Daily Thoughts 11/26/2011

Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan in 1898. On the left Helen Keller and on the right Anne Sullivan.
 Daily Thoughts 11/26/2011

I finished reading The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker this morning.  I enjoyed reading the book; it is very rational and humanistic.  The book argues that giving women rights reduces violence because it makes women more valued.  It also tells us that war is mostly caused by competing violent ideologies like communism, fascism, theocracy, and other ideas.  Reason, trade, education, democratization, improving the rights of women and minorities all lead to less violence.  I can sympathize with this view of the world.

This morning, I updated the Facebook and Twitter pages for the library.

While I was reading Ebooks in Libraries on LinkedIn, I noticed that some libraries were securing E-readers with a security cable to a table.  This is a different approach.

I watched the first half of the biographical documentary Mark Twain produced by Ken Burns.  I am enjoying watching it.  It is very colorful.  It covers his first books, The Innocents Abroad, Roughing It. The Gilded Age, and Tom Sawyer.  Mark Twain reminds me quite a bit of Kurt Vonnegut.  There is a dark humor in both of them.  They even look similar.

The second half of the documentary about Mark Twain was very dark.  It included failed business deals, deaths of relatives, and eventually bankruptcy.  At the same time, it had pathos or feeling to it which is hard to describe.  It is well worth watching.

Web Bits 

Poor Kids Experience App Gap
http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/10/k-12/poor-kids-experience-app-gap-says-study/


Occupy Wall Street Library 


Authors, Publishers, and Supporters React to the Seizure of the People's Library
http://www.shareable.net/blog/authors-and-publishers-react-to-the-raid-on-the-peoples-library
This article has a number of author and library quotes.

Occupy Protesters Hold Dirge for Ruined Lit
http://www.courthousenews.com/2011/11/23/41715.htm

The People's Library of Occupy Wall Street Lives On
http://www.thenation.com/article/164766/peoples-library-occupy-wall-street-lives

Occupy Boston Gets Legal Cover, But Not All Protesters Like It
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/11/occupy-boston/

This is an interesting idea. Because Dewey Square next to the Federal Reserve Building is considered a traditional Public Forum it cannot simply be evicted.  This means that the Occupy Boston Library has become in an odd way, a kind of sanctioned public statement in Boston, Massachusetts. Not all of the protesters like it.

Zucotti Park in Manhattan, New York was never a legally sanctioned public forum. Zucotti Park is a Privately Owned Public Space. I am reading about the concept of POPS-- Privately Owned Public Space.  It seems to be a bit of an oxymoron.  http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/pops/pops.shtml

This is very interesting because Occupy D.C. Library is in McPherson Square which is also a traditional public forum.  Occupy DCs Library A Collection as Broad as Its Movement.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/occupy-dcs-library-a-collection-as-broad-as-its-movement/2011/11/04/gIQA6kmZ6M_story.html  This is a bit on the decision not to shut down Occupy DC.  http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2011/11/15/occupy-dc-allowed-to-keep-on-occupying-d-c-park/

This interestingly says depending on how the space was used previously that the protesters are on determines whether they are an officially sanctioned protest...