Here is the Schedule of Service Impacts for B&ECPL Patrons Under Erie County's Proposed 2005 Red Budget:

Last day to borrow and renew materials
Tuesday, December 7, 2004

Return all B&ECPL materials by
Tuesday, December 28, 2004

All book drops will be closed after
Tuesday, January 4, 2005

Tell your elected officials how important YOUR library is to YOU. Without your support, public library service could end in Buffalo and Erie County! The Erie County Legislature has announced its schedule of 4 public hearings on the proposed 2005 Erie County Budget:

Monday, November 22, 6 p.m.
Lancaster Middle School Auditorium
148 Aurora, Lancaster

Tuesday, November 23, 6 p.m.
Erie Community College City Campus Auditorium
121 Ellicott, Buffalo

Monday, November 29, 6 p.m.
Erie Community College South Campus Room 5101
4041 Southwestern, Orchard Park

Tuesday, November 30, 6 p.m.
Clarence Public Library
Three Town Place, Clarence

Join advocates from across Erie County in a collective effort to keep OUR public libraries from closing in 2005!

Anyone else in da' house mucho impressed by (e:paul) and his awesome spellcheck?!? Over time it has been perfected until it is quite possibly the most user-friendly and least inconvenient spellcheckers I have ever used. It lets you see the misspelled words and then simply click on the correct suggestion to have it automatically replaced in your entry. No typing on your part... a handy list of suggestions if the closest one just isn't it... and a nice colorful interface to boot.

I told (e:paul) maybe it's time to market this baby. I decided to look around for other comparable services to see what was to offer. Hotmail didn't even offer spellcheck (unless it's something you have to pay for). Livejournal has one, but it sucks muchissimo. Take a look:



Crappy, eh? They highlight the misspelled in red and then give you a list containing the words and suggestions. No handy little interface. No clickable suggestions. You actually have to type your own words in, how uncivilized... So if anyone else has praise feel free to share. And, of course, (e:paul) is always available to hear concerns/bugs/suggestions from any of you lovely peeps or peeps-to-be.

sidenote: I just wrote a rant about an hour ago, so take a looksee...



this


way

.
.
.

Do we have to ask over and over again why non-corporate interests are under-represented in the corporate media? [inlink]jason,37[/inlink] Our media today only exists with the financial backing of interested parties. Basically 80-95% of local bandwidth (TV, radio, etc.) is broadcast by companies. What is a company? It is a profit-making enterprise (with the exclusion of some non-profits) whose main (sole?) goal is enriching its stockholders. They operate under a corporate charter which was originally only granted by the states to companies to "serve the public good." This definition has slowly lost that original value, and now just about anyone can apply to be a company, after of course the obligatory fee ((e:Jason) you're a corp. right, how hard was it?).

So back to the top with this, we have most of our easily-accessible media controlled by groups of individuals who are mostly concerned with lining their own fat wallets. They are ostensibly policed by the FCC, whose mandate it is to monitor the respective airwaves for any breaches of broadcasting. They are the arbiters of media justice. Normally they sit back and make sure nothing "offensive" is aired (read: Janet's boobie) at least that's what they'd have you believe . In actuality they are in control of a lot of what you and me can see/hear. The appointed (not elected) group just recently raised the amount of media that can be owned by one interest in any given region. Which allows more local/independent outlets to be outbought, though one might ask when our airwaves became commodities (much like our land and resources which are sold to the highest bidder, or the only bidder in most cases), but I digress...as usual.

(e:Jason), (e:Paul) just gave a link to a new local station [inlink]paul,2405[/inlink] which offers many progressive programs, like Democracy Now! which is the Left's answer to the News Hour, if you haven't listened I highly recommend.

You say that you'd like to hear the two sides slamming it out through media, which is surely highly amusing, yet I fear perhaps distracting. We need media that actually gives credit to the profession: observers of the world who report back what they see without slant (or minimized through the harshest of standards). The news should give us information, and then if we want to listen/watch the others bash it out we can. Today everyone is on a side, and few will tell you what's really happening, both on the right and left. And it's simply unfair/unreal to make everyone become a student of media scientists simply to decipher the reality of the world around them.

...I wanted to write about a neat book I just finished (from the soon-extinct library)...but soon

No posting from cell-phones here, oh-no missy! No siree!! Thank you maam!!! Party was fun. Like hanging out with people. Though, as usual, I hung out most with those I know anyways. Neat rambling bungalow ranch-house-on-a-rooftop thing you got going there Carolyn (maybe (e:Carolyn) soon?). Brought the 40 for effect (think about that 2ways). Still missed the missed-one, felt nostalgic today, strange since it's been but a month. Played the cigarette game with (e:robin) and the master-strategista (aka (e:soyeon)), who kicked my ass (as she did so handily at Chess). The days they are a-rollin'. Rollin' right by my lazyass. I went out last night too, but the hipsters were too cool (who likes to see white people dancing to white people music anyways?). (e:Flacidness) was cool as was cousin Frieda whose birthday we feted. (e:Lilho) cut my hairs. They was longer than a witch's titty. Now I am hot & stylin'. Better watch out lest I steal yo' shoty, ya'll! Update on life. Thanks for caring. Peace out and big ups t'ya'll. Fools.

That last rant down below there is maybe less than precisely precise, I suppose... As usual Paul has to take our little discussion and blow it up until the side I'm on is killing the jews. The point I was trying to make is that the lines that scientists' have drawn around certain things to classify them are arbitrary. When you break it down we are simply using a catalog system to help us better understand the way things work and how they got to be that way, Let's take a library as an example. The books there are currently arranged along the lines of good ole' Dewey's Decimal System. It works just great, but it's not the only way we could classify them, we could stack them all according to color or size, or by authorname.yearpublished.genre.etc. We use Dewey's system because it helps us to find what we're looking for, not because it is inherent in the nature of books to be stacked that way. All science is like that, and the history of science is just chock full of mistakes we've made (or better put, classifications that weren't optimized for maximum usefulness) and later fixed or rearranged.

So is a polyp an animal and not a plant. As the word is currently defined by most scientists (animals generally move, eat, have no cell wall, etc) then perhaps yes. But that's not the point. The point is, as quoted from wikipedia "The actual boundaries between animals and plants are artificial; they are rather due to the ingenious analysis of the systematist than actually resident in objective nature." Couldn't have said it better myself. So now let me get back to killing babies or committing genocide with my atrocious beliefs.

Oh yeah...check out the Yesmen if you want a pretty funny documentary. Bunch of guys play some neat little parnks on the evil of evils, the WTO (with unfortunately and amazingly little surprise or astonishment garnered). 'Sat the market arcade

and WHOA! Arafat is dead and Ashcroft has resigned. The effects of both are still up in the air. Alberto Gonzales may be no soul-singing good-ole-boy patriot like Johnny but he's no angel (remember the wonderful "draft memo on the treatment of prisoners that called some of the Geneva Convention provisions on prisoner treatment 'quaint'"?). And who will/can replace Arafat? More war all around for everybody. Whoopie!