The ID Report

At a blog called "biologists helping bookstores," a Pasadena-based woman whose handle is Shandon explains how she deliberately misshelved Mike Behe's Edge of Evolution, and a number of other books - distributing them around the store according to her private tastes.

Well, the misshelving bug has struck Darwinists again.

Here is another one - a guy, apparently, this time - helping to make life a bigger pain in the neck for everyone, in defense of Darwin:

Today I went to Hastings and had my camera with me. The copy of Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell I moved a few months ago was in neither the science nor religion section, and was probably purchased. Today I moved The Edge of Evolution and The Darwin Myth away from the shelve directly under where copies of Dawkins's The Greatest Show on Earth were, and placed them next to - I just had to - the Adventure Bible and the Princess Bible in the religion section.

Now, if I had to say one thing about modern Darwinism that should raise suspicion in any citizen anywhere, it is this: The lengths to which these people will go to prevent their fellow citizens from discovering information that they are actually looking for.

If you ever wondered what a world run by Darwinists would look like, well, this is what it would look like: An unending stream of busybodies running your life by limiting goods and services, in the name of "evolution" or some similarly unquestionable cause. The big thing is to render the cause, whatever it is, unquestionable, by whatever means needed.

I hear that someone has complained about the problem to the bookstore- and hope that others will, and that the current Miss Shelver runner-up will be asked to take courses in information science, or something.

Earlier, I wrote to friends,

I used to write for Canadian Bookseller Association's trade magazine, so I know whereof I speak when say this:

No one has any right to mess with a private business's arrangement of legal inventory. They arrange it for customer convenience. (Except that the front tables and the end caps of shelves are usually sold to a publisher willing to pay a premium.)

And nothing is so time-wasting for the bookstore sales associate and the customer who is running between errands (= "Honey, if you are picking the kids up at the plaza gym anyway, could you pick me up a copy of Signature in the Cell?") as this scenario:

The computer reports three copies of the book, but no one can find them. Were they stolen? Ruined? Unintentionally misshelved by a new, inexperienced employee? No information on these possible explanations is likely. Thieves, for example, and people who accidentally spill pop on a book usually flee and do not e-mail the store to explain. Also, it is seldom worth interviewing an inexperienced employee, as it will only terrify her and she usually does not remember exactly what she did anyway.

So the assistant manager is called. Then the manager.

The store looks bad. But it isn't the store's fault - rather that of the intellectual vandal who deliberately misshelved the books, who is long gone, to congratulate himself somewhere on his heroic feat - which any old lady in a walker could have done, incidentally. So he should get some medal of honour? From which government? Where?

As a punishment, he should be forced to do the store's year-end inventory. The store would then find the books, eventually, and he might learn something in the process. Maybe he wouldn't need the courses in information science.

*I would like to think there are non-self-absorbed Darwinists, and comfort myself with the thought that people do not always live down to their convictions.