A Year of Blogging: January 2, 2011

Today is 'Run up the Flag Pole and See if Anyone Salutes' Day. Huh? I figured I'd hit stumbling blocks in this experiment, but I did not anticipate hitting it on Day 2. I had no idea what this was supposed to mean, so I googled it. Sometimes when I use google to find out something, I feel sad. So much of my education was devoted to research, to learning how to research. Several years in high school we had to do a major research project. We would go to the library, where the librarians would give us instructions on how to use the card catalog, the periodicals, and the new computer search (which basically gave you a list of possible books or articles- it certainly wasn't Wikipedia!) . I was going to college libraries for research as a sophomore in high school, because I wanted to do the best I could and needed access to resources I couldn't find at the school library or the town library. So I went to the big leagues. When I was in college, one of the courses I had to take was Research Methods. It was a requirement for my major. Many of the majors had it as a requirement. Again, it was teaching us to use the library, to look at all the resources available to us. It was a precursor to completing your Independent Study, which was basically a Senior Thesis. It is also the only class that stood between me and a minor in Political Science. It was required for both my major in Communication and my minor in Poly Sci. They would not allow me to count the Communication course as the Poly Sci course, and I really didn't have time or energy to take the same course twice. I have always hated redundancy. So I have an 'emphasis' in Poly Sci, not a minor. Now all of this information is available on the internet. Do people even use libraries any more? For anything other than internet access that is? I get sad when I think of teenagers today who think doing research is consulting Wikipedia. Sure, it's great for quick little things I want to know, but if I were doing a research paper today, I'd like to think I'd still be going to the library, wandering among the stacks. Checking out more books than I can carry, and then going home and scouring over those books for relevant information. Anyway, I digress. According to holidayinsights.com , today is actually 'Run it up the flag pole and see if anyone salutes Day'. So the paper had a typo. There's a surprise. Apparently this is an common expression. I've never heard it, but holidayinsights.com says it is common in media circles. (Yet, they typed it wrong in print!) Anyway, it means if you have an idea, float it out and see what people think. It is a day to celebrate creativity, or to be creative. Try out a new idea. Well, I guess I am doing that with this blog. The paper should be more careful with their proofreading though. I had visions of people trying to run UP a flag pole. Which would be easy to do if the flagpole were horizontal, say, on the ground. But then, wouldn't it just be a log or a pole?