The changing roles of libraries

A few days ago I was reading an article in the Salt Lake Tribune about how Davis county is planning on renovating and expanding their government center, including a new library building.  It got me to thinking about libraries and how we use them.  In recent years with the mortgage market crash recession and reduced tax revenues many municipalities have found themselves having to find ways to trim their budgets.  For many, their sights fell upon... The Library.

I am so happy to hear that, even though my local government (Davis County, Utah) often found itself having to face budget shortfalls and find ways to reduce their budget, they still decided to take advantage of the reduced costs of construction during the recession to build several new public buildings, including a new large library to be the new headquarters for the county library system.

My Favorites

The other day I was at a friends house and away from my computer and wanted to get online to check something... but wait!  Where are my favorites?  How am I suppose to find that website without my favorites.

So here you are: some of my favorite websites.  What are your favorite websites?  Feel free to browse and comment.

Damn Interesting - A collection of really Damn Interesting articles about a variety of weird things

Entreating Mind - When Damn Interesting stopped updating several of its fans started a new domain to continue the tradition

Discover Blogs -  Discover Magazine hosts a set of blogs about science, technology and the future.

Mental Floss - Where knowledge junkies get their fix

Book recommendation: Armor by John Steakley

John Steakley is probably most famous for his later work Vampire$ which was made into a movie by master of horror John Carpenter.  But I also loved his earlier work Armor

Initially the book resembles Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, but without the politics, with infantry troops wearing high-tech atomic powered battle armor and fighting bugs.  But the book moves into a psychological exploration into what can happen when a man reaches his limits in experiencing horror and then has to go back for more again and again.  And Steakley is much better than Heinlein at writing action scenes.

Babies come from vending machines

Calvin and Hobbes has long been one of my all time favorite cartoons.  I think in large part it is because I see a lot of myself in the characters; and not just in Calvin with his vivid imagination and roguish nature, but in the other characters as well, like Calvin’s dad.  One of my favorite themes in the series is Calvin’s dad bestowing pearls of wisdom to his son, pearls that are completely bogus, and intentionally so.

 image copyrighted by Bill Watterson

Am I creepy?

I think I'm a nice guy... unfortunately I don't really like crowds so I'm usually off by myself doing my own thing, peacefully minding my own business.  But unfortunately this type of behavior can come off as really creepy.

For example:

I my sister teaches swimming lessons.  One afternoon I went down to the pool where she was teaching to take her to lunch but I got there to early.  I found a space off alone on the bleachers overlooking the pool to watch while she finished up her last couple of lessons.

After a few minutes I realized that several people were kind of covertly watching me.  I didn't know any of them.  To my knowledge I don't closely resemble any celebrities.  Oh No!  Is my fly wide open?   Nope, zipped up fine.  Did I dress funny ... nope.  Why are do people keep looking at me like that?

Gradually I begin to realize on me that there is one reason the parent of a kid running around in a swimming suit might be casting nervous covert glances at a single 30ish guy sitting alone at a public pool and apparently watching their child.

Oh my lord, they think I'm some kind of pervert.  They think I'm sitting here watching their kid.  Oh no!  I just checked my fly!  The all probably think I was groping myself.

I really wanted to stand up and loudly announce that "No, I am not a pervert here to molest your child."  Fortunately my brain immediately and with extreme prejudice throttled that idea before I could act on it, realizing that more than anything else I could do, standing up and announcing loudly that "No, I am not a pervert here to molest your child" would be about the most counterproductive move I could make to  allaying such suspicions.

My sister shortly finished and I was able to leave.  Perhaps seeing me leave with their child's teacher made some of them realize that I'm not a child molester but I think there are probably a few that didn't make that connection.

Book Recommendation: A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny

Roger Zelazny’s last novel, A Night in the Lonesome October is completely different than anything he had written before (his most noted work was the Amber series).

This novel is a droll, light hearted and funny mash of Victorian style meets gothic horror in a supernatural fantasy about the ongoing struggle between the champions of chaos who are attempting to allow the elder gods (think Lovecraftian Cthulhu) entrance to the world and those attempting to keep the gateways closed.

Zelazny borrows characters from the works of such notables as Stoker, Shelly and Lovecraft and places them together in a comedy.

The champions of order and chaos are well known personas: Jack the Ripper, Dracula, the werewolf, witches and druids, Dr. Frankenstein, and others.  Animal familiars accompany each champion and the story is told from the familiar’s perspective (the book is narrated by Jack the Ripper’s pet dog Snuff.)

The nature of taxes

It is sometimes jokingly said that there are only two absolute certainties in life… death and taxes.

Throughout history, every organized society has or had some form of government. The roll of government varies some depending on the nature of the society but, at lease in our own free society, it is to protect individual freedoms and promote the well being of the citizens as a whole.

The main reason for taxes is to generate revenue for the government so they can provide services to the citizens that the citizens would not effectively be able to provide for themselves. Former Justice Oliver Wendell Homes said “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”

The future of education

Educational theory has been something that has interested me from my earlier college years.  So much so that I seriously considered doing my Thesis on a comparison of European (particularly British and German) systems and the American system.

I think that my interest stemmed from some personal problems I had with the American educational system.  I’m personally a fairly quick learner and found that I caught on to things very quickly in K-12th grades.  To quickly I think.  This had three negative consequences that I’ve thought about.

What is the nature of friendship?

I’ll be the first to admit that I am a terrible friend (you could also insert uncle, brother and son here).  I think that it is because I am both a severe introvert and fairly lazy.  These two traits combine and negatively reinforce each other.  I’m uncomfortable reaching out to people and bad at forcing myself to make the effort... even though I know I should and I truly care them.

I’ve never been good at going out and putting myself into someone else’s life.  The times I’ve tried I’ve usually bungled it and probably just come off as to clingy or socially inept.  And I’ve always been one of those guys that isn’t invited to things... not that I’m unwelcome or actively excluded, in fact when people find me at some social gathering they are at they are always nice and seem happy to see me, its just that well... why invite him.  Of course a lot of that is because I tend to avoid social gathers and I don’t invite others into my life so of course there is going to be a lack of reciprocation.

Book recommendation: Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

Bridge of Birds was first published in 1984 and I first read it in 1992.  It has become one of my favorite books and one that is always a pleasure to come back to and reread.  It is the first in a trilogy of books including The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen.  All three books are now available as an omnibus edition called The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox.

Hugart was attempting to make a classical Chinese folk story in a format that made it accessible to modern western readers and I think he succeeded wildly.  It is filled with rich Chinese mythology and folklore, from the point of view of someone who lived and believed in those traditions.  A fairytale filled with humor and wonder and set in a vibrant and rich setting.

I was hooked right from the beginning when Hugart described the village, being set in such a way that it was sheltered from winds that would bring bad influences and open to those that would bring good and that the stream was dammed so the good influences would not flow away.

It is the story of a solid, kind, and simple Chinese peasant and his worldly, cynical and experienced mentor who “has a slight flaw in his character” and their adventures as they race to save the village and end up enmeshed with the intrigues of gods and powerful men.

The book is easy to read and the story is well told and beautifully portrayed.  It is filled with humor.  Some of the scenes are astoundingly bloody but done in a way that keeps it humorous and light hearted.  The principal characters have an amazing array of adventures for only 250 pages but it is all wonderfully tied together and flows effortlessly throughout the entire book.

Quote from the book: "Take a large bowl," I said. "Fill it with equal measures of fact, fantasy, history, mythology, science, superstition, logic, and lunacy. Darken the mixture with bitter tears, brighten it with howls of laughter, toss in three thousand years of civilization, bellow kan pei - which means "dry cup" - and rink to the dregs." Procopius stared at me. "And I will be wises?" he asked. "Better," I said. "You will be Chinese."

If you liked William Goldman’s The Princess Bride Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn or Michael Ende’s The Never Ending Story then I think you’d enjoy Bridge of Birds

Trials at work

The past couple of months at work have been exhausting.  I’m a Problem Resolution Specialist with my state’s Tax Commission.  The job has a laundry list of responsibilities from general customer service to taxpayer advocacy and from technical legal research to teaching classes.  My group is also where any problems that other agents can’t answer or figure out ends up which gives us a wide variety of interesting issues to handle.  And to cap it all off nicely job description’s list of responsibilities ends with “and other duties as assigned” which opens it up to everything else.

Actually its kind of perfect for me in some ways.  I love learning new things and in my position I’m constantly being confronted with new things that need to be studied, understood, and resolved as soon as possible.  Another of the things I love most about my job is it is all about helping people pay as little in taxes as is fairly and legally possible rather than just assessing and collecting them – I don’t think I could be an auditor or a collection agent. 

Welcome ya'all

So I've decided to put myself out into the ether.  Yesterday I made my first facebook page and today I'm starting this blog.

I've fought for years against the idea of establishing an online presence... after all once you put something online it is pretty much there forever, even if you later regret putting it there and delete it is still lingers in copies and caches.  Plus, it makes me nervous to invite strangers into my life and to allow them to examine and comment on my thoughts and pictures..

But lately I’ve been doing a lot of web surfing around the blogverse and social networking sites and have decided that, while my concerns are probably still valid to some extent, there are a lot more really nice people out there that I wouldn’t mind meeting online.

I apologize in advance for any mistakes.  This is my first go at all this.  My thoughts tend to outpace my weak 50 wpm typing skills so when I type my thoughts it tends to appear fragmented and disjointed unless I go back and edit it (and hopefully by the time I finish an entry and go back to edit it I’ll be able to remember what I was talking about to begin with).  Also, since I don’t have a THEME for this blog, other than just my meandering mind I’m afraid that you’ll be confronted with a barrage of disjointed and occasionally uncontexted entries.  My mind tends to go off on weird little field trips and I decided that I wanted a place to put some of those meanderings thoughts down.