Here's an annoying quirk in the iPad's e-book function: As you look over books to buy, Apple's iPad offer a helpful description. But for Herman Melville's classic "Moby Dick," the description is oddly censored: "the novel is rooted in two true stories: the 1821 sinking of whaling ship Essex and the killing of an albino s***m whale ..." (Full view at boing boing.) Maybe Apple has contracted out the summaries -- and censorship -- to China?
The prudishness also shows up in Joseph Conrad's "The N****r of the Narcissus." What will they do with the upcoming book by D**k Cheney?
In a related "Apple Protecting Us From Ourselves" matter, a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist says his application for an iPhone app was rejected in December because his cartoons made fun of people. Mark Fiore, a satirist for the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com, has received lots of media attention after noting his problem in an interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab. And that apparently has made Apple reconsider. He has been encouraged to reapply for his app, according to the Nieman site.