Closing Some Tabs

Delicious is being cranky at the moment and not accepting any updates. So instead of using the handy widget in the sidebar to highlight some interesting articles, here’s a post intead:

• Conscientious Cook: Mindful About Waste
• Paying Cash Only, Family Spends $1800 Less
• Third Ghostbusters Movie Rises From The Grave
• Neal Stephenson’s Tale of Two Planets
  And yes, I am so going to buy Anathem when it comes out next week despite my fears that he’s gotten too powerful and his editors can’t make him cut all of the stuff out of this book that they should have so it’s going to be another good 300 page book stuck inside a 900 page one and I’ll have just wasted $20 I should have spent on something more worthwhile.
• “Bechdel Rule” Should Really Be Called “Ripley Rule”
  “1. Does it have at least two women in it,
  2. Who [at some point] talk to each other,
  3. About something besides a man.”
• Kibera’s “Instant Farm” System Is The Future of Urban Agriculture
• Ghost Skyscraper
  When I worked for Amazon, there was this perfect point during sunset when you could look out of PacMed over downtown Seattle and it seemed like you were seeing through the buildings because of how the light was reflecting off them. It was lovely.
• Obama Promises National Tech Officer and a Space Advisor to the President
• A City Prepared for Disaster Is a City that Looks to the Future
• Sexy Librarians: The Appeal is Ethical, Not Asthetic

Libraries Are Good. But Why?

As you’re probably aware (or could guess), I’m a fan of the library. I like them because they’re a quiet place to read, because they have storytime for my kid, because they lend me books for free (not counting taxes), because they make it dead easy to pick up a copy of any book in their system at my local branch, and because they help me find obscure facts. I like obscure facts.

But they’re not run as businesses. Is that bad? Maybe. The rest of the world is worrying about libraries. Check out the graphs in that middle link. Those are depressing.

Libraries Innovating

According to The Consumerist, the Brooklyn Public Library is talking to Netflix about outsourcing their DVD collection. I’m of two minds about this. My first reaction is: that’s a great way for the library to keep its costs down. My second is: how’s that going to work, exactly? And will the wait to get a requested DVD make it less useful? From Netflix’s point of view: will the additional publicity and marketing offset the subscription fee loss?

Libraries Are Good Things

The WSJ has a free publicly-available article about the current state of the American library. They seem to have mostly gotten it right: there’s a lot of parental discussion around which libraries have the best story times, my daughter loves the for-preschoolers computer they’ve got set up, the older kids cluster around the computers, you do see the kids looking at the books, but more often, it’s their parents, and DVDs are popular as hell.

The only thing they missed is one of our favorite SJ Library System features: the ability to reserve a book online from any library in the system and go pick it up at our local branch when it gets there. Plus, since they partner with San Jose State, you get access to all those books, too.

*And* they’ve started to open coffee shops inside the libraries around here. Local libraries are Good Things.