July link dump

I'm getting awfully tabby lately, so here are a bunch of links, so I can close tabs and not feel so bad about it.

• Betty Charm♥cils
  I saw ads in the subway tunnel on 14th St. that connects the 1,2,3 and the F,L, and PATH trains for "Betty: Color for Hair Down There" and for some reason felt compelled to know more. (I'm not thinking of it for myself; they don't offer blue hair dye. They do have a pink one, though, which is called, "Fun.") I like that the side view of the packaging makes it look kind of dildo-like, and the Charm♥cils, just kill me.
• The future of federated searching
  Seen on Library Juice. Rory and I don't get along, but I do agree with him sometimes, and I think this is pretty funny.
• Greens, after the nomination of the McKinney-Clemente...
  Ever since Eric and I accidentally watched the riveting (okay more entertaining than you would have thought) Libertarian Party nominating convention on C-SPAN, I've been waiting to hear who the Greens would run for President. Well now I know that it's Cynthia McKinney and NYC local girl Rosa Clemente, I'm kind of excited. I was kind of interested in Obama when he was running for the Democratic nomination, but now that he's running for president, he all of a sudden sounds just as insincere as the rest of 'em, and expresses the same middle of the road bs as the rest of 'em, too. But I don't say "yea McKinney" just because I say "boo Obama." I have admired her since I heard her speak at some rally before the war on Iraq started. I don't know much about Clemente--that I can remember--but I wouldn't be surprised if I'd crossed paths with her at some point or have compañeros in common, from the NYC IMC, Clamor, or RNC stuff.
  I like that she's young--36, I think. I've been thinking that it's wrong that there's a minimum age for president. Why shouldn't the people be allowed to select the person they think is best for the job, even if she's young? Personally, I'm a lot more worried about folks at the other end of the spectrum. If there's a minimum age, there should be a maximum, too. Regardless of what I think of McCain's politics, he just doesn't strike me as someone who is very sharp anymore (I have no idea if he ever was, though.). He strikes me as someone who couldn't stay awake through an hour long lecture in the middle of the day. I respect my elders and all, but I know from my own experience that the mind, along with the body, weakens with age.
• Is it Protected by Copyright?
  This one also comes from Library Juice. I think it's quite nifty, but the perfectionist in me can't be stopped from complaining about their improper capitalization. I believe in a title, "it" gets capitalized.
• Library questions and answers
  I'm pretty sure I read about this on LISNews, which is a little insulting since James, who created it, is a friend and collaborator, and he didn't tell me about it himself. Whining aside (I'm kidding anyway!), this is a Google Custom Search that searches the websites of libraries that publish their reference questions and answers. Radical Reference is on there, and so is the site James and his partner Shinjoung created at Stanford, the awesome Information Center.
• Life on the command line
  Which I saw either on LISNews or Librarian in Black. I know I should somehow note this sort of thing. I wish when you opened a link in a new tab, it remembered where it came from, and you could back into it. If there's an extension for that, let me know. Anyway, I'm excited to try this. My spouse, who does spend much of his life on the command line looked at it and gave it a 1. (As opposed to a 0, get it?)
• mon.thly.info
  I read about this in Bust--or maybe saw it on their blog? Anyway, it helps you track your period and sends you a reminder when it's due. I was kind of hoping there was more to it than that. I gave it 8 months of data, and all it did was average my cycle. That means it's not really all that great for people like me who aren't very regular. My average may be 31 days, but I rarely menstruate on day 31. (Too much information? Sorry!) Could they incorporate additional information, moon phases and what have you to guess when your cycle might go short or long?
  Is it ridiculous to imagine this as a little more 2.0? I mean, not with pictures or anything, but where you could track your friends' or your favorite roller derby team's cycles? Or at least be able to share it with someone who has a vested interest in your menses or lack thereof? Maybe be able to send people imaginary gifts (or real ones!) of chocolate, ibuprofen, tampons, and massages?
• Not guilty!
  Somehow I got this guy's blog into my feed reader. Amazingly, he had a similar experience and reaction to dealing with a Critical Mass ticket as I did. Amazingly, nearly everyone I know had a similar experience in traffic court if they showed up to fight their ticket. The police officer "wasn't prepared," i.e. didn't contest the ticket. As Eric wrote, "The officer and I were standing before the Judge and I opened up my folder of printouts. He looked at me and gave me a smirk and waved his hand in a way that said 'put all that away, it won't be necessary.' When the judge asked him to present his case, he simply said 'I'm sorry, but I'm not prepared for this case.'" The worst thing about that is that they then expect you to thank them for not being dicks. If they weren't dicks, they wouldn't have given you a ticket they thought was stupid in the first place. Even though few of us riders end up paying fines, we do still lose half a day's work, often having to truck to boroughs other than the one in which we were issued the summons. (E.g. I had to go to Coney Island to fight one of mine.)
• Our government wants to define some forms of birth control as abortion
  Courtesy of my feed reader since I'm a big old fan of both Bitch magazine and Lisa Jervis. "...a new Health and Human Services Department proposal that would define the pill, the patch, the shot, the IUD, the ring, and Plan B as abortion rather than contraception." Lisa's source was RH Reality Check post. I loved Andi Zeisler's "Every Sperm Is Sacred" comment, "I'm so curious to see if the next step is outlawing masturbation for straight men on the grounds that any seed not directly used as a conduit to egg-fertilizing is, like, abortion by omission or something. Oh, but wait -- it's not about men's bodies and autonomy, is it? After all, condoms aren't on that list..."

If you made it all the way through this, thanks for reading. I'll try to be better at keeping up--shorter, but more frequent posts, cuz it's kind of unlikely I'd read through a post this long on someone else's blog!