Open Mouth, Insert Politician's Foot

It's almost too easy to find gaffes among the political during the election. But this one is too good. "Joe the Plumber" became a subject of the final presidential debate. Turns out he's not a licensed plumber and his name isn't Joe. Apparently he has become popular among some parts of the Republican party for criticizing Barak Obama's tax policies. Maybe they should have made sure that he could get his own name and background right first before relying on his political rhetoric.

Australians Forced to Use Filtered Web

The Australian government is planning to filter Internet content, and citizens of the country will not be able to opt out. Instead, they'll be given the option of which set of blacklists to use: one that blocks content deemed inappropriate for children and another of illegal material. There's plenty of concern in the country, whether from librarians who worry about what might be added to the blacklist or ISPs who say that the technology is dicey enough that it will significantly slow all Internet traffic. Some tests suggest that the filters will incorrectly block about 10,000 pages from each million, which is another way of saying that one percent of all sites will be unviewable for no reason at all.

Comic Art Museums and Believing Someone Else's Press

The Guardian reported on a new German museum of comic art. In it, the writer accepted a claim that it was the first museum devoted to comics in the world. That's the problem of beleiving what you read. San Francisco has had one since 1987; there is a cartoon art museum in Florida and two in New York City; and the National Cartoon Museum opened in 1974 under the name the International Museum of Comic Art. I knew offhand about the one in San Francisco, and about 20 seconds of searching the web revealed these others. There may well be others. It was sloppy work to assume that because someone claims something to be original that it is.