Need Something to Do Tomorrow?

Well, tomorrow is Take Your Child to the Library Day!

I don't think my library is doing anything specific to celebrate this glorious holiday (I only found out today that it even existed), but I know they're doing a Valentine craft tomorrow. Sounds fun! What does your library have for your kids? Go find out!

Links!

• Libraries, Books, & Writers
• Magna Cartas united at British Library to celebrate 800th anniversary 
• For AbeBooks, $191,000 online sale is one for the books "Davies said other items are available at AbeBooks in that price range, including an inscribed 1926 first edition of The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway and a second folio edition of Comedies, Histories and Tragedies by William Shakespeare from 1632.  By comparison, $191,000 will buy a new 2015 Ferrari California or a diamond ring featuring a six-carat ruby."
• Feb 6, 1937: Of Mice and Men is published 
• Read an excerpt from the third book of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children The title is Library of Souls! I love that title.
• What’s Inside? A book that gives children x-ray vision! Neat! 
• Review: 'Selected Letters of Langston Hughes' a glimpse of enigmatic poet 
• The Vikings Are Coming! "139 Old Norse Words That Invaded The English Language" Fun! 
• Highland Park Parent Withdraws Challenge to The Working Poor "Although she still objects to the book’s use in AP English classes, Meg Bakich says the current review process is 'unbalanced' and would not give her complaint fair consideration."
• Black History Month Graphic Novels for Your Collection 
• Why are some cities cracking down on little free libraries? 
• Books Matter "In my profession, as a librarian and a curator, this list (of which what follows is only a portion) functions as an apologia pro vita mia—rational defenses for the continued existence of the printed codex—and my involvement with them."
• National Library of Medicine Launches New Twitter Stream For K-12 Science Educators 
• How is Bobby Jindal getting to $103 million dollars in budget cuts? "...[I]n order to save some $293,000 the state will stop providing funds to local libraries to help pay for internet services, and the state library will now only be open two day a week....and the state library system may have to layoff people as a result of the midyear cuts..." That sucks. "As it has typically done, the Jindal administration is taking money collected for one purpose...and using it to fund another. This includes draining $9 million from the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly, which lawmakers had expected to help pay for senior healthcare for decades. The fund -- which once had $800 million -- is now nearly depleted because the administration has drawn on it several times to help pay for other state health care needs." That sucks even more. Why is Louisiana having money trouble? "The Jindal administration continues to place the majority of the blame for Louisiana's financial woes on falling oil prices....While it may be true that this round of cuts is tied to falling oil prices, the state's broader fiscal woes -- including a billion-dollar-plus deficit next year -- were apparent before oil prices began slipping a few months ago. Economists, policy experts and fiscal conservatives in the Legislature have said tax cuts and tax exemptions, along with the administration's budgeting tactics, have contributed to the problem." That would do it.
• Net & Tech
• The computer-generated cookbook: just the thing for a hungry digital age I hope Watson is a better chef than Bender.  
• Comcast insults another customer, changes woman's name to Super Bitch Comcast, this is not how you are supposed to do customer service. 
• Silencing the Alarm "To summarize: If Apple received an order under Section 215, it likely wouldn't know why. And more to the point: it couldn't tell us anyway.  So if Apple can't tell us that it had received such an order, why bother with telling us that it hadn't received one?  The prevailing wisdom at the time was that Apple was using something called a 'warrant canary....' The idea dates back to 2004, when the FBI used a similar process to go after library records and applied the same type of gag order.... In response, a librarian named Jessamyn West came up with the idea for signs which her fellow librarians could post (if accurate), stating simply that everything was OK..." The library sign looks like this:

• Health & Science
• Measles, Vaccines and Our Faith in Science "We will never get to the heart of this issue if we keep pretending that it is a crisis of simply not understanding. It is a crisis of not discussing what we mean by the common good. A crisis of not having an honest debate about balancing rights and responsibilities. A crisis of not talking about what we owe to our neighbors." 
• Unapproved, but Used in Surgery "OtisMed sold $27 million worth of its cutting guides before the FDA rejected them." 
• Hydrogen’s Future as a Fuel May Hinge on the Fate of Four Electrons Fascinating! I wondered why we weren't utilizing hydrogen fuel more - now I know! Well, no, I'm still not sure why we aren't utilizing hydrogen fuel more - but this explains part of the problem, anyway.
• 'Missing Oil' from 2010 BP Spill Found on Gulf Seafloor 
• From beetles to bubonic plague: Bizarre DNA found in NYC subway stations 
• Cheap Smartphone Dongle Diagnoses HIV And Syphilis In 15 Minutes 
• Termite Mounds Can Prevent Spread Of Deserts In Vulnerable Ecosystems 
• Bee brains "Research at the Universities of St Andrews and Dundee has confirmed that levels of neonicotinoid insecticides accepted to exist in agriculture cause both impairment of bumblebees’ brain cells and subsequent poor performance by bee colonies." 

I love bees. Look how beautiful they are. Now stop killing them.

• Education
• Oh Sweet Irony: Walker Caught Lying About Removing "Search For Truth" from UW Mission Statement "Yesterday, Scott Walker...introduced a budget that removed several lines from the University of Wisconsin System's mission statement (aka a little thing known as 'The Wisconsin Idea'), including the phrase, 'basic to every purpose of the system is the search for truth.'" Related: Walker proposes changing Wisconsin Idea — then backs away "Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton), who sits on the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee, said the proposed change was absurd, calling the Wisconsin Idea a model for the country.  'I really believe the governor has lost his bearings as to who he is and what he does,' he said. 'His job is not to rewrite the Wisconsin Idea. It's to promote the Wisconsin Idea.'" I quite like the UW Mission Statement, a.k.a., the Wisconsin Idea.
• Other
• A look at how marriage, co-habitation, domestic violence, and birth rates were influenced by the economic struggles of the 2000s. 
• In Facebook Posts, Congressman Aaron Schock’s Press Secretary Compared African Americans To Zoo Animals Related: 'Downton Abbey' congressman's aide resigns over Facebook posts That was quick.
• $99 Flights to Europe Are Coming Hmmmm....