The Strident Centrist Blog

Stephen Dubner at Freakonomics asks a provocative question: If libraries didn’t exist in today’s environment, could they be started?

But here’s the point I’m (finally) getting to: if there was no such thing today as the public library and someone like Bill Gates proposed to establish them in cities and towns across the U.S. (much like Andrew Carnegie once did), what would happen?

I am guessing there would be a huge pushback from book publishers. Given the current state of debate about intellectual property, can you imagine modern publishers being willing to sell one copy of a book and then have the owner let an unlimited number of strangers borrow it?

I don’t think so. Perhaps they’d come up with a licensing agreement: the book costs $20 to own, with an additional $2 per year for every year beyond Year 1 it’s in circulation. I’m sure there would be a lot of other potential arrangements. And I am just as sure that, like a lot of systems that evolve over time, the library system is one that, if it were being built from scratch today, would have a very different set of dynamics and economics.

Shelly Batts at Retrospectacle points us to the Beer Microscopy Project at Florida State. Was The Onion story true, that FSU is bowing to pressure from alumni and students and has begun phasing out all academic operations?

A friend of my daughter’s has started a Webzine billed as the “inside game for people who aren’t getting rich, a.k.a most people“. Looks cool. Check it out.

FRISCO, Texas — An award-winning Texas art teacher who was reprimanded after one of her fifth-grade students saw a nude sculpture during a trip to a museum has lost her job. The school board in Frisco has voted not to renew Sydney McGee’s contract after 28 years. She has been on administrative leave.The teacher took her students on an approved field trip to a Dallas museum, and now some parents are upset.

. . .

The parents had signed permission slips allowing their children to take part in the field trip.

McGee’s lawyer said the principal at Fisher Elementary School admonished her after a parent complained that a student had seen nude art. McGee said the principal had urged her to take the students to the museum.

It’s nice to have a principal that stands behind you.