Librarian Avengers

ertain, especially awesome public libraries have live-in cats.

I suspect from the lack of spine labels, that this is a privately-owned and operated library monorail lolcat.

friend is going through this. She needs legal advice and low-income resources.

Here’s the best of what I’ve found:

• WomensLaw.org - Incredibly clear and useful site with an excellent FAQ, state-by-state help, info on shelters, courthouse locations, legal forms, advice.
• Battered Women’s Justice Project - Contact list for state Domestic Violence coalitions - These groups can provide individual *advocates* who are familiar with state laws and resources.
• American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic Violence pdf guide to attaining a lawyer
  

I’ve been finding a lot of links-to-lists-of-links. If you know of any *easy to use* resources that would help a mother with no money avoid a murderous creep, please comment, and thank you.

Current TV has a segment called “Target Women” that I absolutely love.

In this episode, Sarah Haskins, who is frikking hilarious, introduces us to the helpful and empowering phenomenon known as Wedding Television.

She gently mocks shows like Bridezilla, Rich bride Poor bride, Platinum brides, and other affronts to sanity.

As you know, marriage is only for skinny rich people. At one point, Sarah appears in bike shorts and a sports bra, comparing her normal body to the “horrible fat future” picture used to scare a woman into bridal fitness on a show called “Bulging Brides”.

This video made me feel so much better about my lazais faire approach to wedding planning. See ya in Detroit in December, friends.

I’ll be the one wearing some sort of dress.

“I lived long enough to see the cure for death; to see the rise of the
Bitchun Society, to learn ten languages; to compose three symphonies;
to realize my boyhood dream of taking up residence in Disney World; to
see the death of the workplace and of work.” — Cory Doctorow, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom.

There’s a nice list of Sci Fi opening sentences up at io9.com. I haven’t read many of them, and I think there’s a few I’ll pick up because of this page.

via boing boing

There’s a great new dating site online…for zombies!
Hurry and join zombieharmony.com!

I wonder if eHarmony will be as cool as Linden Lab was about parodies?

Linden sent the maker of a Second Life parody the opposite of a Cease and Desist letter. Since, like most sane people, they realized that parody = fair use, and fair use = the foundation of cultural exchange.

Now we’re BFF with the EFF, and there’s one less dumbass lawsuit in the world.

I love this line…
“Moreover, Linden Lab objects to any implication that it would employ lawyers incapable of distinguishing such obvious parody.”

itting here in my lavish office. Wearing a kimono. On a chair that I made. The chair has a wagging tail. Oh, and I’m a frog. Did I mention I’m a frog?

I work for Second Life. I can do whatever I want. As long as someone is willing to script it.

love Freebase. Here’s a list of people who died via vomit inhalation. Don’t say I never gave you anything.

anna enrich some data? Got OCD? Tired of trying to get a foot in on popular Wikipedia entries? Try helping out with Freebase.

It’s a database. Of stuff. Free stuff. You can mush it however you like. You can compare stuff. You can edit it. And this week? This week you can join a few hundred of your fellow data nerds and join a data mob.

The topic is Ethnicity

Here’s an update on the current state of the datamob. Go forth librarians! Go forth and link up nodes! For the furture! For the children!

was crawling through my archives this morning and came across this little rant that I wrote years ago, during my first, horrible, post-grad school job at the Cornell University Library. I know several of you Gentle Readers are in school right now, and I thought you might enjoy the sentiment:

First of all, and lets just get this out of the way: a full-time job is actually a pretty shoddy reward for 2.5 years of graduate school stress.

Yes, I’m grateful and all, glad to be here, nice to meet ya, etc. but frankly, I think I was looking for something along the lines of “congratulations on your degree, here’s your houseboat, now get out of here you scamp.”

I suppose having a stable schedule and slightly-more-realistic paychecks is reward enough, but lately I’ve had to face what seems to happen any time you put enormous effort into something. Which is, a rather slow transition into something different that requires enormous effort.

Like learning not to scream when someone suggests you attend the Metadata Working Group Meeting.