I really like the American Memory exhibit “Architecture and Interior Design for the 20th Century: Photographs by Samuel Gottscho and William Schleisner“. Because the photographs, taken between 1935 and 1955, are intended only to illustrate architectural form and detail they are mostly empty of people. The result is a wonderful assortment of empty landscapes. I’ve just started reading a book on everyday life in 18th century Japan, the everyday life of the people who weren’t rulers, warriors or landlords. They didn’t leave behind any works of literature or even diaries (most couldn’t write), they just went about their lives, leaving behind broken pottery, worn tools, and empty buildings. What will you leave behind?

Welcome, all visitors from yoyology.com and howdy to fellow librarian Karl! Since the library world is small and incestuous, you must all promise not to get me fired for my various glib comments! If you break your promise, may you never again score free stuff from the vendor booths at library conferences. (Speaking of which, I got a little toy VW Beetle from BigChalk once, which has nothing at all to do with how impressed I am [very] with the insane variety of full text sources in their eLibrary product. I mean, Beef magazine? How cool!)

The headline “Fantasy games ‘not for geeks’” entirely misses the point the article actually makes: geeks are getting older and many of them have jobs that pay well. And, yes, many of them still play silly games.

Some Dutch commies seem to have a quite a nice assortment of digital exhibits, some with English info as well. All in all a pretty nice web site!

In an entirely foreseen development, Israel is using our actions in Iraq as ammunition in the struggle to keep the Palestinians homeless (for 50 points, how long has Israel been in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions?). Also, while we’re surveying the potential for WWIII, Turkey is sending in troops to ensure that the Kurds get the hell out of Kirkuk, lest the Kurds start thinking they might get a place to live.

On the other hand, it looks like the Serbian authorities did a good job of keeping the Prime Minister’s assassination from being the beginning of something bigger.

It looks like I won’t get a chance to fly the Concorde. From what I’ve heard, it’s pretty sweet, but I can’t make myself believe it’s worth full-fare. Here’s a little more recent info.

Privacy International has issued some Stupid Security Awards. I’ve seen only the summary at the BBC.

In what, as far as I know, is the first “success” for the DMCA, a guy selling mod chips for XBOX has been sentenced to five months of jail followed by five more months of house arrest and fined $28,500.

The King County Library System will no longer be holding their twice-yearly mega-sales of surplus books, but instead will be selling them through a jobber that will sell them on Amazon. Their first jobber was Sweethome, in Texas, but their warehouse was vandalized, wrecking great quantities of books. The second and current jobber is bLogistics in Colorado. They, too, were beset by woe (collapsing shelves) delaying immediate profit. But with a startlingly large amount of effort on my part, I’ve figured out a way to see listings of what bLogistics is selling on Amazon. I don’t know if they’re selling books for anyone else (I hope not, since it sounds like they can hardly handle the volume from KCLS), but here’s an idea of what’s for sale from their warehouse.

Correction! The books are actually listed through a “storefront.”

The NY Times shows every sign of having turned off the ability to get to their content without going through their registration process, even when you get there via Google News. Updates as conditions change, assuming I notice.