Behind every good woman....

The other night, I was all set to go to sleep early, and then I caught the last forty-five minutes or so of the latest Democratic presidential-candidate debate in New Hampshire. I'm sure there are lots of things to be said about this event, but I'll just talk about what really bothered me. First of all, half of the questions addressed to Hillary Clinton were about Bill Clinton - things he'd said and done, positions of his set up for her to disagree with. It really is pretty disgusting. I can't remember if they did the same thing with George W. Bush and his father, but I'm willing to bet it's more intense this time because...ding ding ding! She's a woman, and a former First Lady.

The last two questions of the debate, too, made me lose just a little more faith in the "journalism" of most television news. They were "What is your favorite Bible verse?" and "Red Sox or Yankees?" (the latter no doubt somewhat important to New Hampshire-ites). Still. Couldn't the first be rephrased by asking what the candidates think is the most important moral question for the U.S.? I guess they might have to get into moral specifics then.

Anyway, there's my nice disgusted reaction to that. As to the candidates themselves, it really is nearly impossible to get at real beliefs and potential actions in staged situations (which are the only places we ever see them).

Let's talk about library stuff instead - much more pleasant. Here's what I'm taking this semester:

Evaluation of Information. My last requirement. This is basically social science research methods for librarians, and sometimes it's pretty painful going (e.g., three hours about inferential statistics). Hopefully it will be somewhat useful to me in the future.

Database Management. Oh, math and logic, I missed you! I'm learning how to represent data and the relationships among them in a usable way. Extremely useful, and I get excited about it in the same way I used to get excited about diagramming sentences.

User Instruction. The teaching class. I love this class - what we talk about, how it's run. Even though I'm not going to be a teacher, I seem to keep coming back to the theory and practice of education. And even though I think I'd make a very bad teacher in some areas, information literacy and user instruction are subjects I think I can handle. I just read an article for this class on how students, increasingly, don't really care about doing real research and learning; they just care how they can get the highest grade with the least amount of effort. This is certainly at least partially true, and I'm not sure how to combat it. It seems like teachers and librarians are only this small portion of what a student takes in every day.


In any case. The weather has cooled down and September is ending spectacularly here in Boston. I'm going to go do my homework outside.