The Library of Yore No More

A couple friends of mine are pursuing a Master’s in Library Sciences. To be honest, I can’t quite grasp why you need a master’s degree to be a librarian, but in fairness I will simply plead ignorance of what skills/knowledge is required for the job.

Best of luck to the both of them, in all seriousness. I hope they find it an enjoyable and lucrative career, I really do.

But I think they are entering into a dying field, propped up on crutches by the government’s monopoly on libraries and their IV trickle of money.  The very concept of a library is quickly becoming deprecated.

Biting the Hand That Feeds

Last year in Massachusetts*, Gov. Deval Patrick used a special power to reject 235 of 274 proposed rate increases by state health insurance companies. This, of course, did not sit well with said companies and they went to court over it and, in the mean time, stopped creating new policies. Unfortunately for them, a judge quickly ordered them to return to business as usual.

I can't say for certain what his rationale for it was, but I am confident it involved some form of "protecting the people" kick to it. Health insurance is "too important to deny" folks, since it is for so many a matter of health and sometimes life or death, theoretically. So to allow these companies to start denying customers would be, in some way, tantamount to murder, however tangentially or indirectly.

Optimizing For Enjoyment, or Crowd-Sourcing Cool

Part of the reason I’ve resisted social networks for so long is the huge time sink they inevitably become. And in-between my day job, playing video games, and the various necessities of life (sleeping, showering, shitting, etc.), I have to squeeze reading news, hobby code projects, watching videos, and writing these posts. And that list doesn’t include the highly variable friend/girlfriend time, either. If I tried to add “check Facebook" into that I’d be screwed. Something would have to give, and I like all of the things currently on the list.

Because that’s the crux of time constraints like life: you have to optimize for enjoyment as best you can. There are only so many minutes in the day. How will you best spend them, more or less?