(11:55 pm) Journeyer

    In reference to another conversation...

    Probably one of the most horrific books I ever read was when I was in high school. I don't even know where I got it. I assume some people didn't give it much thought. It didn't have a book cover and it was just a boring looking brown book with an odd symbol on the front. It was The Journeyer by Gary Jennings. To this day I don't know how much of it was historically accurate, though its not hard to believe some of it. Ancient torture techniques, how to make a eunuch, how to save a woman in labor by cutting out the baby. Then of course there was the sexually bizarre. If there is a reason why I believe that people chose their own sexual paths, that book is it. And the paths are many and go in many different directions.

    The book is fiction but I know enough to know this. There are 6 billion people on this planet alive today. Count the lives back to the beginning and you're talking trillions of people and every experience that happened in that book happened to someone, somewhere, at sometime. I could spend my entire life trying to know and understand only the most horrifying things that have happened to real people in humanity's history and I wouldn't scratch the surface. I would also go mad in the process.

    If any adult wants to go on that journey they are free to do so but to push any child on that road without making men and women of them first is an act of sadistic cruelty.

Thursday October 6, 2005

  (08:24 pm) Who's Who

    I am making up the list for who voted for the Iraq Resolution, I'm just waiting on some confirmation on something. In the meantime, I had a short conversation with Jessamyn West at LISNews. For the record she's a nice person but I just don't think she gets it. Read this post. Now consider the fact that she voted, at ALA, for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Is that centrist? Is that doing anything to discourage the rabid and obsessed? I think not.

  (08:22 pm) Why ALA

    David Durant of Heretical Librarian fame and also writer of the now infamous article "The Loneliness of a Conservative Librarian" is responding to my STOP post. He also endorses me, which I sincerely appreciate (and a hat tip and 'thank-you' to his service as well).

    Why ALA? Well, 2 reasons: influence and money. ALA, unfortunately, has clout in the form of accreditation of library schools. Its unlikely we'd be able to create anything comparable anytime soon. There's also issues like certification. Right now that little monster created through ALA-APA isn't considered a requirement but really, does anyone think this isn't a long-term goal? Otherwise why bother. And again, unfortunately, ALA has enough influence so that over the long haul a certification requirement is inevitable unless its killed from within. This issue and future issues like it are why there needs to be serious conservative input on the influence that is ALA.

    The second reason is money. As David points out it isn't cheap to be part of ALA, on top of which are the various special organizations plus state and regional ones. Adding another organization to the alphabet soup is cost prohibitive to most of us. And remember, there's 64,000 members of ALA but only a small percentage are actually active. Can we assume that the rest became members for access to publications, conferences, and some sense of professional obligation? Seems a safe guess, it is the American Library Association after all. It certainly sounds important. So the likelihood of people having to financially choose between ALA and some unknown organization with few benefits is high. The likelihood they'll choose ALA is equally high.

    But there is hope in those numbers too. Of 64,000 members only 10,000 voted. 64,000 members but ALA says there are almost 140,000 librarians out there and  400,000 library workers total. I don't pretend to think that its a slam dunk on issues like the Patriot Act. But the current active crop is praising Michael Moore, calling Bush a liar, and demanding we immediately withdraw from Iraq. Pretend just for a second that all 400,000 joined up and voted on some of these things. What do you think would happen? I'm pretty sure you'd see a sea change in how ALA behaves. Let's find out for sure.