That 100 Book List (That’s Not Actually From the BBC)

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There’s been a book list meme going around Facebook for some time now that purports to be a list of 100 books of which most people will have read only six. I’ve been tagged a few times, and have seen the note pop up when other friends have passed it on. I’ll go ahead and toss my list in this post, but there’s one thing about this that’s been bugging me.

The list has nothing to do with the BBC — the closest the BBC gets is The Big Read, a 2003 list of Britain’s 100 most popular books as determined by BBC viewer nominations — and actually appears to be taken from a 2007 article in The Guardian, reporting on the results of a poll of 2,000 people by the World Book Day website.

In this context, whether looking at the BBC list or the World Book Day list, the claim that most people will have read only six of the books on the list makes little to no sense. Both lists were of the most popular books as selected by the people who took the survey, which carries a strong implication that these are generally well-read books. Furthermore, according to the Guardian article, the “2,000 people who took part in the poll online at worldbookday.com nominated their top 10 titles that they could not live without” (emphasis mine) — so they had to have read more than six, and it’a actually a list of some of the most popular books.

It looks like the bit about most people only having read six was added at some point just to give people a reason to feel superior and to get them curious enough to slog through the list and figure out just how many they have read.

Still. That said. I’m okay with feeling superior. And I read a lot. So, even though the “background” has been thoroughly debunked…here’s how I stack up.

Read more

Close the Washington Monument

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Bruce Schneier nails this.

From Schneier on Security: Close the Washington Monument:

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there’s no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options, but I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They’re afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism — or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity — they will be branded as “soft on terror.” And they’re afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred. Perhaps they’re right, but what has happened to leaders who aren’t afraid? What has happened to “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?

An empty Washington Monument would symbolize our lawmakers’ inability to take that kind of stand — and their inability to truly lead.

[…]

Terrorism isn’t a crime against people or property. It’s a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed — even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we’re indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail — even if their attacks succeed.

We can reopen the monument when every foiled or failed terrorist plot causes us to praise our security, instead of redoubling it. When the occasional terrorist attack succeeds, as it inevitably will, we accept it, as we accept the murder rate and automobile-related death rate; and redouble our efforts to remain a free and open society.

I’ve excerpted a fair chunk here (perhaps slightly more than is strictly appropriate), but there’s a good bit more at the source. You really should read the full thing.

The Proverbial Sausage Factory

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This is a fascinating look at a trial from a juror’s perspective: hearing the evidence, trying to balance all the factors and evidence in coming to a decision, and watching the legal system at work. Perhaps of particular interest to me as a Law and Justice student, but the kind of thing that I think would be interesting no matter what.

From Tux Life: Beyond a Reasonable Doubt:

These are the facts we were given as a jury, facts upon which we were to decide if a boy was guilty of a crime that would put him in prison for 10 years. We were admonished to consider all of the facts but nothing outside of them. Don’t consider the sentence, or the age, or the race, or anything unrelated to what we heard while sitting in the juror box. Just focus on the facts that are presented. Yet, we were also told, time and again, that our Constitution is absolutely unwavering in its mission to protect the innocent, that no matter how clear-cut the evidence may seem, the burden of proof in criminal cases always, always, always falls on the prosecution. The boy sitting in that chair next to a pair of public defenders, possibly wearing borrowed clothes to look presentable in court, is innocent until he is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

[…]

All I could think as I walked to my car after being excused was this: from chaos comes order. This system that we look at and think that it’s in disrepair, that nobody can possibly fix it or in which you have “activist judges” on one side and uncaring, throw-the-book-at-them judges on the other side just isn’t a fair characterization. What you truly have is a proverbial sausage factory: it’s incredibly messy, nothing seems to make sense, nothing looks good or reasonable or even real, but at the end of the line there is something like justice. It doesn’t always look right. It doesn’t always feel right. It doesn’t even always taste right. But it’s at least palatable. And no matter how it is, it’s never for a lack of sincerely trying.

(via kottke)

Not Really a Surprise

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Sad, but very true.

From elusis: (stix cartoon by eyeteeth of Small Pecul:

The thing is that nothing about this is new. Private citizens being arbitrarily singled out for intrusive searches and rough treatment by authority figures because of their appearance, their “attitude,” or just a momentary need for an endorphin rush by a small-minded bureaucrat? Welcome to the lives of people of color, the phenomenon of Driving While Black, the lives of women, of transpeople, of disabled people (oh hai, Canada!).

It is no accident that women have been complaining about being pulled out of line because of their big breasts, having their bodies commented on by TSA officials, and getting inappropriate touching when selected for pat-downs for nearly 10 years now, but just this week it went viral. It is no accident that CAIR identified Islamic head scarves (hijab) as an automatic trigger for extra screenings in January, but just this week it went viral. What was different?

Suddenly an able-bodied white man is the one who was complaining.

(via Bruce Schneier’s excellent roundup of recent TSA stories)

Fly Commando!

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TSA Checkpoint A couple days ago, disgusted (as everyone should be) with the TSA’s current policy of sexual abuse at the screening stations (your choice: nude photos or sexual assault), I tweeted this:

After this http://djwudi.com/4fk and similar, I’m almost disappointed I’m not flying soon. I’d wear my kilt. Commando. Grope away, sucker!

It seems I’m not the only one who’s had this idea….

From TSA Opt-Out Day, Now with a Superfantastic New Twist! – Jeffrey Goldberg – National – The Atlantic:

It’s a one-word idea: Kilts. Think about it — if you’re a male, and you want to bollix-up the nonsensical airport security-industrial complex, one way to do so would be to wear a kilt. If nothing else, this will cause TSA employees to throw up their hands in disgust. If you want to go the extra extra mile, I suggest commando-style kilt-wearing. While it is probably illegal to fly without pants, I can’t imagine that it’s illegal to fly without underpants.  I If you are Scottish, or part Scottish, or know someone who is Scottish, or eat Scottish salmon, or enjoy Scotch, or have a vestigial affection for “Braveheart” despite Mel Gibson, you can plausibly claim some sort of multicultural diversity privilege — the term “True Scotsman” refers to soldiers who honor their tradition and heritage by wearing kilts without drawers underneath.

For the record, I always fly wearing a Utilikilt, and as with any time I wear a kilt, unless there’s some situation that demands otherwise, I generally do go commando. Hey, it’s comfortable, and under normal circumstances, there’s little to no likelihood that anyone’s going to be seeing anything they don’t want to. It’s never been a problem — quite the opposite, in fact, I usually just breeze through the metal detectors.

This past summer, though, as I was flying up to Anchorage from Seattle, I was pulled aside after going through the metal detector for a patdown. I was surprised, especially when the TSA screener told be that I was pulled aside specifically because I wore the kilt. My best guess is that because they can’t eyeball the shape of your upper legs as easily as when wearing pants, it’s marginally more likely that I could have something dangerous but non-metallic strapped to my upper/inner thigh. If that was the reasoning (they didn’t say), it does make me wonder if they regularly pull women wearing skirts aside for the extra pat-down, or if they reserve that treatment for men in skirts. Obviously, weirdos like us are far more likely to be dangerous.

The pat-down itself was about what I’d expect of a normal pat-down — thorough enough, with a quick run of the hands up my legs and under the kilt, but not so thorough that the screener knew whether or not I was commando. No fondling was involved, though there was a cursory brush-down of the front of the kilt that jostled things around a bit. A bit surprising, but at the time, I just shrugged it off.

No more of that, though. While I’m not flying anytime soon, if all of this ridiculousness is still going on when I do have to fly somewhere, I’m definitely opting out, and they just better do their jobs. If they’re determined to sexually assault me, then I’m at least going to get my money’s worth!

(via @jackwilliambell‘s retweet of @furf; image via BoingBoing via Oleg Volk)

Skyline Review by @hogbiker

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Last night, a friend of mine in Anchorage was getting together with some friends. The plan was to watch the new sci-fi movie Skyline, then have a “boys’ night out.”

When I got up this morning, I thought the results needed to be saved for posterity. Here, then, is Karl‘s review of Skyline, assembled from his Twitter posts.

hogbiker: Looks like I’m going to see “Skyline”…

hogbiker: Cool! Boys night out! Bud’s have “kitchen passes.” Skyline then off to other “wet” locations around town. #debauchery

(Two hours later…)

hogbiker: I’d rather watch animal porn than Skyline. #absoluteshit

hogbiker: Thanks to Skyline, ‘Ninja Warrior’ is now a damn good movie! #worthless

hogbiker: Skyline is ‘clap’ of science fiction movies

hogbiker: Never in my life has a movie downed the party enough to call it a night. #historyinthemaking

hogbiker: Where do I start? Like I said, this POS makes ‘Ninja Assassin’ oscar worthy!

hogbiker: People were warning those waiting in line to go & watch something else till the ushers intervened!

hogbiker: …I’d watch [Battlefield Earth] on the BIG SCREEN over Skyline!

hogbiker: Skyline is the Chlamydia of science fiction movies!

hogbiker: Time to wash away that movie with some SERIOUS booze. G’night tweeps!

So there you have it, folks. Skyline: Makes Battlefield Earth look good.

More on Pulp’s ‘Common People’

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Pulp’s ‘Common People’ has been one of my top ten songs for quite some time now. I’ve mentioned it a time or two in the past, which I spent a few minutes throwing together a silly little video putting the audio from the song against this mashup of the song and panels from Archie comics, which you might be able to view here or here on my blog, or maybe here on YouTube, depending on what the copyright rules are in your country.

So it was fun to come across this post about the song from The rage of Common People « 33revolutionsperminute’s Blog:

Insecurity breeds viciousness. The pathos of “watch[ing] your life slide out of view” and having “nothing else to do” gives way to blistering fury at those who “think that poor is cool” and that, in turn, to violence. In a verse cut from the single edit, Jarvis compares the “common people” to a dog lying in the corner who, without warning, will “tear your insides out”, a line so savage that it seems impossible that just two minutes ago we were still smirking in the supermarket. In the BBC3 documentary, Jarvis calls another section missing from the single edit (“You will never understand…”) the “punchline” to the whole song, and winces at the intensity of his own vocal. Did he intend the song to contain so much discomfiting ambiguity, or did it get away from him, as great songs often do?

(via MetaFilter)

I think it’s the slide from amusement to condescension to all-out-rage as the song goes by that really does it for me. This is one song that I just will never get tired of.

Unpopular Questions

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Okay, folks. Some of you aren’t going to like this at all. However, I think these are questions worth asking.

Every year, I see a strong majority of my friends and acquaintances promoting Banned Book Week, “an annual event celebrating the freedom to read and the importance of the First Amendment…[that] highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship [and founded on] the freedom to access information and express ideas, even if the information and ideas might be considered unorthodox or unpopular.”

Last April, the internet and many people I know were thrown into a tizzy because of apparent censorship of LGBT-themed books, prompting the creation of the #amazonfail hashtag.

So, now we have the latest uproar over a book with unpopular ideas that is under attack — only this time, the popular call is for boycotting Amazon until the book is removed. And, apparently all the uproar was successful, because it seems the book is no longer available.

So, folks, which is it? Do we decry the censorship of ideas that are unpopular, or do we celebrate the censorship of ideas that are unpopular?

Yes, the content of the book in question is disturbing and advocates unethical, immoral, and illegal behavior. Depending on who you talk to and what area of the country or world you live in, most if not all of the LGBT section of any modern bookstore, including Amazon, can be described in exactly the same way.

Either censorship is horrible and should be battled in whatever form it appears, or it is acceptable and necessary and you just better not be writing anything that people in power disapprove of. But it doesn’t work both ways. At least, not justifiably.

From » Banned? Wait, what?! Stop Motion Verbosity:

Good thing Nabokov wasn’t “investigated” because of Lolita. Of course, Lolita was also banned for a while. But hey! Who cares, right? Wait, maybe it isn’t books that are clearly fiction, it’s manuals and guidebooks.

Good thing the Anarchist Cookbook is banned. Oh, wait, hold on. Right! It isn’t. Because free speech isn’t just protected when you agree with it. Because the alternative is madness.

[…]

You don’t get to call for a boycott to delist a book when you feel like it, without being willing to sit while someone boycotts for a book you like, the next day.

This is why we don’t ban books, remember? Because it’s dangerous and fucked up and wrong. Even when the book is horrible and morally objectionable. Even then.

That’s the price we pay for free speech. And if you aren’t willing to pay it, then you better duck, because that has consequences you may not enjoy for very long at all. About the time someone disagrees with you and you can’t do anything about it, I’d think.

(Via MissAmberClark)

And this next bit is from a 2008 post in Neil Gaiman’s Journal, which addresses a different specific controversy, but the same questions: Why defend freedom of icky speech?:

Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defending, even stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don’t, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person’s obscenity is another person’s art.

Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.

[T]hat’s what makes the kind of work you don’t like, or don’t read, or work that you do not feel has artistic worth or redeeming features worth defending. It’s because the same laws cover the stuff you like and the stuff you find icky, wherever your icky line happens to be: the law is a big blunt instrument that makes no fine distinctions, and because you only realise how wonderful absolute freedom of speech is the day you lose it.

(Via bicyclefish)