buckdata – news and views for an unquiet age

Feb. 17 UPDATE- The Santa Cruz Library Joint Powers Board put off a vote on any of four proposals under consideration for the library system’s future. Two of the proposals called for closing multiple library branches. However, after hearing public testimony at its Feb. 14 meeting, the board instead directed a subcommittee to come up [...]

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It’s Christmas time. The cookies are in play. These have a different frosting, tweaked spices, lots of sugar and butter. What do I think? I think of my aunt’s diabetes, of elevated glucose levels. I think of my hard-won battle with cholesterol. I think of the movie, Supersize Me, that I recently got from the [...]

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Friends, family, and acquaintances are raising questions about whether President Obama  can accomplish  what we helped elect him to do. Will the wars end in Iraq and Afghanistan? Will clean energy really be funded? Will Bush-era wiretap and other privacy violations be sufficiently curtailed?  Will single payer health care get endorsed or merely sidelined? Will [...]

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Huffington Post does it. Raw Story does it. Obama does it, and so too, reportedly, do Republicans like Karl Rove. They all use Twitter. Twitter is software which allows a registered member to send out very brief messages to others, either from twitter.com’s website or from a cell phone. Recipients can get the messages either [...]

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Monterey Bay Area writer Pat Hanson delivers some practical suggestions for handling a Christmas when material resources are short. Virtual Christmas Giving: A True Story I prefer Halloween to Christmas.  You can dress up any way you like, pretend, and have an excuse for putting on a mask.  As soon as retailers start luring us [...]

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