.xxx domains are about to arrive

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Pornography is about to get its own domain suffix.

From here:

After a 10-year battle, Internet watchdog Icann has finally given in to the creation of an Internet domain dedicated to pornography.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which governs the website naming system, yesterday approved the creation of a top level ‘.xxx’ domain, opening the way for a red-light district online for pornographic websites.

Icann gave initial approval last year, but carried out further consultation checks over the application.

It is now poised to sign an agreement with the ICM Registry, which is backing the domain, allowing .xxx the same level status as .com and .org.

Religious groups argue that giving adult websites their own corner of the Internet legitimises the content.

But pornographers aren’t happy either, and worry it will ghettoise their sites.

I’m in at least three minds about this:

First, I am in favour of free speech on the Internet and that includes saying and displaying things I disagree with.

Second, I think pornography is harmful; since we are well past the stage where it can be banned, ghettoising it might be the next best thing.

Third, pornography is only a symptom of Western decay; to focus energy on its evils is to treat the symptom, not the disease. The West needs more radical medicine.

I think I’ll settle on number three, garnished with number 2.

 

 

 

Parents jailed for removing their children from sex education class

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As Western societies increasingly expunge Christianity from public life, so they increasingly foist compulsory aberrant sexuality on their children. It sounds like an application of Rom 1:24-25: God’s ultimate punishment is to give people what they think they want: in this case, unbridled deviant sexuality, ultimately causing them to bring about their own extinction through fruitless copulating with members of their own sex and – and if that is insufficient, rampant abortion.

Bishop Michael Ingham tells us that all the great religions lead to God

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Christians believe that when Jesus said “no-one comes to the Father except through me”, he meant it. If Jesus was wrong and, as Ingham says, “all the great religions are authentic pathways to God”, Jesus blundered rather badly, didn’t really need to die on the cross for our sins and suffered from delusions of grandeur.

Or perhaps it’s Michael Ingham who suffers the delusions.

It’s very difficult to see how someone can be a Christian and not take one of Jesus’ major claims seriously; it’s even harder to see how that person could be a bishop in a Christian church – but, then, he is a bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada.

What is the final taboo?

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Prudery, of course. Former UK MP, Ann Widdecombe refused to present an award to the owner of a – nudge, wink – lingerie website owner.

The tut-tutting, how could you do such a judgemental thing, article is here:

Former MP Ann Widdecombe waltzed away from handing a lingerie website owner a business award claiming it was against her strict Catholic principles.

The Strictly Come Dancing star, 64, was presenting gongs at the Women of Worth Awards when winning entrepreneur Emily Bendell, 30, was called to the stage.

But Miss Widdecombe, a self-confessed virgin, said her saucy website www.BlueBella.com was against her religious principles – and handed the gong to another judge to present.

Oxford graduate Miss Bendell said: ‘As I walked down to the stage she must have said she didn’t want to give me the award and I noticed a kerfuffle as she handed it over.

‘It was a real surprise that it happened at an event that was meant to celebrate the success of women. It certainly took the shine out of the day for me.

‘Ann is a great proponent of women getting ahead by their own merits so I would have hoped that she would have recognised my achievements.’

Ann Widdecombe, as a self-confessed virgin, is in the most despised of society’s sub-cultures, whereas, the cool, sexually uninhibited Emily, on BlueBella.com, has achieved the pinnacle of pornography-chic by marketing the tasteful “suede flogger”, “sweetheart nipple tassels”, “pocket pinky love cuffs”, “supersex beginner’s bondage  tape double pack” and “supersex luxury stroker”. Perhaps one day Anne will see the light and acquire her own supersex luxury stroker.

As the article notes, the only way that you can now shock a person is to show some reluctance in endorsing their assorted sweetheart nipple tassels:

When Miss Bendell later asked what had happened she was shocked to hear that Miss Widdecombe had shunned her due to the nature of her business.

Personally, I find the supersex beginner’s bondage tape double pack very handy for extemporaneous repairs to my ageing MX-5’s soft-top.

What does book burning look like in the 21st Century?

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This:

A petition has been started to ban a ‘gay cure’ group’s iPhone app.

Christian group Exodus International claims that people can find “freedom from homosexuality” through prayer and practises conversion therapy.

Its iPhone app, which is free and available in the iTunes store, is “designed to be a useful resource for men, women, parents, students, and ministry leaders”.

It has received a 4+ rating from Apple, meaning it is deemed to have no objectionable content.

More than 6,500 people have signed a Change.org petition to call on Apple to remove it.

 

Lutherans and Anglicans celebrate 10 years of full communion

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From here:

There will be a special service this spring to celebrate 10 years of full communion between Lutherans and Anglicans in Canada and the United States, the churches have announced.

In 2001, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC) and the Anglican Church of Canada (ACC) signed the Waterloo Declaration. The same year, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America signed a similar agreement with The Episcopal Church, USA, Called to Common Mission.

As you can see, the two denominations are called to a Common Mission; but what is that mission? To convince the general public to think like them, of course. Early attempts looked something like the following video, although “missional” merchandising has become more radical since it was made.

Baby Joseph Maraachli now in St. Louis

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Baby Joseph has been moved to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri where he should receive a tracheotomy this week in the hope that he can be moved into nursing care close to the family’s home in Windsor.

From here:

The London hospital, where Joseph was treated since October, had refused to perform the tracheostomy and sought to remove his ventilator against his parents’ wishes.

Dr. Paul Byrne, a fifty-year veteran in the field of neonatology based in Ohio, however, has said that Joseph should have had a tracheostomy “a long time ago.”  He also insisted that he has never seen a need to remove a child’s ventilator.  “If a baby has a disease process that’s so bad that they’re going to die, then they die on the ventilator anyway,” he explained.

The LHSC continues to denounce the move as being “against medical advice”.

Here is an interview with his father and Fr. Frank Pavone:

[flv:https://anglicansamizdat.net/wordpress/videos/babyjosephinterview.flv 640 360]

Christian florist refuses to arrange flowers for same-sex wedding

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From here:

A florist in Riverview, N.B., is refusing to provide wedding flowers to a same-sex couple, according to the event’s planner.

After agreeing to provide the flowers for a wedding, Kim Evans of Petals and Promises Wedding Flowers sent an email last month to the couple, saying she didn’t know it was a same-sex wedding and would have no part of the ceremony.

“I am choosing to decline your business. As a born-again Christian, I must respect my conscience before God and have no part in this matter,” the email said.

Evans has not returned calls from CBC News to explain her decision.

Mario Bourgeois Leduc, wedding planner for the couple, who didn’t want their names released, said he was appalled by the florist’s email, especially since “you’re celebrating love and you’re going against all of the odds to celebrate what is important in your life.”

“This is going to stay with them for years, because they were again told that their lives are not OK.”

Eldon Hay, a United Church minister in Sackville and a well-known gay rights advocate, said he still sympathizes with the florist.

“The shopkeeper has every right to her own convictions as long as she is a private citizen in her own house,” Hay said.

“But if she opens her doors to sell flowers, then she must be prepared to meet and deal with the public.”

According to the New Brunswick Human Rights Act, anyone doing business in the province cannot refuse customers based on race, religion or sexual orientation.

I suspect that this type of incident is likely to become more common as the decade grinds on.

While, like the United Church minister, I can feign sympathy for what I disagree with – the law in my case – I do wonder whether, in this situation, the law is being misapplied.

Making it illegal for a homosexual couple to walk into, say, a tobacconist and be refused cigarettes, is a little different from compelling a Christian florist to tacitly condone – almost take part in – a “marriage” ceremony which violates her beliefs.

The law usually acts as a blunderbuss, of course, and is indifferent to fine distinctions, so Christians beware: we appear to be entering a time where we have to pay a social and financial penalty for our beliefs.

Internet Explorer 9 not much use for photographers

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I wanted to like IE9, I really did: it is very fast and has a number of useful built-in security features.

Unfortunately, it is next to useless if you are a photographer and want to see images on a wide-gamut monitor – something photographers usually have – with anything like accurate colours.

All wide-gamut monitors come with colour profiles that Windows can use to correctly display colour information. Unfortunately Microsoft has never used these profiles in any of its version of Internet Explorer; instead it uses a default sRGB profile – IE9 is no exception. This results in every image appearing super-saturated on a wide-gamut monitor. Ironically, Microsoft trumpets IE9’s ability to correctly extract  embedded colour profiles from images – but it then proceeds to nullify its efforts by displaying the image using an sRGB profile, regardless of the monitor.

Firefox has used monitor colour profiles for some time, so it’s back to Firefox for me.

For example. This is what Ava should look like:

 

And this is how IE9 displays her on a wide gamut monitor:

Update: I just installed Firefox 4.0 RC1 and it seems to be as fast – or almost as fast – as IE9. And the colours are right. Lot’s of other improvements, too.

Celebrating the murder of children

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After the terrorist butchering of an Israeli family, residents in Gaza celebrated the fact by passing out sweets in the street.

While war is horrible and the death of children in war even more horrible, it doesn’t compare to the especially insidious evil needed to deliberately murder your enemy’s children – particularly at close range.

And it takes an especially odious religion – Islam – to fuel the impulse to celebrate such an atrocity.

From here:

Do you think the State Department noticed that no one in Arizona, Mexico, or even Mars took to the streets to celebrate the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords? No one seemed to think it was a “natural” act — the Islamic term du jour to rationalize the throat-slitting massacre of a sleeping Jewish family: 36-year-old Udi Fogel, his 35-year-old wife, Ruth, and, yes, their three children: 11-year-old Yoav, 4-year-old Elad, and Hadas, their 3-month-old baby……..

Muslims, in fact, are more often exhorted by their scriptures to brutalize non-Muslims than Christians are urged by the gospels to love their enemies and turn the other cheek. Yet, though we assume the latter are meant to take the message to heart, we are somehow sure Islam doesn’t really mean what it says — that when Muslims strike terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, it must be Israel’s fault, or America’s, or something, anything, other than Islam, the only common denominator in these attacks.