Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

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Tal G in Jerusalem
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Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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Thursday, February 21, 2002
20:33 - Freedom and Liberty and Boobs	(top)
Something that struck me while I was in Toronto: The US is pretty darn puritanical. In Canada, as Hiker told me, they're allowed to show bare breasts on network TV as long as it's after 9PM. At midnight we flipped past a show that had something I'd honestly never seen before, even in R-rated movies: full frontal male nudity. "The Penis Puppeteers", or something like that. It was brought home immediately to me just how much we censor ourselves in the US-- it seems completely alien to us to see female nudity outside a movie or HBO, or male nudity under any circumstances. Why is this? Why do we claim to be the nation that has the most freedom on earth, and yet we whip out the flaming crosses if we see a bared nipple or if someone nearby smells of marijuana smoke? If I were more cynical and Huxleyish, I'd say it's all part and parcel to the idea that what Americans crave is material freedom-- the right to have guns in the house in case the tanks start rolling through the streets-- while the freedom that Europeans and Canadians and Japanese enjoy is more the kind of stuff that keeps people happy but harmless. You know, soma for the mind-- pornography, drugs-- the things that keep people engrossed in their own worlds and unconcerned with issues like government trends and censorship. Americans will forego easy and legal access to weed and bare breasts on TV, if it means they get to keep their free speech and their guns. We'll even toy with prohibition of alcohol-- but we won't entertain the notion of mucking with the rights that we think really matter. But that's really not what I think. These are just thoughts that came to my head on the way home tonight, and I thought they'd make for an interesting set of thought experiments for anyone who feels like testing whether they hold any water or not. I'm fully aware that anything I've said in the preceding paragraph can probably have more holes poked in it than all my combined readers have fingers. But that's really my point, I guess-- think about it. Disprove it, prove it, argue against it, argue for it. See what aspects of real life bear it out and which ones contradict it. I know it's got me all blurry now, thinking about whether it's better to have the human liberty of Amsterdam, or the political liberty of Atlanta.