And so the promised rant2002.01.04

And so the promised rant begins.

The spark to light the fire came most recently from a story out of New Mexico. A church pastor was planning a book burning of Harry Potter books. My favourite quote from the dear pastor: "These books encourage our youth to learn more about witches, warlocks, and sorcerers, and those things are an abomination to God and to me." I just love it when religious zealots talk like this. It gives you a mental image of God dropping down from his cloud to sit across the table from Herr Pastor to explain that with all the wars and religious miracles and such he has to take care of, he just doesn't have the time to take care of the small stuff like burning books that offend Him. If Herr Pastor would be so kind as to take care of that small thing for Him, then He'd be able to concentrate on the big stuff.

But my favourite thought when I run across stories like this is: book burnings may have been effective in the days when books and printed words were the primary medium, but what's a religious zealot to do when you burn the books but TV, movies, and the Internet still exist? We're a multi-media world now, baby.

What people actually listen to zealots like this? Well (sigh) apparently quite a few. And Harry Potter may be a popular title to draw the ire of those people but there are lots more where Harry came from. The American Library Association has a list of the 100 most challenged books for your reference. How many have you read?

Ok. Rant over. Elsewhere on the web, here's a piece of fluff and this is just one more reason to ban HTML email altogether, or at least (are you listening, Microsoft?) give users the option of turning the HTML reader off in their email program or web-based email.

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