If you are like me (as in living in a non-US state and not keeping up on politics), you may have been surprised yesterday to see Wikipedia blacked out. (Icanhascheezburger was also blocked out, which I found out when I wanted to amuse myself with LOLcats while scanning visual survey cards with 1200 dpi - which takes a long time.)

If you are not living under a rock like I am, you will have heard of SOPA/PIPA before me. The tl;dr version: a bill is to be passed by the US Congress that supposedly stops piracy but would effectively mean a go-ahead for censoring the internet. Censoring the Internet. The place that made Rule 34. The place where you can find about anything. Where people throw around links, search for stuff, buy whatever they need or like, and connect with other people - all this would be in danger with the act.

This video can tell you why.


I'm doing my share of blogging, and that means passing along links. Like this one here to a primer about SOPA/PIPA (to get the quick and dirty version in form of an infographic, just scroll to the very end). To you, the readers, because I think that they might be interesting, or helpful, or funny for you. Posting links, however, sounds like it is going to be a dangerous thing after SOPA/PIPA passes - especially since my blog is a "domestic" site (it's blogger.com). Oh, by the way, so is the Textileforum site. Even if its server sits in Germany.

If you're just a little like me... you won't find that a great thing. Even if it inspires nice filk like this.



So please do your share and protest! If you live in the States, it seems to be most efficient to call your congressperson or walk into their office to tell them what you think about the act. Links to lists and help to find person and phone number are all over the InterBloggoTubez. Unfortunately, it's not so easy to protest when you are no US resident - but we can at least spread the word!

Anne McCaffrey, sf writer, died of a stroke on Monday. Locus online has an obituary, and I found out about it via ADM's blog post.

Anne McCaffrey was the writer that first made me really realise how different it is to read an English novel in the original from reading its German translation. I bought my first McCaffrey book - one from the Brain/Brawn series - on a bicycle holiday with my parents, and I loved it. With another of her books, I found that the German translation had lost all the appeal that came with her style of writing... and that convinced me to read books by English-language authors in the original, no matter what.


Then, for a while, she was my favourite author. I was in my teens, and her stories were just what I wanted: tales of love and conflict and glorious partnerships (between humans and dragons, humans and human-ish starships, humans and a living planet, and humans and humans). And all of them with a sort of happy ending guarantee. That was back in the days when it was not so easy to get your hands onto English language books in Germany, and I ordered them in via our local bookshop. With a considerable markup on the cover price in that procedure, I left quite a bit of money there.

Over the following years, my tastes gradually changed and evolved, and other authors took first place in my personal ranking. I stopped buying new books she wrote, instead turning to other tales - not so much guarantee for happy endings, not so many obvious storylines, and vastly different styles. Today, I usually tell people they are "Badewannenbücher" (bathtub books) - books that usually have more appeal to females than to males, a kind of story that you take into the bathtub with you for comfort reading when you are feeling down, with a non-taxing storyline and non-taxing style of writing, and something you don't mind too much if a splash of bath water gets onto it. (And there's nothing wrong with bathtub books - life would be much, much poorer without them.)

My sizeable stack of Anne McCaffrey books is still something I look at and remember my teenage days, my discovery of novels written in English. Even though I don't read them often anymore, they will stay - for the occasional day where I need to get into the tub with a book, or a friend does. And because Anne McCaffrey's books are an important part of my own history as a reader.

Rest in peace, Anne McCaffrey - and thank you for your books.

(Politics first, textile stuff later - please scroll down if you are not interested in German politics.)

At noon yesterday, the German Minister of Defense has abdicated. I think that this is a very, very good thing - it proves that the voters do care about the integrity of their politicians, that plagiarism is still a crime and not a gentleman's crime, and that the Internet community has become an influence big enough to overthrow a person of political importance.

The abdication of her minister does not sit well with the German chancellor Merkel, though - she is actually accusing those not on Guttenberg's side of "hypocrisy and dishonesty" and says that "We do not need to have anybody explain to us what integrity and honour are in our society" ("Wir müssen uns von niemandem erklären lassen, was Anstand und Ehre in unserer Gesellschaft sind", here's the full German press article with those statements).

Well, at least as far as I'm concerned, it was not my aim to harm the CDU/CSU - but that's not how Merkel and her group see things (or state to see things). And now we can all wait and see whether the Fallen One will make a comeback or not... I hope that this time, the memory of Germany will prove to be longer than before. Because yes, I would agree that everyone deserves a second chance in life - but not a second chance to help lead a country.

On to other important things: Old rags. There seems to be a conference in London this weekend, and I'm sorry to pass this on to you on such short notice - I had not heard about it before. It went over the MEDTC-List yesterday, and I'll just repost the whole thing, since I could not find it on the Museum of London pages to link to.

Making it: Textile Technologies in Medieval Europe

Saturday 5th March 2011
Weston Lecture Theatre, Museum of London, 150 London Wall, London EC27 5HN
www.museumoflondon.org.uk

10.00: Doors open

10.30 – 10.45: Welcome: Hilary Davidson [MEDATS and Museum of London]

10.45 – 11.15: Professor Gale Owen-Crocker, University of Manchester,

 ‘Continuity and Change: an Overview of Medieval Textile Production’

11.15 – 11.45: Ruth Gilbert, Independent Scholar and Weaver, ‘Spinning technology in England in the Middle Ages (450 – 1500)’

11.45 – 12.15: Coffee, demonstrations and screening of DVD showing images of medieval cloth production from Semur-En-Auxois, in the Activity Room

12.15 – 12.45: Alan Raistrick, Independent Scholar, ‘Revelations and Calculations; developments in the spinning wheel during the Medieval Period’

12.45 – 13.15: Anna Nørgård, Weaver, author and demonstrator at the Viking Museum, Roskilde, Denmark, ‘The Early Medieval Warp-weighted Loom’

13.15 – 14.45: Lunch (not provided) and demonstrations in the Activity Room

14.45 – 15.15: Anton Reurink, Author, Historisch Openlucht Museum Eindhoven, The Netherlands, ‘The Medieval Process from Wool to ‘Lakense stof’ (Broadcloth)’

15.15 – 15.45: Kathrine Vestergård Brandstrup, Archaeologist,  ‘The Development of the Loom, 1000 – 1500’

15.45 – 16.15: Tea and demonstrations in the Activity Room

16.15 – 16.45: Dr Nat Alcock, Emeritus Reader in Chemistry, University of Warwick, and past President of the Vernacular Architecture Group, ‘Recreating the Medieval Weaver’s House and Loom’

16.45: Discussion

17.30: Close

Demonstrators - Glenys Crocker: warp-weighted loom - Ann Markwick: great wheel - Jo Wexler: tablet weaving
Speakers who will also demonstrate - Kathrine Brandstrup: naalbinding -Ruth Gilbert: drop spindle
Demonstrators Warp-weighted loom: Glenys Crocker, Vice-President of the Surrey Archaeological Society and member of the West & East Surrey Guilds of Spinners, Weavers & Dyers; great wheel: Ann Markwick, the East Sussex Guild of Spinners, Weavers, & Dyers; tablet weaving Jo Wexler, from the Cambridgeshire Guild of Spinners, Weavers,& Dyers.

The researches of some of our speakers demonstrate the contribution of practical experimentation to historical research and, in a museum context, ‘bring alive` many aspects of textile history.  Kathrine Vestergard Brandstrup is the editor, with Marie-Louise Nosch, of The Medieval Broadcloth: Changing Trends in Fashions, Manufacturing and Consumption, Oxbow Books, Oxford, 2009.  Anna Nørgård is the author, with Else Ostergard & Lilli Fransen, ofMedieval Garments Reconstructed: Norse Clothing Patterns, Aarhus University Press, 2010.

What hand tools were used, how were they made, and what practical skills were needed – as well as what changes took place – will be discussed in relation to aspects of the historical and archaeological record. There will be demonstrations of some practical spinning and weaving technologies used in north-west Europe from approximately the fifth to the fifteenth centuries.  It is hoped that a new light will be shed on the production of yarn and woollen cloth.

I would love to go there, but it's too far away and  on too short a notice (and travelling to Britain is, alas, not so utterly cheap and fast). I also don't know if there's a conference fee to be paid or who organises the whole conference, so you might want to call the museum to find out details before you travel there.

I will stay here and play some more with my embroidery, in preparation of the workshop in Vienna that I will give in April. And more about that... tomorrow.

It might have come to your attention that the German minister of defense, zu Guttenberg, has gotten himself in a heap of trouble because he did not actually write a doctoral thesis but copied it - he plagiarised. All of it (except maybe a few pages, it seems). Even the introduction was not written by himself, and for that copy-and-paste work, he received the best grade possible, summa cum laude.

Now you might know that in Germany, a Dr. in front of the name, that's something. There's still a nimbus of infallibility and specialness adhering to these two extra letters, and a Dr. in front of your name, spoken or written, might even provide you with preferential treatment or better customer service. (This is not something that I endorse - I'm writing this just to let those of you not knowing Germany well get a feel of what a title here might mean.) This should make it easy to understand why a phd is a good thing to have if you are going into politics, and it also explains why a German might, from time to time, find some weird advertisement letter in the mail promising a doctoral degree (and all the recognition connected with it) for next to no work (and a goodly amount of money).

A fake doctoral degree might exist more often than I wish to believe (or even think about it). And a fake title - buying something that others have worked and studied very hard for - is not a gentleman's crime. Especially not if you are a person of high political rank and should have high professional and personal integrity. Hello? Minister of Defense? Fake doctoral title? No can do.

So I, like a lot of other academics, are now waiting to see what happens. Meanwhile, since the Internet makes it easy to find plagiarisms in comparison to years ago, the community is working hard - not only making an interactive report available where you can compare the Guttenberg thesis and the original, but also with an open letter to Angela Merkel concerning the Guttenberg Affair from doctoral students (but also signable by others, both with and without an academic title). That letter has meanwhile even made it into the Tagesschau.

And then, of course, there's the jokes. Zu Googleberg, Karl Theodor Xerox, the Killer of Footnotes, Dr. ctrl.c. zu Guttenberg,... If you understand German, you might be amused by this joke collection, even including songs about him.

But there is something that should not be forgotten with all this joking: Mr. zu Guttenberg has wrought a lot of damage - damage to his ministry, to his political party, to the German science community, to the University he got the degree at, his faculty there and the professors working there, and possibly everybody else that comes from that Uni for at least a while. He is a fraud and there's no way to deny this (Statement by Prof. Lepsius from Uni Bayreuth, in German). And that fraud has done damage enough to end a few careers, not only his own.

The V&A, the museum with the wonderful public study room for textiles, has cut down on accessibility on the frames and will close the public study room completely on March 1, 2011; after this will follow the closure of all the other textile and fashion-only rooms during the course of the year.

Bad news, but it's followed by good news: The closing down is just to move all the precious items into a new facility, the Textiles and Fashion Study and Conservation Centre at Blythe House in Kensington Olympia. It's scheduled to open late summer 2013, so we'll have to wait two years for full accessibility again - which is a very short time to move one hundred thousand individual museum textiles.

If you want to learn a bit more about this, you can read ThistleThreads' blog entry, where I first got the information, or get your information fix straight from the Horse's mouth at the V&A website.

Do you know that feeling that to some events, there is something like a secret topic? One of the main chat-topics at Freienfels was quality in crafts and the ability or lack of that ability to discern good craftspersonship from bad craftspersonship and good material from bad. It seems to be a thing very much on the surface of the mind of many sellers and of many crafters at the moment - both joy about the fact that there are still people who value good craftspersonship and sadness about them being quite few and often restricted to medieval markets and fairs.

That is, in my opinion, largely due to the fact that even basic skills in craft things are not much valued in most parts of society today. It is no longer obligatory for girls to learn how to sew and embroider or for boys how to carve and build little wooden boats, giving both sexes at least a small grounding in fine motor skills and a glimpse into craftspersonship. After this gender-specific basic instruction in crafting had been in use for a long time, I was one of the lucky generation(s) when I was in primary school - because in my time, all boys and all girls had to learn how to crochet, sew, embroider, saw, file and drill, in the aptly named "Handarbeit und Werken" (Handarbeit referring to "traditionally feminine", textile-centric work, and Werken to "traditionally masculine" work involving hardware and wood). Back then, I mostly hated the Handarbeit part and especially sewing by hand - there are machines for that, after all! However, these lessons gave me the basic knowledge about seams, stitches and textile work and they schooled fine motor skills. Some of today's schoolchildren do not get any of these lessons anymore - and that does indeed show when they try to get started with the stuff. While I will gladly accept the necessity for the next generation(s) to get acquainted with electronics in a young age and develop their computer skills, I think that neglecting a basic craft instruction is not good at all. For example if you don't know how to mend clothing, you can either walk around with the torn garment or throw it away and buy a new one. And if you have never tried your own hand at making something, how will you be able to evaluate good quality?

There is a special, deep joy in seeing a masterly piece of crafts, even if you know you can't afford to buy it. I have had tears coming into my eyes quite a few times, standing before a thing awesomely well made - a knife forged to perfection, a felt bag masterly done in a very difficult technique, a pair of shoes where every seam, every stitch spoke of the abilities of its maker, a spherical wood capsule that closes just firmly enough, turned to perfection on a lathe. The ability to perceive good quality of material and craft does not come by itself, but has to be trained - it is easiest to see for somebody who has already dabbled into that specific craft, because then you will know or at least have an inkling of the difficulties in making the piece. And then a masterpiece of craft - it can be well and truely mind-boggling.

I am sorry for everybody who has not gotten some grounding in basic craft skills when still a youngster, and I am sorry for everybody who cannot get this joy through craft perception for at least one single craft. And then, quite related to that... I am still hoping that the awareness of good quality and the appreciation of craft skills will creep back into our society, and I am expecting the day that a well-made handcrafted one-of-a-kind item of good material will again be something to show off your status - because that is when we craftspeople will be sought after once more. And when joy through craft perfection and craft perception will again grow in our world.

Yesterday evening, after the Most Patient Man On Earth was back home from work, he casually told me that he had ordered a new hardcover book from our mutual favourite author.

I tried not to flinch - we had been ordering our English books from Amazon, like I wrote yesterday. And a new book from C.J. Cherryh - the first volume of the next trilogy she writes - that is something to rejoice about, after all!
I asked him what publishing house the book is from... and he says "oh, I don't know - I think it's Daw (it is, by the way, and Daw belongs to the penguin.com group)... and I didn't order it from Amazon."

The Most Patient Man had not only read my blog, he had also clicked on some links, and then read some more, and clicked some more, and (via a comment from a lady in France) found an on-line bookseller based in the UK, with free shipping wherever they ship, worldwide. So the link above? Will not lead you to the Amazon site, but to www.bookdepository.co.uk. For me, that means getting used to a new online bookshop structure. They may not be as large as The River Shop (yet), and they might not have as huge a selection as The River Shop, but they will be seeing my (our) money for English-language books now. And my links, with the little traffic that might bring (since while I am utterly happy about the two new followers this blog got during the last few days... realistically thinking, this is a teeny-tiny blog with really not so many readers). And thus hopefully you (as you follow my links) and maybe your money, too...