the pod bay door

.: I don’t remember working harder or feeling more stressed at work than the past few weeks. Apparently things are worse for my colleagues in the UK, where a new study “suggests that being a librarian induces more stress than working for the emergency services, driving a 125mph express, or teaching a class of ill-behaved children.” Or is it really? The author of the study, Saqib Saddiq is a consultant with a recruitment company. He notes: “It seems they are sick of being stuck between the same shelves of books all day. They also found their work repetitive and unchallenging, and overall had very little job satisfaction. Although police officers and firefighters find themselves in stressful situations, they are at least able to get out and about, and there is much more variety in their work.”

My educated guess is that he interviewed circulation and shelving staff, and considered every employee in the library to be a librarian – just like everyone in a lab coat in a hospital is a doctor. I’ve spent half a day shelving books myself from time to time, and am aware that done full time, it would be excrutiatingly boring. I remember my cataloguing professor in library school telling our class that the Library of Congress had full-time card filers working there for decades. I’ve worked as a librarian for 27 years, and while the stress level is high, the work is never boring nor repetitive. As for being stuck between the same shelves of books all day, I’d be surprised if I’m in the book stacks more than once or twice a month.

.: Congrats to Stephen Colbert, who in “The Wørd” segment of the first episode of his brilliant show, The Colbert Report, returned the word “truthiness” into the mainstream – watch the video segment here. Truthiness, a word dating back as far as 1824, was voted the 2005 Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society. The best coverage of the path of truthiness from its appearance on the debut Oct 17 2005 episode of The Colbert Report to the 2005 Word of the Year is at Language Log. Start with Truthiness or Trustiness?, and follow through to Colbert Fights for Truthiness.

The Wikipedia entry for truthiness provides some background and history, yet opens with the line, “”Truthiness” is a term invented by Stephen Colbert as the subject of a feature called The Wørd…”, which is incorrect, as noted above.

.: Of course, within hours of my previous post, it snowed in Edmonton. It was a light dusting, not enough to cover lawns, but the white stuff nonetheless. I’ll have pictures soon.

.: Did you watch Lost tonight, Episode #34, The 23rd Psalm? The element of science fiction was introduced – the “monster”, never seen but in the background in a number of episodes, appears to Eko and the Hobbit Charlie in the jungle. While Charlie sits in a tree, swirling black smoke, seemingly sentient and emitting a deep curdling techno-noise, emerges from the distant trees following two explosions, moving very fast and strong enough to destroy a tree in front of it as it speeds to within inches of Eko, then stopping on a virtual, airborne dime, hovering in front of him. The camera glides through the smoke as split-second images from Eko’s past appear from within the black cloud – is the smart smoke reading Eko’s mind, and sending the images back to the mother ship? After a few more seconds, it retreats at high speed and disappears back into the forest.

So this is what snatched the pilot from the cockpit and killed him, rustled the trees in the first episode, and tried to grab Locke and drag him away in another episode? I waited six weeks to see the big scary monster revealed to be black smoke? Might we see the monolith from 2001 in an upcoming episode as well? The creators of the show have (apparently) stated that the story would not have an sf angle as it unfolds. Well, unless there is a brilliant scientist, inventor, or engineer hiding on the island in an undisclosed location, or the black smoke is related to the Dharma Initiative (I know, it probably is), start the Hugo nomination voting now.

Suspend thy disbelief, my friends, the show can only get weirder and less believable (even with the required suspension of disbelief in the first place.) At the opening of the preceding (recap) episode tonight, the tail of the plane was shown slamming, and I mean SLAMMING into the ocean water at a speed that would have killed most if not everyone on board (assuming anyone could have survived the plane splitting apart in the air in the first place, and the subsequent descent of its parts into the ocean.) Instead, we accept that most survived without a scratch. (Remember the hijacked 767 that was forced to land on the ocean surface near the Comoros Islands in 1996? Six of the twelve crew members and 119 of the 163 passengers died. The crash was caught on video – watch it, and it becomes very difficult to accept the premise of Lost.) What’s happened to Danielle, the nutbag French woman? How is Desmond doing since he split the underground bunker to go hiking? Did a polar bear eat him? How are the sharks with the Dharma logo doing these days, and what happened to the Deliverance extras who kidnapped Walt at the end of Season One?

Part of me wants to think this is brilliant writing and a great story, but another part of me wants to slap the writers silly for adding so much improbability to the many threads in the show, which is becoming one multi-year cocktease. And yes, dammit, I will keep watching Lost.

.: Like most others on the prairies, we are living through the strangest winter I can remember. It is 10 January 2006, and we have no measureable amount of snow on the ground. Random white patches scattered throughout Edmonton are reminders of distant snowfalls from November and December of 2005. Most lawns are bare and brown; daytime temperatures are well above normal. After so many weeks of this weather combined with daily increases in the amount of daylight, it’s beginning to feel as if winter may not happen this year. Famous last words, perhaps.

.: I have not posted since 31 Dec 2005, primarily because I have been too busy at the library. Having returned on January 3rd, I’ve worked to complete a column for IRSQ, e-mailed invitations to participants in the standards update, which I moderate at the SLA Annual Conference, this year to be held in Baltimore in June, 2006. I am madly trying to complete my annual report, and then begin work on the presentation I am giving (see #1722) at the OLA Superconference in Toronto on Saturday, 4 February 2006. Subsequently, I need to ready presentations to be given in at least five classes in mechanical, materials, and chemical engineering, as well as my contribution to an annual engineering ethics and integrity session hosted by the Faculty of Engineering. Trying to ignore the 90-plus emails doesn’t help the situation, but overall, I’m making progress.

.: It’s a quiet New Years Eve 2005 here. I saw Rumor Has It this evening, bringing my total for 2005 to 50 films seen, the lowest number of films I’ve seen in once year since at least 1978. Since returning from NYC in October, I have read a few books, however, including Queenan Country, Talk to the Hand, The Rock Snob’s Dictionary, The Truth (With Jokes), and New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer.

As I type this, it’s a few minutes past midnight, 01 January 2006. Another calendar year begins, which always gives pause fo some reflection on what has been, and what is to come. Do you have any interesting plans for 2006. Already I have events mapped out as far as August, with conferences in Toronto, Atlanta and Baltimore, two trips to Winnipeg, and perhaps one to the west coast. Professionally, there could be a shift in my responsibilities at work, but I can’t elaborate at this time.

Wishing you a very happy, gently, safe and rewarding 2006.

.: Looking for information on the many 2005 film awards and nominations announced to date? Rich Cline, a UK film critic and creator of Shadows on the Wall, a detailed British film e-zine, maintains The Shadows Sweepstakes, “compiling all those year-end accolades in one handy place…” The numbers for scoring used by Cline “are cumulative points based on Shadows’ complex, highly secret scoring system.” The standings as of this writing are from 24 December 2005, with 102 awards tabulated.

Movie City News, my favorite film site, has a number of charts on their Awards Watch site, including The 2005 Top Tens (the BIG chart, with total scores and average votes), The Awards Scorecard, Critics Awards (by society, etc.), The Critics (list by individual critics), and The Worst of 2005, among others.

Cline reviews Syriana, one of my favorite films of the year, and one that I found difficult to follow at times. He sums this up neatly:

Gaghan’s script wisely sticks to the human story as things twist and turn toward a series of explosive climaxes. Keeping everyone and everything straight is quite a challenge, although he gives us plenty of help. This smart, insinuating approach rewards sharp-eyed viewers with all sorts of details, layers of character interaction and powerful human emotion.

I hope to see Syriana again soon, and plan to be sharp(er)-eyed next time. In my defence, when I watched Syriana the first time, my brain was numb, having spent the previous few hours watching King Kong.

.: I was in Calgary overnight, visiting Chris and Debra. In the evening, after driving through what felt like most of a seemingly abandoned Calgary, we arrived at the cinema to watch Brokeback Mountain, a good film about a love story between two sheep herders, which as one might expect, ends tragically. We finished the evening sharing some very delicious takeout from a local Chinese food outlet. It was warm in Calgary, and I couldn’t sleep last night because the room I was in wouldn’t cool down. There is little to no snow throughout most of the southern half of Alberta, while the east is getting hammered by another snowstorm. We need snow cover to protect the land from erosion and to prevent drought. Driving back from Calgary, it was brown landscape everwhere.

I was hoping this would be a relatively quiet week. Next week, when work resumes, will be a return to choreographed insanity.

.: Reuters has issued its 40 Best Pictures of 2005. Most of the choices are good ones, with the exception of a picture of Madonna, which for me has no place on this list. Check out Time’s Best Photos of the Year 2005. (Update: I agree with Katie’s comment that the pic of Courtney Love doesn’t belong on the Reuters list as well.)