This Week's Salad

• Follow-up item: China unblocks the New York Times. Well, I suppose that's a small step in the right direction...


• The Far Side Reenactment Pool. The sincerest, and perhaps strangest, form of flattery.


• Obama's science advisors include an open access supporter, which I guess is sort of a follow-up to the POSTNotes link I provided last week. This is not the first nomination that has gone to someone with strong beliefs about online community and freedom of information, and I'm excited to see where this all goes.

Serious post to follow in a few days' time.

I am your meta-MetaFilter. Call me "Filter Omega".

As usual, life and circumstance puts the lie to my posting claims. The post about obsession and Oliver Postgate (well, his work, that is) is to come later today; for now, you receive more link salad.

• Music industry shifting its anti-piracy tactics. Provided they hold true to this, it looks the RIAA is finally focusing its money and time on targeting music uploaders rather than music downloaders, and is starting to do some work on respecting the privacy of the individual. Unfortunately, they aren't abandoning their current (asinine) crop of lawsuits, so I can only gain so much respect...


• A Mr. Wendell Jamieson gives us a very different take on It's A Wonderful Life. What's better than lit crit? Cynical lit crit!


• POSTNotes. These are briefings and longer works from the UK's Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. I have not gotten a chance to read them yet; I'll edit with a review when I get a chance (and encourage you readers to let me know if this is just terrible stuff). In the meantime, I just dig this idea; it's both a quick way to get an update on current science, and a nice little way for government to make itself a bit less opaque.


• And finally, your dose of schadenfreude: Anti-kidnapping expert kidnapped. This is terrible and I hope Mr. Batista gets out of it safely, and yet at the same time there is a dark part of me that cannot help but laugh. Welcome to the downfall of my generation.

The Great Firewall

Big surprise: Many Web sites are blocked from viewing in China.

As much as I hate to say it, this doesn't scare me. Censorship scares me, but this is neither new nor unique. What scares me, what absolutely terrifies me, is the sentiment expressed in this quoted statement by a representative of the Foreign Ministry:

“I hope that the Web sites in question will be able to self-regulate, and not do things that will violate Chinese law, and for the sake of both sides, develop conditions for Web site cooperation."

This from the Foreign Ministry. In other words, not to be inflammatory: If you want to stop being censored, stop saying things we don't approve of.

I have a serious problem with the quoted representative's attitude. It suggests that the only "appeal" against censorship is censoring oneself. It suggests an incontrovertible rightness to their behavior.

I have nothing pithy to end on. I'm just going to go be furious until I have time to do some research, and determine if China's government really is the fascistic, facile 1984 derivative that this article paints them to be.

The Middle and the End of it

Unless I'm mistaken, this is Banned Books Week. It is entirely possible I'm mistaken, as a week that takes place during "the last week in September" is frustratingly ambiguous as to when it should occur, so it's entirely possible I'm nine days late rather than two. Nevertheless, I have a few brief things to say.

One: I am a rabid free speech advocate. For all the terrible music I hear, for all the insipid speeches that get drooled all over the press, for all the pundits to the extreme right that make me want to tear my hair out, I love the First Amendment. I think that its exceptions as concepts are solid, though I do not always agree with the phrasing--because I think giving anyone more than the barest inch of latitude as far as declaring what is and is not harmful speech is asking for trouble. I defend the right to free speech of those I don't agree with, and hope they will defend mine. That is probably not the end of my statements on free speech, but it is definitely the end for now.

Two: If you're American, be proud--for all we've seen books challenged there has yet to be an official, government-enforced, nationwide ban (though the Post Office's issues with Ulysses come close).

Three: A sticky corollary to one: I don't think the ability to challenge books should exist.

That is not to say that I think parents should not have the right to restrict what their child reads, especially while young. In an ideal world, I do think parents should be allowed to see school reading lists and discuss the material with the teachers, and that books checked out from the school library should be cleared with parents before the student is allowed to get their hands on them. I also think that this level of interference should end at middle or high school when children are starting to become adults and we want to encourage independence, but that's an entirely different issue. But children, like adults, are individuals, and I don't think anyone but the child and the parents should be deciding what is and is not appropriate for the people around them, of any age; and I do not think the government should be doing our parenting for us. Naturally, I understand certain exceptions must be made--but when it comes to free speech I am the closest I get to radical.

So, in short, I do not think the banning of media of any form should be allowed, in any secular institution. It is a system that allows one person's opinion to interfere with mine, and is thus a system that, ultimately, puts one person's views about another. And much as part of me wants to silence some of the major public voices in this country, I don't like the concessions I'd have to make to do that.

There you go. Politics. Maybe next time we'll pretend this is a science blog.