For those of you who do not know, your dear beloved smartass is currently learning how to become a bona fide, authentic, certified, degreed, stamped, sealed-with-a-kiss Information Scientist.

For those of you who do not know, "Information Scientist" is the fancy-pants title that Librarians invented for themselves a couple of decades ago, when, all of a sudden, boys wanted to be librarians, and they still wanted to be able to date girls.

For those of you who still don't understand, well, neither does your beloved smartass. Information Scientists see about as much action as Librarians drifting through the dusty stacks of books not checked out since the Carter administration. Regardless, your faithful smartass is on the track to officially, now and forevermore, becoming an accredited Information Scientist.

IS (Information Science) 490, a course with the nebulous title "Information Environment," a course with the stated objective of giving the students an overview of the discipline of Information Science and the employment opportunities that supposedly await us in the future, is taught by a professor who is a John Goodman of a man, both in girth and voice. I don't know much about John Goodman, but this man, the professor, and not John Goodman, talks a lot in class about the lucrative field of (corporate) Records Management, talks a lot about the Information Professions as a whole, broad, ill-defined category, mentions over and over that Doctors do not get degrees in Hospital Science, that Lawyers do not get degrees in Court Science, and he has also said repeatedly (and pay attention now) that "All problems are information problems."

I'm not quite sure how to unpack that quotation for you. Or for myself. Not to mention that I've often found attempts to explicate pithy remarks such as this to be wholly inadequate; these exegeses tend to make both the intial speaker's intention and the interpreter's response appear entirely ignorable. Regardless, my present attempt, via examples, examples from my day today (remember, the idea is this: "all problems are information problems").

1. This morning, like all mornings, I woke up before the alarm went off. This morning, like all mornings, I tried to focus on the clock across the room to determine whether or not I should just go ahead and drag my ass out of bed, out of the comfort and warmth and pleasant dreams that surround me there. This morning I saw that it was 8 and that if I didn't hurry like hell, skip the shower, get dressed, feed the cat, and run out the door (after turning off the alarm that I had slept peacefully through), that I would be screwed for the rest of the day. So the dragging, the skipping, the dressing, the feeding all happened before the looking out the window and the seeing that it was dark and the refocusing on the clock across the room all happened before I realized it was 3.

   all problems are information problems.

2. Five hours after the undressing and the comfort and the pleasant, there was more waking and dragging and skipping and redressing and feeding, there was a bus that was caught by the tail with a wave and a shout, and on the bus there was the thinking of a conversation I had had the night before with a person held in the highest regard who happens to be living in DC.
   1. In DC there are letters and rumors and spores in the air. To date, 4 have died from the spores in recent history. God knows about the other two in the list. Regardless, this friend, held in the highest regard, hasn't opened the mail in a week. Bills are due, sweepstakes have been won, a thousand have died due to tobacco-smoking-related diseases, and the spores may or may not be involved.

      all problems are information problems.

   2. The real problem with this conversation, the one held with the friend held in highest regard, was that I had Something Else To Do. Here I was talking to this friend, held in the highest regard, who was having a tough time, what with the spores and rumors and letters, and here I was talking to the friend, held in highest regard, but here I was thinking about the bullshit I had to get done to keep my job. The conversation, needless to say, ended poorly, what with the misdirected concentration, the unpaid attention, and all.

      all problems are shun problems

3. AFter the rehearsing of this conversation, during which I was entirely involved in the rehearsing of the letters, the rumors, the spores, the friend, the guilt for the shun, after all this there was the realization that I hadn't noticed the bus stop that I had meant to get off at six or seven blocks before.

   all problems are transportation problems

4. Despite the transportation malfunction, your fearless hero did not tuck tail and return to the warm and comfort and pleasant dreams. Nay, he forged forward, on and on into another information problem. He was walking calmly from his late-to-get-off stop to school, and two undegrad girls approached from the opposite direction. They were cute and talking. After they passed, they giggled. And, of course, I assumed that they giggled at me, the one whose zipper must be wide open. Along with a quick check, without looking down because I have gotten used to this quick check, I had this thought:

   all problems are information problems

5. After more cute passers-by, and the subsequent passers-by-passing-by-giggling, and the obsessive-compulsive zipper-checking, there was finally the arrival at school, which also happens to be work. Eventually, there was leaving this place and going to lunch. During lunch, I didn't want to pay attention. Lunch ended and I went to class, a two-hour class that I taught, taught with a co-worker observing. The co-worker gave me an honest evaluation later, which reminded me that there is much that I have to learn about teaching.

   all problems are information problems

6. After the honest evaluation, I honestly had little to do in the office, and so engaged in one of my guilty pleasures: topicproject, the brainchild of an old, much-respected friend's friend, with contributions from the much-respected friend herself, and even her little brother. A blog of sorts, this topicproject, but from writers who can, well, write well. It had been dead for some time--since 9/11--but, on this day, topicproject finally had new stuff!

   all problems, even entertainment ones, are information problems

7. The event that I'm getting at, through this list of the events of the day: there was, at the end of the day, a lecture/video presentation by one Dr. Masri (who, incidentally, is totally cute) re: the evil of continued Iraqi sanctions. In her presentation, she said little that I had not heard before, but, because of the day that it had been, it dawned on me that I didn't bother to believe any of this that I had heard before, and dawned on me as well that I had no criteria to judge whether or not this--the stuff I was hearing, about the squalor and whatnot of what had previously been the Iraqi middle class, their infrastructure destroyed, the sewage in the streets and whatnot--no criteria to judge whether or not it was real. True. Sure, Norman Schwartzkopf himself was on the video denouncing the sanctions, but was that enough for me?

   all problems ARE information problems

8. At some time during the lecture, Dr. Masri received the question, "Where do we go to get good information?" and she responded with a number of URLs, one of which was abunimah.org. I was jazzed, checked it out some time after the lecture, and was underwhelmed with the site's author. Not a great writer, he. Not wholly believeable. But does that have anything to do with whether or not he may put forth the truth?

   all problems are information problems

After the lecture, there was some punch and cheese and crackers at a reception for Dr. Masri thrown by the student muslim association. I had a question for her that I have since forgotten, and waited patiently through an informal semi-circle of others with questions. I noticed that when she asked the others' questions, she allowed no one else to interfere in the dialogue between she and her interlocutor--the eye-contact was solid, without any glancing away. She did the same to me when I did finally ask my question, whatever it might have been. I only remember being entranced.

all problems are seduction problems

9. And so the question stands, particular to general: iraqi sanctions--how do we get good information, the truth? How come all we deal with is the old (be it as "Information Scientists" searching databases for that which has already been written on a topic/event/injustice, or as a family member remembering Uncle Al and Cousin Jed's resemblances, or whatever...)? Is there really discovery in digging up what has already been done?

   It's the discovery thing that brings me to pause. I want discovery in my life; I want a career that is filled with daily minor eurekas and monthly major ones. Am I on the right path?

all problems are information problems.