Today my daughter becomes a teenager.

This is, of course, impossible. Maddy, my sweet daughter, was just born the other ... Oh my God.

I'm reminded of my Aunt Edith, who told me on the eve of my 13th birthday that something horrible was going to happen to me the next day. She asked me not to take it personally, but she said she really didn't want to talk to me for the next seven years. She was perfectly serious.

I used to teach logic classes for a university's Department of Philosophy. It was fun. You start with a class of very muddy thinkers. You end with a group of paranoiacs.

Muddy thinking is easy. Take any news story. That is, in fact, exactly what I asked my students to do.

Dr. Laura is coming to town. Rumored to have over 18 million listeners of her radio program, she is launching a new television show. Locally, she'll be on Channel 9.

What does that have to do with libraries? Well, new TV shows of a certain kind have to make a local splash, stir up a little controversy, to get people to watch them. And Dr. Laura has decided that the great issue of our times is pornography in libraries.

I've been reading a fascinating book. It's called "The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary." The author is Eric S. Raymond, a self-described hacker.

Raymond presents several essays that explore the psychological and sociological culture of hacking. He's a clear writer and thinker, possessed of both a sense of history, and penetrating insight.