Depending on how your bookmarks are set, you may have been having trouble getting to this site over the last few days. We at FP apologize for any inconvenience and are working to rectify the situation. Of course, if you’re still having trouble, the probability that you’re reading this is pretty low.

The Kaiser Family Foundation released the results of a study yesterday, concluding “Internet filters most frequently used by schools and libraries can effectively block pornography without significantly impeding access to online health information – but only if they aren’t set at their most restrictive levels. As filters are set at higher levels they block access to a substantial amount of health information, with only a minimal increase in blocked pornographic content.” Reuters summarizes this with Web Filters Block Some Health Sites, Study Says, while the moronic and evil Concerned Women for America conclude CWA Says ‘Kaiser Study Confirms Unfiltered Truth: Internet Filters Know It When They See It’ and N2H2 (a filtering company here in (the) lovely (greater) Seattle (area)) proclaims Internet Filtering Scores Major Victory in Kaiser Family Foundation Study. Apparently 87% blocking (a solid B when I was in school) constitutes a “major victory.” The (PDF) list of example blocked sites is fascinating.

Tapeworm birth-control: “It’s all right, honey; I’m taking my parasite every day.” An interesting twist with this one is that it works for men or women. I’ll have to ask my contraceptive experts if they know anything about this.

Oh, dear. Nothing I say can prepare you for Middle-Earth rap.

Another BBC story, this one about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, and its forthcoming adaptations. It’s a much better work than the Harry Potter stuff, and far more subversive. I’m glad to see that “There has also been opposition amongst the religious right in the US. But it has not stopped Pullman’s books selling over three million copies in America.”

Thermoacoustic refrigeration from the BBC. My favorite nugget of trivia is pretty far down in the story: “Sounds of 165 dB would cause a person’s hair to catch fire…” Since that’s 30,000+ times the pain threshold, I imagine there would be other ill effects, as well.

If your trip is more about the destination than the voyage, there are some pretty good deals available at Travelocity. You have to book by December 12, travel by April 4, 21-day advance purchase, and travel only on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Saturday; but the round-trip fares to popular (for some definition of popular) destinations are down around $200. Y’know, for when you know 21 days in advance that you’re really going to want a Saturday-Tuesday break.

This article showed up on one of the mailing lists I subscribe to. I have mixed feelings (so what else is new?) about the state of “personalization technologies.” The existence of those profiles seems like a dream come true for the Total Information Awareness people (does your TiVo think you’re a terrorist? You aren’t the only one), despite the fact that they are clearly not all that useful for drawing conclusions about the profiled people. Or maybe the people complaining are just in denial.

My chosen on-line shopping site (buy.com) offers such recommendations as “People who bought Malcolm in the Middle also bought Big Fat Liar,” but they either don’t base their promotional mail on their customers’ purchasing history or their algorithms suck, since I keep being surprised every time a new MST3K shows up at Silver Platters.

At the place where I work, I get emailed notifications from one of our customers when various services of theirs are not functioning properly. One of those services is called FAST, and for the last several months the customer has been having troubles with it being responsive. So, of course, nearly every day I get mail with subjects like “FAST is slow.”