, 2005, p. 9) [with minor corrections]</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
<br />
Pulp stories in the 20s and 30s. McKenna and Kersh in the 60s. The "outdated official records" problem is smudging out the fine lines of fantastic fiction's development, leaving only the thickest strokes. This would have been a problem even <i>without</i> the lifting of copyright formalities. Today, the "no official records" policy is compounding the issue: <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Since works are given copyright protection the moment they are written, there is no ready way to find authors to seek their permission to republish material, and the penalties for infringement are high, there is a lot of material that cannot be republished because the authors are essentially unlocatable. That is, the cost to locate them, if they can even be located, is often too high to justify the use of the work. Factoring in the 95 years / Life+70 years duration of copyright, a large amount of work is likely to be unrepublishable for over a hundred years and possibly lost altogether." (SFWA, 2005, p. 1)<b><br /></b></blockquote>
In 2056 — the same distance into the future as the publication of Gerald Kersh's <i>Nightshade & Damnations</i> in the past — an editor may want to include a short story from 2012 and have even less hope than the publisher quoted above because the story was never officially registered.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Fantastic Fixes</b></div>
<br />
On January 26, 2005, the U.S. Copyright Office put a notice in the <i>Federal Register</i>, asking for "written comments from all interested parties" on the topic of orphan works.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The issue is whether orphan works are being needlessly removed from public access and their dissemination inhibited. If no one claims the copyright in a work, it appears likely that the public benefit of having access to the work would outweigh whatever copyright interest there might be." (Orphan Works, 2005)</blockquote>
The Copyright Office received over 700 initial responses from individuals and organizations! One of the "interested parties" was the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The SFWA (as it's abbreviated) put out its own call for comments. Some of the resulting anecdotes are cited above. After lively internal debate, SFWA's formed-for-the-occasion Orphan Copyright Committee agreed on a set of seven proposals "felt to comprise a feasible solution to the problem and a dramatic improvement over the current situation" (SFWA, 2005, p. 2).<br />
<br />
These proposals can be roughly organized into three themes: modernizing and simplifying the registration process (#1, #3, #5, #6), creating a legal path to using orphan works (#2, #3, #4), and issuing guidance on "succession of copyright interests (#7). To simplify even further, the proposals seek to make orphaning less likely to occur, and to open the remaining orphan works for responsible use.<br />
<br />
SFFA's main recommendation for improving registration is the establishment of an Author Information Directory. This would be an online database that offers free or nearly free account setup for authors to enter information about their works and keep their contact information up to date. Authors could be encouraged to include at least the first 100 words of their works and would have the option to add notarized forms or digital signatures to verify their identity. From the point of view of authors, the directory would serve the dual function of providing more opportunities for royalties and of eliminating the chance of their works being used under the new rules for orphan works.<br />
<br />
What new rules? After conducting a search according to guidelines drawn up by the Copyright Office, followed by a multi-month posting of public notice, publishers could pay into an escrow fund at a common rate for similar works. Such works could then be published for a limited time without fear of lawsuit. Authors who later come forward would simply be able to claim the funds already set aside for this purpose. Publishers who don't follow these guidelines would be fully at risk of current legal remedies for copyright violation.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Congressional (In)action</b></div>
<br />
After taking comments from SFWA and hundreds of other groups, the U.S. Copyright Office issued a <i>Report on Orphan Works</i> to summarize concerns and give its own proposed solutions. The Copyright Office rejected calls for any kind of new database, worried that it would be too "burdensome" at this time, but recommended revisiting the question in ten years. Also rejected were the calls for specific search guidelines (libraries and archives opposed it), an escrow system (too complex), or a public notice requirement (publishers were against it). The Copyright Office did recommend legislative changes to limit legal remedies to "reasonable compensation" when copyright infringers are able to prove they had conducted a thorough search. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"The term 'reasonable compensation' is intended to represent the amount the user would have paid to the owner had they engaged in negotiations before the infringing use commenced." (U.S. Copyright Office, 2006, p. 116)</blockquote>
This compensation would not apply to non-commercial users, who would only be required to cease infringement activities immediately (U.S. Copyright Office, 2006, p. 13). The report ended with recommended legislative language.<br />
<br />
From 2006 to 2008, several bills made their way through the House and Senate, based on the Copyright Office's report. The most successful bill was the <i>Shawn Bently Orphan Works Act of 2008</i> which passed unanimously in the Senate. A similar bill, the <i>Orphan Works Act of 2008</i>, stalled out in the House.<br />
<br />
The Senate bill echoed the Copyright Office's recommendations about limiting legal remedies to "reasonable compensation," and waiving even this compensation if the infringement was (1) non-commercial, (2) "primarily educational, religious, or charitable in nature," and (3) stopped on receipt of a valid claim of infringement. Also following recommendations, the bill required evidence of a "qualifying search" before infringing, plus clear attribution while infringing. The Senate bill added a requirement that a new symbol for orphan works be created and used to label such publications (S. 2913 § 2).<br />
<br />
The House bill's most controversial difference was the requirement of a "notice of use archive": a database where users of orphan works must document the work they are using, what steps they took to locate the copyright owner, how the work be used, and contact information for the user (H.R. 5889 § 2). Prominent library groups opposed this requirement on the grounds that it would be too burdensome on large organizations wanting to use many orphan works (Adler, 2008). Some artists opposed the archive because they believed it would be too friendly to large organizations wanting to use many orphan works! There appears to have been a significant amount of misinformation going around in artistic communities at the time (Huttler, 2008). <br />
<br />
The whole issue has been effectively shelved by Congress since 2008.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Attack of the Powerpoints</b></div>
<br />
In April 2012, the Berkely School of Law held an orphan works symposium. Among the ideas floated during these talks was Jennifer Urban's suggestion that existing Fair Use law might be applicable to orphan works (2012). One of the four factors of Fair Use analysis concerns the "nature" of the copyrighted work, but what this means, exactly, is not spelled out in federal law. Urban cited cases where availability played <i>some</i> role in Fair Use decisions and argued for expanding this line of thinking to explicitly cover orphan works.<br />
<br />
Lydia Loren advocated a change in metaphor: rather than continue using the term "orphan works," labeling them as "hostage works" would emphasize the way these are "works that are held hostage by the complexity of our copyright system. By its duration, by its lack of formalities, and then of course, coupled with the absentee owner" (2012, 2 min). Under this metaphor, users might be seen as hostage-liberators rather than orphan-exploiters. Loren also showed a troubling graph from a talk by Paul Heald (2012, 12 min 45 sec):<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpdS1QKLx_S9ULICGUOb7bS5DTP7d3GY4YPRZ3DpEu9vCshRudFtTTj95cN2L5h2a3akTfVzFUwClUEZcpXqPQi7Owcxws7pU_P1F3POHFkfGOMsnvQ43Wf-ypDzZU2kVOFwyL08dNeYw/s1600/amazon2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpdS1QKLx_S9ULICGUOb7bS5DTP7d3GY4YPRZ3DpEu9vCshRudFtTTj95cN2L5h2a3akTfVzFUwClUEZcpXqPQi7Owcxws7pU_P1F3POHFkfGOMsnvQ43Wf-ypDzZU2kVOFwyL08dNeYw/s1600/amazon2.png" /></a></div>
<br />
The main lesson to draw from this graph is that books in the public domain from before 1923 are still very popular. Same goes for recent books under copyright. It's that dip from the 20s through the end of the century that shows a severe under-representation of what was written in those decades. New works do have novelty going for them; public domain works tend to have low prices going for them, thanks to both the lack of royalties and competition. So while a moderate dip is only to be expected for older, copyrighted works, it's very likely that the orphan works problem has aggravated the situation.<br />
<br />
Notice where the bulk of science fiction and fantasy's genre development occurred on the graph above. For fantastic fiction and all the other fading stories created in that gap, orphan works legislation would open exciting new opportunities for rediscovery and appreciation. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>My Two Cents</b></div>
<br />
This paper has focused on written works, but copyright law also applies to music, dance, visual arts, architecture etc. Creators in these areas aren't necessarily going to be well-served by orphan works legislation that focuses on texts. Today's technology is completely up to the task of storing and matching text, but still very much in development for finding re-used melodies, dance steps, or even photographic remixes. It might be smart to push for text-specific orphan works legislation first, as a kind of pilot program. When the creative world doesn't come to an end and information technology has improved, other types of content could be added.<br />
<br />
The biggest flaw in orphan works legislation hasn't been the legislation itself, but misunderstandings, misrepresentations, and outright scare mongering. What's needed are multiple promotional campaigns by libraries and artists' groups (like SFWA). Specific examples of unrepublishable works would be most effective because it would raise awareness and increase interest in what the public is missing. What if a copyright owner appears because of these campaigns? There would be an opportunity to show the benefits of reconnecting owners with interested publishers! If the owner allows it, the book could even be marketed as a "rescued orphan." Everyone wins.<br />
<br />
It's important to keep in mind that no orphan works legislation is going to be perfect; it just needs to meet the realistic goal of being a strong improvement over the current situation. Laws can always be amended later to more perfectly reflect contemporary values and technology. It just takes that first daring step to try something new.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>References</b></div>
<br />
Adler, P. S. (May 1, 2008). RE: S. 2913 [letter to Senators Leahy and
Hatch on behalf of the Library Copyright Alliance]. Retrieved from<a href="http://www.sla.org/pdfs/publicpolicy/LCA050108DarkArchive.pdf"> http://www.sla.org/pdfs/publicpolicy/LCA050108DarkArchive.pdf</a><br />
<br />
<i>Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works</i> (1979, revised from 1886). Retrieved from <a href="http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html">http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/ip/berne/trtdocs_wo001.html</a><br />
<br />
Copyright Act of 1976, Pub. L. No. 94-553. 90 Stat. 2541 (1976). Retrieved from <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976#.C2.A7_408._Copyright_registration_in_general">http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1976#.C2.A7_408._Copyright_registration_in_general</a><br />
<br />
Heald, P. (March 16, 2012). Do bad things happen when works fall into
the public domain: The market for audiobooks. [Seminar video]. <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-DpfZcftI00#t=765s">http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-DpfZcftI00#t=765s</a><br />
<br />
Huttler, A. (April 28, 2008). Orphan Works Act of 2008. [Web log post]. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/blog/2008/04/28/orphan-works-act-of-2008/">http://www.fracturedatlas.org/site/blog/2008/04/28/orphan-works-act-of-2008/</a><br />
<br />
Loren, L. (April 12, 2012). Abandoning the orphans: An open access approach to hostage works [Audio presentation] Retrieved from <a href="http://media.law.berkeley.edu/qtmedia/BCLT/bclt_20120412-symposium/day1/Loren.m4a">http://media.law.berkeley.edu/qtmedia/BCLT/bclt_20120412-symposium/day1/Loren.m4a</a><br />
<br />
Orphan Works, 70 Fed. Reg. 3739 (2005). Retrieved from <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr3739.html">http://www.copyright.gov/fedreg/2005/70fr3739.html</a> <br />
<br />
Orphan Works Act of 2008, H.R. 5889, 110th Cong. (2008). Retrieved from <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.05889:">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h.r.05889:</a><br />
<br />
Peters, R. (1850). <i>The Public Statutes at Large of the United States of America, From the Organization of the Government in 1789, to March 3, 1845</i> (Vol. 4). Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown. <br />
<br />
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (March 23, 2005). <i>RE: Orphan Works Study</i> (70 FR 3739). Retrieved from <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0607-SFFWA.pdf">http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/comments/OW0607-SFFWA.pdf</a><br />
<br />
Shawn Bently Orphan Works Act of 2008, S. 2913, 110th Cong. (2008). Retrieved from <a href="http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.02913:">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:s.02913:</a> <br />
<br />
Sprigman, C.J. (2004). Reform(aliz)ing copyright. <i>Stanford Law Review</i>, 57. p. 485-568. Retrieved from <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=578502">http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=578502</a> <br />
<br />
Urban, J. (April 12, 2012). Orphan works and mass digitization: Obstacles and opportunities. [PDF presentation]. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Urban.pdf">http://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Urban.pdf</a><br />
<br />
U.S. Copyright Office. (2006). <i>Report on Orphan Works</i>. Retrieved from <a href="http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report.pdf">http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report.pdf</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-90286593389181632652012-09-21T02:14:00.000-05:002013-11-15T23:27:29.207-06:00Searchers and Finders<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[Finders] visualize there is something to be found, whereas searchers seem to wait and see whether something is to be found. I am convinced that having a firm belief that a relevant document exists makes it much more likely to find it."<br />
<br />
— Evert Nijhof, <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0172219011001013"><u>Searching? Or actually trying to find something? – The comforts of searching versus the challenges of finding</u></a>.</blockquote>
In more than a year of browsing new Library and Information Science papers on <a href="http://www.ebscohost.com/public/library-information-science-technology-abstracts-lista"><u>LISTA</u></a>, there's no question that Nijhof's paper on information seeking styles has influenced my thinking the most. And it came from <a href="http://www.journals.elsevier.com/world-patent-information/"><u>World Patent Information</u></a> of all places!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy3wfYNcCijkNNT9xeQ2seqw2lZQ49LMqygFjlMX1WrYEgTu3FUrnoJY9n5XQJpTvXyMdLSj7tC2t-uGK-NL0R4t5YFCHT3oCebE3sHXapUuVeoD-TAgDliz6Q8upweN3XTTlBy18m8f0/s1600/searching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy3wfYNcCijkNNT9xeQ2seqw2lZQ49LMqygFjlMX1WrYEgTu3FUrnoJY9n5XQJpTvXyMdLSj7tC2t-uGK-NL0R4t5YFCHT3oCebE3sHXapUuVeoD-TAgDliz6Q8upweN3XTTlBy18m8f0/s1600/searching.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fox hunting mole, by Flickr user EricMagnuson.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b>Two Useful Archetypes</b><br />
<br />
After observing the way many information professionals conduct novelty (or 'patentability') searches, Nijhof came to see two major clusters of techniques and attitudes:<br />
<br />
Searchers...<br />
<ul>
<li>focus on methodical search procedures (the journey)</li>
<li>tend to start broad and then narrow</li>
<li>accept customer requests at face value</li>
<li>respond to failure by giving evidence of procedure following</li>
</ul>
Finders...<br />
<ul>
<li>focus on the objective (the destination)</li>
<li>tend to start narrow and then broaden</li>
<li>may question whether customer requests are customer needs</li>
<li>take failure personally and analyze the reason for failure</li>
</ul>
These aren't meant to be strict categories where a given person is either all-searcher or all-finder. That's why I'm using the term "archetype." On the other hand, individuals often do lean heavily one way or the other in Nijhof's experience.<br />
<br />
It may sound like finders are great and searchers are mediocre under this scheme. Sort of true, but Nijhof is careful to point out that being a pure finder is a problem too. There comes a point in an extended search when it should become evident that finder techniques aren't striking oil. This is when a searcher's methodical techniques begin to shine. You don't want to be the hotshot finder who overlooks the equivalent of a checklist item.<br />
<br />
Maybe an analogy will help. Suppose your ten-year-old wanders off in a shopping mall. How would you go about looking for her? You could start searching each store in order, or you could think of the most likely places she would go and check those first. Chances are, you'll find your kid quicker with the second option. But what if you don't? Should you keep checking the 8th, 9th, and 10th most likely stores? No. Now it's time to get methodical (possibly with the help of others).<br />
<br />
<b>The Virtues of a Precise Start</b><br />
<br />
Since this is a major detour in Nijhof's article, let's look more closely at a few of the reasons he advocates starting out with narrow rather than broad searches.<br />
<br />
<i>Noise</i> — Narrow searches start with a much lower signal-to-noise ratio than broad searches. Sure, you get fewer hits, but you can spend more time thoroughly checking each hit for its own sake and for additional search vocabulary.<br />
<br />
<i>Knowing the Landscape</i> — When searching broadly, it can be hard to get a sense of what's available underneath broad terms. If I'm looking for medical information on certain kinds of dogs, it helps to start by looking at the level of detail in the database on one breed of dog. Otherwise a broad search could be using a completely inappropriate set of terminology for the available sources.<br />
<br />
<i>Default Mindset</i> — Starting out broad puts a searcher in an "discard unless..." mindset rather than a finder's "assume relevant unless..." mindset. The searcher approach is supposed to help avoid missing relevant hits, but training yourself to say "nope, nope, nope..." right away might actually cause you to miss an important document among the pile of irrelevancy.<br />
<br />
<b>Concept Goggles</b><br />
<br />
I hope no one takes the terminology "searcher" vs. "finder" too seriously. I've noticed a tendency in business and academia to take two common language synonyms, use them to refer to two interesting concepts, then act like everyone else is misusing these terms if they aren't using them in the same quirky fashion.<br />
<br />
What's important is that you think about these two clusters of search behavior as <i>useful concepts.</i> Now when you sit down to start a search or watch someone else start a search, you won't be able to <i>stop</i> from thinking about the choice of broad or narrow terminology. If you tend toward the searcher archetype, you might consider leaving your comfort zone and trying some if-this-works-I'm-done-already narrow terms. If you tend toward the finder archetype, you might remember to switch approaches when a search isn't going well, perhaps by looking up all of the citations in resources you've already found that weren't quite right.<br />
<br />
Come to think of it, isn't the whole premise of the TV show <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bones_%28TV_series%29"><u>Bones</u></a> about pairing up a methodical searcher with an intuitive finder and showing how they complement each other? Oh no, the goggles won't come off!<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>References</b></div>
<br />
Nijhof, E. (2011). <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0172219011001013"><u>Searching? Or actually trying to find something? – The comforts of searching versus the challenges of finding</u></a>. <i>World Patent Information, 33</i>(4), p. 360-363.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-28191477735664591212012-08-25T22:36:00.003-05:002013-11-15T23:49:52.758-06:00Sex, Violence, and the First Amendment<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8CoH7LmzGqExkDN1mt-vetB3oaoMxVBraZMvoV0M9P8Qogp0U3KmupRPck3BPi0CQUGWKLGRzzVJZTrNsqDQ1sS1LAx3lENwQT8IGKjz8A7051yiWJzBze9brRNtB2CMXvxSup9hqEPk/s1600/flickr-Ste%CC%81fan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Flickr user Stéfan. CC-BY-NC." border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8CoH7LmzGqExkDN1mt-vetB3oaoMxVBraZMvoV0M9P8Qogp0U3KmupRPck3BPi0CQUGWKLGRzzVJZTrNsqDQ1sS1LAx3lENwQT8IGKjz8A7051yiWJzBze9brRNtB2CMXvxSup9hqEPk/s320/flickr-Ste%CC%81fan.jpg" title="Flickr user Stéfan. CC-BY-NC." width="320" /></a></div>
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may pass laws restricting the sale of sexual materials to minors, but may <i>not</i> pass similar laws for violent materials. The difference lies in the Court's traditions regarding obscenity as an exception to First Amendment free speech rights.<br />
<br />
Short version: obscenity has to do with sex, not violence.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Protected and Unprotected Speech</b></div>
<br />
The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Text"><u>First Amendment</u></a> does not list exceptions for "the freedom of speech." Nevertheless, the Supreme Court has set aside <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exceptions#Communicative_impact_restrictions"><u>certain kinds of speech</u></a> as "unprotected" by the First Amendment. When speech is unprotected, state governments are effectively able to restrict it however they see fit. One major category of unprotected speech is obscenity. Here is the key authoritative text, now known as the <b>Miller Test</b>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[O]bscene material is unprotected by the First Amendment. 'The First and Fourteenth Amendments have never been treated as absolutes.' We acknowledge, however, the inherent dangers of undertaking to regulate any form of expression. State statutes designed to regulate obscene materials must be carefully limited. As a result, we now confine the permissible scope of such regulation to works which depict or describe sexual conduct. That conduct must be specifically defined by the applicable state law, as written or authoritatively construed. A state offense must also be limited to works which, taken as a whole, appeal to the prurient interest in sex, which portray sexual conduct in a patently offensive way, and which, taken as a whole, do not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."<br />
<br />
— <a href="http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=us/413/15.html"><u>Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15</u></a> (1973), edited for readability </blockquote>
Notice how obscenity is limited to "works which depict or describe sexual conduct." By definition, violence without sexual conduct can't be classified as legally obscene.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Variable Obscenity</b></div>
<br />
In 1965, the owner of a Long Island lunch and periodicals business sold porn magazines to a 16 year old boy. New York had a law with wording similar to an earlier version of the Miller Test, with the addition of "for minors," "to minors," etc. The vendor was charged for violating this law and the case eventually made its way to the Supreme Court.<br />
<br />
Can something be protected, non-obscene speech for adults and yet be obscene, unprotected speech for minors? The Courted decided: yes, it can!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"We do not regard New York's regulation in defining obscenity on the basis of its appeal to minors under 17 as involving an invasion of such minors' constitutionally protected freedoms. Rather [the New York law] simply adjusts the definition of obscenity 'to social realities by permitting the appeal of this type of material to be assessed in term of the sexual interests' of such minors. That the State has power to make that adjustment seems clear, for we have recognized that even where there is an invasion of protected freedoms 'the power of the state to control the conduct of children reaches beyond the scope of its authority over adults.'" </blockquote>
<blockquote>
— <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/390/629#writing-type-1-BRENNAN"><u>Ginsberg v. New York, 390 U.S. 629</u></a> (1968), edited for readability</blockquote>
This is a BIG DEAL. The Court is saying that New York can classify material that's not obscene for adults as obscene for minors because, in general, <i>states can vary the definition of an unprotected speech category where minors are concerned</i>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Gov. Schwarzenegger vs. Kratos</b></div>
<br />
In 2005, California passed a <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/asm/ab_1151-1200/ab_1179_bill_20051007_chaptered.html"><u>bill</u></a> prohibiting the sale or rental of violent video games to minors, where:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"'Violent video game' means a video game in which the range of options available to a player includes killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being, if those acts are depicted in the game in a manner that does either of the following:<br />
<br />
(A) Comes within all of the following descriptions:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
(i) A reasonable person, considering the game as a whole, would find appeals to a deviant or morbid interest of minors.<br />
(ii) It is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the community as to what is suitable for minors.<br />
(iii) It causes the game, as a whole, to lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors.</blockquote>
(B) Enables the player to virtually inflict serious injury upon images of human beings or characters with substantially human characteristics in a manner which is especially heinous, cruel, or depraved in that it involves torture or serious physical abuse to the victim."<br />
<br />
— <a href="http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/05-06/bill/asm/ab_1151-1200/ab_1179_bill_20051007_chaptered.html"><u>California AB-1179</u></a>, edited for readability</blockquote>
Section (A) should look familiar. It's similar to the Miller Test adjusted for minors, with two major differences. Part (i) drops the sexual requirement so that it can be applied to violence. Part (iii) completely <i>inverts</i> the <a href="http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/08/pope-v-illinois-serious-value-according.html"><u>serious value check</u></a>. In the Miller Test, the presence of serious value overrides the other two parts and makes a work non-obscene no matter how offensive it is to a community. In the California law, the presence of offensive elements voids any value in the work. Section (B) puts a ban on additional games, just in case section (A) didn't throw a wide enough net. Altogether, this makes three likely grounds for questioning the law's constitutionality:<br />
<ul>
<li>Dropping the sexual requirement.</li>
<li>Inverting the value check.</li>
<li>Banning games that fall outside the Miller-esque framework. </li>
</ul>
Interestingly, the Supreme Court slapped down the law for the first and most basic reason: attempting to regulate violent content rather than sexual content.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Limits of Control</b></div>
<br />
In <i>Ginsberg</i>, the Court had decided that the obscenity exception for free speech rights could come in an adult version and a minor version. California's video game law raised another question:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Can there be free speech exceptions that <i>only</i> come in a minor version?</blockquote>
There isn't a free speech exception when it comes to violent content for adults, so (1) a brand new exception would be required and (2) it would only apply to minors. First, the Court pointed at precedent against introducing new free speech exceptions for adults:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Last Term, in <i>Stevens</i>, we held that new categories of unprotected speech may not be added to the list by a legislature that concludes certain speech is too harmful to be tolerated. Stevens concerned a federal statute purporting to criminalize the creation, sale, or possession of certain depictions of animal cruelty. [...] We held that statute to be an impermissible content-based restriction on speech. There was no American tradition of forbidding the <i>depiction</i> of animal cruelty—though States have long had laws against <i>committing</i> it.<br />
<br />
The Government argued in <i>Stevens</i> that lack of a historical warrant did not matter; that it could create new categories of unprotected speech by applying a 'simple balancing test' that weighs the value of a particular category of speech against its social costs and then punishes that category of speech if it fails the test. [...] We emphatically rejected that 'startling and dangerous' proposition. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
— <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZO.html"><u>Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 08-1448</u></a> (2011)</blockquote>
Violence may not be a valid free speech exception for adults, but can't it be an exception that only applies to minors?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"[The California Act] does not adjust the boundaries of an existing category of unprotected speech to ensure that a definition designed for adults is not uncritically applied to children. California does not argue that it is empowered to prohibit selling offensively violent works <i>to adults</i> —and it is wise not to, since that is but a hair’s breadth from the argument rejected in <i>Stevens</i>. Instead, it wishes to create a wholly new category of content-based regulation that is permissible only for speech directed at children.<br />
<br />
That is unprecedented and mistaken. '[M]inors are entitled to a significant measure of First Amendment protection, and only in relatively narrow and well-defined circumstances may government bar public dissemination of protected materials to them.' <i>Erznoznik v. Jacksonville</i> [...]. No doubt a State possesses legitimate power to protect children from harm [...], but that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed. 'Speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them.' <i>Erznoznik</i>"<br />
<br />
— <a href="http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1448.ZO.html"><u>Brown v. EMA, 564 U.S. 08-1448</u></a> (2011)</blockquote>
In other words, minors are only subject to the same <i>basic</i> free speech exceptions as adults, though these exceptions may be applied differently to minors. There is no basic free speech exception that has to do with depictions of violence, therefore violent video games are constitutionally protected speech for Americans of all ages.<br />
<br />
This applies to books too, if anyone is still reading those things. I do recommend reading the whole majority opinion in <i>Brown v. EMA</i>. It makes excellent points about moral panics, censorship, and violence in children's literature.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7060635436578918366.post-76305497508996553502012-08-14T04:28:00.001-05:002012-12-30T23:23:45.126-06:00Quote of the Day: Mill on Intellectual Freedom"He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion. The rational position for him would be suspension of judgment, and unless he contents himself with that, he is either led by authority, or adopts, like the generality of the world, the side to which he feels most inclination. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. This is not the way to do justice to the arguments, or bring them into real contact with his own mind. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form; he must feel the whole force of the difficulty which the true view of the subject has to encounter and dispose of, else he will never really possess himself of the portion of truth which meets and removes that difficulty. Ninety-nine in a hundred of what are called educated men are in this condition, even of those who can argue fluently for their opinions. Their conclusion may be true, but it might be false for anything they know: they have never thrown themselves into the mental position of those who think differently from them, and considered what such persons may have to say; and consequently they do not, in any proper sense of the word, know the doctrine which they themselves profess."<br />
<br />
— John Stuart Mill, <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2"><u>On Liberty</u></a><br />
<br />
<br />
And even more relevant to <a href="http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2012/08/quote-of-day-craig-on-intellectual.html"><u>yesterday's quote</u></a>:<br />
<br />
"[The Catholic Church] makes a broad separation between those who can be permitted to receive its doctrines on conviction, and those who must accept them on trust. Neither, indeed, are allowed any choice as to what they will accept; but the clergy, such at least as can be fully confided in, may admissibly and meritoriously make themselves acquainted with the arguments of opponents, in order to answer them, and may, therefore, read heretical books; the laity, not unless by special permission, hard to be obtained. This discipline recognizes a knowledge of the enemy's case as beneficial to the teachers, but finds means, consistent with this, of denying it to the rest of the world: thus giving to the <i>élite</i> more mental culture, though not more mental freedom, than it allows to the mass. By this device it succeeds in obtaining the kind of mental superiority which its purposes require; for though culture without freedom never made a large and liberal mind, it can make a clever <i>nisi prius</i> advocate of a cause. But in countries professing Protestantism, this resource is denied; since Protestants hold, at least in theory, that the responsibility for the choice of a religion must be borne by each for himself, and cannot be thrown off upon teachers.<br />
<br />
— John Stuart Mill, <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_Liberty/Chapter_2"><u>On Liberty</u></a><u> </u><br />
<br />
<br />
Yes, "at least in theory." The same applies to voters who trust political teachers to tell them all they need to know about other views, without exposing themselves directly.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0