Slashdot Mirror
Banned Books published by Google
Lens Hood Man writes "Marking the 25th anniversary of Banned Books Week, Google is inviting users to celebrate their freedom to read by making Banned Books available to all. From the Google Blog: "...you can use Google Book Search to explore some of the best novels of the 20th century which have been challenged or banned." Those books challenged this year include 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and 'Lolita'."
Sounds like someone doesn't live in hickville. Or belonged to a PTA anywhere. To believe that banning books is either temporally remote or over with is naive AND incorrect. These days parents seem to just are about different stuff, like 'promoting witchcraft' (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings). And sometimes, they succeed for a time (till a suit or injunction slaps them back into shape). Same shite, different decade.
All the techniques ever used to make men moral have been themselves thoroughly immoral... (Nietzsche)
Seriously: So many of the books on this list are completely and totally harmless. I can understand the challenges to "My Dad's Roommate" from a Christian perspective (Don't agree, but understand). But WTF is wrong with Waldo? "How to Eat Fried Worms" is a nice, innocent book. My mother is a conservative Mormon, and she loves to read it to her First Grade class every year.
The fact that many of these books make these lists says a lot about the mentality of people who want to ban books.
If they are banned how is it I can go buy them? A more honest and less inflammatory term would be controversial books. At least in the US they are not truly banned. Maybe not available in some school libraries or even some public libraries but that isn't the same thing as banned.
Frankly I would like to see libraries "ban" more books.
Chariot of the Gods would be a good start.
Why wasn't the Bible on the list? It is banned in and or restricted heavily in many countries.
Also I didn't see any Holocaust denial books or pro Nazi books on the list. Those have been banned in many countries as well.
If you are going to pretend that you support freedom of speech I guess posting a list of books "banned" in some US high schools is a freaking safe way to do it.
I have to admit that publishing a book online that you can can buy at most any book store in the US really does make up for censoring pro-democracy cites in China. Good for you Google. Let us all bask in your "Celebration of the Freedom to Read".
I think I will go puke now.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Uh, no. We get a picture of Tipper Gore. I dislike the republicans as much as the next guy, but it doesn't mean I forget that the Democrats are a bunch of assholes too. Tipper Gore (as per the link) got all hot and bothered when she heard her daughter listening to a Prince album and it flustered her so much she went the wrong direction and tried to get all kinds of great music banned.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's cool - I've read about 60-70% of the books on the list.
It's odd - Call of the Wild has been challenged?
It's informative - I've just started reading The Satanic Verses, and now i have a new reading list
It's missing? - I can't believe Farenheit 451 isn't on that list...
It's scary - many people in the world are denied access to these books.
It's scarier - many people in this country would have these books banned
It's sad - in 100 years, who knows if we'll all still have access to these books.
It's encouraging - challenges, even recently, to these books in schools and libraries have failed - let's hope history repeats itself in such a fashion for years to come.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
Sort of ironic to celebrate Google's showing these banned books when Google China agreed to censor itself.
The box said I needed Windows XP or better so I bought a Mac.
Let me remind you that the Islamic-Fascist's go one better: attempt to kill the author. Salman Rushdie and the cartoonists that drew the Mohammed cartoons in Denmark have had to live in hiding
I find the news coverage and people's opinions of the cartoon issue very interesting. Certain rabble rousers intentionally tried to cause trouble over the cartoons, the the point of sending ones they created and which had never been published anywhere to newspapers and to religious zealots in many countries. And yet, I saw not in one place, but in many, Muslim clerics placing themselves between an embassy and a mob throwing stones and trying to calm the situation and prevent violence. Islamic culture won big points in my mind that day.
I just picture a bunch of hicks from rural America showing up at an Iranian embassy after the widespread publication and promotion of pictures of jesus being sodomized. Then, to put it in context, I picture this happening in Texas, months after an army of middle easterners had conquered Mexico, bombing cities and sending frightened refugees to hide in the USA. Where each of these hicks knew some old friend or relative or friend of a friend or friend of a relative who had lost a mother or son or child to the bombings. And then I pictured all this happening after the President of Iran had made comments about how they should invade the US too, since the US had aided Mexico and all those christians were violent sodomites. With this picture in my mind, I wondered how many local pastors and priests in texas would be there, placing themselves between the rocks and the mob, and the Iranian embassy.
Yes Virgina, evil exists and it wants to kill you.
I don't approve of censorship or murder, but I do understand why people are convinced that both are right in certain circumstances. Lets just be sure not to pre judge people based upon religion or ethnicity. A catholic, muslim, or atheist is equally capable of promoting fascism.
The same thing goes on constantly with "Huckleberry Finn" - at least I assume it's similar - it is always presented in the press as being motivated by use of the N-word, but is perhaps more sophisticated than that (if still just as wrongheaded in my view)
BTW - minor point - Harper Lee is a woman
Maybe, but fascism is a good discription of what they, the Islamo-Fascist, want. A world wide totalitarian society with scrict information control, progroms, purges, and thought policing by a central Islamic government called the Caliphate.
Fascism is also a good description of the ideology of the Neo-Cons here in the US. It's almost funny how we have one group of fascists calling another group fascists. It brings to mind that old quote from Huey Long:
When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag
Or, Long's response to the question of whether or not Fascism would ever come to the US:
Yes, but in America, we'll call it anti-fascism.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig