We've always had birds. When we were in Greece, my grandma kept chickens right behind her house. We use to chase them all day. Then we had a duck when we were in Gibbons, it was better than a dog (no sloppy kisses!) And over the years we've had seven budgies. One of them died recently and now the one left behind is super friendly, tho he figures I have nothing better to do than stand in front of the cage with his yellow mirror so he can look at himself and kiss it. When I go to sit back down, he ruffles once, ruffles twice, then swoops at me. At least a penguin can't do that!
Gee...I thought I was from the Chomsky camp...you'd do well to read him. You still can't deny that they started to trample on people's dreams of having a bit of cyberspace, people who thought the net was supposed to be a great sharing, and not dictated by a mother corp.
I don't spend my life in a fictious community, hell, I'm tree planting this weekend and doing a highway clean up. How about you?
I have to disagree. The reason people are so ticked at Geocities is that the straw has been broken. If you were there in 1996, you would have said it was a real online community. I made lots of new friends there. Then came the ads that defaced your page, over and over again.
Geo was supposed to be about spirit and community. It did a flip and became about money, greed and eyeballs. That's what's making people so upset. They could care squat about community - for example, before you couldn't sell anything on your site. Now you can sell "approved" things on your site. They have constantly changed the rules without consulting their "community".
People may whine that it is free, but at least one should be treated with dignity and respect and not the ninth arm of an advertising monster. It's no longer about people, it's all greed. Geo killed it's own communities. They forgot the human element that put so much into those pages, however crappy or beautiful they were.
Check out Hitlercities btw, you'll get a laugh. This poor guy has been chased from server to server by Geo. http://thor.prohosting.com/~hitler/
I would be for something like that. For most cosmetic ingredients, I think it takes like 3 animals per dose per ingredient. That's a lot of critters!
A friend of mine who is a physiologist, helps with experiments on pigs (I've told him that I may be required to throw red paint on him one day, but he doesn't mind) for heart patients. They test things like stents...the pigs are never revived...when they're disposed, they're cut in half (I don't know if they've been destroyed by that time or still anesthetized). It seems so sad...at least tho, you're going to learn more about something that saves lives rather than something done for vanity.
where in cyberspace did she get that background design???
I didin't see anything referring to the search engine either. I wish I had seen what the old site looked like - if it was such a great search page, you think it would have gotten more press...I don't know if it makes more interesting reading that the webmaster is female. Why do wired women always have to be put in a class? It certainly is a novelty for what I do - TGTH outshines all the male produced gonzo websites out there by far.
Disable javascript to prevent those pop ups. My computer at home is hideously old and those things overtax it...on a related note, a friend of mine when to a porno site called Dirty Bird...got a "why are you leaving" form pop up when he tried to leave - he replied, "I thought this site had pix of birds having sex";-)
whoah! Geo has a long history of yanking sites, from slightly naughty jokes, to those of homosexuals, or anyone who tries to set up a Geo protest site on Geo.
Just look up Geocensored in hotbot...in fact, there's a GeoDelete and a GeoCensored webring out there...the last one Geo tried to get Webring to destroy (but seeing as how Yahoo and Geo now own Webring...)
All it takes is a complaint using their handy dandy nark form, innocently labelled "Neighbourhood Watch" or something.
It's a true story, I heard it from the webmaster of Crosswinds.net. A GeoQuitizen set up a GeoCensored page (I can't remember if it was the original or another one) and Geo threatened to sue Crosswinds, a Cdn server. Holy cow eh?
Another guy, Bill, who does Snickers, got kicked off Xoom and had his email blocked by Geocities - he couldn't send to a geo address...
Oh, be sure to check out Hitlercities. I hope it's still around. That kid had to run from server to server as well.
:-) There can be such a thing as a free lunch. My site, The Great Thompson Hunt, used to be on Geo. Then in May 1998, Lenny asked if I would like to host it on his server. No strings attached. No licence, no contract, no ads, no nothing. And it's true.
A year later the site has grown to over 14MB and nothing's stopping us. I can use swear words instead of blanking them out, and use naughty photos and other things that would have definitely been no-nos in Geo.
The funny thing is, a week after moving to the tekknowledge server, I got a second free hosting offer by a guy in California. So now TGTH has a mirror to boot.
Both guys are gonzo fans. Both are the greatest net friends I could ever have. I get more visitors on a faster server. We three sit back and reap the rewards of having visitors who respect us and what we do for them.
I was having a chat with the tech guy here at work and we came to the same conclusion, about how bad the internet sucks. I sincerely doubt if Geo/Yahoo wants to reproduce kiddie pages with broken links, images, bad HTML, java apps all over, not to mention horrendous background images. Somehow people with those kinds of pages think they're cool, acccccck! I guess I should damper their enthusiasm, but oh pls!
I see the net now in terms of that Sprint commercial with Candace Bergen (oh how I long for the days of deregulation in Alberta!! I'd pay $2 a minute long distance if it meant I didn't have to see another Sprint ad three times in a row!) where everyone is looking into their screens and saying dumb things like "I'm surfing the net!".
Kind of bizarre really. I think Geo is a cult. If you try to say something bad about them (use "geocensored" in hotbot) all these people will come up and get mad at you and say how nice it is that Geo gives them all these things...but they don't realize what Geo is collecting about them and just using them as cheap advertising.
I had an acct there in 1996-1997. Got out while I could, when I was offered free space and no ads by some nice guys. It used to be OK. Then came the java ads, the pop up ads, ads, the watermark...good lord! If a surfer needs to be told that their in a Geo site, then they have to be pretty dumb! I worked so hard to put a site together and suddenly it seemed so hollow. It's not a community, it's a cesspool of psychographics and greed, playing off the hopes and dreams of real people.
Well, I gotta give them credit, after someone got away with geo$hitties.com awihle ago...but Geo is certainly not non profit.
I just register a.org domain and my site, while it doesn't make money (certainly non-profit in every sense, I spend so much on it!) there's also jonathonwinters.org - he sells his artwork there...?
There doesn't seem to be any clear defn for.org domains, like veronica.org or pokey.org
OTOH, bravo for Slashdot. I'm beginning to feel the same crunch with my site. Fortunately I'm on two servers, "free lunch, final wisdom" sort of thing and don't have to pay...but man, updating it each day, and with a redesign in the works, plus answering emails...it's like having a toddler around:-)
>>What exactly are we shielding our children from anyway? Sex? Why do we give kids such a complex about it and make them think it is bad?
Well, you can argue that porn is violent and degrading, but there are women out there who do buy and produce porn, so it's not like, one of those male-oppressive things.
When I was a kid, there was sex all around. I mean, it was so *open*. We'd watch films, get shown books, even from a young age...there's enough sex on TV...certainly when I was a kid, it was thought that educating kids more about the human body was a good thing...videotaping birthings was all the rage. It was like, *so important* to know where babies come from.
I can't speak for Americans, being Cdn, but why do politicians cross their legs and say that all these things are evil? What is so wrong with Jessie Helms (see a book called Close to The Knives) that there's something evil about men loving each other when the US army was invading little island nations and killing people.
Why do people need protecting anyway? Are the American people so afraid of themselves that everyone and everything needs to be locked up, that anything that might offend someone is somehow *evil*...that's Geocities job isn't it?
And I agree, you'd think that the last people to do this would be Republicans...what's there to be so uptight about? Lock up the porn, but don't lock up your guns?
Hee hee, I haven't bought anything from Radio Shack in so long that I forgot about the big receipt they want you to fill out (at least in Canada). Same goes for websites that ask for my address and #, when all I want to do is see what downloads they have. Why do they need all that? Just fill in "don't give out to strangers" and make them think about their information gathering.
If you look in the Wired News archives, there are some fascinating stories about the guy who originally had sex.com in 1994. Then some con man managed to persuade NSI that HE owned it. The lawsuit has been dragging on for a couple of years now, I think.
Me too. When I moved out of my parents, they thought my life had suddenly become lesser because I didn't have the noisebox around. I can still keep up with the news thru the net, and music too. I thought I would miss The Simpsons and The X-files, but I don't. I thought, because I didn't have a TV, I would spend more time on the computer. But it didn't work out that way. Instead I go around to the shops and feed geese by the river. I sleep over at my parents when there's something I want to watch.
Keeping on topic, I have an old copy of Funny Times with the Tom Tomorrow cartoon in there that a previous poster referred to, the mylar balloon idea. Like the last panel of the toon says, "If they could, advertisers would beam their message right into our brains".
We consider a computer tho to be more personal. Unlike a TV, it holds our lives and expressions of ourselves. It's the same concept as bars that put ads on the back door of washrooms. While I'm there piddling, I don't appreciate a big perfume ad staring me in the face!
I know what you mean! I loathe most net advertising, pop ups included, and everyone who insists on being an "associate" (read: cheap labour for big companies).
I remember seeing ads for Lotus that went like "the net is screaming for capitalists" or something...I suppose what hurt is that one ad had the line "short stories that nobody reads". That seemed awful crass. The net thrives on its humanity. Take out the humanity and what have you got? The soulless machine that writers have been warning us about for ages (just reread Farenheit 451 - so hard to believe it was written in the 50s!)
It hurts me that everything is done for eyeballs and money. Newbies will never realize how great it was to surf. They aren't wary of schemes that focus on them as a pyschographic and target markets. They think, "Oh how nice they want to give me free webspace". They don't think, "Gee, I don't like having my page cluttered with ads that I don't agree with."
Ebay is pretty cool. I snagged a lot of good books dirt cheap there. But it is getting harder. Before I could make a bid a few days before and still win. Now I have to wait until the last few seconds to swoop down on everyone else:-)
Laird! A long time ago when I was so innocent, I had a site in Geocitie$ and the server crashes were horrible. I'm surprised they didn't lose more people. The server ate my files, re-wrote permissions, and nevermind that it was slow as hell...it still IS slow...I think everything they do on the site now is to get people to buy faster computers by getting them to think that theirs is slow...
OTOH, I'm not fazed by ebay's problem. I'll never hand over my CC to Amazon, and half the stuff I look for is uniquely weird - the only kind of things you can get on ebay. The crabbers are probably newbies - geez, live with it, it happens, you know? If they ever used Lynx they'd realize how far browsing on the net has come!
Not really. In the case of the local school board, it went on a witch-hunt to find out who ordered a bunch of books on homosexuality. One parent went on record as saying that someone was pushing a gay agenda...well...geez...
I'm sorry, but I have to laugh. Common sense rarely prevails (see above - come on, there are gay teens). TinTin in Africa is hiding behind the desk at a Toronto library...and in Northern Alberta, an entire town stopped a series of textbooks from being used because they contained "witchcraft" (same goes for textbooks in the States where the Klan has gone in and removed books that were "communist")
I've seen it too many times - parents and politicians who go on power trips to control the flow of information.
Literary merit is the only community standard for readers and writers. Unfortunately, there are some in this province who are quick to condemn Of Mice and Men because it had too many gee-dee "swears". Don't even ask what happened when Angels in America came to town, esp. since Alberta has the only second Mormon Temple in North America.
I know libraries where the staff black out swears, and silently drop books if there is so much as one complaint.
Unless a library has a formal censorship-handling policy, then they are in deep trouble.
And I'm not hiding behind my keyboard. I worked for the public library and I am a library technician. Every March and April I resurrect a large section on censorship for Freedom to Read Week.
No, not many libraries carry those mags:-) but you gotta admit, "mainstream" mags are coming close - just look at some covers of Rolling Stone, Esquire, Details - from the past couple of years.
Where will it end? That is the question. We can easily pick out the obvious, but from net porn it will fall to sex books (which kids CAN take out and look at!) then to art (as usual), or say, "pornographic" authors like Anais Nin or Henry Miller.
Once the ball starts rolling on censorship in a library, it can be pretty hard to stop. Basically, once again, government is seeking to abscond responsibility. Let's filter the library since parents don't want to teach their kids respect and responsibility, or even talk to them about naked people. Crumbs, we don't need regulations, we need parenting skills! A library is more vulnerable because it is taxpayer funded, and usually it is a low priority on most budgets.
I just downloaded an Apple//e emulator last week...funny how these things bring back memories, esp. Logo...
People ask, where's the humanity in a machine? It's a cold box. They never think of the people sitting in front of the box. Now if only I could find a ROM of Number Munchers, I'd be in heaven!
I've owned 7 budgies over fifteen years. One of them died in May. It's happened so many times, you'd think I'd be used to them...but it was sad because someone had returned him to the pet store and I got him for free. Buddy would sometimes sit by himself in his little house, and I knew he was sad. But then he would get happy when I walked up to the cage and held up his favourite mirror. The other bird misses him, but has suddenly become tame. He lets me scratch his head.
Even if they came out with a robot bird, I wouldn't buy it. I had a clockwork cat when I was a kid and it was satisfying enough. But how you can you "program" the love and affection from a robot pet?
Count me in. I would never steal a candy bar, but I might consider copying software (and I never have actually...). The exchange rate is painfully expensive.
But what does the statement, "They're Cdns, what do you expect?" mean exactly? If the person had mentioned that the poll came from England, or New Zealand, or South Africa, would it illicit the same response?
When This Hour Has 22 Minutes managed to get Americans to say things like "Congratulations Canada, on your 100th mile of paved road" or "Welcome to Canada King Lucien" I laughed so hard my sides hurt for days. Especially funny was the guy who told a friend of mine that he should take his licence plate back, since they spelt "Montana" wrong. He's from Manitoba...
They were Americans. What else could I expect? ;-)
Uh...do you know what censorship means?
on
Bootlegging Buffy
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· Score: 1
Political correctness is a form of censorship, albeit a very subtle one. By saying "folically challenged" you are censoring yourself from having thoughts of "bald" or "chrome dome".
There is self-censorship when you decide not to read something.
There is government censorship when Canada Customs decides that a chili cookbook called Hot Hot Hot is dangerous to Cdn citizens (they thot it was a sex book)
There is greed induced censorship when a tv station/show or newspaper owned by a tobacco company doesn't run a story about smokes causing cancer.
Whew! If all that isn't censorship, then I don't know what is...check out Carl Jensen's Project Censored books and find out what you've been missing (literally)
While a station has the right not to release a show, it is their product, it's not as if Buffy was a "bad" product. Anyone remember Degrassi? In the series finale where Wheels gets drunk and hits a car and there's a kid and her mom in the car... no one ever said, hey, don't show that, the kids will go out now and get drunk...
No, I don't think this trivializes it. If all citizens expressed the same outrage over materials witheld from them, what a more just and democratic society we would have!
I think the subject of domain names is a good topic too. It would go to show the frivolity involved in corporate America. For example, ajax.org, who was sued by Proctor and Gamble, because they saw it as an infringement on their product. Never mind that Ajax and Ajax the Lesser were figures from The Illiad! (btw, PG also owns diarrhea.com, talk about gross!)
Yeah...you could probably touch on a number of topics, but basically you could write an entire book on any of them!
I agree. I remember when I used to link to Geocities and you weren't allowed to make defamatory comments...I remember a story I wrote about Ralph Klein and I used to be on pins and needles so I put a statement that it wasn't defamatory...
You couldn't have links either to smut or words with swears too....ha ha, I learned recently that I'm not a "respectable person" after being kicked out of a women's webring for links that contained swears.
Jains have quite a unique perspective on life. They sometimes walk with brooms to sweep insects out of their path, as they may be stepping on a "relative". Don't laugh, I mean, lots of cultures believe in re-incarnation. Their diets are almost wholly fruitarian (again, don't laugh). Fruit is OK because it grows on trees, and you're just eating the fruit and not the whole tree. Seeds are saved and replanted. It's quite mystical. If you're intrigued, check out "The Jain's Death" at Electric Sheep web comics. It's quite astounding.
Slashdot Mirror
We've always had birds. When we were in Greece, my grandma kept chickens right behind her house. We use to chase them all day. Then we had a duck when we were in Gibbons, it was better than a dog (no sloppy kisses!) And over the years we've had seven budgies. One of them died recently and now the one left behind is super friendly, tho he figures I have nothing better to do than stand in front of the cage with his yellow mirror so he can look at himself and kiss it. When I go to sit back down, he ruffles once, ruffles twice, then swoops at me.
At least a penguin can't do that!
I don't spend my life in a fictious community, hell, I'm tree planting this weekend and doing a highway clean up. How about you?
Geo was supposed to be about spirit and community. It did a flip and became about money, greed and eyeballs. That's what's making people so upset.
They could care squat about community - for example, before you couldn't sell anything on your site. Now you can sell "approved" things on your site. They have constantly changed the rules without consulting their "community".
People may whine that it is free, but at least one should be treated with dignity and respect and not the ninth arm of an advertising monster. It's no longer about people, it's all greed. Geo killed it's own communities. They forgot the human element that put so much into those pages, however crappy or beautiful they were.
Check out Hitlercities btw, you'll get a laugh. This poor guy has been chased from server to server by Geo.
http://thor.prohosting.com/~hitler/
A friend of mine who is a physiologist, helps with experiments on pigs (I've told him that I may be required to throw red paint on him one day, but he doesn't mind) for heart patients. They test things like stents...the pigs are never revived...when they're disposed, they're cut in half (I don't know if they've been destroyed by that time or still anesthetized). It seems so sad...at least tho, you're going to learn more about something that saves lives rather than something done for vanity.
I didin't see anything referring to the search engine either. I wish I had seen what the old site looked like - if it was such a great search page, you think it would have gotten more press...I don't know if it makes more interesting reading that the webmaster is female. Why do wired women always have to be put in a class? It certainly is a novelty for what I do - TGTH outshines all the male produced gonzo websites out there by far.
Disable javascript to prevent those pop ups. My computer at home is hideously old and those things overtax it...on a related note, a friend of mine when to a porno site called Dirty Bird...got a "why are you leaving" form pop up when he tried to leave - he replied, "I thought this site had pix of birds having sex"
Just look up Geocensored in hotbot...in fact, there's a GeoDelete and a GeoCensored webring out there...the last one Geo tried to get Webring to destroy (but seeing as how Yahoo and Geo now own Webring...)
All it takes is a complaint using their handy dandy nark form, innocently labelled "Neighbourhood Watch" or something.
It's a true story, I heard it from the webmaster of Crosswinds.net. A GeoQuitizen set up a GeoCensored page (I can't remember if it was the original or another one) and Geo threatened to sue
Crosswinds, a Cdn server. Holy cow eh?
Another guy, Bill, who does Snickers, got kicked off Xoom and had his email blocked by Geocities - he couldn't send to a geo address...
Oh, be sure to check out Hitlercities. I hope it's still around. That kid had to run from server to server as well.
Then in May 1998, Lenny asked if I would like to host it on his server. No strings attached. No licence, no contract, no ads, no nothing. And it's true.
A year later the site has grown to over 14MB and nothing's stopping us. I can use swear words instead of blanking them out, and use naughty photos and other things that would have definitely been no-nos in Geo.
The funny thing is, a week after moving to the tekknowledge server, I got a second free hosting offer by a guy in California. So now TGTH has a mirror to boot.
Both guys are gonzo fans. Both are the greatest net friends I could ever have. I get more visitors on a faster server. We three sit back and reap the rewards of having visitors who respect us and what we do for them.
and we came to the same conclusion, about how bad the internet sucks. I sincerely doubt if Geo/Yahoo wants to reproduce kiddie pages with broken links, images, bad HTML, java apps all over, not to mention horrendous background images. Somehow people with those kinds of pages think they're cool, acccccck! I guess I should damper their enthusiasm, but oh pls!
I see the net now in terms of that Sprint commercial with Candace Bergen (oh how I long for the days of deregulation in Alberta!! I'd pay $2 a minute long distance if it meant I didn't have to see another Sprint ad three times in a row!) where everyone is looking into their screens and saying dumb things like "I'm surfing the net!".
Kind of bizarre really. I think Geo is a cult. If you try to say something bad about them (use "geocensored" in hotbot) all these people will come up and get mad at you and say how nice it is that Geo gives them all these things...but they don't realize what Geo is collecting about them and just using them as cheap advertising.
I had an acct there in 1996-1997. Got out while I could, when I was offered free space and no ads by some nice guys. It used to be OK. Then came the java ads, the pop up ads, ads, the watermark...good lord! If a surfer needs to be told that their in a Geo site, then they have to be pretty dumb! I worked so hard to put a site together and suddenly it seemed so hollow. It's not a community, it's a cesspool of psychographics and greed, playing off the hopes and dreams of real people.
I just register a
There doesn't seem to be any clear defn for
OTOH, bravo for Slashdot. I'm beginning to feel the same crunch with my site. Fortunately I'm on two servers, "free lunch, final wisdom" sort of thing and don't have to pay...but man, updating it each day, and with a redesign in the works, plus answering emails...it's like having a toddler around
Well, you can argue that porn is violent and degrading, but there are women out there who do buy and produce porn, so it's not like, one of those male-oppressive things.
When I was a kid, there was sex all around. I mean, it was so *open*. We'd watch films, get shown books, even from a young age...there's enough sex on TV...certainly when I was a kid, it was thought that educating kids more about the human body was a good thing...videotaping birthings was all the rage. It was like, *so important* to know where babies come from.
I can't speak for Americans, being Cdn, but why do politicians cross their legs and say that all these things are evil? What is so wrong with Jessie Helms (see a book called Close to The Knives) that there's something evil about men loving each other when the US army was invading little island nations and killing people.
Why do people need protecting anyway? Are the American people so afraid of themselves that everyone and everything needs to be locked up, that anything that might offend someone is somehow *evil*...that's Geocities job isn't it?
And I agree, you'd think that the last people to do this would be Republicans...what's there to be so uptight about? Lock up the porn, but don't lock up your guns?
Hee hee, I haven't bought anything from Radio Shack in so long that I forgot about the big receipt they want you to fill out (at least in Canada). Same goes for websites that ask for my address and #, when all I want to do is see what downloads they have. Why do they need all that?
Just fill in "don't give out to strangers" and make them think about their information gathering.
If you look in the Wired News archives, there are some fascinating stories about the guy who originally had sex.com in 1994. Then some con man managed to persuade NSI that HE owned it. The lawsuit has been dragging on for a couple of years now, I think.
As well, I couldn't believe how many times the word "whore" was used. Damn, just when I thought I had busted that glass ceiling.
I thought I would miss The Simpsons and The X-files, but I don't. I thought, because I didn't have a TV, I would spend more time on the computer. But it didn't work out that way. Instead I go around to the shops and feed geese by the river. I sleep over at my parents when there's something I want to watch.
Keeping on topic, I have an old copy of Funny Times with the Tom Tomorrow cartoon in there that a previous poster referred to, the mylar balloon idea. Like the last panel of the toon says, "If they could, advertisers would beam their message right into our brains".
We consider a computer tho to be more personal. Unlike a TV, it holds our lives and expressions of ourselves. It's the same concept as bars that put ads on the back door of washrooms. While I'm there piddling, I don't appreciate a big perfume ad staring me in the face!
I remember seeing ads for Lotus that went like "the net is screaming for capitalists" or something...I suppose what hurt is that one ad had the line "short stories that nobody reads". That seemed awful crass. The net thrives on its humanity. Take out the humanity and what have you got? The soulless machine that writers have been warning us about for ages (just reread Farenheit 451 - so hard to believe it was written in the 50s!)
It hurts me that everything is done for eyeballs and money. Newbies will never realize how great it was to surf. They aren't wary of schemes that focus on them as a pyschographic and target markets. They think, "Oh how nice they want to give me free webspace". They don't think, "Gee, I don't like having my page cluttered with ads that I don't agree with."
Ebay is pretty cool. I snagged a lot of good books dirt cheap there. But it is getting harder. Before I could make a bid a few days before and still win. Now I have to wait until the last few seconds to swoop down on everyone else
OTOH, I'm not fazed by ebay's problem. I'll never hand over my CC to Amazon, and half the stuff I look for is uniquely weird - the only kind of things you can get on ebay. The crabbers are probably newbies - geez, live with it, it happens, you know? If they ever used Lynx they'd realize how far browsing on the net has come!
I'm sorry, but I have to laugh. Common sense rarely prevails (see above - come on, there are gay teens). TinTin in Africa is hiding behind the desk at a Toronto library...and in Northern Alberta, an entire town stopped a series of textbooks from being used because they contained "witchcraft" (same goes for textbooks in the States where the Klan has gone in and removed books that were "communist")
I've seen it too many times - parents and politicians who go on power trips to control the flow of information.
Literary merit is the only community standard for readers and writers. Unfortunately, there are some in this province who are quick to condemn Of Mice and Men because it had too many gee-dee "swears".
Don't even ask what happened when Angels in America came to town, esp. since Alberta has the only second Mormon Temple in North America.
I know libraries where the staff black out swears, and silently drop books if there is so much as one complaint.
Unless a library has a formal censorship-handling policy, then they are in deep trouble.
And I'm not hiding behind my keyboard. I worked for the public library and I am a library technician. Every March and April I resurrect a large section on censorship for Freedom to Read Week.
Where will it end? That is the question. We can easily pick out the obvious, but from net porn it will fall to sex books (which kids CAN take out and look at!) then to art (as usual), or say, "pornographic" authors like Anais Nin or Henry Miller.
Once the ball starts rolling on censorship in a library, it can be pretty hard to stop. Basically, once again, government is seeking to abscond responsibility. Let's filter the library since parents don't want to teach their kids respect and responsibility, or even talk to them about naked people. Crumbs, we don't need regulations, we need parenting skills! A library is more vulnerable because it is taxpayer funded, and usually it is a low priority on most budgets.
People ask, where's the humanity in a machine? It's a cold box. They never think of the people sitting in front of the box. Now if only I could find a ROM of Number Munchers, I'd be in heaven!
Even if they came out with a robot bird, I wouldn't buy it. I had a clockwork cat when I was a kid and it was satisfying enough. But how you can you "program" the love and affection from a robot pet?
I might consider copying software (and I never have actually...). The exchange rate is painfully expensive.
But what does the statement, "They're Cdns, what do you expect?" mean exactly? If the person had mentioned that the poll came from England, or New Zealand, or South Africa, would it illicit the same response?
When This Hour Has 22 Minutes managed to get Americans to say things like "Congratulations Canada, on your 100th mile of paved road" or "Welcome to Canada King Lucien" I laughed so hard my sides hurt for days. Especially funny was the guy who told a friend of mine that he should take his licence plate back, since they spelt "Montana" wrong. He's from Manitoba...
They were Americans. What else could I expect?
;-)
Political correctness is a form of censorship, albeit a very subtle one. By saying "folically challenged" you are censoring yourself from having thoughts of "bald" or "chrome dome".
There is self-censorship when you decide not to read something.
There is government censorship when Canada Customs decides that a chili cookbook called Hot Hot Hot is dangerous to Cdn citizens (they thot it was a sex book)
There is greed induced censorship when a tv station/show or newspaper owned by a tobacco company doesn't run a story about smokes causing cancer.
Whew! If all that isn't censorship, then I don't know what is...check out Carl Jensen's Project Censored books and find out what you've been missing (literally)
While a station has the right not to release a show, it is their product, it's not as if Buffy was a "bad" product. Anyone remember Degrassi? In the series finale where Wheels gets drunk and hits a car and there's a kid and her mom in the car...
no one ever said, hey, don't show that, the kids will go out now and get drunk...
No, I don't think this trivializes it. If all citizens expressed the same outrage over materials witheld from them, what a more just and democratic society we would have!
Yeah...you could probably touch on a number of topics, but basically you could write an entire book on any of them!
You couldn't have links either to smut or words with swears too....ha ha, I learned recently that I'm not a "respectable person" after being kicked out of a women's webring for links that contained swears.
Sad sad sad.
Jains have quite a unique perspective on life. They sometimes walk with brooms to sweep insects out of their path, as they may be stepping on a "relative". Don't laugh, I mean, lots of cultures believe in re-incarnation. Their diets are almost wholly fruitarian (again, don't laugh). Fruit is OK because it grows on trees, and you're just eating the fruit and not the whole tree. Seeds are saved and replanted. It's quite mystical. If you're intrigued, check out "The Jain's Death" at
Electric Sheep web comics. It's quite astounding.