Rumors of an automotive snuff film have been circulating around the Net, and our resident Gumlegs has tracked them to the source. DarwinCentral brings you an Internet exclusive, the elusive true story, and the snuff film itself. Just remember, when the truth erupts, you’ll hear it here first.
As a follow up to the previous article, I notice the following, supposedly comforting, little note at the end of the Snopes article:
A CPSC announcement issued on 6 February 2009 regarding that agency’s enforcement policy also stated that they would not “impose penalties against anyone for making, importing, distributing, or selling” certain specified items, including any “ordinary children’s book printed after 1985.”
WTF are these idiots thinking about? How many classic books have not been reprinted since 1985 and never will be? This is exactly what was envisioned by Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451. And it’s not theoretical. It’s happening.
As readers are aware, the Consumer Product Safety Commission yesterday advised thrift stores and other resellers and distributors of used goods to discard (unless they wished to test for lead or take other typically unpractical steps such as contacting manufacturers) children’s books printed before 1985 and a very wide range of other children’s products, including apparel and playthings.
I wasn’t thrilled with the exception stating that we can sell pre-1985 children’s books as long as they are pricey vintage collectibles for adult collectors. Um, great, but most of our children’s books, even our older children’s books, are sold for children to read. And read them, they do.
We ran an audit in our bookstore today. We have about 7000 books catalogued. Of our children’s chapter books, about 65% are pre-1985. Of our children’s picture books, about 35% are pre-1985. Most of these sell for under $10 and are stocked as children’s reading.
As an ethical matter, I really can’t discard our cultural heritage just because the CPSC has decreed that books published through *1984* may or may not still form a legal part of the canon of children’s literature for our culture.
So how’s it going to feel in fifty years when the Democratic administration that replaced the evil George Bush will be known as the book burners? And the mainstream press that looked on in horror at conservative culture warriors sat silent while the flames rose?
Only in America.
The usually trustworthy Snopes.com has screwed the pooch on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) of 2009.
There’s been a lot of talk about it’s effect on flea markets and thrift shops, and Snopes tries to oil the troubled waters.
However, the new regulations are not as restrictive as first feared, nor will they put the thrift shops out of business.
…
Sellers of used children’s products, such as thrift stores and consignment stores, are not required to certify that those products meet the new lead limits, phthalates standard or new toy standards.
Oh, is that so? Reading further we find:
In other words, used children’s items offered for resale after 10 February 2009 must still meet the new CPSIA standards regarding lead and phthalate content, but vendors will not have to have such items tested and certified.
Hmmmmmm…
Vendors should therefore “avoid products that are likely to have lead content, unless they have testing or other information to indicate the products being sold have less than the new limit.”
Now what might that include?
How about just about everything? Including, it seems, ALL children’s books made before 1985. By law it will be illegal to sell, give or transfer ownership of any children’s book published before 1985. You don’t have to do any expensive testing. You just can’t do it.
I can’t wait ’till someone tries to burn one of these lead containing books. Or put it in a landfill. Maybe they can be snuck into landfills with fluorescent lamps.
So what if one of these unthreatened thrift shops fails to test their items and sells something that violates the standards of the new law?
“Those resellers that do sell products in violation of the new limits could face civil and/or or criminal penalties,” a reasonable interpretation of that statement as it applies to the sale of used goods would be that the agency will focus its attentions on those retailers who blatantly take a cavalier attitude towards the used childrens’ items in their inventory by continuing to vend merchandise items they have good reason to suspect contain lead.
Reading the latest in Creation Science. So you don’t have to.
I’m not just suggesting, I’m saying that evolution is not science and is of Satan. It has no place in Conservatism.
Link
Satan has everything to do with this thread, because the thread is about Darwinism and evo-atheism, which are of Satan. It matters not how long one has been posting here, it matters what they have been posting. I have been posting the Word, and evo-atheists have been posting the words of the Deceiver.
Remember, God is the final Admin.
Link
Forget about Lady Hope and Darwin’s deathbed conversion. Now we have the audacity of hope and a lame duck conversion. George Bush, about to leave office, says:
I think that God created the Earth, created the world; I think the creation of the world is so mysterious it requires something as large as an almighty and I don’t think it’s incompatible with the scientific proof that there is evolution.
And to think, just a few years ago, Bill (Waterloo) Dembski’s website, Uncommon Descent was proclaiming a final political victory over evolution:
…and last but far from least, George W. Bush hisself drove a stake in the ground saying teach the controversy. Unless Judge Jones wants to cut his career off at the knees he isn’t going to rule against the wishes of his political allies. Of course the ACLU will appeal. This won’t be over until it gets to the Supreme Court. But now we own that too.
Politically biased decisions from ostensibly apolitical courts are a double edged sword that cuts both ways. The liberals had their turn at bat. This is our time now. We won back congress in 1996. We won back the White House in 2000. We won back the courts in 2005. Now we can start undoing all the damage that was done by the flower children.
Somehow science trudges on, ignoring the fortunes of politics and power.
I’ve pretty much dispensed with the EF. It suggests that chance, necessity, and design are mutually exclusive. They are not. Straight CSI is clearer as a criterion for design detection.
This leaves one poster a bit confused:
Has anyone got an easy to understand CSI calculation? I’m fairly math savvy…
Okayyyyy… We’ll get right on that.
It’s always interesting to see people with their inhibitions down. You learn so much about their real feelings. sometimes alcohol does it and sometimes politics.
From the CNN website we get a rather simple news story, followed by readers’ comments.
From CNN’s Mark Preston and Rebecca Sinderbrand
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee, will speak on Sen. John McCain’s behalf at the Republican National Convention, a source in the McCain campaign tells CNN.
pat C. August 20th, 2008 10:58 am ET
ANOTHER OLD MAN HAS BEEN.
Nicolette August 20th, 2008 10:59 am ET
Go back to Israel where you belong you traitor!!!!!
blaising August 20th, 2008 11:26 am ET
Lieberwoman is a pus head…stick a pin in it and watch it pop.
I’ve always been reluctant to demonize cdesign proponentsists, particularly those rare individuals who seek genuine debate. So it is a pleasure to report that Uncommon Descent has a genuine debate in progress, and that one of its senior bloggers has something intelligent to say.
jjcassidy
Only with Darwin did extermination become advancement of the species and death improvement of the race.
That is a fallacy and Schloss rightly pointed it out. It was well known and practiced in animal husbandry long before Darwin came along. Darwin’s only real significant contribution to science was coming up with the notion that the well known principles of artificial selection to improve breeds of animals had a working corollary in nature which he termed natural selection and further that natural selection operating over millions of years led to the emergence of new species.
I made the exact same argument that Schloss made months ago. It’s painfully obvious to anyone who hasn’t made it a mission in life to demonize Charles Darwin.
In point of fact Darwin was right that new species come about in this manner. The mistake is in thinking that the same mechanism which can cause new species to emerge can account for all of phylogeny. It’s an unjustified extrapolation. Mike Behe in the “Edge of Evolution” explains this very well and tentatively puts the limit of Darwinian evolution’s capacity for change somewhere between class and family IIRC.
Dave was on a roll. Too bad he mistakes Behe’s “tentative” limit for an actual testable hypothesis.
Thanks to Pharyngula for the link.
The regents met in closed session for more than one hour before voting 7-1 to reaffirm ISU’s final decision in the case.
The Discovery Institute is not pleased:
Stellar Astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez Denied Fair Hearing by Iowa State Board of Regents
The Board of Regents of the State of Iowa has denied the tenure appeal of Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez, Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Iowa State University (ISU). Dr. Gonzalez’s appeal has been ongoing since the summer of 2007, when he was first denied tenure by ISU.“We are extremely disappointed that the Board of Regents refused to give Dr. Gonzalez a fair hearing in his appeal,” said Gonzalez’s attorney Chuck Hurley. “They say in Iowa that academic freedom is supposed to be the ‘foundation of the university.’ That foundation is cracked.”