Some shout outs

I visited and signed books at two schools this week. They both deserve a HUGE shout out!

Matanzas High School in Palm Coast, FL.
Bartram Trail High School in St. Johns, FL.

Here's a BIG smooch to some awesome teens.

Who throws an Octopus?

Well Detroit Red Wings fans do of course!! How very odd, but still, a tradition I respect and hope keeps going...and for the record...I don't believe they are alive at the time. Here is a clip from the Detroit News which gives further insight into this bizarre tradition.

Assemblying "Cash Is King" Painting

Today artist Jay Rolfe assembled the 5 pieces of his new 3-D shaped stretched canvas (3DSSC) painting titled "Cash Is King." It's large, 8 feet high and 8.75 inches deep and more than 4 feet wide. Don't you love the gold color? Rolfe does. It's the photo of the day.

This is the latest step of artist Jay Rolfe on his Journey From Starving Artist To 21st Century Picasso. You may view some of Jay Rolfe's signature style, his innovative 3-D Shaped Stretched Canvas paintings, on his website at http://www.3dssc.com/.

a bit worried...

It´s Friday. Next Thursday it´s prom. Just finished a 1½ hour of family-dessert-time x). But the real question is; why am I eating cake when it´s prom on Thursday ?!

Mother´s answer; -We are celebrating your A´s you said you got...
My thought; I have a feeling that there is going to be a lot of celebrating this weekend...especially with Mother´s Day on Sunday...but I can´t turn down this weekend´s celebrating, it wouldn´t be as fun if I just sit on the side and watch them eat, right...guess a slice can´t hurt ma...I just have to exercise A LOT and pray I won´t get fat till Thursday ! Hehe...

Morning Thoughts

I was looking on Facebook and I came across something rather interesting. It is a newswire for librarians. It is basically a large collection of press releases from libraries and library companies. I think it is fairly new. http://www.liswire.com/ . I rather like the idea of it. It still needs a lot more coverage.

My day should be interesting today. Yesterday, I got to the subway and it was so packed that I could not get a seat. I had to stand all the way in. It is quite hard to read standing up. Hopefully, if I leave a few minutes earlier, I will get a seat today and be able to read on the subway. It was like being in a can of sardines. So many more people are taking the subway as gas prices are climbing much higher.

I work an hour earlier on Fridays. Today, it was a much nicer ride on the subway, peaceful compared to yesterday. I got to read some more of Steampunk. I enjoyed reading a kind of odd story by Joe Lansdale, The Steam Man of the Prairie and The Dark Rider which combines steampunk with westerns. It has all sorts of odd things in it, morlocks, a vampire, a steam man, and a few other odd surprises. Joe Lansdale is an author who I really enjoy reading. He writes, western horror, mysteries, steampunk, and graphic novels.
He has a myspace fanpage which lists his films and books. It is kind of entertaning.
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=240828807

I looked through the New York Times Bestseller list which we have as part of our library catalog and placed Bad money : reckless finance, failed politics, and the global crisis of American capitalism by Kevin Phillips on hold.

It is the afternoon. This morning, I went around checking for books with minor damage, torn covers, peeling spine labels, and other minor damage to be repaired in the reference area. The reference books are fairly clean right now. The shelving is in good order and looks neat.

Thinking back to steampunk, one of my favorite graphic novels is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Kevin O'Neill. I think the storytelling is fantastic. It is set in alternate British Victoria populated with many of the genre favorites of old, Captain Nemo, Mina Harker, The Invisible Man, Allan Qatermain and others. The first volume deals with formation of the league and a battle between Fu Manchu and Professor Moriarty in London. The second volume in the series is even more outrageous. The league fights the invading martians who are like the martians from War of the Worlds. There is brief appearance by John Carter and Gulliver Jones on an alternate mars.

There is supposed to be a third volume in the series which hasn't come out yet. They did an interim story, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Black Dossier but none of our libraries purchased it. I am not going to shell out my own money to buy this. Maybe, I will get it eventually, I am not in a hurry.

I was looking at various blogs when I came across an interesting story at the OUP Blog about a gentleman living in a tiny apartment in Manhattan and plastering the floors and walls with pages from a dictionary. It looked interesting enough for me to mention it in my blog. I really enjoyed the story. http://blog.oup.com/2008/05/words-out-of-context/

thoughts I never thought

Home. Long break till 12.35 pm. Had only one french lesson and then 20 minutes of "class quality time" discussing our stupid classtrip we are going to make in 2 weeks ??? We have like no money, are going to a place called Fjällnora, in the middle of nowhere and we are going to camp !!! I´m not going - forget it...2 nights with my class in the wood will drive me crazy =.= and I´m not kidding...we are even going to use some of our weekend and one day that is supposed to be a holiday...

Anyhow, realized that I am really going to miss my french lessons...I never thought I would really say this but I am gonna miss Eva-Britt and Ann-Sofie (my french teachers), espesially Eva-Britt ;) hahaha...God, what´s wrong with me; I couldn´t wait to get out from this school but when the time slowly passes (or at this point quite rapidly...) I want nothing more than to just stay here, where I have memories and feel secure somehow...

Last day during our french lesson we were just talking the whole lesson about the upcoming lessons and Paris and France in general, and after today there are only 3 lessons left =(...

HAPPY - watching La Vie en Rose x).

NOT AS HAPPY - handing in our books on Wednesday x(.

Common Wealth Economics For Crowded Planet-- Jeffrey D. Sachs, Review

Common Wealth Economics For A Crowded Planet by Jeffrey D. Sachs is about how to address pressing common human global problems: global environmental issues, population planning, sustainable development, and persistent poverty. It is written in very clear, understandable language. There is no academic jargon here. These issues will affect everyone rich and poor alike.

If we do not address these issues at the source, our security is threatened. For example, the crisis in Ethopia and Sudan can be traced back to lack of water, arable land, and overpopulation. This pushes people into warfare and conflict over very limited resources.

Human beings are now the major cause for environmental change: desertification, global warming, species loss, and industrial pollution are caused by human beings. Jeffrey Sachs sets down a set of specific goals on how to reach these ends.

The problem here is that he couches the goals in the language of the left and the language of the United Nations which can be disconcerting at times. Jeffrey Sachs has worked with United Nations Millenium Project. His language is very much focused on international peace and diplomacy. He wants to considerably reduce global armaments and put the money into peaceful development.

This is quite idealistic. One of the advantages of this approach is that it is a soft power approach, based on diplomacy, development, culture, and superior technical knowledge something which the United States has not followed at all in recent years. He claims that if we do not address these issues we will have more terrorists, more wars, more underdevelopment, and more conflict.

The problem is one of how to balance the need to change underlying problems and still at the same time deal with the issues of terrorism and security.

There is going to be quite a bit of opposition to his ideas from the right as well. He pushes for a combination of family planning and pre-natal care. This is to reduce population pressure and encourage people to have less children. This will be hard to fund because many lobbyists do work against birth control.

I happen to think that his ideas on development are quite interesting. He puts forth the idea that government, society, and business are inseperable. In order for business to move forward infrastructure like roads, schools, and telecommunications need to be built. It is as important to make sure there is an adquate food supply as there are free market reforms.

At the end of many of the chapters, he gives examples on how to address specific problems that are fairly practical. For example in the section on climate change he endorses carbon sequestration and hybrid cars. For persistent poverty, he claims that people should drill wells in communities, open schools, introduce school lunch programs provided by indigenous farmers, distribute new seed stocks, distribute new breeds of livestock, and remove any leftover ordnance from old wars in the countryside.

If you strip away a lot of the political talk, this book gives quite a few good examples on how to address common human problems. I think it is worth reading for the solutions described, not the politics.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon on the Millenium Development Goals.

This book is well written and easy to follow. It has notes, a bibliography, and an index. There are eight pages of full color illustrations. I would have liked more illustrations in this book.