Death by Books

Ok, I have yet to become a BLOGGER, per say. I understand the phenomenon very well as I used to do the whole BBS thing way back in the day. Still for the most part I have not found the need to expound publicly on my own ideas.

Then last night I was working on a business plan that I am developing to open a science museum here in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam. It is not relevant at this point how a westerner (U.S. California resident) came to live in Vietnam, sufficed to say that this is currently my home. For the most part I love living here. I live a life of ease for next to nothing and have opportunities here that I could never have at home in the USA. Still, there are areas that are hard to deal with, censorship for example. With the US poised to destroy their own freedom of information act, and the continued errosion of civil liberties I was suddenly prompted to the thought, "How many people die because of books?"

Especially here in Vietnam where there are more social police than traffic police, and there are thousands upon thousands of traffic deaths every year in the extremely chaotic Vietnamese traffic, it seems to me that we should look very carefully at what is that is so threatening about books.

So now I am making a call out to all of you... can you send me any documented evidence of death caused by books? Allow me to qualify this statement. I am not referring to religious wars, for example the crusades, which could arguably be claimed as being caused by the bible. I would say that it is not so much the bible as religious fervor that caused these deaths. If you disagree I will be glad to receive your comments on this topic as well. But, what I am thinking of more is say for example the call for the murder of Salman Rushdie for the writing of the Satanic Verses. If Mr. Rushdie had been murdered for writing this book I would qualify this as a death by books. Of course there are the obvious deaths, such as man crushed by box of falling books, or heavy tome causes concusion. I mean just how dangerous are these books anyway?