General Chat

Rollo, our posts crossed so I had not read yours when I posted. I do know there are no easy answers or quick fixes.

and for another little bit of Latin ( not that i learnt it at school)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? "

Imagine a world in the near future.

You buy a book (yes, it is still just about possible if only you can find a bookshop that has not been converted into a cafe and taken over by Kindle-toting pseudo-intellectuals).

You read a couple of pages and then discover, to your horror and dismay, that the next few dozen have been ripped out.

Naturally, you go back to the purveyor of publications to complain.

But the owner of the literature emporium informs you that he has himself removed a number of pages on the instructions of a higher authority because they deem the pages to be unsuitable (NOT ILLEGAL) should a small child, of a literary persuasion, pick up said book.

In order to read, and thus enjoy, the book you have to purchase it and then ask for the removed pages (upon proof of age, I.D., Social Security number, address, eligibility etc) to be released.



Censorship - the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which MAY be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or INCONVENIENT as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

Kindle toting pseudo intellectuals? :-S :-S

Top of the banned list in the USA and effectively banned from UK schools "Catcher In The Rye" , "To Kill A Mocking Bird". Not PC.

The Bill Gates Trust (yeah, Microsoft) has engineered the US curriculum such that 70% of books read in schools must be "useful" non fiction.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Mums Net and Paul Dacre, sitting on the Downing Street sofa with Brave Dave and Theresa May, apparently.

Latest casualties: the Chilcott Report ( heavily redacted prior to burial ),
historical abuse of young children by people in high places: crashed on the runway.

That could be a problem - "To Kill A Mockingbird" is on the GCSE curriculum this year as one of the modern texts for exploring culture.

AnnCardiff - yep, Kindle toting pseudo intellectuals.



Edit...
lol Rollo

Page 3 - RIP.

so are you saying that Kindle owners are pseudo intellectuals?

pmsl

I said nothing of the sort lolol

To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men axed as Gove orders more Brit lit

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/25/mockingbird-mice-and-men-axed-michael-gove-gcse

... but the underlying reasons are opposition to these and kindred works ( eg CITR ) from an ill assorted coalition of ukippers, ethnic associations in large British cities and the wooly cardy brigade. If Gove was as good as his word then "Trainspotting" would be no.1 on the schools reading list but it is not to be found even in Scotland. Similarly "Lord of the Flies" is slated for removal. The unlamented and departed Gove thought that far more attention to pre 1900 authors was needed.

Kindle don't mind publishing Trainspotting though.

What would yr top 10 GCSE/A level English language reads be for today's UK ? Would you restrict it to the UK only or allow world wide ?

Would you ban works that are too demanding of children's reading skills ( discriminatory ), novels that put any ethnic group at a disadvantage from Irish nuns to WASPs and everything in between ?

What would you do when a novel for young adults ends up digitally pulped by Sky's filters ?

If To Kill A Mockingbird has been axed then my friend must be teaching the wrong syllabus.

I assure you, pupils are studying To Kill A Mockingbird. for June exams this year, as they are Of Mice And Men too.

English Literature as a GCSE subject has changed tremendously in recent years and the above titles are used by at least AQA (if not others) as part of exploring culture, assessed through external examination.

It obviously takes time for a dictum about curricula to filter down to the chalk face including reading lists thus even Gove could not have changed the 13/14 or 14/15 exam and prob not 16/17.

As it is Nicky Morgan MP for Loughboro' has the job so I guess Ladybird will soon be back in kid's school bags. She is also a stout defender of faith and free schools.

TKAMB and the works of John Steinbeck are of course top notch stuff but ... the limited and iterative UK reading lists could do with quite a powerful kick up the backside and include a great deal more of the excellent modern stuff written in the UK addressing these issues.

Life in the grey gritty concrete which is the UK for most of the population has moved on since the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Billy Liar, Kes and even Trainspotting and Bridget Jones. What on earth would a guy living in Poplar make of a reference to Radio City ?

Taking Errol's point if all the ISPs start using the same filter list ( def. Dave C objective ) then what action will be taken about the printed word whether delivered by Kindle, actual bookshop or Amazon? Will eBay become more a mine of difficult to find stuff than it already is? Will people applying for jobs end up defending their reading list ?

Censorship even with the best of motives is a primrose path.

Like this? Stretches the definition of modern quite a bit. Apparently it is poss. to get an "A" level in English Lit purely on the basis of pre 1900 work anyway !!!!!

PROSE FICTION Any of the ten named prose texts for Unit 2, or any other novel by Morrison.
Chinua Achebe Things Fall Apart (Penguin, 1958)
James Baldwin Go Tell it on the Mountain (Penguin)
Nadine Gordimer July's People (Bloomsbury, 1981)
Radclyffe Hall The Well of Loneliness + (Virago, 1928)
Zora Neale Hurston Their Eyes Were Watching God + (Virago, 1937)
Andrea Levy Small Island * (Headline, 2004)
Patrick McCabe Breakfast on Pluto * (Picador, 1998)
Anne Michaels Fugitive Pieces * (Bloomsbury, 1996)
Arundhati Roy The God of Small Things * (Harper Perennial, 1997)
Robert Tressell The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists + (Flamingo, 1914)
Irvine Welsh Trainspotting * (Vintage, 1993)
Jeanette Winterson Oranges are not the only fruit (Vintage, 1984)
Richard Wright Native Son + (Vintage, 1940)
Kurt Vonnegut Slaughterhouse 5 (Vintage, 1969)
Rose Tremain The Road Home (Chatto and Windus)
Kathryn Stockett The Help (Penguin, 2009)

Censorship is a primrose path indeed!

Once we go down that route, the implications are far reaching in the extreme.

I agree about a swift kick up the backside re reading lists too.

This afternoon I may amuse myself with a stroll into town to seek out some Kindle-toting pseudo-intellectuals with whom I might debate the pleasures and benefits of the printed word.

Errol will probably find this interesting ( technical level: HARD ) but the conclusion is easy enough to understand.

"To prohibit the reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves."
Claude Adrien Helvétius

http://goo.gl/IL2k9X

Rollo - I cannot open that link for some reason.

hi errol you seem to have blocked google short url server!

here is the full link:
https://survivetheclaireperryinter.net/2014/09/27/how-to-bypass-o2s-internet-filtering-without-a-credit-card-or-identifying-yourself/?fromnext=1

and here is google short url maker
https://goo.gl/

It's the actual link I am having a problem with.

The site is registered with gandi.net in Paris, friends of CH.
It is not very popular with UK ISPs especially BT/O2.

here is the home page:
https://survivetheclaireperryinter.net/

Here is the DNS entry:
Start of Authority
mname: a.dns.gandi.net rname: hostmaster.gandi.net
serial: 1408734701
refresh: 10800 retry: 3600
expire: 604800 minimum: 10800
Nameservers
a.dns.gandi.net, b.dns.gandi.net, c.dns.gandi.net
Mail Exchangers
spool.mail.gandi.net(10), fb.mail.gandi.net(50)
A Records
89.151.84.116

If you cannot access the home page then either your isp or some software/network setup you have has deemed it unsafe. It is ok just a bit scurrilous.

Thanks for that - I will bypass it and take a look when I get back from town.