The Librarian's Lounge

More on the Elections

This campaign has made me wonder what the "do not call" registry really means. I am pretty sure I'm on it. And I've been getting an average of 6 messages a day over the past week from politicians asking for my vote. I wouldn't be as annoyed if half of them were coming from people I'd actually vote for. At least there'd be equal coverage that way. Instead, I'm being phone-spammed by one of the two major parties. And they're talking to the wrong answering machine. I've already voted and their phone calls wouldn't have swayed me one bit. The reason I have an unlisted number, which I pay for monthly, is to avoid calls like this. It's enough to make me get rid of my land line altogether. But I've found out that the regular "do not call" registry pretty much only covers for-profit telemarketing calls. If you want to stop receiving campaign calls, you can add your phone number to the Stop Political Phone Calls Now registry. There's no guarantee that it'll work, but it's worth a shot.

I read another great, timely, article about how citizens are using social media to monitor the elections tomorrow. Written by Simon Owens for PBS, it covers the background of the "Video Your Vote" movement and provides further insight into the Twitter Your Vote movement. It also talks about the Voter Suppression Wiki, a site that is dedicated to educating the public about voter suppression and providing a space for voters to tell their stories. The Incident Tracker page conveniently lists problems encountered by state so you can see what's happening near you. So now, everyone can tweet, video, blog, and wikify their voting experience. This is documentation on a scale that has never been seen before in an American election.

I don't know how anyone is going to be able to work tomorrow. Which is why it makes even more sense for the United States, in my opinion, to follow all the other countries who vote on the weekends or holidays. The entire nation is distracted by what's going on; we might as well just take the day off and focus on what is most important.

Rachel Maddow calls these long lines the new poll tax:

Check out Why Tuesday?'s candidate challenge to see what they have to say about about current voting practices and whether they need to be updated. And stop by Current to find out about all the free stuff you can get tomorrow just for voting.

According to the Arizona Republic, the votes in Maricopa County may take days to count up because of all the early ballots that will be walked in on election day. 

And the first report is in for this election, from New Hampshire- in favor of Obama.

More elections resources

I've been thinking about writing another post full of resources all week. I just hope I don't forget any here.

I saw this video today and found it very moving:

This election is so important. Please encourage all your friends, family, and neighbors to get out and vote.

First on the list today is Election Protection, an organization that's here to help you with any problems you may encounter at the polls on November 4th. You can call them for help on any trouble you have voting at 1-866-OUR-VOTE. You can also tweet what you're experiencing at the polls through your cell phone and have your message immediately appear in their feed at the Twitter Vote Report website (and their twitter feed) by adding the hashtag #votereport to your message. Instructions can be found here on how to participate. You don't even need to sign up for a Twitter account to send a tweet - here are instructions on how to do it without an account. The standard number to dial in the US to send a tweet is 40404, but they have a special section called "How do I submit a report?" on the Twitter Vote Report website. Election Protection has their own tweet feed as well. If you don't use Twitter, you can still view all the messages that come in by bookmarking these sites and checking in periodically, or by subscribing to their rss feeds (if you use an rss reader like Google Reader) using the button on the bottom left of each page.

Then there's Video the Vote, an organization encouraging people to record their voting experience - particularly any problems that arise - and upload them to the web for people everywhere to view. You can subscribe to their feed through YouTube. They also have a twitter feed. You can add the hashtag #vtv to show up in their coverage feed. They are looking for volunteers to video voting problems in their communities, to help get videos uploaded as quickly as possible to the web, to serve as a dispatcher who connects up videographers to voters experiencing a problem, to drive videographers to the places they need to get to, and to blog about the reports as they come in.

There's also, on YouTube, a channel called Video Your Vote, which is partnered with PBS and tons of other organizations. What's cool about this group is that they have a Google Map you can add your video to. One of their playlists currently has 117 videos in it, although you have to dig into their subscription page to find it.

VOTERSTHINKdotORG is another resource on YouTube for news coverage about the election, with lots of clips from different news shows. It's pretty liberal in tone.

Of course, Twitter also has a whole section devoted to tweets about the election, which I've found to be my best source of late-breaking news. You can even follow what people are saying in your area by using the advanced search page and filling in the city you're in and some keywords.

Here's an article on Alternet called "Voting Watch: Twelve States to Follow on Election Day." You may also want to check out their article, "Colorado Sued to Reverse Voter Purges." Here's a video of the long lines voters were experiencing in Colorado Springs on Friday. 

Over on Voters Unite, I'm keeping a close eye on their elections problem log, where you will find daily updates about what some voters have been experiencing, including both a summary of the problem, the state it happened in, the date, and links to how it was reported in the news.

From TechDirt is this story: Surprise, Surprise: E-Voting Glitches Found in Early Voting.

From Rolling Stone magazine is Greg Palast's article: Block the Vote - Will the GOP's campaign to deter new voters and discard Democratic ballots determine the next president?

Here's an interactive Google Map that show which newspapers across the nation have endorsed a particular candidate.

From the Representative Press comes this video commenting on a fraudulent flyer aimed at voting Democrats, as reported by AP News.

This video campaign that you can send to your friends and family to spur them into voting is cracking me up. But I like its message and think it's an important one - every vote makes a difference.

A look at early voting statistics from Dr. Michael McDonald at George Mason University. This is what he had to say about the trends he's seeing in this data about a week ago. You may want to check out Pollster for some graphics on how this is mapping out across the nation.

According to the Pew Report, the Internet is now the 2nd place people turn to for campaign news, after television. 

US Elections and the Economic Crisis - a media digest

I want to take a minute to post some of the resources I've been following over the past couple weeks.

First and most recent is Greg Palast, an independent journalist who was featured on a BBC program last night about voter fraud in America and how it could effect the outcome of this year's election. Here are the clips:

Part One:

Part Two:

You can learn more about this at Steal Back Your Vote. You can read more about the voter purges here:

The Dirty Details of Voter Purges
Voter Database Glitches Could Disenfranchise Thousands

Then there's this article interviewing one of the people who asked a question at the 2nd presidential debate .

Here's NPR's page covering the election. They even have an rss feed available.

Sarah Silverman is cracking me up with her Great Schlep video:

Here she is being interviewed about it by Keith Olbermann:

I was heartened to see this piece about how McCain was somewhat forced into backing down from the hate campaign the Republican party has been operating against Obama:

On the economic crisis, I've been listening to two excellent recordings at This American Life. They explain what's been happening in a way that makes it understandable by a laywoman like me.

1. The Giant Pool of Money
2. Another Frightening Show About the Economy

NPR's new podcast, Planet Money, continues to offer daily coverage about the economic crisis along with explanations of terminology and background information for listeners like me who are feeling a little lost by the regular news coverage. I've also been following the Becker-Posner Blog, Seeking Alpha, and The Baseline Scenario. 

What did Sarah Palin have to say about the Bailout Package?

There are several interesting clips over at the American News Project.

Another video of interest is this one on McCain and the Keating 5:

I've also found the Sourcewatch wiki to be helpful in getting more background information on issues and people in the news.

I'm still waiting for my Obama bumper sticker/magnet to show up in the mail. In the meantime, I stopped by the local Obama headquarters and picked up a tshirt today. The place of a hive of activity - tons of posters were being made, phone calls were being placed, people were signing up to canvas neighborhoods - it was an inspiring site to behold.

Environmental issues

I just finished reading The Body Toxic by Nena Baker. What a frightening book. Frightening, but full of essential information that every American needs to know about what the FDA doesn't do to protect us from harmful chemicals in the products we buy and use every day. I wish I had seen the extensive notes in the back of the book before I started reading it. As it is, I'm planning to now go back and look at the articles and sites Baker references throughout this book. The focus of this book is primarily on chemicals that are known as endocrine disrupters and how our daily exposure to them affects our physiology and, in the case of women, even the health of our grandchildren. Whereas in Europe they have developed REACH to protect consumers from unnecessary exposure to some toxic chemicals, we in the US do not have a similar organization protecting us. Baker takes an in-depth look at the effects and uses of commonly-used chemicals in manufacturing and agriculture in the US such as atrazine, phthlalates, PBDEs, bisphenol A, PFOA, and PFOS. She also explores how the influence of large corporations on our government has been keeping the US behind relative to many other developed countries in identifying toxic chemicals and banning their use. She further looks at cases where big business has retaliated against scientists reporting on their discoveries of the effects of these chemicals with "damage control" campaigns and cries of "junk science." After reading this, I have a renewed appreciation for how careful consumers need to be about who they believe when it comes to these issues, and how important it is for all of us to be informed about the context of anything we read, including any unmentioned conflicts of interest that may exist in any author's, website's, government's, or organization's background. Baker's book is incredibly eye-opening and I highly recommend getting ahold of a copy. Here she is giving a presentation about her book:

As a person concerned about our environment, one thing that I try to minimize is how much I throw away and what can be recycled. But I also am concerned, as everyone is these days, about my money, which is why I've chosen to take advantage of my health insurance's mail-order prescription plan. But when I receive packages from Aetna Rx Home Delivery such as the one shown here, where massive amounts of waste is generated by the shipping of a very small product, I am just appalled. And the fact that my complex doesn't offer recycling makes it that much more difficult to tolerate it.

Speaking of recycling, I recently heard about RecycleBank, a company that pays its users to recycle materials from their home. What a great idea. I'd love to see this in my neighborhood.

Today's musings

We, in the librarian business, are often told that we must be "change agents." I consider myself to be an early adopter and someone who does reasonably well with change. But I don't believe in change for the sake of change. And I don't think people who are selective about the changes they support are "afraid" of change or "against" change. Everything changes all the time, in both positive and negative ways. As librarians, it is imperative that we reassess things once in a while and evaluate what kind of change has taken place, particularly if we are the ones instigating it. We have to be able to learn from our mistakes and we can't do that if we deny that we've made any.

I meant to come home and catch up on some reading, but instead find myself at my laptop once again.

I ordered a couple copies of a book for my discussion group online, using Better World Books for the first time. They arrived together today and one of them is really moldy from water damage. I really hope this is an anomaly for this business, because I'd like to see them succeed. I think it's great that they help libraries make a little more money and donate books that probably would have wound up in a landfill to support literacy around the world. But I hope the quality of what people are receiving from them is generally in better condition than what I received today, for health reasons. I emailed them immediately and am awaiting their response. Moldy books are definitely not patron-friendly.

I saw this article the other day about Dell trying to change its reputation to being more customer service oriented.  What I found most interesting was the part about having 42 employees who troll the web daily to find out how Dell is being spoken about online. Yet they never found the post I wrote nearly a year ago about my bad experience with their customer service department. When I bought my Dell laptop, I wasn't really aware of the problems consumers had been having with them. I basically chose Dell over all my other options because I could still get a laptop made with a matte screen this way. Recently, I met someone who put me in contact (sort of a 6 degrees of separation situation) with a service rep at Dell, who is now trying to help me solve my computer problems. In addition to the corrupted files, I also have a power cord that refuses to stay plugged in. I haven't tried to contact the company directly since my first bad experience because I quite frankly didn't know where to turn. I am curious to see how this will all play out. I think Dell is smart to have people looking after the company's online image. Someone in their company obviously understands how word of mouth extends through the social web and what the consequences of repeated bad service can lead to - reporting by the consumer.

Here's a radio program from the BBC with a reporter going to speak to some local Phoenicians to find out if they will be voting for McCain.

I watched Michael Moore's new film, Slacker Uprising, the other night. I was lucky enough to have seen him while he was filming this 4 years ago. I particularly appreciated the closing message of the film - that the young people of America really did make a huge difference in the election in the swing states in which Moore spoke. It gives me hope for the upcoming election and I hope lots of people see it.

When Food For Fines Stops Working

In the olden days, one of my local libraries used to offer, once a year, an event called Food for Fines, in which patrons could bring in food for local food banks and pay off their fines at the same time. It used to be at a ratio of $1 per can or box of food, which was a pretty good deal at the time, since it wasn't hard to buy items like tuna fish and mac and cheese at 3/$1. Now, however, two things have changed. The library still holds the event, but has changed the ratio to 1 food item = 50 cents of fines paid. And prices for groceries have skyrocketed. It is now less expensive to pay the fines than it is to bring food for fines. This leads me to wonder how successful this event will continue to be and how the local food shelter will be affected. It makes me sad, too, because the program used to be a win-win situation, and I'm sure I wasn't alone in feeling good about being spend thrifty while simultaneously helping a good cause.

New from Morgan Spurlock

Here's the trailer for Spurlock's new documentary, "What Would Jesus Buy?"

Definitely looks like something interesting to see, just in time for the holidays.

The Writer's Strike

Here's a clip from one of the Daily Show's staff writers, explaining the current writer strike in simple terms:

A Deserted Second Life?

This is a great article about Second Life from Wired this week. It and others like it that have been published lately are lamenting the fact that people don't go to Second Life for the marketing. I don't know why any company ever thought people would flock to their virtual reality site - it makes sense that people either go to the company's homepage or to a brick and mortar location. I can't imagine anyone wanting to walk into a virtual world full of advertising. The only things that really seem to sell in SL are products that you can use in SL, like clothing, skins, and objects for your virtual home.

It seems to me that these companies had a mistaken idea of what SL is all about in the first place. Like chat, it's about connecting with others. Like games, it's about having fun online. Like education, it's about sharing ideas and learning new things. It certainly wasn't built primarily for its money-making potential. Ok, and maybe it seems like Linden Lab has been fudging its population count and that there are actually a lot less people online and active than previously thought. Still, when sites like Info Island are getting about 5,000 visits a day - obviously, people are coming to Second Life and using it, whether someone stands to profit from it or not.

The way I see it, this type of virtual reality environment is important for its ability to connect people and, through that, for its value as an educational tool. I for one would be happy to see all the big corporations pack up their virtual storefronts and call it a day - their presence in my time online is unwelcome. Really, what's the difference between being subjected to advertising in SL and pop-ups when visiting a website? I find both equally annoying. I would bet that if Second Life became a company-driven enterprise, it would be its death. I would also bet that a new, noncommercial recreation would soon be in its place.

Odds and Ends

Tankbooks' new design for public domain classics could give new life to old cigarette machines.

I'm afraid I haven't been around much lately to blog because an evil virus has lodged and spread throughout my laptop. Until I either find my startup discs or break down and buy a new laptop, my connection to the net is somewhat less than it used to be. This is probably a good thing, as I tend to spend way too much time engrossed in online matters. Being unable to use my laptop is encouraging me to read more books. Reading is a much simpler pleasure than being online, I find.

I am taking a class on virtual reference services in Second Life through the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It just started last Friday. It meets once a week for 6 weeks. I managed to borrow a laptop that has a good graphics card in order to take it (my Toshiba, aside from being down and out, never did meet the technical requirements for SL). I'm really enjoying it so far. We meet on Info Island at the outdoor auditorium. My big feat for my first session was learning what timezone is Second Life (same as mine in Arizona) and how to sit on a bench at the auditorium facing in the correct direction. I'm happy and surprised to learn that Info Island gets about 5,000 avatars visiting per day. That's huge! I think there's great potential for providing library services in virtual worlds in the future. But in order to reach the general public in great numbers, these worlds need to be easier to access in terms of internet connection and speed, they need to have more intuitive interfaces, and mainstream computers need to be powerful enough to make them work well.

Here's a somewhat scary story about a guy being questioned by the FBI in regards to what he was seen reading in a coffee shop one weekend. Isn't this a bit much?