books

(Un)banning the Bible in Utah

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The Davis school district in Utah has reversed an earlier decision removing the Bible from middle and elementary schools. Few people thought it should be banned; the challenge to it was supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum of the policies that led to the removal of other books. Unfortunately, the appeal committee and the district officials missed the point. They said that “the Bible has significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains.” Of course it does. The point is, so do many other books. Violence and vulgarity, even outright immorality, aren’t a sufficient reason to exclude books from school libraries.

The Bible is a horrible book. The Old Testament presents a sadistic, murderous God who drowns nearly the entire world population, firebombs cities, orders the extermination of every man, woman, and child in other cities, and decrees death penalties for many kinds of actions. In the New Testament, this sadist comes to us, not to beg for forgiveness for his crimes, but to say that he’ll forgive us, on the condition that we believe he turned himself into a human in order to be executed. People who don’t believe that claim will be tortured forever.
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The Snow Forest cancelled because of review bombers

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War and Peace. Crime and Punishment. We the Living. Are all of these classic novels now unacceptable? Based on reactions to Elizabeth Gilbert’s no longer forthcoming The Snow Forest, it appears so. They’re set in Russia, and to a certain online mob such novels can’t be endured.

Elizabeth Gilbert was set to release her next novel, The Snow Forest. It has become, according to Time, “the target of review bombing, a practice where online users post multiple negative reviews on social media and review sites.” Faced with that reaction, she has pulled it from the publication schedule.

What was the problem? “The historical novel, which centers around a family in the 1930s that finds refuge from the Soviet government in the woods of Siberia, received backlash online from Ukrainian readers who criticized her for publishing a book set in Russia amid the Russian war in Ukraine.”
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Ignorance is not strength

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“Protected Identity Harm” sounds like revealing that Clark Kent is Superman. At Stanford, it means anything that offends somebody. An associate dean and another person filed a report of “Protected Identity Harm,” the harmful incident being a Snapchat picture of a student reading Mein Kampf. In making their complaint, they urged students to turn in others whom they see engaging in similar “harm.”

It’s not clear whether the supposed harm came from reading the book or from showing it being read on a social media site. Fortunately, Stanford did not punish anyone. A Stanford spokesperson said, “At the request of the student organization, we have been engaged in conversation with a number of students, seeking to provide support and foster communication. However, there has been no requirement that any student meet with or report to a university official to discuss the matter.” It could have been worse, but the university’s response still was not good. It should have just told the complainers to get a life and not given any of them “support.” The biggest share of the blame goes to the dean who decided it was fun to make life a little more unpleasant for a student.
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Book Discussion: Waco by Jeff Guinn

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It’s been thirty years since the disastrous events near Waco, Texas. In the nineties I read and reviewed five books related to them; I’ll link to them at the end of this review. Jeff Guinn’s Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and a Legacy of Rage is a new addition to the literature.

The first third of the book, except for a short introductory chapter, is about the history of the Branch Davidians before the ATF raid. Much of what it covers predates Vernon Wayne Howell’s taking leadership and assuming the name David Koresh. This is an important area for anyone studying the matter in detail, but I was more interested in information about the ATF raid, the subsequent siege, and the final assault on the buildings. Getting through the material about the Adventists and the earlier leaders of the group was an effort for me.
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Penguin Random House announces unbowdlerized Dahl books

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Penguin Random House, which holds the publishing rights to Roald Dahl’s books, had replaced Dahl’s texts with bowdlerized versions. They wanted to “make the books suitable for modern readers,” who evidently have reverted to the Victorian era. They discovered, though, that a lot of people today aren’t “modern readers” and can stand to read what an author actually wrote. As a result, Random Penguin has announced it will issue editions with the original text along with the sanitized versions.Stack of Roald Dahl books. Source: Wikimedia

Perhaps I should mention I’m not a fan of Dahl as a person. His reaction to Khomeini’s murder contract on Salman Rushdie was “This kind of sensationalism does indeed get an indifferent book on the top of the best-seller list — but to my mind it is a cheap way of doing so.” He characterized himself as antisemitic and said, “There is a trait in the Jewish character that does provoke animosity.” The portrayal of the Oompa Loompas is creepy, no matter how movie makers dress it up. For that matter, the punishments inflicted on the “bad” children in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are rather horrible. They didn’t do anything that bad!
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Smashwords end of year sale: 50% off my books

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Starting today, December 15, and until New Year’s Day, Smashwords is running a sitewide end-of-year sale on participating books. This includes all three of my books on Smashwords, which are available at 50% off. While you’re there, look for other titles that might interest you. Here are the links for my books:

A quick note on Bookwyrm

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With the explosion of Mastodon use, some people may have come across Bookwyrm, a federated network that uses ActivityPub protocols. It’s supposed to be something like a decentralized alternative to Goodreads. I was excited about it at first, but fortunately was quickly warned about its license. It’s unsuitable for me, for independent writers, and for advocates of freedom. I thought about whether I should even mention it, but decided I should post a brief warning.

The problem is write at the top: “This is anti-capitalist software, released for free use by individuals and organizations that do not operate by capitalist principles.” Software licenses that restrict who can use the software and for what purpose are almost always a bad idea, even when the restriction isn’t inherently bad, as it is in this case. Open-source code which only some people are allowed to use isn’t open-source.

Most obviously, it implicitly excludes publishing houses and self-employed authors. Organizations that aren’t employee-owned are explicitly excluded. That’s worse than senseless. Depending on how you read it, it could also exclude people who live by capitalist principles, such as giving value for value and rejecting governmental control over what can be published. 🚩
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Penguin Random House employees want it to be a partisan publisher 1

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There are 520 employees of Penguin Random House who think it should take a partisan position in what books it publishes. Hopefully the publisher will tell them it doesn’t take their orders. They want the publisher to drop Amy Coney Barrett’s upcoming book, which as far as I can tell doesn’t have an announced title yet.

Update: Good news! The publisher has effectively told that bunch to go to Hell.

It reminds me of some Amazon employees lying on the ground a few months ago and demanding that it not carry some books. Do some people get jobs in publishing and distribution because they dream of controlling what people can read?
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Book discussion: Classified by David E. Bernstein

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Cover, Classified by David BernsteinRace, we’re often told, is a social construct. Sometimes it’s even more arbitrary; it’s a government construct. Since the days of slavery, governmental units in the US have assigned people racial designations based on bizarre criteria. The civil rights era and the introduction of affirmative action only made it crazier. Iranians, Afghanis, and Arabs aren’t Asian, even though they’re mostly from Asia. Instead, they’re “white.” You can be from Spain, yet not be Hispanic. Native Hawaiians aren’t Native American. Members of recognized minority groups lobby to keep other people from being recognized as minority groups.

Official designations of racial and minority status in the United States are insane, but David E. Bernstein keeps a straight face as he documents them in Classified: The Untold Story of Racial Classification in America.
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