The big question that the generation raised on porn must answer

...Porn has come under the super-revealing spotlight again in the last few weeks, with a certain EU resolution causing controversy after it was put forward by Dutch MEP Kartika Liotard on International Women’s Day. Liotard’s mention of porn came under the broader aim to "eliminate gender stereotypes in the EU", which in her resolution involved "a ban on all forms of pornography in the media’, including ‘the digital field". Predictably, there was uproar.

What constitutes "freedom" on the internet still remains to be decided. Freedoms may well have been restricted by certain ISPs choosing to block their users’ access to illegal downloading site The Pirate Bay last year, in the name of protecting "artistic freedom", or copyright. Many argue that their right to engage with an online article or a public figure on social media outlets like Twitter is restricted by blocking or by comment moderation; still others argue that the writers or celebrities themselves should have the freedom to protect themselves from possible harassment.

In the online realm, which still remains fairly unregulated, people tend to feel strongly that they should be able to access anything that’s going except in the most dire of circumstances, such as child abuse. In the case of porn, most attacked Liotard’s resolution on this basis - the majority of Huffington Post readers voted that it was "an absurd attack on liberty and freedom of expression".

Needless to say, the vaguely worded EU resolution is not out to rip the downloaded porn from your hard drive; its use of the term "the digital realm" is more likely to be because most printed newspapers and magazines are now moving online. Considering the nature of the widespread international reaction to Liotard's proposal, its adoption is unlikely - and even if it were, in all likelihood nothing practical would change...

http://www.newstatesman.com/media/2013/03/big-question-generation-raised-porn-must-answer

James Holmes offers guilty plea to avoid death penalty

Source: USA Today

Attorneys for Denver-area theater shooting suspect James Holmes have offered to have him plead guilty and be jailed for life to avoid the death penalty, KUSA-TV is reporting.

The prosecution has not yet responded to the offer, which came in a court filing Wednesday.

"Mr. Holmes is currently willing to resolve the case to bring the proceedings to a speedy and definite conclusion," the filing reads.

The defense team said the case could end Monday if the Arapahoe County district attorney accepts the deal. Prosecutors planned to announce Monday whether they would seek the death penalty.

Holmes, 25, is charged with first-degree murder for the July 20 rampage that killed 12 moviegoers and wounded nearly 60 others at the premiere of the latest Batman film at a multiplex in Aurora.

On March 12, a judge entered a not guilty plea on Holmes' behalf but said Holmes could enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity later.

Trial is set for Aug. 5.

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/27/colorado-theater-killings-guilty-plea-offer/2025809/

1969 Ford Mustang Reinvented With Computer Printer

I Went to the Playboy Mansion (and It Was Kinda Depressing)

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to the Playboy mansion for a screening of that new Jennifer Lopez/Jason Statham movie, Parker. I don't usually go to press screenings because it's much easier to download the movie and watch it at home and not have to talk to other people, but I'd literally wanted to visit the Playboy mansion ever since I'd found out it was an option for me several seconds earlier. So I HAD to go....

http://www.vice.com/read/i-went-to-the-playboy-mansion-and-it-was-kinda-depressing

Rise of the naked female warriors

Known for its topless protesters, Femen is a worldwide movement against patriarchy. But are the activists' breasts obscuring the message?

One day last summer, Inna Shevchenko went into a forest outside Kiev, to learn how to use a chainsaw. The lumberjacks who were instructing her couldn't work out why she was so keen. "They thought I was just a crazy blonde," she says, shaking her white curls. "I was acting like: 'Oh really?'" She affects a coy, clueless demeanour. "'That's how you do it? Great!'"

The next day she went to a hilltop overlooking Kiev, and stripped to a pair of red denim shorts, worn with heavy boots, leather gloves, and a mask to protect her eyes. The Pussy Riot verdict was due that day, and in tribute to the Russian punk activists – and to mark her opposition to all religions – Inna proceeded to chop down a 13ft wooden cross that had been there since 2005. Despite her preparations, it wasn't easy. "When I started to cut it, I thought, 'it's not possible to destroy it,'" she says. But after seven minutes it fell, and she posed against the stump for invited journalists. With "Free Riot" scrawled across her bare breasts, she held out her arms to mirror the figure of Christ now lying on the ground.

Death threats arrived instantly. She says there were official calls for her arrest, and Russian TV reported that the cross was a memorial to the victims of Stalinism. Inna denies this, but Ukrainian journalists repeated the claim, and anger towards her sharpened. Men she suspected of being secret service agents immediately began milling outside her apartment, and a few days later, she was woken at 6am by the sound of her front door being kicked in. She escaped, jumping through a back window, then down from a first floor balcony, and made her way to Warsaw with $50, a mobile phone and her passport. She feared jail if she returned to Kiev, so some days later, she travelled to France, where women had expressed interest in joining Femen, the feminist group she runs with three Ukrainian friends.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/20/naked-female-warrior-femen-topless-protesters

New Yorker jailed in Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger's 1990 killing could be freed

A man put behind bars for the 1990 killing of a Brooklyn rabbi was on the verge of freedom Wednesday after prosecutors told a judge they support tossing out his conviction.

Based on its own re-investigation of the case, the Brooklyn District Attorney's office filed papers on Wednesday supporting the motion. They also told the judge they want the murder indictment dismissed, since they "no longer have sufficient evidence to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt."

If the judge agrees, the 58-year-old Ranta could walk out the courtroom Thursday afternoon as a free man. His dramatic reversal of fortune was first reported Wednesday by The New York Times.

"I'd lie there in the cell at night and I think: I'm the only one in the world who knows I'm innocent," Ranta told the Times from a Buffalo prison. "I came in here as a 30-something with kids, a mother who was alive. This case killed my whole life."

The case dates to Feb. 8, 1990, when Rabbi Chaskel Werzberger, a Holocaust survivor and a leader of the tight-knit Satmar Hasidic community in Williamsburg, was shot in the head by a man fleeing a botched robbery.

After Ranta's arrest, Hasidic Jews surrounded the car that carried him to jail and chanted, "Death penalty!"

Ranta, a drug-addicted, unemployed printer, was convicted in May 1991 and sentenced to 37 1/2 years in prison.

But the Times, citing investigators and legal documents, said that the detectives who arrested him broke numerous rules. They kept few written records, coached a witness and took Ranta's confession under what a judge described as highly dubious circumstances. They allowed two dangerous criminals, an investigator said, to leave jail, smoke crack cocaine and visit with prostitutes in exchange for incriminating Ranta.

http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jewish-world-news/new-yorker-jailed-in-rabbi-chaskel-werzberger-s-1990-killing-could-be-freed-1.510807

Foreign tech workers on a cruise ship? SeaCode was first to try

SAN FRANCISCO -- As novel as the concept sounds, Blueseed was not the first company to take "offshoring" so literally.

In 2005, a San Diego company called SeaCode proposed housing foreign software engineers on a cruise ship three miles off the California coast.

The controversial plan to bring low-cost, offshore labor so close to California shores came under fire as a "slave ship" and "sweatshop on the sea."

But Roger Green, an entrepreneur, and David Cook, a former tanker captain who had gone into technology, said they were simply trying to help American businesses.

Their idea was to give companies the benefit of the lower payscales of offshoring while doing away with some of the downsides: the time difference, the challenge of overseeing work being done so far away, concerns over the security of intellectual property in other countries and the high cost of redoing work not done properly in the first place.

"We were interested in giving American companies a level playing field to be productive and create good products at good cost," Green said. "Articles said we were trying to run slave a ship, which was totally crazy. That's not a sustainable business model. I don't know any company that would use a company like that. We planned to ship in people from all over the world, pay them a fair wage to live in a private cabin on a ship that used to be a cruise ship. That didn't seem like slave ship to us at all...."

.....Max Marty and Dario Mutabdzija have come up with a new twist. They want to put foreign entrepreneurs on a cruise ship 12 miles off the coast of Northern California, within commuting distance of Silicon Valley but out of reach of restrictive U.S. immigration laws.....

http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-seacode-was-first-to-try-to-put-foreign-workers-on-a-cruise-ship-20130319,0,546155.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+latimes%2Fmostviewed+%28L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories%29

Poor Ashley...

MAN

Animation created in Flash and After Effects looking at mans relationship with the natural world.

Thumbs replacing guns in movie posters...

"Real tough guys don't need guns, they just need a positive, can-do attitude," according to "Thumbs & Ammo," a blog featuring user-submitted photoshopped versions of famous movie scenes with a slight twist--the gun has been turned into a "thumbs-up."

http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/slideshow/thumbs-ammo-18763000

http://thumbsandammo.blogspot.com/