A lot of our increased life expectancy is to do with basic hygiene and the availability of germ-killing substances. But -as always - advertisers have exploited this respect for germs and turned it to maddness.
I don't know about other parts of the world, but in Australia, hospital-grade disinfectants are available for household use, which is just idiotic unless typhoid has struck recently. We are breeding some very hardy germs while rooting our immune systems.
We had Walkmans rather than ipods. My clique didn't refer to them as Walkmans because that was sexist language. No I am not joking. The music was all pirated, though, so that hasn't changed at least.
Boy, people take too many photos these days. Back then it cost too much to develop them - photos were for special occasions, when you were dressed up and looking your best. And if Cousin Tommy pulled a face or Grandma blinked then we just beat them till they behaved better next time.
I see your point, and that's why we need to make sure everyone can recieve a good, solid, free education. I do think though that "stupid" and "educated" are not the opposites you are making them out to be. I've met plenty of educated dumb people and many clever people with little schooling.
Education also doesn't mean that people will make sensible decisions about "the course of legislation and whatnot". I'm sure you can insert the name of your own favourite university-educated idiot politician here.
When I used the word "campaigning" I was quoting from Jenny Hockings "Lional Murphy: a political biography". She said: "He had conducted a long campaign for the recognition" of the COS. She also adds that they held a "special service of thanks" for him in 1973. (pages156-157 - link to the pages below).
The person sitting next to me at work - who knows a lot more about this than me - tells me that Jenny Hockings was wrong. He agrees with you.
I grew up near the weet bix factory. You could smell it everytime the wind blew our way. I could never eat those things after breathing in the smell so often.
It's opened up a good debate in Australia - should any religion be tax exempt? People here are mentioning other religions which are corrupt (Catholoic Priests and child abuse is never our of the media) or which operate commercial activities but get an unfair competitive advantage because they don't pay tax (Hill Song and the Seventh Day Adventists are being mentioned).
Lionel Murphy (A High Court Judge) was responsible for campaigning to get Scientology recognised as a religion in Australia. He said it wasn't government's job to determine which religious beliefs are worthy of recognition and which are not.
Overall, religions should have to pay their own way.
Isn't hitting water worse? I mean if was a big metal asteriod that hits fast? I'm sure I read that the world as a whole (i.e. not the locals who live near where the impact is) would be better off if such a thing hit land. Or did I just hear this in a movie? (You can probably tell that asteroid science isn't my special nerd-field).
I'm at a loss, here. I was talking about children, not "underage girls". You are correct when you say: "Wanking while merely thinking about an underage girl is not illegal". As far as I know, only the Church thinks thoughts are the same as deeds - I've never heard of a case where a person has been jailed for "wanking while thinking about X"(unless you do it in public).
You are incorrect when you say: "looking at an underage girl who's in a state of nudity is [illegal]." Since when? Maybe it's different in your country, but in Australia naked children aren't a shocking or particularly rare sight. My friends let their 4 year old run around their house naked. Children swim in our local creek naked. Ads for raising money for aid show naked kids. That award-winning photograph of a child running down the road naked in Vietnam is used on an ad here. I've never heard of anyone going to jail for looking at a naked child. As you say, every parent would be a criminal. In fact, since I'm assuming we've all seen naked children, we'd all be criminals
What is illegal is when you join up the two. Because you become part of the child pornography industry. And while producers or distributors of that porn may not be pedophiles, those at the end of the supply chain (those who wank to photos of naked children) are unambiguously pedophiles.
How can you say that there are no victims? The industry largely wouldn't exist without the end-user. Of course there would still be pedophilia, and rape and incest. And shoplifting as well. So what? At least there would be a reduction in the number of children exploited simply to supple someone's demand for this material.
It's important to distinguish pedophelia from age of consent issues. One involves sexual attraction to children. Teenagers are not children - many young people are sexually active before the age of consent.They are two distinct things.
Boy, sometimes it's easy to tell that the majority of people here are men. I don't know American age-of-consent laws and I don't really care, but how hard is it really? Don't worry about all those scenarios - they don't all apply to you. You'll be ok if you (a) don't have sex with children or look at pictures of them and (b) find out how old a girl is before sex - if she's younger that 16 - she's too young for you if you're out of high school yourself and - if she's younger that 18 - don't put the pictures up on the net.
While I agree that there are differences between the four groups - I can't quite agree with your conclusion.
1. Re distinction between 1 and 2 (people who look at pictures and people who have actual sexual contact). Pedophiles are (technically, by definition) people who are persistently erotically atracted to children. If a person has repeated or extensive sexual contact with a child/children they meet the definition of a pedophile. If a person persistantly looks at pictures of children for sexual gratification (i.e. not just clicked the link once for curiosity) then they are a pedophile. If a person's sexual fantasises are usually or exclusively about children then they are a pedophile. The law differentiates between the "molester" as you say and the person who views porn, with the first offence being much more serious than the second. (People who do neither and restrict themselves to fantasy are not committing a crime - despite what the Catholic Church says - it's the deed and not the thought). People who are attracted to 16 year olds are not pedophiles - the age of consent is a separate matter.
2. Two and three (photographers and distributors) are not pedophiles - they are photographers and distrubutors of illegal pornography. They might be pedophiles, or they might just be run of the mill sociopathic criminals. But why are you leaving the chain as record - distribute and failing to add consume/buy?
You are correct in saying the consumers and molesters have psychological issues - so do most criminals. And really it's a case by case thing. A person who buys a video of a baby being penetrated violently would be dealt with differently than someone who downloads a pictures of a smiling girl with her knickers showing.
The law always considers cases on a case-by-case basis taking this stuff into account.
How the hell did this rant get modded insightful? "People like you... people like you" People like who? Huh?
People have a special contempt for pedophiles because their victims are children and the motivation for the crime is mere sexual desire - the sort of urge most of us supress every day. It's an adult versus a child. So it's natural that people will be outraged by that - just like a mugger will get a bigger sentence if they mug and old woman than a young man.
No, it's not particularly rational, but rationality isn't the whole game. Unless you've had an empathy bypass, it's something that's understood on an instinctual level.
BTW I feel sorry for pedophiles as well - it must be sad to be hardwired that way. And of course they should be treated fairly, given a chance to be rehabilitated and not subjected to a witch hunt. But they are the predators.
Sorry if I missed the point of your post - maybe it was burried in the spew.
You don't know why looking at child pornography is illegal? Wow. See, if my niece got raped or otherwise sexually exploited, and I knew that it had been photographed and men were downloading that picture to wank to, I'd have them strangled with their own guts.
CP is governed by supply and demand like everything else. If there were no buyers, then there would be no sellers. Sure, those who sexually exploit children would still do that, but the majority of people involved in CP aren't sexually interested in children - it's just a source of money for them.
This whole thing reflects where the research dollar and goverment funding goes. Give that much money to any group of tech developers and they'll start building very expensive toys that we don't really need and which probably won't work that well. If medicine had that much we'd have eyelash transplants by now.
On the other hand, here in Australia we had a major government inquiry ("The Fitgerald Inquiry") into police corruption that only happened because of the activities of an journalist who wouldn't stop digging.
Many many journalists do just reguritate press releases or write tired "opinion pieces". That doesn't stop a free press (internet or not) from being a necessary force in a democracy.
Journalists are like the rest of us - there's ethical, thorough, dedicated ones, ones who self-aggrandise, ones who do as little as possible to pick up a pay packet and so on.
My concern is that if people have to pay for news, many will content themselves with the free stuff (dressed-up reissues from the same few news sources).
People just won't pay for online news. They need to find ways to raise revenue from advertising - perhaps they could stop giving away space to all of those companies who expect to get free advertising just because someone can write a press release. (That toyota flower might just be an example).
A high proportion of clothing in developing countries is second hand clothing from the west. So it's likely that the guys got no idea what it is that he's wearing. Apparently the second hand clothing trade creates employment but does undermine local textile industies. People like the cloths because they are cheap and they appeal to some more than the traditional garb. Oxfam did a report (although it doesn't mention Liberia): http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/trade/downloads/research_shc.pdf
But it's true that time spent driving inflates your risk. Hence some (but I stress only some) of the variance in the "men have more accidents" statistic is that the average man spends much more time on the roads than the average woman. So a lower risk to an insurance company doesn't totally refect "a better driver".
I've looked at the article and the driving simulation test was designed to evaluate "implicit motor learning" (so it wasn't a memory test per se). "Subjects were seated in front of a computer screen with a steering wheel (Logitech MOMO) attached to the desk. All subjects were instructed to place 2 hands on the wheel at "10 and 2" and keep them there for the duration of the task. Subjects were told to use the steering wheel to guide a vehicle on the screen through a curving track on the floor. The track had a black line down its center, and subjects were told to use the steering wheel to stay centered over the black line, with a computer recording deviation from the black line as extent of error."
The vehicle was programmed to not change direction instantaneously, providing a level of demand that supported a need for motor learning. Subjects therefore had to begin turning the steering wheel before the track changed in order to minimize tracking errors. At the completion of each circuit, subjects were given a 10-s rest before the next circuit began. On the first day, subjects completed the same circuit 15 times, each taking approximately 60 s. Subjects returned approximately 4 days later, when the driving circuit was repeated. The mean tracking error, defined as the mean of the absolute value between the black line and the actual steered path, was calculated for each trial and expressed as root mean squared (RMS), with a cap at 2.0.
McHughen, Rodriguez, Kleim et al (2009) BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism Influences Motor System Function in the Human Brain. Cerebral Cortex. Advance Access, Sept 2009
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I don't know about other parts of the world, but in Australia, hospital-grade disinfectants are available for household use, which is just idiotic unless typhoid has struck recently. We are breeding some very hardy germs while rooting our immune systems.
We had Walkmans rather than ipods. My clique didn't refer to them as Walkmans because that was sexist language. No I am not joking. The music was all pirated, though, so that hasn't changed at least.
Boy, people take too many photos these days. Back then it cost too much to develop them - photos were for special occasions, when you were dressed up and looking your best. And if Cousin Tommy pulled a face or Grandma blinked then we just beat them till they behaved better next time.
Education also doesn't mean that people will make sensible decisions about "the course of legislation and whatnot". I'm sure you can insert the name of your own favourite university-educated idiot politician here.
I'm gathering that he thought that all religions were equally silly.
The person sitting next to me at work - who knows a lot more about this than me - tells me that Jenny Hockings was wrong. He agrees with you.
Anyway, here's the link:
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=lV-swA4Y1zMC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=lionel+murphy+scientology&source=bl&ots=vg2Vn-hh3z&sig=X65f0qH2JDdsL11HSomu9bCr8n4&hl=en&ei=yNEFS_7iBIz0sQOBo5DBCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=lionel%20murphy%20scientology&f=false
I grew up near the weet bix factory. You could smell it everytime the wind blew our way. I could never eat those things after breathing in the smell so often.
There's pretty good reasons for not taxing charities.
The new ones cost less that the used one ...
Lionel Murphy (A High Court Judge) was responsible for campaigning to get Scientology recognised as a religion in Australia. He said it wasn't government's job to determine which religious beliefs are worthy of recognition and which are not.
Overall, religions should have to pay their own way.
Isn't hitting water worse? I mean if was a big metal asteriod that hits fast? I'm sure I read that the world as a whole (i.e. not the locals who live near where the impact is) would be better off if such a thing hit land. Or did I just hear this in a movie? (You can probably tell that asteroid science isn't my special nerd-field).
You are incorrect when you say: "looking at an underage girl who's in a state of nudity is [illegal]." Since when? Maybe it's different in your country, but in Australia naked children aren't a shocking or particularly rare sight. My friends let their 4 year old run around their house naked. Children swim in our local creek naked. Ads for raising money for aid show naked kids. That award-winning photograph of a child running down the road naked in Vietnam is used on an ad here. I've never heard of anyone going to jail for looking at a naked child. As you say, every parent would be a criminal. In fact, since I'm assuming we've all seen naked children, we'd all be criminals
What is illegal is when you join up the two. Because you become part of the child pornography industry. And while producers or distributors of that porn may not be pedophiles, those at the end of the supply chain (those who wank to photos of naked children) are unambiguously pedophiles.
How can you say that there are no victims? The industry largely wouldn't exist without the end-user. Of course there would still be pedophilia, and rape and incest. And shoplifting as well. So what? At least there would be a reduction in the number of children exploited simply to supple someone's demand for this material.
It's a crime, and so it should be.
It's important to distinguish pedophelia from age of consent issues. One involves sexual attraction to children. Teenagers are not children - many young people are sexually active before the age of consent.They are two distinct things.
Buying pornography isn't "just thinking about it". Fantasising is just thinking about it.
Boy, sometimes it's easy to tell that the majority of people here are men. I don't know American age-of-consent laws and I don't really care, but how hard is it really? Don't worry about all those scenarios - they don't all apply to you. You'll be ok if you (a) don't have sex with children or look at pictures of them and (b) find out how old a girl is before sex - if she's younger that 16 - she's too young for you if you're out of high school yourself and - if she's younger that 18 - don't put the pictures up on the net.
1. Re distinction between 1 and 2 (people who look at pictures and people who have actual sexual contact). Pedophiles are (technically, by definition) people who are persistently erotically atracted to children. If a person has repeated or extensive sexual contact with a child/children they meet the definition of a pedophile. If a person persistantly looks at pictures of children for sexual gratification (i.e. not just clicked the link once for curiosity) then they are a pedophile. If a person's sexual fantasises are usually or exclusively about children then they are a pedophile. The law differentiates between the "molester" as you say and the person who views porn, with the first offence being much more serious than the second. (People who do neither and restrict themselves to fantasy are not committing a crime - despite what the Catholic Church says - it's the deed and not the thought). People who are attracted to 16 year olds are not pedophiles - the age of consent is a separate matter.
2. Two and three (photographers and distributors) are not pedophiles - they are photographers and distrubutors of illegal pornography. They might be pedophiles, or they might just be run of the mill sociopathic criminals. But why are you leaving the chain as record - distribute and failing to add consume/buy?
You are correct in saying the consumers and molesters have psychological issues - so do most criminals. And really it's a case by case thing. A person who buys a video of a baby being penetrated violently would be dealt with differently than someone who downloads a pictures of a smiling girl with her knickers showing.
The law always considers cases on a case-by-case basis taking this stuff into account.
We would definitely "ya know, go extinct from lack of babies" if sexual attraction to children was the norm.
People have a special contempt for pedophiles because their victims are children and the motivation for the crime is mere sexual desire - the sort of urge most of us supress every day. It's an adult versus a child. So it's natural that people will be outraged by that - just like a mugger will get a bigger sentence if they mug and old woman than a young man.
No, it's not particularly rational, but rationality isn't the whole game. Unless you've had an empathy bypass, it's something that's understood on an instinctual level.
BTW I feel sorry for pedophiles as well - it must be sad to be hardwired that way. And of course they should be treated fairly, given a chance to be rehabilitated and not subjected to a witch hunt. But they are the predators.
Sorry if I missed the point of your post - maybe it was burried in the spew.
CP is governed by supply and demand like everything else. If there were no buyers, then there would be no sellers. Sure, those who sexually exploit children would still do that, but the majority of people involved in CP aren't sexually interested in children - it's just a source of money for them.
This whole thing reflects where the research dollar and goverment funding goes. Give that much money to any group of tech developers and they'll start building very expensive toys that we don't really need and which probably won't work that well. If medicine had that much we'd have eyelash transplants by now.
Got out of the empathy side of the bed this morning did we?
Many many journalists do just reguritate press releases or write tired "opinion pieces". That doesn't stop a free press (internet or not) from being a necessary force in a democracy.
Journalists are like the rest of us - there's ethical, thorough, dedicated ones, ones who self-aggrandise, ones who do as little as possible to pick up a pay packet and so on.
My concern is that if people have to pay for news, many will content themselves with the free stuff (dressed-up reissues from the same few news sources).
People just won't pay for online news. They need to find ways to raise revenue from advertising - perhaps they could stop giving away space to all of those companies who expect to get free advertising just because someone can write a press release. (That toyota flower might just be an example).
A high proportion of clothing in developing countries is second hand clothing from the west. So it's likely that the guys got no idea what it is that he's wearing. Apparently the second hand clothing trade creates employment but does undermine local textile industies. People like the cloths because they are cheap and they appeal to some more than the traditional garb. Oxfam did a report (although it doesn't mention Liberia): http://www.oxfam.org.uk/resources/policy/trade/downloads/research_shc.pdf
But it's true that time spent driving inflates your risk. Hence some (but I stress only some) of the variance in the "men have more accidents" statistic is that the average man spends much more time on the roads than the average woman. So a lower risk to an insurance company doesn't totally refect "a better driver".
The vehicle was programmed to not change direction instantaneously, providing a level of demand that supported a need for motor learning. Subjects therefore had to begin turning the steering wheel before the track changed in order to minimize tracking errors. At the completion of each circuit, subjects were given a 10-s rest before the next circuit began. On the first day, subjects completed the same circuit 15 times, each taking approximately 60 s. Subjects returned approximately 4 days later, when the driving circuit was repeated. The mean tracking error, defined as the mean of the absolute value between the black line and the actual steered path, was calculated for each trial and expressed as root mean squared (RMS), with a cap at 2.0. McHughen, Rodriguez, Kleim et al (2009) BDNF Val66Met Polymorphism Influences Motor System Function in the Human Brain. Cerebral Cortex. Advance Access, Sept 2009