Mags Blast iPad’s No-Nipples Policy

Apple’s no-nipples policy means fashion mags are censoring their iPad editions

I’m not sure what I think.

• I always appreciate somebody standing up for what they believe in.
• I hate censorship.
• I admit, I’ve got some anti-porn feelings. I do draw a line between depictions of sex in creative endeavors that require live humans and ones that don’t, i.e. in a book, painting, sculpture or even a realistic animation? Get graphic with your kinky self. In a movie,  internet video or photograph with actors/models doing these things for money? I get squiggy about that. From what I’ve read, I don’t like the way the porn industry treats its actors, particularly its women. Nobody’s looking out for them; I mean you don’t get voted into office as the politician who wants to “supervise porn.” But big business needs monitoring, and porn is huge business.  So, yeah, I tentatively appreciate somebody taking an anti-porn stand. (Note: I’m not talking about videos made by couples for sex therapy or sexual enhancement – people copulating on camera who would be doing it anyway doesn’t bother me, and though potentially titillating, those videos are not something I consider porn.)
• Just because something depicts body parts does not mean it’s porn, and America needs to lighten up about boobs (I gotta agree what the first writer says about breastfeeding).

It also gets into the question of if you develop a device, can you control the way it’s used? I’m tempted to say yes – it’s your invention – but if asked the same question about some practical items already in existence, I’d say no. Can Alexander Graham Bell set rules (yeah, from the grave) about what I can say on the telephone? Can the inventor of the television tell us what we can put on it? The inventor of digital cameras tell us what movies can be made? Does Al Gore get to decide what goes on the internet (just kidding!)?

The 20th and 21st century are all about communication – how we communicate, how quickly, from where to where – and it continues to raise some interesting questions about control.  True, a lot of communicators do not possess the same values I do, and that can lead to encountering things I would rather not see (and that I’d certainly rather my mythical children not see). On the other hand, a lot of controllers do not possess the same values I do, and as an artist, it terrifies me that they would stop me from communicating my ideas to the world. The fact that I know that the words I write would be censored in different places around the world for different reasons, in my mind, justifies my fear.

My verdict? And maybe this isn’t for the right reasons, but I’m OK with Steve Jobs outlawing porn aps on his iPad (and again, it’s not the sex. With the stories I write I have no business telling somebody else they can’t depict sex in their, uh, “artwork”). But I’m not OK with him censoring art/fashion photography in magazines. Maybe there’s a little inconsistency in that, but frankly, I’m still working out where, why, and how I draw my censorship line, because as much as we say “anything goes” on the internet, the reality is, I’ve never met anyone who still  meant that when you drag it down to the lowest depravities of human behavior (snuff? pedophilia? non-consensual sadism? is that really okay on the web?), and that means there is a line.

In other news of the weird, I took a phone poll today presented by Ronald Reagan’s grandson. The questions could only be answered yes and no, and ranged from the leading, “Do you want your taxes cut?” to the downright confusing (this is a paraphrase that is far less confusing that what was asked on the phone – I can’t remember the whole questions because it was long) “Obama’s health care plan would allow for abortions to be paid for through government sponsored health care. Do you think it’s fair to force taxpayers and businesses to pay for abortions?”

The whole survey was, in my opinion, a study in how you ask questions.

“Do you want your taxes cut?” Well… who doesn’t? But I said “no”  because that’s a stupid question. If there were zero consequences to having my taxes cut, sure I’d love that. But there are consequences to every action. What am I trading for my taxes? National debt? Social services? Which ones? Are we going to quit funding Title I schools? Environmental research? To ask a question without considering the consequences is misleading and creates false data.

As for the second one, I wanted to say “No… of course taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to pay for abortions.” But then I had to think about that one. It’s too broad. Example: a teenager gets napolied by a relative… can taxes pay for that abortion? I have no problem with that. So… to broadly answer “no” to the question is wrong. In most cases am I OK with my taxes paying for abortion? No. But the survey didn’t specify under what conditions the health care bill would allow them (I’m gonna  go out on a limb and say it likely specifies at least SOME conditions), but in answering “no”, I would be disagreeing with the bill – when I don’t know what the bill actually says. But the way the question was worded (and it was hecka-more confusing than I worded it) it begged the answer “no”.

The whole thing was a very frustrating and misleading study in how to ask questions in a survey and get the answers you want instead of the answers that people really think.

Two questions in the last set were “Are you male?” and “Are you over 50?” And all I could think was “Wow… you have a very narrow view of your constituency.” I used to be a Republican, but I feel like the party has completely given up on listening to any issues that are important to my generation. Segments of the Republican party seem to have ceased listening to anyone who isn’t Evangelical Protestant. Unfortunately the Texas Board of Education seems to be part of that group, and is doing its best to ignore my generation (and everybody else who isn’t on the extreme right) and indoctrinate the one after me.

Sorry for the political rant. I just get so frustrated sometimes. I know there are people who completely disagree with me, and your opinions are valid and I respect you as a human being even if you think separation of church and state means “teach any branch of Protestantism you want in the classroom”.

On a happy note, Go  New Jersey, the first state board of education to approve pagan holidays for a religious excused absence! See. The world may be crazy, my own SBOE may be FUBAR, but there is always light shining somewhere!

Why ‘The People Speak’ and the Zinn Education Project May Be Illegal in Public Schools

OK. So… you ever like what somebody’s trying to say and hate the way they’re saying it?

• Education needs serious reform: check!
• History class can (and should) be used as a call to social action: check!
• All history – what we did right as well as what we seriously screwed the pooch on, all the often twisted roads to how we got where we are now – should be taught: check!
• There is no such thing as a non-biased history lesson, so we might as well come right out and say “hey, this is biased”: check!
• Students should be taught to question everything: check!

These are the stated goals of the Zinn project, and I believe with my whole heart that these are incredibly admirable goals. Then I read the lesson plan that’s posted in the article, and while I disagree with nothing in there… well… I guess in my mind there’s such a thing as too biased.

“Unity” – what does that mean? As humans, we are naturally social and we group ourselves.  It’s how we survived as a hunter-gatherer culture whose enemies had better eyesight, bigger claws and thicker skin: we made tribes.

In modern American society, we don’t have the hunter-gatherer collective defending the tribe from panthers, but we have our facsimile standing under the Friday Night Lights watching the local boys defend the home field from the Neighbor HS Panthers. We want a group to root for, to love on, to defend. Take two people who normally wouldn’t say two words to each other, stick ‘em in a stadium, and they’re suddenly wearing similar dress, carrying the same symbols, chanting in unison, and then moshing in the same pit when a field goal sneaks through the uprights to win the game.

We do the same thing with countries that we do with high school football teams: we have symbols and pennants, colors and mottoes, and these things are used to promote tribe unity… and here’s where the idealogical divide seems to split apart, because the same things that are used to promote unity in the form of pride and loyalty (what conservatives typically emphasize, and two things I think are great) are also used to promote conformity and what I’ll call a tribal psychopathy (what liberals tend to emphasize, and two things that I have a huge problem with – and I’ll get to what I mean by tribal psychopathy in a minute).

I will stand by pride and loyalty as good things, provided they don’t swing to an extreme. Pride gives us the confidence to challenge ourselves and dare things that we otherwise wouldn’t. (“We’re going to contest and we’re taking on the bigger, richer schools of Houston – and we’re going to look GOOD doing it! ‘Cause we’re MHS Theater, and we’re awesome!”) And loyalty makes us give people a second chance when they screw up – and we all will screw up. We need loyalty.

On the other side…

Conformity is a mistreatment of members of your own tribe, and I don’t think I need to proselytize on why required (or even encouraged) group-think is bad anywhere outside of a mammoth-hunting party, a sports stadium, or a group artistic endeavor (good actors and techies know that the good of the play is more important than the good of the single performer – you don’t suddenly decide to do your own thing on opening night, no matter how good your idea is).  (Just like pride and loyalty can have their bad sides, conformity, used judiciously and thoughtfully, as much as it pains me to say, does have a good side).

So what is tribal psychopathy?

A psychopath is someone who is incapable of feeling empathy for other people or remorse for their actions against them. According to an article in the New Yorker, pyschopathy could affect up to 1% of American men (women are much less likely to utterly lack empathy… go figure), so it’s much more prevalent than people think and doesn’t usually result in serial killers. It does result in that ass who doesn’t care who gets hurt, as long as he gets what he wants. Problem is, with a psychopath, this guy’s not ignoring the feelings of others or somehow squashing his guilt, like most of us tend to assume… it never occurred to his brain to have those feelings. Psychopaths will sometimes seek out useful people to make “friends” with, but when it comes down to it, their tribes only ever have one person in it.

For the rest of us, though, somewhere along the way of developing our natural tribe mentality, we realize that if there is an “us”, then there must be a “them.” And those other tribes are competing with us for the world’s limited resources, like good hunting grounds… and oil. (And while there might be enough to go around for now, our children’s children’s children are going to have a problem, so we should be forward thinking and start staking claims to provide for our children’s futures.) And while, again, it’s very natural to look out for your own tribe, a tribal psychopath is someone who, while likely caring and loyal to people within his/her tribe, feels no empathy towards any other tribes and no guilt for any actions performed against them.

I think tribal psychopathy is not only a lot more common than regular psychopathy (and if you know 100 men, according to some psychologists, you know a psychopath. As a schoolteacher who averaged 100 new students per year, every two years, I taught a psychopath. So…. it wasn’t me! It was them!) but tribal psychopathy is, to an extent at least, socially accepted. Certainly a lot more accepted than the Tribe Me form of psychopathy.

So… back to the article that you probably forgot about since I haven’t mentioned it in ten years… it seems to me, that Zinn is trying to get rid of tribal psychopathy (which is a bad thing that we should get rid of) by getting rid of tribalism. “Imagine all the people, living life as one…” and all that.

I don’t think it’s going to work. I think rejecting tribe goes against the core of human nature, because everyone but psychopaths have a tribe. (Showtime even gave Dexter tribal vestiges so audiences would like him. Imagine Dexter without his confusion over his wife, father, sister, and adopted kids. Yeah. Suddenly he ain’t so cool.) Some people might say they have no tribe, but if you study them, they’ve redirected their tribal loyalties onto an idealogical clique. For example, “I’m an artist/scientist/member of ‘x’ religious group/etc., not beholden to country but to mankind… and my fellow artists/scientists/members of ‘x’ religious group/etc.” Surprisingly, I sometimes find ideological tribes to be the most hateful of others because they (a) often don’t realize that’s a tribe, (b) justify rejecting people whose tribes are anything but ideological in nature as unenlightened or uneducated, and (c) can get the hate on in a spectacular fashion for tribes who are ideologically not aligned with their own – a difference in geography is nothing compared to a difference of opinion on gun control. My favorite true life quote ever of this type was, “I hate Republicans because Republicans hate people.” Seriously? Would you listen to what you just said?

Anyway, everyone has a tribe – probably multiple tribes – and it isn’t all of humanity.  Tribalism is an inherent part of human nature. Tribal psychopathy, however, isn’t inherent to all humanity – a lot of people love their tribe without forgetting the sovereignty and potential efficacy of other tribes – which means we can combat tribal psychopathy. But we need to work with human nature instead of trying to change human nature. Don’t tell people not to group; you’ll fail. Make it not acceptable inside your group to hate other groups. That I’ve seen be successful. Wave that flag… and make sure it stands for something worthwhile. That’s the way to a better humanity.

Steve Faber from his article in Script Magazine called Mining for Real Comedy in a Techno-Virtual Lexicon Pit:

Arlie Hochschild from his article in The New York Times called The State of Families, Class and Culture:

In survey after survey, Americans show up as valuing marriage more than people almost anywhere else. Yet at the same time we have the highest divorce — and romantic breakup — rate in the world… Children born of married parents in America face a higher risk of seeing them break up than children born of unmarried parents in Sweden… The culprit is not the absence of family values, I believe, but a continual state of unconscious immersion in a market turnover culture. It is this that sets us apart from a more stable Europe.

Not a quote, but if you’ve got a little under and hour and want to see something really cool and hopeful, Rick Steves goes to Iran.

And in case you want to see something less hopeful… you know it’s bad when John Stewart can’t make it all funny: Rape-Nuts.

A totally random new book technology thing called Vook that I’d dying to try. And for $6.99? I guess that’s cheaper than death.

And finally, save Dollhouse! Catch up on hulu.com and keep tuning in!

When I was younger, I had a strong environmentalist bent. I bought “rainforest crunch” to save trees, promoted recycling in a town that didn’t have a recycling program, and marched in parades with BSET, the Boerne Student Earth Team. Somewhere around the age of 15, however, I was already an apostate. I’d gotten the distinct impression I was being lied to, or at least that extremism was being presented as facts, and as much as I’d love a healthier planet, without real facts, I wasn’t sure anymore that anything I did was actually helping. Any dissension I voiced was viewed as heretical by my compatriots, and eventually I left the group, vowing to do what I could on my own, but I couldn’t march when I felt like half the time I didn’t know what I was marching for.

And so I continue to this day, hanging on the fringes of the environmental movement, never really allowed in due to my doubts about global warming, belief that corn for fuel when there’s a world-wide food shortage is unethical (along with a few zillion other problems I have with ethanol, but that’s a different post), and thoughts that maybe it wouldn’t be horrible to spend money on clean coal technology, recovering shale oil, or safely extracting Crystal Methyl Hydrates. It’s not like humanity is going to quit using electricity for the sake of the planet (and, to be honest, whether or not it’s better for the planet, I don’t want to give it up, either), so it seems to me that exploring cleaner and less Middle-East-Dependent avenues of fossil fuels while people like my husband work on solar technology is a good thing.

So with my experiences, when my friend Ginger sent me an article called Global Warming as Religion, I found it quite humorous and true to my experiences. Granted, author John Brignell is not presenting a scientific treatise (though he is defending science) with documentation and source quoting, but that doesn’t detract from the amusement. Besides, he uses the word troglodyte, and any article that uses the trog is automatically cool in my book. So, if you’ve got a few minutes (it’s not exactly short), check it out. He’s got some good points. If you don’t, here my favorite quote from it that I feel needs to be repeated: “There is no fundamental clash between faith and science – they do not intersect. The difficulties arise, however, when one pretends to be the other.”

WTH? I’ve heard several people saying things like we shouldn’t discuss social issues in the classroom because the government should stay out of education. Um… the government runs education, unless you didn’t notice that public school is paid for by taxes and not directly from your pocket like private school or homeschool. At which point you can pay to send your kids to whatever weapons stock-piling, Kool-Aid drinking commune you want. Not that most private/home schools are like that. A lot of them are really cool, but, you know, if you don’t like the society you are a part of, you can find private education that caters to your particular breed of madness.

So, if you are still seriously concerned about the dangerous and subversive messages that the President is secretly sending to the youth of America with his socialist rally on Tuesday, I have discovered the ultra-secret hiding place of all the materials – including the speech and lesson plans, I mean lesson propaganda – that Obama is imprinting your children with through that hotbed of liberal thought known as public schools. It’s on WhiteHouse.gov. It takes 1 or 2 clicks to get to from the front page, depending on how you get there. Practically classified.

I’m sorry, do I sound bitter? I usually try to reign in my more caustic comments, but this just, well, it really pissed me off. The labels we carry – our political party, our self-identified race, our nationality, our religion, our jobs – these things are pieces of who we are, but the pervasive idea that you can disseminate all that a human is from a couple labels and then mark everything they do as evil or good because of it is destructive to the human race. All politicians aren’t evil. All liberals aren’t conniving. All Christians aren’t condemning you to Hell. All Muslims aren’t violent. All Americans aren’t money-grubbing, over-sexed, culturally insensitive morons. Some? Sure. All? Heck no. Our upbringing colors our opinions of everything, but people – and therefore groups – change. What was ten years ago, is probably not true today. For the love of God and Humanity, give people a chance before you condemn them. Don’t look for the worst, because you will find it even if it isn’t there.

And then where will we be?

Apparently our nation likes casual, funny, honest, passionate, and biting more than ponderous fear-mongering and ad-naseum redundancy. That’s not the part I consider a bad sign. The part that’s bad is that, well, the person we most like to get our news from… claims he’s not a newscaster.

I would actually disagree with him, but it seems to me a sign of the times that America’s favorite newscaster doesn’t come from the traditional news establishment. We need to take a serious look at what we as a nation are holding on to “’cause that’s the way it’s always been done!” and what actually works. And we certainly don’t need to start a “new establishment” of copy-cats trying to imitate what’s popular. Our favorite newscaster works because he is a smart man doing what he loves and saying what he believes, not because he followed a trend.

I guess what I’m saying is that the world will become a better place as more people feel empowered to follow their hearts, instead of following the crowd. I hope that every day you find time to pursue being the person you want to be!

Wow.

I was just thinking about this yesterday (before I saw the quote today), how every group is represented not by the best people, but by the loudest people. An example. I remember having a conversation once regarding homosexuality. The other person said something to the effect of, “Well, there must be something abberant about it; look at all those people marching in parades with leather thongs on.” And she gave a couple more examples of more extreme behavior. And while I don’t see anything weird about being gay, I have to admit, I think it’s weird to wear a leather thong in public. (Not that “weird” is an evil thing; if you have a desire to do something that I or anybody else considers “weird” and it’s not hurting anybody, get on with your bad self. Just, also, don’t be mad if I continue to think it’s weird. You can think things I do are weird. I promise not to get offended.)

So, anyway, her logic ran “I’ve seen lots of weird behavior by gay people. Being gay must therefore be weird.” Not terrible logic, but the flaw is exactly what I told her next. “You’re talking about a marginalized group. The people that don’t want to be perceived as “weird” are not marching. Or they’re in the center of the pack wearing sunglasses and a hat so that their number is represented, but their boss / family / pastor / whoever doesn’t see them. The people you see are the ones who don’t care what you or anybody else thinks. Those people are also more likely to wear a leather thong in public.”

Not everybody’s going to be as “you go with your weird self” as I am, and so the 10,000 are judged by the “socially unacceptable” actions of the 10.

I think Christianity lately has gotten a really bad rap for this same thing. (This is why I was thinking about it yesterday; my dad and I talked about faith for a little while while he was helping me tile my shower, and it was a cool conversation; my dad’s a pretty amazing guy. Anyway, back on topic.) Here we have a faith with millions of people doing Habitat for Humanity and Meals on Wheels and going to church and living good, quiet lives. And then we have Jerry Falwell, the loud one, with his infamous quotes such as:

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped [9/11] happen.’”

I’m on that list like three times. All but the most extreme conservatives knows and likes somebody on that list. And then your average American, reeling from this attack promoted by blind, prejudicial, religious hatred (and I’m talking about 9/11 there… ) is gonna draw an easy comparison between “My version of Islam or die” and Mr. Falwell.

And then then 10,o00 look like zealots because of the accusations of the 10.

This is my rationale for going against most members of my faith regarding issues like prayer in school. I think we should encourage expression in all it’s forms, and instead of shutting it down, we should simply make sure that more forms get a voice. Pray at graduation. Just make sure there’s 3 or 4 short prayers, maybe a Christian, an Islamic, a Buddhist, and a humanist (I guess that wouldn’t be a prayer, but a “good vibe address”). Let people see a sample of the beautiful diversity of the school’s student body. Pray before a game, but each week let a different faith group lead it (and Baptist this week, Fundamental Baptist next week doesn’t count as different – and I realize that’s where the problem with my ideal is gonna come in). But the world needs to see this. The 10,000 must speak.

I’ve challenged myself to not be “in your face” about it, but to be more open about who I am and what I believe, not because I want to “convert” anybody to my way of thinking, but because the more we can be honest with each other about the fact that we’re all different, the more understanding and united this world can be. Remember the rule of 10. Don’t let the wrong people be the only ones heard.

So in that line of thought, now you know that I:

1. play paper and dice games. Yes, I’m a gamer. Though it’s not my favorite system, I have played Dungeons and Dragons many times, and playing a rogue/sorcerer is my specialty. Check out Eden’s Unisystem if you want to see something really cool.
2. am 32 and still afraid of rollercoasters
3. have never smoked pot, but would vote for its legalization
4. think babies are ugly (except Avery; she’s perfect in every way. Even Seas, my devil cat, likes her)
5. love Britney Spears and am developing a serious fascination with Lady Gaga (who also wears completely inappropriate clothes in public)
6. was a virgin when I got married
7. write romance novels!!
8. listened to Rush Limbaugh religiously when I was in high school (yes, you can do that and still grow up normal)
9. practice Eclectic Wicca
10. worked on George W. Bush’s original gubernatorial campaign and voted for him the first time he ran for president. It was the last time I voted Republican in a major election. (To clarify, YES, I voted for Obama. Don’t hate who I was, love who I am. I’m promoting honesty and diversity here. *sheepish grin**)

What’s your list?