I give up listening. Again.

I give up on audiobooks all the time. I listen in my car for 30-40 minutes and if the book isn't instantly compelling, but not so much that I drive into a lake, I eject the disk and go on to something else.

If I feel that the book deserves more time, because of its popularity or reputation, I might give it up to 2 hours before deciding to break off the engagement. It's rare for a book to lose me in that first half hour then get me back an hour later.

Often it's the actor doing the reading. I just don't want to listen to some people talk. Like maybe their performance doesn't match the way the words form in my head. Like I'm trying to listen to the author tell me a story, but this other person just keeps getting in the way with that voice. That often happens if the reader is using an accent.

But David Sedaris is great to listen to. Who'da thunk, with that voice of his? And Stephen Colbert, awesome. Some writers are just destined to perform.

The latest book I've given up on is Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. But in this case, although I'm trying to blame the performer for his somewhat Southern or genteel manner he attributes to some characters, I realize that I just don't care about vampires. I don't care about them so much that even the prospect of a great and bloody war with them can't keep me from ejecting the disk and re-inserting some music. I believe you kids call it rock and roll.

Spoiler Alert.

So when this happens, I have to go online to find out if I'm going to miss anything really good by ejecting the book. And luckily, Wikipedia has pretty thorough summaries of many books and movies. And when I read the plot for Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, I realize I've made the right decision to abandon it. Thank God for libraries and all that free lending.

This is what convinced me:

"Lincoln follows a slave buyer and his new slaves back to their plantation and discovers to his horror that the buyer is a vampire - the slaves are to be used not for labor but for food. Lincoln writes in his diary his belief that vampires will continue to exist in America as long as they can easily buy their victims in this manner - to end slavery is to end the scourge of vampires."

And that bothers me. I agree with the first three paragraphs from the Wikipedia summary, so I'm guessing that they got this part right, too.

So in this book, Seth Grahame-Smith decides that slavery is bad because of vampires?

Earlier, a few escaped slaves attempt to steal Lincoln's boat, but he fought them off only to learn that they were trying to flee from their vampire master. And I could sense Lincoln's guilt at keeping them from gaining access to the craft for their escape even if it meant they might have taken his life in the process.

But to write an alternate history to say that the African slave trade expanded and that the Civil War was caused by vampires is kind of dumb, if not offensive.

The lesson we are supposed to learn from slavery and the Civil War is that we are all capable of great evils.

But even when the story attempts to fix this confusion about the causes of the war, the author tells us, "Lincoln decides that the best way to defeat the vampires is to eliminate their food source and starve them out- to that end, he announces the Emancipation Proclamation and encourages the slaves to fight back against slave owners and vampires alike."

Starve them out? Their food supply? The only reason slaves were the preferred food supply is because they could be purchased, eaten and killed without raising any alarms because no one cared what happened to a slave, which was simply a person's property.

Without slaves, there would still be many poor white farmers and laborers, even Native Americans, who could be eaten. And because this part of the story seems so ill-thought-out, I'm tempted to advance to that part of the book to hear what and how that really plays out. (But not so tempted that I'd actually do it.) It just doesn't make sense, so maybe the Wikipedia entry is oversimplifying things. But I guess I'll never know.

Anyway, this is not an actual review since I admit to only listening to a small portion of the book. But it was enough to help me decide to move on to something else. Maybe The Hunger Games. Although I also tried to listen to Gregor the Overlander (the same author), but gave up on that after 20 minutes. I wanted away from that story pretty much as soon as I started it.

But that's the difference for me between audiobooks and print books. With print, I can flip through the pages very quickly and scan ahead to see if maybe there's a part where I can jump back in. I took a speed reading class in school and used a machine that projected words on the wall and I could dial up the speed to 1200 words a minute. And I remember every book I read after I learned to read faster. For example, The Red Badge of Courage begins, "cold earth fogs liquid feet hostile hills." It's a story about a jogger or a marathon runner, or something.

With an audiobook, I can only advance then listen. Advance, then listen. It doesn't help me to find a good spot to get back into the story. So I quit. If only I had speed hearing, but sound travels so slowly.

Why Wikipedia is Necessary.

Rodney Dukes found $1,000,000 in a pay phone in East St. Louis.

[According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch]

He drove to the main library building in downtown St. Louis. He bounded up the library's wide stone steps in a hurried stride, the $1 million bill on his mind.

"I'm trying to find something out about a million-dollar bill," he said.

"You're looking for what now?"

"A million-dollar bill. To see if it's ever been made."

[By Todd C. Frankel, 12/13/2009]

The librarian looked, but didn't find what Rodney needed to know, that his $1,000,000 was fake. Rodney's note looked real. It says, "1,000,000" right on the front next to a picture of Rutherford B. Hayes, a dead, white President. So it must be real, right?

Unfortunately, the librarian didn't have all the information, since Rodney had just mailed his bill to the Federal Reserve to have it authenticated. I'm hoping that the librarian would have found the answer, otherwise.

"Hmmm," the librarian said. "It's not matching anything."

"But you can't say for sure, can you?" Rodney countered.

Reading the story, the reporter never gives you that important information you'd need if you wanted to solve the mystery for yourself. The reader needs to follow along with Rodney, to feel what he feels, and to know only as little as he knows about his possible lucky find.

But one quick Google search and one click on the Wikipedia link to, "Fake denominations of United States currency" answered the question as to whether Rodney was a rich man. Frankly, I didn't know whether the million dollar bill was going to turn out real, or not. The only thing I know about million dollar bills are the urban legends you hear about how the federal government printed super-valuable notes to move large sums of money during wartime.

So, no, Rodney didn't get rich. His bill is fake, but not counterfeit since the United States has never issued a real $1,000,000 bill.

I feel sorry for the guy. According to the story, he spent months hoping that the bill was real and dreaming of escaping his life of poverty. If only he'd spent five minutes with me, I could have destroyed that hope before it even started; lucky for him, he didn't.

Yeah, don't read the last few lines about how Rodney is about to blow ten real dollars on some lottery tickets. I felt kinda sorry for the guy until then.

Why the Wikipedia Paradox will destroy the universe.

"Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source." (I read that at Wikipedia.)

"Wikipedia's standards of inclusion--what's in and what's not--affect the work of journalists, who routinely read Wikipedia articles and then repeat the wikiclaims as 'background'..." I just read this here at Technology Review by Simson L. Garfinkel.

When the published source relies on Wikipedia content, the paradox arises.

If journalists continue to cite Wikipedia as a source, and Wikipedia links to those articles for reliability, then Wikipedia ultimately will use itself as a source, something its rules forbid: Catch-22.

How this hasn't happened yet, I don't know, but it should happen soon. But I do know that when it does, Wikipedia will vanish in a puff of logic.¹

Eventually Wikipedia "verifiability" will be supported entirely by sources citing Wikipedia in one form or another, essentially citing itself as expert.

We can only hope that the resulting anti-net ("anti-Internet," think antimatter) black hole won't suck us all in. (But I guess if it's a black hole, it will.)


¹ What happens to God in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Why the Internet sucks more.

So I'm an old dude. And old dudes have lots of old crap. I was looking through some old cassettes and found one for a band named Amboog-a-Lard. Wow, I thought, I should convert this cassette to mp3 and put it on the Internet to help archive this long lost obscure band.
So then I type Amboog-a-Lard into the googly and lo and behold, there's already a Wikipedia entry for them (???). Who'da thunk?

It seems that one of the band members went on and joined Marilyn Manson (who was called "Marilyn Manson and the Spooky Kids" when I was going to FIU and they used to put their flyers up around campus and we would laugh at them and speculate on the "Kids" complete and total suckage).

Here, I thought this was some completely disappeared band that I could help to salvage from the nothing, but no, it's already been done.

Ditto for the band, Gay Cowboys in Bondage which I saw a few times on Miami Beach when I used to go out and get drunk and dance like a fool. Before I became a librarian. Okay, fine, I still do all that. But I'm making professional blogging here; there could be children in the room. Why did you make me say it?

The Internet has made the world a whole lot smaller. When I can fit the whole world in my 19" monitor, everything loses significance. I need to go outside and catch a lizard or pet a frog or lick a toad.

That's the solution. Go outside, you idiots! No, don't take time to get dressed. Go out now! Yes, I know I can see your ass: why the hell do you think I'm shouting!!!??? Get you naked ass outside!

Music

So R.E.M. has a new record. And it's getting good reviews. I just clicked on their site and gave a quick listen to the tracks, and it sounds good, like early 1980's filtered through the debris of a natural disaster, a little rough, but glad to be alive.

I have good memories of R.E.M. After yesterday's post about the old photo, I found another from 1984 when we went to see them play at Daytona Beach (I should post it because it shows the.effing.librarian shirtless, woo-hoo!). It was cool because they were performing on the second stage, not on the beach, so the crowd was much smaller. The main stage had The Fixx, I think. I wish I could find a list of tour dates for 1983-1985 because I know we saw them at University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University around the same time, but I can't remember exactly when.

Another reason to like them was that they recorded in the area and you could sometimes see them around town like the times I saw Peter Buck in the North Miami Borders store. Wait, is that what made me want to be a librarian? That I wanted to be prepared for the next time I saw a celebrity or musician in a book store? So I could step up and help them find what they needed? All this time I thought it was because a witch foretold that I would become a librarian (okay, maybe not a witch, but a really, really, really, really, really old woman). Damn you Peter Buck! I wanted to be a male model. I just never had the cheekbones for it. You stole my dreams!

Or maybe I have this renewed interest in R.E.M. because I saw a recent photo of Michael Stipe and I'm starting to look just like him. Yeah, that's sad. Especially since I'm only ten years old.

Oh, and thanks for nothing, Wikipedia, for this link:
R.E.M. tours, The following is a comprehensive listing of R.E.M. tours and itineraries.

1995
Monster Tour
* May 15 - Mountain View, CA - Shoreline Amphitheater
* October 10 - Richmond, VA - Richmond Coliseum

Someone want to beef that up a little? You could add one concert date and increase Wikipedia's usefulness by 33 per cent! How could you create a page called a "comprehensive" list and give up after two items? That's not even a half-ass list. Is two items even enough to be called a list? If you go to the store for two items and you need to write them down so you don't forget, shouldn't you also put down, "make appointment with doctor about memory loss"? Can you have just two items on your "bucket list"?

1. kiss Valerie Bertinelli on the lips
2. release a red balloon from the top of the Eiffel Tower
   

Is that a list? How many things did Morgan Freeman have on his list? I'm disappointed in you, Wikipedia. Now, where the hell can I go to meet Valerie Bertinelli? Yeah, I know she's almost 50; it's an old list. Are you arguing with the list? No, I didn't think so.

We are not alone. Unless you never click "publish," then who knows?

The following is a post from 3/11 that I never finished; I saved the draft, intending to finish it, but it lost momentum and the thoughts scattered from entropy and ennui.

But if I never published it, did it ever really exist?

**
I worry about virtual myself. I think he's getting too uppity. The virtual me says, "Go blog something because you're so clever and everybody loves you." And sometime the real me believes. Because the virtual me is so powerful.

I'm a god in the virtual world. Computers allow me to alter my identity, influence others and kill ogres. But there's more. I saw this love letter to Wikipedia and it seemed to reveal this insight:

BED BUGS MOTHER FUCKER THEY GON GET YO MOTHA FUCKING ASS BRAAAAAAAT FOOL BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.

But that's not the important part, and neither is this:

A piece of antivandalism software, VoABot II, reverted that edit, with a little sigh, less than a minute after it was made.

The important part is that the "bed bugs" message still exists. It was deleted, but it's returned from the dead, as fresh as the moment it was posted. I think we love the Internet because we can pretend we are gods. We are omnipresent; we are eternal; we are omniscient. Thanks to Internet Explorer, we are rarely omnipotent, but you get the idea.

We, meaning each person, not just a King or Emperor, have more power to communicate and influence than any time previous.

But it's not real. I think people instinctively know that what we do online isn't real. Like the Suze Orman book you could download in electronic format for free; one million copies were nabbed, but that didn't stop people from buying the print edition. Electrons, fake; book, real.

But the Internet is so comforting, so easy to control. The only weakness is the receiver, the disciple. If only we could make him believe.

Thoughts "c"

So I just went to Toondoo to log into my account to create another hilarious episode of BLACK SHIRTS, you know, that comic strip that all the world is talking about. (The next strip will continue with "square conversation bubble" trying to convince "round conversation bubble" that he's a woman - coming soon.)

And I see this question about a strip: "I don't get it. What's LAPD?"

So, of course, I wonder if this "google generation" lazyassmofo googled "lapd." The first hit from my search says "official website of the Los Angeles Police Department," so I guess he didn't.

But even if he did, how would he even know if the top answer was the right one? I google acronyms and abbreviations and new terms all the time, but sometimes I need to confirm what I find, since obviously at first glance, I don't know what I found. That's why now I tell people to bypass google and just go to wikipedia for any damn thing they want to know. If they aren't going to read a book or ask the librarian, at least they'll find some answer that isn't tied to lots of ads. And they won't have to think too much. Because who needs that; it hasn't helped most people so far.

Wikipedia more popular than ever.

The publicity couldn't be this good if Wikipedia took some personal private photos (nekkid) that got leaked out to the web. Of if Wikipedia got caught having sex in a public restroom. Or if Wikipedia caused erections lasting four hours.

Some schools have banned Wikipedia.

"Greg Reihman, the Lehigh faculty development director, encourages students to use the Web site "to get a quick snapshot or an initial sense of views as they are commonly understood," according to university spokeswoman Dina Silver Pokedoff."

Poked what?

"Many students use Wikipedia because it's often one of the first Web sites to come up on search engines, according to Kris Dumschat, a high-school senior."

Dumb what? Is this a real story?

I don't think any school should ban Wikipedia. It's a good place to begin your research.
This story was not paid for by Wikipedia. But it was sponsored by Levitra, your four-hour miracle.

Knowledge by Consensus: a Social perspective

I am not lying. I've seen with my own eyes, people doing the "Webster's dictionary defines blah blah as..." but using Wikipedia. We know how cliché that's become, so that when you attend a presentation and the speaker says, "Webster's defines leadership as.." you open your program and start to draw cartoon characters having sex. I'm pretty good at drawing the characters from Unshelved doing it.

So now that Wikipedia has become the de facto expert on everything, does the triteness counter get reset to zero? Are speakers now free to dust off old papers and replace "Webster's" with "Wikipedia"? When did Wikipedia become the boss of everything? If you base your loyalty on popularity then it's had the corner office with the private bathroom for about 2 years. So I guess Wikipedia is the boss of me.

And speaking of expertise by consensus, what up with the "I hear it's excellent" artards? Someone came in looking for the dvd for the movie Wristcutters: A Love Story (which, as of right now, is not available on dvd), and her reason for requesting that the library buy it was that she heard "it was excellent."
Again, I'm not a smart guy (or gal or dog), so saying that you heard that something is excellent means absolutely nothing to me. You'd sound more interesting if you'd said that you heard it smelled like feet.
"It smelled like feet?"
"Yes, like feet."
"That sounds interesting. Tell me more."
See?

Mathematically, saying that you heard that a thing is excellent means that there is a thing that another entity made a critical observation about its quality. So you are at least once removed from the critic. So if the critic has a 50% track record for rating things as excellent that I also rate as excellent, then your opinion that the thing is excellent is half crap.
Why do people think that making a claim that they heard something was good rubs off on them and makes them good? If I like a movie and Roger Ebert likes the same movie, does that make me a film critic like Roger Ebert?

This is why the idea that we are all creators in the 2.0 universe pisses me off. Simply pointing at a beautiful thing doesn't make you beautiful like the thing. The beauty is supposed to transform you to make you more beautiful. Simply pointing at the Mona Lisa while sucking a sesame seed out of your teeth does not transform you.
Knowledge by consensus is less important to me the lower you go on base needs. Yes, practically any opinion is valid for recommendations on where to get my car's oil changed. Your preference for Wendy's over Burger King (you're terrified of the creepy king) is of equal unimportance. So yes, you may be an expert in those areas.
But not culture or art. Or any higher learning which requires critical thinking skills. I seek experts. In some ways, I am an expert. But not on this blog. But in the kitchen and in the bedroom, rraawwr.

I don't want to be confronted by anyone who wants to argue that Wikipedia is the new expert because everyone says so. Because then I'll have to do this:
Me: "What is your name?"
LB: "Lester Balls."
Me: "Well, Lester Balls, I'm opening a new page on Wikipedia and entering, 'Lester Balls is an idiot.' Now, save page, and there, your own page on Wikipedia that says you are an idiot, and now the whole world knows."
LB: "Wha? Huh? M.. W.. Wikipedia? I'm.. I'm famous! I'm on Wikipedia! I'm famous!!!"

And then I will kill myself.

[goes with this and this]

Knowledge by Consensus: A historical perspective

[note: this is sort of a continuation of this: What's Right or Wrong with Wikipedia?]

You know I'd do anything for you guys, so last night I time-travelled back to see a version of Wikipedia from long ago. Yeah, now I know I could have just used the Wayback Machine, but I didn't think of it last night, okay? Besides, the time travel was way cooler. The only problem is, that before I left, we were all unicorns and lived in a world of peace and harmony (so I must have disrupted something in the fantasy-alchemy-reality-time-space (or farts) continuum),... but this isn't so bad, right?

Wikipedia in the year 1200

The World

---

This page is currently protected from editing until disputes have been resolved.



orbis terrarum est campester
orbis terrarum est rotundus
il mondiale Ÿ piatto
il mondiale Ÿ rotondo
The World, she is round.
The World is Flat.

---

Maybe I'm just too much of a fan of hero mythology or Archie comics because I usually believe that everyone else is wrong, and one person will rise up to save us. And that person is me, obviously. And don't say I'm Jughead.

What's right or wrong with Wikipedia?

It's nice of Wikipedia to have an entry on Wikipedia.

As I read the entry, I came across this criticism:

"The site has also been criticized for...favoring consensus over
credentials in its editorial process..."

I don't know what Wikipedia's current editorial process is, but I think it's pretty open, allowing any registered user to post and/or edit any entry. And then it would be up to any one of the rest of us to correct that entry or make a claim that's it's inaccurate or complete bullshit.

This is the core of the democratic process. Present an idea and allow the masses to judge its value. And this is what seems to be good about Wikipedia. The people decide what is right or wrong.

And this is the state of much of the Internet. The people decide. If I blog something and you blog something and others blog similar somethings, the Internet will become filled with our ideas. And if we say similar things, then similar ideas will dominate.

Now I trust my own level of susceptibility to stating crap. But how can I be sure that you don't say complete crap? And if you or I have more free time to post our crap, then won't the Internet just be filled with your or my crap? Even if your intentions are good, are you or I qualified to load the Internet with crap?

We like to think of a hierarchical chain of knowledge, from the student to the teacher to the expert. But what if the opinions of students dominate: are masses of students qualified to make decisions in this democracy when obvious experts are ignored?

This seems to be the root problem with the Internet and Wikipedia. Is consensus of opinion good enough to help us make decisions?

How do you control information? Do you limit what is known, or, do you dilute the known with crap until the general understanding of everything is wrong? ...In other words, is it possible to use Wikipedia or Google or any other popular informational sources to make people stupid?

The complaint of lack of credentials is what interests me most. If one is an expert and paid to publish ideas (research, facts, conclusions, opinions), then others must pay, in some form, to access those ideas. If Wikipedia is free, then the ideas posted there would be inferior to those of the expert.

But if consensus is the arbiter of knowledge; if Wikipedia can alter the perception of people to believe that consensus is the rule, then the argument is that consensus limits knowledge because people will accept what's "generally known" as an expert opinion. If we are all experts, is anyone an expert?

Does this make any sense?

Teachers oppose Wikipedia because they've seen the bell curve and know that consensus only equals about a grade of C+.

An educated person knows her own limitations and says, "I am not qualified to answer that, but here is an expert source."

Where do you go for answers? If we define that source as an expert, then Wikipedia and Google are the experts.

There is the dilemma. People want agreement. Reality demands agreement. If ten of us call something a "chair" and one calls it "my son" then that person might be labeled as crazy. But what if ten of us say that the Earth is flat and one says it's round? By consensus, the Earth will remain flat until, when? We fear this kind of power that consenus can wield because of the scale of information access on the Internet.
[editor's note: the chair is not my son.]

Does consensus guarantee that the Internet will eventually be filled with crap?

Rest easy and read with confidence the words written here: I am The Effing Librarian. And I guarantee that everything I say, regardless of consensus of opinion, is complete and utter crap.