Blissed out when I shouldn't be..

Oh. My. God.

One of my favorite publications ever, the Onion, just published a blog post about a controversy regarding book banning in Missouri. The author, Noel Murray, makes some eloquent statements about the role of libraries in the community which reads just like anything you'd find in a journal from the library world. Because he's normally writes about pop culture, and has no obvious connection to the library world, this post is stunning to me. He really nails all the stuff librarians like to say about themselves, but is rarely heard from outside our insular library world. We need more of these voices!

Too bad we only elicit such praise when such censorship occurs.

Why it's not right that search engines save your search terms...

This weekend, I opened up my local paper, to discover an AP story about the disgraced senator from Florida, Foley, and his contact with 16-year old pages. It was illustrated with a picture of former president Clinton.

While I am by no means Clinton's biggest supporter, (I voted third-party rather than for him or Dole) I considered writing a letter-to-the-editor about how inappropriate it was to compare Clinton's issues with Foley's. After all, Lewinsky was old enough to consent. Except, what is Florida's age of consent? I don't know... and I'm too afraid to do a Google search, since that information will then be stored in Google's database, making me look like a creepy person who is looking to justify some unseemly actions, rather than a concerned, but happily married citizen.

I guess I should start looking into the Dutch search engine mentioned on NPR that refuses to store such info... If only I can find the NPR article...

running stuff

Edited to add: This is getting a lot of hits right now in people's search for Goodview Gallop Running results. I understand. I will post a link to the 2007 results on my other blog Winona Running and help you find the 2006 Results.

So enough on parenting. Back to my latest, and oldest obsession: running.

I looked and looked online for the results of the Miller Lite/Milwaukee Public Museum Dinosaur Dash from 2001 & 2002. However, since the race is now defunct, so is access to the results. However, I eventually remembered I did have a print-out of my 2001 time. Yeah! It sort of reminds me of those times I told middle schoolers "Believe me, you may think Internet research is faster, but you'd be surprised..."

Turns out my time was 23:39.6 in 2001 dash. I think my time was slightly, although not much, faster in 2002. It was a USATF certified course, which makes me think my 22:38 5K in Waukegan was both 1) not a one-time fluke and 2) legit. I'd been thinking that because 23:40 was the fastest time I ran as part of my college's cross-country team, the Waukegan 5k must've been off. I was being trained by a coach, after all. I guess I wasn't training as hard as I should've been. (I wasn't that into running long distances at the time.)

Now it makes my 27:26.0 in the Goodview Gallop seem really slow. I would love to find another 5k to run this fall so I can see if longer runs have improved my time. I looked at Runner's World, Running in the USA, and other sites. Any suggestions?