There Actually IS A Fight Against Anti-Knoweldge! Awesome!

[BlooInBloo]

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2007/08/01/reclaiming_the_bookshelves_for_reason.html

"Here's one you might like. New blog Biologists Helping Bookstores - spotted via Jason Kottke - features a crusading scientist called Ste who tries reorganising bookshop shelves to prevent pseudoscience featuring in the science categories.

Take this recent entry, where the target was work by individuals like intelligent design "pioneer" Michael Behe:

Four copies of The Edge of Evolution were discovered once more in the science section. I flip a copy and read the back. Here's the beginning of the first quote from the back cover: "Until the past decade and the genomics revolution, Darwin's theory rested on indirect evidence and reasonable speculation..." (Dr. Philip Skell, Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Emeritus, at Pennsylvania State University, and member of the National Academy of Sciences). That's not true! I am emboldened by this bare-faced lie from this well-respected elderly chemist, pick up all four copies, and stroll upstairs.

Now, I aim for accuracy in my recategorization... so I sought out the most appropriate section of the store: Behe's lie-covered volume now rightly resides in the Religious Fiction section. A job well done.

Behe (if you didn't know) is one of the leading thinkers behind the intelligent design movement - and the fellow that honed the theory of irreducible complexity that underpins many a Creationist argument.

I've heard of people doing this with political books (usually for party political reasons) but I'm liking this effort to increasing amounts of pseudo-scientific gabble that's taking over."


He's gonna lose the fight of course - America is dead-set on choosing fiction over knowledge. But it's gratifying nevertheless to know that someone actually cares.

[Kutjara]

1. I've been doing the same thing for a few years.

All the pseudoscience hooey at my local Borders, B&N, Waldenbooks etc. finds itself relocated to (usually) "Romantic Fiction."

[BlooInBloo]

2. Heh! Nice!

[Chovexani]

3. Hell yeah!

There's no better way to strike a blow for science than making your local bookseller's workday a bigger pain in the ass! Remember, kids: it's okay to be an obnoxious douchebag, as long as it's for our side.

[BlooInBloo]

4. And The Empire Of Anti-Knowledge Strikes Back.

[Kutjara]

5. Yes. Order is the Most Important Thing.

Be Orderly and All Will Be Well!!!

:)

[Chovexani]

14. Fail.

This isn't about order, unless you're ordering Not Being a Douchebag with a side of Empathy. When people pull juvenile stunts like that, someone has to clean up after it, and it's usually someone who gets paid shit wages and, here's the kicker, probably agrees with you. There wasn't a single freeper on staff at the bookstore I worked at, except for the fuckers in management. Every last one of us were geeky liberal kids who resented having to stick Ann Coulter books in anything but the humor section, and used to perform dramatic readings of the Left Behind books. Moving books around doesn't do anything except annoy the fuck out of people who agree with you and makes you like stupid.

Yes, congratulations, that puts you in the same category as the assholes who leave magazines all over the cafe area (complete with coffee stains), the teenage prats that leave stacks of manga and $ilver RavenWolf books all over the floor, and the yuppies who let their spawn loose knocking crap all over the place.

(God, where's my "Get off my side, you're making it look stupid" icon when I need it.)

[Kutjara]

15. There comes a time when the...

..."your only hurting the poor underpaid wage slaves" argument fails. You can say the same thing about any large company. The people who deal with customers are always lowly paid and overworked. So we should all just shut up in case we hurt a fellow worker's feelings? I disagree.

If you work eight or 10 hours a day at any job, that's the amount of time you work. Whether you spend that time stacking shelves, replacing magazines or working the checkout, you work those hours and then you're done. If someone's "creative filing" means that you spend time rectifying that instead of doing something else, so what? At least you might get a chuckle out of it. It's not like anything else you were going to do would be any more fulfilling.

As someone who worked in retail himself, I know there are enough books strewn around the store at random by people who can't be bothered to walk back to where they picked them up to be too impressed by the vision of dozens of serfs working themselves to death putting a few "politically filed" books back.

Did any of those "geeky liberal kids" you mention understand that protest is important? That if only a few people see those books filed in "romantic fiction" or "humor" it might change their thinking, however slightly? Sounds like it didn't from your description. Instead, the "liberal kids" were just annoyed and irritated because their little routine had been disrupted. Some liberals. Vive la Revolution.

[Chovexani]

7. No, just the Party of Irritated Retail Workers

Dude, I agree with the sentiment. It's the methods I have a problem with.

I'm not a retail monkey anymore, but I spent enough time working in a bookstore to know that every time some idiot with an agenda (even if it's one I agree with) decides to be cute and fuck with the shelving of books, someone has to come behind them and clean it up.

I say this as someone who spent about two hours picking Chick tracts out of every Pagan book in the New Age section one day when our local Bible beaters decided to have a yearly field trip to the heathen temple of forbidden knowledge (also known as your local Borders).

[Madspirit]

"an agenda (even if it's one I agree with) decides to be cute and fuck with the shelving of books"

This isn't an agenda. This is...Science Books should be in the Science Section and Fiction in Fiction, Religion in Religion...

You're talking about "Fairies and Gnomes" being put under Science. Science is Factual, not an agenda, not an opinion.

Lee

[Greyhound]

17. So what, we've all worked shitty jobs for next to no wages. You were paid

hourly and if there was extra work to do, you got a few extra hours.

Why are you whining?

[Madspirit]

10. How is that being obnoxious?

So it would be OK with you if they put "Fairies and Gnomes" in the Science section? Wow...just wow.

Lee

[Kutjara]

16. Yes. Whatever the Company Decrees is Correct.

We must only do what the Company tells us to do. Creationism is Science. Borders says so, so it is Truth.

[ismnotwasm]

6. Did you read that

"That's a supression of free speech" comment?

Moving books to an appropiate section is NOT a supression of free speech. Rather a very apt expression of it really.

[BlooInBloo]

8. Yah - the vehemence with which people battle for their own stupidity is amazing.

[Madspirit]

9. k&r Bloo!...

What century are we living in again?

Lee

[BlooInBloo]

12. Good to see you before I hie off to bed! Just tryin to get thru the Daily Show...

... and then it's dreamland for me!

[blogslut]

11. A local book/magazine/music chain had a bit of drama a while back

The store rented videos and had begun to rent softcore vids to adults. The pearl clutchers organized a letter-writing, press covered tirade. I, for one, loved the response from the manager of the store:

"We also carry bibles."

Don't know why I threw this in here. Take of it what you will.

[BlooInBloo]

13. I like it! You stay!

[BlooInBloo]

18. Kick for morning crowd....

... Let's see how many "it's too risky" types there are.

[Madspirit]

19. kicking for importance...n/t