Weekend Feasts, Jammin', ROUS, Teh Stupid

[tcpip]

You know you've had weekend feasts when you weigh 2.5kgs more on Monday morning than you did on Saturday morning. Last weekend included an excellent and well-attended Christmas cocktail party with magnificent food hosted by txxxpxx, who deserves a medal for her efforts (and Mr.Pxxx too!). Spent much of the evening chatting to severina_242, horngirl, recumbenteer among others, including usekh, who was very entertaining. Following day was the Unitarian's christmas gathering; whilst I have a similar distate for such tunes as caseopaya (although my opposition is more towards humour than revulsion), the performance of the singers and Therese Virtue's choir was very good. Oh, and more food followed.

Other weekend events included working on Saturday, consisting of separating our mail and mailman/web servers and moving the former to Zimbra. On Sunday played through more of D3: The Vault of the Drow. The DM explained over dinner the complete lack of structure in the module; I haven't read through it yet, but he's doing a reasonable job under the circumstances. Currently debating with myself over what gaming to do next year. High on the agenda is a "classic RuneQuest" consisting of Borderlands, Pavis and Big Rubble which are undoubtably among the best gaming supplements of all time. Looking forward to imajica_lj's offer to run Call of Cthulhu's Masks of Nyarlathotep which, from all accounts, is pretty damn fine as well.

An excellent act of culture jamming against those wanting to block the ACTs Civil Partnership Bill (protected, essentially go here and use their resources to say what you really think). Rodents of Unusual Size (from gevauden. Please stop the stupid (again). Under a new German law, a 15-year-old who posts a picture of herself in a bikini on the internet would be guilty of disseminating pornography.

Comments

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

The shame from an unphotographed act can more easily fade with time than one where the evidence can be dug up and made fresh at a moment's notice.

Certainly, of the act in question is relevant. (I am thinking here of the This in part is noted in the Ferber decision (New York vs Ferber 1982), that prohibits the production, distribution and exhibition of real children in actual or simulated sexual acts.

In that decision, it is not the content per se as such that is deemed worthy of censorship (as viewing child pornography does not make one a pedophile or incite such acts) but rather the harm to individual's reputation by its public exhibition and circulation.

[demonhellfish.livejournal.com]

Notwithstanding issues of reputation, of course a photographic record has moral relevance! A camera captures the soul, and trafficking in souls should be illegal!

As absurd as that idea is, I think it's important inasmuch as the particulars of laws are a stochastic sampling of the distribution of ethics of a legislative jurisdiction. As such, rational coherence can't be expected as an observation, but instead, any psychological predilection can bias the observability of a mores (Yes, I'm abusing Latin grammar.).

In particular, child pornography is a sufficiently emotionally charged topic, with sufficiently low probability, that the exact specification of rules about it have fairly low pragmatic selective pressure. That is, gut reactions matter more, and there is a very real gut reaction about photographs. The magic of the photo does matter as to what laws are passed.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

*nods* Which does explain, for example, why there isn't a prohibition on photographs of victims in Nazi concentration camps, but - in certain states - there is a prohibition on Nazi symbolism.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Damn, I just confirmed Godwin's Law and we weren't even arguing!

[zey.livejournal.com]

I've always thought Godwin's Law was horribly over-rated. When there's a clear cut example to use that everyone can relate to, why wouldn't you use it? ;-)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heheh.. Good point.

[zey.livejournal.com]

as viewing child pornography does not make one a pedophile or incite such acts

There's a nature versus nurture debate in that ;-).

On the nature side, there's an animal attraction in humans for other healthy post-puberty humans of all ages. On the nurture side, people know from the way they've been brought up that post-puberty humans under a culturally and legally agreed age are out of bounds due to the way our culture has evolved.

Child pornography can be argued to be a counter-culture influence which normalises the attraction to those under-age post-puberty humans and makes it easier for the paedophile to justify acting on their attraction to themselves. (That's all aside from the horrible industry which makes its money molesting these kids to produce the child porn in the first place.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

There's a nature versus nurture debate in that ;-).

*nods* We're both graduates in sociology ;-)

Child pornography can be argued to be a counter-culture influence which normalises the attraction to those under-age post-puberty humans and makes it easier for the paedophile to justify acting on their attraction to themselves

Sure, that's why I like the reasoning of the Ferber decision. It nips such claims in the bud. (Although, it is at least theoretically plausible that a person subject to the production of such material would give consent at an age of maturity to have it published on the grounds that they did not find it defamatory - as unlikely as this sounds!)