January 2004

A group of parents from Washington Township (NJ) schools is asking that all books about the occult be pulled from all the schools’ libraries. One set of parents contend that two books checked out by their son led him down a path to Satanism and self-mutilation. While the district is taking the complaints seriously, they have not removed the titles, which are undergoing review. The parents plan a campaign to ask retail stores to treat occult titles as they would obscene material. More here from the Courier Post Online.

1. Create Your Own Discussions. You can use the comments page to start a discussion independent of any story or journal entry.
2. Write In Your Own Blog [AKA Journal]. If you have a user account, and you’re logged in, you can blog right here at LISNews. You can browse the most recent entries Here.
3. Change Your Messages. The Slashcode that powers LISNews has the ability to keep you informed of what’s going on around the site. You can be informed when a comment of yours gets moderated, when someone replies to your journal, and a few other things as well.
4. Browse By Topic.
5. Browse By Story Popularity.
6. Moderate Comments you love/hate. Comment with higher scores can be seen by more people, and you give the person higher karma.
7. Ignore Low Rated Comments. Your comments page lets you filter out comments based on score, type, or the person who left them.
8. Make New Friends. The friends/foes system lets you choose other LISNewsterz as friends, or foes. You can then be notified when they post a journal entry, or you can highlight or ignore a comment left by your friends and foes.
9. Change The Homepage. There’s about a million options in there. You can Exclude Stories from the Homepage based on author, topics, and sections. Add your own slashboxes, and more.
10. Have Fun!

The Help Page has a list of most of these things, and a few more as well. Slashcode is an amazing piece of Open Source Software, I’m not even sure I know everything it’s capable of at this point.

1. Create Your Own Discussions. You can use the comments page to start a discussion independent of any story or journal entry.
2. Write In Your Own Blog [AKA Journal]. If you have a user account, and you’re logged in, you can blog right here at LISNews. You can browse the most recent entries Here.
3. Change Your Messages. The Slashcode that powers LISNews has the ability to keep you informed of what’s going on around the site. You can be informed when a comment of yours gets moderated, when someone replies to your journal, and a few other things as well.
4. Browse By Topic.
5. Browse By Story Popularity.
6. Moderate Comments you love/hate. Comment with higher scores can be seen by more people, and you give the person higher karma.
7. Ignore Low Rated Comments. Your comments page lets you filter out comments based on score, type, or the person who left them.
8. Make New Friends. The friends/foes system lets you choose other LISNewsterz as friends, or foes. You can then be notified when they post a journal entry, or you can highlight or ignore a comment left by your friends and foes.
9. Change The Homepage. There’s about a million options in there. You can Exclude Stories from the Homepage based on author, topics, and sections. Add your own slashboxes, and more.
10. Have Fun!

The Help Page has a list of most of these things, and a few more as well. Slashcode is an amazing piece of Open Source Software, I’m not even sure I know everything it’s capable of at this point.

AP, The NYTimes, and The Washington Post are reporting Attorney General John Ashcroft, in a letter to Senate leaders, said the changes proposed in the Security and Freedom Ensured Act, known as SAFE, would “undermine our ongoing campaign to detect and prevent catastrophic attacks.”

Ashcroft told reporters that President Bush would veto the bill if it reached his desk.

“When American lives are at stake, we need to have all the capacities to disrupt and to defeat terrorism that we’ve been successfully using over the last 28 months,” Ashcroft said yesterday.

“The attorney general’s attack on the SAFE Act shows how out of step the Bush administration is with growing national concern over the Patriot Act,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union said.

More on Rik, Kimba & LC from Sign On Sandiego.

Espinosa told jurors that, for health reasons, he would not have entered the building had he known the cat, which library employees had adopted, was there.

The cat stood, arched its back, jumped to the floor and touched noses with Kimba, said Espinosa, who is representing himself.

Then “the cat went nuts,” the plaintiff said. “It started scratching Kimba. At times, all four claws were embedded around Kimba’s nose and eyes.”

Under cross-examination by attorney Steve Nelson, the plaintiff conceded that no one ever told him he was not allowed in the library.

Library employees eventually gave up the cat after it attacked another animal six months later.

The plaintiff originally was asking for $1.5 million, but after Vista Superior Court Judge Yuri Hoffman ruled against him on a number of motions, he lowered the total to $15,000.

This Story has a photo, of Rik and Kimba.

One man, who was not picked as a juror, said he didn’t have any reason to be biased in the case but told the judge he had another concern.

“I wish it was the dog suing the cat,” the man joked. “We’ve all used the word ‘frivolous,’ but I think the dog has a real case.”

This One Says Among the items that Espinosa wants the jury to see is a photograph of him with boxer Muhammad Ali. Nelson said the picture is not relevant to the case; Espinosa said the photo gives him credibility.

It also strengthens his argument, Espinosa said, since he believes the cat is like the famed pugilist: a tiger in the ring, a pussycat outside of it. L.C.’s ring, the Palomar Mountain resident said, was the library on South Kalmia Street.

Search Engine Optimization writes “Will they or Won’t they – chime in with Your Predictions…..

Times Online, theaustralian.news.com.au,
business.timesonline.co.uk

Eric Schmidt, the Google chairman and chief executive, briefly let his guard slip, telling business leaders that an IPO was not his agenda “right now”, only to decline to answer follow-up queries.

webadvantage.net says Google has been certified compliant with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley law and it is believed that Google’s board of directors were awaiting the audit report before giving the final go-ahead to file the IPO with the Security and Exchange Commission, according to a report in the the New York Times.

Also, check out Google Labs Papers, a newly released ARCHIVE exposing the underpinnings and theories that led to the rise of this influential Search Engine”

search-engines-web.com/ writes “

“

Daniel writes “Secrecy News reports on the study Predicting Nuclear Proliferation: A Declassified Documentary Record. This report asserts

“the declassification of several Cold War-era Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimates of nuclear proliferation trends offers interesting insights into what previous U.S. governments believed—and ultimately did—about the international spread of nuclear weapons.”

This looks like some pretty even-handed research which wouldn’t be possible under the current administration’s secrecy policies.”

InfoWhale points us to some information about Cuban librarians from the ALA.

The page he points to is an announcement that an “ALA and IFLA
Access to Information and Intellectual Freedom
in Cuba” page has been created.

More Cuba than you can shake a big cigar at.

Norma sent over This Transcript of Colloquy Live about open access at Chronicle of Higher Education web site. Interview with Peter Suber of Earlham College.

After hundreds of years in which scientific publishers have based their business models on charging subscribers, could a fundamental change be just around the corner in this $3.5-billion-a-year industry? If so, how will the new journals affect researchers, librarians, and publishers?

Walt writes “Miss those wonderful multiline ALA URLs?

(Yes, the HugeURL does work, once you combine all the lines and strip out any spaces. You didn’t think I was going to include the whole thing as HTML, did you?)”

Walt writes “Miss those wonderful multiline ALA URLs?

(Yes, the HugeURL does work, once you combine all the lines and strip out any spaces. You didn’t think I was going to include the whole thing as HTML, did you?)”