Why you air bad things about your boss on the television...

Apparently the popular, long running show on Fox, The Simpsons, recently ran a controversial intro to the show. Now, I personally have not watched the Simpsons in quite sometime. I just lost interest. In no way am I saying the show is not good. On the contrary, it has, most of the time, been intelligent and funny and satirical all at the same time. I found an article on the Entertainment Weekly website that describes the opening sequence and it poses some interesting questions that I would like to answer. But first, the thing that got everyone all ruffled:

Now, I will be the first to say that, yeah, that was a little much. Kind of not the norm for such a show as the Simpsons. Now the article asks "How did this get to air?" Well, honestly, it was rather harmless. It's not like Banksy hijacked the intro to the show and made everyone air his intro. Someone at Fox and at The Simpsons had to have seen it and approve it. The article also points out that not only does it put Fox in a bad position, but The Simpsons as well. As we all know, The Simpsons takes some pretty nasty jabs at Fox from time to time. Granted this makes them look good and Fox look bad, but I wouldn't put it past the creative team at the show to do this to prove a point and not care who looks bad. Hell, the show has been on for over 20 seasons, what do they have to lose? However the story is, if the Simpsons are making a statement that yes the show is made in Korea(...which it is, that is old news...it's even in the credits of the show) and yes it is made in horrible conditions where pandas are made to pull carts and kittens are killed to stuff dolls and unicorns are chained up to punch holes in DVDs, then there it is and guess who is bankrolling all of that? Fox. Can the Simpsons team do anything about it? I don't know. But, I think they probably just did.

Missouri and Florida, states after my intellectual freedom heart

Wow. Missouri is quickly becoming my favorite state to write about. Once again, MO is in the news for challenging books in the school system because god forbid our little snowflakes actually learn something interesting. Apparently an assistant professor at Missouri State...yes, an actual (alleged) learned person, has a few problems with the curriculum in the Republic School district. A school district that his children don't go to. Well, his oldest did, but he decided to home school his other children. Anyway, he has a few things he wants changed in the school. Like the history class. He has a problem with the American government being taught as a democracy when clearly it is a democratic republic. I mean, come on. He also has issue with "Separation of church and state, and freedom of expression,Viewing of R-rated movies in English class, such as "Saving Private Ryan" and "The Breakfast Club",Science and evolution,Sex Education classes include information about condom usage, and other 'immoral' topics" Ok, you got me on the Breakfast Club...I don't really see the educational merit of that movie, but Saving Private Ryan? It is a realistic depiction of an important point in history. Maybe this guy is one of those people that denies the holocaust (I am just making generalizations now, he probably is not one of those people).
Here's another doosey. This lady in Florida is on a crusade to ban Catcher in the Rye. I know, I know, not the first time this book has been challenged. This lady's son, who is in 11th grade, brought home the book and both he and his mother were quite offended. She requested her son read a different book, and the school complied. The book that he is reading instead? The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. If you know anything about banned and challenged books then this is quite funny. Here is a link to an article about the Florida woman and her problem with Catcher and her apparent no problem with Huckleberry Finn.

Where I eventually address a city...

Ah, it's fall. The air is getting crisper, the leaves are starting to twitch in the cool breeze; Halloween candy is being pushed to the early buyers and eaters; Christmas decorations are starting to find their way onto shelves; the crazies start to come out...

Wait, what was that last bit? Yeah, about the crazies? Are you talking about this guy?

Yes, Terry Jones...no,
not that Terry Jones, the other, crazier one...yeah, the pastor.

You with me? Good.

Before I continue, you may want to visit my disclosure page once again. I'll wait...

Pastor Terry Jones decided (then undecided when the rest of the world was against him) that on September 11th, he, along with his church, were going to burn the Koran, the holy book of the Muslim people. Think about that for a second.

Now, with September 11th behind us and banned books week in front of us, let us think about this situation.

On one hand, we live in a country where, yes, you can burn the Koran, the Bible, the Torah, the J. Crew catalog if you so wish. Will people be your best friends for it? Probably not. Will you be arrested...well, it really depends on what's going on at the time. Do you have the right as a red blooded American to do and say what you please and worship however you please? Yes.

However, you see, there is this thing called common sense. I don't know if everyone has heard about it, but common sense is this little thing in your brain that when presented with a situation like burning the Koran on September 11th, it tells you not to. It's basically the little voice in your head that tells you to not be a jerk.
There is that pesky other hand. We have the freedom to read. We also have the freedom to not read. We bibliophiles will not force you to read anything you don't want to. There is no "reading agenda". If you don't want to read it, then don't. Along the same line, if you don't want to believe in it, don't. I know September 11th is a horrible, horrible wound that will probably never heal in America. However, let's not let the wound fester. Let's keep it clean and let it remind us how strong we are. How we will not let fear rule over us and how we will continue to do what we want and say what we want and believe what we want because it is the right thing to do. Stephen Abrams had a wonderful blog post about this situation. He said: "So, in my burgeoning discomfort and anger at the foolishness of those who disrespect and endanger all of our freedoms, (and those who serve to protect them), by perverting them to their own interests for publicity, false catharthis, or whatever twisted motivation, I am fearful that we risk losing our freedoms. The forces for book burning do have a right to their views and actions and good and decent people have a right to object to their views and actions.

I have a simple suggestion for those who want to take personal action.

Sometime on Saturday September 11th, 2010 please try this simple task:

Read a passage of the Qur’an/Koran to yourself – quietly. Reading is more than an activity. It builds insight and understanding. Read other holy passages of your choice of other faiths – quietly. Light a candle. Let the light of that candle defeat the darkness of some souls. Besides, I love irony and the misguided actions of the few can be overwhelmed by the quiet and respectful actions of the many."

I have a feeling that pastor Jones came out nine years later with this demonstration in light of the mosque controversy in the vicinity of ground zero. You know what? I don't see any problem with that mosque. Hell, even Salmon Rushdie, who has a fatwah on him, says the mosque should be built.

It's also funny, New York, (yes, I am now addressing a city) that you would have a problem with the mosque when, as a country, a radical Islamic group called Revolution Muslim, is allowed to celebrate 9/11 and call out threats to the creators of South Park and Comedy Central if a certain South Park Episode was not censored. Guess who won that fight? Us? Think again. The South Park episode was censored, so much that the mere mention of Muhammad was bleeped out. You can watch the full story of that here. USA! USA! USA!
So, America, you need to get your sh*t straight, because I, too, am afraid for our rights. Need I remind you of China?
So go forth, America. Read the Koran, the Torah, the J. Crew catalog. You don't have to just do it on the anniversary of September 11th. Just read and know that you have the freedom to read and think freely.

7-0, and I'm not talking about the Saints game

7-0. That was the vote to ban a book from a school's curriculum. A book teachers were hoping to use to get teenage boys (a particularly hard demographic) to read. The score to permanently ban the book from the high school library, even with restrictions? 7-2. What book is it you ask? "The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian" by Sherman Alexie.

Why, oh why, was is challenged and ultimately banned you say? Why are any books challenged? It depicted reality. It had profanity and discussed masturbation. When the very valid point of "well, uh, it is high school, and, uh, you know kids know about this kind of stuff" was brought up, it was outright rejected with the fingers in the ears and singing loudly. Okay, the last bit didn't happen, but it was outright rejected. It was also said that the reading level of the book is low for high schoolers. I will go ahead and disagree with that. I think the reading level is just fine for high schoolers (particularly ones in this neighborhood from the sound of things)and will not "dumb down the educational standards" of the students reading it. Once again the statement was made that the book did not meet the values of the community. Oh, thank heaven those seven people were there to save me from making a decision myself. You know, I don't know what I would have done if that vote hadn't gone through. Oh, yeah, I would have done what everyone else in the town did: go to amazon.com and order the book to see what everyone is so up in arms about. We have the freedom to read and the freedom to choose. Even high school students have that freedom. If you don't like it, close the damn book.
Once again, please visit my disclaimer page...banned books week is coming up (September 25 - October 3) and it may get kind of hot in here.

Slippery pig

Recently in class we discussed "equity of access". In library school, this comes up a lot though under different guises. "Equity of access" also appears under "intellectual freedom" and "freedom of information" and "censorship". Call it what you want and discuss what you want about it, it all boils down to people (and I type "people" meaning the broadest sense of the word) getting access to the information they want (and I type "information" meaning the broadest sense of that word). That means people of any race, religion, sexual orientation, social, financial status, etc. can have open and free access, without compromising privacy, to information, any information, all information. Now, the Internet has changed who can access information, where they can access it, and how they access it. The "who" that can access it is just about everyone. You have a computer and a phone line? Great, you can get the internet. You don't? Well, how about a library nearby? BAM! Free Internet. The "where" is virtually anywhere. Lots of people, even people who don't have computers (at least in my experience at the library where I work) have smart-phones. With a pretty affordable plan, anyone, anywhere (as long as you have a cell phone signal) can access the internet. The "how" of getting information is RIGHT NOW. Magic. Instantaneous. I would like to know what the capital of Brazil is. Brasilia. Done. That took like a second. (Well, I already knew it, but had I not, it would have taken just a few seconds to pull up the answer.) Libraries jumped on the bandwagon of the Internet and it has served them well.

Now, as anyone with a computer and Internet service knows, it costs money. "But libraries are funded with tax money!" You cry. Yes, they are. "But you take in fines from my late books every week!" You say. Yes, but if you turned your books in on time I wouldn't have to do that, and at $.10 a day that isn't really paying the bills. So how does a library afford to pay for all of those wonderful computers and all of that bandwidth that is used everyday? The government. At least in most cases. See, the government has a teeny, tiny stipulation on that. You have to filter the internet according to the Child Internet Protection Act, or CIPA. If you follow the standards presented in that act, then you get all kinds of monies and discounts for computers and Internet. Oh, you don't want to comply? Then good luck affording all of that technology.
Here is a good overview of CIPA so I don't have to type it all out here.
Basically the government wants to protect our little snowflakes from things on the Internet that might harm them. Forget about the Internet, how about lazy ass parents that don't pay attention to their kid. And guess what, the Internet is harmful to a lot of people, not just kids. Moving on...

For my class I had to read notes from the ALA (American Library Association) on the case for Internet filtering. In the notes a case in California was mentioned where a mother sued the library because her son downloaded copious amounts of porn from there. I mentioned that in class and wanted to get other people's thoughts on it. Everyone started talking about kids viewing porn. Yes, viewing porn in a public place like a library is not only creepy and weird, but can cause harm to other people around, especially small children. However, in order to download porn, you don't necessarily have to view it. That was the point I was trying to make. The library staff cannot monitor computers all of the time, nor do they want to. In my opinion, I could care less what you are viewing on the computer as long as it is not harming anyone else. The kid could have gone to a simple FTP site his friend set up and started downloading things by file name only. The library would have no idea it was porn. In that situation, who is liable. Hell, in just a normal situation of a teenage kid looking at some naked pictures on the computer in a library, who is liable? There is always a slippery slope. Never solid ground.

You probably know me....

I am stealing this blog post from The Shifted Librarian because I think it deserves posting again. It is about privacy and the world we currently live in. She thought about who out there has information about her and came up with a pretty impressive list of companies that probably know a whole lot. These are the companies that know the most about her (taken from her blog):
* Cell carrier/cellphone maker — they know my loca­tion at any given time, plus all of the data that goes through my phone (and I don’t have a land­line, so every­thing goes through my cell)
* Cable com­pany = they know what I watch on TV and what I surf on the net
* Bank = they know most of the places where I spend my money
* Credit cards = they know a lot of places I spend my money
* LISHost — hosts my web­site and email, which would include a lot of receipts for online purchases
* Google = knows most of the things I search for and many things I read (via Google Reader); even though I don’t use Gmail, any email I send to Gmail users is in their archives
* Ama­zon = knows about a lot of things I pur­chase and read (includ­ing via my Kindle)
* Face­book = knows a lot about what I say about myself via sta­tus updates and who my friends are
* Friend­Feed (now owned by Face­book) = aggre­gates a lot about what I say about myself pub­licly online, plus which con­ver­sa­tions and peo­ple I watch on the site
* Net­flix = knows a lot about what I watch
* Foursquare = knows some about where I am/go
* Flickr = knows a lot about where I am/go, who my friends/contacts are, and what inter­ests me
* Twit­ter = knows my net­work and who I inter­act with the most
* Health care provider = I’m lucky that I’ve been rel­a­tively healthy, but my provider(s) know about any problems
* Deli­cious = knows a lot about sites I’ve vis­ited and want to remember
* Dopplr = knows my trips and some of my friends
* Ever­note = knows about some things I want to remem­ber, although I haven’t put much per­sonal infor­ma­tion there yet
* Illi­nois Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion (IDOT) = I don’t drive nearly as much as I used to any­more, but IDOT knows when I go on tollroads

Now if I think about who knows what about me...the list is very similar.
I love my privacy, but I also love technology and the ability to share things instantly with my group of friends and family. If I weigh out the options, technology wins.
I recently went on a weekend trip into a state park and had no internet and limited cell phone use. As soon as we crossed into a 3G area, I was looking for things to do on my phone just to use the technology. I had checked facebook and twitter and my e-mail and I was just surfing the web for the heck of it, just because I could. That's how much I love technology.
The first week in May (2-8) is the first annual Choose Privacy Week. I will probably be doing some talks at the library where I work about it. People don't realize what is out there, and being aware is the first and most important thing to do.
But for me, between technology and privacy...well, I'll just take my chances with the 3G network.

Google and the fight

Wow. Anyone been following the Google book Settlement? Yes, I capitalized the "S" in settlement, because it has turned into a sentient being and will be scanning our thoughts before we even have them...ok, not that bad, but damn is it long and complicated.
I have been following it casually over the last year and was kind of hum drum about it. Yeah, Google wants to scan everything ever printed in the universe and let people have access to it (a little bit of a hyperbole, but hey, let's run with it). As a person who thinks information should be open and free to anyone and everyone I thought this was a great idea.
This is why I am a librarian and not a lawyer.
I never once thought of the privacy issue.
I thought about the money issue, but I thought about it in the downloading music sense. Like the RIAA was going to go after my 12 year old neighbor for downloading some scream-o band. Bands don't make that much money off of music sales, they make money on tours and merchandising. I could care less about the record company, quite frankly, because they didn't write the song or play the music, so screw 'em.
But I digress...
Privacy. I have been diving more and more into this because we don't realize how much stuff is out there. We blog, we post things on facebook and twitter. We take videos and pictures and post them on the internet for the world to see. And once it's on the internet, honey, it never really goes away. Just because you hit that delete button 50 times doesn't mean a thing.
I will post another blog entry on that later.
But Google poses a privacy problem with this book settlement. I was reading the Fairness Reading Report done by James Grimmelman
and something jumped out at me. Cindy Cohn, speaking for the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), brought up a big privacy issue. She said that Google "can track not just what books you read, but which pages, and what you scribble in the margins."
Think about that for a minute.
Yes, you say, but If I order a book on Amazon, how is this different? "Cohn gave the second-best answer to a question all day: unlike Amazon, Google will be able to track what you read after you buy."
Now, let that set in for a second.
And guess what?
It's get's better? Oh, yes.
The government can get that information without a court order. Yep, requiring a court order isn’t the law yet.
Having fun?
How seriously does Google take privacy?
Take a a look at the problem with Google Buzz.
The short of it is that "The problem is that -- by default -- the people you follow and the people that follow you are made public to anyone who looks at your profile." So anyone can go in and see who you've been chatting with and e-mailing on the list.
The other problem I started seeing with the Google Settlement is that all of the information Google collects is now Google's information. As in, if they decide to censor it we would be none the wiser.
I'm not saying that Google would do that, I'm just saying they could. In fact Google has done some great things in China with censoring of the internet (or rather opening it up for the Chinese people). They are trying to stop the government from telling the people what they can and cannot search for. If you want to see what China censors, go here. It's pretty startling when you think of it from a free perspective.
Could that happen to us?