h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This one is a weird one...

There aren't any books which are totally banned from the country, as anyone who has heard of Paladin Press will know. Paladin Press is a publishing company that sells direct via mail-order, and the things they publish are dodgy, to say the least. They carry books on conspiracy theories, anti-government stuff, and their most famous publication, the Anarchist's Cookbook. This book is a how-to source for the modern terrorist who doesn't have the financial backing of an entire Islamic country. You can learn how to make pipe bombs, as well as various other explosives, poisons, and weapons that can be made from common household items.

When we talk about book-bannings in the US, we're talking about school libraries. The banned book list is a list of books that public school students are not allowed to access through the school. They will not be studied in English, and they won't be available in the library for self-study. It's not even a standard list... for instance, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a banned book is many communities, but it was taught by one of the English teachers in my high school.

As for why they are banned in any way... I blame the Puritans. The Indians should have killed them while they were still weak.

Hmmm - so the 'I pledge allegiance to the flag' thing was a Cold War invention? I guess it's one of those ideas that it's politically hard to argue against, even for a politician who might not agree with it.

Given that the USA seemed to function pretty damn effectively as a nation during WWII, what was supposed to be the point of the pledge - as far as I can see, being required to repeat something to the point of boredom isn't necessarily likely to inspire people to beleive in it (it sure as hell didn't work with me and Xtianity).
I wonder - could reaction against the imposed beliefs have help stimulate the surge in dissent and anti-establishment thinking in the sixties?

Regarding the Puritans, as far as I understand it, they were hardly the first Europeans to land on US shores - just the most convenient for revisionist history to build a myth around. Also, I believe (from something I read on h2g2, I think) the reason they were 'persecuted' was that they were a right royal pain in the arse, and Europe was glad to see the back of the miserable bastards.

Still, the same thing happens in other countries - I remember a South African friend telling me of one of his country's apartheit politicians who made a big deal of his direct descent from the Boer equivalent of the Mayflower. Odd thing was, it turned out that there were two possible ancestors with his surname. One was a childless old man, the other was a young bloke who, on arrival, immediately shacked up with several local black women.

The Pledge came about in the 50's only after WWII. It was a Red Scare, McCarthyism kind of thing. Along with that is a pledge all government workers have to take before they are hired. Silly, I know...

It's not that the Puritans were the first here, but they were the first zealots. I'm sure that a study of religious evolution in this country would tie Presbyterianism, Southern Baptists, and those freaky guys in the South who play with snakes to the original Puritans. We al know how imbalanced those people were, as anyone who has heard a bit of the history of Salem, Massachusetts can attest.

I suppose there's also the old 'Do you intend to overthrow the US government by force' question (or similar) asked by immigration officials. I guess whoever decided on that one must have been rather lacking a sense of the ridiculous, though having had a minor experience with US immigration myself on one occasion, I guess a sense of humour possibly isn't the main qualification for the job (presumably a pretty internationally applicable observation.)

I guess over here we have an rough equivalent to the pledge of allegiance with all the 'God save the Queen' palaver, though how much attention we pay it depends whether we see ourselves as citzens or subjects, and it's not really forced on most children at school.

There's some similarity with religion as well, I suppose - I caught a few minutes of a service on the radio this morning, where the congregation was doing the repeat-after-me bit, 'I believe in God the father, son & holy ghost. I believe in... . I'm not worthy. yada yada yada'

I guess there really must be people out there who do start to believe anything if they say it often enough, kind of placing religious belief as a analogue of induced false memories. (From what I've heard, some of the 'recovered' memory therapists have a faith in their own infallibility that would put many Popes to shame.)

I used to know a guy who claimed that hewas flying to somewhere (I can't remeber where exactly - it could have been the States) and he gad to fill out one of those 'Do you intend to overthrow the government' type questions. Having had a few to drink on the plane over, he decided to answer the question "Sole purpose of visit" as a bit of a joke - which all went a bit sour when the plane landed, and he was detained for questioning for 5 or 6 hours afterwards!! Some people have no sense of humour....

The thing that really gets me about the British national anthem, is that although I do consider myself patriotic I do not at all enjoy hearing/singing it. Firstly, I do not believe in God, and even if I did I can't think of a single reason why I would want him to save the Queen (being that the only reason the royals weren't kicked out of this country years ago is because they're good for the tourist industry).

Secondly, it's so bloody boring. It doesn't exactly inspire patriotism - well, not in me it doesn't. I would far prefer it if we used 'Rule Brittania', although the words may need to be changed a bit as we don't exactly rule the waves anymore. In fact, we don't exactly rule anything anymore. Hmmmm. OK, maybe I didn't fully think that one through, but it has got a good tune

I guess there's also 'Land of Hope and Glory', or maybe 'Jerusalem' - even with the religious overtones, at least it is about the country, rather than some mixed-European monarch.
However, I suppose 'Jerusalem' is about England, rather than the whole of Britain, though there is that verse in the current anthem about crushing the rebellious Scots (not that anyone actually remembers the lyrics that far)
The current anthem does have one thing in its favour - the tonal range is so limited, and the melody and rhythym are so simple that it's possible (as a mate of mine occasionally demonstrates) for someone to perform quite a successful, even tasteful, rendition purely by belching.

So is THAT what they were up to when they selected that 3 octave English drinking song as the musical bakdrop for Francis Scott Key's poem?

Still, the Star-Spangled Banner does have a rather powerful and moving melody, and it doesn't have any religious claptrap messing it up. It's all about war and explosions and stuff, which is always fun to sing about.

The French national anthem is pretty bloodthirsty as well...
Problem with these anthems is that they're all out of date. We need something contemporary. (perhaps we should get Robbie William to write us one...). What about 'God cut the Waiting Lists'?

Following on from the New Scientist articles on creationism a few weeks ago, here's a link to the resulting pages of reader's letters.

http://www.newscientist.co.uk/forums/creationism/creationism.html

Though there are many good points, (including many from non-literal Christians), I find the ignorance of evolution among some of the 'neither Darwin nor God' brigade most depressing - some of the points people raise as arguments against evolution could be countered by a reasonably smart schoolkid.

I also note with interest, though with particular sadness, the letter on the second page referring to 'Alpha courses' in the UK, which would appear to be progressing along the exclusionist, holier-than-everyone-else lines of most budding cults.
I wonder how long it'll be before one of the leaders gets caught embezzling funds, or touching up a few nubile acolytes in the usual manner?
Maybe we should run a sweepstake?

I can't hear La Marseillaise now without thinking of Monty Python's 'Man with a Tape Recorder up his nose' sketch. Thankyou, Pythons

Those Alpha Courses sound extremely worrying - and strange. You don't tend to run into many fundamentalists in this country anymore, thankfully. As I think I have said before, most christian people in this country (or at least the ones I have met) only seem to have a 'casual' belief in god anymore - probably because it's hard to take CofE seriously, as it only came into being so that Henry VIII could get his end away with more women. I assume these Alpha Courses were RC.

Back at school, I used to know a girl who went to ones of these 'New-wave' church thingies - the ones that have Religious "gigs" and "raves" It was run by this guy who was in his mid-twenties, and the majority of it's members were under 25. Now, that place really worried me. You just knew it was only a matter of time before it got shut down because the leader was knocking up fourteen-year-olds. Oh well, some people will insist in believing any old rubbish...

I'm not sure which church or churches the Alpha lot are affiliated with, I wouldn't want to assume it's necessarily RC, or solely RC.

here's an interesting page... www.bettybowers.com cracked me up; make sure you have the flash 4 plug in.

Oh, can I say Hi, and can I join... I'll take the position of Dice-sciple, if it's open.
And what is with this thing - does h2g2 have a bookmark facility I haven't found? (Wouldn't surprise me - this place is like a Warren...

Now you've posted here, every time someone adds a post, the link to this conversation gets pushed to the top of the 'Most recent forum entries' section on your homepage.
All the means is that someone was interested in keeping up with the forum, but didn't have anything profound to add at the time, so there's no explicit bookmark facility, just a simple bodged solution.
However, it would seem that many people can't resist adding more text when bookmarking, somewhat negating the reason for the bookmark in the first place.

Welcome to the Foundation - is there any particular area of un-faith you're interested in?

I'm a big fan of the various 'joke' religions - I'm planning on setting one up myself, and I need to research... (no you can't get a sneak peek - Ultimate Truth under construction - keep out! I got halfway through the discordia .. umm ... thing, before my finger hit the "back" button in a spasm of choatic influence.

Oh, and I'm always up for a quick round of xtian re-education. There's nothing quite like it for helping visualise what an immovable object would really be like. I hang out on alt.atheism for much the same reason... (I wonder if news: links work in here? Let's try - news://alt.atheism )

Sounds cool Dice (Can I call you that?)
I don't have anything too terribly profound to say, and I already used my bookmark for this forum, so I'll just say welcome to RedDice, or MyRedDice, whichever you prefer.

Welcome, Dice! It's good to see some fresh blood in here... it's been getting a bit quiet lately. I'll put you on the page shortly.

News links don't work here, sorry to say... the programming only turns things into clickable links in forums when it sees an "http" in front of them.

Yeh, hiya Dice.

It has got a bit quiet in here recently, hasn't it. Surely someone else has found some other Religious websites we can poke fun at?

Perhaps a fresh forum is what we need... and I also have a bit of news to share, but you'll have to jump on over to the new business forum to find out what it is.