From: xxx@grad.washington.edu
Subject: Master’s degree  approved by Grad School

Congratulations Gabor Por, your request to graduate with a MASTER OF LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE has been reviewed by the Graduate School and is approved.

Official transcripts with the posted degree will be available approximately four weeks after the end of the quarter in which you graduate. When requesting transcripts, make certain you request that the transcripts be sent after the degree has been posted.

A diploma will be mailed to the address of your choice approximately 3-4 months after the end of the quarter in which you graduate. You may select the preferred mailing address for your diploma in MyUW at http://myuw.washington.edu under “Change of Address”. If you have not received your diploma after 4 months, contact Graduation and Academic Records at xxx@u.washington.edu or (206)xxx-xxxx.

Best wishes in your future endeavors,

The Graduate School

This entry is part of my Intellectual Freedom series.

Video games are under scrutiny around the country as some parents and special interest groups raise concerns about the topics and themes contained in some games. Some groups call for laws regulating access to games based on their content; others advocate for an outright ban on violent games. Several states have passed laws restricting minors’ access to “violent” video games, but every such law has been invalidated by the courts under the First Amendment.

These organizations and individuals are likely to turn their attention to libraries as libraries begin to add games to their collections. Join us for a presentation on applying intellectual freedom principles to games and gaming activities, and a discussion about video games and the First Amendment. We’ll discuss recent court decisions addressing minors’ access to video games, the legal status of game ratings, and policy developments.

This entry is part of my Intellectual Freedom series.

First, I found it true, that British on average are more reserved than Americans. They do not go out of their way to share their opinion. Hence they may not object to a book publicly, just because privately they disagree with it.

Also, because of the lively state of the paparazzi in the UK you may not think through, but private life is considered more private. So, homosexuality is considered a private issue. I know that his sounds similar to the more accepting kind of US conservative view. They also say that as long as homosexual behavior is kept behind walls, they don’t have a problem with it. The UK is an even more traditional society (or has been when I lived there for a year 15 years ago.) Thus in this regard it can be seen as conservative.

The article linked above has more details about the book’s future in the UK; it’s worth a read.

This entry is part of my Intellectual Freedom series.

I wonder thought whether though whether he really believes in evolution. For his latest book (Challenge of Creation: Judaism’s Encounter with Science, Cosmology, and Evolution) the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union wrote the foreward. That signals a certain level of acceptance for me. I copy here his disclaimer to show his real stance:

This book was written for those who are committed to the tenets of Judaism, but also respect the scientific enterprise and possess an advanced education in the natural sciences, and who are therefore disturbed by the challenges that are raised for their understanding of Torah. It addresses these challenges by following the approach of Rambam (Maimonides) and similar Torah scholars towards these issues, which, while firmly within the framework of authentic Orthodox Judaism, is not the method of choice in many segments of the ultra-Orthodox community. But many have found that no other approach works as well in solving these difficulties.

The point I am trying to make that book banning can happen on the basis of any number of principles. We most often here about people’s concern from a moral perspective and often from Christians. But they don’t have exclusive rights to do so as it appears from the affair above. I also wanted to show that there are other contexts, not just the public library, where book banning can become an issue. Such as the relatively closed private communities of the orthodox and ultra-orthodox Jews.

This entry is part of my Intellectual Freedom series.

The Authority, which in this case is called Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority is logging obscenity complaints both against the paper (184 at the writing of the article) and against the Bible (1766 so far.) The interesting thing for me is that both cases took a piece of content out of context and judged the whole work on that. This is exactly what librarians should fight against. In the first case I believe in the context of a survey it should have been acceptable. The paper was not advocating, showing or encouraging incest or bestiality in any form. They got labeled just by mentioning it. They (assuming that they are behind the website) fought back with the same method robbing the sexually explicit or morally questionable lines of the Bible out of context. I am wondering whether it is a wise move to use this kind of analogy. Yes, it shows the ridiculousness of the method. But at the same time they got engaged in a fight that they cannot win.

This entry is part of my Intellectual Freedom series.

I personally think this is rather twisted logic. Because of a few bad clerks now everybody has to self-sensor her/himself. From my perspective it would be simpler and more conducive for intellectual freedom if these companies would have better background check on their employees and would do everything in their power to prevent employees steeling customers’ pictures.

The article suggests that “the question of whether you surrender privacy rights when you hand over a computer full of personal information to a repair shop is still open.” I would think you don’t surrender your privacy rights. Just like when you borrow a book only you should know what you got. In an ideal situation not even your librarian has to be aware of your reading habits, unless you volunteer some information about it yourself (such as asking for a reference.)

At the same time I agree with the idea that the police (and other agencies) has to crack down on child pornography. They have to do it when and where it really happens. Trying to prevent is a noble cause to but proving the intent of a crime can play out as thought-police-work. That I do not support.

The article cited other examples when photographers were reported, not just child pornography, like shots of marijuana plants and even “a classroom civics assignment to photographically illustrate the Bill of Rights, he’d cut out a magazine photo of President George W. Bush, tacked it to a wall with a red thumbtack through the head, made a thumb’s down sign next to it, and snapped a picture.” But the piece ended on the grandmother, an acclaimed photographer, who got busted for the pictures of her grandchildren. She wrote a book about the experience. This is how she perceives now the limitation on her freedom: “They took away my innocence, constricted my vision, brainwashed me into seeing things differently. They definitely changed my pictures of children.”

This entry is part of my Intellectual Freedom series.