Arturis

So, upon closer inspection, there is no law against full frontal nudity on broadcast television between the hours of 10pm and 6am local time.

From the FCC (actually from the ruling I linked to in my last post, but adopted by the FCC):

According to the U.S. Supreme Court, to be obscene, material must meet a three-prong test: (1) an average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest (2) the material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and (3) the material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

What is the “safe harbor”? The “safe harbor” refers to the time period between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., local time. During this time period, a station may air indecent and/or profane material. In contrast, there is no “safe harbor” for the broadcast of obscene material. Obscene material is entitled to no First Amendment protection, and may not be broadcast at any time.

So in order for something to be obscene, it must depict sexual conduct. But nudity is fine. Quick, get me a timeslot on a community access station during the safe harbor period. I'll call my show Naked Time.

This article brings up all kinds of issues about free speech and decency.

My favorite: Justice Antonin Scalia, an avid hunter, insisted the 1st Amendment did not allow the government to limit speech and expression, unless it involved sex or obscenity.

I think there are a lot of people who would find the violent death of an animal to be obscene. There are plenty of TV shows I've found to be obscene (World's Scariest Police Chases, Jerry Springer, Sean Hannity). Mr. Justice Douglas wrote it better than I could:

Today the Court retreats from the earlier formulations of the constitutional test and undertakes to make new definitions. This effort, like the earlier ones, is earnest and well intentioned. The difficulty is that we do not deal with constitutional terms, since "obscenity" is not mentioned in the Constitution or Bill of Rights. And the First Amendment makes no such exception from "the press" which it undertakes to protect nor, as I have said on other occasions, is an exception necessarily implied, for there was no recognized exception to the free press at the time the Bill of Rights was adopted which treated "obscene" publications differently from other types of papers, magazines, and books. So there are no constitutional guidelines for deciding what is and what is not "obscene." The Court is at large because we deal with tastes and standards of literature. What shocks me may be sustenance for my neighbor. What causes one person to boil up in rage over one pamphlet or movie may reflect only his neurosis, not shared by others. We deal here with a regime of censorship which, if adopted, should be done by constitutional amendment after full debate by the people.

The obscenity exceptions are such a disgusting, baseless, and idiotic precedent. I'm glad that on this particular issue the court seems likely to rule correctly, but it troubles me when "strict constructionists" start making appeals to some bullshit precedent that has absolutely no basis in the constitution. I might even call it obscene.

Yesterday we visited team Isaacson for dinner. I spent quite a bit of time hanging out with Luna while Katherine and Sonja talked about boring adult things.

Last time I saw Luna she didn't really talk. Now she talks a lot in mostly her own made-up language. For instance the title above is her way of saying she wants you to read her the story about horses. At first I spent a lot of time deciphering things she said in her language into English and repeating them back as questions, but she's resolute in using her own words and eventually it's too much work to verify that, yes, she knows what the English word is, she just prefers to use her own instead. So "book" is, I think, some mispronunciation of "color", and most animals are called by the sounds they make (except bears which deserve and command respect). Sonja insists she hasn't had any regular exposure to people mimicking the sounds of horses, but I'm pretty sure wheyheyhey is a whinney. Bears don't get a noise and are instead the thing we need to look out for at all times. Pirates are apparently animals, because they are called "arg"s. "Here please" is pretty much how she begins any request for anything, which is most things she says. Wow means big.

She also apparently makes up names for people, so for instance one of her grandmothers is named Tractortrher.

We spent a lot of time with her telling me to write things and me writing them in little books we made. I would spell them out one letter at a time and she would get very excited when we happened to use a letter she recognized (which was pretty much A or B). So "bear" is a really great word to write. And "lamb" has this awesome surprise B at the end. Then she tried to write B's of her own and she went through the same motions I did, but with a little less control so they wound up being circles.

In conclusion, kids are awesome.

An Update of the Epic Saga

A searcher once flew to Nantucket
And then took the train to Pawtucket
From there to Manhasset
He asked "DO U HAS IT?"
But that walrus could not find his bucket!

This article has lots of great detail. The summary is that several organizations, including the US Energy Information Administration and Exxon believe that gasoline consumption in the US reached a peak in 2007 that it will never reach again.

I've noticed a general increase over the last few years in the number of people talking about the possibility of a civilization-ending disaster. So more people are talking about it, in general terms, but more interestingly, the prospect is universally discussed as a positive thing. Since, whatever the specifics, it would quite obviously be a terrible thing, I can only assume this positivism is a manifestation of the general malaise people have with the status quo, for whatever reason.

I think any disaster that could end our country, let alone global civilization, is extremely unlikely. However, within that realm of extreme unlikeliness, an increasingly likely manifestation of a nation-ending disaster is, I think, another civil war. And while nobody can predict anything like this with any accuracy, and I don't mean to suggest a war is by any means likely, when it inevitably comes to pass, it will definitely be a war based on conflicting worldviews. On one side will be the evidenced-based philosophies, and on the other side will be the crazies. We'll have our science and our logic and our reason and they will have their wishing-makes-is-so army of renegades. We will of course win, but at what cost?

Naturally this war will have to be called the Reality Wars. I'm pretty sure this post is sufficient to establish my claim of copyright.

Somewhat relatedly, this episode of the Daily Show has a segment on the health care "debate" that starts at about 1:10 and reaches the best punchline I've seen in a long time at 3:30. The rest of it is pretty good too, but ( spoiler redactedCollapse ) very nearly made me choke on my lunch. Only by the grace of god am I alive today to tell you about this clip, that's how funny it is.

Here's a brief list of some upcoming movies that interest me:

The Invention of Lying has a neat premise and could have some gems.
Ninja Assassin looks like it will be unadulterated awesome. It could simultaneously suck, but I think the awesome is pretty much guaranteed.
The second and more elaborate trailer for District 9 is really compelling. I love the premise, and robotic exoskeletons are the very definition of hotness.
I'm interested in Extract solely because Mike Judge delivers.

Honorable mentions go to A Serious Man which I'm obligated to care about because it's the Coen brothers, and Tronmageddon or whatever it's called because as much as its an obvious crappy cash-in, I'm obligated to be interested in any move that is scored by Daft Punk. Dishonorable mentions go to Funny People because I'm so sick of everyone involved in it (and no Paul Rudd to save it) but it could still be hilarious, and Where the Wild Things Are because Spike Jonze disgusts me and see above regarding obvious cash-ins but damn if that movie doesn't look gorgeous.

My dad's dad died. He was pretty great in his day. He loved to provoke people, to start arguments, and to take unpopular positions for the sake of discussion. He constantly challenged everyone, but he also had a completely unrestrained joy that was often infectious. I miss him, but no more so now than for the past five years. As his hearing faded, it was harder for him to interact with people and he and my grandmother stopped traveling at all. His death really didn't hit me because it didn't really change anything, but the more I think about him and remember him the more I mourn his passing. Anyway, he lived out in Oregon and my parents rushed out there to see him and are on their way back now. There's going to be a local service for him in early September, so that'll be nice.

In other news, Bobby McFerrin is still awesome.

Man charged $23 quadrillion for smokes; bank adds overdraft fee

Unruly Teen Charges $23 Quadrillion At Drugstore

Coincidence, or sign of the end times? YOU BE THE JUDGE!

After turning 21, the age milestones become less worthy of celebration and more just a matter of time. So I'm always on the lookout for milestones worth celebrating, and I stumbled on this one today, just a little bit belatedly: Most men commit suicide between the ages of 20 and 40, so at 31, I'm over the hump! The same goes for women, but the peak age range is narrower, between 22 and 38 roughly.

I found this looking for some statistics about flight safety, because I thought of a pithy statement and wanted it to be statistically accurate.

If next year you took a commercial flight every single day, and you drove a typical amount, your chances of dying in a plane and in a car would be about equal. Put another way, an airline flight is about as dangerous as the average round-trip commute.

Equally Deadly:
One commercial airline flight
32 miles of motor vehicle travel
2.7 miles of motorcycle travel (wearing a helmet)
13 miles of bicycle travel
21 passenger rail trips
417 amusement park rides

Each item on the above list has roughly a 1-in-2-million chance of killing you.