Everyone is my friend until they prove otherwise.
Not many are aware of the breadth of the Google Books initiative, or the controversies it has created. I became aware of it from reading Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbow’s End“.
Here’s Google’s Alexander MacGillivray talking about the service, the legal challenges, and the settlement.
This makes it worthwhile to get a library card again, there are many out of print books that I want to read again.
Thanks go to the Berkman Center for the session.
On the left they are trying to paint Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as a warmongering end-of-days rabid Christian dominionist, and one of their sallies is to say that she tried to ban books. I happen to know who and where the Christian dominionists and rabid Christian Identity movement people are since we’ve been actively fighting them over their attempts to get creationism into public schools. (See here.) I can tell you that Governor Sarah Palin is not one of them.
If you look at the records of asks to ban books (and the Wasilla Public library records them all,) there aren’t any from Sarah. Here’s the table of requests, and the actions the library took from their records:
If this is the best the left can come up with, they better get ready to weep November 3rd.
Resources: PDF file Link in Wasilla
