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Saturday, March 10
A Couple Last Notes on Freedom to Read Week
by
Jason
on Sat 10 Mar 2007 03:04 AM CST
When I uploaded my FTRW interview to YouSendIt a couple days ago, I didn't realise they now required you to set-up an account before downloading files (boo!) Quinn has very generously agreed to host the file for those of who who may have found this a barrier for whatever reason.
To save the file to your hard drive, right click on that "host this file" link and select "Save Link As" to save it to your hard drive. Or click the link to listen to directly - no password or account needed. I also had one correction from the show (so far  .) I said that Little Sister's went to court because they were importing material depicting underage sex. That's not true. I mixed up their Supreme Court case with another similar but different one that happened a couple years ago which was to determine if child pornography in the form of "works of the imagination" (ie. fictional stories or illustrations instead of photos) was illegal like "real" child pornography. (If I'm reading that article right, it turns out that the Supreme Court found that it isn't.)Okay, one and a half corrections. I mentioned that I thought Little Sister's was going out of business. Their web site is still up so this doesn't appear to be the case but there were rumours they might cease operations since they lost their case and were therefore subject to massive legal bills. Okay, two corrections. I guessed that FTRW had been around for 25 years. (It's 24 - not bad for a wild stab in the dark though!)Oh, why not? Three corrections. I said that ALA's Banned Books week is in November. It's in September. (How can you tell I'm used to the written medium where your words stay there forever to be contemplated and corrected as needed rather than the transitory nature of radio communications? But if I'm putting up the radio broadcast in this format where anyone can download or listen repeatedly, I might as well 'fess up to my misstatements.)
What else? I read from "Behold The Man" on the show and Wikipedia has a nice summary of the book although they give away the big "plot twist" (but so does the back cover of the edition I own - why do publishers do that? They're getting as bad as film studios with their trailers, I swear!)The story of how I came to know and then own this book is fun. I was a big SF fan when I was younger and found the book while browsing at RPL one day. The back cover (which thankfully didn't give away the plot) grabbed my attention so I took it home and devoured it. At the time, I remember thinking it may just be the best book I'd ever read. It was one of those books where everything fits together magically and there are no loose ends. Plus the themes being explored - faith, mythology, religion, modern society, angst - had a big impact on me in a variety of ways. I kept the book in the back of my mind but never re-discovered it until I organized a Freedom to Read Week event a few months after I started at the Writers Guild of Alberta. I asked local bookstore Pages (excellent independent bookstore if you're ever in Calgary!) to sell books at the event and during one of the readings intermission, I went over to check out their wares. I saw the book on the table and blurted, "Sold!" Brad, the Pages employee working the table, goes "You know that book? Wow, I only brought it so I'd have something to flip through instead of Harry Potter when the table wasn't busy!" I bought it and a couple others I'd been meaning to add to my library and that book has come to define FTRW for me - I talked about it non-stop while serving on the Calgary Freedom to Read Week committee, I read from it during our FTRW reading last year at UWO and again on the radio show. So what I'm saying is that you (yes, you. I can see you out there at your computer reading this blog - screw Web 2.0, that's Web 3.0, baby!) should find this book and read it.
Thursday, March 8
Reference Question About Online File Storage/Sharing
by
Jason
on Thu 08 Mar 2007 11:58 AM CST
Does anybody know a place to store a 30MB file for easy sharing online? I'd store it on my site - I have the space but know the file transfers would eat up my monthly bandwidth in no time. I taped the FTRW interview yesterday off the air (memories of taping "American Top 40 with Casey Kasem" as a kid sitting there with a tape recorder and the radio turned up loud) and was going to put it up temporarily until I could get a proper digital copy. I thought about just putting a single photo over top of it and making it a video file to upload to YouTube but they apparently no longer have "Director" accounts to let you put up videos over 10 minutes (the interview is 30 min.)I saw Odeo billed as a "YouTube for audio" but they don't do any hosting of files (which means they're not the "YouTube for audio" in my mind.) There's a new site called "Scripd" that's trying to be a YouTube of documents (PDF, doc, PPT, txt, XLS) but although they seem to have a option to listen to any documents on the site as an MP3 (automated text-to-voice?), they don't allow you to upload MP3's of spoken word or anything else directly.
(On that note, somebody observed that as the Net grows on an exponential basis, instead of a single search engine, there might be these "category" sites that are the place to go for all video, all audio, all documents, all information relevant to a single subject, whatever it is. Interesting theory.)
File hosting/sharing sites like box.net (which I otherwise like) have upload limits - no files bigger than 10MB on that one. YouSendIt only hosts a file for 7 days and has some other limitations as well although nothing that would affect me regarding this particular file.I could see how much WinZip or another archiving program would shrink it although I don't like that this puts an extra step on the end user.
I didn't spend any time trying to compress it myself. I recorded it at 128kps but it probably doesn't need to be that high for a voice file.
Hmm, maybe I'll
just put it on YouSendIt for the time being and anybody who wants it
can grab it now. If you're reading this and the file's not available
anymore (after March 15 I think) but you want ot hear it, e-mail me and I can use YouSendIt again to re-send it to you.
Tuesday, March 6
You *Can* Say Scrotum on the Radio (and Nut Sack too!)
by
Jason
on Tue 06 Mar 2007 06:37 PM CST
Just a reminder - the replay of my appearance on the "Book Chick" radio show on local community radio talking about Freedom to Read Week last week will be replayed tomorrow at noon, Saskatchewan time (11am Alberta time, 1pm Ontario time.) You can listen in at: www.cjtr.caIf you don't catch that, I'm hoping to have a podcast of the show up on this blog in a week or three.
Saturday, March 3
FTRW - Day 7 - An Overview of Canadian Book Challenges in 2006
by
Jason
on Sat 03 Mar 2007 11:26 PM CST
Here's something that was posted to the Canadian Library Association mailing list this week that's a fitting way to end my week of FTRW posts: the results of the CLA’s Advisory Committee on
Intellectual Freedom’s web survey titled “ Tracking Challenged Resources in Canadian Libraries” (PDF) for the year 2006. This
report doesn’t include every instance of book challenges in Canada last
year but does give a good overview of some of the types of materials
that get challenged, the reasons why and the response of and/or actions
taken by the reporting library. Thanks to Toni Samek, who is chair of that committee, for giving me permission to post this document.
Friday, March 2
FTRW - Day 6 - "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
by
Jason
on Fri 02 Mar 2007 06:33 PM CST
As a bit of a follow-up to yesterday's FTRW post about an attempt to ban "Fahrenheit 451" in Texas last fall, here's an earlier essay by Ray Bradbury, on various attempts to censor his work over the years. In other news, my appearance on the "Book Chick" radio show a couple nights ago talking about FTRW was great fun and not just because I managed to say "scrotum" a couple times as well as "nut sack" at least once!  Podcast hopefully to follow in the next few weeks.Some of our discussion during the show inspired me enough to go back and add a couple more points to my list of "What Freedom to Read Week is not", especially since she's probably going to have a chat with the manager since I said "nut sack" on the air and, whether you agree or not, there are restrictions on your freedom of expression including what can be said during the daytime hours on a Canadian radio station (neither of us were sure if "nut sack" crossed the line or not.)
The "Book Chick" radio show is a legacy of an SPG program called "Sask Books Go Public" that the Book Chick started and I took over for a few months in 2005 when she was on maternity leave. There was some controversy when she started it because the station obviously has their regulations and yet, by booking authors (poets being the worst offenders!  ), there's a good chance you'd have the occasional "bad word" slip out during a reading or whatever, especially since the show airs at noon on Wednesdays when many are listening during their lunch break. In the end, a language disclaimer that played at the start and mid-point of the show seemed like a reasonable compromise on both sides.
Speaking of, anybody have any thoughts on "bad" words? What are they? And more importantly, why are they?
On the radio show, I talked about the movie "The Aristrocrats" and how the whole point of that documentary is to show various comedians telling the same insider joke with the same set-up and the same punchline with the jazz-like beauty being the improvisations they do in between to make it as foul and offensive as possible, yet while also capturing their own individual styles. In fact, in some ways, the show reaches a point where the words the people say doesn't even matter as much as how they say it.
I agree with this commentator (halfway down for their review) that the best versions of the joke are from the comedians who twist the standard set-up/improv/punchline in some unique fashion. Sarah Silverman's performance, where she blurs reality and fiction by describing herself as part of "The Aristrocrats" act as a child, was called "Oscar-worthy" by some.)
(Some people have a NSFW - not safe for work - note on links like that last one. I think I need to invent "NSFMIL" - NotSafeForMotherInLaw. Joan, if you're reading this, please don't click that link!)
Anyhow, another great twist was one comedian who told the middle part of the joke in a very G-rated, straight-laced fashion then inverted the standard punchline (which is always something like: "Wow, that's quite an act. What do you call yourselves again?" The Aristrocrats!) except this comedian tells it, "Wow, that's quite an act. What do you call yourselves again?" The Nigger Cunts! By using what are often considered the two most offensive words in the English language, the comedian distills the joke to its essence, subverts it, and shows the incredible power words have over us. (It is notable that the commentator I linked to earlier admits to enjoying some of the jokes, being offended by much of the movie but was especially outraged by this particular telling.)
So if I have a point, what is it? One of the things that you have to keep in mind with Freedom of Expression issues is that if you believe in Freedom of Expression, it is an all or nothing proposition. You can't draw the line by saying "well, I support Freedom of Expression except when it involves sex scenes (or Neo-Nazi propaganda or blasphemy or violence or whatever.)
This quote, from Evelyn Beatrice Hall, is appropriate:
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
And although that last quote would make a beautiful finale for this post, because of the subject at hand I thought it might be more appropriate to link to the Bob Saget (yes, wholesome father Danny Tanner on "Full House" and the one-time host of the innocuous crotch-shot follies that was and are "America's Funniest Home Videos") version of the joke, widely regarded as the most obscene of any of them in the documentary. (Again, NSFMIL.)
Thursday, March 1
FTRW - Day 5 - Irony As Big As Texas
by
Jason
on Thu 01 Mar 2007 08:15 PM CST
Last fall, a parent in Texas demanded the removal of the book, Fahrenheit 451 from his 15-year old daughter's school library. (The subject matter of that book being so famous that its title has become shorthand for "censorship".) And because you couldn't make this stuff up, the challenge happened the week after the American Library Association's "Banned Books Week" (which is in September unlike Canada's which is this week.)
Speaking of FTRW in Canada, here's a story in the UWO student newspaper about the FTRW student reading which I mentioned a few times in the past couple weeks and which was held last Monday featuring readings by various library students and one very cool eight year old.
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