Web Log Archives: April 06, 2003 - April 12, 2003
Saturday, April 12, 2003
Scientific American: "According to a report published online today by the journal Science, reproductive cloning in rhesus monkeys is hindered by the absence of key proteins that control cell division and the splitting of chromosomes. The findings indicate that reproductive cloning of primates, including humans, is unachievable using current techniques. More.
Wired: "Giving new meaning to the term phone sex, a British company is selling software that transforms a cell phone into a sex toy. Vibelet.com's Purring Kitty software, launched last week, turns certain Nokia cell phones with vibrating ring capabilities into a 'discrete, vibrating massager.'"
Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch by internet filtering watchdog Benjamin Edelman.
Sundry Saturday silliness:
Links snagged from Peace Dividend, Reverse Cowgirl, Geisha asobi, Coolios, Attu Sees All.
Thursday, April 10, 2003
One of the blowhards at esteemed culture blog 2 Blowhards offers "a few musings after a short spell of porn surfing." Entertaining discussion follows in the comments.
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit by a Harvard law student seeking the right to reverse-engineer internet filtering software and publish a list of the sites blocked by the program. The ACLU had backed the case as a challenge to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which "forbids the dissemination of information that could be used to bypass copyright-protection schemes."
Joshua Glenn conducts a short interview with masturbation historian Thomas Laqueur, author of Solitary Sex.
A major survey of sexual practices and attitudes in Australia came out this week. The Sydney Morning Herald has several articles based on the survey findings:
Metafilter is talking about prostitution. The front page post includes fifteen links covering various aspects of the subject.
Playboy Enterprises is suing adult webmaster Mario Cavalluzzo over the domain sexcourt.com and the name "Sex Court", claiming Cavalluzzo's website infringes on the Playboy channel show of the same name. Cavalluzzo is countersuing Playboy, claiming his website came first and thus he deserves a cut from the TV show. The case is currently being argued before a jury in federal court in Brooklyn. So who thought of it first? Wednesday's testimony centered around the Internet Wayback Machine. "[Playboy attorney] Johnston said that the earliest entry on the Wayback Machine for Cavalluzzo's 'Sex Court' was January 1999, four months after Playboy aired the first installment of its cable show. But [Cavalluzzo attorney] Bostany has submitted evidence that the page was on the Internet by May 14, 1998."
As neato as the Internet Wayback Machine is, it's useless as evidence of when a page first appeared on the web. The first IWM record for the Daze Reader weblog is January 24, 2001, fifteen weeks after I started this site. More relevant: A WHOIS check (not mentioned in this article) shows the domain sexcourt.com was registered on September 16, 1998.
Wednesday, April 9, 2003
The second annual labia blogathon runs Wednesday and Thursday "to proclaim labia love, body acceptance and an end to the shame many girls feel about their genitals."
David Chess steers us to more Jane Austen-inspired fiction. Several years ago on alt.sex.stories, Mark Aster wrote an erotic continuation of Pride and Prejudice imagining Darcy and Elizabeth's wedding night. "I think, my Lady, that you have quite triumphed now in your ambitions. Prepare yourself, therefore, for the emergence of that ferocity of whose aspect you declare yourself so curious."
Now that every alt-weekly and lifestyle magazine has done a special "Sex Issue", other publications are getting into the act. The spring issue of literary journal Tin House is entitled, you guessed it, The Sex Issue — fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, interviews, all about sex. Mario Vargas Llosa contributes a piece called "Permanent Erection." The Tin House website has the table of contents and a few excerpts.
The one full piece available online is a hilarious interview with the anonymous mastermind behind Divine Interventions, home of the Jackhammer Jesus dildo and Baby Jesus Butt Plug, wherein he endears himself to the "Free Mickey!" crowd.
TB: What about hate mail?
N: That seems to come and go in waves, but if I've gotten any consistent backlash it's been from the Republicans. They're a group that seems to be quite short on humor. I received a letter from a lawyer who said he represented the pope. Well, I'm a lawyer too, and I know that you can't copyright Jesus. He's been dead for quite some time and the copyright laws are limited to 125 years when it comes to the likeness of a personage. Then it becomes part of the public domain. I ignored him and never heard another word.
Check out Divine Interventions if you're in the mood for some twisted erotic blasphemy.
Tuesday, April 8, 2003
Slow day on the sex news beat, but I've added several sites to the "Sex Blogs" blogroll in the sidebar.
Survival Research Labs is a robotic arts group based in the Bay Area. The SRL website describes their performances as "ritualized interactions between machines, robots, and special effects devices, employed in developing themes of socio-political satire," or more simply "the most dangerous shows on earth." They have just produced the official SRL Nudie Calendar featuring "naked SRL members paired with naked SRL machines." The fifteen-month calendar runs from April 2003 to June 2004. All proceeds go toward medical bills for an SRL member recently stricken with cancer.
Good Vibes editor Violet Blue is a member of SRL and appears in the calendar. She recently wrote about the calendar photo shoot and posted some wild teaser pics at her site Tiny Nibbles (second half of 3/15 entry, you'll have to scroll down). "See me in white panties engaged in a sloppy girl-girl scene with the sexiest machine in the world, the Running Machine."
Monday, April 7, 2003
Very sweet story (maybe too sweet, depending on your taste, but I enjoyed it): "Agnes Warner has seen three centuries, two Halley's comets — actually, the same one twice — and eight great-grandchildren. . . . So when Edie Barr, the recreation director of the Chelsea at East Brunswick, the assisted living facility where Mrs. Warner now lives, asked what she wanted for her 105th birthday today, her answer was at the ready: a date." Four bachelors aged 85 to 94 vied for the honor.
Wai Wai ran a three-part series last week on "schoolgirls' decade of decadence . . . where schoolgirls turned from demure, bobby-soxed innocents to insatiable sex workers contributing by some estimates as much as 65.3 billion yen to Japan's underground economy." Part one: Panty sales have punters panting; part two: Girls go from boom to boom-boom; part three: From floozies to free rides.
The German town of Erfurt, in hopes of luring tourists, is distributing condoms in wrappers depicting its landmark medieval cathedral.
Barbara Lippert at Ad Week discusses the notorious Miller "cat fight" TV spot and the swill-brewer's followup plans.
Although the Mideast conflict has produced a schizophrenic TV universe (with some networks and stations operating as if nothing has changed), perhaps the war's most surprising media casualty so far is Pamela Anderson.
The latest word from Miller is that the star's much-awaited spot has been temporarily bobbed. Naturally, if you're appealing to the boobeoise by showing bikinied women at work in the water, you might as well go to the great master. Nevertheless, it seems that showing girl-on-girl-on-girl pillow fights (six breasts, no waiting) was deemed to be in bad taste while our military is battling it out in Baghdad.
The "cat fight" ad is also off the air for the duration. Lippert dissects three other followup ads in the works. In one sequel,
The tables are turned and the fighters are hunky men—the kind of hot young guys with 'fros who look like they'd get thrown off American Idol for passing bad checks. They're about to fight when one of them pulls back and says, "I'd like to create a friendship where we support each other's growth." By the end, he's taken his top off, saying, "This shirt is chafing me."
Funny and insightful column, worth reading in full.
City Pages (the Minneapolis/St. Paul alt-weekly) ran their Sex Issue recently with various pieces about sex toys and dating.
Sunday, April 6, 2003
Why doesn't paying someone to have sex on film fall under prostitution laws? And why is the adult film industry so concentrated in California? Adult media industry lawyer (and proud owner of the domain firstamendment.com) Lawrence Walters presents a legal history lesson.
Jean Roberta reviews The Lesbian Sex Book at Erotic Readers and Writers Association (longer review than the one linked last week at Technodyke).
Wai Wai reports on tough times for Japanese "soaplands" ("the name given to brothels where customers are served by women who wash and cover them with suds before going all the way"). One soapland owner says:
Everybody says the ejaculation industry is immune to bad times, but that's a myth. The past one or two years have been awful. We'll have some girls on a weekday early shift who go home without having seen a single customer.
I really hope the phrase "ejaculation industry" catches on. The day I read the words "ejaculation industry" in the New York Times or hear "ejaculation industry" spoken on CNN, I will know my work here has not been in vain. The soapland owner continues:
The war on Iraq has almost killed us. Business has gone down 40 percent since the first attack. We can't do anything about it now it's started, but I hope they hurry up and get the job done.
I can't for the life of me figure out why war in Iraq would affect business at a Japanese brothel.
