Entire New 13-Story Building Tips Over in Shanghai

“This past Saturday, an entire apartment building in Shanghai collapsed. To be fair, the building was under construction and thus unoccupied, but it’s still a minor miracle that there was only one fatality.”  (More pix at Gizmodo)

EBSCO Demo Products

Hey staff, don’t forget to look at the Ebsco trial products on the SCLS blog listing of active Suffolk VRC/Coordinated Order demos.

Is it right to censor Wikipedia to save a life?

“On Nov. 10, Times reporter David Rohde, his interpreter and his driver were taken captive by Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Times management, believing that publicity would only increase Rohde’s value to the kidnappers and hurt his chances for survival, contacted dozens of other news organizations and got them to agree to spike the story, which is why we didn’t know anything about it until Rohde and his interpreter staged a daring escape a week ago Saturday. But muzzling the persistent citizen-editors of Wikipedia was more difficult. Three days after the kidnapping, an anonymous user added the development to the page on Rohde, citing an Afghan news agency. A Times staffer spotted it and edited that information out. The original user returned and put it back in. The Times turned to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, who decided that Rohde’s safety outweighed any reluctance to tamper.”   Full Story / Another Opinion

A Guide to Green from NatGeo

Going Green with NatGeo

In my perusal of the NYT RSS feeds, I somehow got to this very nice website from National Geographic.  If you are at all concerned with the environment, or need someplace to which you may refer a patron, this might fit the bill.

http://www.thegreenguide.com/

Alan

Patron Self-Cancellation of Holds

I checked with PALS about the status on fixing the problem of patrons cancelling their own holds. Innovative is still working on the problem, and as soon as it is fixed we will be informed. Feel free to tell any patron who asks that the problem is being worked on. Any further questions, please see me. -Denise

There’s a Tag Cloud on This Blog

If you look to the righthand column of this Blog, you should see our new ”Tag Cloud”, which will jump to posts on a range of specific topics.  The tag’s size is a function of the number of posts you get when clicking it.  This is a work in progress at the moment, but it functions and is a nice start.  (thanks go to Denise for her efforts creating it.)

Status Updates on the Staff WebOPAC

Beginning on Thursday, June 25th, 2009, the PALS Staff will begin using Twitter to disseminate information to the libraries. The updates will display at the bottom of the screen in the PAC1 (Staff) County Catalog as well as on the PALS Wiki.  Details are available on the PALS Wiki, including:

A detailed Explanation of the service, a grid outlining times when Twitter communications might be expected and a Frequently Asked Questions page.

Incredible Optical Illusion – The Blue and Green Spiral are the Same Color

From Discover.com:

“This is why I tell people over and over again: you cannot trust what you see even with your own eyes. Your eyes are not cameras faithfully taking pictures of absolute truth of all that surrounds you. They have filters, and your brain has to interpret the jangled mess it gets fed. Colors are not what they appear, shapes are not what they appear, objects are not what they appear.”  See Article with Explanation

More Inconsequential Trivia from “The Order of Things…”

Precipitation types from warmest air to coldest:

drizzle
rain
freezing drizzle
freezing rain
sleet
hail
snow

(Go ahead! Impress your party guests!)

What Does the US Debt Clock Look like Right Now?

“As of June 18, 2009, the total U.S. federal debt was $11,342,734,351,973, or about $36,989 per capita. Of this amount, debt held by the public was roughly $7.098 trillion. As of 2007, the debt of the United States ranked as the 22nd-largest in the world as a percentage of GDP.As of June 2009 the debt was 82.5 percent of GDP based on current GDP. This level of debt has not been seen since 1951, with the nominal value the largest in recorded history.”   (from wikipedia)

See the realtime Debt Clock ticking away