There are numerous ongoing examples of governments and political institutions preventing the sharing of information – often in the name of “security” but often, more accurately, in the name of “not being embarrassed”.
Close to home, ongoing efforts by the Canadian Press to get Tommy Douglas’ CSIS files released keep being stonewalled because “confidential informants’ lives could be endangered and jeopardize the agency’s ability to conduct secret surveillance.”
And of course, the funniest/saddest example of government interference when the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council decided that one of the greatest rock songs of all-time was suddenly offensive because it had one of the characters in the song says the word “faggot”. This, after a complaint from ONE listener!
A few links about where the place where writing, publishing and selling controversial books intersects…
In a post about Chapters deciding to not stock Mein Kampf during FTRW 2007 (part of a larger post that’s worth re-reading this week, he says humbly), I stated that although I wished bookstores would operate to a higher standard than other retailers, ultimately, they were private businesses that had the right to stock (or not stock) items as as they saw fit. I still feel that way but also think that the dynamic gets much more complex in the age of the e-book when people who buy an electronic copy of a controversial book (in this case incest fantasy fiction) can have it go poof! and disappear from their Kindles, even as other similar titles are disappearing from the Amazon database!
A profile of America’s most dangerous publisher, Feral House, who were hard at work on the Unabomber’s new book at the time I bookmarked this story. I’m happy to report that coincidentally, I have one of their books on my shelf at home right now, courtesy of the good folks at RPL. (I’m not going to tell you which one – but you may hear more about it in a year or so!)
We screened a few films during library school that either had a library theme (Party Girl) or that somehow related to library issues.
One that we showed which is very heavily connected to the concept of freedom to read/freedom of speech was “The Aristocrats” and my frequent partner-in-crime, Quinn Dupont outdid himself by playing this song (a different video mash-up than this one though the one below would’ve worked too) before the film started as people walked into the lecture room we were using. (I think only one person walked in then turned around and walked right back out! ;-))
All the core points of any book challenge are there in this brief letter: you should monitor you own child’s reading but that doesn’t give you the right to try to control what others read, it’s the publisher and the school library who ultimately put the book there so writing to the author (who isn’t going to stop writing) isn’t very useful. And anytime you get a book removed, you’re basically guaranteeing it more attention and more sales so nah-nah-boo-boo. (Er, he doesn’t say this but I’m reading between the lines! ;-))
Today’s the second ever Heritage Classic outdoor hockey game (Heritage Classic is in Canada – there’s also an annual outdoor game/marketing bonanza in the US called the Winter Classic.)
The Flames are my team but have had a pretty crappy season, being in second-last place in their division just a couple months ago and basically sucking pretty hard all year long.
Fans were up in arms speculating about trading the team’s captain and long-time face of the franchise, Jarome Iginla which would basically indicate the Flames were blowing up the whole team and going into full rebuild mode.
But they’ve gone on an unreal run after their GM got fired resigned at the end of December – getting at least a point in something like 21 of their last 25 games – which is unheard of in the NHL by *any* team and where the top teams play about .650 hockey. That run has catapulted the Flames back into a playoff spot (well, they’re currently in 9th spot and the top 8 teams in each division make the playoffs.)
The league’s parity (which is part of the reason teams don’t go on 16-4-5 runs) especially in the Western Division where the Flames play most of their games meant that at one point last week, FIVE of the eight playoff spots had teams tied with the exact same number of points (I think it was 86.) Today, three points separate the team in 4th spot from the team in 10th spot. Only ten points (five wins) separate the 4rd spot from the 13th.
One thing working against the Flames’ claiming one of those top eight spots is that they’ve played more games than most of the teams they’re competing against (eg. those other teams still have games-in-hand to gain points on the Flames). But there are some things in the Flames’ favour including a lot of home games which usually give an advantage to the home team – both because of crowd support but also in a practical sense because the home team gets last change and an advantage on face-offs too because they put their sticks down last.
So yeah, if you want to catch the excitement, check out the forum on CalgaryPuck.com and read a few of the threads, especially the ones debating the Flames odds of making the playoffs. You can also check out this site, aimed at sports bettors, which numerically shows the impact of not only the Flames wins and loses but shows you which other teams to cheer for each night to give the Flames the best odds of making the playoffs as well!
…is getting to carve out all manner of redneck, yokel and classic facial hair styles as you whittle it down to “clean-shaven.”
(For the record, Regina is still fricken freezing – made worse by a thaw the other week that’s turned Regina into a city-sized curling rink – but we’re gearing up for Cuba in a couple weeks so the beard goes early this year!)
If you’re like me, you have contacts all over the place – on your home computer, on your work computer, on your smart phone, on a notepad by your phone, on little scraps of paper in your pocket. Soocial is a new site that attemps to easily automate the process of syncing contacts between all these different places (okay, maybe not the telephone notepad or the scraps of paper.)
I haven’t gone through and set it up yet so I can’t speak to how well it works. But it sounded useful so I thought I’d pass it along.
I recently watched a YouTube clip (sorry, didn’t save the link) where the CEO of Zappo’s talked about some of the unique things they asked during interviews and one thing that clicked for me – you could probably have a really good idea of how good an employee will be by watching how much they smile during the interview.
No, that post title is not a joke. (Well, mostly not a joke.)
The reality is that I’m only slightly ashamed to admit that I find Justin Bieber and his recent rise to stardom fascinating.
There’s the fact that he’s from Woodstock, ON, just down the road from London. [Edit: I’m obviously not *that* fascinated because he’s from Stratford, not Woodstock. Worse, it was my mom who corrected me on this point!] Woodstock is a town that Shea and I passed through quite a few times during our year in London (I even have a fond memory of buying a mandolin with a crack in the casing at a garage sale for $5, keeping it in our apartment all year then bringing it back here and finally selling it at our own garage sale last fall for…$5.)
And of course, the fact that he’s the first YouTube superstar is also of note to me given my personal interest in technology, online broadcasting and related subjects.
Apparently he’s the next person to get his picture on the cover of the Rolling Stone and in the accompanying interview, he made a couple comments – one on healthcare and one on abortion – which are getting a lot of attention/causing some measure of controversy.
(Okay, I admit I’ve used the “cute” tag on this post. The *real* reason I like Justin Bieber is revealed! ;-))
A generation ago, one of the biggest insurmountable challenges in computing was writing a chess program that could beat the world’s best human player. That eventually happened in 1997 when IBM’s Deep Blue beat the greatest Grandmaster of all-time Garry Kasparov (of course, computers had been beating inferior players for much longer – including ChessMaster 3000 regularly trouncing me in my college dorm room back in the early 1990’s!)
Today, the challenge has moved from the numerous mathematical but ultimately finite possibilities of chess to the much more difficult world of natural language processing. Once again, it’s IBM taking up the challenge. They’ve spent five years and tens of millions of dollars developing Watson, a super-computer specially designed to play Jeopardy with all of its uniquely worded, pun-filled trivia questions.
How does Watson actually work? It’s programmed with the rules and strategies of the game (if it’s further behind, it may make a bigger wager on a Daily Double question.) Beyond the framework of how to play Jeopardy, the IBM scientists have inputted a data set equivalent to the Library of Congress holdings into the massive super computer that is “behind the curtain” operating Watson (they only have a stand-in avatar on the Jeopardy stage.) Beyond that data set, the computer isn’t connected to the Net or any other external resources.
Watson is also “deaf and blind” as programming in speech and video recognition are yet another leap. (This was clear in the first game when Jennings gave a wrong answer then Watson immediately repeated it.) So instead of Watson “hearing” or “reading” the questions, they get put into its algorithm as a text file just as Alex Trebek reads them to the human contestants. Watson does word parsing and other analysis to come up with a near-instantaneous answer as well as calculations to determine how confident it is. Watson’s even been programmed to “push” a buzzer button when it wants to answer a question!
MetaFilter’s been following this since the project was first publicly announced in 2009 including a new thread now that the actual Jeopardy showdown, pitting Watson against two of Jeopardy’s all-time champions, has arrived.
It’s a three-day, total points tournament so you’ll have to tune in today and tomorrow to see who ultimately wins (and yes, the shows do feel like an infomercial for IBM!)
