Salon⁠85%

Library book found in fireplace returns 150 years late ⁠9%

By CK Smith⁠58%

8/2/2026, 1:00:43 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 11 faulty reasoning types, including Anchoring Bias, Framing Effect, and Negativity Bias, with Optimism Bias as the most egregious example at 16.5% saturation with 53 hits. Analysis detected 328 faulty-reasoning hits from 322 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 18.8% and a BS Rank of ⁠9% (26,420 of 28,842 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 91.60% of the article peer group.

An Australian library has welcomed home a book roughly 150 years overdue after it was discovered inside a tea crate bricked into a sealed fireplace. 
Ross Simmons found the water-damaged copy of “The Antiquities of Athens” while renovating a house in the seaside town of Kiama, south of Sydney. 
The book was published in 1858 and carries the number 506, placing it among the roughly 1,000 volumes held when the Kiama Library opened in 1872. 
Simmons believes the book may have been borrowed by his great-great-grandfather, John Simmons, who owned the house when the library first opened. 
The library’s original borrowing records have been lost, however, leaving the identity of the delinquent reader — and the reason the book was sealed inside a fireplace — a mystery. 
Had the library applied the overdue rate printed in the volume, the theoretical fine would have reached approximately 28,000 Australian dollars, or about $19,500 in U.S. currency. 
Fortunately for the Simmons family, the library no longer charges late fees and has no intention of pursuing a 19th-century borrower’s descendants. 
The old lending rules discovered with the book offered another glimpse into library life during the 1870s. 
A household needed at least three people capable of reading before borrowing, and patrons were prohibited from collecting a book while intoxicated. 
Despite some water damage, the volume survived its century and a half inside the fireplace and has now been added to the library’s local history collection. 
It will not, however, be returning to circulation. 
“We’re not going to allow it to go back out again,” library manager Michelle Hudson said, joking that staff did not want to wait another 150 years for its next return. 
The discovery gives Kiama Library an unusually complete local mystery: an unidentified borrower, a hidden fireplace, a theoretical five-figure fine and, after approximately a century and a half, a very late happy ending. 
Article reasoning-pattern comparisonThis article: 6.8%CK Smith: 2.9%Salon: 4.9%Confirmation Bias6.8%This article: 15.2%CK Smith: 0.4%Salon: 0.3%Anchoring Bias15.2%This article: 7.8%CK Smith: 2.8%Salon: 3.1%Availability Heuristic7.8%This article: 8.1%CK Smith: 1.4%Salon: 1.0%Representativeness Heuristic8.1%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.0%Salon: 0.8%Hindsight Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.4%Salon: 1.6%Overconfidence Bias0.0%This article: 10.2%CK Smith: 9.5%Salon: 6.4%Framing Effect10.2%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.3%Salon: 0.3%Loss Aversion0.0%This article: 6.8%CK Smith: 0.6%Salon: 0.3%Status Quo Bias6.8%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.2%Sunk Cost Effect0.0%This article: 16.5%CK Smith: 1.1%Salon: 1.3%Optimism Bias16.5%This article: 2.5%CK Smith: 0.9%Salon: 1.9%Pessimism Bias2.5%This article: 10.2%CK Smith: 6.4%Salon: 10.0%Negativity Bias10.2%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 2.1%Salon: 0.7%Self-Serving Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.0%Salon: 1.9%Fundamental Attribution Error0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.4%Salon: 0.2%Actor-Observer Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.4%Salon: 1.7%In-Group Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 1.2%Out-Group Homogeneity Bias0.0%This article: 8.1%CK Smith: 1.5%Salon: 2.0%Halo Effect8.1%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.2%Salon: 0.6%Horn Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.0%Dunning-Kruger Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.5%Salon: 1.1%Recency Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.5%Salon: 0.4%Primacy Effect0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.3%Salon: 0.1%Blind-Spot Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.5%Salon: 3.2%Ad Hominem0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.5%Salon: 1.1%Straw Man0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.5%Salon: 2.7%Appeal to Authority0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.7%Salon: 2.0%False Dilemma0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.2%Salon: 1.3%Slippery Slope0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.2%Circular Reasoning0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 2.9%Salon: 9.2%Hasty Generalization0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.5%Salon: 0.2%Red Herring0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.4%Salon: 0.5%Bandwagon0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 2.3%Salon: 5.3%Appeal to Emotion0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.5%Salon: 1.2%Begging the Question0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 2.1%Salon: 2.1%Post Hoc (False Cause)0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.2%Salon: 0.2%Tu Quoque0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.6%Salon: 0.5%Burden of Proof0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.1%Salon: 0.2%Appeal to Nature0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.3%Salon: 0.5%Composition/Division0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.5%Salon: 2.6%Anecdotal0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.1%No True Scotsman0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 1.4%Salon: 1.2%Ambiguity (Equivocation)0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.0%Gambler’s Fallacy0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.4%Salon: 0.1%Middle Ground0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.1%Personal Incredulity0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.2%Salon: 0.1%Special Pleading0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.0%Salon: 0.3%Genetic Fallacy0.0%This article: 9.6%CK Smith: 1.9%Salon: 1.7%Unattributed Quote9.6%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 2.2%Salon: 1.3%Quote-first Misdirection0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 5.5%Salon: 13.1%Biased Writer Voice0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.7%Salon: 2.1%Indoctrination0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.7%Salon: 6.0%Politically Left Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 0.7%Salon: 0.2%Politically Right Leaning Bias0.0%This article: 0.0%CK Smith: 2.4%Salon: 1.5%Attempt to Sell a Product or S…0.0%

322 words analyzed.

Speakers

2speakers16%attributed speech269writer words
Selected voice

Michelle Hudson

100%flagged-word coverage
31 attributed words58% of attributed speech62% writer coverage
0%50.0%100.0%Unattributed Quote+100.0 ptsWriter: 0.0%Michelle Hudson: 100.0%100.0%

Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.

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Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.