Don't Panic!

Hmm...

I'm having some trouble tracking down an Australian television advertisement from the 1980s. I always thought you could find almost anything on line, but this is eluding me at present.

It was an ad put together by one of the cancer councils (I think) and probably belonged in the same stable as Sid the Seagull's "Slip Slop Slap" campaign (I think) and would have aired about the mid-late 1980s (I think) and involved a cartoon mole (as in the animal) telling us to keep an eye on the moles on our skin (as in, a melanocytic nevus).

From what I can recall from childhood, it went something like this:

Mole sticks his head up through the sand at the beach: "Don't panic! I'm not the sort of mole you have to worry about. But the moles on your skin? Some of them can make you sick. Real sick. So, if you catch a mole changing shape, changing colour or growing bigger - get it looked at, quick as you can. Oh, and try a little less sun".

Having difficulty finding any evidence that this campaign actually existed, though.

Hmm...

My Job Doesn't Exist

I had a strange epiphany the other day (I must admit, though, that most of my epiphanies are a bit strange).

I come to the sudden, yet undeniable conclusion that my job doesn't exist. Or, at least, it shouldn't. It's not real, you see. Very little I do is real.

It's all Flashforward's fault. I was trying to explain to the characters in the TV show that they were creating self-fulfilling prophecies. They were collecting things to put on a board because in their visions of the future these things were on the board. But the problem with that is it becomes some sort of weird paradoxical cycle. The reason why the items were on the board in the future is because the items were on the board in the future. They could very well mean absolutely nothing, but they've managed to hook themselves into that existential cycle.

The characters in the TV show didn't listen to me (they never do), but I suddenly realised that I do exactly the same thing every day. You know, most people don't need the services I offer them until I tell them they do. Then, suddenly, they need something I can supply.

The world existed quite happily without iGoogle, EndNote, electronic databases, Delicious and LibGuides. No one really cared about all the wonderful tools they could have been using to do things they weren't doing.

Suddenly, an academic librarian like myself says: "but, wait, people need blogs! If they only knew how effective blogs could be, they would want them!" So, I invent a blog, tell everyone to look at it, convince them it's a Good Thing and something they not only Want, but Need... And now it's a part of my job to find things to put in blog posts.

EndNote and other bibliographic software programs are useful, but they aren't really necessary. I help people believe they need such things in order to study well. Then people need me to help them use EndNote. Or Google Docs. Or Connotea.

I'm finding the things we believe we will need in the future, then helping people need them today. And so much of my job is wrapped up in supporting things that, frankly, mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I feel like I'm training a unicorn to fly a spaceship - treading a strange line between fantasy and science fiction, and hoping nobody notices the fact that you don't need an interactive web-based guide to grow food for your children.

Truth be told, what we will really need in the future isn't any of these things. They'll all turn to dust before we realise it. No, the things we'll need in the future are the same things we needed in the past: the ability to cultivate food that will nourish us and build shelters that will keep us warm and dry.

These are things I can't do and can't teach anyone else to do either. But they're real. So much more real than most of what I do in my day.

Next time some librarian tries to tell you how useful the latest gadget is, tell them you're better off learning how to spin cotton into thread. It's true.

But, on the other hand, that gadget is probably really cool and quite useful, so still pay attention.

Scary Stuff

We need to better educate our kids:

http://searchengineland.com/uk-report-1-in-3-kids-think-top-search-rankings-most-truthful-27428

Sadly, they only listen to music videos. Anyone know how we can convince Robbie Williams to create a music video about search engine rankings?

Magnetic Recording

Favourite quote for today:

"Magnetic Recording. Although the principle of magnetic recording is over sixty years old, it is only during the past few years that the modern tape recorder has reached perfection. Recording on magnetic tape is the most accurate and versatile means of reproducing sounds today. It is used almost universally for making master recordings of music from which disks will be pressed for public sale; in another form it is used for recording television; and in still another. it is the heart of the data retrieval systems of the modern computers."

Stack, E.M. (1966) The language laboratory and modern language teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.

This book is older than our library and isn't catalogued - it's from the days before we were a university in our own right, and just a branch of the University of Queensland. I found it on our shelves and insisted the folks downstairs put a barcode in it so I could check it out. On the front, there's an imprint from an old tape spool.

Among it's many features, it includes a whole chapter on magnetic tapes - as in, the what, why and how of using tapes, channels and speeds to create magnetic recordings.

It's somehow wonderful. A snapshot of a world that briefly existed and will never return. It's completely useless for my thesis, but I can't help but like it.

Sadly, I know the minute I return it the book will probably be "decatalogued" (as far as any book which isn't on the catalogue can be decatalogued) and probably thrown out. We just don't have space for this sort of thing.

And yet, we've had it on the shelves for all these years...

Enough to give you the willies

Okay, I apologise for the really bad pun in the title. You'll have to read the rest of this blog entry to work out why it's so bad, but trust me, it's horrible.

Prometheus: bringer of fire, benefactor of mankind, poor sap doomed by the gods...

The legend of Prometheus, so it goes, was that he was a Titan - which is kind of like a cousin to the gods, but not a god - who decided to take pity on poor, miserable, snivelling little mankind and give them the gift of fire. Until Prometheus came along food was always raw, night was always dark and winter was always cold.

With fire came science, art and all kinds of figurative sparks. Mankind stopped huddling in the dark trying to keep warm, and instead made vast leaps and bounds towards civilisation.

However, Zeus (king of the gods and all round jerk - I'm sorry, but that whole Leta and the Swan thing will have me forever despising the ol' Zeus) was not happy. He didn't particularly want mankind to have fire. He was quite happy to have them huddling in the dark. So he punished Prometheus for his audacity.

I half recall that, prior to the punishment, there was a bit of defiance on Prometheus' part. Something along the lines of:

Zeus: "Mankind shall never have fire if I have anything to do with it!"
Prometheus: "I'll give mankind fire if I want to! What are you going to do about it?"

It probably needs to be mentioned occasionally that annoying the gods never ends well. In fact, if there is one piece of advice I can feel confident in giving to every living being, regardless of race, creed or position in the space-time continuum, it is this: don't annoy the gods.

To punish Prometheus for having the gall to defy him, Zeus had him chained to a cliff on a remote island. Every morning a vulture would come along, rip open his guts and eat his liver. Every night the liver would grow back and the guts would heal up so it could all happen again. I believe this was not a pleasant experience, and Prometheus was doomed to suffer it for all eternity.

So, remember, kids, don't annoy the gods.

Now, where I work, we have a statue of Prometheus not far from the reference desk. He's large, he's made of brass, he has a pained expression on his face, he appears to be chained to the wall... and he's naked.

Quite obviously naked, in fact - especially in profile. He's not one of those old-fashioned, classical male nudes with their modest accoutrements*. No, he's one of the new, modern male nudes who are a little more obvious.

Now, the interesting thing about this (as Prometheus' sculptor would tell you) is that most people these days don't know how to look at a male nude. A female nude is fine - we see those all the time in "art" - but a male nude... Well, that's a naked guy standing in the room, right? That sort of thing just isn't on. Especially not in Australia.

The first few times you see our Prometheus, it's a bit of a shock. Then you get used to him. Eventually, you stop registering the big brass naked guy chained to the wall.

Well, until someone decides to "decorate" him. Tonight, I had the dubious privilege of removing a paper frog from Prometheus' appendage. Sadly, it was attached with chewing gum, so I had to spend a little bit longer trying to get rid of that, too.

Just part of a day's work, really. So far I've taught a colleague how to use blogger, consulted the special collections librarian regarding the picture collection, given a training session to a post-grad student, answered questions at the reference desk, made arrangements for the new training room, worked on my Master's project and cleaned chewing gum of a statue's willy.

And what did you do today?


*Bonus points go to whoever can correctly explain how the word "accoutrements" is being used ironically in this sentence.

Word: Curses...

I would just like to say:

Darn you, Microsoft Word! Darn you to Heck!

May whoever changed your flaming bullet function so that it will not easily convert to a multilevel list after having been started as a single level list find the glue on his best pair of shoes is failing.

I do not want to re-write my list! I admit I wasn't paying attention when I first began this bullet point fiasco, but my needs are not exorbitant. All I want is to be able to change the list level based on my tab movements. All I want is to be able to highlight my current list and change the type of bullets from single level to multi-level so that such a thing may happen.

Why can this not be done? The old Word used to do it. Open Office does it with ease. Why am I doomed to manually push each new level to the point I desire without using my handy keyboard short cuts?

While I'm at it, may whoever changed the menus so that keyboard shortcuts I know and love are not longer logically related to the functions I desire find they left their favourite pen in their pocket when they did the washing.

It's not efficient, people! It's just not.

Word of the Day: Unicursal

Unicursal is, apparently, a mathematical term, but we shan't hold that against it.

In addition to mathematical what-nots, 'unicursal' is also used to describe a kind of maze, which makes it cool and interesting. Some may argue that, as a mathematical term, it was already cool and interesting. Those people are sad and deluded, but useful to have around so we shan't insult them too much.

'Unicursal' is an adjective which means Having, traversing, or being on one course or path (OED), and is apparently also used as a noun without taking on a nominative form, which is just dodgy if you ask me. You shouldn't be able to say "I'm following a unicursal at the moment and won't be able to speak to you until I finish", although I'm sure it's the sort of thing people would say all the time - seeing the propensity amongst human beings to forget that adjectival words are meant to describe the noun in the sentence, not be the noun.

Basically, the word 'unicursal' describes situations where there is only one path or direction to follow. A figure in which the whole is transcribed in one route - a maze in which there are no branches to follow and no wrong turns to take.

If my interpretation of the concept is correct, one should be able to undertake a unicursal route within any "true" maze, even if it is not technically a unicursal maze. I remember reading once that a "true" maze (according to the precepts of some obscure maze designing school) is one in which you could follow the wall and it would take you through every point of the maze and back out again. This is the origin of the theory that, if you get lost in a maze or a labyrinth, you should put one hand against a wall and follow it and you will eventually get out. These are also known as "branching" mazes - to separate them from island mazes, in which the walls don't all touch.

I have been in a number of branching mazes and one or two island mazes ("false" mazes?), and I can tell you that the branching mazes feel different, somehow. The island mazes just felt strangely random - as though there was no rhyme or reason to them - while the branching mazes felt like a controlled environment. It's almost as though you can feel the design. Even when you take the short-cuts, go up the wrong path, get horribly lost and somehow manage to get right through the maze without ever finding that damn target in the heart of the thing, you still feel as though you're following something. There's more of a sense of purpose to your movements. Plus, you always have that confidence that if you just follow the wall you'll eventually get out...

'Unicursal' is also used to describe any number of shapes created by a continuous line, such as the unicursal hexagram and a number of designs popular in Celtic themed art. Apparently, the Celts had quite a thing for unicursal patterns.

I suppose one could quite happily use the word 'unicursal' to describe any metaphoric journey in which someone could only follow one path - with no chance of branching off in any direction.

See if you can use it sometime this week.