LISNews: Librarian News

This week's somewhat (still) delayed episode brings a zeitgeist review, a news miscellany, an essay, and a notice of a possible future event.

Related links:
WikiLeaks readying new document dump -- AP
No Swedish Green Card for Julian Assange -- Reuters
No Swedish Green Card for Julian Assange -- BBC News
Radio crosses borders that block the Internet -- Radio World
BBC World Service could lose half its staff -- Media Network blog at Radio Netherlands Worldwide
BBC World Service to lose radio dramas in 2011 -- Media Network blog at Radio Netherlands Worldwide
Canon introduces new copier that can selectively block jobs due to keyword recognition -- IT.com.au
German Chancellor Angela Merkel claims multiculturalism has failed in the Federal Republic of Germany -- AP
A tardy tax office imperils Des Plaines libraries -- Chicago Sun Times
Driving directions from ALA national headquarters to Des Plaines city hall

This week's episode brings a book report, an essay, a news miscellany, and a look at the zeitgeist from the last week on LISNews.

Related links:
Website of the musician Earl B. Hall
Tech News Today #91
Ars Technica on increased international Internet capacity
The Register on broadband increases in the UK
Ashtabula County as described on Wikipedia
Promo material on the longest covered bridge in the United States, located in Ashtabula County
CNET on GOOG411 being killed off
The Register on GOOG411 being killed off
Google via SMS...a service utilized by Erie Looking Productions from time to time during broadband outages
Scientific American appalled at broadband in the US
Daily Kos proposing Google Bombing during the 2010 congressional election cycle
The Register on The Wisdom of the Crowds Being Wrong

LISTen: An LISNews.org Podcast -- Episode #124 by The Air Staff of Erie Looking Productions is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at twit.tv.

This is only appearing here, not in my real blog, because it's entirely about an aspect of LISNews that I believe has reached FAIL! stage. To wit, commenting.

I just checked articles with comments over the past couple of days--34 comments in all. Of those, exactly five were clearly signed (three by me, two each by two other people) and two more were pseudonymous. The rest--27, or nearly 80% of the total--were anonymous. (Oops. Now it's 28 of 35, or exactly 80% of the total.)

And one of mine only appeared because somebody else found it convenient to attack me by name for the content of my comment. Whereas you can't possibly attack Anonymous by name--after all, they're anonymous.

Screw it. If FriendFeed conversations were 80% anonymous, I'd get the hell off of FF. As it is, I'm learning my lesson: Join the faceless, irresponsible crowd--either don't comment on LISNews posts at all or make sure I've logged out first, so the comments are anonymous.

Too bad. There used to be some worthwhile conversations here, but when nearly all the participants are hiding behind namelessness, the conversations go bad.

I love contributing to LISNews, it's sort of my hobby (would-be journalist) and Blake is the best to work with.

If you want to find out a bit more about me and my business In My Book (great for the Friends of the Library Shop
http://inmybook.com )
you might want to listen to my recent radio interview on WOR-AM (13 minutes more or less):
http://podcast.wor710.com/wor/2575218.mp3