Science for Everyone

Not Exactly Rocket Science- a fun and well-written science blog. Check it out!

R.I.P. Judith Krug

Judith Krug, the woman credited with founding Banned Books Week, died on Saturday at the age of 69. Sadly, she was a woman I was unaware of until hearing of her death today, but would have been a person on my "Must Meet" list had I only known.

I will try to honor her memory by reading everything I can get my hands on and fighting to uphold Constitutional Freedom of Expression whenever and where ever I can. Will you join me?

For the Win

From here. I assume she took the picture herself.

PEEPS!

Peeps Show III from the Washington Post has a slide show with their favorite forty Peeps dioramas.

This picture is

Nightmare at 20,000 Peeps by Allie Berg and Jonathan Herr, Washington. A re-creation of the famous episode of the classic "Twilight Zone" episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," starring William Shatner, the diorama was composed in various shades of gray, black and white (no Photoshopping) to match the look of the 1963 episode.

Books and Covers and All That

It looks as if Britain's Got Talent was recently schooled in the old adage. Heartwarming, if a bit heavy on the vibrato.

Mean Kitty Song

The Mean Kitty Song

Still, It's Upsetting

The Amazon thing I posted about was an error:

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from 'false' to 'true.')

"It's no big policy change, just some field that's been around forever filled out incorrectly," the source said.

Some questions were answered here:

Q: Was the problem with a French programmer? Can you illuminate what you think happened?

Daisey: Someone was editing the category systems inside of Amazon.fr, made an error, and that system is global, so it propagated everywhere. I have no insight as to anyone's nationality, or whether it was a language gap, or anything of that nature.

As one who helped to blow it more out of proportion, sorry. Still, to know that one employee making a mistake (or a "mistake") can effect thousands of titles is disturbing.