Re: META: Watch the subject lines, people!

From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Mon Feb 14 2000 - 10:15:48 MST


It appears as if Neal Marin <shikarivivasi@yahoo.com> wrote:
|
|--- Sasha Chislenko <sasha1@netcom.com> wrote:
|> You are big boys and girls already, you should not
|> hide from
|> parents anymore with printed word "sex".
|
|*ahem* I don't know about everyone else on this list,
|but I'm fourteen and five feet short

You forgot to add the clause "and am located in a territory where the local
legislation and culture considers humans of that age minors". In others, that
is not necessarily the case, you know.

Length is irrelevant, as technology can always correct length insufficiency.

|>And you
|> should have
|> brought up your own kids to be free (otherwise, why
|> the hell
|> did you produce them?).
|I didn't know people produced children; I thought they
|gave birth to them.

The "giving birth" method, the traditional method, is not necessarily the
sole method of offspring production.

Let me assure you that the parents actually and definitely _produce_ the
offspring from their gametes, even though the phrase "giving birth" might
indicate that it somehow just ``happens'' or that the local god visits
young brides and makes them pregnant. If this fact offends you, feel free
to ignore it (the fact will not go away, however).

[...]
|It is pretty much naturally engrained into parents
|that they need to protect their children from certain
|things, sex being one of them. It is a social thing
|more than a natural thing, I think, but one that is
|none the less very present. I know; often enough I see
|my parents hastily switching channels when my little
|sister enters the room.

YOU ARE IN ERROR.

The American obsession with sex appeared very late in history. There exists
no proof of "naturally engrained" parents to protect their children from sex.
In fact, the opposite has been mainly the norm throughout history.

I suggest you control your historical and scientific sources.

**** THOSE UN-INTERESTED IN A RANT WILL WANT TO SKIP TO THE "END OF RANT" TEXT,

<RANT>

Why should the American obsession with sex define the moral of the world?
OK, so you have a nation with weird sexual mores.. Why should *I* care?
In *this* country we have sex education for kids in school. So? Big deal.

Should we stop discussing beer so our brethren in Saudi-Arabia, where ethanol
is a controlled substance, will not become imprisoned?

Should we stop discussing politics so our brethren in random dictatorships,
where discussing politics makes you an enemy of the State, will not become
imprisoned, tortured, and killed?

We have to draw a line somewhere. I say we should do it here and now.

Q: What can we discuss if any sundry sepcial circumstance of some weird local
   custom and even weirder local laws are taken into account?

A: NOTHING RELEVANT.

This censorship-related meme would have little significance if it not happened
to exists in a nation with a planet-wide military force armed with nuclear
weapons, and an extremely well-oiled propaganda apparatus to further its memes.

Thus, any weird meme from the U.S. can easily propagate around the planet in
no time, up to and including such highlights as The A-Team, Oprah Winfrey,
root beer, and marshmallows.

Remember various previous weird meme complexes which have swept around:

  o ``We must stop masturbation! It makes you feeble-minded and blind!''

        Never has so sadistic machinery been generated by mankind to put
        on and around tender body parts of children to ``save'' them.

  o ``We must save our race from bad elements!''

        Holocaust in Nazi Germany, naturally. But also sterilization and
        active euthanasia in lots of countries, incl. Scandinavia and
        Australia.

  o ``We must save people from drugs!''

        War on Drugs, naturally. The resources used to generate the police
        state could have been used to control real crime (violence, rape,
        murder, roobbings, burglary, etc.).

  o ``We must stop the heretics!''

        Torture, pain, burning at the stake, etc.

  o ``We must save the souls of these poor creatures!''

        Torture, pain, burning at the stake, etc.

The remedy has always been worse than the ``problem''. Only time will tell
what weirdness come from the ``We must save our kids from sex!'' meme.

Hopefully, it will make the meme carriers to stop breeding altogether. !-[

[END OF RANT]
</RANT>

The worst thing about censorship is



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