The Rogue Scholar

Problems with Workflows and Plans for 2009

Now that it's a new year/new semester, I'm back to playing catch-up with the world.  Namely, back to cataloging. 112 new volumes that are destined to sit upon the noble shelves of the Reserve section (required text for the most part) and the Education resource Room.  This will take days but at least it's not difficult work.

What is more difficult (or at least aggravating)  is navigating the guts of SirsiDynix Unicorn Workflows Java Client v. 3.21.2.1.  I've got the ILS installed on all but one of the staff workstations in the library and for the most part it's working nicely.  One thing that is really giving me the business is the configuration modules's use of override passwords.  The passwords are easy to set up--in fact we migrated all the previous password to the current setup.  It remembered everything that came over from the earlier install, so that's not the problem.  The problem (I know this is a roundabout explanation, but bear with me, we're almost there) is that every detail of the five main configuration flowcharts must absolutely agree with each other, or the ILS blocks the user's access to the module function.  In other words all the details must agree to get access to the stuff I and the staff had full access to before we migrated. 

The confusing part about this is that when creating or modifying a new User Access profile, it gives you the option of choosing or omitting any one of the wide array of tools and permissions that are part of the access tree. For example, I've got student workers able to perform only basic actions (create/modify user, check in/discharge, etc.) but now even those require password overrides.  Even the super user account I created for myself some time ago is subject to the overrides.  

Long story short (as if you haven't sat through enough already), I have to create a block of time to sit down, print out every configuration rule chart this application has, and figure out how to make everything agree.  It'll be ugly but the guys at Sirsi Clientcare insist that's how one goes about fixing it.  Yowza.

In the mean time, there are other things to plan for. The catalog need a deep reaming and that's the sort of thing that goes above and beyond mere semiannual weeding.  The RFID tags (using our single tagging station) have been integrated into our Reserve collection and that part of the grand scheme is working as expected.  But now we need to follow through.  We'll need to budget for additional circulation stations to start tagging the rest of the collection and a definite time-frame for this to happen.  45,000 books can be tagged at a rate of 10,000 per year in 4.5 years, so it's doable but we need to keep up with it.  That means talking to Bibliotecha, the company we bought the system from.  A lot of talking.

Another major project, which I'll need to report on to my boss by mid-March is the possibility of integrating our Full Text journals into the catalog. I can think of a number of ways to do  this (something like Serials Solutions' Article Linker comes to mind since I worked successfully with it in the past).  The mechanics need to be figured out of course, but the benefits to the students and faculty are pretty clear ("More stuff on tap! Yea!").  Then there's the actual labor involved, but since Serials Solutions would be doing the heavy lifting on it, that's less of a problem than it might sound.  Finally, there are the training issues for staff, students and faculty.

There's more to think of: preparing better and more frequent stat reports for the staff and admin folks, improving and implementing new quality control procedures, and improving our collective levels of customer service, to name three, but that's for later.

For now, back to cataloging.

The Universe Just Gets More and More Interesting

Odd planet's extreme global warming: Highs of 2240
BY SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer 
Wed Jan 28, 3:18 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have found a planet with a galactic case of hot flashes. In just six hours, this planet four times the size of Jupiter heats up by more than 1,200 degrees, according to a study published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature. "It's the first observation of changing weather" on a planet outside our solar system, said study author Gregory Laughlin, an astronomy professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to study the planet.

Change is a mild way to put it for the lifeless world, called HD80606b, where the word "mild" would never enter a weather forecast.

Normally, the planet is a toasty 980 degrees or so. But in the few hours it whips around its sun the planet gets zapped with mega-heat, pushing the thermometer closer to 2,240 degrees.

During its brief close pass to its sun, the planet is 10 times nearer its star than Mercury is to our sun. When it comes closest to its star, it becomes one giant "brewing storm" complete with shock waves, Laughlin said. The radiation bombarding the planet is 800 times stronger than when it is farthest away.

Then just as quickly, the planet slingshots away and radiates the heat to the cool vacuum of space. It glows cherry red and the temperature plummets, Laughlin said.

"Utterly bizarre," he said. "It is thoroughly completely uninhabitable. In a galaxy of uninhabitable planets, this one stands out as being completely inhospitable to life."

The planet circles its star — the larger of two stars in a binary system — in a comet-like orbit in just 111 days.

The star is visible from Earth near the Big Dipper. On Feb. 14, HD80606b will travel between the Earth and its star. There's a 15 percent chance that amateur astronomers using small telescopes could see it swing by, obscuring a tiny part of the star, Laughlin said.

"This is indeed an oddball planet, where the temperature range of the season changes from hellish to super-hellish," said Carnegie Institution astronomer Alan Boss. "This place makes Venus look like a nice place to live and that is saying something."

Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery Medal for Children's Literature

From the NY Times:

Newbery Medal for Children’s Literature Goes to Neil Gaiman
By Motoko Rich

Neil Gaiman, the British-born fantasy author, has won the Newbery Medal for his children’s book “The Graveyard Book.” (Yuko Shimizu)

The John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature was awarded on Monday to “The Graveyard Book,” by Neil Gaiman, a British-born author who has distinguished himself both as a science fiction and comics writer for adults. “The Graveyard Book,” about a boy who lives in a cemetery and is raised by ghosts, was published by HarperCollins Children’s Books and has spent 15 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller list. The American Library Association announced the prize at its midwinter conference in Denver.

Read the rest of the article here.  Congrats, Neil!

Obama Frees Bush Historical Records

This article should be of interest to historians and archivists all over the political spectrum. To wit:

Obama Frees Bush Historical Records 

By Robert Parry 
January 22, 2009

When authoritarian forces seize control of a government, they typically move first against the public’s access to information, under the theory that a confused populace can be more easily manipulated. They take aim at the radio stations, TV and newspapers.

In the case of George W. Bush in 2001, he also took aim at historical records, giving himself and his family indefinite control over documents covering the 12 years of his father’s terms as President and Vice President.

It was, therefore, significant that one of Barack Obama’s first acts as President was to revoke the Bush Family’s power over that history and to replace it with an easier set of regulations for accessing the records.

Just as George W. Bush upon taking office in January 2001 immediately delayed the scheduled release of documents from the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Obama wasted no time in reversing that policy by signing a new executive order on his first working day in office.

Eight years earlier, George W. Bush initially postponed the document release and then – after the 9/11 attacks – sought to extend the cloak of secrecy over those documents virtually forever.

Bush signed Executive Order 13233 on Nov. 1, 2001, granting the sitting President as well as former Presidents or ex-Vice Presidents – or their heirs – veto power over release of many documents.

In other words, Bush was giving himself and his family effective control over key chapters of 20 years of American history (his father’s eight years as Vice President and four years as President, and his own eight years as President).

Presumably at some point, that power would have passed to George W. Bush’s daughters, Jenna and Barbara, and to their progeny, giving the family a kind of dynastic control over how Americans would understand key events of an important national era.

Self-serving myths could become a substitute for accurate history – all the better to protect the Bush Family’s interests.

The rest of the article is here. Enjoy! (And have a great weekend.)

Something to Remember About "The Media"

My wife and I went to visit my CFP last night. He’s a nice guy, very smart, and we’ve known each other for roughly 20 years (during which time he’s made me some real—for me, at the time—money, which is I’m still dealing with him). At any rate, part of the plan we were talking about for the future last night rests on the assumption that what’s happening right now is a temporary glitch in the global financial system which will work itself out after a few years.

Well, he may be right.  As I said, he’s very smart. He’s certainly right to say that this is not the end of the world or even the end of commerce. Some things are just too important to too many people to let go of. On the other hand he might just as easily be wrong, and while the world and the life it supports will continue, the manner in which our wealth is created, calculate, and preserved probably will change, perhaps quite radically over the next few decades. 

Consider this bit from Mike Ruppert’s A2:FTW blog:

Jan. 18, 2009 – Perhaps we should be holding our breaths for something else; something that is breaking out all over the world. Civil unrest now moves from a back to a front burner as a landmark on our map and a pressing issue for our discussion.

On January 16th and 17th I saw (either) cowardice or duplicity on the part of mainstream media. Chesley Sullenberger is a great pilot. Coming from an Air Force/aviation family I would be honored to shake his hand. The U.S. Air miracle on the Hudson was indeed that. But for almost 36 hours I watched in rage as the mainstream media, especially CNN, played the same four of five clips endlessly, over and over, rehashing the rehash – hour after hour. The anchors and their producers were either taking a break or regrouping. Several looked very bored. Not since 9-11 have I seen American media shut down news coverage of other important events to such a degree. But the US Air crash landing wasn't a 9-11 was it?

On January 16th the United States shed another 21,000 jobs… in one day. Globally, the economic collapse is hitting other industrialized countries much harder than here. Around the world "emerging" bourses are imploding at a faster rate than ours. Perhaps we should rename them as "disappearing markets" now. The disappearing act has hit turbo charge in Europe as a result of a now three-week old lack of Russian natural gas. Triggered by the economic collapse and compounded by human suffering in unheated, near-zero weather, riots – big ones – have erupted from Latvia in the North, to Sofia in the South. There is serious street fighting. Around the world, from China, to India, to Europe, industrialized nations are "frantically" preparing for civil unrest (China at a very rapid pace). Of course our map says that the US, the UK, Russia and a few others have been preparing for this for years.

Arab nations have lost $2.5 trillion (40% of their investments) thus far in the collapse and have postponed or cancelled 60% of their new development projects… You know? Those hotels where you can snow ski inside when it's 112 outside? That kind of a shutdown will cause the Arab oil-producing nations to explode in civil unrest as aggravated poverty, starvation and disease hit home in short order. Collapsed oil prices have exposed the lack of economic stamina in the region. (You thought Americans were foolish spenders.) The luxuries of the princes will now stand starkly contrasted against the barren desert of their subjects' lives. Thus, geography is giving us our first major political tectonic fault line. From the Baltic south, through Greece, into Turkey, then fanning out across the Middle East is a new frontier of soon-to-be flaming unrest

Unrest will happen here and it will happen in an earthshaking fashion within the next year. Could the evidence supporting this conclusion have been missed as we watched footage on the Hudson for the thirty-second time in 36 hours? Couldn't they have squeezed any of this other news in… somewhere?

Mike is pointing out one thing we all need to remember: news is relative. Americans are notorious for ignoring what goes on overseas or even in the American interior. And “The Media” are not our friends: the news is handled by professionals to resemble entertainment, not information.

Just a few things to remember as we hope for the best in the coming year.

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President,

First of all, I wish to offer my heartfelt congratulations on your electoral victory.  In a short while you will be considered by many to be the most powerful person in the world.  For a man to call himself such is something an American has been doing every four years since 1945.  For a man of your race and background to call himself such is a unique and genuinely new moment in American history.

That is, of course, the point.  Along with your predecessor's problems you are inheriting an opportunity to build something genuinely new in this country.  Not a Utopian vision of perfect equality, justice, and universal happiness--there are some things that physical reality and human nature will not support and perfection is among them. Your and our ideals are important, and they should guide you and us as we try to figure out what kind of a country we actually want to live in.  One hopes that it will be a different one in tone and public action than what we've been seeing in the past decade.

I ask only that you remember that ideals are exactly that--ideas that we use to guide us as we struggle with physical limitations placed upon us by physical reality.  Our physical reality at this particular moment is rather bleak.  Our energy supplies are dwindling, our infrastructure is crumbling, our economic power is waning, and our military is unable to conquer or control underfed, poorly supplied adversaries in destitute countries.  The thing to remember about all of these problems is that more thinking of the type that created them will not help us solve them.  We need to think of something different.  To that end, I would suggest only that you keep an open mind and understand that good ideas and solutions comes from many places.  In fact, they come from everywhere.  All you need do is listen.  (You might want to start by listening to those Americans who've been experiencing hard times the past eight years.)

Good luck, and once again, congratulations.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Frater

Last Minute Reminder: NYLINK Meeting at NYPL

On November 4, 2008, OCLC issued its revised policy statement regarding the use of bibliographic records from WorldCat, entitled the Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records, scheduled to become effective in mid-February 2009. 


Please join moderator Robert Wolven, Assistant University Librarian for Bibliographic Services and Collection Development at Columbia University Libraries, and Karen Calhoun, Vice President, OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services, for a moderated discussion of the policy on Friday, January 16, 1:30 – 4:00 PM, at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, South Court Auditorium, New York Public Library [at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street]. Refreshments will be served. 


The introduction of the policy has led to vigorous discussions, on blogs and listservs, among librarians and OCLC staffers. You may also be interested in reading Lauren Pinsley's post on Nylink's Status Line blog, which summarizes some of the issues that have elicited comment. 

We hope that you are able to join us on January 16. Please register online by January 9 so we know to expect you. 

If you are unable to attend, but would like to have your questions about the proposed WorldCat record use policy asked at the forum, please contact Lynne Graziadei by email [graziadeil@nylink.org]. Thank you. We look forward to seeing you in January. 

 
Regards,

W. David Penniman, PhD

Executive Director
Nylink

Traditional Fairytales Turn Off PC Parents

It's easy to make fun of the strange and continually evolving social experiment in national behavior known as Political Correctness (a.k.a. "cultural sensitivity").  It's a frightening yet inevitable truth of our world that a great many of the things that go horribly wrong in life are the unintended consequences of well meaning people striving to make the world a better place.  PC, I believe, belongs squarely in that category.  I realize that those who believe in it are trying to make the world a better place by ensuring that we refrain from giving each other offense.  It's an admirable ideal.  The theory merely does not bear up under the facts, two of which stand out most glaringly in this context: firstly, human beings routinely hate (and love) each other for very superficial reasons.  Secondly, we habitually rally around common points of reference. We band together based on race, language, religion, history, culture, hobbies, interests, hair color, height, weight, age, ideology, visions of the future, and past experience.  None of this is bad per se, it merely describes our social propensity to seek out those like ourselves in one way or another.  It's human. 

But another human tendency is to randomly beat the living crap out of those who are not like ourselves, frequently in large groups, often killing other humans in the process. This is generally considered a bad thing by sensible individuals the world over.  PC attempts to fix these tendencies by politicizing public communication.  I think that in adopting this technique, we actually make communication more difficult by creating an adversarial relationship between two or more parties where none need exist.  Clearly, there are some things nobody should say in public (inflammatory speech comes to mind) but I suspect that to view every word as if it might be inflammatory is not likely to improve the situation.

So, for those of us who do not subscribe to the theory or comply with its requirements, making fun of PC and those who use it is easy.  It's fun to make light of people who are different from ourselves, first because it makes us feel better about ourselves, and second, it helps us deal with the fear they might be reading the world correctly and we are not.  After all, these people are trying to make the world a better place.  Who can argue with that?  (Actually, I can, but that's a post for another time.)

But I wonder about these parents who refuse to read certain well-known bedtime stories to their children on the grounds that they are bad for the kids.  So that we're clear, let me just say that not all kids are ready for all stories at all ages.  Knowing what your kids can handle and at which age is part of being a parent. (When they were younger, for example, my autistic 11-year old nephew could routinely handle stories and films that gave his "normal" 13-year old sister nightmares for weeks.)  For that matter, if your stomach is strong enough, get yourself a copy of The Hard Facts of the Grimm's Fairy Tales by Maria Tatar and read it cover to cover. You have no clue (especially if you're an American) just how frightening these stories were a few generations ago.  And that's why I'm not going to make fun of these parents.  But I do question what they themselves are projecting into the stories they won't read to their kids.

The article contains two lists of books, the ten most read children's stories and the ten books least read.  Briefly, they are:

Top bedtime stories of 2008: 

1. The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Eric Carle (1969) 

2. Mr Men, Roger Hargreaves (1971) 

3. The Gruffalo, Julia Donaldson (1999) 

4. Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne (1926) 

5. Aliens Love Underpants, Claire Freedman & Ben Cort (2007) 

6. Thomas and Friends from The Railway Series, Rev.W.Awdry (1945) 

7. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame (1908) 

8. What a Noisy Pinky Ponk!, Andrew Davenport (2008) 

9. Charlie and Lola, Lauren Child (2001) 

10. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Robert Southey (1837) 

Top 10 fairy tales we no longer read: 

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 

2. Hansel and Gretel 

3. Cinderella 

4. Little Red Riding Hood 

5. The Gingerbread Man 

6. Jack and the Beanstalk 

7. Sleeping Beauty 

8. Beauty and the Beast 

9. Goldilocks and the Three Bears 

10. The Emperor's New Clothes

You'll notice the Do Not Read column contains the more traditional works.  I'm the first to admit that most of the stories in the first list are unknown to me.  (When I saw the headline to the article I was worried that The Very Hungry Caterpillar had been banned on the basis of its encouraging obesity.)  I will say that I'm a bit surprised The Wind in the Willows got onto the Good to Read list seeing as how Toad is a total creep who puts his friends through hell as he destroys himself and everything around him. I understand reading Winnie the Pooh to kids, but I'm not a good judge of Milne's writing for one reason: I never liked Pooh.  Eeyore was and remains my boy, followed by Benjamin, the similarly morose donkey in Orwell's Animal Farm.  Although there's a clear difference between the two: Eeyore expected the worst and was often pleasantly surprised when it didn't appear.  Benjamin expected the worst and watched it unfold before his eyes, but he never looked away.  (I'm convinced Benjamin had a library of classic Russian literature stashed in the barn somewhere.)

It's also interesting to me that Goldilocks and the Three Bears made it to both lists.  I think I  see why in both cases. Those parents who liked it probably thought it was a whimsical story where the naughty little girl is "scared straight" as it were, and gets away unharmed and maybe a bit wiser.  But I can sympathize with parents who hated it, too.  Who wants to read a story about a girl who breaks into a strange house, vandalizes the family's furniture, befouls their food, then soils the bed before being discovered and escaping justice to their kids?  Not me.

I don't think Snow White deserves to be on the Do Not Read list.  It's not her fault the queen wants her dead, in fact, she lucked out with her escape (the hunter didn't have to let her go in the woods, you know). Beyond that she's just trying to make an insane situation livable.  Granted, I'm not sure I'd want my teen-aged daughter shacking up with seven dirty old men in the middle of nowhere, but even then they never actually demand anything obnoxious from her.  It seems they're happy just having a young woman around who likes to cook and clean but doesn't spit, curse, and stay out all night.  She could have done worse (and in some re-tellings, I'm sure she did.)

My parents did not read Hansel and Gretel to me and my brother when we were young.  I don't know if it was because the characters were Germans and we were Jews.  I did grow up thinking it was normal in the Fatherland for old women to trap and eat children, or occasionally for kids to push old ladies into ovens, but . . . well, maybe it was because we were Jews.  I don't remember.

Cinderella gets a bad rap because a lot of people think she's made to be a slave to the other women in the house. I don't deny she gets treated poorly, but if this story is truly offensive, it's more derogatory toward stepmothers and step-siblings.  I at least understand the pathology behind the stepmother, she's favoring her own kids over the adopted one. That happens plenty in real life (it happened to both my grandfathers at very young ages.) But the stepsisters are so one-dimensionally grasping, greedy and envious of anything Cinderella comes home with (or even wants to come home with) that in the original story (or one version of it) they cut off their heels and big toes to get that glass slipper to fit.  (Spoiler Alert: it doesn't.)  

Little Red Riding Hood should have followed instructions, stayed on the path and not wandered off.  Is that so hard?  (Neil Jordan apparently thought so.)  Meanwhile the Gingerbread Man was, by all accounts I remember hearing when I was six or seven, a complete jerk.  The lesson seemed clear to me even then: be a braggart, look for trouble absolutely everywhere and you will  get eaten by a fox.  Or else John Lithgow will torture you and rip your legs off.  Whatever.  The point is, don't be a jerk.

I never found Jack and the Beanstalk very interesting.  Jack was clearly a jock (what normal ten-year old can climb hand over hand for several hundred feet? None that I know) and to my mind suspect for that reason more than any other.  He's also obviously no math whiz or future business tycoon or he'd have understood that trading up from a healthy heifer does not mean getting a handful of so-called magic beans in return. (That the beans actually were magic was a mere lucky break.)  Then there's the matter of this young Mr. Universe breaking into the castle at the top of the giant plant to nowhere, killing the giant, stealing his golden egg-laying pet, then chopping down the beanstalk to cover his tracks.  I hasten to add, I don't entirely blame Jack.  He's a product of his genetics and environment.  I think the fact that the boy's mother ripped open the goose in a fit of greed to find nothing but blood and entrails is all the defense he'll need in court.  (I mean, come on, how much gold can a  goose pack in her ovaries at any one time? Gah!)

Sleeping Beauty might be a poor role model for young girls, or she might not be, it all depends on your interpretation.  Personally, I've always felt a little sorry for her.  All she wanted to do was learn a trade (i.e., spinning cloth), and a good skill it was--Gandhi himself calculated that if even a fraction of the women in India could spin for a two or three hours a day, they would produce so much raw cloth that they would provide for their national needs and completely bankrupt the British textile industry within a year.  It's also not her fault that her parents were rude to the wrong people; you'd think Old World royalty would know better. She certainly did not ask some strange man to come galloping from God knows where to behave as if he owned her just because he took advantage of her while she was indisposed.  And what Anne Rice put her through was just plain mean.

Beauty (no relation to Sleeping Beauty) and the Beast made a great Disney film, mostly because Belle is the only Disney princess to have an IQ greater than 87. Unfortunately, that's pretty much all the film had going for it (the voice acting of Jerry Orbach and David Ogden Stiers notwithstanding), so I won't say more about it.  Suffice to say that the French version is rather more complex.

I don't understand why The Emperor's New Clothes is on the Do Not Read list.  Public male nudity perhaps?  Wrecking the myth that Authority Knows Best?  Observing that a five year old boy on a crowded street knows a mature wee-wee when he sees one?  I never found this story anything but positive.  Then again, maybe that's the problem: many of these tales are steeped in allegory and metaphor to provide cryptic messages encouraging obedience in one form or another. This one stands out because it does exactly the opposite: it instructs children that when their elders are clearly not grasping the situation, they are to tell them what's happening.  Remind them that lies are still lies, no matter how scared of the liar and his minions they may be. Remind them that respect is earned and that to work it must be mutual.  

Most of all, children should remind their parents that trying to protect them by stealing other people's right to speak openly and honestly in public is just not going to work.

What Do Library Staff Want President Obama to Know: Special Membership Town Hall Meeting

What Do Library Staff Want President Obama to Know: Special Membership Town Hall Meeting

When: Saturday, January 24, 2009, 3 PM to 4:30 PM

Where: Four Seasons Ballroom at the Colorado Convention Center

What library issues are most important to ALA members to share with the incoming administration? How can libraries serve as catalysts in communities to help the administration put its agenda into motion? ALA’s Executive Board and Membership Meeting Committee are sponsoring a Special Membership Town Hall Meeting on Saturday, Jan. 24th, from 3 PM to 4:30 PM in the Four Seasons Ballroom at the Colorado Convention Center. ALA wants to hear from you!

During the economic downturn, library services are in greater demand for access to and assistance with job searching, financial aid, class assignments, lifetime learning, free Internet for poor families, government forms and programs. Just when families need libraries more, budgets, services, and hours are being cut.

 

Topics can include:

· e-rate applications

· broadband

· network neutrality

· libraries as agents of equal learning opportunities for all

· school library media specialists as professionals

· libraries as the sole sources of no-fee access to the Internet for many citizens

· libraries and access to e-government services

· transparency in government

· civil liberties vs. security

· Internet filters

· library services for active-duty military

· library services for the visually impaired

· libraries and early childhood literacy

· the rights of the public and of copyright holders. 

We hope that you will address these and other issues and perhaps give specific examples of the role of libraries in the life of our nation.

The meeting will begin with a couple of short (five-minute) presentations and then open the floor to the members. We are looking for a healthy and vigorous discussion of the role of libraries in our country and welcome all views. Your suggestions and comments will help us as we develop our library message that President Jim Rettig will share with President Obama and the new administration.

Before the meeting, share your views at the Town Hall Discussion wiki:

http://wikis.ala.org/midwinter2009/index.php/Town_Hall_Discussion

Theresa Liedtka

Dean, Lupton Library

University of Tennessee, Chattanooga

ALA, Membership Meeting Committee 

The Ponzi Master

I've not been reading the financial pages with my usual attention since other projects keep taking time away from such interesting but (I admit) unproductive tasks.  On the good side, I'm not nearly as depressed as I've been for oh, say, the past year.  On the bad side--now that I think of it, there is no bad side to that. (Yea!)

Anyway, the Trials and Tribulations of Bernie Madoff is an especially fascinating subject to me personally. (I was one of those money nerds who clipped reams of articles when BCCI--a.k.a. Bank of Credit and Commerce International--went belly-up in a shitstorm of illegal money transfers and scandals years ago, not unlike Madoff's spectacular self-destruction.) The names change and the schemes become more sophisticated but the sequence of events is the same: rich people lose money, laws are discovered to have been broken, scandal, instigations and allegations follow. 

If you're doing rsearch on the subject, I might suggest taking a look at CNN's so-called Complete Madoff Coverage website, which I won't call complete since it relies exclusively on CNN reports, but I will call a good place to begin your research. Another good place to look (assuming he keeps updating it, of course) is Matt Savinar's coverage of Maddoff's problems on his LATOC website.

Something not directly related but interesting to read is a Wall Street Joirnal article titled Why we Keep Falling for Financial Scams.  And finally, you'll want to look at this profile of Mr. Charles Ponzi, courtesy of the Times of London.

Enjoy!

RS Edit: I just found this article by Michael "Liar's Poker" Lewis and David Einhorn in the NY Times. Definitely worth the read, if only becauyse the authors do a good jobof bringing the wackinesss of Mr. Madoff's activities to a more comprehensible place.