celebrity advice

[Alex Martelli]

Arthur wrote:

> Owen write -

[didn't get Owen's original so I'm hijacking Arthur's reply...]


>>I don't see the link with Python, but anyway...
>>Very long ago, some books where burnt in public,
>>for "religious" reasons, later for political

Very long as in, Winter 2001/2002, for example?  That's when
a book burning (of Harry Potter books) was held by the "Christ
Community Church", for example.  As Kenneth Paulson points
out in http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=15610 ,
as long of course as the books you burn belong to you, that's a form of
political speech which is just as acceptable as burning a flag.  (If you
burn a book you have not legally purchased, just as if you buy a flag which
belongs to somebody else, the issue is obviously totally different).  Thus:

>>reasons. Hopefully these old practice have
>>disappeared and will never come back.

Wanna bet?  Very little has changed over the last couple of years to
suggest the "Christ Community Church" and similar organizations now
believe that book-burning is not warranted any more.  Just like
flag-burning, I'm quite confident it WILL happen again (and be roughly
as ineffective as in all past cases, except perhaps where armed force
underpins it, normally through government sponsorship).


Alex