Twitter is set to censor content to their service in some countries when necessary:

The company announced Thursday that it could start censoring certain content in certain countries, a sort of micro-censorship widget that would pop up up in a grey box on the Twitter feed.

“Tweet withheld,” it would read “This tweet from @username has been withheld in: Country.”

Twitter explained the change in a blog post on Thursday: “We haven’t yet used this ability, but if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.”

Twitter is growing up. There’s some censorship angst among the commentariat, but people have to remember: Twitter is a business. They’re not in the business of changing laws that we’d find unpalatable here at home.

When you look into the details there is a degree of transparency to the process Twitter is putting in place.

Information wants to be free. People need to speak with other people. This move by Twitter might limit this particular tool in times of domestic turmoil in hotspots, something else will always emerge. Or work arounds will be found. (Indeed, it seems that took just a few hours.)

In short, Twitter could have done far more here, which would have been far less.

This is reckless and frightening:

Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

The bill was introduced last week and a legislative committee met this morning to discuss the bill, which is even more far-reaching than the federal analog.

The legislation was abandoned by its author sometime around that committee meeting:

Rep. Kymberly Pine, an Oahu Republican and the House minority floor leader, told CNET this evening that her intention was to protect “victims of crime,” not compile virtual dossiers on every resident of–or visitor to–the Aloha State who uses the Internet.

“We do not want to know where everyone goes on the Internet,” Pine said. “That’s not our interest. We just want the ability for law enforcement to be able to capture the activities of crime.”

Pine acknowledged that civil libertarians and industry representatives have leveled severe criticism of the unprecedented legislation, which even the U.S. Justice Department did not propose when calling for new data retention laws last year. A Hawaii House of Representatives committee met this morning to consider the bill, which was tabled.

What will they think of next? Brain erasing? Oh yeah …

For decades scientists believed that long-term memories were immutable—unstable for a few hours and then etched into the brain for good. Research now suggests that recalling a memory causes it to revert temporarily to an insecure state, in which the recollection can be added to, modified, even erased. “Memory is more dynamic, more fluid and malleable than we thought,” says neuroscientist Daniela Schiller of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

That idea, brought to the fore about a decade ago, has opened up a new controversial research area exploring the possibility of deleting, or at least muting, parts of human memory with drugs or targeted therapies. Some experts have found that a drug used to treat high blood pressure works to unseat recollections; others are testing novel biochemical means or behavioral interventions to interfere with unwanted remembrances

The application is still limited in trials, but the implications are fascinating.

Unemployment numbers: This came from Todd Stacy, an aide to Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard. The speaker presented numbers showing Alabama’s unemployment percentage diving below regional and national averages. One hopes the good news continues.

(Disclosure: Years ago Hubbard was my employer. Nice gentleman, too.)

I did not ride today. The Yankee pronounced it yucky, and I had no desire to ride in such a condition. (She did though.) Truthfully, the conditions didn’t bother me much, but I noticed my legs were sore before I even put my feet on the floor this morning.

Better to take the day off, I figured. Clearly I have a lot of work to do towards realizing my larger cycling goals. Tomorrow, though, I’ll have a big day in the saddle.

So I worked instead. Emails, syllabi, networking, reading. I do so much reading that someone should write a book about it. No one would read the thing, though. Except me.

The fun reading is fun, at least. Last night I finished Mark Beaumont’s The Man Who Cycled the World. Eyeing a plan of about 100 miles a day, Beaumont started in Paris, rode through Europe, the Middle East, across India and part of Asia. He suffered through the barren portions of Australia, raced through New Zealand and then crossed the U.S. (He got mugged in the States, perhaps making Louisiana as memorable as his experience in Pakistan.) Finally he made it to Portugal, Spain and back to Paris. He shaved two months off the world record.

It is an interesting premise, and a Herculean feat of speed and endurance. The read becomes a bit repetitive. That’s hardly a fault, though. The guy is writing about the most repetitive thing one can conceive: “I pushed my feet around in circles for six months. And, also, saddle sores!” So the intriguing part is the mental grind, and that’s probably one of the hardest things to write about. By the time he reaches the southeastern U.S. his point is made.

There are a few inaccuracies in his recounting, and it feels like he was still writing the thing while trying to overcome the bicycle burnout. The thing that amazes me is how much of his trip he managed to not research, because you think you would devote a great deal of time to that.

I was hoping for more people and vivid descriptions, but he’s an adventurer who wrote a book rather than an author who developed great calves and cardio. If you aren’t intrigued by cycling or ultra-endurance sport this book probably isn’t for you.

Had dinner with Shane and Brian tonight. We visited Logan’s, where they have a new menu. You can gorge on peanuts and rolls and get the marrow of a steak bone along side a sodium supplemented potato, all for $7.99.

I told a joke.

Shane: “Country people don’t say ‘extension’ they say ‘stension’.”

Me: They don’t need ‘straneous letters.

The waitress thought the joke killed. Of course, she was new. Maybe she didn’t know any better.