Silliness

Library of Congress vs Wikileaks … and some silliness, too

by David Lee King on December 6, 2010

I’m sure most of you know about Wikileaks – interesting stuff, for sure. For the most part, I’m not getting into that – I’ll leave all that legality stuff for others to discuss.

However, I WILL mention the Library of Congress and their decision to block access to Wikileaks. And the Federal Government’s memos going out “reminding” government employees who don’t have access to classified documents that they aren’t allowed to view them, even when not at work.

I like what this article called it – “a classic case of shutting the barn door after the horse has left.”

In my mind, anyway, the Library of Congress and the federal government are being sorta silly:

  • Yes, many government employees don’t have access to classified documents
  • whether you like it or not, Wikileaks just published them
  • so whether you like it or not, those published documents are really no longer classified – they’re now freely available on the web
  • unless, of course, the government is being silly and is telling people “please turn your heads the other way and don’t look.”

This is pretty different from, say, before the web. Way back then, if a classified document was swiped and shared, you could potentially track it down and stop the leak.

But now, there’s no getting those documents back. Sure, you can block access. Sure, you can arrest people (if they broke laws). But get the documents back? Good luck with that. They’re now freely available on the web, being copied on millions of servers, and parts of those documents are being quoted by multiple news outlets.

Is that still classified? Well yes – legally, it is. But no – in reality, anyone can now see it, which sort of defeats the purpose of calling them “classified.”

And Library of Congress – since you are blocking access to those documents … are you also blocking access to all the news organizations that are currently publishing bits from those classified documents? Because they’re all quoting from them.

Here are two good articles I saw over the weekend with some good thoughts this whole fiasco:

What do you think?

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New Song/Video Announcement and Call for Participation!

by David Lee King on July 17, 2009

Read all about it here! Or just read this … remember that song/video Michael Porter and I created last year? Well… we’re at it again – with Library 101!

Here’s what Michael says:

“Getting into this video is actually really easy. Simply take and share a picture of YOU posing with a 0 and a 1! (Tagging it with library101 on flickr will be really helpful). We even have the flickr group linked above [ok, I linked it here] where you can put your 101 pictures. So c’mon! Do it and get just a little bit famous! Your family and friends will love finding you pop up in the video (and maybe even your coworkers?)! Put your kids in it! How about the family dog!? And you know grandma loves the library too, riiight? :) The most interesting your submission the more it will be featured, so get creative!

Look for the song and video in October of 2009 (debuting at a special “Connecting Through “Lights, Cameras & Action” session at the Internet Librarian Conference in Monterrey, California).”

Now all Michael and I have to do is this:

  • write words for the song
  • Create and record the music
  • Somehow fly Michael to Kansas to record the song and shoot some video
  • Get Michael back to Seattle so he can video edit like a madman
  • collaborate on a multimedia presentation for Internet Librarian like you’ve never seen before…

Whew! I’m already getting psyched!

Pic courtesy of Libraryman

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New Song and Video: Social Digital Global Shift

by David Lee King on October 23, 2007

I recorded a new song and video for y’all! This song is all about social networking and how people are using the emerging social web to connect with each other, to communicate… and in my case, to sing songs to my blog readers.

When writing the song, I was thinking about facebook, twitter, MySpace, and all the social connections that are happening 24/7 – I find it extremely fascinating.

Social Digital Global Shift
by David Lee King

I haven’t seen her since high school
never thought I’d see her again
but yesterday I got a facebook request
she asked to be my friend

so I took a little time to catch up
browsed through her photobucket and blog
I watched some funny videos of her kids
and then I wrote this song

’cause it’s a social digital revolution
social digital relationship
social digital communication
it’s a social digital global shift

I have friends around the world
they’re growing globally
some of them live in Saskatchewan
while others live in D.C.

Enjoy!

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I’m No Antidigitalist: a song about GormanGate

by David Lee King on June 18, 2007


Click To Play


Last week, as I was reading and responding to everyone’s responses to Michael Gorman’s blog posts, I re-read a couple of the posts myself… and this phrase from his earlier “blog people” article started running through my head … and wouldn’t leave.So I did what any self-respecting closet musician would do on his day off – I wrote a song!

A little more explanation – I wrote the music (with a little help from GarageBand here and there). For each line of the lyrics, I pulled random Gorman quotes from these three articles.

This is probably some odd self-fulfilling prophecy, since I am a blogger, since Gorman said “entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs” … and that’s pretty much what I did to construct this song!

Now, on to the song! And here’s a game for you while listening: try to find each quote while you’re listening to the song!

I’m No Antidigitalist
Music by David Lee King, lyrics pulled from Gorman quotes

an associated flight from expertise
believers in Biblical inerrancy
authoritative printed sources
an extreme example of technophiliac rambling

human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways
verifiable credentials and demonstrable expertise
derision of the professorial authority figure
hyperventilating not blasphemy

I’m no Antidigitalist

there are obstacles to such a benign outcome
antihuman and intellectually debasing
the endemic confusion of means
the triumph of hope and boosterism over reality

I’m no Antidigitalist

read what they want to read … random facts
read what they want to read … paragraphs

an associated flight from expertise
believers in Biblical inerrancy
human beings learn, essentially, in only two ways
hyperventilating not blasphemy

I’m no Antidigitalist

The structures of scholarship and learning are based on respect for individuality and the authentic expression of individual personalities.

Enjoy!

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The Next DOPA?

by David Lee King on January 31, 2007

From my comments – “Dopa is reborn as DOPA jr… ” (thanks, Steve!)

From the full article: “Sen. Ted Stevens, R-AK, introduced S.B. 49 at the beginning of the
current legislative session. The bill is reported to have identical
language to DOPA, with one addition. According to a report on ZDNet, Stevens added language that had been
part of a failed communications bill that required all sexually
explicit websites to be labeled as such, or impose prison sentences on
website operators who fail to comply.”

Just an FYI to those who hadn’t heard about it yet…

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Penguins at the Omaha Zoo

by David Lee King on April 10, 2006

Update: How funny… this post was SUPPOSED to show up on my fledgling non-library blog, davidleeking.com/etc – not my library techie blog!

I’m doing an “etc” blog to get other non-library stuff out of my head. It will most likely include videoblog posts (stretching out a little more in that area), might include podcasts of music I create, and once in awhile will have a music and/or a church/worship team post (I drum for my church’s worship team). I still plan to post an occasional videoblog over here – but it will have a library focus to it.

As I said, this post wasn’t actually supposed to show up here. My etc blog works great – just for kicks, I set it up using the ftp version of blogger. But I attempted to post to the etc blog using Performancing, and apparently did something wrong when I set up the Performancing pointer. When I sent the post, I checked to see if the post hit the blog – and it wasn’t there. So I figured I goofed somewhere along the way, and posted the normal way (ie., went to blogger to do the post).

The post apparently decided to worm it’s way over here! So enjoy anyway – the penguins really ARE pretty cool.

***************

penguins

Taken at the Omaha Zoo – the aquarium is extremely cool. This video shows the penguin tank.

performancing

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Law Professor Bans Laptops in Class

by David Lee King on March 29, 2006

From this article… a professor has banned the use of laptops in her class. The article says “Professor June Entman says her main concern is that
students are so busy keyboarding they can’t think and analyze what
she’s telling them.”

Wow. Just wow. I have a question… those students are TAKING NOTES. But using a laptop to do the note-taking.

How in the world is typing one’s notes somehow different from using pen and paper to take notes? Is there really a difference, other than laptops might be a bit more noisy?

Compared to what her students just might be doing in the “real world” (as in, using a laptop to take notes, write reports on the go, etc, etc), I’d think the professor would welcome the use of laptops.

But that’s just me.

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Remixed Information Rap

by David Lee King on March 29, 2005

There’s always a highly entertaining (and useful) Dead and Emerging Technologies forum at the Computers in Libraries conference. This year, D. Scott Brandt (who usually moderates these forums) started us off with a fun spoof of the “I’m too sexy” song – but he turned it into a rap about technology. It was pretty funny.

So, I had forgotten about that, and I was thinking about the topic of re-using content for web purposes. While thinking about this, an mp3 of Brandt’s “I’m too sexy for my disk” rap was pointed to on Jane Dysart’s blog. And I had some time on my hands…

So for your listening enjoyment, here’s a streaming version of an edited, remixed version of Mr. Brandt’s rap. And here’s a link to the mp3 version to download (free registration is required). For those curious souls – I used a free version of ACID (ACID XPress) for the music (I also had a CD of free music loops), and then moved the music over to Audacity, added the rap, and edited it to fit with the song.

Useful to libraries? Probably not. Fun to do? Yep.

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