I love bookstores — I like the ones that have huge stacks of strange used books where you can find surprises, and I also like the big online stores where I can order anything I want. My kids are all the same way; when we make trips into the big city, the whole mess of us usually end up spending hours in places like Cummings or Uncle Hugo’s. But I finally found a bookstore with no redeeming values at all, one I will never patronize.
It’s called Abunga, and their motto is “Empowering Decency as your Family Friendly Bookstore”. What that means is that they allow bookstore members to vote against books, and if enough people reject a book, the store removes it from its database. This makes no sense to me. There are a lot of books that I deplore, and the way I cope with them is that I don’t buy them. I don’t go to the manager and tell them that no one else should be allowed to buy them.
So of course one set of books already banned is Pullman’s His Dark Materials. Looking around the site, it seems that they’re mainly pushing is religious pablum, naturally enough.
It seems a small thing, but that’s what you get when you give a religious cult majority rule — it’s not an opportunity for them to relax and enjoy their culture, but a reason to suppress minority views.
let’s freep ’em and get “Mere Christianity” pulled :)
And speaking of bookstores, if you’re in the Boston area, the remainders room at New England Mobile Book Fair is so fucking much fun.
Damn, the very existence of that site angers me.
Yeah, we should definitely wage a Pharyngula campaign. We should agree on a list of books, starting with the bible, and get them all blocked.
Who cares? It’s not like anyone who gives a toss about books or learning new things is likely to shop at such a place anyhow…
It shouldn’t be very hard, Ric — I don’t see what’s “decent” about brutal infanticide, rapes and attempts at cannibalism.
“Currently over 65,000 books have been blocked on Abunga.com to guard you family. Help us create a safer site for you and your family by blocking titles you find that aren’t family friendly.”
Seriously! They boast about it!
I guess when the devil’s always out to get you, the world can be a scary place, and things like ideas even scarier.
what a miserable existence that was.
What a stunning and simple concept and yet it is one that seems to be completely too complex for many to follow.
Don’t like men touching other men? Well then if you are a man… don’t touch one. Don’t like what that artist took a picture of… well, then don’t look at it. Don’t like the fact that alcohol makes you drunk… then don’t drink it.
Holy shit. Revolutionary.
/pffft
Hey, maybe we can get the list of books that got voted out, and start a “banned bookstore” specifically to carry them! Heck, even just having a “banned books list” on, say, Amazon would be good. I understand that an attempt to ban a book is usually good for sales, we should help these books take full advantage of the effect.
Let’s go!
I’ve just blocked ‘The Dawkins Delusion’ – not that there’s anything wrong with it much, but just because it was something they would presumably approve of…I thought trying to get the Bible banned by them was a bit much for a first step.
Interstingly, they had lots of different versions of ‘The God Delusion’ available on the website.
So, someone should just write a script and block every book in their database.
Nothing to sell, out of business, problem solved.
I love it as a working example of a Christian theocracy in microcosm. Anyone can point to Abungu’s book list (and banned list) as a preview of American society as run by a government unfettered by the pesky Establishment clause.
Banning books? Bunch of amateurs. Real fanatics burn books.
I always find it amusing when the Xian cultists get together for a good old fashioned book burning. Nothing sums them up better than that. So far anyway. At least they have stopped burning people alive.
They don’t seem to do that much anymore. I haven’t heard of a book burning since the Harry Potter ones. The War against the War on Xmas and the War Against Halloween have also died down too.
Could it be the fundies have lost their zeal for looking dumb? Naw, impossible.
Out of curiosity, I went to see if Abunga sells books by Nietzsche, Hume, and Spinoza — all of whom have done far more harm to organized religion that Pullman ever has, or could. Sure enough, Abunga sells all of them. One possibility is that the “family friendly” customers who petitioned Abunga to remove Pullman were reacting to what they’ve been told to react to, and don’t understand the history of religion or of secularism. Another possibility is that Abunga well understands that it can’t operate as a respectable bookstore without offering such texts, whereas Pullman is expendable.
I have no problem going there and clicking on books to “ban”. They are inviting it and I don’t see anything about who’s decency.
I set up an account did a search for Intelligent design, Dembski, Behe, a few others and clicked an a …”few”.
I found this book, it’s got the worst stuff you’ve ever seen in it…
It’s got incest, masturbation, prostitution, slavery, violence. Cities are destroyed, families are torn apart, people worship at false idols.
I certainly don’t think we should allow children to read this filth.
Seeing as how this is a post about bookstores and mentions the Golden Compass, I’m going to do a bit of blogwhoring. The last time I went to my local Books A Million, all the Phillip Pullman books had these little cardboard inserts from Living Waters Ministries (the one run by Ray Comfort, of banana fame). There were a few different inserts, but one I thought was particularly dishonest, since it was disguised to look like something the publishers might have included as a bonus. It even advertised a website, goldencoNNpass.com. Anyway, I scanned the inserts and posted them on my blog. So, if you want to see them, follow the link below. If you click on the images in the link, it will bring up a bigger image that shows the back of the inserts, too.
http://www.jefflewis.net/blog/2008/01/golden_compass_a_surprise_at_t_1.html
I dunno…just to play devil’s advocate for a minute here, it seems like the blocking feature is just a gimmick to appeal to their target audience, not some nefarious plot to crush free speech. This is the sort of Focus-on-the-Family-esque hokey crap that plays real well among the credulous faithful.
“Hey! Here’s a site where I can act out on all my fears, like that one where big bad Pullman’s coming for my kids’ souls! I think I’ll buy from them.”
As a microcosm of theocracy, yes, it is appalling, but it’s more a real-world example of effective xian marketing.
Well, the first version of this got held up for moderation. Let’s see if it works if I get rid of one of the web addresses.
Seeing as how this is a post about bookstores and mentions the Golden Compass, I’m going to do a bit of blogwhoring. The last time I went to my local Books A Million, all the Phillip Pullman books had these little cardboard inserts from Living Waters Ministries (the one run by Ray Comfort, of banana fame). There were a few different inserts, but one I thought was particularly dishonest, since it was disguised to look like something the publishers might have included as a bonus. It even advertised a website, goldencoNNpass dot com. Anyway, I scanned the inserts and posted them on my blog. So, if you want to see them, follow the link below. If you click on the images in the link, it will bring up a bigger image that shows the back of the inserts, too.
http://www.jefflewis.net/blog/2008/01/golden_compass_a_surprise_at_t_1.html
I note Behe, Dembski and BillO among the recent bannees. I guess you guys have been busy…?
Regarding #9… my university library celebrates banned books. Seriously. They have a permanent place set up displaying banned books and encouraging people to read them. I love my library. *grins*
Well, the first two versions of this got held up for moderation, so lets’s see if it works if I rename the link. I apologize if this gets triple posted.
Seeing as how this is a post about bookstores and mentions the Golden Compass, I’m going to do a bit of blogwhoring. The last time I went to my local Books A Million, all the Phillip Pullman books had these little cardboard inserts from Living Waters Ministries (the one run by Ray Comfort, of banana fame). There were a few different inserts, but there was one I thought was particularly dishonest, since it was disguised to look like something the publishers might have included as a bonus. It even advertised a website, goldencoNNpass. Anyway, I scanned the inserts and posted them on my blog. So, if you want to see them, follow the link below. If you click on the images in the link, it will bring up a bigger image that shows the back of the inserts, too.
Blog Entry on Golden Compass
I despise this idea of “family friendly” anything. The real world is not “family friendly.” Everyone is supposed to tiptoe around children and young adults as if any wrong word or idea would absolutely destroy their lives. Me, I liked growing up without a lot of censorship: reading & watching pretty much whatever I wanted as a kid and being befuddled by sex and violence and other adult pleasures. That stuff rattled around in my head until I was old enough to figure it out on my own. That’s called growing up & joining the real world. These people want to keep their children mentally infantilized, but it’ll backfire. The kids will end up in the real world confused & scared because mommy & daddy shielded them from ever having to grow up, & then we’ll more kids shooting up church parking lots. Sucks, don’t it? A s Malcolm X said, the chickens come home to roost.
I agree we should join Abunga and block all Creation Science books.
Some strange twist of fate pointed me to this.
Out of stock, though. Can’t be from too many people buying it.
whoever just banned the CS Lewis stuff, I tip my hat to you – that was a nice touch.
I signed up and blocked all of Behe’s and Dembski’s (un)intelligent designs. However, it seems that this problem is only on the other side of the puddle. We havent seen this level of public censure in Europe since the ‘Life Of Brian’.
Infact in the last couple of days there has been plenty of good news in the UK.
1) The blasphemy laws are being repealed.
2) The Lords are pushing for more regulation of woo to ensure that woo doesnt interfere with patient health (Though I rather see it abolished)
3) Research institutions in the UK have been given permission to create human-animal embryos.
Go blighty go!
I like the fact that you can “report non family products”
I strongly urge all members of Pharyngula’s Army to go over to that book store site and report random books as “non family products”
More blocks, I say. We need to disabuse everyone of this notion that “family” is synonymous with “Christian”.
I stand by my comment above, but now I’m having way too much fun with this. I’ve even been congratulated for my efforts!
Thank you
You have blocked 35 books.
You’re helping make this site even safer for your family and ours
Does anyone else predict that some major changes to the blocking feature will be made by the site admins after the Pharyngu-swarm is detected? Either that, or they’ll run out of books entirely.
I always felt “family friendly” was the conservative version of “politically correct” except without the blatant “we must protect The Children” con.
Ahem. My first thought about their invitation for people to demand they blackball certain books:
Tight-assed conservatives, this is your chance to cow Abunga.
I used to be a book seller (still am in a way) and among all my great antiquarian books I ended up with a ton of religious and new-age types of books… I even had a holocaust-denier book… and I still sold them.
I even talked myself out of my temptation to look down on those who bought them, I figured that they might be buying them for opposition research. Just because you read Mein Kampf doesn’t make you a neo-nazi.
“I despise this idea of “family friendly” anything. The real world is not “family friendly.” ”
T-shirt slogan idea: “Censorship is not family friendly.”
oops, italics tag didn’t take, that was a quote.
We need to disabuse everyone of this notion that “family” is synonymous with “Christian”.
Considering that they use the term to mean a patriarchal, male-dominated, one-man, one-woman and their spawn type family, they can have the term, as far as I’m concerned. They can own that model of family, and it can go away anytime it likes. Yes, by their standards, I’m genuinely “anti-family,” since I’d prefer to see “families” as being intentional groupings of people, possibly including children and biological relations, dedicated to each other’s mutual welfare, rather than an odd fusion of biological determinism and hereditary social obligation.
I can’t say I’m particularly outraged by this Azunga thing. If fundies didn’t have something or someone to hate, they’d be completely at loose ends.
(Yoo hoo, funnymentalists! I really am a hairy-legged atheist feminist. Booga booga!)
*Waves bye bye to all of Ray Comforts books*
Don’t forget the “Purpose Driven Life” pablum and the “Left Behind” series, folks!
Just a thought, kids:
Suppose at some later point, Ann Coulter gets hold of this site’s database, and crows:
“See! See! When it came to banning books, it wasn’t the conservative Christians who tried to ban the most! It was evolutionists and atheists!!”
Don’t get too happy about this. It could turn out, inadvertently, to be a trap.
I don’t know of a more genuinely family-unfriendly force in the US than the Republican party.
Oh, thanks for reminding me – let’s block Ann Coulter, too!
>>Just because you read Mein Kampf doesn’t make you a neo-nazi.
Hear, hear! I’ve gotten so many weird looks at bookstores and libraries when buying/checking out books like ‘Mein Kampf’ or ‘Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp.’ I hate the feeling that I need to explain myself to them! As soon as I say, “It’s research for a novel” they lighten up, but sheesh!
I posted a link to Abunga on reddit:
http://reddit.com/info/65s14/comments/
If you’re into shits & giggles, go upmod my reddit post. If you think Pharyngula can do make a mess of Abunga’s database, wait till the redditors get hold of it.
(After all, they named Mr. Splashy Pants.)
To me it looks like the perfect way to run that particular ‘bookstore.’ When the hypothetical inventory gets low enough (down to only one book, which all their targeted customers already own), they’re out of business.
Hey, banning Xtian books on that site is kind of fun. Bye bye Ann Coulter, you stupid scrotum. :)
Do they sell versions of the Bible? Let’s go big and block the Bible.
I say again:
Bad idea, “blocking” books.
Bad idea.
Hey, Pullman on CD is still allowed. Is there less danger of catching the atheism that way?
But it’s great that Abunga is providing this service, since now I can be reasonably sure that any books in their database are all safe and appropriate family entertainment, right?
Hank Fox, we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t so we might as well have some giggles while we can :) Then again, there is no way the bible can be considered family friendly, at least not if you actually read it, so we are doing them a favour and only ‘thinking of the children’.
I have a suspicion this thing is going to backfire. One of the christians who scan this blog is going to tip them off, and the whole thing will blow up and atheists in general and PZ in particular is going to take the fire.
That said, good work so far. You guys are nuts. Banned O’Reilly, Hannity, Behe, Wells, Dembski, Bibles, Left Behind, etc etc etc, are currently outpacing banned Jerry Garcia and Golden Compass by about 11 to 1.
Yeah, I tried to ban CS Lewis but I couldn’t find any of his books. You guys rock. It’s getting to the point where there isn’t much left to ban that I’d want to ban. :)
raven writes:
Banning books? Bunch of amateurs. Real fanatics burn books.
Bad for carbon emissions. Nowadays proper thing is to compost them, I suppose.
Empowered Decency Indeed!
MAJeff:
Jeff, isn’t that the place over on Needham Street in Newton? My mom used to take me there when I was a kid (before we moved outside 128 when I was eleven) on those days when we had money to spend on books. I loved that place. I also loved the new public library the city put up there on Walnut (?) Street. (Walnut and Lowell?) Well, whatever – it was a 5 or 10 minute walk from our house. :-)
LMFAO @ the category: censorship
http://abunga.com/?d=category&category=POL039000
Jeff, isn’t that the place over on Needham Street in Newton?
Yeah. The overall organization of the place takes some getting used to. The remainders room is so much fun, though. Now that I don’t have a car, it’s no longer convenient to get to, but when I did, I would make a straight line for that back room and skip all the regular priced stuff.
The basement of the Harvard Book Store in Harvard Square on Mass Ave is fun, as is MacIntyre and Moore in Davis Square (which is close to where I teach, and therefore the most convenient for me).
In Minneapolis I would always hit (and still do if I can) Magers and Quinn in Uptown.
To all those who are concerned about this backfiring please note the reason folks here are doing this. It’s a protest, not a book burning.
Speaking as a librarian who deals with the demands for book bannings from enthusiastic christians I find this entirely appropriate. My typical response to a demand for removal of a book is to order anther copy.
It’s got a pretty impressive set of offerings, really. I wonder if they’re just floating atop Amazon or some other bookstore. For example, I quickly located some of my literary favorites like
The 120 Days of Sodom, by the Marquis De Sade
Fanny Hill, by John Cleland
les Fleurs du Mal, by Baudelaire
Missing, presumed banned:
Story of O, by Pauline Reage
The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty, Roquelaure (Rice)
Why I am not a Christian, Betrand Russell
…
I’m pretty sure they’re just reselling and marking up for their “service”
For those commenters who think this is a bad idea: I disagree.
See, it’s not the big scary atheists that are banning the books in that store, it’s still the operators of the store actually doing the blocking/banning.
This little exercise should just be an exercise in the problem with letting a bunch of people decide to censor stuff. Because when it comes right down to it, everything is offensive to at least a small group of people. If you let that type of thinking run your life, you get exactly what you deserve.
See, the big scary evil atheist, well….secular, bookstores will still carry the buybull, O-Liar, Coultergeist, et. al. Those of us who believe in the precepts of freedom of speech and print will continue to make money since ‘we’ don’t censor even the dipshits that support censorship.
I’m pretty sure most fundibots are immune to the irony of this position, but I say, keep it up, get them to ban every book they carry.
Cheers.
Okay banning books you don’t agree with is stupid but banning The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. How exactly could that offend someone?
How exactly could that offend someone?
Game of chance? (depends on which letters you draw?)
Al’s breakfast….. that brings back some good memories.
Left Behind has now been, um, left behind. :)
Exactly. All we are doing is using their site in the way that all those god-fearers are. Nowhere do they proclaim their site to be “Christian”, just “family”. Well, maybe there are some differing ideas of what should be considered “family-friendly”.
Sort of like that presidential poll the other day. If they put it on the internet, they can’t control who votes in it. Same applies here, only more so. Although it would be hilarious if they decided to screen potential members with some sort of ideological test.
Hypatia, good point. I don’t feel so edgy about it now.
It IS a protest, a little bit of push-back against the ages of conservative and Christian book-banning from school and public LIBRARIES.
And since this is not a public library, but a private business which INVITES people to “block” books, maybe it’s not as bad as I first thought.
And I’ll bet everyone here would vehemently protest the REAL removal of books from public access.
I might fantasize about setting fire to Bill O’Reilly’s falafel collection, and then dousing the flames with George Bush’s drool, but books … no way.
With enough accounts, and enough diapprovals, they won’t have a bookstore… Mwa ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA!!!!
Marcus @ 54: Damn, you’re one kinky dude.
“Avenue Victor Hugo” was a great Boston used book store.
Too bad they closed their store front and went totally online.
Do I understand how the site works?
Just one request for bananation will remove the ability to buy a book?
With no over site?
WTF is wrong with them?
Hank, if there was any actual banning or burning going on, I’d be right there with you, but I think Fastlane (#56) got it exactly right. The fact that the lesson (what can happen when a precedent for banning is set and your point of view subsequenty slips into minority standing) will be lost on them, but what the hell. At least there’ll be a lesson to point out. Maybe someone will get it.
Do you think we just doubled the number of books banned?
Wait a second, I just went to the site and got these back as results:
http://abunga.com/?d=search&keywords=His+Dark+Materials
am I missing something? Or is their filter really that bad?
I cooled down too once I realized that all books there, regardless of their content, are eventually being banned, and that it was a protest of the system. It’s not the counter-banning fiasco (where we would lose the moral ground) that I was worried about. I am still concerned that fundies are going to be hollering that PZ unleashed his barbarian hordes out to ban bibles, but on the other hand they hate atheists anyway for just existing. Screw them.
Major hysterical laughter!!!!! They sell child porn!!!
Ok… well, maybe not exactly, but..
“David Hamilton, 25 years of an artist” has a lot of nice family friendly photos of underaged girls…
And they have a great selection of Jock Sturges’s books of family friendly nudity. “Radiant Identities” and “The Last Days of Summer”
I just ordered a copy through them of “La Danse” by Hamilton… I need to see if it’s got lots of naked little ballerinas in it so I can decide whether or not to ban it. I love doing research!!!! And I added a Jock Sturges book, too. And a copy of De Sade – why not? Let’s see how long it takes to arrive.
Dirty words:
Penis
Anal
Sex
Priest
Choir
Boy
Catholic
League
Bill
Donahoe
If you block a book it just never appears on that individual customer’s account.
It takes an unspecified number of blocks for total removal.
I’m imagining a rolling counter on the Abunga home page, counting up from 65,000 in real time … kind of like the inverse of when the bad guy in the Western shoots up the place and then decrements the “Population” count on the sign outside the town …
ric @#64
My problem, if it is one, is that I am insatiably curious instantly if someone tells me something is off-limits. I grew up in an academic family and had pretty much unfettered access to any book I could lift. And, I kept hearing about “banned books” and such and would immediately go check to see whether they were especially cool, or something.
I read Joinville’s journals of the crusades the same summer I read Justine and I can tell you which one did me more psychological violence. But I bet you can guess.
ric @#64
Marcus @ 54: Damn, you’re one kinky dude.
…I do admit, though, that Betrand Russell is mighty steamy.
We have an interesting problem in Canada when the ‘Chapters’ range of book stores make choices on which books to carry. It’s their choice, I suppose, but since they’re basically the only suppliers of books any more, it approaches censorship.
You see the same thing with the purchasing power of WalMart and its (not so) indirect effect on video games and movies. Things simply don’t get produced if the publishers primary distribution channel won’t carry them.
The claim that “we don’t stop other stores from carry the product” is really starting to fall apart.
Frac,
With the huge increase in internet sales that will become less and less of a problem. Someone somewhere WILL sell it. It wouldn’t surprise me much though if the “parent” company of the seller would actually be one who wouldn’t want it in their main.
From the site:
We remove broad classifications of illicit materials by the information classifications set by the publisher. Currently, over 65,000 books are eliminated from our available inventory to protect your family.
I think I’m missing something here. With other online booksellers, is there any way for a book to arrive at your home other than you (or the other responsible adult with a credit card) actually purchasing it?
Or is the protection here simply about not even hearing the names of “those” books?
(What gets me is this … why don’t they just simply come out and say they’re a Christian bookstore? A simple glance at their featured books confirms that.)
Hey, O/T but important:
Minnesota Department of Education deep-sixes ID/Creationism or any attempt at same or similar.
Now it looks like some of Ken Hamm’s books have been blocked. Rats.
I’m still waiting for the hails of hearty laughter over Comment # 29.
I thought it was my best in days.
Libraries and librarians are the other favorite target of fundies. They like to try to get books banned and librarians fired. As another poster said, unless these people have someone to hate, they are lost.
Our public library periodically displays the latest in banned books with the slogan, Read a Banned Book Today!
I haven’t seen any fundie Xians standing around performing exorcisms but who knows, maybe they come in the morning.
I wouldn’t be shocked to hear that this group randomly goes through and “unbans” whatever books they like. I mean hey, if you’re enough of a control freak to set up an abomination like this, you can’t be too far from other acts of hypocrisy and shamelessness.
Nevertheless, best to err on the side of caution and ban with abandon.
Frac, let me introduce you to this wonderful thing called the Intarwebs. Seriously, my spouse and I purchase books all the time, but we only occasionally rely on brick-and-mortar Chapters in T.O. to get them. With the Canadian and US Amazon, Chapters online, and websites like Powells and Alibris, if a book is available anywhere, you can pretty much buy it and get it sent to you in Canada.
A bookstore whose customers vote to ban books? That’s outrageous! I vote we ban their website from the internet.
rick and shrimp and grits writes:
why don’t they just simply come out and say they’re a Christian bookstore?
I’m not so sure they are… They sell HR Giger’s “Necronomicon” Vol I and II. I think they may be Cthulhu cultists. I wish there was a way to propose it as a feature. I has some great stuff.
And if you search for “spaghetti” you’ll find a book with a rather provocative cover illustration…
http://abunga.com/?d=product&productid=9781425947309
If that’s not the FSM right on the cover, I’m Yog-Sothoth.
I just registered as Beelze Bub and blocked the bible and ID books, Dembski in particular. If we all do similar, we could make a big difference.
And yes, I’m aware of the irony and internal contradiction, but I just couldn’t resist.
Marcus@ 75
Who am I kidding? I’ve read all those too. :)
“it’s not an opportunity for them to relax and enjoy their culture, but a reason to suppress minority views.”
Sadly, suppressing minority views IS fundies enjoying their culture.
My first reaction was much the same as PZ’s, but on reflection I’m not sure this idea is all that nutty. Don’t think of it as a bookstore; think of it as a search engine with content filtering, not unlike Google’s SafeSearch. The difference is that Abunga users get to vote on what gets filtered out, and Google users don’t. (Another difference is that filtering is optional on Google, and not on Abunga as far as I can see, but then you can always use Amazon instead.)
If I were designing a system for content filtering, I’d want users to be able to configure their own individual blocking rules (Abunga has that), to subscribe to third-party or group-based block lists (Abunga is that), or to opt out of the filtering altogether (which you can do by shopping elsewhere). So once you get past the front-page claptrap about decency and family values, I don’t see that the mechanics of this site are all that objectionable. If you feel like you fall into their target audience (or if you just want to mess with their heads), go ahead and use it. If not, don’t, and let the chips fall where they may. It’s not like this is the only book-search tool out there.
I will say that the idea that part of the proceeds will go to support “family-friendly” non-profits not of my choosing makes me a bit uneasy, and it’s for that reason, more than the search filtering, that they won’t be getting any of my money.
When you register, you select from a list of non-profits, and plenty of them are good ones. I rather like that idea, actually.
In response to the comments that the internet makes books available when large outlets “censor” them:
In part, I agree. I buy all my books through the internet. However, you still have the problem of books not being produced because large producers won’t sell them. The large conglomerates have too much power.
Until self-publishing, micro-publishing, or something new really takes hold, the problems I describe do and will continue to exist.
As an aside, purchasing books from the States for shipment to Canada can be very expensive due to shipping, tax, and import duty charges.
I second the idea above: Let’s compile a list of the books that the bookstore banned, and then do all we can to promote them. I say we go a step further. Let’s open a “Banned Books” shop right across the street from them. The slogan should be: “We sell what Abunga does not want you to read” or something like that.
My first thought was, “This is a parody, right?” but I’m thinking that my first thought was wrr wrrr wrrrrong.
Aren’t we just a regular pack of heathens? And who says being atheist doesn’t have perks!
They’ve noticed us on their blog: Golden Compass is gone because of your blocking!
Since their blog is moderated, I’ll reproduce below the comment I left there in case it never shows up:
&ItemidQuoth the raven:
Sadly, no, they haven’t.
LOL – I can’t believe the double standard that many of you blatantly wag about. You’re saying that Abunga is bad for banning books. Fair enough, don’t use their site. But to try to corrupt their voting system is doing what? Burning them down? You’re perhaps thinking their website should be banned? I love it when pseudo-intellectuals get their haggles up and reveal that in fact, they’re only anti-moralists masquerading as freedom loving liberals. For those of you with an opinion, thank you. For those of you who passed judgement, shame on your hypocrisy.
“You’re perhaps thinking their website should be banned?”
Did anyone say that?
“anti-moralists”
What does that even mean? We just like to mess with tight-asses.
“Barbarian hordes”. I like it!
I love it when pseudo-intellectuals get their haggles up and reveal that in fact, they’re only anti-moralists masquerading as freedom loving liberals. For those of you with an opinion, thank you. For those of you who passed judgement, shame on your hypocrisy.
blah blah blah….content please.
Dude, I can’t even remember the last time my haggles got up.
How is it hypocritical to pass judgment on a site that is itself all about passing judgment?
First off Loki, learn to fracking spell before you start babbling about pseudo-intellectualism, it makes you look like the village idiot complaining that the local scholar is stupid because he doesn’t beleaf in fairees. Beyond that, I tend to agree with you. Let these morons hang themselves with their own rope, when we jump in to help, however honest *some* of us might be in expressing the uselessness of the stuff they think *is* family friendly, or how biased, meaningless and blindly stupid their choices are about which things to ban, like Dark Materials, while leaving in something like Nietzsche, the right way to undermine them is to expose their stupidity on the net, point out **why** its stupid, then let rational people laugh at them. They themselves are not going to change their opinions, just because we got cute and helped ban something written by Dumbski, or Beahea (the later is supposed to represent sheep sounds BTW). The only thing doing that is going to do is give the morons that run the place grounds to claim that we are a) scared of them, or b) trying to undermine the truth, or c) some other idiotic bullshit, which they can “claim” is true, because we opted to do the equivalent of spray painting graffiti no the wall of their building, when we should have been painting a fracking mural (which would be a lot damn harder to justify suing us, or calling us the crazies, for doing). And, when we pull this kind of BS, we *do* run the risk that someone will try to sue us over it, and some pro-woo judge actually finding in their favor.
Lets get our heads out of our asses people. We are acting like children.
http://blog.abunga.com/2008/01/17/golden-compass-is-gone-because-of-your-blocking/
right side, Top 5 Links
Just playing devil’s advocate here… does “no censorship” also apply to pictures of naked 14-year-old girls, lists of other people’s credit card numbers, and source code for extremely destructive computer viruses?
@ Doug S
No. Not selling nude pictures is a choice a store has every right to make. Having others credit info is theft, viruses are vandalism were talking real harm to people in those cases. We are upset about censoring ideas and stories. Not selling step by step insttructions for a crime is one thing. banning a childs book because you think there might be something you don’t agree with is a whole different level of stupidity. Finally I just can’t get over the whole blacklisting The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary. I mean really how deep in the cave of ignorance do you have to live to be afraid of words? Words with no context at that.
I’m off to a flying start; I just banned McGrath’s “Dawkins Delusion”, the KJV Bible, the catholic Bible, and half a dozen prayer study books.
This is fun!
As PZ said, this is no way to run a Xian fundie bookstore.
Banning books is for amateurs.
1. They should have the patrons vote on a list of books to burn. When enough for a big pile is received, pile those books up and….BURN THEM. Videotape it live on the internet and post a video on Youtube. I mean really, this is the 21st century for Cthulhu’s sake.
2. They could just have votes for book burnings. When you click, yes, the book in question goes up in virtual smoke and flames on the internet. I’m sure this wildly popular feature will keep fundies engaged for days. What good is it being a pinheaded religious fanatic if you can’t burn something,……or someone?
Option #1 is the best. The second option lacks a certain tinge of reality. Real Xians(TM) burn real books, not virtual books. Just because this is the 21st century and people are fat and lazy is no excuse.
If you’re willing to put these on your library’s “banned books” shelf:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/L/levine_harmful.html
http://www.ipce.info/host/radicase/index.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Age-Innocence-David-Hamilton/dp/1854103040
http://www.eriswerks.org/steal.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Exit
then I would say that you do, indeed, have the courage of your convictions. ;)
Customer: “Uhhhm…?”
Sales-Person: “Yes sir, how can I help you?”
Customer: “Uhhm, I thought you are a bookstore!?”
Sales-Person: “Yes, of course, we are Abunga, THE family friendly bookstore, here to protect you and your family!”
Customer: “Then, where are all the books?”
Sales-Person: “I’m sorry sir, don’t you know our company motto?”
Customer: “No!?”
Sales Person: ” ‘Reading is BAD for your family'(TM), it even says it on this t-shirt, just $14.95″
Customer: “?’!§%&?”
They can’t let the customers read anything that might broaden their horizons too much. That would be dangerous. ;-)
Andreas, great. Now I have the Cheese Shop Sketch running through my head, only with the customer guessing at genres.
I really cant understand all the strong reactions people are having to this site. All bookstores-and all stores in general for that matter- have to have some element of selection to what they offer. Clearly it would not be possible to offer every single book every published, so you offer what you feel will best appeal to your target audience. Generally these types of decisions are made by some team or individual in upper management, but this site allows their customers to decide. Why is this so offensive? Just because the target audience happens to be more conservative? You wouldn’t walk into a children’s bookstore and expect to find pornography, yet this is not considered to be close-minded. Its the same concept. Businesses always are sensitive to their targeted audience. Its simply smart business.
Thanks for your clear understanding and response to our mission of empowering decency. It is interesting to us that our desire to provide an alternative to the myriad of retailers of pornography and atheism on the web strikes such a strong chord with you. I am certain that it is a comfort to you that there are places on the web for you to find any decent or indecent material your eyes and spirit desires. You speak of freedom, but I see a society where individuals have lost their concept of responsibility and decency, particularly in the nurture of the next generation.
Lee Martin, you said “our desire to provide an alternative to the myriad of retailers of pornography and atheism.” This is very revealing– that you see atheism as indecent. You also say, “You speak of freedom, but I see a society where individuals have lost their concept of responsibility and decency, particularly in the nurture of the next generation.” What exactly does atheism have to do with a lack of freedom and decency? Atheists support freedom more than any religious sect you know, and as studies of prisons have shown, atheists are generally more decent on average than religious people.
Lee Martin:
Atheism is the ultimate expression of personal responsibility. We don’t derive our behavior from any pathological holy book. We don’t subjugate our will to some likely-corrupt religious authority figure. We don’t attempt to excuse horrible behavior by claiming that we’re doing what some deity wants.
Tell me how a religious viewpoint is not the greatest abrogation of personal responsibility imaginable.
Where I live we have four book-shops. A rambling barn of a second-hand place which is very roughly sorted when the owner can be bothered, a snooty over-priced ‘antiquarian’ place, a Waterstones and an independent.
The independent has a strict ‘no-woo’ policy. You want books on angels, crop-circles, the rapture, creationism, bible-codes, previous lives, etc. then you will search in vain. ‘Proper’ religion is well covered, as is philosophy and natural history/popular science. There was no voting, just the owner’s personal preference and good on him, it’s an asset to the likes of me. I know the owner and if he were ever asked to remove a book his response would be ‘Buy your own bloody book shop, I sell what I damn well please’ before giving the objector the bum’s rush.
The whole ’empowering decency’ thing grates like hell, but is it so different? In the case of Cogito there is an element of ’empowering rationality’. You can easily get the other stuff elsewhere, if you are so inclined.
What does it matter if they block specific books or not? They aren’t blocking them, the consumers are. If you want to buy those books shop at Amazon.com where you can support the world’s largest seller of pornography. Why can’t you respect good intentions? There are plenty of other ways you can obtain those books, and I doubt any of you have bought books from Abunga in the first place, so I don’t really understand why it personally offends you so much.
Why can’t you respect good intentions?
Because you don’t have any. For crying out loud, you’re so frightened of ideas that you want to actually limit what other people can buy. “I don’t like this, so no one should buy it.” Typical. Terrified of the world around you.
We’re not offended. We are laughing at fundie Xian morons as if that is not a tautology.
Since it is an internet bookstore, the banning gimmick is like putting on a blindfold with large holes in it.
Amazon and other online bookstores as well as real world bookstores sell a vast variety of books. If someone doesn’t want to buy religious books, atheist books, or books on car mechanics, so what? Don’t buy them.
I’m still of two minds about messing with Abunga. It’s a bookstore — thay carry, or refrain from carrying, whatever the proprietors like. And these folks have decided to let their customers have a direct vote on what to drop. Is it banning? Not IMHO. Banning is when you try to stop anyone from reading a book — say, by getting the library to remove it, or coercing every bookstore in town. But on the Innertoobz, if you can’t find what you want at one site, some other site that does have it is only a click away. As I see it, the patrons of Abunga have made a voluntary consensus to pre-filter works of certain types — which is their right.
That being said, I find the whole “empowering decency” thing incredibly prissy and anal-retentive. And of course, it’s also wide open to abuse. Never mind marauding Pharynguloids — what about eg. hyper-fundamentalists banning the works of C.S.Lewis as Satanic and pseudo-Christian? Or people of one theological persuasion banning books advocating the “wrong” doctrines?
You all jump all over them for “banning” books and what not, but no one has commented on the fact that 5% of whatever you spend goes into the nonprofit of your choice. And thats not just Christian based nonprofits, thats your child’s elementary school, or the Red Cross, or whatever. So sure go ahead boycott the site, thats your prerogative absolutely, but while we are all so quick to jump on the band wagon of hating “holier than thou” Christians who think they are the authority on “Empowering Decency” they actually are attempting to do some good here, and it deserves to be recognized.
The Abunga people finally showed up. What took them so long?
While I personally don’t think that sabotaging the system like some are doing, the point is that it is a poor one open to abuse. Here’s the sequence of events:
A bunch of people are upset that certain books are being sold, and want to have a place to shop for books while not even having to look at covers of offensive ones or be bothered by the idea that they might be around. Considering the power of the “interweb” they decide that they should have a system where like-minded close-minded individuals can recommend books not to read. Said books are not even revealed as banned and not available. They are not mentioned and everyone pretends that they don’t exist. However, the way the system is actually set up invites abuse, in that anyone can ban anything. People who are offend by what is being blocked counter-block. Other people start blocking neutral books in protest of the system.
Do they have a right to sell what they want? Certainly. This “sweep it under the rug if X people don’t like it” is a very poor way at looking at the world; very few books are unoffensive to everybody. Let them have their stupid site. But the won’t have much respect to go with it as long as they keep up this “empowering decency” holier-than-thou “blocking to protect your family” BS approach to inventory selection.
“Why can’t you respect good intentions? ”
Because they aren’t good intentions, it’s censorship. It’s silencing anything and everything people find to be outside their narrow view of what is “proper”. Today it’s witchcraft and “alternative lifestyles”. Tomorrow it could be what *you* want to read.
The Bible is full of more incest, murder, rape, betrayal and general sadism than any book on the NYT bestseller list. Yet it’s available in every “family” bookstore in America. How is that for irony?
It is interesting that so many comments here, including the original post by PZ, say that one simply shouldn’t purchase a book they don’t like, rather than removing it from the list of available books. Yet, these same people call for a “blocking” of the site. Ha! Take your own medicine and simply don’t shop there if you don’t like it! It is certainly Abunga’s RIGHT to have a site in which folks who don’t want to see, or have their children see, pornographic books (as an example) can shop. Why does that bother you? The last time I checked, religious or other family friendly TV shows don’t televise content that they don’t feel is right for their target audience. And, this is coming from someone who’s not religious.
Yet, these same people call for a “blocking” of the site.
Who?
We played with it and fucked around. Basically, we made fun of them by using their own tools. We called their values stupid. Who called for banning?
Actually it isn’t. The Abunga people aren’t silencing anybody; they’re sticking earplugs in their own ears, and offering similar earplugs to their customers. They’re not preventing books from being published (that would be censorship) or lobbying Amazon to suppress them. They’re just choosing not to carry them in their own catalog.
Personally I’m not interested in a filtered book catalog, and especially not their brand of filtering. Nor am I interested in vandalizing their catalog just because they’ve left that door open. I don’t agree with their filtering criteria, but as far as I’m concerned they’re within their rights in creating a filtered catalog if they think there’s an audience for it.
Those who advocate Censorship, Banning, Burning, or their less malevolent cousins such as Blocking, must realize that those tactics cut every which way, that today’s Family Values may be tomorrow’s Social Disease, that precedents such as those are difficult to undo.
Sure, it’s just Abunga, but you know – you know – that at least some of the people who block books on Abunga would make those books completely unavailable to the public if they could.
And, frankly, if I were an Abunga customer, I don’t think I’d be comfortable knowing that other Abunga customers (I’m guessing a relatively small percentage of the Abunga customer base) have the power to decide what I can and cannot order from the site.
Yes, yes: I could take my business elsewhere – in fact, I’d be forced to – which would be a shame given the charitable-donation feature of Abunga. Other customers would have taken away my right to buy through Abunga and have a percentage of the purchase price go to the charity of my choice simply because they think Harry Potter (for example) isn’t “decent”. (Though I can’t for the life of me figure out what’s indecent about a series that emphasizes humor, friendship, loyalty, the power of love and compassion, and the importance of being willing to take a stand – even at tremendous personal risk- against great evil. But that’s just me.)
The irony is that what they hope to accomplish is virtually impossible. They’ll never block every objectionable book – they’ll only make some subset of books they personally find objectionable unavailable to those of similar but unidentical mind who may feel otherwise. What’s the use of that?
that today’s Family Values may be tomorrow’s Social Disease,
with luck…..
MAJeff (#136):
R’amen.
God help Professor Pharyngula’s poor students at the University of Minnesota. He is apparently so fanatically socialistic that he can’t tell the difference between a private enterprise and a public library. This is the sort of dogma which impels dictators such as Hugo Chavez to nationalize businesses in The People’s Republic of Venezuela. If you find a retail outlet’s product offerings insufficiently appealing to your prurient interest, mosey on down the block. By what right do you dictate inventory to an entrepreneur? Abunga is giving parents a place they can shop without having to worry that guys like you are going to assault their children. Abunga isn’t interfering with your right to wallow in depravity. Why do you feel so threatened by their attempt to shield themselves from it?
Without the protection of family value, this is the beginning of diaster. Abunga, run by a group of sincere people, just wants to take action doing so. We should support them, instead of blocking them.
The Golden Compass=Depravity; Atheism=indecent
That’s what we need to know about these folks. They’re simply morally and intellectually bankrupt. And terrified of the big scary world.
God help Professor Pharyngula’s poor students at the University of Minnesota. He is apparently so fanatically socialistic that he can’t tell the difference between a private enterprise and a public library.
perhaps you missed the point:
so should we exhort as positive a business model that utilizes mob censorship?
If that’s what you think, perhaps you should be instead be feeling sorry for anyone you are trying to teach.
I wonder if you’ve ever heard of John Stuart Mill?
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm
The Rowling and Pullman books appeal to my prurient interest?
Mr. Cunningham reveals much with a few poorly-chosen words.
Sanctimonious wretch! Talk about poisoning the well!
This is the sort of dogma which impels dictators such as Hugo Chavez to nationalize businesses in The People’s Republic of Venezuela.
time to invade Venezuela, right Cunningham?
gotta stop the spread of godless communism!!
when will you people ever pull your heads out of your collective asses?
sanctimonius wretch indeed.
It would seem that the folks at Abunga are driven by the same impulses as these folks
just so, which of course is why they decided to parody them in the movie.
hey, with the dirty talk and the torture designation, we might just have to invade. It is about DECENCY after all.
Ok, here is my challenge to you…I am providing you all with a link to a list of the top one hundred most banned books. I can almost guarantee you that if you search them on Abunga you will be able to buy almost every single one of them, maybe with the exception of Madonna’s book “SEX” but I think that’s a little bit self explanatory given the main idea of Abunga is filtering sexually explicit content.
People, Abunga isn’t trying to police what you can and cannot read, it’s not there to censor what you can read or even make you feel morally self conscious about what you’re reading. It’s purpose isn’t to impose Christian values or send you on some ethical guilt trip. It’s just in place to try and give you and your family a pornography free place to buy books. AND the idea is they let you (the consumer) decided what kind of books you want to browse through and what kind of books you don’t. THEY ban pornography, the consumers are the one’s that ban everything else. Sure the idea may have flaws but the intentions were/are good.
Here’s the site of banned books (it’s the list from 2002, but I think it stays more or less the same) if you care to search them on Abunga…go for it.
http://www.suprmchaos.com/bcEnt-banned-books.index.html
makes me want to break out in a chorus of “Blame Canada!”
:p
(they’re not even a real country, anyway)
Taylor, so the Golden Compass is pornography?
Ichthyich, I’m actually watching the movie right now. It’s time for Operation Get Behind The Darkies.
It’s just in place to try and give you and your family a pornography free place to buy books.
BS lamest argument I’ve EVER heard.
ever heard of child filters for your personal internet browser?
apparently you don’t get what kind of business model Abunghole represents.
try again?
most banned books
LOL
yeah, make your argument from that point. that’ll work well.
It’s just in place to try and give you and your family a pornography free place to buy books.
LOL
so of course, just excluding pornography for sale to begin with would be far too difficult.
oh, wait… that’s right… the majority gets to decide what is and is not pornography by voting!
so of course, it has nothing to do with censorship.
ROLFMAO
Ichthyich, I’m actually watching the movie right now. It’s time for Operation Get Behind The Darkies.
Duck!
Ichthyich, I’m actually watching the movie right now. It’s time for Operation Get Behind The Darkies.
Duck!
“Is somebody gonna die?”
Just decided to put in “A Dirty Shame” for the encore. “What’s good about a morning with a dildo in it?” Quite a bit actually!
Scrivener’s Books and Bookbinding in Buxton, Derbyshire is a very nice old bookshop – You literally never know what you’ll dig up there.
Sadly I haven’t noticed anything new added to their science section the last few times I’ve been, but being a second hand bookshop that’s hardly their fault is it.
Still on books, I have to say that the one slightly disappointing thing when I visited Down House last summer was the lack of a decent selection of books in the gift shop – plenty of copies of ‘Origin’ of course, and a few other books but all-in-all a bit lacking.
Thinking about it, the selection on sale at the Natural History Museum failed to impress as well. Sad.
Just thought I’d share.
Assault their children? Doesn’t that usually happen in church via the priest or by pumping scary ideas into kids heads?
Wallow in depravity? I think censorship from others ideas is depravity. I’ll simply use Amazon and allow these other folks to stock whatever they choose. It’s their business and if the model works, well, when in Rome.
I do like the donation aspect however.
I don’t mind if they choose to stock what they likebut the comments of some of the posters in support show they have some other motivations.
You guys are funny though.
Taylor, you ran off the rails with the “pornography” claim. Otherwise, you weren’t completely wrong.
Still:
I disagree. The idea is they let sanctimonious shoppers decide what kind of books everyone else is allowed to browse through. That’s the reality, masquerading as… well… as what you claim it is.
Just decided to put in “A Dirty Shame” for the encore. “What’s good about a morning with a dildo in it?” Quite a bit actually!
if you haven’t seen it yet, I’d recommend checking out “Idiocracy”.
i find myself referencing it disturbingly frequently.
These people really don’t get it. When you’re a member of a majority, then of course allowing democratic rules to dictate content seems fair and reasonable. Look up the tyranny of the majority sometime — it’s easy to get into a situation where minority viewpoints aren’t represented at all, because they’re stifled by an overdominant mob.
Try imagining a country where the tables are turned, and 10% of the inhabitants are religious, and 90% are godless. You’d think you might go into a bookstore and find that Christian interests are only lightly represented — one corner with books on the bible and spirituality, for instance — but what if we instead amplified the majority and allowed them to dictate the exclusive content of the store? Suddenly, you don’t have any kind of proportional representation, but instead an overrepresentation of the majority view.
I like the eclectic mix in a good bookstore, even if there are vast swathes I’d never consider reading. It’s what a good bookstore has. I’m not complaining about Abunga because it censors, I’m complaining about Abunga because it is a crappy model for a bookstore, and I don’t want to live in a world where bookstores peddle nothing but popular pablum rather than trying to challenge their clientele.
Look up the tyranny of the majority sometime
*ahem*
#141
if you haven’t seen it yet, I’d recommend checking out “Idiocracy”.
Will do.
Correct, that is the reality, but I don’t think it’s masquerading as anything. On the contrary, they’re quite up-front about it. That’s part of the draw for people who want someone else to do the dirty work of protecting their children’s delicate sensibilities. Community values and all that. You call it sanctimoniousness, they call it decency. Potato, potahto; it amounts to the same thing. But they’re not trying to hide it; it’s the whole point of the site.
Geez, these people are really hung up on pornography, aren’t they? Almost every post made by an Abunga supporter has mentioned “pornography.” Oh, and “depravity.” (Insert joke about psychological projection here.)
Pearl-clutchers amuse me to no end. “Atheism = pornography!!” OMG!!! Run for the hillz!! SAVE THE CHILDRUUUUNNN!!!!
They mention “pornography” because blocking it was the original purpose of the site. Does anyone know exactly how many people have to block a book for it to get taken off the site?
OMG! Pron!
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of paperbacks for sale on Abunga which feature graphic scenes of sex and violence, and the custpeeps choose to ban a thing of beauty like The Golden Compass. Tsk.
Is it just me or do I have no problem avoiding PORN at the nearest barnes and noble, not to mention the local bookstore? If it’s porn you’re looking to avoid, then advocating idiotic censorship will do nothing to help as it isn’t a problem to begin with.
Face it, these people want to limit the knowledge of their children and call it decent. I call it bullshit. It happened to me and I’ll be damned if I go silently while it happens to others. Narrowminded censorship is exactly that and it cannot be excused. Simply because it happens on the interwebs, where we can find other content doesn’t excuse the intention. These people would censor everything if they had their way. I for one intend to oppose it, and badger it to no end as well. I have bite as well as bark.
What an amazing collection of self-deluded bigots I see here! Regardless of what you think of this or any other site, doesn’t this company have the right to do business as it pleases?? What I see most of you saying is that, if someone or something offends you, “let’s put them out of business”, yet if someone offends the owners of this company or its patrons, they should have to ‘suck it up’ and deal with it… Stunning hypocrisy!
Jeff,
Of course, this company has the right to do business as it pleases. But :
people have the right to criticize this business decision
people have the right to advise others not to buy there
people have the right to ask about the rights of Children
people have the right to view it as religious censorship
The hypocrisy would be to consider the rights of believers to feel offended by non believers more or less worthy than the other way round.
Not only do they censor books, their blog does not allow contrary comments either.
Just got an email that they need help (and prayers :) ) against the onslaught of Pharyngulites , GO PZ!!!!
What an amazing collection of self-deluded bigots I see here! Regardless of what you think of this or any other site, doesn’t this company have the right to do business as it pleases?? What I see most of you saying is that, if someone or something offends you, “let’s put them out of business”, yet if someone offends the owners of this company or its patrons, they should have to ‘suck it up’ and deal with it… Stunning hypocrisy!
Christ what a stupid person. Who has said, “let’s put them out of business?” NO one. We’ve said, “These people are pretty stupid; let’s fuck with them.” If you can’t grasp that, the problem is with you.
It’s amazing how fussy they’re getting. It’s about the poor christians being persecuted, because obviously fucking with them is an attempt to wipe them off the face of the earth.
Terrified, pathetic little losers.
So, they’ve banned The Golden Compass, but not The Amber Spyglass?
These people are just plain clueless.
What they deserve is continuous, unrelenting ridicule.
PZ,
You are certainly entitled to your opinion, as is Abunga and its supporters. You state above that your real issue is that “it’s a crappy model for a bookstore.” Do you think that’s also the case for christian bookstores, jewish bookstores, muslem bookstores, etc.? The last time I checked, there is significant market demand for those types of bookstores, and most of them do quite well financially. Sure doesn’t seem like a “crappy model” to me. At least not from a business standpoint.
From reading all of the comments, it sure seems like most of those commenting really take issue with the fact that it is a Christian bookstore. Get a grip. Better yet, why don’t you do something creative and start your own online bookstore…but that would take too much initiative. It’s infinately easier for the lazy and uninspired to criticize than it is to create.
cwit, you’re on to us. We don’t like religion. Is that so hard for you to accept?
Your thoughts are as disturbing to me as mine would be to you. I order and will continue to order from Abunga. Freedom is priceless for both of us. Let’s enjoy it and have our share of it. Neither is superior nor inferior. Different goals, different virtues. So be it. Relax and get on with your life without pretending to be so far above the masses.
i think we’re hurting their fee-fees.
What are all the Abunga fans afraid off?
That their faith will be destroyed by a novel for children?
What are all the Abunga fans afraid off?
That their faith will be destroyed by a novel for children?
Pretty much. The world is a scary place, after all. Can’t have kids learning and thinking about it if it means that god will git fussy.
The Subtle Knife is still there too. So are boxed sets of the trilogy. Yet again proves the point that book-banners are pretty stupid.
“Freedom is priceless for both of us”
As in your freedom to censor books so that others may not read them, thereby infringing on the freedom of those people? Yes, Chrysalis, you make perfect fundamentalist sense.
Relax and get on with your life without pretending to be so far above the masses.
some people just refuse to fucking READ:
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm
is it getting any clearer yet?
Do you think that’s also the case for christian bookstores, jewish bookstores, muslem bookstores, etc.?
it would be if they also let people “vote” on which books should be included as “Jewish”, “xian” etc.
otherwise, it’s not censorship to be up front about which books you plan to include, and which you don’t.
that is indeed, a private decision for a private business.
entirely a different model, but then you morons can’t seem to get that through your tiny heads for some reason.
here, for all of you that still don’t get it, try looking up “freeping” in google, learn what it means.
then read the link I provided (and PZ’s) to John Stuart Mill’s essay, and just maybe, you might start getting a clue as to what the problem inherent in such a business model is.
What they deserve is continuous, unrelenting ridicule.
so far, that appears to be the case.
since they appear unable to read, perhaps they should just abandon any pretense of interest in bookstores to begin with?
Sorry for the following long comment, but I just got this email from Abunga (I had registered, so everyone else who did got it too, but for those who didn’t, you may want to see it):
dedicated to family-friendly
that’s gotta be how PZ found it to begin with.
:p
whenever you see the catch-phrase “family friendly” you can almost guarantee some religiotard is behind it (or someone trying to fleece the religiotards).
btw, that isn’t this:
http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=60314
Lee Martin, is it?
Entering into this effort, we knew that we would be engaging in a spiritual battle as we sought to bring decency into the marketplace.
—
irst and foremost, I ask for your prayers for Abunga, for the encouragement and protection of its staff and its vision. More times than I would like to admit, ours feels like a lone voice in the wilderness crying out for goodness to overcome evil.
What was it the assholes were saying about “live and let live.” They’re involved in a “spiritual war” to defeat us, to defeat “evil.”
but hey, they’re using prayer, so we’re safe.
More times than I would like to admit, ours feels like a lone voice in the wilderness crying out for goodness to overcome evil. Secondly, would you take a concrete action – pass on this email, write an entry on a blog, call a friend, visit our site. It is time for warriors to rise up for the common good…
Onward xian soldiers, marching as to war…
right, just a friendly, open, freethinking business model.
uh huh.
thanks for posting those, jpf.
Hmm. Well, at least they are not like most right wing websites. I posted two comments on the blog entry for Golden Compass, the second is still awaiting moderation and just says, “Clip out the description of what the books are about and keep that, if you won’t post the rest of it.” The first one they either let through so they could later point at it to show how big an ass atheists are, or maybe they just figured it was an honest response with value… nah, has to be the former. Needless to say, I was a bit less than congenial about a) my opinion of how their users picked it to ban, b) their comprehension of the content, c) their ability to form their own judgments, instead of following some authority figures like sheep, d) their odd choice of banning this book, when so many *other* far more scathing books exist on their acceptable list, and e) the likelihood my comment would make it through moderation. 4 out of five isn’t too bad I guess, though being wrong about (e) kind of threw me.
I registered with abunga as Mr Beelze Bub, and banned the bible and various other wastes of paper. They just sent me the same email about being assaulted by Pharyngula. Incredibly, they asked for my support, and my prayers(!) to help continue their thought control.
The religious are really un-self-aware, or terminally stupid….
Paul
It is time for warriors to rise up for the common good…
I am a god warrior!
The religious are really un-self-aware, or terminally stupid….
both/and, by good man, both/and
Why does the staff need protection?
some fun quotemining:
Abunga.com will only succeed with the support of the Lord, as its business model makes no earthly sense
doomed to failure defacto.
These are not the business practices taught at Harvard.
I rather suspect not.
Why does the staff need protection?
The boogey man, and/or boogey men.
Do you think that a good way to start a SF bookstore would be to take the entire inventory of Amazon and require customers to block the titles that in their opinion aren’t SF? If someone wants to start a specialist bookstore, let them do the damn work.
The religious are really un-self-aware, or terminally stupid….
hey now, don’t eliminate the rather large contributions from those who are both.
take for example, several of the supporters of Abunghole that have posted in this thread.
earlier, Taylor said:
It’s purpose isn’t to impose Christian values or send you on some ethical guilt trip. It’s just in place to try and give you and your family a pornography free place to buy books.
I wonder if he ever bothered to read the blog for the site:
I wonder if Lee Martin plans to trademark “Empowered Decency”?
also directed at Taylor (who appears to have given up on his “challenge”:
…ah, no I see it’s actually H Lee Martin, who is THIS guy:
http://www.amazon.com/Techonomics-Theory-Industrial-Evolution-Innovation/dp/0849370671/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200791115&sr=1-1
from his own description of the book on the Abunghola blog:
The word Techonomics is a combination of Technology and Economics
how profound, wizard!
Fellas … I cant believe that you have nothing better to do with your time than flame a website of this nature.
Lets presume that you do not agree with the morals and standards set forth within this site .. a safe presumption I believe.
Do you really think that posting up on this (or any other) forum will accomplish anything Good?
Whats truly sad about all this is .. a lost world that spends more time in the virtual wold than in the real one we all live in.
At worst this site and others like it are one man’s or one groups idea of a “better life” … and that’s wrong … how?
The net is full of sites and beliefs that the majority here .. based on the posts .. find very appealing.
So go there … enjoy yourself .. dive into your moral views or lack there of .. but to place so much time and effort to flame a site that has the courage to stand for a belief system that is not yours .. is just sad.
Are not the differences that we all share .. the basis of a free society? Are they not the very freedoms we are promised in the Constitution?
Dive in head long in the love of this world and things of this world. Its your right .. as it is mine to do as i see fit, based on my personal belief system.
Interestingly enough to flame this site has only created a “band of brothers” effect for those of us who do care about a moral society.
I will not , nor will the men behind this site, flame you for your beliefs. That choice is yours and your alone. Do as you see fit ..as in the end we all must answer for our actions. If you don’t believe that .. then you have nothing to worry about! Least of all one website of the millions out there .. who has taken a moral stance.
I encourage each of you to step out of the virtual world and join us in a world that needs more from its citizens than flaming from the safety of your chair. If this site is not your cup of tea .. then move on.
Live and let live.
Its not that hard.
Until this or any other site you do not find appealing .. comes to your home and kicks your door down to “change you” … relax a bit. This site is a viewpoint, a viewpoint that is obviously not shared by you individually, but never the less a viewpoint.
One last “view” that will keep you flaming I’m sure … I will pray for each of you. A prayer that is to encourage an opening of your eyes. If not to see God .. then to at least to see to beauty of the real world we live in and the real needs it has everyday. Use your “flames” to effect real change … change that will make your part of the world a better place to live in.
Do something! Even if you personally do not believe in God .. you still do things everyday that are of God. If you have children … I’m sure you wish for them better than you have. From a simple good deed .. to a favor for a friend .. they are all actions generated in and out of care and compassion. Simple acts of Love.
That’s the truly interesting part of all this … if you do or do not believe in God, things most of us do everyday are done from a compassionate or loving viewpoint.
That’s the real test of God. Be it joining and participating in this website to the act of buying girl scout cookies. These things are done because we realize that people need support, compassion, and love. Just the simple act of petting an animal .. is one done from a compassionate viewpoint.
Compassion and love is the center of God’s heart. You don’t have to live it or even believe it. It is still true. You can deny it and even the existence of it .. and its still true.
The real difference is a never ending love for you .. even if you don’t want it. That is something you cant find in this world. Not in this website or any other, not in your children or even you mother. Its bigger than me .. bigger than you, and thats the first step.
Flame on … and the love is there … and I will pray for you … even if you don’t want it.
:)
All they wanted to do is censor books in peace. But we uppity atheists just had to point it out. And now the scary xians are going to come back at us hard, by mumbling to a sky fairy. Feel the fear heathens!
Bogo,
Next time try a comment with content…prayer and morals and eternity, oh my. Oh, my, what silliness.
Live and let live.
Live and let live is not the motto of those engaged in a “spiritual war.” Live and let live is not the goal of the decency police.
What are we objecting to? It’s been laid out several times, but more than anything, we oppose the immoral indecencies of the morality and decency squadrons.
What are we afraid of? The continuing onslaught of the forces of ignorance–willful, malignant ignorance.
How about morality instead of moralism. How about dealing in the real world instead of the land of woo.
Flame on … and the love is there … and I will pray for you … even if you don’t want it.
And isn’t it cute. It thinks that being an asshole and (even indirectly) interfering in our lives is a cool thing to do. Surprise!
Fellas … I cant believe that you have nothing better to do with your time than flame a website of this nature.
why are these people so apparently concerned with how we spend our time?
any ideas?
why are these people so apparently concerned with how we spend our time?
any ideas?
And not only that, so concerned about time wastage that they’ll come here to waste time by criticizing others for wasting time. Why can’t they do something useful?
Lets presume that you do not agree with the morals and standards set forth within this site .. a safe presumption I believe.
you assume correctly, however what you fail to notice is that your assumptions are entirely irrelevant to what we actually ARE criticizing about the site, which is that a busniness model based on the tyranny of the majority simply should NOT be supported, it being tantamount to censorship.
if you can read, suggest you scroll up to learn what the actual arguments are before you choose to speak again.
And not only that, so concerned about time wastage that they’ll come here to waste time by criticizing others for wasting time. Why can’t they do something useful?
are we wasting time even addressing the issue of how time is wasted, and who might be concerned about it?
no, I’m convinced we’re on to a useful topic here.
Are not the differences that we all share .. the basis of a free society? Are they not the very freedoms we are promised in the Constitution?
a document you might actually want to read, before it gets banned on Abunghola.
LOL .. can you feel the love in this room.
Glad I could help you “vent”.
Enjoy kids
I’m sure you wish for them better than you have. From a simple good deed .. to a favor for a friend .. they are all actions generated in and out of care and compassion. Simple acts of Love.
now you’re gettin’ it.
guess what? we long ago discovered we didn’t need imaginary props in order to help us express those things.
perhaps you will join us someday in realizing your fantasies are a handicap to expression, not an enabler.
LOL .. can you feel the love in this room.
actually, yes.
can you feel the vacuousness in yours?
hey jeff, do you feel like this epitomizes the level of communication we are having with the creobots in this thread:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0523.html
Why not leave the power to the user. I think Abunga.com works and is a great idea.
The user does not have the power.
The mob does.
If by works you mean “the majority gets to dictate what can and can’t be sold” then I guess it does work.
Why not leave the power to the user. I think Abunga.com works and is a great idea.
I think at this point, I’m just going to keep posting the link to Mill’s essay on liberty, instead of actually responding:
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm
btw, it’s the same fucking reason it isn’t a good idea to let people teach creationism in science class.
it really ISN’T an issue of “to each his own”.
If by works you mean “the majority gets to dictate what can and can’t be sold” then I guess it does work.
indeed, and they appear proud of it.
http://blog.abunga.com/2008/01/17/golden-compass-is-gone-because-of-your-blocking/
just to repeat the point, again.
“the user” is the decency borg
I find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t want to spread the power of the user to us all.
they haven’t yet realized that resistance is futile?
I hope our resistance is not futile.
(A letter to the CEO of Abunda.com)
Lee:
I admit that my immediate reaction upon reading about Abunga’s, to me, distasteful, indecent book burnings, the first thing I did was sign on the Abunga site and try to screw it up by blocking a few hundred insidious books myself like The Bible, The Quran, anything with the Catholic in it, bestsellers, children’s comics, etc. However that was clearly inappropriate: in a free society, people are able to voluntarily gather and do whatever they want within the bounds of law and shouldn’t be subject to disruption or harassment.
I can’t wish you well since I disagree morally with your choices but I’ll certainly leave you alone. If anyone asks me about it, I’ll ask them to leave you alone also.
With my apologies,
Stephen Marney
I share your concerns about a business model based on the tyranny of the majority: if people can ban books willy-nilly, how will they ever learn to think critical, engage people with radically different viewpoints and philosophies of life? Banning books does nothing to develop charitable discourse among opposing viewpoints.
I’m a thoughtful Christian, proud to stand in the tradition of people like Johannes Kepler, J.S. Bach, T.S. Eliot, or Bono. I believe that the Bible is true, and because of that I don’t have any reason to fear ideas I disagree with. Its relevant to the Abunga discussion that in the Bible, Acts 17 records a speech Paul gives to intellectual Athenians, and he shows familiarity with their poets and philosophers: in other words, nobody kept him from reading widely.
A question relevant to this discussion is, “Which worldview (Weltanschauung) does the best job promoting real tolerance and diversity of viewpoints in a pluralistic society?” I certainly don’t think a tyranny of the majority promotes genuine diversity, either as a business model or political-social model.
BTW, I’ve read and enjoyed all three of Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” novels, and I just picked up a come of Radclyffe Hall’s “The Well of Loneliness” last night. If you’re an atheist, what are the top three books you’d recommend I read to better understand why you believe what you do?
I’m tired of other Christians misconstruing the message of the Bible to support their favorite social mores or political views: they ought to try to get out and love the world. Grace and love broke the back of evil. Take a lesson from Bono, who backs up his words with action. As wrote in his song, “Grace”:
“What once was hurt
What once was friction
What left a mark
No longer stings
Because Grace makes beauty
Out of ugly things.”
I hope our resistance is not futile.
if that business model catches on, it probably will be.
can you imagine that kind of business model applied to ALL products sold on the web?
*shudder*
I’m scared.
hold me.
:P
stephen appears to have missed the point, as well.
I’m tired of other Christians misconstruing the message of the Bible to support their favorite social mores or political views: they ought to try to get out and love the world.
What’s a book that will tell you why we’re atheists? The Bible.
You see, though, this is most definitely not the message of the Bible. It’s a contemporary reading. The god of the bible is truly a vile monster. Genocide is cool. Human sacrifice hunky dory. This isn’t something worthy of worshi-
I certainly don’t think a tyranny of the majority promotes genuine diversity, either as a business model or political-social model.
exactly so.
there is a reason so many philosophers have warned of that historically, but I still look at Mill as having said it most eloquently, and most appropriately, especially for our own country.
“can you imagine that kind of business model applied to ALL products sold on the web?”
It would probably be like shopping at Wall Mart.
something tells me we could sit here for days and days, and the religiobots would post the exact same responses, over and over again, and never EVER respond to the substance of the original argument as to why we object to this business model.
As entertaining as it’s been, I can’t think of anything else to add.
the only people to have posted on Abunghola’s blog are pharyngulites, so that’s done.
some have participated in the almost mandatory freeping of the site itself.
it’s been made quite clear in the posts (jpf) of the emails from Martin exactly what the goal of the site is.
what’s left?
what’s left?
Point and laugh?
It would probably be like shopping at Wall Mart.
*sigh*
Point and laugh?
“SHE’S NOT A CHRISTIAN!!!
AAAAAUUUGGGGGHHHH!”
laugh or cry, laugh or cry.
I remember that episode well (actually, it was a two-week thing). Not a good advertisement for christianity. She was insane. Her friends were cruel. And even the MA family that she was switched with was enough into woo that they came off a little silly.
Got to love how she says “they will be on my prayer list” as a threat.
did you see the Judge Judy version?
Got to love how she says “they will be on my prayer list” as a threat.
it is
heh, almost sounds like Willy Nelson.
I love how she tore up the check, but after the episode they had a note “She decided to accept it” even though it was spiritually filthy. Nice to know her values can’t be affected by cash or anything.
I love bluegrass.
Thanks for the link MAJeff.
I aims to please!
Nice to know her values can’t be affected by cash or anything.
all i can say, is that if she was paid to pull off that routine, she deserves a shot at a real acting job.
all i can say, is that if she was paid to pull off that routine, she deserves a shot at a real acting job.
It’s wife swap. Each wife that gets traded gets to distribute a certain amount of money to the family she stays with for the show, but they have to spend it as she determines. That clip showed her tearing up the check without looking at it or reading the note the other mother had written. A large chunk of the money was to go to the woman in the video for a gastric bypass surgery…she decided to take the money.
She also showed up in another episode the next season, with another family. I never watched as at that point it had moved into a parody of itself, and I had stopped watching the series.
To be honest, as a sociologist, early on it was interesting to watch various forms of family dynamics–even taking into consideration the aspects of editing etc. Then, it started to do the reality tv thing of becoming more extreme and ridiculous, and i lost interest.
….she reminds me of that bus driver (Mrs. Crabtree) in South Park.
I can just image that as a real-life version of her.
Bogo, you and your god have had over two millenia to make the world a better place. He hasn’t done it. Christians haven’t done it. If you guys really thought your activities were making the world a better place, you’d be taking a well-deserved break, now wouldn’t you? (I mean, it’s not like you guys are perfectionists–just look at the type of people you have as your preachers for any number of examples of ‘coming up short’.)
I’d advise you to stop wasting your time with prayer. If god really answered them, I’d be out of a job producing cancer mortality statistics (not that I’d mind, I’d love nothing more than to leave this job because cancer ceased to exist).
You’re the one who needs to open his eyes and see the truth. Your god, if he exists, doesn’t seem to care what his kiddies ask of him. Maybe it’s time you stopped asking.
Finally, I’m going to ask you not to pray to god to ‘open my eyes’. I ask this not because I think there’s a chancer god exists, but because I value my free will (one of those little ‘gifts of god’ you xians tend to forget) above all, and rather not have some nut petitioning the universe to usurp it.
If you truly wish us love, you’ll honour my request in this regard.
….she reminds me of that bus driver (Mrs. Crabtree) in South Park.
I can just image that as a real-life version of her.
YES, but a jesusy version.
God Warrior vs Mrs Crabtree
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/video/watch/12753/
God Warrior vs Mrs Crabtree
LOL, statistically, I figured there just had to be someone out there who thought the same thing i did.
OH. MY. GOD. that’s fantastic. What’s especially good is that they use the footage from when she actually had to be in the same room as a psychic (that’s the “I feel under attack” and vomiting in the middle).
It was seriously a trainwreck you couldn’t stop watching.
Got to love google.
actually, the vomiting was at a party–can’t remember if it was the dreamcatcher or the gargoyle that sent god’s finger down her throat.
Got to love google.
changed my life, when I opened my heart to Google.
can you feel the love in this room?
I feel the LOVE!
Praise Larry and Sergey!
Hello! Are there any Jonah’s out there? OH! Perhaps most of the previous bloggers do not know who Jonah is becasue he is in the Bible (and yes he has his own book that you can order through Abunga.com)! His mission was to preach to a dying world (like ours) that if they would repent God will hold back His wrath on the Assyrians then(or Americans now).
The Three “R’s” of marketing are real, relevant and responsive” (Moran, 2008). Most of us who grew up in church have heard this as a way of life…we must be real in our endeavors, life applications must be relevant and how we respond will determine eternal life with GOD.
When God speaks to and through His people – they listen and obey. Abunga.com staff has answered the calling. Obedience is better than sacrifice.
We need to embrace morality and train up our children, along with all the adults who never had the opportunity to be trained as the Bible says…so when you are old you will not depart from them (Proverbs 22:6).
We all have choices and God has plans. He knows the plans He has to proper you, to give you hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). If your choice is not in line with God’s Word…you will not reap a harvest…therefore, you may need to order a book about hope from Abunga.com!
Desipte some of you may never order a book from Abunga.com and that is your right, however your internet marketing ploy to destroy this orgainzation will not work.
When God opened the door for Abunga.com He also showered it with HIS anointing. No devil in hell can stand against the anointing of God, and nor will he (and you if you are in the family with the devil) stand either.
May God bless you and keep you and may HIS face shine upon you and your family! Now, you may order the “HOLY BIBLE” from Abunga.com and began a new beginning. Recreate your life in 2008!
Post Script: Don’t forget to select the charity of your choice in order that Abunga.com can direct 5% of your purchased amount to that charity. This NEVER happens at Amazon.com!!!
This is going to be fun. They’re all showing up with their silly little quotes.
Point and laugh.
And before Pascal gets abused, I’m looking forward to it
Praise Larry and Sergey!
sing it on the mountain of electrons, brother!
I already have a bible.
How about I just give to charity and skip Abunga all together.
I would rather spend my money at my local book store.
Obedience is better than sacrifice.
Freedom is slavery!
War is Peace!
Ignorance is Strength!
I really find it ironic that an online bookstore would appeal to people who obvious never read.
I think I need a fundie to English dictionary.
I think I need a fundie to English dictionary.
I thought you said you already have a bible.
:p
I guess I was not trained in it’s use.
crap…. its use
O_o
Banning and count-banning (I knew that would be a bad idea) aside: Just when the thread is dying, shirley comes along and somehow manages to slap us with the typical christian guilt trip as well as some how worm adds for Abunga in it. Here’s a news flash: More atheists than you think have read the bible.
Gotta love how Bongo (?) lived up to expectations. Not only did he insert elipses between every thought fragment, he slipped in the obligatory “youhavenomorals” insinuation, too!
A+ for Bongo!
crap…. its use
blame it on babelfish.
I actually had to use that to translate an academic paper once. It was an unpublished manuscript, and my advisor gave me the author’s email and told me to ask for it. So, I do. He’s Swiss, and the thing is half in English and half in French. I used babelfish to at least make sense out of the French sections. There will be an unpublished French title in my dissertation bibliography, but there will be no direct quotes. je ne pas parle Francais is all i can muster.
I blame my total lack of writing ability.
Oh shit! Jonah! I’ve never heard of him before. Bible? The wha? My brain hurts from that stupidity. Shirley my dear, I have little doubt that I know your bible better than you do.
When God opened
the door forAbunghole, He also showered it with HIS anointing.um, you don’t say, Shirley?
I hope he wore a condom?
(oh, I’m sure i just gave poor Shirley the vapors!)
but seriously, Shirley, even the CEO says:
so you better hope that you are right. I’d wager not, though.
I hope he wore a condom?
damn, shoulda said:
“hope he brought a towel”
*sigh*
missed opportunities.
Shirley my dear, I have little doubt that I know your bible better than you do.
Bible-off!
throw down your verseknowledge, biatches!
suggest this as an aid:
http://www.biblegateway.com/keyword/?search=censor&searchtype=all&version1=31&spanbegin=1&spanend=73
“hope he brought a towel”
*sigh*
missed opportunities.
As long as he’s got socks, it’s all good.
OTOH, I suppose since Shirley believes in blind obedience…
1 Corinthians 14:34:
“Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience as also saith the law.”
KJV
so shut up already?
Are you a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is?
As long as he’s got socks, it’s all good.
my god is so much bigger than your imaginings…
no, I think only a beachtowel would do.
:p
hmm, somehow i think this line of discussion will act as a ward to our visiting fundies.
better stop.
Are you a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is?
always. sass that?
Um, at the time, the Assyrian civilization was very much alive and not dying when Jonah was commanded to preach God’s word to them.
And the problem that you’ve neglected to mention is that Jonah didn’t want to preach to those awful awful Assyrians.
God wanted Jonah to be a social prophet, but, Jonah wanted to stay an antisocial prophet. So, God punished Jonah by having him swallowed up by a giant fish, who then vomited him up, whereupon he became a gross prophet. It was a good thing that he came out the way he came in, otherwise he would have been a very gross prophet. And when some Assyrian fishermen rescued him, he became a net prophet.
And if you think he’s sassy with his towel, you should see him when he’s on the dance floor.
It has been fun.
Time to sleep.
Gnight
you should see him when he’s on the dance floor.
I’m just picturing him flopping around, poor thing…no legs and all.
And the problem that you’ve neglected to mention is that Jonah didn’t want to preach to those awful awful Assyrians.
for good reason, he knew if he did that Dagon would swallow him the fuck up.
oops.
oh yeah, sure, “God” took all the credit.
phht.
Dagon just spit the fucker out because he left a taste like saccharine in his mouth. tasted good initially, then got all bitter.
don’t believe me?
see for yourself:
http://philologos.org/__eb-ttb/images/fig48.htm
it’s hard to make out, but this actually re-enacts dagon after he swallowed Jonah, and was on his way to the can (center) to puke him back up.
“god” is on the left hanging over Dagon’s shoulder, just waiting to take all the credit.
(all hail Dagon)
I’m just picturing him flopping around, poor thing…no legs and all.
bloody lobefinner!
;)
oh, btw, in that particular re-enactment I linked to, that’s me on the far right, asking Dagon if he would like a nice turkey instead (depicted top center).
which, of course is REALLY how thanksgiving started.
damn, dude, you’re old. I’m feeling young again! *skips away to go dancing*
damn, dude, you’re old.
well, that re-enactment was done by humans of course, so I actually look far better than what you see there.
oh, wait, you were talking about chronological age?
meh, age is relative when your immortal, right?
only as young as you feel and all.
still, who would want a god that can’t dance? That’s no fun.
oh ye of little imagination.
http://www.allstuff.dk/dance/fish/index.htm
that kinda looks like the web page Homer designed before he discovered the flu vaccine was part of a global conspiracy.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/178181/disco_dancing_fish/
family get together; skip towards the middle:
Nice, but my people have taken it to another level
Cthulhu’s relatives know how to get down and funky too, or did you not check out the vid PZ posted on Friday?
Did someone say BIBLEOFF?!
I prefer blueletterbible.org myself.
The best part of Jonah’s story is of course the fact that he left the harbor in another direction under the assumption that god was, what, sleeping and thus he’d get away unnoticed? So who comes out looking dumber in that story? The dipshit prophet, or the human resource deprived god who is forced to use him?
Actually I think the real moral of the story is, the bigger jackass you are the higher the odds that god will want to use you for a stupid idea.
I think in this matter we see that the Abunga group is right smack dab in the middle of gods will. His will of course being to give them a business plan that resembles fish vomit.
Of course, if Abongo doesn’t sink like a stone, it’ll be because of all that assistance from The Lord. Hallelujah.
Michael, let me ask you something: Did Jonah ever find the Blue Fairy and get turned into a real boy?
Actually I think the real moral of the story is, the bigger jackass you are the higher the odds that god will want to use you for a stupid idea.
yup. just ask Job.
heck, for that matter, if you’re REALLY a jackass, God will let someone rip your jawbone out and use it to smite phillistines.
I want the jawbone of the huge-ass fossil rat PZ wrote about the other day.
No, sadly. After he was spewed upon the shore, shivering from cold and disoriented from being nearly digested inside the belly of fish, he absentmindedly used himself as firewood and burned himself into a pile of ash.
The lord, smacking his infinitely large forehead and cursing “ME DAMNIT” then decided to screw it all and flood the world thereby drowning everyone, except the fish, who did their job just fine. Or at least I think that’s how it goes. I dunno, boy, Shirley really nailed me when she said that I’ve never read the buble! Is that how it’s spelled? Silly me, I can never remember…
The story of Odin was the first sex story I ever read.
No, “Buble” is that Canadian swing vocalist.
AH! That’s right! I always confuse those two…
shit, not Odin, Onan
drowning everyone, except the fish, who did their job just fine.
I keep TELLING you…
:)
You the real problem with fundies? They go to sleep to early. I like the instant gratification of seeing their reactions to ridicule. I don’t wanna have to wait till the morning.
drowning everyone, except the fish, who did their job just fine.
Don’t forget the .
I was about to say Jeff, I had no idea Odin was such a ladies man. I’d have to go back and reread. Not that I’d be able to find any historically interesting and relevant books on the matter on Abunga. I might have to search Amazon and give to my preferred charity like I always do anyways…
OK. Don’t forget the floatie things:
Aw, found out! I was going to use the etch-a-sketch end of the world joke, but I thought that would be too obvious.
If they make it through the posts between the last fundie missive and now, and can do anything other than call us evil bastards, I think that will make it quite clear they don’t bother reading.
which of course, means that Abunghole will indeed need God in order to maintain itself.
which of course means we needn’t worry a bit.
If they make it through the posts between the last fundie missive and now, and can do anything other than call us evil bastards, I think that will make it quite clear they don’t bother reading.
Oh, please, I haven’t even started my, “Thith ith my body….take….eat” gay orgy version of the last supper yet.
Or you could start brainstorming on where Cain’s wife came from. That’s always a crowd pleaser.
Oh, please, I haven’t even started my, “Thith ith my body….take….eat” gay orgy version of the last supper yet.
*looks at watch*
well?
It really is more of an aural experience. One of those times when I have to use my best gay vocal inflections. I’ve had a number of atheists tell me i’m going to hell once i get done with jesus….but he’s good-tired when we’re done, not bad-tired.
OK. Don’t forget the floatie things:
oh Izzy’s great, until he starts talking about good/evil fish.
one: ALL fish are evil (we like it that way).
two: We do NOT walk like that, even if English.
but you’re too damned expensive in restaurants!
Jeff, rest assured, by simply stating that “once i get done with jesus….but he’s good-tired when we’re done, not bad-tired” you’ve already done your job. Not to mention the fact that I’m stealing that line for later use.
but you’re too damned expensive in restaurants!
with good reason!
If you made eating my ancestors any cheaper, there really wouldn’t be any left at all!
bloody bastards weren’t satisfied with fishing poles and longlines were ya?
nooooo, gotta have your giant trawls and purse seines too!
bloody genocidal lobefinner!
Jeff, rest assured, by simply stating that “once i get done with jesus….but he’s good-tired when we’re done, not bad-tired” you’ve already done your job.
Like I said, I aims to please…and please i do.
Like I said, I aims to please
would you aim, please?
ack
too tired to put the “too” in there too.
In the immortal words of Al Gore…
peace out, ya all!
“You the real problem with fundies? They go to sleep to early.”
They gotta be up early tomorrow. *snicker* Suckers.
*cringe*
These godless intellectual discussions confuse and frighten me.
:-(
This may not be appropriate here but it’s a book thread so what the heck.
I know we all get peeved when we see the ID books in the Science section but how come no one says anything about the God Delusion. It doesn’t seem like it belongs in the science section either.
These godless intellectual discussions confuse and frighten me.
Oh, it ceased to be intellectual a while ago :)
but you can be scared….BOO!
I agree mostly, and this bookstore certainly has a right to use whatever criteria it wants to use to determine what books it will and will not sell.
As long as it’s a private bookseller and not a religion-imposed blanket policy or a government-imposed policy, contrary to seemingly a lot of people on this thread I don’t really have much problem with it. PZ says, quite rightly, “There are a lot of books that I deplore, and the way I cope with them is that I don’t buy them. I don’t go to the manager and tell them that no one else should be allowed to buy them.” I’d extend that to saying, “There are lots of business that have policies I deplore. I cope with them by not doing business with them, not by urging people to sabotage their business, as some in this comment thread have done. All this trying to “ban” religious books is doing is in effect trying to prevent a private business set up to cater to the religious from doing legal business in the way that it chooses. In fact, the only difference between this model of doing business and that of many other corporations is that this bookstore, at least, is up front and honest about it.
Anyone see the crybaby letter Abunga just sent out?
“Friends of Abunga:
I need your help – please take 1 minute to read this.
As you know, Abunga.com is a company dedicated to family-friendly retailing and the support of worthy charities. Entering into this effort, we knew that we would be engaging in a spiritual battle as we sought to bring decency into the marketplace. We even embraced the motto – empowering decency. We set out to eliminate pornographic and other objectionable materials from our retail offerings, unlike the name-brand bookstores that sell anything to anybody without bounds. We also set out to serve with great prices and giving to selected worthy charities.
Up until this point, Abunga.com has simply been a business endeavor with the typical challenges of any startup – getting the staff together, creating a competitive service, marketing that service to customers, fulfilling our commitments.
All has now changed – the battle has now begun. We are being assailed for our actions to empower a segment of the marketplace to have a voice for decency. It has been said that your convictions are never made real until they are tested. Abunga, and its band of brothers, is now being put to the test. For an example of what the world is saying, take a look at:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/01/no_way_to_run_a_bookstore.php
or Google “Abunga”.
I need your help. First and foremost, I ask for your prayers for Abunga, for the encouragement and protection of its staff and its vision. More times than I would like to admit, ours feels like a lone voice in the wilderness crying out for goodness to overcome evil. Secondly, would you take a concrete action – pass on this email, write an entry on a blog, call a friend, visit our site. It is time for warriors to rise up for the common good – we are seeking to give you a voice, but we cannot do it alone. Abunga.com will only succeed with the support of the Lord as its business model makes no earthly sense – reduce inventory to protect families (basically turning away certain customers) and giving 5% of revenue to charities that support good works in communities across the nation. These are not the business practices taught at Harvard.
Thank you for your time to read this, your heart to take action and your continuing support of Abunga.com.
Lee Martin, Chairman
Abunga.com
Empowering decency
lee@abunga.com
http://blog.abunga.com“
The effect of your column against Abunga has done one thing for me– I will never read your column again. Why is it so wrong for anyone to try to make this world a better place? It seems the minute anyone tries to have a positive effect in this world, they are criticized for being narrow-minded. I would counter that the ones who are negative, and legalistic are the ones who are narrow-minded. To open the doors to any and all evil is evidently acceptable and preferable. I choose to close the door to the negative and evil efforts to corrupt my family by choosing to support Abunga. I don’t support support your work because it is contrary to everything I believe and support. That is my choice. If you don’t want to support Abunga, that is fine, but don’t denounce and wage war against a business for doing good and wanting to help everyone keep their children safe.
“Don’t like men touching other men? Well then if you are a man… don’t touch one. Don’t like what that artist took a picture of… well, then don’t look at it. Don’t like the fact that alcohol makes you drunk… then don’t drink it.”
One addition I would like to make: Don’t like Christian Bookstores allowing its customers to ban books..? well, then don’t shop there. Is that so hard?
In such a community, I would expect people to understand evolutionary dynamics and some economics. Clearly Abunga people think it is a good way to make money, looking like a “family friendly book store which can survive only with the help of Lord.” What is it that you don’t get? Is that business model stupid?
Of course you have the right to fuck with Abunga but if someone critizes Abunga because being irrational or anti-liberal, I think he’s plain wrong. People has the right to try business models like Abunga to see if it makes money. People has right to open book stores like Abunga to serve people who just want bookstores like Abunga.
If you have a problem with that I am sorry, as a matter of fact I have too. But I don’t think criticizing a business model or Abunga.com without a discussion on how to change the dynamics of the market or the consumer profile will be helpful at all but only ego satisfaction.
Cindy,
keeping your children terrified and ignorant is exactly what we should be criticizing.
Hm.
Doesn’t reducing inventory reduce costs, especially if you know for a fact that it is inventory that your customers will not buy, because some reasonable majority of them actually told you so? And aren’t all charitable contributions tax-deductible?
Cindy and Recai, and the rest. Our point is that it doesn’t work like you think it does anyway, so its useless. First off, there is no way to prevent anyone from joining that doesn’t share your views, and ruin the system. This has proven true here, where some of the people that read this blog opted to be assholes, but ***Abunga’s own rules*** allow them to do it. Second, it works by majority rule, so if some large majority of some other group that is ***far*** worse than atheists, even from your ignorant viewpoint, like Nazis, Islamic Fundamentalists, or what ever, showed up to use the site, it would very quickly become a tool “only” for their hatred and vile thinking, not for your “making the world a better place”. You want to wallow in ignorance and allow the questionable beliefs about what books are good or bad of people who never read them, but just, like in the case of Golden Compass, just banned in because everyone else said to, then by all means, do so. But don’t get all angry when someone else, with an entirely different view, decides to screw with a system that is 100% designed to support mass ignorance and group thinking, instead of truth. Why, as others have pointed out, is The Golden Compass banned, but nothing else in the series? Why are works by people that rip theology and religion to shreds listed as acceptable, but relatively inoffensive children’s books banned? Why, if you are truly trying to make the world a better place, are you basing 100% of the choices of what to ban on the site **solely** one what ever book, idea or person that some nut case said on the 700 club, or something, you should all fear, and which a thousand fools rush to ban, having never so much as read the back cover?
At the very least, if the fools that made the site wanted it to be truly useful, and more difficult to abuse, they should have profiled the beliefs of the people signing up to use it, then based what gets listed as banned on “which” profile those people are in. Because, we have already had at least one Christian post here that doesn’t agree that The Golden Compass is a hot bed of anti-family evil, and doesn’t agree much with banning any book, since ignorance is a damn hard position to argue from. Abunga allows a majority of clueless, ignorant fools, who only do what their church says, to dictate what is or isn’t banned. This is flat out stupid. Church’s *have* changed their minds about books and other works, as they themselves realized their ignorance. Abunga has basically created a situation where every act, done in ignorance, becomes set in stone, and it would be nearly impossible to correct mistakes. Not only does it allow such mistakes, so that only of the majority realizes the error can it change, but it forces ***everyone*** that believes it is a useful tool, and it isn’t, for the reasons given, to conform to what ever false, paranoid, untruthful, or ignorant view that some large number of fools held when the banning took place.
I cannot comprehend how you think this “improves” the world. What if the majority are wrong, as is all too often the case? Most will continue to be wrong, and all you have done is make the world a “worse” place, by creating a tool to spread misinformation, while those that realize it is wrong will stop using it, because if its wrong about what *they* know is wrong, then it might be about virtually everything else. Creating a tool that can and does serve evil as well as it could, in some wacky theory, serve good, then relying on prayer as the means to prevent its misuse by the former isn’t just stupid, its insane. And there has ****never**** been a single case in history where such a tool has not fallen into the hands of, and been used to promote, evil.
And modern evil is clever. It doesn’t go for grand gestures, like banning books you people *would* object to. It works by defending those books that mislead, lie and distort truth, for its betterment, but which **sound** like they are good, while banning all works that require thought, consideration, knowledge and conscience to understand, and which might, if people where less ignorant, uncomprehending and gullible, lead to recognition of that evil. It hardly matters if the evil is some real entity, or just human greed, lust for power, and insanity, which demands that they lie, distort and mislead people to serve them. In the end, evil is evil, and it is going to use your own tool to promote books that **it** knows will hook you deeper into its desires, while banning the ones that would lead you to question those desires. The entire site is predicated, instead, on the idea that people are smart enough to tell when they are being duped, and that evil is too stupid to quote scripture as a means to lead people down **its** path.
One question. If your God exists, you create site that invariably makes it easier to serve evil, then you pray that God helps you defend it, will your God a) open your eyes to the evil and use what ever means he can to destroy the site or b) allow you to have the free will to dig your own grave, by using that tool to better serve the evil that has driven you to ban harmless books, while defending those created to mislead and destroy you? Free will, or fire to bring down the Tower? And, if the later happens, how many of you are going to whine about how the world is “worse” for not having such an easily misused tool?
The devils best tool isn’t, if one assumes he exists at all, that he convinced some people he doesn’t exist, its that he *can and does* quote scripture as well or better than a good priest, and he uses it to spread lies and ignorance about the world, nature and his own evil. Ignorance is **his** tool, and most of the people promoting things like Abunga have been convinced that ignorance of opinions, idea, and even proven facts, that they don’t like is a virtue. That is why the US and the places like the Middle East are the **most** religious of all places in the world, with virtually 90%+ believing, but also the most corrupt, violent, and immoral. Ignorance leads to immorality and intolerance, and that leads to fear, paranoia, blind obedience of anyone offering a false answer, and finally, more often than not, to violence and rage, directed at those that we are **told** are the true cause of the problem, even if they would not, and have not, lifted a finger against you, or done more than call you a fool for falling for lies.
No, if Abunga survives, it won’t be because your God wants it to do so. It will because evil finds it a useful tool to spread its ignorance and hatred of differences.
Why is it that when some small group of people oppose something some loony group of christians do, suddenly it’s a WAR? There is no war against the idiocy that is Abunga. If they got freeped in an act of internet protest, then so be it. But for those of you who simply state that such practices should be ignored are missing the actual point. Mob rule and religious mass tyranny is antithetical to this little thing I like to call our democratic republic. Heaven forbid if we cause a stir in making that point.
It seems to me that a great deal of you need to read the link to Mill up this tread. You treat with spineless apathy all infringements that arn’t on your doorstep. But hey, it’s just a itty bitty ol’ business model right?
Oh, and just in case you still missed my point. If you go to a “real” book store, where the titles are picked by the “owners”, you can talk to them and find out what **they** believe and thus why they picked what they did. If you go to Abunga you have thousands of nameless people, who you can’t ask what they actually believe, or even test/gauge their honesty about what they believe, who you only **assume** are the same as you, and make their choices based on similar good will and a desire to make the world better. You have, in truth, no idea who they are, what their real goals are, what they actually believe, why they banned any particular book, etc. All you have is the ***assumption*** that they seek the same goal as you, and are not like the thousands of letter writers that show up in political situations to undermine something, based on an organized effort to undermine what they are protesting. I.e., everyone *except* you could have the goal of leading you astray, and unlike the local Christian book store owner, you have no way to tell how many, or if any, of them are using the tool as “you” and its creators think it is supposed to be used. Its like deciding that you like the looks of the stranger named Natasha that just walked into town, and everyone aught to let him decide what to do with the churches money, without knowing a thing about him. For those that never read Piers Anthony’s “Incarnations” series, spell the name backwards, with a space between the ‘s’ and ‘h’. You literally have no clue what the **true** goal of the majority on Abunga is, or even who they truly are.
Kagehi misses my point. There are people out there who are happy to find a bookstore like Abunga. A bookstore which claims to be family friendly and allows its customers to ban the books they don’t like. Abunga.com is probably going to make money by this idea. These are the facts or my assumptions without any comment. Do we agree on these? I don’t care whether the claim of making the world a better place is right or wrong. I don’t care if Abunga’s stance is consistent or not. These are irrelevant. Abunga.com will survive as long as makes money (or the as long as the Lord helps them as they wish to say).
If we do agree on these facts, my question is what your reaction to this situation should be.
1) You may ignore and continue shopping at Abunga.com
2) You may go and try to change the way Abunga.com by writing emails to the owners
3) You may ignore and forget about Abunga.com
4) You may go and try to sabotage Abunga.com by voting for the books you like
5) You may start a petition for banning bookstores like Abunga.com
Of course that’s not a good scale nor does it covers all possible reactions but apart from kidding around and satisfying your ego what other option you could offer?
Don’t you make the same mistake by refering to me and Cindy and others like we belong to a homogenous group and asking what would happen if “my god” exists. What does make you think I have a faith in some sort of God?
Yes Abunga.com opresses the views of minority. Yes it dictates the preferences of the majority but then again, it is a business. And it is actually designed to serve to those who would like to shop from a store where the majority dictates. What is wrong with that on its own? Who are you trying to defend against whom? The innocent people trying to shop at Abunga.com against Abunga? Me against Abunga? Yourself against majority totalitarianism? Come on…
You missed one very important option that drives most of us here. Consciouness raising. In the very act of protesting we draw attention to it so that others may hear and join in. It is no secret that ridicule and public condemnation are effective in curtailing such nutters as these.
As for who were trying to save, I’m trying to help those other kids like me, caught in an ever narrowing world, told their ignorance is for their own good.
And by the way, if you can’t grasp why censorship and tyranny of the majority is in and of itself detrimental to society, then I wonder at your audacity to offer your opinion on the matter. It would seem you’ve already missed the point.
I agree protesting is a good way for creating an awareness about these issues. And I agree on that point. But besides being provocative and raising your voice just to get attention you should talk about possible implications of such business models.
Maybe the possible success of Abunga.com will encourage others and we will start to see many book stores like it. Maybe people will have the opportunity to shut the rest of the world to their kids. This is a political issue, people should be aware of the possible dangers of such practices and should think about what they can do.
But and this is a big but, I believe that accusing Abunga.com by being irrational, stupid, inconsistent or fool does not help you to get the kind of attention you want. It is a business model. What I heard on this thread of conservation was primarily the second type of criticism not the first one that I talk about.
What I heard on this thread of conservation was primarily the second type of criticism not the first one that I talk about.
then you didn’t read very closely.
the key issue involved was raised well over 2 dozen times by commenters in the thread, let alone having been raised not just in the OP, but also by PZ again in his later comments in the thread itself.
the rest is just poking fun at what you damn well have to admit is utter stupidity.
so, *yawn*, try actually seeing where the point was raised over and over again, eh?
As long as it’s a private bookseller and not a religion-imposed blanket policy or a government-imposed policy, contrary to seemingly a lot of people on this thread I don’t really have much problem with it.
so do most of your shopping at Walmart, do you Orac?
what the fuck is with you that you entirely missed the point of how bad this business model would be if it all of a sudden became popular?? did you fail to see ANY of the posts as to how this business model is different than say, one where the owner decides to sell only xian books?
sometimes i swear, you say the dumbest stuff.
I can’t believe people keep missing the point.
What part of “the tyranny of the majority” is confusing?
Not to mention the fact that the people protesting the site are using it as it was designed.
They are not hacking it.
They are not doing anything different than other users.
They just have a different goal.
That is just too bad for the self righteous Abunga supporters.
I can’t believe people keep missing the point.
What part of “the tyranny of the majority” is confusing?
beats the fuck out of me, not like the point wasn’t stressed enough.
but, what the hell one more time can’t hurt, eh?
____________________
so should we exhort as positive a business model that utilizes mob censorship?
If that’s what you think, perhaps you should be instead be feeling sorry for anyone you are trying to teach.
I wonder if you’ve ever heard of John Stuart Mill?
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/jsmill.htm
seemed pretty clear to me, even the very first time I heard it as a sophmore high school student, so many years ago.
Instead of allowing anyone who registers to ban a book, why don’t they restrict that right to just those who actually make a purchase? duh.
I’m surprised that, while several posters commented that the donation aspect of the store was a positive, nobody came up with an alternative.
iGive is a portal through which normal online shopping can generate donations to any cause. If it’s not yet listed with them, if it’s in the US or Canada it can be quickly registered.
Amazon isn’t one of their participants (they do their donations through their affiliate program, I think), but I spend enough at Staples through the year to send some money to my selected cause, and there are nearly 700 online vendors who participate.
First, I place you in the same group as Cindy, because like her, you don’t fracking get it. Note, all I did is post a comment on the Golden Compass blog entry they had, telling them what the series **did** say, and how bloody stupid they where to block it without reading it first. I think going their and mucking with their system is childish.
The ***point*** I am trying to make though is that if some group of nuts, say Muslim extremists, since they are the current non-Christian nuts we are worried about, found out about the site, it wouldn’t be that hard for them to find a way to log in, vote a bunch of books **they** don’t like out of existence, and thus undermine the goals of the current majority. However, what I find far more disturbing, and which you can see in the case of The Golden Compass, is that most of the people that constitute the majority over their are not ***choosing*** to block books. They are letting other people choose which ones to block, based on the rantings of religious leaders. In other words, to restate my prior point, someone that intends to enforce ignorance, impress on them his/her dominance, prevent them from discovering new ideas, and lead them on a twisted path of good intentions to a real life hell, all they need to do is convince that majority, as happened with The Golden Compass, to vote for books their ***leader*** doesn’t like.
If Jim Jones, of Jonestown infamy, had access to Abunga, and demanded that his followers only buy the books from their that **he** said didn’t contain lies, you would have had 1,000+ people banning books on their, all of them convinced they where making the world a better place, by banning the lies of the neo-Nazi US government. And, it would ***probably*** be more than enough people to constitute a sufficient majority to “ban” them from “everyone’s” searches. Now, think of the innocent fool that shows up because they “are” looking for such a site, think it provides, somehow, what they want, and has **no** clue that its been taken over by a group of religious fanatics, who are led by a raving lunatic.
The point isn’t **if** some people might want such a place, the point is, the nature of how this one works means you a) don’t know who *is* actually guiding its direction, and b) you can’t tell if those doing so have an agenda that is radically different than what you intend.
The only ***rational*** statement that can be made about the types of people that go to Abunga, thinking it will help them, if you where entirely amoral, and didn’t give a crap about the dangers, would be something along the lines of, “You reap what you sew.”, or, “You get what you deserve.” Well, ***we*** don’t think any of these people *deserve* to have their choices limited, or their lives made less than they might have been, by people they don’t, and can’t, really know, and whose goals may bare no resemblance at all to what they *think* they are getting from them.
Well, ***we*** don’t think any of these people *deserve* to have their choices limited, or their lives made less than they might have been, by people they don’t, and can’t, really know, and whose goals may bare no resemblance at all to what they *think* they are getting from them.
You do have a point there. Why complain about banning books and then go and ban a bunch of books? Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now that you mention it!
While on the subject of censorship, what are the opinions of this new documentary? http://www.expelledthemovie.com/home.php Are scientists suffering from censorship?
So, what is it about this place that scares you so much? It’s their store, and they’re free to run it the way they want. I, for one, applaud them for standing up for decency.
I think we should let Morgan off the hook for not reading the 345 posts which preceded his/hers. But, questions for Morgan:
1. How do you define “decency”?
2. How is a system which enables a relatively small number of people to make a book like The Golden Compass unavailable to others who browse the site “standing up” for anything other than, say, pandering to the proclivities of sanctimonious control freaks?
3. How is a system which enables a relatively small number of people to arbitrarily decide to make ANY book unavailable to others who browse the site “standing up” for anything other than suppression of personal choice by a capricious pseudo-majority?
I’ll tell you what I would applaud: A site which enables people to take responsibility for obtaining what they believe to be quality reading material for themselves and for their own families and friends, without allowing them to anonymously impose their own idiosyncratic value choices on everyone else who browses the site.
I believe that describes most online bookstores, but but Abunga failts to qualify for applause. Their mistake was extending the blocking feature beyond scope of the individual shopper’s ID. I don’t oppose filters – customized personal filters are good! But allowing others to impose their filters on me? Or on you, Morgan? No good can come of that; the concept is flawed, and the precedent is disturbing, for reasons enumerated and explained (and, indeed, demonstrated by the freeping of the site) many times over in the comments above.
I’m way late on getting in on this string but here goes anyway! The abunga bookstore, in my opinion has a very marketable concept for its targeted customer. The concept of banning indecent and pornographic material is very noble, regardless of the numerous administrative issues regarding what should be deemed unsalable on its site. One doesn’t go to a hardware store to buy cosmetics. And one shouldn’t bash and disrupt the hardware store’s business because it doesn’t sell cosmetics. It’s simply a company that is in the business of selling hardware supplies. I’m a writer, thus I have a legitimate point to make in this issue, in comparison to those that are merely readers of books yet weigh-in with their haughty and self-righteous indignation of all those that care about family values and their religious beliefs. The target audience is the key here. Not every business is going to appeal to everyone, or even be usable by everyone. Not utilizing this bookstore’s services is your prerogative, but we as civilized creatures don’t have the “right” to be disruptive to their business no more that we could legally go into a traditional retailer and disrupt their store. It seems all to clear to me that those that cry the loudest about the freedom of this, and the freedom of that are actually the ones that are the most closed minded when it comes to alternative thinking. Responsible and decent people don’t take up the actions of those that have participated in the so-called banning of books that should not be separated from those that the bookstore wishes to promote and sell. But hey, that’s just my opinion. Which by the way also includes the opinion that this site doesn’t seem too interested in hearing from anyone with an opposing viewpoint? If we both think the same, then one of us isn’t needed – and from the looks of the attached comments, a lot of folks on this site really aren’t needed since they simply share the same sad mindset. Doug
Doug, how is registering for Abunga and using it as it was intended “being disruptive”? Is it because we’re blocking the wrong books? And if so, then who’s deciding which books are wrong or right? And if someone is deciding, then why not just drop the whole silly facade of this bookstore being some sort of “democracy”? Why not just call it a Christian bookstore and ban all the “indecent” stuff right off the bat?
I won’t insist you read this whole thread, but just read Kseniya’s comment directly above yours (#347) for a good rebuttal.
“Which by the way also includes the opinion that this site doesn’t seem too interested in hearing from anyone with an opposing viewpoint?”
Has anyone been censored on this thread? No. If you can’t accept being disagreed with, then you can kindly go back to your cloistered religious communities.
I’m late getting in on this string but here goes anyway! The ABUNGA bookstore, in my opinion has a very marketable concept for its targeted customer. The concept of banning indecent and pornographic material is very noble, regardless of the numerous administrative issues regarding what should be deemed non-saleable on its site. One doesn’t go to a hardware store to buy cosmetics, and thus one shouldn’t bash and disrupt the hardware store’s business because it doesn’t sell cosmetics. It’s simply a company that is in the business of selling hardware supplies. Since this subject involves books and I’m a writer, I believe I have a legitimate point to make in this issue, where it seems that you’re only hearing from those that eagerly weigh-in with their haughty and self-righteous indignation of all those that truly care about real family values. The target audience is the key here. Not every business is going to appeal to everyone, or even be seen as usable by everyone. Not utilizing this bookstore’s services is your prerogative, but we as civilized creatures don’t have the “right” to be disruptive to their business no more than we could legally go into a traditional retailer and disrupt their store. It seems all too clear to me that those that cry the loudest about protecting the freedom of this, and the freedom of that are actually the ones that are the most closed-minded when it comes to alternative thinking. Responsible and decent people don’t take up the actions of those that have participated in the so-called freeping or banning of books that shouldn’t have been separated from the ones the bookstore wishes to promote and sell. But hey, that’s just my opinion – which by the way also includes the opinion that this site doesn’t seem too interested in hearing from anyone with an opposing viewpoint? I’ve heard it said that if we both think the same, then one of us isn’t needed – and from the looks of the attached comments, a lot of folks on this site really aren’t needed since so many apparently share the same sad mindset, which is what they seem to be criticizing the owners of the bookstore of doing. Irony, I suppose…..Doug
I apologize for posting the unedited version to begin with… Not that there is any substative difference in the two.
Rey, I have read a good majority of the items posted yet not all of them as you alluded to. But I continue to believe that this string is almost entirely made up of those expressing one opinion, in some form or fashion. My main point is that regardless of our beliefs concerning they way the bookstore chooses to operate, we should not be freeping their site, which is in fact disrupting their business. Those that complain of a certain behavior shouldn’t be found to be a hypocrit by demonstrating the same behavior yet in a way that appeases their sense of superiority.
As a supporter of the goals of ABUNGA, i.e., Empowering Decency through their own custom approach to Empowering Safety and Empowering Charities, I’m struggling with many aspects of the criticism being leveled against them. But there is one point in particular that’s confusing to me. the “tyranny of the majority” as it’s been referred to here is real in every corner of the retail world. It’s the whole basis for our supply and demand system. As a writer I’m painfully aware of how the demand of the consuming public drives the supply any retailer, faith-based or otherwise, choses to offer for sale. Regardless of how democratic or undemocratic or fair or unfair the method may seem, every purveyor of books and related media has their own way of deciding what will “stock their shelves.” I may want it to be my book. I may even believe it’s only fair that my book be included. But, sadly, I’ve learned it isn’t my decision. There is a majority who “vote,” based on their own personal criteria – whether I like it or not – and by various means – purchases, inquiries, requests, etc. – and those “votes” drive the retailer’s decisions about what to offer. The way I see it, (1)ABUNGA never claimed to be a one-stop shop for any and every book or form of media, like AMAZON, for instance, and (2)being an online retailer vs. brick-and-mortar, they simply employed the technology at their disposal to gather data from their customer’s to guide their inventory decisions. It’s just a modern-day approach to supply and demand management in a niche market that’s no different from what the mom-and-pop and mega book stores have been doing for decades. I don’t see it as banning books. The books, mine included, are still available by other means. The booksellers have just made a business decision based upon the demand of their core customer base. I wish I could just put up a blog site entitled “No Way To Run A Bookstore” and bad-mouth retailers (who refuse to buy my book, of course)and bully them into doing what I want (that is, putting my book on their shelves.) What an ingenious approach for all marginalized groups! All obscure writers could band together and create our own “tyranny of the frustrated, not-so-good, and quite poor writer’s community.” But, then, how would we be any different than those we initially criticized?
It’s really a good idea that asking the readers to vote about the book so that a online book store can keep or remove the books in their stores and visitors can buy a book that can give good knowledge to the readers and also help the store to increase their online books sales.
It’s really a good idea that asking the readers to vote about the book so that a online book store can keep or remove the books in their stores and visitors can buy a book that can give good knowledge to the readers and also help the store to increase their online books sales.
Perhaps some of the people posting to this site should take their own advice. If they don’t like the abunga bookstore, perhaps they should just take their money and go elsewhere. Simple.
Fletcher Armstrong’s comment is indeed simple. And wrong. His kind of thinking is ruining our youth.
I vote no one else read his comment or visit his website.
No shit Fletch.
The site is still crazy.
Their users are crazy. Crazy crazy crazy.
Have u try the online bookstore Cocomartini.com
http://www.cocomartini.com to buy textbooks
I get all my textbooks for this semester from this bookstore. All are brand new textbooks and half price discount textbooks and cheap textbooks.
Good luck and wish some help.
hehe ^_^