Loss of Privacy

In the 14th century, King Richard II’s cooks compiled a book detailing the different recipes of the time.  The book is one of 40 that has been digitally scanned and placed on the Internet.

Forme of Cury, which was written in 1390 in Middle English, details more than 200 recipes that were cooked in the royal household, including blank mang (a sweet dish of meat, milk, sugar and almonds) and mortrews (ground and spiced pork).

The work, which will be carried out using a state-of-the-art high-definition camera, will begin next month and is due to be completed by late 2009.

Though the University of Manchester’s John Rylands University Library will be placing their scan online in 2009, there are other versions, such as at Project Gutenberg and on Greg Lindahl’s site that you can view now.

Postal employees have been ordered to upsell pricey express or priority mail services to anyone sending anything more than a letter, according to an anonymous tipster. The directive comes straight from Washington to help combat the Post Office’s $1.1 billion operating deficit. To avoid the upsell, specifically ask if there is a cheaper way to ship your package.

More information at The Consumerist.

There’s an interesting IQ test online that you can take testing how well you can actually see colors.  The closer to 0 you get, the better your score is.  I got an 11.

This is, the most accurate pie chart I have ever seen.

A mother in California wants to ban the best selling book, The Kite Runner, claiming that it’s inappropriate because it deals with a violent sex crime, namely male rape.

The book tells the story of an Afghan boy through the revolutions, wars and religious zealotry of modern-day Afghanistan, and includes a description of the protagonist being raped by a man. It is widely used in California classrooms for both English and history classes.

“When you have something that is explicitly referring to sexual violence, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual, it is not safe for children,” said school board president Carl Harris, in an interview with the newspaper. “I have a moral stance against it.”

This is a very well written book that deals with life, albeit a horrific version of it.  It’s reality as it is.  You cannot keep your child locked up forever in their idyllic world where everything is perfect, good and nice.  This book should have been an insight to other parts of human life and a realistic look at something that can happen anywhere, not just Afghanistan.  If your child does not know of these things by the time they are fourteen, then, possibly, you have sheltered them far too much.

The school gave the girl an appropriate alternative, yet the mother didn’t want it.  If the mother had bothered to read the book thoroughly, she would have seen that this book is far more about tolerance and acceptance than it is about rape.  Maybe the mother should keep her daughter at home and make her read about Lot and his daughters.

The Kite Runner is about hope and redemption.  To concentrate on the violent parts takes away from the message of the novel and does a disservice to what the author is trying to teach.  Let your kids read what they’re assigned, read it with them, then have an open and honest discussion with them about the subject matter.  Stop with the book burning crap and use it for as a life lesson with your child.

The Kite Runner:
limited preview at google books.
Author’s Site
Study Guide
Official Movie Site
Wikipedia
Buy From Amazon.com