For the record, I agree with the sentiment that children and pornography don’t mix. Heck, adults and pornography don’t mix half the time. Having said that, I’m convinced there has to be a better method of keeping the two away from each other (kids and porn) than this. (Dare I suggest more involved parenting?) While…
Xeni Jardin writes on the nature of what, in her experience at BoingBoing, gets filtered out of which websites, and why and how. Meanwhile, Lily Pregill (NYAM’s Special Projects Librarian who works across the hall from me) points to an article in the current issue of Harvard Magazine, entitled "The People’s Epidemiologists" by Madeline Drexler. …
I know I’m a day late and dollar short with this, as I am with everything I write here, but it’s Wednesday and this caught my eye. Linking to the NY Times is always problematic because of their new NY Times Select subscription package, but this makes linking to non-subbed articles a lot simpler. In…
This bit comes from Terry Allen from In These Times, and it’s titled "Information Is Power." It begins thusly: "Sometimes it’s the small abuses scurrying below radar that reveal how profoundly the Bush administration has changed America in the name of national security. Buried within the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 is…
This might not be perfect, since it’s been some time since I did any original cataloging for web pages, but here it is (apologies in advance for the MESH). Suggestions are welcome. One hopes you click on the link below to read the actual statement, too. 100 1 Feingold, Russell D.245 10 $a I…
I’m not interested in turning this into the "All Vonnegut All the Time" blog, but this week, it seems to be shaping up that way. Not that I’m complaining: I’ve been reading the gentleman’s work my whole life and am amazed and encouraged by the fact that so much of it is still in print. …
Jeremy Clarkson opines thus in The Sunday Times: ". . . the worst word. The worst noise. The screech of Flo-Jo’s fingernails down the biggest blackboard in the world, the squeak of polystyrene on polystyrene, the cry of a baby when you’re hungover, is ‘beverage’." It’s a fun article, but I am forced to disagree:…
Kurt Vonnegut had this to say in the Guardian this past Saturday: "The title of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science-fiction novel Fahrenheit 451. Four hundred and fifty-one degrees Fahrenheit is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s…
I’m honestly not sure if this is a proper reader’s advisory or not, but, it’s an awesome article: "Moving Forward–and Backward–With the English Language." This comes courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor, a newspaper I’ve been reading (online) for years without ever seeing a single article on christian science. I must be looking at the…
I think "Ick!" says whatever the title doesn’t: Human Skin-Bound Books in Many Libraries Apparently this was a big thing in the 19th century. Enjoy! (or, well . . . whatever.)