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Cynical-C Blog

John Cleese on The Unpleasant World of Penn & TellerYesterday

I think I’ve posted this before but I’m still in a tryptophan induced haze so please forgive me.

Why Defend Freedom of Icky Speech?Yesterday

Neil Gaiman’s long and passionate answer to a question posed to him from a reader about why he is defending lolicon (Wiki def. here) and why he is appalled by the arrest of a comic collector for owning manga comics which allegedly depict minors engaged in sexual acts.

In this case you obviously have read lolicon, and I haven’t. I don’t know whether you’re writing from personal experience here, and whether you have personally been incited to rape children or give inappropriate hugs by reading it. (I assume you haven’t. I assume that Chris Handley, with his huge manga collection, wasn’t either. I’ve read books that claimed that exposure to porn causes rape, but have seen no statistical evidence that porn causes rape — and indeed have seen claims that the declining number of US rapes may be due to the wider availability of porn. Honestly, I think it’s a red herring in First Amendment matters, and I’ll leave it for other people to argue about.) Still, you seem to want lolicon banned, and people prosecuted for owning it, and I don’t. You ask, What makes it worth defending? and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you’re going to have to stand up for stuff you don’t believe is worth defe

We’re Officially in a RecessionYesterday

I know everyone is going to be shocked about this but:

The nation’s economy peaked, and the recession began, in December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced today.

The group’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, the semi-official arbiter of these things, defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators.”

While analysts have been all but certain that a recession has been underway for months, there has been some debate over exactly when it began. Last winter, employers started cutting jobs and growth slowed significantly, but the decline appears to have accelerated over the summer.

Anner Bylsma - Bach PreludeYesterday

Surfing for SeniorsYesterday

(via Everything is Terrible)