Fair Trade Expo

~Last Saturday, I helped out at a Fair Trade Expo held at the Carrboro Century Center. The event was part of "The Big Read", a program run by the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Central Piedmont Literacy Collaborative. The idea of this region's Big Read is to get as many people as possible to read The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, so people will better understand what migrant farm laborers (of which there are many in North Carolina) go through in difficult economic times.

The expo was being run by the staff of the Carrboro Cybrary, and since I work nearby at the Carrboro Branch Library, I decided to help out.

^ The information table of the Fair Trade Expo. Learn all about Fair Trade!

Fair Trade is a market-based social program designed to empower producers in developing countries and ensure sustainability, typically for agricultural trade items such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, tea, etc. To be certified as "Fair Trade", a product must reach certain standards of ethical production, ensuring that the producers are paid a fair wage, have good working conditions, and have a stake in the business (for a much better explanation, look at the Fair Trade Overview at fairtradeusa.org).

This might sound hopelessly idealistic, but it's a market-based business approach (like micro-lending), not a pie-in-the-sky hippie scheme. The amount of Fair Trade products produced and sold is increasing rapidly, and it has helped millions in developing countries achieve not only better standards of living, but a sustainable business model that will continue to produce income for them. On the buyers side, we get the benefit of high-quality, pesticide-free products, and an increased market for U.S. exports as consumers in developing nations are able to buy more.

^ Representatives from the Open Eye Cafe were at the Expo, selling delicious, freshly-brewed fair trade coffee. Or at least, it smelled delicious; I haven't drank coffee since I got back from Japan.

^ My job at the expo was to run a quiz about fair trade; the display on my left has facts about fair trade that help with the quiz.

^ Good luck, girls! 5 out of 8 correct answers won the quiz-taker a prize (a magnet, button, or sticker). The rare person who got them all correct (and believe me, it wasn't easy!) won a fair-trade chocolate bar.

^ This dad got a little help from his backseat driver.

^ There was also a representative from Ten Thousands Villages, a chain of shops that sell fair trade handicrafts such as ornaments and toys.

^ This guy from Weaver Street Market had plenty of fair trade items for sale, including coffee, tea, cooking cocoa, and chocolate bars. He also had free chocolate samples...

^ Another game at the expo was this "Pin the Fair Trade Food on the Country", along with information on which countries the products come from.

We ended up with perhaps thirty people stopping by the expo. It wasn't a tremendous turnout, as I don't think it was advertised enough. There was a reporter from the Chapel Hill Herald who interviewed me and wrote an article about the expo for the paper. Still, I'm glad that a few dozen people got a chance to learn what the "Fair Trade" label means, so they'll understand when they see it in stores. Hopefully, if given a choice, they'll buy fair trade.

Enceladus Up Close

~Click here to see some amazing pictures of Enceladus, a satellite of the planet Saturn, taken by the Cassini space probe. It's the third satellite in the solar system in which internal geologic activity has been detected, after Io and Triton.

Oopsies!

~Can you spot what is wrong with the picture below? (Hint: somebody made a truly asinine mistake.)

^Yes, that red-white-and-blue scarf with the word "VOTE" being worn by Governor Palin does indeed have donkeys on it, the symbol of the Democratic party. I guess it must be hard for her to keep track of the $150,000 spent by the Republican National Commitee to buy expensive clothes for her entire family (ironically, a likely violation of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law). Yessir, the RNC is putting your donation money to good use!

My suspicion: the person in charge of Palin's wardrobe is actually an Obama spy.

The Successful Launch of IBEX

~NASA's latest science satellite, the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (or IBEX) was successfully launched today. Its purpose is to detect and examine particles from the termination shock, which is where the solar wind blasting outward from the Sun begins to slow down and eventually cease. It will also study galactic cosmic rays, which may pose a health hazard for astronauts operating beyond Earth's orbit.

Aside from its scientific value, an interesting thing to note about IBEX was its unusual launch method. Rather than blasting off from the surface of the Earth or being released by a space shuttle in orbit, IBEX utilized the Pegasus launch system, which is a rocket released from an aircraft in flight. Imagine a large plane firing a missile, which is powerful enough to go into orbit. This is useful only for small payloads; fortunately, IBEX is about the size of a bus tire. You can see a video of the IBEX launch by clicking here.

"I am here to clear these mines, sir!"

~Coming this holiday season: a Hollywood mega-blockbuster, from the creators of: Mario Brothers, Double Dragon, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Tekken, Pokemon: The Movie, Wing Commander, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark, Doom, Bloodrayne, and Silent Hill:

Minesweeper: The Movie

Indiana Jones and the Ring of Death?

~I spent most of Saturday at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and the North Carolina Museum of History. While I would have enjoyed the museums in any case, I was there as part of an assignment for a class I'm enrolled in, on the subject of how libraries and other institutions can be places of lifelong learning for adults. The professor scored us free passes to see the Dead Sea Scrolls traveling exhibit, which I was looking forward to.

At first, I thought the Scrolls exhibit was a bit of a letdown: the scroll fragments were tiny, and most of the exhibit was there to establish context for them, with information on ancient Israel and the cult that created the Scrolls. The room with the scrolls was dark and had ethereal music playing, theatrical effects which I found irritating rather than awe-inspiring. After pondering the exhibit for a couple of days, however, I've decided that I like it more than I did while I was there. After all, I did walk away from it knowing more than I did when I entered, and there were some interesting dioramas and other displays. Of course, the fact that I wasn't charged $22 certainly helped.

The most interesting thing I saw on my day of museums was actually not the scrolls, but rather a mysterious silver ring located in the military history exhibit of the History Museum. The permanent exhibit is titled "A Call To Arms", and documents the involvement of North Carolina soldiers throughout the history of the state. New since my visit to the museum last year was an expanded section on North Carolina soldiers in Iraq.

The ring that interested me, however, is in the World War II section. Take a look:













Creepy, isn't it? Notice the SS lightning bolts on either side, and the date "1946" on one side and "DACHAU" on the other. The history behind this object is brief but fascinating. It was handmade by a Nazi SS guard who worked at Dachau, the first of the infamous concentration camps where tens of thousands of prisoners were gassed or worked to death. The camp was liberated by Allied forces in 1945, and the SS guard was captured and later put on trial for crimes against humanity.

He made the ring while incarcerated, and gave it to an American soldier (from North Carolina) who had been guarding the German prisoners awaiting trial; apparently, the SS guard felt that the American had treated him humanely. What a story! In the words of a friend of mine, "This is how action movies begin." A mysterious ring, passed down through the family for generations, holding a terrible secret...I can almost hear the late Don LaFontaine in my head.

Unfortunately, details about the ring were frustratingly lacking while I was in the museum. What were the names of the SS guard and the North Carolinian solider? How did the ring get to the museum? Why was it donated? I wished there was a way I could find out at the museum, but I had little to go on. Later, I searched through the museum website, hoping for more details, and found the page for the ring...but it has even less information than what is actually written at the exhibit. So I emailed the head of collections, asking for more information. This morning, I received a reply (links added and spelling corrected by me):

"Mr. Dusto—this ring was donated by a North Carolinian from Scotland Neck in Halifax County who served as an enlisted solider in the US Army 1944-1946. While part of the Army of Occupation in Germany, he was selected to assist the judges at the Dachau War Tribunal Trials as needed. As such he often escorted the prisoners. This ring was made by one of the former guards at Dachau who was on trial who was later executed. The donor could not remember the name of the prisoner. The prisoner made it while in jail and gave it to the donor in appreciation for the humane treatment he received. Hope this information helps. Regards, Tom Belton, Curator of Military History, North Carolina Museum of History"

So, there was more to the story, as I suspected, but Mr. Belton's reply leaves a great deal out. What does he mean, "the donor could not remember the name of the prisoner"? Why not? Did the prisoner and the guard barely know each other, and the Nazi just gave it to him one day? Was the ring found in the soldier's estate after his death, without him saying much about it? Or perhaps...the soldier didn't want to remember the person who gave him the ring, and just wanted to get rid of an object attached to such hideous memories of what was done in the camps..?

I have the sudden urge to write a screenplay. In the meantime, to learn what Indiana Jones thinks of Nazis, click here.

The Communist Threat!

~"Investigative Reporter" Stephen Colbert has exposed a Red Menace lurking in society, one different from the massive socialist bank bailout from "Comrade Bush". This new threat is slowly but surely destroying America's free market system by lending books to the public for free. Watch this video, as it is essential that you be able to recognize this Marxist threat lurking in nearly every town in our nation:



^ Looks like things are looking up in my profession! Actually, I really have noticed a significant increase in library use since the mountain range that was the Dow Jones suddenly eroded into a canyon. I think library use will only increase in the coming years. At libraries, you can (among other things): check out books, DVDs, and audio books; use computers and the internet; read newspapers and magazines; and even take your children to storytime and other events. Best of all, there's no individual charge for any of this. Libertarians need not apply.

Incidentally, I forgot to mention that the week of September 27 was Banned Books Week, which celebrated books that are banned or challenged for removal across the United States. The SILS library at UNC displayed a collection of challenged children's books and had a banned books reading. It's sad that books like "Huckleberry Finn" are still challenged. In my opinion, the most amusingly pathetic attempt to challenge a book was a parent who in 2006 wanted to remove "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury from the reading list of his daughter's school.

Yeah...let's ban a book about book banning! While we're at it, let's have a public book burning! We'll party like it's 999!

Impact in 3....2....1....

~Lurking in the depths of space, a piece of material left over from the formation of the solar system has orbited the sun for billions of years. Hurtling through the void, its path has now brought it to its final destination: Earth!

No, no, it's not that bad. However, for the first time, astronomers were able to accurately calculate the location that a small asteroid would explode in Earth's atmosphere.

The meteor, designated Asteroid 2008 TC3 (or 8TA9D69), was between 3 and 15 feet in diameter, and was discovered by astronomers at Mount Lemon Observatory, which is operated by the University of Arizona. It entered Earth's atmosphere and subsequently exploded in a 1-kiloton fireball at 10:46 pm EST over northern Sudan, moving eastward towards the Red Sea (which is northeast of the Horn of Africa).

The meteor was predicted to explode in the upper atmosphere, and therefore did not cause any damage on the ground (although I imagine it might have given some uninformed pilots in the area quite a shock). I think it's amazing that astronomers were able to detect and predict the fate of this asteroid, and it gives me hope that larger and potentially dangerous space objects could be detected before they impact Earth.

Of course, even if we did know that a killer asteroid was headed our way, there's not much we could do about it at this point. Our only realistic option would be to assemble a team of roughneck oil drillers led by Bruce Willis to land on the asteroid and destroy it. Bruce, the survival of our civilization is in your hands!

There's No Place Like Home

~Check out this alternate ending to "The Wizard of Oz", which reveals what Dorothy was *really* thinking towards the end of the film:

The Wisdom of Dr. Losee

~On Mondays and Wednesdays, I attend a required class in "Research Methods", which is a prelude to completing a master's thesis. My instructor, Bob Losee, occasionally throws out gems of wisdom on various topics. Here are a few of his sayings:

Dr Losee on research sampling:

• "There's nothing magical about samples."

Dr. Losee on causation:

• "Causation is best done by English majors."

Dr. Losee on money:

• "You can get fancier if you've got money."

Dr. Losee on sex:

• "Guess what? Sex is a whole lot in your head."

And my personal favorite, Dr. Losee on variables:

• "Independent variables are variables that can vary independently."