We're off for a few weeks' holidays, planning to hit Calgary, Kelowna and Vancouver as our main ports of call. Here's a shot from somewhere near Brooks, Alberta. “When you gotta go” and all that – glad we decided to throw the potty in the van with us!
The funniest/scariest part of this was the two dudes who stopped where we'd parked on a side road to ask if we were okay. We told them we were and that we'd just stopped for a potty break. “We'll need one soon, too!” they said, holding up their beers and driving off, turning onto the #1 highway!
Geist did the closing keynote at the recent CLA (I taped it with my iPhone but haven't decided whether to post it or not – copyright and all that, you know! ) and he's always got interesting things to say. So having him come to Reddit for one of of their patented “Ask Me Anything” threads should be a good one!
The best part is that the Toronto Maple Laffs now have the longest Stanley Cup drought in the NHL. And the way that team's going, the Kitchener-Waterloo Blackberries have a better chance of winning a cup before the Laffs do!
Would you believe four turns? (And if you don't, make sure you read the comments for even more inspired ideas!)
We started to wonder about what the shortest THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE game
of Monopoly would be. That is, if everything went just the right way,
with just the right sequence of rolls, Chance and Community Chest cards,
and so on, what is the quickest way one player could go bankrupt?
After working on the problem for a while, we boiled it down to a 4-turn (2 per player), 9 roll (including
doubles) game. Detail on each move given below. If executed quickly
enough, this theoretical game can be played in 21 seconds (see video
below).
[Edit: Seeing some reports that the taping is on June 14 and the show will be broadcast on June 18. I always thought Letterman taped around suppertime for broadcast the same day so jokes, etc. were timely but just to be safe, you may watch to watch both nights.]
(via MetaFilter which has a good discussion of the implications for the deaf community, many of whom are opposed to this type of operation. Man, I never would've thought there was any question about doing something like this!)
My “Misadventures at CLA 2010” series sort of died out after a couple days, somewhat ironically because I was out having mis-adventures that left me less time for actually summarizing what I was up to. (And let's be honest – the first two I wrote were pretty “I did this then I did this” boring anyhow.)
But I did want to wrap up another great CLA experience with a photo that I hoped could capture a bit of what it's like to be at this conference. This is from the reception at the Art Gallery of Alberta last night:
As part of their preparations for the AGM, CLA has been distributing a two-question mini-survey to members soliciting feedback about how CLA is perceived and how it can better accomplish its mandate.
Here are my answers:
1. Why does CLA matter? To me, CLA matters because it is (and/or should be) the only national voice for all of Canadian librarians. No matter how many delegates it gets to its own conference or how many members it may have, OLA will never be able to fill this role. No matter how nice its magazine is or how cheap its membership is comparatively, ALA will never be able to fill this role. No matter how they structure themselves or how they may account for the giant that is Ontario, my provincial association (or a coalition of provincial associations) will never carry the same weight. As someone pointed out to me yesterday, “we focus too much on the 'L', we should focus more on the 'C'”.
2. CLA is the national advocate for Canada's libraries. How can we better accomplish this? Honestly, I think CLA missed a question that should've been inserted between the first and second one on their survey: “Given our current financial crisis, how should we fix it?” I think we need to focus on fixing our financial problems before turning to how the association can work better on its broader mandate.
I've posted some of my own half-formed ideas and I know that the membership (especially the membership who are engaged enough to come to and actively participate in the annual conference and therefore will receive this survey) would have tons of other ideas.
But as for the question itself, I think CLA does a pretty good job as a national advocate for the most part. But again, echoing what I've heard others say, CLA members spend a lot of time and money on divisions and don't target specific issues – for example, right now Copyright is the hot topic and we should be really quick and vocal in our response – so I suspect the new structure will somehow de-emphasize the divisions and focus more on specific topics/areas.
What will come of it? It remains to be seen. But I know today's AGM is going to be *very* interesting.
Posting this as a Friday Fun Link sorta feels like being the party guest who comes over and starts criticizing your housekeeping or your parenting skills or whatever. But anyhow, here I am in Edmonton, enjoying the CLA conference and I can't help but re-post my essay, “Cash Cow: User Fees in Alberta Public Libraries“.
I didn't mention it except for one brief exchange with a colleague from Calgary but for me, it was the elephant in the room for the pre-conference on social responsibility. We had twenty or so people there, at least fifteen were from Alberta yet nobody seemed to notice or bring up that the fact that Alberta charges a fee to everybody who wants a library card (and yes I know they'll waive the fee for those who can't pay it but I address all the related issues around that in the essay. Go read it!)
(That reminds me – I gotta go reply to Punch Jackson on Twitter. Oops, can't find his reply to my tweet right but I think he asked “how do you make up the $4 million shortfall for not charging user fees?” Well, call me a communist but how about since Alberta's population is 3.3 million, how about adding a buck and a quarter to the annual taxes of everybody in Alberta? Or what about tapping into a very small fraction of the the surpluses they had when I wrote the essay and the government projects to be coming back? Or maybe have the libraries raise their levies a small amount? It's not a hard question – it's a question of having the balls will to do it.)
