I have a question....

Let's say you're in a store. And you want to steal a pair of socks. Or maybe you want to steal a small juice box, something like that, doesn't really matter.

Now, you can see that somebody has already opened a package of the same sort of socks or juice boxes or whatever that you want to steal, and has stolen one. So why would you, at that point, open up a new package?

I mean, you're already stealing. Isn't it better to minimize your crime and steal from the already stolen-from box?

On a completely unrelated note, you cannot reserve the name "Madison" for your child. I don't care if you're telling that to your distant cousin, you still can't reserve it. It's like reserving the name "Jennifer". Now, I'm far too polite to point out that Madison is an ugly and overpopular name to your face, and tell you that your kid is going to be Maddy P. (or whatever your initial is) for her entire life, but please, don't sit there and go on about how somebody wanted to steal your future kid's name. It's Madison, of all things. I generally like you, but the more people say silly things, the more I get the urge to call them out on it.

(Check it out. Even though more-traditional names are all the rage right now, Madison still manages to be number three on the list of popular baby names. I'm just waiting for Minnie to come back in vogue.)

Something that's been on my mind the last week (I wonder why....)

People, when reading those lists of Banned Books^TM always ask "Why was this banned????"

Now, aside from the fact that simple google or amazon searches will clear that up quite nicely for you (and usually, one doesn't even need that if one thinks, though Waldo was a bit of a puzzle....), this raises a question -

Do people know what the word banned means?

Because that list is the list of banned and challenged books. Most of those books have never successfully been banned. And even if they have, banned in the US means something very different from banned elsewhere.

It might mean that the book can't be taught in public schools - but students can still read the book on their own.
It might mean that the book can be taught in schools, but students are expected to have to opt in to read it.
It might mean that it's not stocked in the libraries.
It might mean that it is stocked in the libraries, but that children need parental permission to read it from there.

These are all area by area - no banning covers the entire country, I doubt any of them really cover an entire state.

Books are still stocked in bookstores (assuming they sell, which is a different kind of loss, but not one which is governmentally enforced), you can still order them over state lines, you can't go to jail for possessing them.

You don't die if you read a banned book.

The word banned, really, has been diluted and reduced to mean something altogether different from the reality people in other places encounter in their daily lives.

That doesn't, of course, mean we shouldn't fight this sort of censorship at home. The day will never come when I argue that because things are worse elsewhere, we must accept unquestioningly what we have here. But please. Let's not get franticsad about things.