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Bulletin Board
- My J-school buddy Tom Lawrence has started a blog called Prairie Perspective, which will provide “news, commentary and history on politics, life and culture in South Dakota and the Upper Midwest.” (Must say I like the name.)
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Who is the Real Enemy of the State? (“In essence, the [National Defense Authorization Act] seeks to designate the United States as an active war zone in regards to allegations of terrorism, or support of terrorism, wherein our most cherished all while putting your basic Constitutional Rights subject to the President’s whim.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Blog Lines of the Week
Batshit Craziness of the Week
Legal Inanities of the Week
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
Even in a country with constitutional guarantees of freedom, something more is needed to resist fear and its manipulators. That is courage.
Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate
Bulletin Board
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- The Hell of American Day Care (“The United States has always been profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of supporting child care outside the home, for reasons that inevitably trace back to beliefs over the proper role of women and mothers”) (via)
- Why Doctors Can’t Give You LSD (But Maybe They Should) (“Part of the problem with studying psychedelics–and other illicit drugs, such as marijuana–for medical use, is simply that they’re not high-tech, and no pharmaceutical company needs or wants to get involved. There’s no money in it for them.”) (via)
Blog Headline of the Week
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
I think “experimental fiction” is a synonym for “Give me a break.”
Anna Quindlen, NYTBR
The Googlization of the world occasionally provides unique — or bizarre — insight into what people are thinking or interested it. That is particularly true with its search autocomplete feature. As you type, it suggests potential searches reflect “the search activity of all web users and the content of web pages indexed by Google.” (Autocomplete can also be personalized a bit based on your web usage but I have both the personal results and web history options turned off on my Google account.)
It can be interesting to see what autocomplete suggests. Here’s a few examples of my first exploration into “autocomplete for fun.” Except where indicated otherwise, each of the results are in the order listed.
- For “why can’t,” the first two suggestions are “why can’t i get laid” and “why can’t tertiary alcohols be oxidized.” I don’t even understand the second one so for all I know it is related to the first. (If you just type “why,” “why can’t i get laid drops to number three.)
- Typing “why can’t obama” produces both sides of the political spectrum: “why can’t obama be impeached” and “why can’t obama close gitmo.”
- Autocomplete also indicates that people want to know if “republicans are”: idiots, evil, crazy, the problem. For Democrats, evil moves to number one, followed by racist, liberal and socialists. Perhaps that is why the second suggestion for “democrats and republicans” is “democrats and republicans are the same.” And I must say I found a bit of pleasure that “politicians are like diapers.”
- We lawyers don’t fare too much better, though. The first suggestion is “lawyers are scum.” I’m not sure if that’s better or worse than evil but ultimately I needn’t worry. Evil is number four in the autosuggest while “lawyers are liars” is second.
- Getting back to more generic search suggestions, “where” prompts “where is chuck norris” and “where’s my refund.” I’m fairly certain the latter keeps moving down as we get past April 15 but I’m not quite sure why people are so concerned about Mr. Norris.
- “Did I” produces “did i shave my legs for this” and “did i stutter,” suggesting webizens are fairly interested in wisecracks. “Did you,” in comparison, produces the straightforward “did you know.”
- It’s probably only fair to end this first round of the autocomplete game asking something about the feature itself. The results suggest that problems with autocomplete may have something to do with typing skills: “google autocomplete is not working corre” and “google autocomplete is not working corre marshmallows.”
If autocomplete is based on what web users are searching, I’ll leave you to ponder correlation between Goggle Autcomplete and marshmallows.
Google is a global Rorschach test.
John Battelle
Each year during National Library Week, the American Library Association releases a State of America’s Libraries report. One of the highlights (or lowlights) is that it contains the Top Ten List of Most Frequently Challenged Books, compiled annually by the organization’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. So here’s this year’s “winners”, in order, and the reasons they were challenged:
- Captain Underpants (series), Dav Pilkey (offensive language, unsuited for age group)
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie (offensive language, racism, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group) As an aside, Alexie spoke at SDSU to kick off the 2012 South Dakota Festival of Books last September.
- Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher (drugs/alcohol/smoking, sexually explicit, suicide, unsuited for age group)
- Fifty Shades of Grey, E. L. James (offensive language, sexually explicit)
- And Tango Makes Three, Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell (homosexuality, unsuited for age group)
- The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (homosexuality, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit)
- Looking for Alaska, John Green (offensive language, sexually explicit, unsuited for age group)
- Scary Stories (series), Alvin Schwartz (unsuited for age group, violence)
- The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (offensive language, sexually explicit)
- Beloved, Toni Morrison (sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence)
I doubt anyone is shocked that Fifty Shades of Grey is on the list and while there are a few perennial “favorites” (And Tango Makes Three and Beloved, for example), there’s also some new entries this year. Thirteen Reasons Why is a 2007 young adult novel dealing with the reasons why a young girl committed suicide. Looking for Alaska, meanwhile, is a 2005 young adult novel that takes a before and after look at another young girl’s death. Both won numerous honors when released.
Instead of asking – “How much damage will the work in question bring about?” why not ask – “How much good? How much joy?”
Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
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Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
Blog Headline of the Week
Lawsuit of the Week
Legislative Time-Wasters of the Week
Bookish Linkage
Nonbookish Linkage
All knowledge, the totality of all questions and all answers, is contained in the dog.
Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog”
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Disclaimer 
Additionally, some links on this blog go to Amazon.com. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is no additional cost to you. Contact me You can e-mail me at prairieprogressive at gmaildotcom.
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