Karaoke saves lives

At the moment I'm watching Alain de Botton discuss status-conciousness on a PBS show based on his book "Status Anxiety". His questions about spiritual richness, material wealth, and what people aspire to when pressured to want it all in a democratic society are poignant when considered from an educational perspective. What should we be teaching our children to want? Is it really OK to tell a child that he or she can be anything they want to be (like a pop star) when they may not have the tools to acheive that dream? Well, I don't know, but I am determined to do what I can to try to awaken the potentials of all the kids I work with, and I'd like to think that a kid might one day discover they're unique talent while they're singing a karaoke tune. Or not. Maybe they'll just have fun singing, and isn't that enough sometimes?

Onion Article

Dewey Decimal System Helpless To Categorize New Jim Belushi Book

DUBLIN, OH—Members of the OCLC Online Computer Library Center's Editorial Policy Committee, which oversees the Dewey Decimal System library...

Drop DOPA!

Drop DOPA!
Originally uploaded by libraryman.

DOPA is the worst of the worst and it's up to librarians, really all workers in the public sector to save democracy - yeah, I said it - save democracy by opposing this legislation and telling our senators to oppose it.

What the Deletion of Online Predators Act (DOPA) would do is cancel federal funding to organizations that do not filter social networking sites. So librarians and teachers and couselors are not professionals? So parents and leaders and children themselves do not have the right to make informed decisions? This legislation operates on the principle that our lives are ruled by fear and that the poor and underprivileged (those that rely on publicly available Internet time, by the way) aren't smart enough to know how to keep themselves safe online. And to librarians and library workers out there: there's a job we have to do, namely teaching information literacy. It's not always acknowledged and it often leads to more difficult and thornier questions, but the world is better for it.