When answering accusations by the Catholic Church that our society is obsessed with sex, Stephen Fry turned the allegations around by equating sex with food and stating that the only people obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. This, of course, is to say that trying to avoid sex and to not think about it is an extremely unhealthy viewpoint.
I think a lot of the neuroses people have about sex stem from the fact that it is taboo and that we try to shield people from it for as long as possible -- having a healthy and honest relationship to our sexuality will only result in a happier and healthier society. I mean, it is has been statistically shown that abstinence only sex-ed leads to higher rates of teen pregnancy -- why don't we just cut the bullshit and recognize that humans are ALWAYS going to be obsessed with sex, no matter what we do.
The entirety of our bodies and minds exist solely to pass on our genetic information, making sex our prime directive! There is no way that you can undo 3 billion years of this sort of genetic programming, and I see no good reason that we ought to try.
Ummm... China doesn't really need to make "for the children" style excuses to stifle free speech. They are pretty open about it. If they are saying that this is to block pornography, then it probably is. It will certainly help them tighten their grip on political speech, but if that were the main aim, they would have almost certainly come out and said it.
Sorry, but this is just not the case. I will agree that the U.S. is very far from perfect and that our civil liberties are being eroded at an alarming rate, but just because one is imperfect does not mean that it is equal to all other imperfect entities -- there certainly is the question of degree. China is much further to the totalitarian end of the scale than the U.S. -- this is a plain fact. Please note that I am not saying that because China is worse than the United States we need to ignore the pressing civil liberties issues at hand (nothing connects my palm to my face faster than hearing someone say "If you don't like it here why don't you just move to China?") -- they absolutely need to be addressed immediately. It does not, however, help the situation to make the problem look worse than it really is.
I don't know that this is necessarily true -- I just think that the government has only been stepping on the toes of American citizens in ways that they have not noticed. There certainly will not be riots over ACTA as a copyright treaty, but I have a feeling that a wholesale ban on pornography on the 'net would see a pretty nasty reaction by concerned citizens -- at that point the infringement on their rights becomes impossible to ignore or rationalize and requires action.
Citation, please. Please show some sort of evidence that this is the case. Please also note that as you are the one making a positive claim here (introducing children to sex early causes harm) the burden of proof lies on you. Show me evidence that children who view sexual materials at a young age are more likely to become parents as teenagers, show higher rates of STD infection, perform more poorly in school, or end up in lower paying jobs. Show me that these children end up with higher rates of mental illness or are incarcerated more often. Show me evidence of this and then we can have a conversation about it -- until then you have nothing but a bunch of hot air.
Who says they aren't ready for it? Who is to say that any of this is even harmful? I know that the mantra has been repeated time and time again throughout our society that seeing images of sexuality is harmful to children, but is there any evidence of this? I feel that it most likely comes from the false Judeo-Christian value system that has been drilled into our heads from before we knew how to talk -- the one that tries to tell us that everything related to sex is bad (at least until you are married) and that we ought to feel bad for being human. You could make at least as powerful a case (if not more so) for this mentality being the cause of harm and you could for pornography, methinks.
Wow, what a useless post. Your first point, that there is debate about the role of women in these films, says absolutely nothing. You are mentioning that there is debate. That means that there is nothing conclusive either way, and that much could be said for either side of the viewpoint. Things that are still debatable should not be legislated unless there is significant evidence to suggest that serious, immediate harm could come from failure to act. I see no such evidence to even suggest that pornography comes anywhere near fitting this bill.
Your second point is entirely nonsensical and a blatant non sequitur -- trying to create a link between the availability of pornography and people that want to have sex with children is incredibly irresponsible and has no basis in reality. It is kind of like saying that we should not let children have grape juice because it is kind of like wine -- it is somewhat true on a superficial level but couldn't miss the point any further. Pedophilia has NOTHING to do with any other sort of healthy adult sexual behavior. Pornography is not a gateway drug to child pornography, nor is it a gateway drug to rape. Studies have shown time and time again that it is a normal, healthy part of the average person's life and is really nothing to be concerned about. If you are still concerned despite the evidence that's FINE. Go buy Internet filtering software (or shut off your Internet) and keep it out of your own home, but leave the rest of us out of it.
Because of this, I think that these restrictions will not last long. Above and beyond anything else, the Chinese government wants to become the next world superpower. They are well on their way to doing this now by utterly pwning us in the fields of math and science. If they restrict access to the Internet in such a fundamental way (whitelist vs. blacklist), they will seriously hamper education and slow their ascendancy as the dominant superpower. This seems to me to be a bit more of a sacrifice than the Chinese government will be willing to make to get rid of some nudie pictures, but hey, I have been wrong before and certainly will be again.
As someone who knows a great deal about the art of film making, I can tell you that on every possible metric by which one could judge a film the original trilogy utterly decimates the prequel trilogy. The original trilogy is an entertaining and wildly creative sci-fi/adventure/fantasy epic. These films are absolutely flawed, but are still extremely well made and effective for what they are. The prequel trilogy, on the other hand, is an utter mess. The story is incoherent, none of the characters have any depth or behave in anything even approaching a believable manner, and all the CG eye-poop only serves to make the whole thing even less believable.
They need to do way instain theater> who kill thier movvys. becuse these movvy cant frigth back it was on the news this mroing a theater in ar who had kill her three movvys . they are taking the three movvy back to new york too lady to rest my pary are with the custimers company who lost his movvys ; i am truley sorry for your lots
Agreed -- when I try to tell most people about the dangers of DRM all I get are blank stares, or an "STFU, nerd". I notice, however, that people start to pay attention when it gets in the way of them using the stuff they paid for.
Those ones are nowhere near as bad as the ones that pop up over the text you are trying to read. You know, the ones where when you click on the X button to close it it takes you to the advertiser's page? Creating those should be a capital offense...
Sorry, but you are simply wrong. Extinction means 100% of a species. If an asteroid hit Earth and left one person alive, we would not be officially extinct until that person died, even though the blast killed off 99.9999999998% of the population. I'm not really sure where you get your definitions from. This is not even to mention the fact that you grossly overestimate the physical damage that Yellowstone will cause -- most of the harm caused by the Yellowstone supervolcano will come from the fact that it will almost certainly collapse the current dominant superpower in the world, which will collapse the worldwide economy and leave a huge power vacuum. Sure, there will be some collateral damage around the globe (lower temperatures, leading to decreased food production, leading to famine), but the rest of the world outside of North America will be largely unaffected.
ASCAP is too the "music industry". They just happen to be the gatekeepers of performance rights, rather than the copyrights. Do a little bit of research into ASCAP and you will find that they are every bit as anti-artist and anti-consumer as the RIAA. They have been caught withholding funds from artists while tossing around the idea of charging royalties on cell phone ringtones. They are in the same exact position as the RIAA -- worthless leeches on our society that stand between artists and fans. I would even say that ASCAP is worse, their obscenely high licensing fees simply ensure that most places simply won't play popular music. A sane person would consider their song being played at the mall to be free advertising, but ASCAP would beg to differ. ASCAP? They more like ASSHAT.
They aren't the RIAA, but ASCAP plays by more or less the same rulebook as the RIAA and is every bit as odious. It just so happens that they have less reason to go after individuals and chase after businesses instead.
Sorry, but you are 100% wrong. From what I hear, his contract stipulated that he only divulge the password to the mayor. It doesn't matter what anyone else says or how much they want to cry about it, if this was the case he was contractually obligated to keep these passwords a secret from everyone save the mayor.
From what I hear, life is doing BETTER around Chernobyl than in other comparable, non Nuclear Disaster areas. This is probably due to the lack of humans in the area, but it goes to show how resilient life is -- living things really, really, really want to keep living and will do whatever it takes.
The amount of poison that all of our chemical plants and reactors would be able to put into the atmosphere is absolutely nothing compared to the Earth's machinery for correcting such things.
To be fair, most of the things you mentioned would not be extinction level events -- it would take quite a bit to fully extinguish humanity from this planet -- we have more knowledge and technology to help us survive than any other species in history. We can build underground bunkers powered by nuclear reactors and grow plants by the soft glow of UV lamps, for instance. For humans to become extinct, something will have to hit us really hard and really fast. I do agree with your main thesis though -- we need to get our asses into space while we still have the chance. In any of these cases, we would, at best lose hundreds to thousands of years of potential progress. If we had kept up the momentum we had in the 1960's, 2001 would have been a pretty accurate depiction of the year in question, methinks. It's a pity, really.
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When answering accusations by the Catholic Church that our society is obsessed with sex, Stephen Fry turned the allegations around by equating sex with food and stating that the only people obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese. This, of course, is to say that trying to avoid sex and to not think about it is an extremely unhealthy viewpoint.
I think a lot of the neuroses people have about sex stem from the fact that it is taboo and that we try to shield people from it for as long as possible -- having a healthy and honest relationship to our sexuality will only result in a happier and healthier society. I mean, it is has been statistically shown that abstinence only sex-ed leads to higher rates of teen pregnancy -- why don't we just cut the bullshit and recognize that humans are ALWAYS going to be obsessed with sex, no matter what we do.
The entirety of our bodies and minds exist solely to pass on our genetic information, making sex our prime directive! There is no way that you can undo 3 billion years of this sort of genetic programming, and I see no good reason that we ought to try.
Ummm... China doesn't really need to make "for the children" style excuses to stifle free speech. They are pretty open about it. If they are saying that this is to block pornography, then it probably is. It will certainly help them tighten their grip on political speech, but if that were the main aim, they would have almost certainly come out and said it.
Sorry, but this is just not the case. I will agree that the U.S. is very far from perfect and that our civil liberties are being eroded at an alarming rate, but just because one is imperfect does not mean that it is equal to all other imperfect entities -- there certainly is the question of degree. China is much further to the totalitarian end of the scale than the U.S. -- this is a plain fact. Please note that I am not saying that because China is worse than the United States we need to ignore the pressing civil liberties issues at hand (nothing connects my palm to my face faster than hearing someone say "If you don't like it here why don't you just move to China?") -- they absolutely need to be addressed immediately. It does not, however, help the situation to make the problem look worse than it really is.
I don't know that this is necessarily true -- I just think that the government has only been stepping on the toes of American citizens in ways that they have not noticed. There certainly will not be riots over ACTA as a copyright treaty, but I have a feeling that a wholesale ban on pornography on the 'net would see a pretty nasty reaction by concerned citizens -- at that point the infringement on their rights becomes impossible to ignore or rationalize and requires action.
Citation, please. Please show some sort of evidence that this is the case. Please also note that as you are the one making a positive claim here (introducing children to sex early causes harm) the burden of proof lies on you. Show me evidence that children who view sexual materials at a young age are more likely to become parents as teenagers, show higher rates of STD infection, perform more poorly in school, or end up in lower paying jobs. Show me that these children end up with higher rates of mental illness or are incarcerated more often. Show me evidence of this and then we can have a conversation about it -- until then you have nothing but a bunch of hot air.
Who says they aren't ready for it? Who is to say that any of this is even harmful? I know that the mantra has been repeated time and time again throughout our society that seeing images of sexuality is harmful to children, but is there any evidence of this? I feel that it most likely comes from the false Judeo-Christian value system that has been drilled into our heads from before we knew how to talk -- the one that tries to tell us that everything related to sex is bad (at least until you are married) and that we ought to feel bad for being human. You could make at least as powerful a case (if not more so) for this mentality being the cause of harm and you could for pornography, methinks.
Wow, what a useless post. Your first point, that there is debate about the role of women in these films, says absolutely nothing. You are mentioning that there is debate. That means that there is nothing conclusive either way, and that much could be said for either side of the viewpoint. Things that are still debatable should not be legislated unless there is significant evidence to suggest that serious, immediate harm could come from failure to act. I see no such evidence to even suggest that pornography comes anywhere near fitting this bill.
Your second point is entirely nonsensical and a blatant non sequitur -- trying to create a link between the availability of pornography and people that want to have sex with children is incredibly irresponsible and has no basis in reality. It is kind of like saying that we should not let children have grape juice because it is kind of like wine -- it is somewhat true on a superficial level but couldn't miss the point any further. Pedophilia has NOTHING to do with any other sort of healthy adult sexual behavior. Pornography is not a gateway drug to child pornography, nor is it a gateway drug to rape. Studies have shown time and time again that it is a normal, healthy part of the average person's life and is really nothing to be concerned about. If you are still concerned despite the evidence that's FINE. Go buy Internet filtering software (or shut off your Internet) and keep it out of your own home, but leave the rest of us out of it.
Because of this, I think that these restrictions will not last long. Above and beyond anything else, the Chinese government wants to become the next world superpower. They are well on their way to doing this now by utterly pwning us in the fields of math and science. If they restrict access to the Internet in such a fundamental way (whitelist vs. blacklist), they will seriously hamper education and slow their ascendancy as the dominant superpower. This seems to me to be a bit more of a sacrifice than the Chinese government will be willing to make to get rid of some nudie pictures, but hey, I have been wrong before and certainly will be again.
As someone who knows a great deal about the art of film making, I can tell you that on every possible metric by which one could judge a film the original trilogy utterly decimates the prequel trilogy. The original trilogy is an entertaining and wildly creative sci-fi/adventure/fantasy epic. These films are absolutely flawed, but are still extremely well made and effective for what they are. The prequel trilogy, on the other hand, is an utter mess. The story is incoherent, none of the characters have any depth or behave in anything even approaching a believable manner, and all the CG eye-poop only serves to make the whole thing even less believable.
I think the reason they did not know about Bing! was because they tried to find them with Bing. Should've googled it...
They need to do way instain theater> who kill thier movvys. becuse these movvy cant frigth back it was on the news this mroing a theater in ar who had kill her three movvys . they are taking the three movvy back to new york too lady to rest my pary are with the custimers company who lost his movvys ; i am truley sorry for your lots
Agreed -- when I try to tell most people about the dangers of DRM all I get are blank stares, or an "STFU, nerd". I notice, however, that people start to pay attention when it gets in the way of them using the stuff they paid for.
I accidentally the DRM keys for the movie... is this bad?
He was also probably not considering the costs of cameras, computers, software -- as it is all stuff he had already.
Those ones are nowhere near as bad as the ones that pop up over the text you are trying to read. You know, the ones where when you click on the X button to close it it takes you to the advertiser's page? Creating those should be a capital offense...
Yes, well my hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.
Wow, reading comprehension FAIL
Yeah, I heard you have to move away from the phone to breathe when you're playing it...
Sorry, but you are simply wrong. Extinction means 100% of a species. If an asteroid hit Earth and left one person alive, we would not be officially extinct until that person died, even though the blast killed off 99.9999999998% of the population. I'm not really sure where you get your definitions from. This is not even to mention the fact that you grossly overestimate the physical damage that Yellowstone will cause -- most of the harm caused by the Yellowstone supervolcano will come from the fact that it will almost certainly collapse the current dominant superpower in the world, which will collapse the worldwide economy and leave a huge power vacuum. Sure, there will be some collateral damage around the globe (lower temperatures, leading to decreased food production, leading to famine), but the rest of the world outside of North America will be largely unaffected.
ASCAP is too the "music industry". They just happen to be the gatekeepers of performance rights, rather than the copyrights. Do a little bit of research into ASCAP and you will find that they are every bit as anti-artist and anti-consumer as the RIAA. They have been caught withholding funds from artists while tossing around the idea of charging royalties on cell phone ringtones. They are in the same exact position as the RIAA -- worthless leeches on our society that stand between artists and fans. I would even say that ASCAP is worse, their obscenely high licensing fees simply ensure that most places simply won't play popular music. A sane person would consider their song being played at the mall to be free advertising, but ASCAP would beg to differ. ASCAP? They more like ASSHAT.
They aren't the RIAA, but ASCAP plays by more or less the same rulebook as the RIAA and is every bit as odious. It just so happens that they have less reason to go after individuals and chase after businesses instead.
Sorry, but you are 100% wrong. From what I hear, his contract stipulated that he only divulge the password to the mayor. It doesn't matter what anyone else says or how much they want to cry about it, if this was the case he was contractually obligated to keep these passwords a secret from everyone save the mayor.
From what I hear, life is doing BETTER around Chernobyl than in other comparable, non Nuclear Disaster areas. This is probably due to the lack of humans in the area, but it goes to show how resilient life is -- living things really, really, really want to keep living and will do whatever it takes.
The amount of poison that all of our chemical plants and reactors would be able to put into the atmosphere is absolutely nothing compared to the Earth's machinery for correcting such things.
To be fair, most of the things you mentioned would not be extinction level events -- it would take quite a bit to fully extinguish humanity from this planet -- we have more knowledge and technology to help us survive than any other species in history. We can build underground bunkers powered by nuclear reactors and grow plants by the soft glow of UV lamps, for instance. For humans to become extinct, something will have to hit us really hard and really fast. I do agree with your main thesis though -- we need to get our asses into space while we still have the chance. In any of these cases, we would, at best lose hundreds to thousands of years of potential progress. If we had kept up the momentum we had in the 1960's, 2001 would have been a pretty accurate depiction of the year in question, methinks. It's a pity, really.