mrdennis

Privacy… is the grass greener?

mrdennis — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:56:58 +0000

When it comes to privacy, we all want it and arent comfortable without it. There are always different ways to approach privacy. In England Privacy is a very difficult thing to define… sort of. They take in-home privacy very seriously. If you are in your home and not harming or affecting anyone else, you can preatty much do anything you want. Drugs, underage drinking, you name it, as long as it is out of sight from the rest of the public. So you may think, well thats the way it is supposed to be. And i would agree, but there is almost no laws against peeping toms and candid cameras. One night I was walking home from the pub and I saw a man in someones window, behind some bushes. Then as we got closer I saw what eh was doing, he was waching some poor women in her bedroom and he was masterbating. I just kept walking, but was so confused. The man looked at me and my friend, then went back to finishing the job at hand like it wasn't a big deal at all. So I asked a few English friends and apperantly, there arent any laws that prohibit that.

So yes, they have ideal privacy issues for you inside your home but you can be watched from the outside. Compare that to here in the US where you can't stare into someones window but you arent completely private. I dont know which I would choose, what would you pick?

The course as a whole

mrdennis — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:49:16 +0000

I think that I have learned a lot in this course over the semester. I had previous knowlege of a lot of these topics from classes i took at another school. But the blogging was different, in a good way. It isn't just learned material for a test then forgotten. If you have to blog about the topics every week it forces you to think annalytically about the topics and then actually tell others what you think. I remeber so much more from this course than I do from all my others. It may be because this was an interesting class, unlike every other Communication class there is.

My point is that this course made me think about the workd around me and made my create some ideas of my own. This is something that most classes are completely lacking. Its usually just information and nothing else. I would recommend this class to any one I know, and that is the first time I have ever said that.

Rating system is a bit too strict

mrdennis — Mon, 01 May 2006 00:43:14 +0000

Im not exactly sure how I feel about the Rating System that congress is proposing. There are some parts of it that make sense and dont seem to invade our freedoms as Americans. Then there are parts that are just dumb, they will never pass as laws and they do infringe on my freedoms.

The two parts I agree with are: To not allow websites to have words like 'telletubies' i the source codes so that when you 'google' it porn shows up. This is an obvious way to trick people and children to find porn. I agree that you should be able to see porn if you want to. But I also believe that you should be able to avoid porn if you want to. Also, i feel that it wouldn't be a bad idea to ensure that the websites homepages dont have any explicit material. For example, whitehouse.com seems like a government site, but its porn. But if there werent any explicit pictures on the homepage,it wouldnt be a big deal really.

Although the part that saws you will have to rate your site seems too pushy. It comes far to close to treading on my freedom. Also, it isnt necissary at all. If there are warnings as to what you are going to find on the next page, then why force people to categorize their websites? It makes no sense.

International Obscenity

mrdennis — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 02:13:25 +0000

When i was recently living in London, England I found out that pornogrpahy was essentially outlawed in the UK. Untill the EU came into effect. For those of you who don’t know the EU is the European Union, it is an agreement between 20 or so western european countries. It makes for easier travel between the countries, little or no tarrif on goods sold in other countries and it created the Euro, Europes currency.

What this means is that everything is easier to get from one country or another. In other countries, porn was legal and because of the EU, those pornographic materials can be distributed in other participating EU countries. So even though it was basically outlawed, now it is alive and well.

This is another example of the Global Village, the world is shrinking and getting more and more difficult to avoid other cultures. Even if the values of other cultures are completely contrary to yours, you can’t just outlaw them, you have to deal with them changing your cultures. The world of porn and obscenity will be interesting to watch as the world keeps getting smaller.

Easier said than done

mrdennis — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 03:12:53 +0000

While I'm sure that there have been a lot of posts similar to this one, but voicing my opinion is the reason we blog right? Obscene material is a very tough subject for a variety of reasons. First, the definition of obscene material doesn't really define what content is obscene, just what the concept of obscene is. It's really the same argument as 'is it porn or art' it really depends on your opinion, culture and context. So who is to say what is obscene and what isn't. For this reason you don't really have much legal ramifications when it comes to distributing obscene material (which is illegal). Also, you have to wonder where the First Amendment comes into play. Is it personal expression or is it art…? It's a really tough subject to pin down.

The next point I want to address is the fact that we live in a global community now. In years past it was easy to segregate one cultures values from another. People in Asia had completely different media, values and rituals from people in Europe. Now, living in the Global Village, cultures are merging, but also its so easy to find the overlaps of the cultures. For example, lets look at obscene porn, a hundred years ago it would have been almost impossible to find child pornography from Indonesia. But now all you have do is sit in your own home, spend some time and voila, illegal porn. But it isn't illegal there, so is it really illegal? Is it obscene?

My point is that obscene porn is almost impossible to define or to control. Wouldn't it be so much easier if humans were respectable upstanding citizens, then we would have to deal with this would we? But we don't live in a perfect world, so we have to, as a community and as the world as a whole, have to create definitions and laws to govern obscenity… easier said than done.

Con porn Myths, they make no sense.

mrdennis — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 01:08:12 +0000

The webpage of porn Myths is absurd. They are a series of off the wall ideas and lame excuses. To say that porn is for men who sincerely appreciate the female body is just crazy. You and I know why a guy watches porn, and its not to study the female form. While yes the female body is something to be appreciated, thats not why people
watch others having sex.

Or to say that if we didn't have porn we would do "bad things". So if I didnt have any porn to watch, i would kill people, steal things, vandalize buildings? I dont do any of these things because I have morals. Not even, I dont do them because they are just plain wrong. So to say that not having porn is a reason for crime and deviant behavoirs is just plain crazy.

over all the website was dumb for the lack of a better term. I disagree completely. or do I?

Three sweet blogs

mrdennis — Mon, 03 Apr 2006 00:56:19 +0000

Three blogs that i think that have been inciteful and consistent are Porn each day will get me and A, Rugby Winger, and sex is like spades… i am not gonna sit here and lie, i dont really read other peoples blogs all that often. There are 400 people in this classs with 2-3 blogs a week. i find it really overwhelming actually. there is too much to chose from. But i looked for interesting names and read some of their blogs, these three stood out to me. They seem to be doing well.

http://loc8ed.com/cpblogs/Porn_each_day_will_get_me_an__A_/

http://loc8ed.com/cpblogs/Rugby_Winger/

http://loc8ed.com/cpblogs/Sex_is_like_spades___/

Cybersex, is it sex and is it cheating?

mrdennis — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 03:50:00 +0000

I have taken a class before where the question was posed "Is engaging in Cyberporn equivelent to having sex?" and also "Is it cheating to engage in Cybersex?" The answer isnt any more clear now than it was in my other class. And it comes down to one thing, you. If you believe that it's cheating, then it's cheating. if you believe that it is actually sex, then it is. When Sex and Pornography are the topic of discussion, everyone will have a different oppinion. So I find it somewhat trivial to even try to define porn or decide if it is or isnt cheating/sex. In my oppinion, cybersex, in a purely text format isn't sex at all. It's really just people typing sexual things to eachother. So is talking dirty, sex? No. But the text of Cybersex can be combined with live feeds and pictures. This is, for me, where things turn grey. Because you are seeing someone else performing sexual acts on themselves while talking to you. I feel that this is much closer to sex, than other forms of cybersex. Also, this is where I start to feel like it's cheating. If your significant other was in a room with some one talking dirty and touching themselves, that would be cheating. So if you do that, but through a screen, is it realy that different?

How Am I Doing So Far…

mrdennis — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 03:26:52 +0000

After looking over the syllabus, I think that I have been keeping up with this class fairly well. I always have my posts in before midnight on Sunday and I have watched the lectures each week. I think that I deserve something like a B or B-… I know I’m not quite A quality, but my posts are always insightful and I think that they are getting better. I had a bit of trouble expressing my thoughts being that these blogs are so short. I think that I had trouble completing my thoughts. Also I haven’t really been linking my blogs to other websites I have looked at. So I can certainly put forth more effort in the second half and I will try to make my blogs better and do more than just the required two or three.

Porn Makes You Feel Good

mrdennis — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 03:26:21 +0000

Why is porn so addicting? It’s not that uncommon to hear about some one who is normal, then gets a hold of porn and completely changes. I remember a story about a Pastor that my Mom’s, friends, friends, of a friend knew, and he was a holy roller. Pastor of the church, a wife and two kids, yada yada yada. Then when the Internet came along and all of a sudden he had access to lots of porn. But the problem wasn’t that he had never seen porn before, the problem was that he had instant access to every kind of porn, from hardcore to crazy fetishes. Then he was hooked, it went from a once a night thing, to an all night kind of thing. Then it got worse and worse. He wound up divorcing his wife and getting fired from the church. Now maybe he was kinky at heart or had some specific weakness. But it seems that porn is somewhat addicting. Some times your looking for some good porn and you wind up looking at porn for an hour. But you really didn’t notice the time go by. I know that video games instill the sense of accomplishment and that in turn makes your brain release dopamine, which makes you feel good. So I wonder if porn has sort of the same effect?