As is typical, the big businesses that can already afford to are going to be the ones snapping up lots of addresses.
Anyone remember the www.bushsucks.com story from a while back? One of the other things a large company might do is buy up mis-spellings of rivals' domain names and redirect them there. Imagine, for instance, if Microsoft bought up things like www.linuz.com and www.netcape.com. That can leave people with interesting false perceptions, if they don't realize they've made a typo.:) I mean, I can sort of understand Microsoft buying up www.microsort.com, but what if there's a company out there called MicroSort? That could suck. A lot.
Though I have to admit, I do still think it's pretty entertaining that the NAACP bought up www.kkk.somethingorother. (I forget which ending it had.)
Now, wait a minute. Any legitimate business of ANY kind (not just an ISP) tends to have to cooperate when court-ordered to release records pertaining to a possible crime.
But since the great polarization of all net issues is "the net is full of kiddie porn and hatred" vs. "our right to privacy is being taken away"... what we have here is an article combining the worst of both.
You know what really burns me about this article? It's perpetuating the link of "Internet user" to "child molester" in much the way that the media has in the past, say, linked "male preschool teacher" to "child molester." *sigh*
There are sickos out there, and plenty of them ARE on the net. However, most people on the net are NOT engaged in illegal activities beyond the rather generic sort that might be expected of a more-socially-liberal-than-average sector of the population (smoking a bit of pot here and there, breaking laws against consensual sodomy, providing alcohol to 18-20 year olds, "stealing" the occasional office pens and pencils, that sort of stuff).
And if people were seriously wasting their time prosecuting THAT, and using it as an excuse to read e-mail, then I'd worry. And the Raytheon bit does bother me. I'd've liked to see an article on that rather than this done-to-death "child molester" and "trench coat mafia" concern.:P
That's the biggie for me. That, and I type really fast (hoping to break 100 WPM in the next year), but I have very nasty handwriting unless I'm actually trying to be neat, in which case I write v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Kind of gives new meaning to "snail mail.":)
That said, I was in a LDR that despite both of us having e-mail (admittedly, I had JUST gotten it), we continued to write snailmail letters to each other every day. *smiles*
Also, writing to Grandma still means *writing* to her, though admittedly I tend to compose on-computer and print it out so her poor old eyes don't have to deal with my scribble.
Mostly, though, e-mail is the Great Lowerer of Phone Bills for me. It is weird because it's not-quite-snail-mail yet not-quite-telephone, but for me and my friends (who have this annoying tendency to scatter around the world) it's helpful. I'd certainly rather try to get e-mail to Poland than either a letter OR a phone call.:)
I am a regular on a telnet-to Citadel-based BBS called ISCABBS.
I know there have been a few HUGE flamewars related to "release of confidential information" to either a minor user's parents, UIowa campus officials (UI is where this thing is based), and/or outside law enforcement agencies. If I remember right, the most recent case allegedly had to do with a child molester (thereby polarizing everyone even more than if, say, it was some guy confessing to the net-at-large that he uses marijuana). Certain fora have also been killed due to possible conflicts with established law.
However, there IS a policy stating that confidential information would not be released for someone making a suicide threat. (I guess we had too many boys and girls crying wolf on THAT subject.)
I'm just very glad this never came up back when I used to sysop on The Far Side (another, much smaller, telnet CitadelBBS that is now defunct, unfortunately). Then again, considering that I was one of two American 'ops on an Australian BBS... though it was amusing when someone tried to buy drugs from the other American 'op because he had "the drug is ready" (from a Tragically Hip song) as his Doing: field. *chuckles* That one should have had his info released by the 'op to the cops just for being so damn stupid.:)
Well, in the extremely UNlikely case that this situation were ever to occur, I'd allow the research. I would not, however, run screaming through the media saying "this is the greatest thing since the wheel and sliced bread!" unless I was VERY sure that it was that good.
As I've seen posted online elsewhere "If I invoke the deity Electricity, it doesn't matter from its perspective whether I use its power to light my house or electrocute my neighbor. The society I live in will have definite opinions on the matter, however."
Nothing wrong with progress or with scientific research. Lots of things wrong with progress-for-its-own-sake. I'm also VERY "iffy" on genetic-based science thanks to my experiences in the les/bi/gay community. Find us a conclusive "gay gene," and folks will start aborting genetically gay fetuses. OTOH, find "straight" folk with the "gay gene," and the fundies get more proof that we're a bunch of perverts who can change if we really WANT to. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. It sucks.
I'm not sure what the answer is. Disallow "abusive" uses of new technology? "Abusive" by whose standards? Like I said before, we can't just "implant" a moral code of any kind into someone's brain. [See the previous paragraph for one very obvious way in which this fails...]
The thing that you can't ignore, however, is the very real extent to which politics drives scientific and medical "discoveries." (Compare the history of Viagra with the history of either the Pill or RU486 sometime... and yes, RU486 has uses other than abortion.) But I'm tired. G'night.:)
Costs? Not necessarily. There's a difference, cost-wise, between SUPPRESSING a technology or anything else, as such, and just not encouraging its development. In the specific case of nuclear "stuff," it's tightly regulated for various reasons (not just the potential for some crazy person to blow us all up, but also for the potential of some careless person making others very sick with radiation poisoning). I'm not saying that scientists shouldn't be allowed to study cloning, but I'd really rather they weren't getting government funding to perfect it. I also have always believed that just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
What I want to know is, why isn't the answer that we as a society should try to behave more ethically, responsibly, and/or intelligently?
It would be nice, wouldn't it? However, legislating that X technology should/shouldn't be used is a heck of a lot easier than persuading people to be ethical, responsible, and/or intelligent.
Granted, it is the easy way out. I'd rather that society as a whole become more ethical, responsible, and intelligent. However, I'd rather not [be blown up by a nuclear bomb/have some idiot clone 1000 Hitlers/allow people to hunt a species to extinction because "we can always clone it later"/etc.] while waiting for society to mold itself into what I wish it was.:)
OK, so I can perfectly grow a sack or five of spare parts, and have no fear of ruining my body, because I can just pop a new liver, set of lungs, or whatever in?
Yeah, sure. I bet the tobacco industry would just love that. *smirk*
Of course, this logic falls apart at a few critical points: how bad does your quality of life due to the malfunctioning organ have to degrade before it's time for a replacement?
Also, even if I can just pop in a new heart after a few too many five-egg omelettes with lots of nice greasy bacon, that's not going to fix my blood vessels. Do we have to clone those too?:)
And of course, eventually folks will run out of quality replacement parts, and whatever bad habits have been established are going to be even trickier to break (smoking, too much alcohol, too much caffeine, too much fat). It's not going to make us immortal.;)
OK, folks, this sounds all nice and noble, but it is a damn bad idea. Some of these points have already been made; others have not. But here goes:
1. If the attitude becomes "don't worry, we can always clone 'em later," we'll have no reason to protect endangered species anymore. This is bad, because...
2. At the present time, cloning is not sufficiently advanced to be a truly viable replacement for reproduction. And seeing as how there's only that one cloned sheep running around, has anyone checked to see whether or not Dolly is capable of reproduction? We could be pseudo-breeding a bunch of sterile animals, and have to keep cloning them, in which case the quality of the genetic "copies" will degrade in much the way that a copy of a copy of a copy etc. of an audio tape does.
3. Introducing a species into an ecosystem, without full knowledge of how it interacts with the stuff that's already there, is a BAD IDEA . Cases in point: the Australian feral cat problem, chestnut blight, and even some attempts to reintroduce captivity-bred endangered species into the wild.
4. That reminds me, do cloned animals have the same "survival instincts" that their normally-bred counterparts do? The whole thing could become a big old exercise in futility if not.
I understand the nobility of the instinct. But you know what is paved with good intentions...:P
"The bats are doing just fine. There are hundreds of them. I have a terrible feeling we're in trouble." -Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
I wonder if my friendly local Baron bribed them or something... he's a BIG Onion fan, and we hung out at Borders a couple weeks ago reading Our Dumb Century. Good stuff, BTW.
BTW, if you like political satire, do a net search on "Capitol Steps" and pick up an album or several. Good stuff.
I believe their story goes something like this:
"Well, we were going to do a Christmas pageant, but in all of Washington DC we couldn't find three wise men... or a virgin."
And it just gets funnier. Of special interest to/.ers would probably be the various incarnations of "Yuppie Love." Oh, and if you ever get the chance to see them live, go for it. They're wonderful.:)
And if you think that's fun, try having to read them for classes. (Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death etc.)
I'm not a huge fan of the "idiot box" and I also don't eat a whole lot of meat, don't smoke, etc. But that's my thing, that's MY moral code, and I wouldn't impose it on anyone else (except perhaps whatever spouse and children I may or may not end up with).
Besides, I've got my stumbling-blocks, like net-addiction, and caffeine, and chocolate, and spending too darn much money on Starbucks.;)
TV isn't pure evil any more than the net is all-porn-and-hate-speech, all-the-time. The problem is that, like with so many things, the tripe dominates and the good stuff gets pushed aside.
I didn't have cable until college. I was grateful for being able to veg out in front of *gasp* MTV the semester I broke my leg and wasn't going out much for obvious reasons. (Though I *did* hobble up to the weekly open-mic coffeehouse.) Later, I discovered the Sci-Fi channel and specifically Ray Bradbury Theater.
But as a kid, I watched: Sesame Street and lots of other PBS shows (any other Square One junkies out there?), the news, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, occasionally certain series (The Wonder Years and I'll Fly Away come to mind) when I happened to be home, and VERY occasionally Saturday morning cartoons on the RARE Saturday mornings I didn't have art classes, swim meets, etc.
If any single activity is sucking up all your time, there's a problem. And I don't care if it's TV, the Net, good old-fashioned reading, the SCA (guilty!), AD&D or some other roleplaying game, exercising, or working ridiculous amounts of overtime. Or anything else. And TV is particularly problematic because it tends to encourage uncritical acceptance.
But like I said, TV isn't inherently bad any more than the Net is. Generally speaking, I have better things to do, but if I happen to be home and Star Trek or anything else I like happens to be on, I can veg out with the best of them.:)
Fair enough. But I've got a whole list of reasons why I'm railing, personally:)
And just for the record, I do put my money where my mouth is on this topic. I have an upstairs-of-a-house apartment in the city I live in, maybe two miles from downtown, and I rode public transit for the first year I lived here -- still do, when it's going where I need to. (I just started the first job that makes riding the bus vastly more trouble than it is worth -- ie dealing with the bus will quadruple my commute time.)
There are very nice parts of the city that I live in (Rochester, NY, if you're curious), but as soon as we cross the border that says "city of Rochester", some of the paranoid idiots I deal with start looking around nervously as if some psycho is going to randomly jump out and mug them. My mother started begging me to move after there was a murder two blocks away from me.
Guess what, Mom? People get murdered in small towns, too! In your nice small town, my grandmother was mugged on the way home from church, of all things.
Also, in my experience, in a city intelligence at least has a fighting chance of being accepted. Perhaps it's just because there are more people around and consequently more who will share obscure interests.:) The place I grew up in on the other hand, suburbia at its worst, still had the attitude that math/science/technology was not "cool," and that went about triple for girls.
And dammit, I'd rather wander a downtown street with unique places to shop than a strip mall with a Wal-Mart and a (insert name of local grocery store monopoly here) and a McDonald's.
As I've explained to several people long before it became trendy: Malls cause the crack problem.
See, a mall opens (and of course it needs to be driven to or else it costs extra to get there via whatever public transportation might be left). People who can afford it all flock to the mall. The downtown stores (even branches of chain stores like Rite-aid) end up left in the dust in favor of the mall version. Downtown stores either move to the mall or go out of business. Downtown starts looking run-down and only the people who really can't afford to go elsewhere shop downtown. Storekeepers can't make their rent. Things get foreclosed on and bought up by people with lots of money, who may or may not be drug lords and who may or may not have mafia ties.
Soon, only the desperate and those seeking to do less-than-legit business will come downtown at all -- everyone else goes out to the mall and the Wal-Mart.
It sucks. This is pretty much exactly what happened to Utica, NY (the city I grew up closest to), and it is to some extent happening in Rochester.
And there IS a solution -- chase the bad guys out, convince the paranoid that downtown isn't full of bad guys, encourage businesses to move in there, and let the buildings be used for the purposes they're meant for. The sprawl around here is ridiculous -- even the closer suburbs are full of deserted storefronts as people go to expand into the next big market. It's ugly.
And again, I find it ironic that I see someone griping about the very existance of the minimum wage on/. just a few days after another/. discussion about all those poor underpaid programmers who can't afford an apartment with a golf course.
Here's a clue: Someone who works minimum wage jobs for 40 hours/week makes just over $10K in a year. Perhaps this person holds two min wage jobs (since most such jobs are reluctant to give overtime), both for 30 hours a week (so the employer can say the employee is "part-time"), thereby making about $15K in a year.
I worked a minimum wage 32.5 hour/week work-study job in the summer when I was at college, and was able to live off of it -- barely. I had no car at the time, and was renting a room the size of a large closet for $100/month plus utilities from some friends of mine. It's not an experience I would care to repeat.
I also just love the assumption that blue-collar workers are lazy. Here I am slacking off a bit on the job as an entry-level tech. writer. And over at Toys R Us, there's my boyfriend working on a remodel project, carrying heavy things around for 7.5 hours/day and getting paid $3.25 less an hour for it. I freely admit that I'm the lazy one here, but the default assumption is exactly the opposite.:P
What you have to understand is that with all of the "Red scares" in this country, the mass media became very allergic to ANY talk about class at all. The lessons of McCarthy sunk in a bit too well in some cases.
Race made a handy metaphor for class, and it's been used and abused in this fashion. And you better believe it pissed me off when a black student whose family makes more money than mine (and I don't exactly come from poverty) is getting scholarships that she doesn't need, while my parents scrimped and saved and rearranged priorities such that I didn't need to be on financial aid.
That's because Americans don't want to talk about class, and those who try get "You godless Commie!" screamed at them for their troubles. The exception is academia, but this does WHAT exactly to fix the problem? Nothing, really. It mostly becomes a concern to those who have access to higher education in the first place.
And there is something wrong with not asking the have-nots precisely what it is that they would like to have. Admittedly, you and I aren't likely to like some of the answers (as I've posted elsewhere, most of them seem to want white-bread suburbia to start with). But it would make a good starting point.:)
It's sort of like what happened to the feminist movement in the 1960s -- Betty Freidan made a huge tactical error that had all sorts of race and class bias tucked away into it: Women can't possibly be fulfilled by the "domestic arts," so hire a cleaning lady and live out your life the way you were meant to. Um...? Needless to say, black women took offense at this, especially since at the time this was written, the South was still segregated, and "cleaning lady" was one of the easier jobs for black women to get.
I'd like to stay that other social movements (including those that try to advance education) have learned from this mistake, but I'm not so sure.
Even among the "gifted and talented" it's still not considered cool to really have an interest in something intellectual. To an extent, this goes away by college (depending on what college you're at), but even then you can still run into it in more subtle forms.
And how many times have those of you who have gone as far in school as you care to for the forseeable future heard, or said, "I'm not in school anymore; why should I stretch my brain?"
"Educational" and "fun" are still supposed to be oxymorons in this country, and in pseudo-attempts to combat that, people say and do the damndest things... remember a few years ago when the TV stations were trying to argue that the Jetsons is "educational TV?" *LOL*
*sigh* It's funny, but it's horribly depressing at the same time. And until the culture as a whole gets some respect for education, we're not going to see much improvement. The lifestyle that the underclass wants to move up to tends to be brainless middle-class ignorant suburbia anyhow. (Yes, I'm bitter -- look at my.sig quote!)
Yes, I know that "obscenity" is not legally protected under the First Amendment. Who doesn't?:)
However, bear in mind the things that obscenity laws have been invoked to stop: information on birth control, AIDS awareness sites, gay teen support groups, images of classical artwork, even pictures of breastfeeding mothers! Oops, was there a baby in that bathwater?
Furthermore, is a kid honestly going to be traumatized-for-life by a couple of nasty pictures? I've never understood that "logic", which is what Katz seems to be complaining about the most, anyhow. I saw old copies of Playboy and Hustler in the fire station bathrooms on a Girl Scout field trip (of all things!), and I don't think it damaged me.:)
And if all blocking software had a design similar to SafeSurf or RSACi, which allow for customized description of content and varied blocking levels, I'd say go for it. But when we've got crap like CyberSitter out there, which is blocking sites that have nothing to do with explicit sex or violence or intolerance (let's see... blocking anything with "mistress" or "witch" or "druid" etc, blocking any criticism of your product, blocking a whole site because they host a gay square dance page, etc. you get the idea)... I don't think that censorware is empowering ANYone.:P
I have these two SCA friends, both female. One is quite petite, the other is quite large.
The petite one was pacing around her bedroom complaining that she felt unattractive because she didn't "fill out" her garb enough and men in that particular SCA group have a real tendency to go after the larger ladies.
The larger one replied, "Now you know how *I* feel next to *you* outside the SCA!"
And the lesbian fashion show sounds fun... though your sterotypical lesbian isn't much into fashion.:P
OK, granted. I could, myself, stand to lose some weight.
However, I'd rather be 20 pounds overweight than a) yo-yo diet or b) have an eating disorder. It's also healthier.
I would have probably ended up with an eating disorder when I was 13 and skinny, but I am hypoglycemic and get severely ill if I skip meals. I also never "mastered the art" of making myself throw up.
As it was, I dealt with a close friend in college, who was at a "healthy" weight, who would eat an ice cream cone, say "I'm so BAD!" and go to the workout center for five hours. This is neither healthy nor appropriate. Neither was the officeful of women at my former job who all went on the same dangerous fad diet at the same time. I tried it for a day, got severely sick to my stomach, and almost passed out. It's not worth it.
And fine, give us models that are an appropriate "healthy" weight. Don't give us Kate Moss or men-in-drag-because-they-are-skinnier.
And given that plenty of people (myself and my 82-year-old grandmother included) are medically overweight but otherwise in very good health, "obese" when applied to someone who doesn't exceed the "ideal" weight by a considerable amount is about as useful of a medical diagnosis as "nymphomaniac" applied to a woman who enjoys sex "too much" by someone's standards.
The pressure doesn't come from most men. It comes from other women.
I'm 5'10" and last time I was at the doctor's office, I weighed 187 pounds. This makes me 15-30 pounds overweight depending on who you ask (though the doctor said not to worry about it because other than that and my ever-present hypoglycemia, I am in very good health).
When I was a 13-year-old wannabe model, I was 5'6" or so, weighed in at 115 pounds, and thought THAT was fat. It's a damn good thing I'm hypoglycemic -- the headaches and dizzy spells I would get if I skipped meals stopped me from becoming anorexic. No joke.
I was also not-particularly-attractive-to-boys. After I went to college and gained weight, I had NO trouble attracting the opposite sex, or interested parties of the same sex. (Started college at 155, ended up at the aforementioned 187.)
Those who have seen my picture will swear "but you couldn't possibly weigh that much!"
Here's a clue, guys... make that two:
I'm 5'10", and the average woman is 5'5" or so.
Women tend to lie about their weight because the socially accepted numbers are, for some bizarre reason, 5'7" and 115-125 pounds.
A man with my height and weight might be thought to be slightly heavy but wouldn't get the "you must be a fat PIG!" reaction. Granted, women on average weigh less than men on average. But even at the IDEAL weight for someone of my height (155-170 or so), others would have the "fat pig" reaction to the numbers.
Now, all that said, I've only been told that I must be, or am, a fat pig by two groups of people: clueless net-trolls (like the one who told me I'm too fat to fence), and heterosexual women.
Anyway, guys, whatever you may have been led to believe, the ladies aren't putting on makeup, obsessively dieting, etc. for YOU. They're competing with each other, at least in part because "beauty" is one of the few traditionally acceptable areas for women to compete with each other (or at all!) in.
And ladies... most men don't want to date someone with a perfectly made-up face who picks at a salad at dinner so she won't get fat. And the ones that DO are seriously not worth your time if doing this sort of thing makes you uncomfortable.
Back when I was a skinny 13-year-old wannabe actress in dire need of learning to be graceful, I was interviewed by a modeling school and told that I "had the look" and would be a wonderful model.
My family paid almost $1000 for the classes -- and that didn't include the high heeled shoes I had to bring so I could learn to walk gracefully in them, or the makeup and makeup brushes we were "required" to have, or the photo sessions.
None of it ever went anywhere, of course. And now that I'm a not-quite-skinny 21-year-old, I'm told that I'd be a good artist's model or perhaps "large size" model (I really hate that term -- the average woman wears a size 14, folks -- try "average-sized" model).
I agree with the person who pointed out that giving teenagers CGI models to "measure up" to is likely to cause more problems. It's bad enough that in some cases, men with padded bras are considered "better" models for women's clothing than WOMEN are, because men can get down to a lower % body fat without it causing health problems.
Sorry for the rant -- this just brought up some bad memories.
They have this funny little life-cycle, which in the end causes more problems than it fixes. And not just CTS, either. I'm thinking of the dyslexia/ADHD "epidemic" particularly among young boys, and the tranquilized housewifes of a previous generation. The latter had an interesting analogue at my college -- female students (not sure whether that is coincidence or not, but I never heard of this happening to a male student) were given anti-depressants like candy, and NO other counseling. This, even after one of my friends committed suicide with said anti-depressants. We also, to an extent, saw this situation with AIDS.
The life-cycle:
1. A bunch of people who have some sort of similarity (typists, gay men, 10-year-old boys, housewives) all begin to have a certain problem. Note that it does not affect all members of that category, but the problem is found mainly if not entirely within that category, at least in the beginning.
2. The problem is given a name. Members of the appropriate category begin to be diagnosed with the problem. Eventually, to everyone's surprise, someone who doesn't fit the category comes in with the appropriate symptoms. (This is why AIDS is no longer called GRID - Gay-Related Immune Disease - as it once was.)
3. The disorder enters the mainstream consciousness as a public health problem. A weird double-standard occurs: members of group X get this disorder, but "it can happen to anyone."
4. Overdiagnosis and mis-diagnosis of similar problems as the "trendy" disorder begin to occur. Some people begin to question whether the disorder is either "real" or a "real" public health concern, seeing as how it only effects a targeted subgroup of the population.
5. People begin to use the disorder, or fear of getting the disorder, as an excuse for bizarre or inappropriate behavior. "I'm dyslexic -- of course I didn't do the reading assignment!" (This character annoyed the hell out of my best friend, who is ALSO dyslexic but managed to struggle through.) "Oh, my son can't help being destructive -- he has ADD." "I have to go out on worker's comp because I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome [at the same time as the person asked for a vacation that was denied]." "I can't go camping - I might get bit by a mosquito and get AIDS!"
6. The public begins questioning the validity of the diagnosis, even though doctors are still diagnosing the trendy problem constantly. Meanwhile, people who HAVE the problem aren't getting help for it, or are getting one-size-fits-all therapy that doesn't help much. Other people announce they have "cured" themselves of the problem using methods that may or may not be snake oil.
This is partially from experience. I have a "trendy" medical disorder, in a fairly mild form. (Seasonal Affective Disorder, aka winter depression, if you must know.) Because of the aforementioned idiocy of my school's counseling center, I didn't follow through with their idea of treatment -- paying attention to what I ate (I'm also hypoglycemic, and the two problems reinforce each other) and occasionally sleeping with the light on are enough to keep me functioning, though it is still not easy.:/ I might just invest in a lightbox before winter shows up again.
It's evil anyhow, but this site will show you why programmers should be extra-careful to avoid letting this get installed on their machines. Among other things, CyberSitter didn't like the function name "RefreshItems" because of the cuss word embedded in it.:P
Then again, as a technical writer for a utility company, the project I'm working on would have the same problem. All these "nipples" and "butt ends" and "stopcocks" on the equipment database... *sigh*
And as a scadian, anything with "A.S. XXXIV" is likely to get blocked by stupid censorware as well. When I have kids, I'd rather let them run across the odd dirty pictures than have to figure out why they can't get to something like that.
Not to mention, as a pagan, I really hate CyberShitter in particular.:P
(Oh, did I mistype that? Freudian slip, sorry!)
*shrug* Seemed relevant. Not that I'm not preaching to the converted about filtering software or anything.;)
Yes the priorities are screwed up. Examples follow:
1. Ellen getting TV-14ed for kissing her girlfriend, while Dharma and Greg can practically have sex in front of the audience and only get TV-PGed for it.
2. One use of the word "fuck" = automatic PG-13 rating in a move. Admittedly, this is better than it was; used to get it rated R. Ditto for one shot of someone smoking dope. One glimpse of a nude female breast will probably kick it up to R. Yet PG and even G movies can show various and sundry violent acts. A particularly nasty example of this was the NC-17 movie Kids, which is one of those movies that should have been rated R so that parents would watch it WITH their teens and talk about it!!!
3. MTV's silliness about Tom Petty saying "roll another joint" when they've had plenty of songs with more-subtle pot references.
And in closing, the quote from Apocalypse Now: "You can go into a village and bomb innocent men, women, and children... but you can't write 'fuck' on the side of an airplane because it's obscene."
Well, I always thought that disallowing dirty domain names was kind of silly. And of course, www.fuck.com is going to get hits from bored teenagers in much the way that 1-800-FUCK-YOU would get lots of calls.
However, I find it strangely disappointing that people can't come up with anything more interesting or intelligent. Someone posted about www.oedipus.com instead of www.motherfucker.com... I think the first shows a certain amount of thought that the second lacks.
Of course, it's less and less relevant to keep censoring the Seven Dirty Words (even though radio still does it) because they're not considered the ultimate obscenity anymore. I don't swear all that much (four years of being a college DJ taught me to watch my mouth), but I don't feel as nasty about using the "F" word as I do about using the "N" word, for instance -- even if I'm quoting someone else (and I'd never use the "N" word of my own volition, except possibly in a story).
The culture has changed. Medieval Catholics' ultimate "cuss words" were blasphemous, and "fuck" was a slightly-vulgar-yet-acceptable verb. (Chaucer has a character "go to take a piss" in one of his Tales...) Protestants found scatological terms more "obscene" than blasphemous ones, in most cases. Now, it's changing again. I can say "goddamn" or "fuck" in relatively polite conversation, but racial and ethnic slurs are another matter entirely.
Slashdot Mirror
As is typical, the big businesses that can already afford to are going to be the ones snapping up lots of addresses.
Anyone remember the www.bushsucks.com story from a while back? One of the other things a large company might do is buy up mis-spellings of rivals' domain names and redirect them there. Imagine, for instance, if Microsoft bought up things like www.linuz.com and www.netcape.com. That can leave people with interesting false perceptions, if they don't realize they've made a typo.
Though I have to admit, I do still think it's pretty entertaining that the NAACP bought up www.kkk.somethingorother. (I forget which ending it had.)
Now, wait a minute. Any legitimate business of ANY kind (not just an ISP) tends to have to cooperate when court-ordered to release records pertaining to a possible crime.
But since the great polarization of all net issues is "the net is full of kiddie porn and hatred" vs. "our right to privacy is being taken away"
You know what really burns me about this article? It's perpetuating the link of "Internet user" to "child molester" in much the way that the media has in the past, say, linked "male preschool teacher" to "child molester." *sigh*
There are sickos out there, and plenty of them ARE on the net. However, most people on the net are NOT engaged in illegal activities beyond the rather generic sort that might be expected of a more-socially-liberal-than-average sector of the population (smoking a bit of pot here and there, breaking laws against consensual sodomy, providing alcohol to 18-20 year olds, "stealing" the occasional office pens and pencils, that sort of stuff).
And if people were seriously wasting their time prosecuting THAT, and using it as an excuse to read e-mail, then I'd worry. And the Raytheon bit does bother me. I'd've liked to see an article on that rather than this done-to-death "child molester" and "trench coat mafia" concern.
That's the biggie for me. That, and I type really fast (hoping to break 100 WPM in the next year), but I have very nasty handwriting unless I'm actually trying to be neat, in which case I write v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Kind of gives new meaning to "snail mail."
That said, I was in a LDR that despite both of us having e-mail (admittedly, I had JUST gotten it), we continued to write snailmail letters to each other every day. *smiles*
Also, writing to Grandma still means *writing* to her, though admittedly I tend to compose on-computer and print it out so her poor old eyes don't have to deal with my scribble.
Mostly, though, e-mail is the Great Lowerer of Phone Bills for me. It is weird because it's not-quite-snail-mail yet not-quite-telephone, but for me and my friends (who have this annoying tendency to scatter around the world) it's helpful.
I'd certainly rather try to get e-mail to Poland than either a letter OR a phone call.
I am a regular on a telnet-to Citadel-based BBS called ISCABBS.
I know there have been a few HUGE flamewars related to "release of confidential information" to either a minor user's parents, UIowa campus officials (UI is where this thing is based), and/or outside law enforcement agencies. If I remember right, the most recent case allegedly had to do with a child molester (thereby polarizing everyone even more than if, say, it was some guy confessing to the net-at-large that he uses marijuana). Certain fora have also been killed due to possible conflicts with established law.
However, there IS a policy stating that confidential information would not be released for someone making a suicide threat. (I guess we had too many boys and girls crying wolf on THAT subject.)
I'm just very glad this never came up back when I used to sysop on The Far Side (another, much smaller, telnet CitadelBBS that is now defunct, unfortunately). Then again, considering that I was one of two American 'ops on an Australian BBS
Well, in the extremely UNlikely case that this situation were ever to occur, I'd allow the research. I would not, however, run screaming through the media saying "this is the greatest thing since the wheel and sliced bread!" unless I was VERY sure that it was that good.
...]
... and yes, RU486 has uses other than abortion.) But I'm tired. G'night. :)
As I've seen posted online elsewhere "If I invoke the deity Electricity, it doesn't matter from its perspective whether I use its power to light my house or electrocute my neighbor. The society I live in will have definite opinions on the matter, however."
Nothing wrong with progress or with scientific research. Lots of things wrong with progress-for-its-own-sake. I'm also VERY "iffy" on genetic-based science thanks to my experiences in the les/bi/gay community. Find us a conclusive "gay gene," and folks will start aborting genetically gay fetuses. OTOH, find "straight" folk with the "gay gene," and the fundies get more proof that we're a bunch of perverts who can change if we really WANT to. Damned if we do, damned if we don't. It sucks.
I'm not sure what the answer is. Disallow "abusive" uses of new technology? "Abusive" by whose standards? Like I said before, we can't just "implant" a moral code of any kind into someone's brain. [See the previous paragraph for one very obvious way in which this fails
The thing that you can't ignore, however, is the very real extent to which politics drives scientific and medical "discoveries." (Compare the history of Viagra with the history of either the Pill or RU486 sometime
Costs? Not necessarily. There's a difference, cost-wise, between SUPPRESSING a technology or anything else, as such, and just not encouraging its development.
In the specific case of nuclear "stuff," it's tightly regulated for various reasons (not just the potential for some crazy person to blow us all up, but also for the potential of some careless person making others very sick with radiation poisoning). I'm not saying that scientists shouldn't be allowed to study cloning, but I'd really rather they weren't getting government funding to perfect it. I also have always believed that just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.
What I want to know is, why isn't the answer that we as a society should try to behave more ethically, responsibly, and/or intelligently?
:)
It would be nice, wouldn't it? However, legislating that X technology should/shouldn't be used is a heck of a lot easier than persuading people to be ethical, responsible, and/or intelligent.
Granted, it is the easy way out. I'd rather that society as a whole become more ethical, responsible, and intelligent. However, I'd rather not [be blown up by a nuclear bomb/have some idiot clone 1000 Hitlers/allow people to hunt a species to extinction because "we can always clone it later"/etc.] while waiting for society to mold itself into what I wish it was.
OK, so I can perfectly grow a sack or five of spare parts, and have no fear of ruining my body, because I can just pop a new liver, set of lungs, or whatever in?
Yeah, sure. I bet the tobacco industry would just love that. *smirk*
Of course, this logic falls apart at a few critical points: how bad does your quality of life due to the malfunctioning organ have to degrade before it's time for a replacement?
Also, even if I can just pop in a new heart after a few too many five-egg omelettes with lots of nice greasy bacon, that's not going to fix my blood vessels. Do we have to clone those too?
And of course, eventually folks will run out of quality replacement parts, and whatever bad habits have been established are going to be even trickier to break (smoking, too much alcohol, too much caffeine, too much fat). It's not going to make us immortal.
OK, folks, this sounds all nice and noble, but it is a damn bad idea. Some of these points have already been made; others have not. But here goes:
1. If the attitude becomes "don't worry, we can always clone 'em later," we'll have no reason to protect endangered species anymore. This is bad, because
2. At the present time, cloning is not sufficiently advanced to be a truly viable replacement for reproduction. And seeing as how there's only that one cloned sheep running around, has anyone checked to see whether or not Dolly is capable of reproduction? We could be pseudo-breeding a bunch of sterile animals, and have to keep cloning them, in which case the quality of the genetic "copies" will degrade in much the way that a copy of a copy of a copy etc. of an audio tape does.
3. Introducing a species into an ecosystem, without full knowledge of how it interacts with the stuff that's already there, is a BAD IDEA . Cases in point: the Australian feral cat problem, chestnut blight, and even some attempts to reintroduce captivity-bred endangered species into the wild.
4. That reminds me, do cloned animals have the same "survival instincts" that their normally-bred counterparts do? The whole thing could become a big old exercise in futility if not.
I understand the nobility of the instinct. But you know what is paved with good intentions
"The bats are doing just fine. There are hundreds of them. I have a terrible feeling we're in trouble." -Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See
That will always be my favorite. *grin*
I wonder if my friendly local Baron bribed them or something
BTW, if you like political satire, do a net search on "Capitol Steps" and pick up an album or several. Good stuff.
I believe their story goes something like this:
"Well, we were going to do a Christmas pageant, but in all of Washington DC we couldn't find three wise men
And it just gets funnier. Of special interest to
*LOL*
And if you think that's fun, try having to read them for classes. (Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death etc.)
I'm not a huge fan of the "idiot box" and I also don't eat a whole lot of meat, don't smoke, etc. But that's my thing, that's MY moral code, and I wouldn't impose it on anyone else (except perhaps whatever spouse and children I may or may not end up with).
Besides, I've got my stumbling-blocks, like net-addiction, and caffeine, and chocolate, and spending too darn much money on Starbucks.
TV isn't pure evil any more than the net is all-porn-and-hate-speech, all-the-time. The problem is that, like with so many things, the tripe dominates and the good stuff gets pushed aside.
I didn't have cable until college. I was grateful for being able to veg out in front of *gasp* MTV the semester I broke my leg and wasn't going out much for obvious reasons. (Though I *did* hobble up to the weekly open-mic coffeehouse.) Later, I discovered the Sci-Fi channel and specifically Ray Bradbury Theater.
But as a kid, I watched: Sesame Street and lots of other PBS shows (any other Square One junkies out there?), the news, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy, occasionally certain series (The Wonder Years and I'll Fly Away come to mind) when I happened to be home, and VERY occasionally Saturday morning cartoons on the RARE Saturday mornings I didn't have art classes, swim meets, etc.
If any single activity is sucking up all your time, there's a problem. And I don't care if it's TV, the Net, good old-fashioned reading, the SCA (guilty!), AD&D or some other roleplaying game, exercising, or working ridiculous amounts of overtime. Or anything else. And TV is particularly problematic because it tends to encourage uncritical acceptance.
But like I said, TV isn't inherently bad any more than the Net is. Generally speaking, I have better things to do, but if I happen to be home and Star Trek or anything else I like happens to be on, I can veg out with the best of them.
Fair enough. But I've got a whole list of reasons why I'm railing, personally
And just for the record, I do put my money where my mouth is on this topic. I have an upstairs-of-a-house apartment in the city I live in, maybe two miles from downtown, and I rode public transit for the first year I lived here -- still do, when it's going where I need to. (I just started the first job that makes riding the bus vastly more trouble than it is worth -- ie dealing with the bus will quadruple my commute time.)
There are very nice parts of the city that I live in (Rochester, NY, if you're curious), but as soon as we cross the border that says "city of Rochester", some of the paranoid idiots I deal with start looking around nervously as if some psycho is going to randomly jump out and mug them. My mother started begging me to move after there was a murder two blocks away from me.
Guess what, Mom? People get murdered in small towns, too! In your nice small town, my grandmother was mugged on the way home from church, of all things.
Also, in my experience, in a city intelligence at least has a fighting chance of being accepted. Perhaps it's just because there are more people around and consequently more who will share obscure interests.
And dammit, I'd rather wander a downtown street with unique places to shop than a strip mall with a Wal-Mart and a (insert name of local grocery store monopoly here) and a McDonald's.
As I've explained to several people long before it became trendy: Malls cause the crack problem.
See, a mall opens (and of course it needs to be driven to or else it costs extra to get there via whatever public transportation might be left). People who can afford it all flock to the mall. The downtown stores (even branches of chain stores like Rite-aid) end up left in the dust in favor of the mall version. Downtown stores either move to the mall or go out of business. Downtown starts looking run-down and only the people who really can't afford to go elsewhere shop downtown. Storekeepers can't make their rent. Things get foreclosed on and bought up by people with lots of money, who may or may not be drug lords and who may or may not have mafia ties.
Soon, only the desperate and those seeking to do less-than-legit business will come downtown at all -- everyone else goes out to the mall and the Wal-Mart.
It sucks. This is pretty much exactly what happened to Utica, NY (the city I grew up closest to), and it is to some extent happening in Rochester.
And there IS a solution -- chase the bad guys out, convince the paranoid that downtown isn't full of bad guys, encourage businesses to move in there, and let the buildings be used for the purposes they're meant for. The sprawl around here is ridiculous -- even the closer suburbs are full of deserted storefronts as people go to expand into the next big market. It's ugly.
And again, I find it ironic that I see someone griping about the very existance of the minimum wage on
Here's a clue: Someone who works minimum wage jobs for 40 hours/week makes just over $10K in a year. Perhaps this person holds two min wage jobs (since most such jobs are reluctant to give overtime), both for 30 hours a week (so the employer can say the employee is "part-time"), thereby making about $15K in a year.
I worked a minimum wage 32.5 hour/week work-study job in the summer when I was at college, and was able to live off of it -- barely. I had no car at the time, and was renting a room the size of a large closet for $100/month plus utilities from some friends of mine. It's not an experience I would care to repeat.
I also just love the assumption that blue-collar workers are lazy. Here I am slacking off a bit on the job as an entry-level tech. writer. And over at Toys R Us, there's my boyfriend working on a remodel project, carrying heavy things around for 7.5 hours/day and getting paid $3.25 less an hour for it. I freely admit that I'm the lazy one here, but the default assumption is exactly the opposite.
What you have to understand is that with all of the "Red scares" in this country, the mass media became very allergic to ANY talk about class at all. The lessons of McCarthy sunk in a bit too well in some cases.
Race made a handy metaphor for class, and it's been used and abused in this fashion. And you better believe it pissed me off when a black student whose family makes more money than mine (and I don't exactly come from poverty) is getting scholarships that she doesn't need, while my parents scrimped and saved and rearranged priorities such that I didn't need to be on financial aid.
That's because Americans don't want to talk about class, and those who try get "You godless Commie!" screamed at them for their troubles. The exception is academia, but this does WHAT exactly to fix the problem? Nothing, really. It mostly becomes a concern to those who have access to higher education in the first place.
And there is something wrong with not asking the have-nots precisely what it is that they would like to have. Admittedly, you and I aren't likely to like some of the answers (as I've posted elsewhere, most of them seem to want white-bread suburbia to start with). But it would make a good starting point.
It's sort of like what happened to the feminist movement in the 1960s -- Betty Freidan made a huge tactical error that had all sorts of race and class bias tucked away into it: Women can't possibly be fulfilled by the "domestic arts," so hire a cleaning lady and live out your life the way you were meant to. Um
I'd like to stay that other social movements (including those that try to advance education) have learned from this mistake, but I'm not so sure.
... the Hellmouth. Remember?
It's Not Cool to Be Smart.
Even among the "gifted and talented" it's still not considered cool to really have an interest in something intellectual. To an extent, this goes away by college (depending on what college you're at), but even then you can still run into it in more subtle forms.
And how many times have those of you who have gone as far in school as you care to for the forseeable future heard, or said, "I'm not in school anymore; why should I stretch my brain?"
"Educational" and "fun" are still supposed to be oxymorons in this country, and in pseudo-attempts to combat that, people say and do the damndest things
*sigh* It's funny, but it's horribly depressing at the same time. And until the culture as a whole gets some respect for education, we're not going to see much improvement. The lifestyle that the underclass wants to move up to tends to be brainless middle-class ignorant suburbia anyhow. (Yes, I'm bitter -- look at my
Yes, I know that "obscenity" is not legally protected under the First Amendment. Who doesn't?
However, bear in mind the things that obscenity laws have been invoked to stop: information on birth control, AIDS awareness sites, gay teen support groups, images of classical artwork, even pictures of breastfeeding mothers! Oops, was there a baby in that bathwater?
Furthermore, is a kid honestly going to be traumatized-for-life by a couple of nasty pictures? I've never understood that "logic", which is what Katz seems to be complaining about the most, anyhow. I saw old copies of Playboy and Hustler in the fire station bathrooms on a Girl Scout field trip (of all things!), and I don't think it damaged me.
And if all blocking software had a design similar to SafeSurf or RSACi, which allow for customized description of content and varied blocking levels, I'd say go for it. But when we've got crap like CyberSitter out there, which is blocking sites that have nothing to do with explicit sex or violence or intolerance (let's see
Join the SCA and/or hang out at RenFaires.
True story:
I have these two SCA friends, both female. One is quite petite, the other is quite large.
The petite one was pacing around her bedroom complaining that she felt unattractive because she didn't "fill out" her garb enough and men in that particular SCA group have a real tendency to go after the larger ladies.
The larger one replied, "Now you know how *I* feel next to *you* outside the SCA!"
And the lesbian fashion show sounds fun
-fable2112, out-and-proud bi-chick
OK, granted. I could, myself, stand to lose some weight.
However, I'd rather be 20 pounds overweight than a) yo-yo diet or b) have an eating disorder. It's also healthier.
I would have probably ended up with an eating disorder when I was 13 and skinny, but I am hypoglycemic and get severely ill if I skip meals. I also never "mastered the art" of making myself throw up.
As it was, I dealt with a close friend in college, who was at a "healthy" weight, who would eat an ice cream cone, say "I'm so BAD!" and go to the workout center for five hours. This is neither healthy nor appropriate. Neither was the officeful of women at my former job who all went on the same dangerous fad diet at the same time. I tried it for a day, got severely sick to my stomach, and almost passed out. It's not worth it.
And fine, give us models that are an appropriate "healthy" weight. Don't give us Kate Moss or men-in-drag-because-they-are-skinnier.
And given that plenty of people (myself and my 82-year-old grandmother included) are medically overweight but otherwise in very good health, "obese" when applied to someone who doesn't exceed the "ideal" weight by a considerable amount is about as useful of a medical diagnosis as "nymphomaniac" applied to a woman who enjoys sex "too much" by someone's standards.
The pressure doesn't come from most men. It comes from other women.
I'm 5'10" and last time I was at the doctor's office, I weighed 187 pounds. This makes me 15-30 pounds overweight depending on who you ask (though the doctor said not to worry about it because other than that and my ever-present hypoglycemia, I am in very good health).
When I was a 13-year-old wannabe model, I was 5'6" or so, weighed in at 115 pounds, and thought THAT was fat. It's a damn good thing I'm hypoglycemic -- the headaches and dizzy spells I would get if I skipped meals stopped me from becoming anorexic. No joke.
I was also not-particularly-attractive-to-boys. After I went to college and gained weight, I had NO trouble attracting the opposite sex, or interested parties of the same sex. (Started college at 155, ended up at the aforementioned 187.)
Those who have seen my picture will swear "but you couldn't possibly weigh that much!"
Here's a clue, guys
I'm 5'10", and the average woman is 5'5" or so.
Women tend to lie about their weight because the socially accepted numbers are, for some bizarre reason, 5'7" and 115-125 pounds.
A man with my height and weight might be thought to be slightly heavy but wouldn't get the "you must be a fat PIG!" reaction. Granted, women on average weigh less than men on average. But even at the IDEAL weight for someone of my height (155-170 or so), others would have the "fat pig" reaction to the numbers.
Now, all that said, I've only been told that I must be, or am, a fat pig by two groups of people: clueless net-trolls (like the one who told me I'm too fat to fence), and heterosexual women.
Anyway, guys, whatever you may have been led to believe, the ladies aren't putting on makeup, obsessively dieting, etc. for YOU. They're competing with each other, at least in part because "beauty" is one of the few traditionally acceptable areas for women to compete with each other (or at all!) in.
And ladies
*grin*
Back when I was a skinny 13-year-old wannabe actress in dire need of learning to be graceful, I was interviewed by a modeling school and told that I "had the look" and would be a wonderful model.
My family paid almost $1000 for the classes -- and that didn't include the high heeled shoes I had to bring so I could learn to walk gracefully in them, or the makeup and makeup brushes we were "required" to have, or the photo sessions.
None of it ever went anywhere, of course. And now that I'm a not-quite-skinny 21-year-old, I'm told that I'd be a good artist's model or perhaps "large size" model (I really hate that term -- the average woman wears a size 14, folks -- try "average-sized" model).
I agree with the person who pointed out that giving teenagers CGI models to "measure up" to is likely to cause more problems. It's bad enough that in some cases, men with padded bras are considered "better" models for women's clothing than WOMEN are, because men can get down to a lower % body fat without it causing health problems.
Sorry for the rant -- this just brought up some bad memories.
They have this funny little life-cycle, which in the end causes more problems than it fixes. And not just CTS, either. I'm thinking of the dyslexia/ADHD "epidemic" particularly among young boys, and the tranquilized housewifes of a previous generation. The latter had an interesting analogue at my college -- female students (not sure whether that is coincidence or not, but I never heard of this happening to a male student) were given anti-depressants like candy, and NO other counseling. This, even after one of my friends committed suicide with said anti-depressants. We also, to an extent, saw this situation with AIDS.
The life-cycle:
1. A bunch of people who have some sort of similarity (typists, gay men, 10-year-old boys, housewives) all begin to have a certain problem. Note that it does not affect all members of that category, but the problem is found mainly if not entirely within that category, at least in the beginning.
2. The problem is given a name. Members of the appropriate category begin to be diagnosed with the problem. Eventually, to everyone's surprise, someone who doesn't fit the category comes in with the appropriate symptoms. (This is why AIDS is no longer called GRID - Gay-Related Immune Disease - as it once was.)
3. The disorder enters the mainstream consciousness as a public health problem. A weird double-standard occurs: members of group X get this disorder, but "it can happen to anyone."
4. Overdiagnosis and mis-diagnosis of similar problems as the "trendy" disorder begin to occur. Some people begin to question whether the disorder is either "real" or a "real" public health concern, seeing as how it only effects a targeted subgroup of the population.
5. People begin to use the disorder, or fear of getting the disorder, as an excuse for bizarre or inappropriate behavior. "I'm dyslexic -- of course I didn't do the reading assignment!" (This character annoyed the hell out of my best friend, who is ALSO dyslexic but managed to struggle through.) "Oh, my son can't help being destructive -- he has ADD." "I have to go out on worker's comp because I think I have carpal tunnel syndrome [at the same time as the person asked for a vacation that was denied]." "I can't go camping - I might get bit by a mosquito and get AIDS!"
6. The public begins questioning the validity of the diagnosis, even though doctors are still diagnosing the trendy problem constantly. Meanwhile, people who HAVE the problem aren't getting help for it, or are getting one-size-fits-all therapy that doesn't help much. Other people announce they have "cured" themselves of the problem using methods that may or may not be snake oil.
This is partially from experience. I have a "trendy" medical disorder, in a fairly mild form. (Seasonal Affective Disorder, aka winter depression, if you must know.) Because of the aforementioned idiocy of my school's counseling center, I didn't follow through with their idea of treatment -- paying attention to what I ate (I'm also hypoglycemic, and the two problems reinforce each other) and occasionally sleeping with the light on are enough to keep me functioning, though it is still not easy.
Weird, I previewed and everything, but the URL disappeared.
Here it is: http://www.within.com/~chandhok/robvscs.sh tml
:)
Beware of CyberSitter!
:P
... *sigh*
:P
;)
It's evil anyhow, but this site will show you why programmers should be extra-careful to avoid letting this get installed on their machines. Among other things, CyberSitter didn't like the function name "RefreshItems" because of the cuss word embedded in it.
Then again, as a technical writer for a utility company, the project I'm working on would have the same problem. All these "nipples" and "butt ends" and "stopcocks" on the equipment database
And as a scadian, anything with "A.S. XXXIV" is likely to get blocked by stupid censorware as well. When I have kids, I'd rather let them run across the odd dirty pictures than have to figure out why they can't get to something like that.
Not to mention, as a pagan, I really hate CyberShitter in particular.
(Oh, did I mistype that? Freudian slip, sorry!)
*shrug* Seemed relevant. Not that I'm not preaching to the converted about filtering software or anything.
Yes the priorities are screwed up. Examples follow:
1. Ellen getting TV-14ed for kissing her girlfriend, while Dharma and Greg can practically have sex in front of the audience and only get TV-PGed for it.
2. One use of the word "fuck" = automatic PG-13 rating in a move. Admittedly, this is better than it was; used to get it rated R. Ditto for one shot of someone smoking dope. One glimpse of a nude female breast will probably kick it up to R. Yet PG and even G movies can show various and sundry violent acts. A particularly nasty example of this was the NC-17 movie Kids, which is one of those movies that should have been rated R so that parents would watch it WITH their teens and talk about it!!!
3. MTV's silliness about Tom Petty saying "roll another joint" when they've had plenty of songs with more-subtle pot references.
And in closing, the quote from Apocalypse Now: "You can go into a village and bomb innocent men, women, and children
*sigh*
Well, I always thought that disallowing dirty domain names was kind of silly. And of course, www.fuck.com is going to get hits from bored teenagers in much the way that 1-800-FUCK-YOU would get lots of calls.
However, I find it strangely disappointing that people can't come up with anything more interesting or intelligent. Someone posted about www.oedipus.com instead of www.motherfucker.com
Of course, it's less and less relevant to keep censoring the Seven Dirty Words (even though radio still does it) because they're not considered the ultimate obscenity anymore. I don't swear all that much (four years of being a college DJ taught me to watch my mouth), but I don't feel as nasty about using the "F" word as I do about using the "N" word, for instance -- even if I'm quoting someone else (and I'd never use the "N" word of my own volition, except possibly in a story).
The culture has changed. Medieval Catholics' ultimate "cuss words" were blasphemous, and "fuck" was a slightly-vulgar-yet-acceptable verb. (Chaucer has a character "go to take a piss" in one of his Tales