The Rogue Scholar

Are We . . . Screwed?

(I'm in a ramblin' mood this afternoon, so . . .)

On this day--October 31--we are told, the barrier between the world of men and spirits are at their thinnest. But men and spirits both being less than reasonable 100% of the time have been known to seek us out for redress for past slights (real or imagined.) We traditionally dress up in costume to confuse or frighten off any would-be seekers of vengeance. And, we're told, we shouldn't really breathe easily until the clock strikes midnight and All Hallow's Eve becomes All Saint's Day, when the two worlds go back to their respective routines and men and spirits go their separate ways.

At any rate there's lots of goings on among the world of men to scare one silly. First off being that the great man who was known for a decade and a half as "The Maestro" and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II has officially come out of the stupid closet. It's not his fault, he says, he had no clue his brilliant ideas would screw up absolutely everything.

Right. No offense to Sir Alan, but my grandfather could have figured it out on his slide rule. Encourage people to do stupid things at no risk to themselves (albeit at substantial risk to those around them) and they--surprise!--will do stupid things. And they did, to the tune of making $70 trillion worth of bad bets on the global economy. (I know it's more complicated than that, but that's what it boils down to.)

That's the real problem with what's going on in the U.S. at this particular moment in time: idiots run the country, and through various international levers and treaties, the world. That sounds harsh and unfair on the surface. Greenspan had the best education money could buy, was imminently well-connected and was entrusted with managing the money supply--as, for instance, you and I never would have been--and there was a good reason for that. One assumes that anyone smart and motivated enough to get to such a position should, I don't know, know what he's doing. It's a decent assumption--you go to a good school, learn from the best, you should know which way is up. Except that Greenspan apparently didn't know up from down and by extension we can assume neither do the other big shots in economic circles.

Some of these guys are unquestionably saying these "Dude! I'm as surprised as y'all!" type things now to cover their asses, which really is a learned skill (covering your ass, that is, not saying "I'm shocked this has happened"), especially in our institutions of higher learning. And let's give credit where it was due, only a fucking genius could have invented something as complicated (and frankly as dangerous) as the derivatives market turned out to be.

I say these things out loud and I'm nearly always told by someone that I just don't understand economics. I agree that math is not my strongest skill set. But I understand human behavior pretty well, and it's a well documented fact that people fall in love with their ideas. I hate to throw away half-written articles or short stories because, well, they're mine and I put a lot of energy into them. I don't think about the fact that seven out of then ten people who read them in the past year hate them for largely the same reasons. But I should think about that because when you show a piece of writing to ten people and more than seven list the same things as being noticeable, it's best to listen to them.

By that same logic if government statistics say we're wealthier than at any point in history but polls  consistently say that the people actually living in America just don't feel that way, maybe that's a hint worth taking.

So, at this particular moment in time, October 31, 2008,  the world of economics--noted by some as a real science and by others as a bunch of wishful thinking with a lot of math--is closer to the everyday world of daily life than it has been in years. By that I mean that those of us not in the special club have finally taken notice of it and are perhaps also noticing that maybe handing control of our destinies to this Harvard-edumacated crowd is not the best idea.  And with that in mind would you rather vote for the guy who seems to have a handle on things--what things the system will let him handle once he's in the top job, of course--or the guy who thinks being the touchiest man in the room qualifies him for that job?

As I said several posts ago, this, too, shall pass. It'll be like losing 50 lbs.: doing it sucks, but you feel better when it's over. And granted, there are real reasons to be very afraid of the future we're creating. But there are resources to get through this as well because life never really stops and nothing ever really ends. 

Happy Halloween!

Was Karl Marx Right? Well, Sort of . . .

I'm posting this article from the UK Times entirely because A) I can almost guarantee nothing like this will ever be presented by any American mainstream media publication (if I turn out to be wrong on that, please send me the links or citations) and B) the article closes with an extended quote from Alexei Sayle.

My own idea is that, yes Marx was right, sort of, up to a point,  but it's more complicated than that. And that seems to be similar to the consensus presented both by the author and the additional comments by various students of Marx. But I've written on that already and I won't go into it again today (I can't compete with Alexei Sayle and know better than to try.)
Enjoy!

Bad Grammar Makes Me [sic]

I haven an enormous inferiority complex when it comes to using the English language. You can thank my mother for that.  Mom is not merely the sort of person who got a perfect 800 on the verbal portion of the SAT and can learn the basic grammar and vocabulary of nearly any language within 3 days--she is that person. So while I know it's considered poor taste to blame one's failings on one's parents, my mother drove me nuts. As kids, my brother and I were continually subjected to snap vocabulary quizzes, corrected when our pronunciation sounded deficient or sloppy, and even though I didn't know what grammatical rules were--I couldn't recite them on demand, for example--I developed a permanent feel for them. Reading helped--my whole family is filled with compulsive readers (including myself). Hebrew school was a little complicated at first because when the teachers referred to The Bible I thought they were talking about the Random House Unabridged Dictionary in our living room. Most seven year olds thought the thesaurus was an obscure sort of dinosaur, but to us it was the other dictionary. The best present my parents ever gave me was the Random House Encyclopedia for my eighth birthday. Absorbing that was a religious experience for me, and to this day, I haven't found the classroom able to compete with it.

In hindsight, Mom clearly did me a favor although I had to turn to writing and teaching English in my early twenties to realize this. More importantly, in the 20 or so years since then I have had the chance to read, edit, and correct the work of innumerable others who clearly did not have my Mom helping them out in their formative years. I see the same mistakes both from students and professionals who, frankly, should know better. Spelling errors, mistaken contractions, and grammatical gaffes are, of course, part of the life of writing for any purpose, but the fact that I see the same problems in both students and their teachers has me worried. 

At any rate, this is meant as friendly advice and while I admit my perfectionism is probably genetic, I think perfect writing skills are something worth aspiring to. (As a final note I would like simply to point out that any  mistakes in this post are entirely my own fault, not that of my mother.)

Here we go . . .

How many times have you heard a friend tell you that “I could give a shit,” or “I could care less.” The correct phrase is “I could not give a shit,” or “I could not care less,” and it always has been. In case you think I’m being an elitist bastard, think about it logically for a moment. If you could care less it means you actually care. If nothing else, it means you care to a level that is not zero (since negative caring is not logically possible). If you could not care less, then your level of caring is at zero,  which is an absolute point of non-caring. In other words, telling people that you could care less means you give a shit and vice versa. If you really and truly don’t care,  say it correctly.

Using “It’s” as a possessive pronoun is just plain wrong.  The reason is simple: “it’s” is the contracted form of “it is.” “It’s raining out.” “It’s too hot in here.” “It’s time to load the guns because those zombies aren't going to kill themselves.” “Its”, written without the apostrophe, really is a possessive pronoun. “The dog wagged its tail.” “The car lost its muffler on the highway.” “Hey, Fred,  the volcano is flipping its lid.” Same sound, two different meanings and respective spellings (that's called a homonym for you etymology junkies). Think about what you actually mean to say before writing it down.

There vs. Their vs. They’re. This one makes me nuts, but it's easily corrected if you just keep the context of the statement the word appears with in mind. Observe:

There means "there" as in "That, over there" or "Not here, but there" or "There you go again, you silly Democrat."

Their is a possessive pronoun for a group which modifies a noun : "They took their ball and went home." "What is ours is not theirs." "They stumbled drunkenly as they looked for their house in the dark."

They're is a contraction for the words "they are." As in: "They're crazy." "They're rich as Nazis." "They voted for Bush twice, and now they're voting for McCain." And so on.

More/Less vs. Many/Few. This one takes a bit of explanation, but at its root is the difference between an amount and a number. An amount is a portion, like a cup of sugar or a ton of grain, or something of that nature. A number is a group of individual objects, like one, or ten, or a gazillion. So when writing this you should consider the essence of what's being described.

On that note, "More" and "Less" refer to amounts, while "many" and "few" refer to numbers. So I can have more sugar or less grain. Or, I can see many stars with a good telescope, or see that I have ten fewer spoons in the drawer at home.

Two, Too, and To. In the simplest terms I can imagine:

Two is the number, two.

Too is an adverb that means "also," "as well as," "in addition to," and such like.

To is a preposition that denotes motion towards a goal: "I went to put my paycheck in the bank," or "The gangsters went to rob the bank," or "They went to repossess the house but I  burned it down instead," or something similar.

And there you have it: the problem words I see the most often and the answers. Use them well, and often. Mom will thank you (and so will I).

Digital Scholarship Publication: "Author's Rights, Tout de Suite"

Lifted in its entirety from SUNY Binghamton's ERIL-L listserv:

Author's Rights, Tout de Suite, the latest Digital Scholarship publication, is designed to give journal article authors a quick introduction to key aspects of author's rights and to foster further exploration of this topic though liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent Web sites.

http://www.digital-scholarship.org/ts/authorrights.pdf

It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, and it can be freely used for any noncommercial purpose, including derivative works, in accordance with the license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/

The prior publication in the Tout de Suite series, Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, is also available.

http://www.digital-scholarship.org/ts/irtoutsuite.pdf

--

Best Regards,
Charles

Charles W. Bailey, Jr.
Publisher, Digital Scholarship
http://www.digital-scholarship.org/

DigitalKoans, Electronic Theses and Dissertations Bibliography, Google Book Search Bibliography, Open Access Bibliography, Open Access Webliography, Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, and Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog

A Look Back at Nineteen Years as an Internet Digital Publisher

Wisdom From Carnegie

"Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community."

-- Andrew Carnegie

Outsourcing our Proxy Server

We want to outsource our library's proxy server. In essence, we are working apart from our IT department which has shown no inclination to helping us manage the library's electronic resources (they insist it's not their job.) The company that's been doing the hosting for our existing proxy wall has been slowly but surely declining in customer service quality, so we're shopping for a new vendor. We've had very little interest from giants like Verizon and AT&T so we're looking for suggestions on other smaller firms that provide this sort of service. Anything anyone might be able to offer would be welcome.  (Just drop me an email at jfrateratmcny.edu or post a comment.)

Thanks!

Don't Panic . . .

 . . . monorail cat now stops at the library.

All right, so monorail cat doesn't stop anywhere but the top shelf because that's where the light from the living room window hits during the day. But there are valid reasons not to panic, which include (but are not limited to):

The fact that this blog just logged its 18,000 visitor. I am amazed and astounded (and pleased as hell) to report this. Part of the reason that I'm reporting it today is because someone--I don't know who because there's no referral link involved--has been looking at a post I wrote years ago about what librarians should know about electronic resources., over and over and over again. I'd love to know where these people are coming from but I'm just as happy to report that they did in fact visit for a spell.

If you're like most Americans, the Great Market Drop hasn't affected you personally yet.  It will, probably when you open that next day trading account statement or your next quarterly statement from whichever firm holds your 401(k) plan. That will suck, and you need to mentally prepare for it. However, chances are you still have a job, are still paying your bills, and are still living in the home you had weeks or months ago. Those are all good things. Be happy you have them.

And as I write this the market is up something like 400 points. That is a prime opportunity to sell whatever stocks you've lost faith in because it means the market is swarming with buyers. That's a good thing. It probably won't last so take this chance while it's here.

As a final note, remember King David's posthumous words to his son Solomon, who had been left with enemies on all front and a kingdom in a marked state of decay and disarray: this, too, shall pass.Night always turns into day. (Just be prepared for day to turn back into night at some point.)

Still More on John McCain's Qualifications to be President

This article from Tim Dickinson in this week's Rolling Stone magazine doesn't tell the whole story of John McCain's life--because no single article in a weekly periodical can tell The Whole Story, all 72 years' of McCain's life included--but it does put the candidate's military service, malleable personal ideals and volcanic temper into a coherent perspective.  Definitely worth the read.  Enjoy!