Laila Lalami

“Rejecting the First Amendment arguments offered by civil libertarians and the association representing the nation’s librarians, the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) is constitutional. The law requires libraries that receive federal money for their Internet tools to use filtering software to block access to adult Web sites and other online information deemed inappropriate for minors. ” The Washington Post’s Cynthia Webb explains. The problem, of course, is that there isn’t really any filtering software that works appropriately. See for example, the case of the library that filtered itself out.

Leon Uris is dead. Uris is best-known for his novel Exodus (which was made into a movie directed by Otto Preminger and starring Paul Newman). The portrayal of Arabs in Exodus and The Haj (primitive, “noble savages,” etc.) earned Uris few friends among Arabs, but otherwise the novels were hugely successful.

Some interesting developments in the Ali Lemrabet case. The journalist has decided to end his hunger strike (started 47 days ago) shortly after a visit from a cousin of the King. It’s a bit early to tell, but I suspect this latest development could signal a royal pardon, which would free Lemrabet and put an end to a freedom of expression case that has caused a lot of embarassment for the Moroccan government.

“To be, or not to be, I there’s the point,
To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all;
No, to sleepe, to dreame, I mary there it goes

It’s Hamlet’s greatest soliloquy, but not quite as we know it. The first published version of the play commonly regarded as Shakespeare’s best was yesterday revealed as a travesty of the drama that helped shape the modern English language.
The version of Hamlet known as the “bad quarto” is a salutary warning of the dangers of literary piracy. An entrepreneurial player in Richard Burbage’s company at the Rose Theatre, where Hamlet is believed to have been first staged, beat the Bard to the press with a version of the play he remembered from rehearsals and its first performances in 1600. ” Read on.

Eric Schlosser’s new book, Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market, is reviewed in the Washington Post.

Is there power? Health care? How many troops remain? How many people died? Marc McKinnon’s answers in the Globe and Mail.

“Perhaps it was magic, some kind of dark magic. But early yesterday morning a throng of young and eager and happy faces queued all the way round the block to London’s Fortnum & Mason, all waiting to read and thrill and let loose their imaginations. Yet it was hard not to feel cynical. Not, for heaven’s sake, at the children, but at the marketing.”
Marketing robs Hogwarts hero of his magic

“When Matthue Roth takes the stage at a poetry slam, the audience knows right away that they’re seeing something new. For some it’s his peyes, or sidelocks; for others its the poetry about phylacteries (”my tefillin nature/leather wrapped around me like I’m/all tied up/in you. I know the secret of S+M, why/white men pay for bondage and loveless sex/night after night after night, finding nothing”). For most, though, it is the surprising juxtaposition of energetic, erotic performance poetry and intense, Orthodox Jewish religious feeling. How does Roth reconcile the two?” Read the full article.

I just started Mary Yukari Waters’ new collection of stories, The Laws of Evening.

Currently, Waters has a story up on the Zoetrope All-Story site, called Mirror Studies, and a couple others in Best American Short Stories and O. Henry Prize Stories.

The invasion was three months ago today and the liberated people of Baghdad still have no electricity. Guess what, they’re not too thrilled.