Amazing how many people love to network socially on sites such as Facebook and Myspace - millions of you. John Cassidy nails this trend - and the companies it supports - in his article "The Online Life: Me Media: How hanging out on the Internet became big business," in the May 15 issue of The New Yorker magazine. Read this article - virtually - from General Reference Center Gold electronic database, or actually from the actual May 15 issue of The New Yorker magazine at the library.

Sidney Poitier was recently named a Commander in France's Order of Arts and Letters during a ceremony at this year's Cannes Film Festival. In presenting Poitier with the title, French culture minister Renaud Donnedieu De Vabres proclaimed, "You are the champion of equality between men."

The library has the following films starring Poitier:
Blackboard Jungle, The Bedford Incident, The Defiant Ones, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Lilies of the Field, A Raisin in the Sun, To Sir, With Love, and my personal favorite, In the Heat of the Night.

Presented by the Entertainment Software Association, the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or Exposition), commonly known as E³ or E3, is the world's largest annual trade show for the computer and video games industry and the third largest gaming convention. The expo is open only to game industry professionals, celebrities and journalists who are over eighteen.

The 2006 E³ show focused on the upcoming releases of Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii, along with the next wave of games for the Nintendo DS and Xbox 360. Several websites such as the Washington Post noted in retrospect that Nintendo clearly dominated and stole the show. They cite as an example the queues; which were approximately half an hour long to play the PlayStation 3 and up to four hours long to play the Wii.

So the first book in the Gossip Girl series by Cecily Von Ziegesar was published 4 years ago and the 9th book in the series Only in your dreams just came out, but after Naomi Wolf wrote a scathing editorial in the New York Times about this series and their read-alikes Clique and The A-List everyone has been talking about it. Yes, they are basically Sex and The City for teens filled with consumerism and fun without consequences. Are they any worse than anything as popular that came before them? No. Are they flashier and better marketed? Definitely. Any teen who is reading these books - as opposed to watching the rampant fun without consquences on TV or online - is a teen I wouldn't worry about. Because *reading* is what separates the teens you worry about from the ones you don't.

With the recent revelation that three major telecommunications companies are working under contract with the NSA to collect the phone records of millions of average Americans, the discussion of how to balance civil liberties and national security seems more important now than ever before. Is it safe to say that we are now all living in a virtual panopticon? A surveillance society?

The library has a number of books on this topic for those interested in learning more. Here are some recent titles:
No Place to Hide
Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping
Civil Liberties: Opposing Viewpoints
The End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance is Becoming a Reality
The Naked Employee: How Technology is Compromising Workplace Privacy
The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror
Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID

It's still a week away from hitting theaters, but Ron Howard's film version of the controversial blockbuster is making as many waves as Tom Hanks' new hairdo. Churches are trying to debunk the novel; a senior official (and devout Catholic) in the Philippine government hopes his state's censors will ban the film. Others are simply tired of all the hype. But if you can't wait for the film, or you're one of the two remaining people alive who doesn't yet know the 'secret' of 'the code', here are a few videos to tide you over: Unlocking Da Vinci's Code, Jesus, Mary and Da Vinci or Da Vinci Code DeCoded.

It appears that LucasArts has finally given in to fan demands and promised to release the original Star Wars trilogy in all its unaltered glory. I am glad the greed finally won out over Lucas's strange need to tinker..

Porter Goss (image from Wikipedia)

AADL Select Sites : World

The recent resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss has followed a string of a high-profile personnel changes in the Bush administration. Other changes include replacing the Press Secretary Scott McClellan with Fox News and radio pundit Tony Snow and Joshua Bolten stepping in as Chief of Staff, a position previously held by Andrew Card.

With all these changes, it can be dificult to keep the people in power straight here in the U.S., to say nothing of what's occuring worldwide. That's where Rulers.org, one of our handy AADL Select Sites, steps in. This website details how leadership has changed in countries over their histories. For instance, you can see the powerful people in France throughout history, including its kings, emperor, and presidents.

Rulers.org also tracks recent changes in country officials and royalty. May 2006 has seen not only Goss's resignation, but also new cabinets in Israel and Afghanistan and a reshuffling of the British cabinet. Simply click the the month and year in which you're interested from the Rulers.org homepage.

Current magazine says this “rousing band indulges in hip-shaking ska, Latin, and rock.” I’d add swing and rockabilly to that mix, but whatever you call it, Hullabaloo is sheer energy and fun. They play at T.C.’s Speakeasy in Ypsi on Saturday night. If you can’t wait that long, try one of Hullabaloo’s CDs from the Library collection.

The Diane Rehm Show on Tuesday, April 25th featured an interview with Russian author Boris Akunin, the pen name of Grigory Chkhartishvili. His literary detective novels became bestsellers in Russia and soon spread to the English-speaking world. The AADL owns several of his books in both English and Russian, as well as The Winter Queen and Murder on the Leviathan as books-on-CD. Can anyone spot the sly allusion to a certain Russian thinker hidden in Chkhartishvili's pen name?