John -- thanks for the comment. There are, of course, millions of people who do believe that the newly fertilized egg is a person with full human rights. Many of the new anti-abortion laws are explicit about this. Your comment suggests that you do not think these people are "reasonable", which, I suppose, depends on how you define "reasonable". Certainly the reality of an aborted fetus may be disturbing and upsetting, but the long thoughtful literature on human rights would suggest that basing those rights on the degree to which a fetus resembles a baby may not be sufficient. You're right that if you disallow the moment of conception, there is no bright line to bring comfort to the decision to abort. That ambiguity is very hard for people to deal with. But the only way to eliminate the ambiguity is to stick with the moment of conception. And that ultimately requires a religious basis for giving the zygote full human rights.

Thanks. I think it's worth struggling with. I'm always trying to get a better handle on what's really going on in the minds of people who have views so fundamentally opposed to my own. Most people believe that they're doing "the right thing," even when it's something that causes pain to other people.

Tom -- thanks! I learned some things myself. The surprises are part of the point of my doing these longer pieces, I think.

Very nice rendition by Mike Farris! Thanks. There's actually tons of great music that gets labeled "country" -- you just won 't hear much of it on contemporary country radio.

Tom -- love that

And here's one more marvelous reason for hope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN-3F8T4t5w

Bev -- I blush. I certainly expect to be involved for quite some time. I'll continue going to Charleston and I'd love to get to UKSG again in the next couple of years. Kay -- sounds like you're making a success of your retirement this time 'round. Seems it hits everybody differently and each of us has to find our own way. Which, I guess, is no different from what it was like before retirement.

Tom -- actually, it's worse then that. I'm picking up one extra evening of cooking, which I'll enjoy, but I'm going to do cleanup every night. And Lynn can be a very messy cook. But it's only fair. These last few years she's had to take over almost all of the household chores which has interfered with her own retirement. So I need to take on some of the things that I can manage.

Counting the refugees is tricky -- the numbers I quoted are here: http://www.factcheck.org/2015/09/stretching-facts-on-syrian-refugees/ But you're quite right that the numbers don't answer the ethical question.

As I pointed out in my Doe lecture (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3257492/) librarians contribute to this misconception by continually talking about what "the library" does, rather than what librarians do.

For our Boston gig I was actually toying with sticking a rap verse into something but I didn't get around to figuring it out. Mostly I just wanted to blow my bandmates' minds.

Yes, the filter caught it (nothing personal!). Let me see if I can release it.

Many congratulations! This bodes well for CILIP and as a very interested observer from across the pond, I am very pleased.

ILPUK. Lovely way it rolls off the tongue (with a nice little click in the back of the throat). My university (http://www.uab.edu) is currently using "Knowledge That Will Change Your World" as our tag line (the U.S. version of "strap line"). Does this mean that we can all join CILIP/ILPUK since it is the organization for those in the "knowledge professions"?

I've been watching events with great interest and although your motion didn't pass, the vote tally indicates substantial concern among the membership with the way things have been proceeding. I hope you'll be able to leverage this to make CILIP a more open, transparent and responsive organization.

Kent -- thanks for chiming in. I think what was most significant about the STM session was simply the range of opinions and approaches reflected in the publishing community. If librarians would spend more time engaging with publishers they would realize that there are, in fact, many people in that community that we can work with effectively.

Bill -- I'm not sure I follow you. Is this a case of sarcasm not playing well on the internet? Mike -- I wish that SPARC would drop the adversarial stance and try to work with publishers to build on what they're currently doing in order to try to shape things in a direction that works for all of the stakeholders. I don't expect that to happen. Professor Harnad -- your views are well known. Does cutting and pasting the abstract of a 3-year old article into a comment constitute spam?

Marcus -- I'm glad you caught that. It was intended to be rather tongue-in-cheek.

I'm so glad to hear it's been restored. I was dumbstruck when I first saw it back in the eighties. When the renovations were finally done some years ago and I first had a chance to see the Folk Art wing, I was afraid it wouldn't be on display anymore. Then I saw what had been done with it and I actually cried. I get back to DC a couple of times a year (I lived there for several years in the mid-eighties) and I always try to stop by to spend a few minutes. It really is a sacred space.

I'm looking forward to it... See you there...

Reminds me of one of my friend Lonnie's favorite quotes: "A moment's thought would have shown him his error -- but thought is difficult, and a moment is a long time."

You may very well be right. It may be that the incremental approach that FRPAA represents is the best that we can do right now. And yet, when I talk to people in publishing I don’t hear much resistance to Open Access. Marty Frank, at APS, has been the most vocal of the society publishers in his opposition to FRPAA and to the NIH Policy, but he’s been a leader among the Highwire publishers in making content freely available and he’s the one who helped develop and push the linking proposal that I reference in this post. During the discussions that led to the report from the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable, it became clear that the big commercial publishers were quite willing to consider some form of funder-supported gold OA. The big publishers (commercial and not-for-profit), given their significant investments in infrastructure, definitely get the importance of standards for interoperability and the importance of preservation/archiving. So I think the sad irony is that the focus on FRPAA has actually been an impediment. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the folks at OSTP are smart enough to ignore all of the RWA/FRPAA noise.

I stand corrected! Kudos to ISTL.

And to Ben -- I'm not falling in with the publishers. I don't fall in with anybody. I agree with some policies of some publishers and disagree strongly with some policies of others. I'm a strong supporter of OA (and helped to make the JMLA the first major open access library journal back in 2000), but think it should be to the version of record. I disagree with SPARC on tactics and I think FRPAA is a poor legislative solution. I like the idea of funders setting up peer review mechanisms and wish that NIH would take a stronger role in supporting Gold OA. All I'm trying to address in this post is that the policies make it explicit that there is something publishers do that the policy makers feel is essential. I would certainly agree that some publishers add little value and many are perhaps not being as innovative as we might wish, but I'm afraid that a blanket statement that "publishers" aren't doing this or that without acknowledging the tremendous variation among publishers is kind of meaningless.

To Joe: My point here is only that the publishers are apparently doing something that the policy makers feel is essential and which they, for some reason, have decided not to try to duplicate. In my previous post I suggest something similar to what you say here -- let's have a requirement that funded researchers publish in OA journals, and provide, within the grant, some mechanism for funding that. Regarding Elsevier just refusing to publish those papers, yes, in theory they could refuse to take those articles, although for any journal that publishes a substantial number of papers that come from funded research that would be suicide. When you offer somebody two options (refuse to publish the papers, or comply with the policy) and one of the options will put them out of business it's not really much of a choice. It kinda reminds me of the reactions of librarians to the suggestion that they should just quit buying Elsevier products if those products are so grossly overpriced. It's also worth pointing out that Elsevier was providing authors' final versions of NIH-funded papers back when the policy was voluntary. Before the policy became mandatory, compliance was hovering around 7%. It would've been around 3-4% if it weren't for the documents that Elsevier was supplying. It's not the deposit that Elsevier objects to, it's the compulsion. I'm not defending Elsevier here -- I strongly disagree with their support of RWA and I'm one of very few librarians who has walked away from the Big Deal. I just think that the situation is more complex than many of Elsevier's most vocal critics apparently do.