The Invisible Library

Here’s a list from the ALA of the most challenged and banned books in the country. Bet you can’t guess what the most banned book is. Hint: it’s about a boy with glasses who goes to a special school.

What’s your favorite banned book? Let me know in comments.

This week is Banned Books Week and of course, some people don’t like the word “banned”:

Judy Platt with the Association of American Publishers is a proponent of Banned Books Week. But not even she could come up with a book that has been banned.

“I can’t think of any book that has been banned across the country.”

Phil Burress with Citizens for Community Values says the event is a fraud put on by the American Library Association.

“What people need to understand is that this is the American Library Association’s way of trying to censor those who exercise their free speech rights and say that there are books in the library that should not be available to children.”

These are the same people who often don’t like the word “book” either unless it is preceded by the words “The Good” (a euphemism I’ve never really cared for, as it carries with it the implicite assumption that if this is The One and Only Good Book than whatever subject covered in all those other Books is by definition Bad).

But they’re missing the point. The ALA wouldn’t have to sponsor a Banned Book Week if idiots didn’t keep trying to ban books. That’s the operative word, trying. Because while we no longer ban books on a national level, it wasn’t that long ago that we did. Not that illiterate jackasses would know that, since they weren’t the ones trying find a copy of Ulysses or Lolita back in the sixties when those books were still being seized by customs officials.

Hat tip to Bookslut for reminding me it was one of my favorite weeks of the year.

My friend Jenny’s brother Kevin is in Thailand with the Peace Corp. He wrote in to let everyone know what’s going on since last night’s coup:

Dear all,

So, what’s new?

Nothing much here.

Just a military coup that’s all.

Seriously, this has been an incredibly boring event.  My initial excitement when I got the news at 2 am has worn off, or maybe I’m just tired.

So, the military has overthrown the government while Prime Minister Thaksin was in New York for the opening of the UN.  The leader of the coup is a Muslim and is tight-friends with the King.  This is bad, just bad.  Bad for Thailand, bad for democracy, bad for the economy.  Just bad all around.  The initial news reports I’m reading are disheartening.  The people in Thailand who were calling for Thaksin’s ousting are actually praising this event!  Tanks rolling through the streets of Bangkok….  As if that were a good thing.

Actually, since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, there have been 20 coup attempts–10, now 11, of which have been successful.  The last one was as recent as 1991.  Despite that, Thailand has been praised in recent years as a leader in Democracy.  They’ve kept the same Constitution since 1997, the “people’s constitution,” written after the financial crisis.  Thaksin was popularly elected three times.  Now, it’s all over….  What does this mean for Thailand?  For Southeast Asia?  It all remains to be seen.

No, Thaksin wasn’t perfect.  His “war on drugs” killed over 2,000 Thais, and drug use continued.  His handling of the Muslim insurgency in the far South has been terrible, often brutal.  (Couple of weeks ago the first foreigners died down there–two Canadians)  He’s corrupt and loves his shady business dealings.  He’s suppressed critics at every turn.  Poverty continues.  Worst of all, he forced all of Thailand’s entertainment places to close at 1 am–less than 1 year before I got here!  (Will we now see later closing hours??  Could there be some good in all this?  I feel it’s my duty to report and will head out this weekend to the bars and discos to investigate, put my finger on the pulse, so to speak.)  But, he did open Thailand up to free trade and improve the economy (for a while anyway).  And, he was democratically elected….

The coup, thus far, has been bloodless and peaceful.

What does all this mean for me?  Well, I’m currently on “Standfast,” one of the steps in our emergency plan for PCVs.  Just means I’m on alert.  Got a message from our Country Director this morning saying he expects things to return to normal (normal??).  But, it’s good news for me.  The worst thing (for me and other PCVs) would be to be evacuated.  But, for now, it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen.

Life in the village continues on as normal.  People are happy because everything’s closed today.  Kids are playing in the streets.  I’m at the office, using the computer, with nobody around to bother me.  Life goes on….

Not terribly exciting, sorry.

Hopefully, things will stay nice and boring and he’ll be just fine.

It’s a little late but today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Go forth and pillage. And listen to this.

 [Update below]

After pissing off the Muslim world (again) Pope Rat said this weekend that when he said that Muslims were filthy barbarians and that Islam was a religion of violence, he was just quoting a predecessor, from the 14th century. Memo to the Pope (who, I’m sure reads this blog): If you’re trying to win over the Muslim world, here and now in the 21st century, it’s probably best not to quote from a document that dates from the tail end of the Crusades. They’re a tad sensitive about that whole time period.

Of course, this is all based on the common assumption that the Pope really was trying to open a genuine dialogue with the Muslim world. But let’s be honest, Pope’s aren’t known for their ecumenical olive branches (JP II aside, and even he had limits). Pope Benny “I never was a Nazi, really” XVI has made it clear in the short time he’s been wearing the Funniest Hat of All, that he has no intention of following in his predecessor’s fancy footsteps by trying to foster understanding between people of different faiths. Benny has declared that it’s his way or the highway, and here’s a quarter for the toll booth. Which I’m sure is the best way to fill empty churches and inspire a new generation of pedophiles to become priests. Everyone I know says, “I’m tired of thinking for myself. My life would be so much better if only I had one more authoritarian asshole to tell me what to do.” And the kids, they love 14th century didactic dialogues.

Once again, this demonstrates the whole problem of two groups who both wish it still were the 14th century trying to talk. There’s no way to do so without making a lot of people angry, setting Burger kings all across Southern Europe on fire and generally fuelling religious violence. And, predictably, to prove the Pope right, the Mujahadin Army is threatening violent reprisal against Vatican City.

So, it’s the usual mess. Bloody, violent Islamic fundamentalists getting irate because a bloody minded Catholic fundamentalist called them bloody and violent. And the root of all of this lies in a disagreement as to just which book, supposedly penned by an invisible man who lives in the sky, should be used as the basis for world domination.

Back in my D&D days we solved all disagreements with a swift roll of the ten sided dice. To this day, there’s still no better way of solving petty squabbles about the peculiar rules governing intricate fantasy worlds.

Update:

Sam Harris gets a few good punches in, too:

While the pope succeeded in enraging millions of Muslims, the main purpose of his speech was to chastise scientists and secularists for being, well, too reasonable. It seems that nonbelievers still (perversely) demand too much empirical evidence and logical support for their worldview.  Believing that he was cutting to the quick of the human dilemma, the pope reminded an expectant world that science cannot pull itself up by its own bootstraps: It cannot, for instance, explain why the universe is comprehensible at all. It turns out that this is a job for… (wait for it) … Christianity. Why is the world susceptible to rational understanding? Because God made it that way. While the pope is not much of a conjurer, many intelligent and well-intentioned people imagined they actually glimpsed a rabbit in this old hat. Andrew Sullivan, for instance, praised the pope’s “deep and complicated” address for its “clarity and openness.”

As PZ Myers points out, Pope Rat comes off as more dottering and opaque than crystal clear:

This was an appeal to treat Christian superstition as primary, ruling over the false religion of Islam and the even more detestable godlessness of much of Western culture. It was played for the Catholic conservatives, no one else.

All apologies for th elack of posting in the last week. work’s been hectic and I’ve spent all my free time working on creative endevors, some of them related to the upcoming birthday of a certain friend. Blogging to resume shortly.

I’ve mentioned before what a formative experience watching the original Star Trek with my father on sunday afternoons was so, I’ve been extremely interested in the news that, starting next week, Star Trek will be airing again, with spruced up theme music and effects. Take a look at the trailer. It looks amazing.

Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist is soliciting tales of how we Atheists and agnostics lost our faith, so I thought I’d share mine with the class.

***

My parents, born and raised Catholic, became Lutherans when they were old enough to leave the house. I don’t blame them one bit. My first girlfriend was a neurotic mess and made so by her strict Catholic upbringing. She was afraid of saying I love you too often for fear it would make the sentiment less meaningful. I stopped saying it to her altogether and never looked back.

So I was raised with a Protestant sense of the spiritual. Which means I hardly had a sense at all. Religion was a social function. You went to church in order to see the neighbors dressed in their Wal-Mart finest, sat through Sunday school where they showed you cartoons of Jesus holding a lamb and petting kittens. I was in my early teens before I actually sat down and read the Bible and found out how my Sunday School teacher neglected to mention the passages where Jesus cursed all Gentiles (non-Hebrew) as swine and vipers and went on and on about how they were bound for hell, with glee in his eyes. And the Old Testament? I still find it hard to believe that Fundies want impressionable, school age children to read about Lot letting his daughters being raped by a mob (and praise dd forit afterwards), or all the various and sundry reasons given for why slavery and genocide are a good thing.

My childhood Sundays were all about the aafternoon wich was when Star Trek, Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica came on. That’s what was meaningful to me, because it was time spent with my father, talking about science and robots and how spaceships fly. So, it’s no wonder I started having doubts and questions by the age of thirteen. After all, my parents are both teachers.

But for the most part, my disbelief in God was purely academic. I could see no evidence for an invisible, intangible, absentee divinity who was nowhere yet influenced everything, which is as close to a summation of Protestant Theology as I can recall. But neither could I see any evidence against such an inconspicuous God. My agnosticism was a philosophical decision, one made after years of study and introspection and exploration.

Ultimately, however, there comes a point where you realize that the horrors of history are not personal horrors. I was not there to witness the Crusades. I was not burned as a Witch. I did not see the Conquistadors Save a Heathen Soul by running women through with lances or trampling children with their horses. These things are centuries distant from us her in the twenty-first century. As distasteful as I found them, they were not personal horrors, merely philosophical objections. At least, I used to think so. I have since decided that the dark ages aren’t over yet and may only just beginning in some parts of the world.

Like many, I am now fully aware of just what sort of modern horrors God’s faithful can come up with. And while I was not in New York City that day and didn’t loose anyone in the collapse of the World Trade Center I, like millions could not escape seeing the virtual horror replayed over and over for the following weeks. And one fact, above all the others became crystal clear: This is what people with Faith can do.

Since then I have had a tangible dislike for Religion in general and the idea of God in particular. It turns my stomach to know that millions of otherwise intelligent people can shut off their critical thinking at will and do so on a weekly basis, that millions simply refer to three thousand year old sheep herder poetry when it comes time to make a decision. Religion is the reason why most people are content to be screwed by the more Machiavellian members of our society who hide behind religious rhetoric as they lie cheat and steel their way to fame and glory and above all money. Oh and sweet, sweet altar boy ass. because they’ve been taught since childhood that what happens here doesn’t matter (so long as you aren’t having any fun. Bu t touch yourself and suddenly God gets quite irate). This is a world of suffering. Except it doesn’t have to be. I learned early on that it wasn’t the faithful who discovered the vaccine for polio, or put men on the Moon. Every great achievement in history was made by someone who put aside the silly fairy tales of our ancestors and took a good long look around and said, “yeah, I think I an make this a better world.” And then worked their ass off to do just that. No clouds parted and handed them the instructions. No leprechauns appeared with the cure for the Plague and they didn’t hunt down Unicorns. They just read and studied and experiemented, got depressed, inspired and persevered for no other reason than they wanted to acomplish something.

When I was thirteen, my parents made me attend confirmation class. it was the one and only time my parents enforced any sort of religious education, and they did so more out of a desire to keep the aunts and uncles from talking about what a godless sort we were, than out of any real desire for me to have religion in my life. So I got confirmed, all right. Reading the Bible in an organized fashion, confirmed just what a stupendously bloody foundation religion was based on. And I wanted nothing to do with it. I spent the rest of my teenage years studying other religions, out of a desire to be fair. I found eventually that they all follow the same basic template: do what the rich and powerful* say, or suffer the consequences.When I was thirteen, I decided that I’d rather suffer the consequences, because it means I can read books and admire art and think for my self. And I’ve never been happier.

I’ve been reading a lot of comics lately (shut up! It’s part of my job!) and I have to say, my favorite comic out there right now is Nextwave. Following up in a close second is Neil Gaiman’s take on the Eternals. And while the Eternals has a much better story (for those who are interested in such anachronisms of the 20th century) it follows the Gaiman formula pretty closely.* Nextwave wins out though, even if there is no story to speek of. I’ll let Warren Ellis explain it:

“I took The Authority and I stripped out all the plots, logic, character and sanity. It’s an absolute distillation of the superhero genre. No plot lines, characters, emotions, nothing whatsoever. It’s people posing in the street for no good reason. It is people getting kicked, and then exploding. It is a pure comic book, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise. And afterwards, they will explode.”

Seriously, there’s no real story: Five C-list Marvel characters are recruited by an anti-terrorist organization that turns out to really be a front for terrorists. So they blow shit up. But, as is with most simplistic concepts, it’s all in the execution. And Nextwave is executed brilliantly. There are funny asides, like in the Family Guy; absurd reoccurring villains, like in Monty Python (or James Bond); and monsters, like in Godzilla. There’s absolutely nothing redeeming socially, morally or spiritually, which means it is almost perfect. If it only had some sex, it would be three bucks of Nirvana on a monthly basis.

________
* I mean no disrespect to Mr. Gaiman. He’s probably one of the best fantasy writers alive. But all of his stories follow the same basic formula: Normal, Boring Person is either chosen or accidentally stumbles out of his every day world into the mythic world that exists just below the mundane surface reality and is guided by a not altogether reliable native of the mythic world along a quest in order to set right a wrong/restore balance or do something mythic. As formulas go, it’s solid Joseph Campbell stuff and there are plenty of variations on the theme of self discovery. But it is a formula.