Issue 185
News: Amazon puts out a book on pedophilia. Should it stay up?
There has been, particularly in recent years, panic has been rising about the possibility of pedophiles in our midst. Let me give you my take on the whole phenomenon: whoever wins, the human race loses. If those who panic win, eventually, it comes to pass that the mob mentality completely takes over, and sooner or later, it leads to a lynch mob mentality against anybody who shows even the slightest interest in any child but their own. Already, it has led to parents increasingly sheltering their children from other people. And if the pedophiles win? Do I even have to tell you why humanity is screwed if they win? The latest incident in the war on pedophilia is that people have discovered an eBook which was reportedly a how-to guide of how to seduce children. The news was leaked on Wednesday, a day so slow that Michel Houellebecq winning an award (and not even an international one) was front-page news on Wikipedia. However, rather than succumb to the mob mentality, I actually tried to look up some reliable information of what the book was about. For all we knew, it could have been a guide for teaching pedophiles to have relationships that didn't cross the line into sex. Of course, it took a few days before I could manage to find somebody who actually read the book (the Amazon review pages, when they were up, did not seem to have a single person who admitted to actually reading the book), and when I did, the hype was pretty much verified. It did include a guide for having sex with children. However, that said, I think that breaking the story to the media was a very bad idea; first of all, before they finally took it down, the ebook went from having a sales rank in the sextuple-digits to #114. For comparison, James Joyce's Ulysses is currently #322. In short, the media story gave this guy even more attention than he could have ever dreamed of, and far more than he deserved. Even if he ends up getting jail time, I wouldn't end up being surprised if he ended up with a book deal from a bigger publisher (as long as he writes about the ordeal of getting banned, and not more of the same.) The second reason is that, generally, if one work is banned, sooner or later, more people are going to lobby for banning things they don't like, and eventually, we'll live in the world of Fahrenheit 451 because everybody will have found some offense somewhere. In case you think I'm exaggerating, PeTA has been asking that books they don't like be removed. Granted, PeTA are, by this point, a joke, and it's less likely that those books will be removed. But the slope is already getting slippery. Whoever wins, the human race loses.
Film Review: Mary and Max. Simply put,this is probably one of the best films about Autism I've ever seen. I've seen films about autism that aren't exactly that good on their own terms despite being excellent portraits of Autism (films like Adam and Mozart and the Whale regrettably fall into this category), films which are good, but portray autism inaccurately (like Rain Man), and then there's works like Sonichu which suck hard, and fail to portray much of a portrait of Autistic spectrum disorders. That said, I did find it particularly interesting, particularly in the fact that it blends tragedy and comedy, veering between the two almost constantly.
Quote of the Day: "Do you have a pet kangaroo? When I was born, my father left my mother and me on a kibbutz. She shot herself with my uncle's gun when I was six. Do you like chocolate hotdogs? I invented the recipe for them and can send it to you."
_______________Max from Mary and Max.
Link of the Day: Brass Eye's take on Pedo-Hunting.
Tract Review: Love that Money! Yet another tract about how angels and demons are fighting over people's souls, with the twist that this takes place in the latest economic downturn.
There has been, particularly in recent years, panic has been rising about the possibility of pedophiles in our midst. Let me give you my take on the whole phenomenon: whoever wins, the human race loses. If those who panic win, eventually, it comes to pass that the mob mentality completely takes over, and sooner or later, it leads to a lynch mob mentality against anybody who shows even the slightest interest in any child but their own. Already, it has led to parents increasingly sheltering their children from other people. And if the pedophiles win? Do I even have to tell you why humanity is screwed if they win? The latest incident in the war on pedophilia is that people have discovered an eBook which was reportedly a how-to guide of how to seduce children. The news was leaked on Wednesday, a day so slow that Michel Houellebecq winning an award (and not even an international one) was front-page news on Wikipedia. However, rather than succumb to the mob mentality, I actually tried to look up some reliable information of what the book was about. For all we knew, it could have been a guide for teaching pedophiles to have relationships that didn't cross the line into sex. Of course, it took a few days before I could manage to find somebody who actually read the book (the Amazon review pages, when they were up, did not seem to have a single person who admitted to actually reading the book), and when I did, the hype was pretty much verified. It did include a guide for having sex with children. However, that said, I think that breaking the story to the media was a very bad idea; first of all, before they finally took it down, the ebook went from having a sales rank in the sextuple-digits to #114. For comparison, James Joyce's Ulysses is currently #322. In short, the media story gave this guy even more attention than he could have ever dreamed of, and far more than he deserved. Even if he ends up getting jail time, I wouldn't end up being surprised if he ended up with a book deal from a bigger publisher (as long as he writes about the ordeal of getting banned, and not more of the same.) The second reason is that, generally, if one work is banned, sooner or later, more people are going to lobby for banning things they don't like, and eventually, we'll live in the world of Fahrenheit 451 because everybody will have found some offense somewhere. In case you think I'm exaggerating, PeTA has been asking that books they don't like be removed. Granted, PeTA are, by this point, a joke, and it's less likely that those books will be removed. But the slope is already getting slippery. Whoever wins, the human race loses.
Film Review: Mary and Max. Simply put,this is probably one of the best films about Autism I've ever seen. I've seen films about autism that aren't exactly that good on their own terms despite being excellent portraits of Autism (films like Adam and Mozart and the Whale regrettably fall into this category), films which are good, but portray autism inaccurately (like Rain Man), and then there's works like Sonichu which suck hard, and fail to portray much of a portrait of Autistic spectrum disorders. That said, I did find it particularly interesting, particularly in the fact that it blends tragedy and comedy, veering between the two almost constantly.
Quote of the Day: "Do you have a pet kangaroo? When I was born, my father left my mother and me on a kibbutz. She shot herself with my uncle's gun when I was six. Do you like chocolate hotdogs? I invented the recipe for them and can send it to you."
_______________Max from Mary and Max.
Link of the Day: Brass Eye's take on Pedo-Hunting.
Tract Review: Love that Money! Yet another tract about how angels and demons are fighting over people's souls, with the twist that this takes place in the latest economic downturn.
Labels: Animal Rights, Books, Miscellaneous, PC
posted by DerekAxe at 1:41 PM
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