lower east side librarian

I wonder why ballot proposals aren't a big deal in NY, the way they are is say, California? I got 165,000 results searching Google for <new york ballot proposals> and 1,500,000 for <california ballot measures>.

I want to point my fellow New Yorkers to this article by Steve Wishnia in The Indypendent. The conceipt of the piece is that since Bloomberg is going to buy the Mayoral election anyway, then we shouldn't let him have it for the mere $80 million he's likely to spend on advertisement, but that we should demand the full $11.5 billion he has earned since becoming NYC mayor in 2001. (His "worth" then was $4.5 billion; now it's 16.) Wishnia portions out the 11.5 B on the MTA, housing, education, jobs, alternative energy, health, etc.

I have been sick of the presidential elections since the early part of the primaries, but that doesn't mean I won't prolong the discourse myself on occasion. Click the read more link for some thoughts on Obama, Kucinich, political cartoons, patriotism, sexism, and protests.

I'm getting awfully tabby lately, so here are a bunch of links, so I can close tabs and not feel so bad about it.

• Betty Charm♥cils
• The future of federated searching
• Greens, after the nomination of the McKinney-Clemente...
• Is it Protected by Copyright?
• Library questions and answers
• Life on the command line
• mon.thly.info
• Not guilty!
• Our government wants to define some forms of birth control as abortion

Annotations and provenance information if you read the whole post.

As much as I try to ignore electoral politics and the U.S. president and stuff, I can't help but give the Democratic primary race some thought--about race and gender.

If I weren't working 'til 9 on Thursday, I'd go to this forum at NYU. It's Thursday 1/31 at The Puck Building, 295 Lafayette St., 2nd Fl. from 6:30-8. You're supposed to RSVP.