Flickr: Photos of San Francisco’s homeless. Less dramatic: my South Bend photo stream.
COPS: The TV show “COPS” has been taping in Worcester, and reports are flooding in that the taping has had a major impact on the behavior of the local police. Indymedia is covering some of the opposition to this foolishness. Buck Paxton shares the concern, but writes:
I’m not a big protest guy preferring instead to take down my adversaries with tried and true methods such as kidnapping, torture and assassination.
Worcester: Today the Telegram notes that over-the-counter needle sales are now legal in Massachusetts, and that Worcester City Councilor Barbara Haller opposes this move.
Los Angeles: P&C friend Julia Scott is now writing for the LA Daily News.
South Bend Library: I have a “temporary” St. Joseph County Public Library card. I am told that the policy here is for people living in known homeless shelters to be limited to checking out 2 books. The Catholic Worker residences in South Bend are relatively new, and I haven’t checked to see if they’re on the “you are a bunch of lying thieves” list.
As of today, the library computers are banned from contacting BoingBoing because Smartfilter considers it to be “nudity.” Smartfilter is stupid, stupid, stupid. For now, I’ll be reading BB with a web-based RSS reader. Google’s cached version of “BOING BOING’S GUIDE TO DEFEATING CENSORWARE” pointed me to http://boingboing.hexten.net/, which seems to have solved this problem.
Speaking of which, might as well link to their post on the 95 Theses of Geek Activism.
My own filter at work filters out BoingBoing, and I don’t really mind that much. First of all, it cuts down on my at-work browsing, and (unless my internet connection at home is being wack, like this weekend) I can go through BoingBoing at night in about 10 minutes. Having more than 2 click-throughs in a day is rare.
Second, it’s not like BoingBoing doesn’t occasionally feature nudity (especially from Xeni), or prominently feature advertisements for Suicide Girls, or have a pathetic, unhealthy obsession with Goatse.
Barbara Haller also opposes the over the counter sale of bubble gum opting instead for safer, more socially acceptable forms of gum chewing such as Beemans.
Adam–I can access WFMU’s popular blog, which is WAY smuttier than BoingBoing. I repeat, Smartfilter is stupid.
Re: Goatse. This is exactly the sort of stuff that SHOULDN’T get a site banned. Nobody walking by my computer is going to be offended by the goatse-related images–they’re completely benign.
I think the goatse-obsession is worth banning less because of the vulgarity and more just because I find the sheer stupidity of it so offensive.
Incidentally, I just noticed that BoingBoing is no longer banned from my work web browser, but I’m nto sure when this transition was made. I also notice that BB no longer has the Suicide Girls ad running, either. Not sure when they stopped that, but it could be related.