The Taboo Topic

THE FORBIDDEN ISSUE

An epidemic is upon us that we are ashamed to admit. There is an addiction out in our lives that the majority of Americans commit. It destroys the user's life and they’re too embarrassed to get helped. It is not a recognized addiction and throughout the country it hurts marriages and individual lives. According to an interview by MSNBC, $12 billion is spent annually on the Adult Industry in America alone (2006). With the spread of the Internet, porn has become easy to reach. The biggest problem is not that it's easy to get to, but that it can act like a drug and hurt the user's life. Since you can be completely anonymous on the internet, no one knows of your serious problem. Porn addiction is not a documented or official addiction and therefore receives little research money. Many therapists and sexologists consider this to be a serious epidemic that is waiting for you where ever you go. The Internet is all around us, in our homes, our jobs and our schools. The experts both agree that pornography can have some serious side effects, whether it is causing you to lose a job or a family by just wasting your time in front of a computer screen, TV or other outlet for porn. There is always a constant urge to see a taboo substance David Foster Wallace, A commentator of the adult industry, writes on this, "The more acceptable in modern culture it becomes, the further porn will have to go to in order to preserve the sense of unacceptability that's so essential to its appeal," (1998, Wallace). Foster Wallace even goes on to say that now, a part of porn staying taboo lies in how it's becoming more and more "extreme" in nature, meaning degrading, painful and abusive to the female participants.

Experts consider porn to be a drug. Mary Anne Layden, Co-director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Therapy, reports that porn is the "most concerning thing to psychological health that I know of existing today," and that "The Internet is a perfect drug delivery system," (2004, Singel). She goes on to say that porn is even worse than cocaine, because cocaine addicts can get the drug out of their system, but porn addicts will have it in their minds for the rest of their lives. This is because porn as Jeffrey Satinover, a psychiatrist and adviser, puts it, "...it (porn) causes masturbation, which causes release of the naturally occurring opioids," (2004, Singel). Some would argue that if porn was a drug, it is more like Advil or Tylenol and isn’t that big of a problem, but like Advil and Tylenol, it should be regulated and controlled.

Porn is argued to be an addiction as strong as gambling or drinking and should be treated as such, but no limits have been placed on it. This is because porn is protected under the First Amendment. Pornography is considered to only be illegal if it is obscene. Obscenity has qualifications referred to as the Miller Test, where it has to meet 3 basic rules. "(a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, Roth, supra, at 489, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value," (1973, Supreme Court). These laws have allowed the general public to overlook the First Amendment if it applied to those three principles. One of the Justices wrote a dissenting opinion mostly saying that the only reason he disagreed with the ruling is because it went against the First Amendment in that everything is free speech no matter the material.  The problem with how the general public determines this is that the general public is always changing its opinion and will not stay the same. In the lawsuit, the Supreme Court didn't allow one community to determine the rules for the nation and therefore this test is rarely used and paraphernalia can almost never fit its rigid and strict set of rules which essentially makes the court case a useless waste of time.

Simon Louis Lajeuness, a postdoctoral student and professor says that porn has little to no effect on men and that in his study, "Those who could not live out their fantasy in real life with their partner, simple set aside the fantasy," (2009, Moore). This was a flawed study because it only had 20 participants and the testimonies could have been false and there is no way to really document how people’s relationships aren’t what they fantasize about or if their fantasies changed. This is argued against by Naomi Wolf, an author, political consultant and third wave feminist, who wrote in her essay that, "Porn has blurred the line between clothed and unclothes, decent and indecent," referring to how porn is helping people become more and more obscene in real life (2005, Wolf). She also claims in another essay that the younger generation are being desensitized to real human beings. In the exact opposite of Lajeuness, Wolf argues that porn causes unrest with their families when users prefer their fantasies over reality (2003, Wolf). She further relates that this causes women to think that they can't "compete with a cyber vision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer's least specification," she explains that this gives more power to men as women, seeking to please men have to do more and more, because porn will do more and more (2003, Wolf). This is truly troubling, because this has made people different than before. With porn literally at their finger tips, the users could just surf the net for hours fulfilling their sexual needs.

Statistics show that more men than women view porn and that almost all men do view porn at least once in their lives. There have been many reasons proposed for this and the scientist, Dr. Erick Janssen reported to PBS that men viewing porn is an evolutionary trait derived from the drive to spread your genes and have a much sex with as many different people as much as possible and thus, have your child inherit these desires (2002, Janssen). This would cause men to want to view porn in order to simulate the thought process that occurs when having sexual intercourse. In contradiction, sex therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, in a MSNBC interview purposes that maybe women are too ashamed and hide their activities because society has a harsher view against women viewing porn (2006). She relates that people comes to her a lot for an addiction to porn and that many couples are getting seriously hurt by this pandemic. She worries less about porn's existence, but like other experts on addiction, she advises rather that people use it in moderation and that it's only bad when, "...it's getting in the way of the intimacy in your relationship, it's getting in the way of a healthy sex life, and, in many cases, it's getting in the way of your ability to even hold down a job, or spend time with your family, or carry out your daily tasks," (2006). She explains that many people come to her complaining that their husband spends hours every night stuck in front of a screen, wasting their lives away.

Porn pulls a steady profit and helps our economy, but like tobacco and alcohol, it needs to be regulated so as not to cause harm. It's true that porn doesn't kill people, but it can do worse things than that like ruin your family and life. The obscenity law isn't enough and I won't argue against the First Amendment and try to censor the Internet, but the Government should fund more programs that help those with the addiction to porn and make young people aware of the programs that are available to them to learn how to sate their appetites or at least prevent their lives from spiraling down into the fearful predictions and terrible results that happen today.

1337 Words in this document (not including works cited).

Armstrong Moore, Elizabeth (2009, December 1). New research suggests porn is overly           demonized. news.cnet.com/8301-27083_3-10407102-247.html

Foster Wallace, David (2006). Big Red Son. Consider the Lobster

Janssen, Erick (2002). Why People Use Porn.          www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/porn/special/why.html

MSNBC (2006, March 3). Porn Addiction on the Rise.          http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11640411/ns/msnbc_tv-rita_cosby_specials/t/porn- addiction-increases-across-country/#.TznZGoH9J94

Singel, Ryan (2004, November 19). Internet Porn: Worse than Crack?          www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2004/11/65772

Supreme Court (1973, June 21). Miller v. California.          http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0413_0015_ZS.html

Wolf, Naomi (2003, October 20). The Porn Myth. nymad.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

Wolf, Naomi (2005, May 21). Equal Wrongs.    nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/columns/n_10405/

Final Word Count: 1459 Words

Small Tribute to a Great Game (SKYRIM)

Play this game.

My Thought on the Plauge of Acyronims

SOPA, ACTA and PIPA. Common terms for the internet at the moment. The thought is to give the United States law enforcement the ability to illegalize any websites that have any unauthorized streaming, counterfeit goods or copywritted material. Many people think of this as a "censoring of the internet" and are openly fighting the bills by attempting to hack the FBI and other government agencies. The main argument that the defense has is that it would help the entertainment industry by forcing people to buy the CD of that one artist of buying the DVD of that one awesome movie. Many people are outraged, because this is a sign of oppression by the government in a form of saying that they are supporting big business and hate the weak, poor man who can't even pay for his cable, but now he has to pay for his music too. The commonly shouted phrase is, that you don't get to destroy the internet because it doesn't fit the business model you want or that you need to find a new way to market the products that you're making. Unfortunately, this bill would spell the end for our favorite websites like Facebook and Youtube, and already Megaupload was taken down by the FBI and hackers retaliated taking down various government and music sites in protest. (whole story here)

Whatever happens, I'm pretty sure that SOPA, ACTA and PIPA will cause much more harm than any sort of benefits.

-The Observer

Skill Set 8ish?

It's been awhile, but a new skill has come to me. In honor to the snows of winter, I'd like to pay a small tribute to the art of sledding.

Short Beginnings:

Sled where at first used by Native Americans to move heavy things long distances. These sleds where usually pulled by a team of dogs (like what the Natives used in Alaska) or pulled by humans. Most sleds today are for recreation, but some traditional races still exist for the original purpose such as the annual 1,100 mile Iditarod. The most famous sleds are used in the Olympics as bobsleds (referencing the bobbing motion that the runners take to increase their speed in the beginning of their race). These sleds usually feature an in-cased chassis and a steering system.

Skills:


There are many techniques to sledding, most importantly though, is not how you go down, but how you go up. Observe the slope, find the steepest part with the most bumps that is iced over. Find that place and keep it locked in your head. Head to the very beginning of the descent and wait.

With a traditional long rectangle shaped sled that has a great directional speed but no spin and little steering.

Method 1: The all original boring-man's position when you sit up right and slowly fall down the mountain. Preferably screaming like a girl and crying.

Method 2: "The Stack" is my personal favorite of any way of sledding. A great way to get many people down a hill quickly, you first get a sturdy, long sled and put the heaviest and strongest person on the bottom. Then you put more and more people on top of that person and ride down the hill. You will start off slow, but end up at speeds of at least mach 2. This is fun, because if only one person starts to wobble, the whole stack save the base will tumble and bail. Usually, a very awkward position too, because you're all laying on top of each other too... Also, beware base, it will hurt...

Method 3: "The Raft" is a move where you get many sleds of any kind and lock arms side by side for as wide as you can then all ride down, eventually, you will drift apart or fall off(depending on the hill), but it is a great way to sled, because it's like a show down to see who has the best dexterity.

Method 4: "The Train" is a popular sledding technique, where you all line up and connect legs to arms and create a mega-bobsled-type sled that acts like a snake or roller coaster that is always pushing behind you. The Train is good for big groups, because you all will do the same thing and have the same amount of fun.

Method 5: "The Couple" technique is sledding form, where one person sits in the back of the sled and faces forward with spread legs and the other sits at the front facing backward, wrapping each other's legs around each other. This is great, because neither of you know where you're going and neither of you can see anything but each other's face which is very fun, cause one of you will likely freak out, or if you're a Sir, have a polite conversation with each other in a heroic pose of understanding and depth.

Method 6: "Dare Devil" is the style of sledding in a reckless fashion, where you lay down on your back, head facing the front of the sled and you close your eyes. A dangerous way of sledding where anything could happen, you could hit the cute little 6 year old, painfully come down on your head after a jump, or accidentally bail and hit a tree. This Dare Devil sledding is a thrill that is hard to match and can be repeated by laying on your stomach facing backwards.

With a saucer sled that has absolutely no control of any kind and can get really fast.

Method 1: The traditional style of sitting upright and sliding down the slope at a very fast pace, likely spinning, turning and spitting blood when you hit the concrete of the street.

Method 2: "The Spinner" is a way of starting the decline. You first start up the initial momentum, then you start spinning yourself in a circle until you get to about 40 rpm. This is hard to not bail on, because you'll be dizzy and will likely do a barrel-roll to safety.

Method 3: "The Brothers" is when you get together your homies or bros or brahs or sisters or whoever and lock your guys' sleds together by having them grab your saucer and grabbing theirs. This intertwines you together and you fly down the hillside and end up somewhere, but together like bros.

Method 4: "The Scary Driver" can be performed by leaning on your lower back and spreadeagleding yourself so you have the best of both worlds, an intense workout and a fun slide.

These methods are great ways to have fun in the winter, but watch your surroundings, there are trees out there and there are drop offs. But most importantly, watch out for the concrete of streets and parking lots. If you don't, you'll end up like me yesterday, sliding down a hill in "The Couple" formation with my friend Jessie when we swerve off course and I, being in the front facing backwards, can only see her face screaming when we bail on the packed up snow shoveled away from the parking lot and end up sliding a little bit until I end up under her parked car and she ends up, luckily still on the snow.

Be careful and watch out, but remember to have fun. Winter only comes once a year.

PS. In character with the observer, likely you'll be using this to get away with your friend at the top of a mountain on a piece of plywood whilst a mad scientist is chasing you with a pack of dogs and a Glock.

-The Observer