Library bans itself

Net Nanny strikes again. The Flesh Public Library in Ohio recently revamped its web sites — only to find that it now fell afoul of the filtering software on its own computers.

“We banned ourselves,” he said Thursday.

Oda said he never gave much thought to the library’s name — named 70 years ago for businessman Leo Flesh, who donated the money for the library’s current location. But Net Nanny, a filter the library uses on all the children’s department computers, did not care much for “flesh” linked to “public.”

“Growing up in Piqua, I don’t think we give it much thought,” Oda said. “But when I was in the service, my Mom — who worked at the library at the time — used to send care packages in these little plastic bags that said ‘Flesh Public Library.’ There was a whole group of Army guys who had a lot of fun with that.”


blog comments powered by Disqus

Search This Site


Bio:

I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

More of Me

Twitter
Tumblr
Flickr


Recent Entries

A long German word for “noticing when ads are being customized based on your surfing history”

Gay squid sex

“El Ajedrecista” — an analog chess-playing computer from 1912

Hacking the Model T

“How did you find my site?” and Vannevar Bush’s memex

» visit the Collision Detection archives

Clive Thompson's Tumblr
a bunch of stuff

May 20, 2011 » 02:28 PM

From Christopher Kennedy’s very droll book “Neitzsche’s Horse”.

July 28, 2010 » 07:35 AM
“Wr” - S

July 06, 2010 » 10:05 AM

My Xbox broke, and I was trying to Google some possible technical solutions, when I noticed that Google appears to be encouraging me to make a typo. I suppose it’s possible that Google’s algorithms know that typing “wont” instead of “won’t” would produce better results.

June 29, 2010 » 05:00 PM

On the other hand, when I tried the test for multitasking, I was pretty abysmal. I performed worse than people who identify themselves as heavy multitaskers, and those who identify as low multitaskers.

June 29, 2010 » 04:58 PM

I finally got around to trying out the interactive “test your distractability and multitasking” page at the New York Times, which they put up alongside their story earlier this month about how computer distractions are eroding our lives. 

According to the test, I guess I have good focus — I’m not very distractable! 

» visit my Tumblr

Recent Comments

Photos

» see all of my photos on Flickr

Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson