I have engaged in the war against paper

Thanks to my miserly ways and a reverting pool of startup funds, I splurged on a new document scanner. This thing is amazing. I had a meeting with a graduate student this afternoon, where I took notes on a legal pad. When the meeting was over it took all of 3 seconds to scan my notes to a pdf file and store it in my student's directory.

Thanks to Jeremy for his inspiration to start my own war against paper.

The humbling reminder that we get things wrong

I'm deep in the historical databases, looking for material about W.I. and Dorothy Swaine Thomas. One of W.I.'s early arguments concerned the social and biological bases for the inferiority of women. As I understand the story, he changed his tune in the early 1920s. [Though I could be wrong, I haven't done a lot of biographical research yet]. In anycase, I came across the attached headline while working through Proquest's historical New York Times file. I like reviewing these bold proclaimations which turn out to be far from accurate. It humbles me and reminds me that regardless of how sure I may be about something, I too could be very wrong.

Source: The New York Times February 11, 1910, page 7

Bumper stickers that make me chuckle

After class this morning, I walked by the library on my way to buy a cup of coffee. A car parked in the library lot has the following slogan affixed to its rear bumper:

Yes I'm a librarian and I will shush your ass.