July 2003

A csmonitor.com Article, via Bob Cox, on the Gender and Science Digital Library (gsdl.org), an online collection of “gender-fair resources” in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

The GSDL was developed by the Gender, Diversities & Technology Institute based in Newton, Mass., as part of the National Science Foundation’s initiative to create online education resources.

Jen Young shares A Slate.com Story that says today American courts are dealing with an unprecedented number of Holocaust reparation cases. And last year, the Justice Department successfully prosecuted a well-known New York dealer, Frederick Schultz, for conspiring to receive stolen Egyptian antiquities.

As a result, some foreign collectors and museums have become more cautious about loaning work to museum shows—particularly those in America—and everyone has become vastly more diligent about conducting provenance research before buying.

Steve Fesenmaier writes spotted An Article that says This should be a great time for the book world, but instead of celebrating, publishers have been cutting. Scholastic, Inc., the U.S. publisher of the Potter books, announced in May that 400 employees had been fired worldwide and said that in mid-July there would be additional spending reductions. Simon & Schuster, which released both the Clinton and Isaacson books, announced this week that 75 employees would be laid off.

Holly Hill writes “Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday used the occasion of a conference on the response to the September 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon to decry critics of an antiterrorism measure enacted later that year.
“Unfortunately, some Americans have been told myths about this law, a myth that [police] can unlawfully visit local libraries and check the reading list of ordinary Americans,” Ashcroft said at a conference keynote speech. Sponsored by Arlington County, Va., the conference assembled “first responders” to emergency incidents from around the nation.

Ashcroft said the USA PATRIOT Act preserved traditional checks on library, bookstore and business records because a “federal judge must first issue a warrant” and because it is for “foreign intelligence that doesn’t affect U.S. persons.”

Full story .”

Mark Santoro points to money.cnn.com Story that says The local phone system in Baghdad is a mess, with only half of the lines working and international calls impossible more than three months into the U.S.-led military occupation. But the Internet business is booming.

Since U.S.-led forces ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in April, dozens of Internet cafes have sprouted up across Baghdad and more are on the way. Cafe owners connect via satellite in the absence of working land lines.

Gary Deane writes “Here’s A Story that says Debates about Western culture, particularly American culture, often take on a new dimension when they occur in foreign places.”

Gary Deane writes “News That Managers at the county’s technology business incubator have created a road map for business development that they hope will help new companies evaluate their progress and prepare them for growth.
The new program, called Sustainable Business Excellence, details the general steps of development for a young company, generating a timeline and goals to enable a company to move in and out of the incubator in two years
“

“The readers of Law Office Computing have confirmed what hundreds of thousands of attorneys already know: Westlaw(R) is the legal industry’s most preferred online research service.”

“Westlaw, the legal research service from West, a Thomson business, was awarded first place in the Legal Research Service category of the magazine’s annual Readers’ Choice Awards. Westlaw has won Law Office Computing’s Readers’ Choice Award seven consecutive years and eight times in the nine-year history of the award. Once again the winning margin was two-to-one over the leading competitor, a preference that is supported by similar research from the American Bar Association.” (from PR Newswire)

Honest to gawd, I have no idea what this is about. What it is is a bunch of pictures of people burning a book while spitting absinthe on the conflagration. I’m sure there’s deep symbolism here. Or maybe just people with too much absinthe and time on their hands. From a site called brainwrong.com, linked from an Ian Fraser column in the African Mail and Guardian. This Ian Fraser, while seemingly a pretty funny guy, is not to be confused with this Ian Frazier.

“The Christian conservative Republican Leadership Council suffered a setback Monday when Montgomery County Commissioners Court voted to keep the county’s membership in the American Library Association and to leave county library book-selection policies unchanged.”

“The 3-2 showdown vote ended weeks of momentum for the divisive issue, which ostensibly centered on whether the ALA, the national organization for professional librarians, has too much influence on what books go onto county library shelves.”

“ALA opponents say the group is atheistic, communistic and supportive of homosexuality.” (from The Houston Chronicle)