Web Log Archives: January 19, 2003 - January 25, 2003
Saturday, January 25, 2003
Seattle Weekly reviews several recent books of cultural history, including studies of intoxication, chocolate, toilets, beards, penises, corsets and farts.
The Straight Dope answers the question: Do Eskimo men lend their wives to strangers? "Sorry to disappoint, but the Eskimos have gone and let Christianity ruin a beautiful thing. Since the coming of the missionaries, that sort of thing just doesn't happen any more. Besides which, it never really worked quite the way a certain sixteen-year-old used to imagine."
Emily Nagoski presents a beginner's guide to polyamory.
National Geographic has produced its first swimsuit issue.
The e-card generator doesn't seem to be working, but it's still worth checking out these cute little bunny rabbits. (Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Friday, January 24, 2003
Wired has a story on the internet porn industry's attempts to turn filesharing users into paying customers.
Hunter's company has developed software that helps content providers put their legitimate versions of material being pirated onto the file-share networks in such a way that it overwhelms the pirated versions of the same material.
The software also influences the search engines of Kazaa, Gnutella and Limewire so that if a user searches certain keywords, they'll be more likely to find the legitimate version of the file they're seeking and download that.
When users try to open up the legitimate editions, though, they may be forced to pay for it and be sent to the porn company's homepage, or they may be allowed to watch it for free provided they ask for identifying information the company can use later for marketing purposes.
The Wired story presents this as a clueful alternative to the music industry's approach: treating filesharing users as potential customers rather than criminals. But this approach also sounds very similar to the music industry tactic of flooding the KaZaa network with bogus, intentionally corrupted versions of popular new releases. In both cases, the industry hopes to render the filesharing network useless for finding free stuff, so that casual users will give up and go buy product instead. Different, but not all that different.
One music official said privately that porn customers are seeking an immediate gratification that they'll pay for, whereas music consumers aren't quite so desperate for their fix.
On the other hand, porn customers have less specific wants. Someone searching KaZaa for, say, Eminem's four cuts from the 8 Mile soundtrack wants those exact files; he probably won't settle for stuff by other white rappers who hate their mothers. Pornhounds are more likely to search generally for material that suits their tastes, without being so intent on acquiring specific files.
Daze Reader is a little behind the curve on this story. The Bush administration appointed Jerry Thacker, a gay-bashing religious wacko, to the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.
In his speeches and writings on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a "deathstyle" rather than a lifestyle and asserted that "Christ can rescue the homosexual." After word of his selection spread among gays in recent days, some material disappeared from the Web site. Earlier versions located by The Washington Post that referred to the "gay plague," for instance, were changed as of yesterday to "plague."
Once the controversy broke, the White House vehemently disavowed Thacker's views, and Thacker withdrew his nomination. One of the other new Commission nominees says, "This is like putting a Dixiecrat on the Civil Rights Commission, and you just can't do that. For a president who I think has been much better on gay issues than people assumed, it sends a bad signal." Today's San Francisco Chronicle story includes this disturbing passage:
A number of sources close to the council said the Thacker nomination was pushed by the council's controversial executive director, Pat Ware, an African American woman allied with the Family Research Council and other conservative Christian groups and a vocal proponent of abstinence as an AIDS prevention method. Ware referred media calls to the White House.
A member of the council said Ware has made several comments to gay members of the council suggesting that gay white men are responsible for infecting the African American community with AIDS. Others confirmed that Ware and her allies among conservative Christian groups have promoted that theory.
Ugh.
Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was first published in 1953. "Indiana University, which fostered the research, marks the book's 50th anniversary in 2003 with a yearlong series of art exhibitions, film festivals and lectures exploring women's health and sexuality, the arts, science and history." This AP article surveys Kinsey's career and the contemporary reception of Sexual Behavior in the Human Female.
A group of Lubbock, Texas, high school students addressed a local school board meeting last night to call for better sex education. "Sex: students feel the three letter word is being treated more like a four letter word in L.I.S.D. Since 1995, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases have skyrocketed in Lubbock County. Students say that should be a wake up call to change the current curriculum, which is only abstinence based."
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Go visit noodle town and check out the brilliant noodoll sutra.
Tim Sullivan on new sexual openness in India. "The images, these days, are everywhere: the beer company calendar with Indian models spilling out of bikinis, the Hindi movie with couples wrapped passionately together, the magazine offering frank sexual advice. It's pretty tame stuff, or would be if this were New York or Paris. But this is India, where kissing remains a seldom-broken movie taboo, Playboy can only be found on the black market and homosexuality remains, for the most part, quietly in the closet."
Sydney Morning Herald: "Thousands of people in Sydney's inner-west could be free to turn their homes into a brothel - as long as they don't advertise. Under a controversial plan in front of Marrickville Council next month, prostitutes in the area will no longer have to apply for development consent if they want to work from home. . . . Under the plan, only one prostitute would be allowed per home, a situation the sex industry says would put workers at risk of assault from clients. Advertising - such as shining a red light or blacking out windows - would be banned." (Link snagged from Six Different Ways.)
Good Vibrations has opened a new store in San Francisco, "sandwiched between two beauty salons across from a Christian Science Reading Room on Polk Street."
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
Aspiring pornstars should check out these two articles by Dave Cummings: How To Be A Porn Star and Other Avenues into the Porn Industry. (Thanks, cowgirl.)
About once a week, I get some variation of this email:
I want to start a porn career. However, I don't know what to do. Could you please help me.
Hello I am a 19 year old make who is intereted in working in the adult industry. Coould you please tell me how I can get started
I desperately need your help. I'm a big beautiful female trying to break into the porn industry. However, I have no clue how to begin. Please help me. waiting for you to write back.
I'm intrested in a tryout cesion. I'm a 19 yr old male. I'm hoping to have a shot please write back.
Would you know of a site in which I can contact someone that would be intereasted in amitures for porn tryouts? I am looking into getting into the business.
hi , how are you?good i hope.i was looking at some of your movies and i like them.i was hoping you could help me out? by telling me where i might be able to make a few movies.i am in good shape and looks.i have always dreamed of being in a movie. where i am dressed like a women and my car broke down.then a bunch of guys stop to help me.i tell them i am not gay and just doing this for a dare i lost.they dont care and show me what its like to be a women???????
hello i was wondering what exactly do i need to do to get in to the porn business, who do i contact, what cities do i need to go to etc.. thanks
So just for the record: I have no fucking idea.
The ShanMonster recounts her battle with Candidiasis in humorously excruciating detail.
Great site just added to the "sex blogs" sidebar: Raymi the Minx. Also check out some of Raymi's pieces at Rocketpack:
I think Daze has a little crush on Raymi.
Cloning crackpots update: The Washington Post last week ran an interview with Rael, founding guru of the Raelians. This week, Rael addressed followers in Montreal and admitted that the human cloning claims might be a hoax. "If [Clonaid director and Raelian bishop] Brigitte Boisselier has done it, she has achieved a wonderful thing and should receive a Nobel prize. If it isn't true, it's the most beautiful scientific joke but, in any case, it has allowed us to communicate our messages to the whole planet."
Meanwhile, Italian mad scientist/fertility doctor Severino Antinori has gone on hunger strike, accusing the Italian authorities of persecuting him for his human cloning projects. "From now on I am not eating anything until Prime Minister [Silvio] Berlusconi meets me and gives me guarantees that Italy is still a free country for science and for me."
The third notable cloning project is run by Michael Zavos of Kentucky, USA. His personal website has a photo of "Dr. Zavos sitting at Dan Rather's anchor desk at the CBS News Studio during his recent visit at CBS," so you know he's legit. I'm really tempted to steal that neat background tile for the next Daze Reader redesign.
Tuesday, January 21, 2003
This site collects 125 scans of Swedish sex book covers from the 1920s through 1980s. (Link snagged from the reverse cowgirl.)
Tracy Quan reviews the latest stripper memoir, Bare: On Women, Dancing, Sex, and Power by Elisabeth Eaves.
Bazima writes about dating through the Nerve personals.
wKen is running for president and has adapted the shaved "G" Gucci ad as a campaign poster.
Anil Dash unleashes a spirited rant about the marketing of diamonds. "Any one of these ads might be amusing, even charming, on its own. But there are dozens of them, all based on these same idiotic, dysfunctional archtypes. 'Carve the turkey any way you damn well please.' Think about the number of assumptions there. A shrill harpie of a wife, so overbearing that she's prone to criticizing her husband's turkey carving, yet so inept that she can't carve the turkey herself because it's a man's job. A henpecked, spineless cad of a husband, so hapless that he accepts her orders to portion the poultry but then holds onto the resentment of her criticisms of his effort. A relationship so broken and twisted that his purchase of a blood-tainted rock from a monopolist cartel would appease her superficiality enough to get her to relent from her sniping at his performance of a trivial act. And this seems like a bargain because this man is so emotionally worthless that he couldn't just say, 'Hey, if you want me to carve the turkey, you should probably be less critical of how I do it.'"
Monday, January 20, 2003
Brian Grazer and Ron Howard are producing a documentary about the cultural impact of Deep Throat. The film will be directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, who previously made Monica Lewinsky in Black and White for HBO and the six-hour Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization for Channel 4. Grazer says, "I find the actual movie and Linda's story less interesting than I do that moment in society where something ignites enough curiosity that it is like splitting an atom. That single movie popularized pornography. It became the catchphrase in the Watergate scandal, it broke down all kinds of walls."
The Scotsman reviews an Annie Sprinkle performance and workshop in Glasgow. (Link snagged from World Sex News.)
The California Supreme Court will hear another round in the Sex.com legal battle soon. The key issues are whether a domain name can be considered property and whether Network Solutions (now Verisign) should be held financially responsible for helping a conman steal the domain in 1995.
Newsweek interviews Joan Irvine, executive director of Adult Sites Against Child Pornography, about the Pete Townshend arrest, the international child porn crackdown and her organization's goals.
Researchers from the Kinsey Institute say that modern women have less sex than their 1950s counterparts. Dr John Bancroft, the institute's director, says, "People don't have as much sex as they used to. Couples are often weighted down by double careers and childcare, and by the time people have been to the shopping mall and watched all the television they want, there is not much time for sex. We live in an age where there is little unfilled leisure time. Sex used to fill that gap."
Fairfax County (Virginia) plans to send out surveys to high school students about sex, alcohol and drug use, suicide, weight loss and family relationships. "But some members of the county Board of Supervisors, which is paying for the survey, want to drop the section on sex, saying it could give teenagers ideas. Others want to rephrase those questions so they don't suggest that such behavior is all right. Still others contend that, as awkward as it can be, asking students about sex will yield useful information."
Express and Star: "Firefighters were called to a branch of Ann Summers [sex shop chain] - after a shopper became trapped in a pair of handcuffs. A fire engine and crew of six arrived at the store in Dudley Street, Wolverhampton, to release the red-faced woman and a crowd gathered at the shop door as the firefighters got to work with a hacksaw."
