Posts by Roger Ruffley 13 publicly visible posts • joined 26 Jun 2008
"You gotta make way for the Homo Superior
Bowie - '71"
Written allegedly after a chance meeting between Bowie and the creator of the Tomorrow People while he was pitching the show to Thames TV.
I won't say that Bowie must have been into the Tomorrow People... because that joke is just too cheap.
"Does that mean that the Vatican will be raided for its confessional records which contain all of the above and so very much more ..... "
"And uncomfortable thought maybe, but hardly one which can be reasonably argued is not true and valid."
Actually... it's very easy to argue that the comparison is invalid.
Your mistake is that your entire argument is based on a faulty premise.
The Vatican, much as I despise them, do not keep confessional records. Confessions are not recorded, their priests aren't there taking secret notes in the confessional, there is nothing to raid the Vatican in search of.
Scientology on the other hand, does keep notes made during auditing sessions, and retains the information for future use.
These two scenarios really can't be compared at all.
It wasn't me, I didn't do it. it MUST have been CPW... prove it wasn't. I'm a nice girl, I wouldn't do anything impure or inappropriate like that. Seriously, that disgusting stuff is all immoral and wrong and I want no part of it. I must forsake all bodily pleasure, I want to be a nun, you MUST believe me.
Methinks she doth protest too much.
Flog 'em on eBay, I say. Make some cash. I'm sure there's a whole demographic of society would like the chance to own their own scanner like that! For all sorts of academic research and educational purposes of course.
Paris... not that you need a perv scanner to see what she's hiding. 'Cause she doesn't exactly hide anything.
@James O'Brien
"why couldnt he just take that and tell it to use his notes there"...
Well, personally, if I had to choose between another copy of the book, or $150,000, I would probably go for the $150,000 as well I'm afraid. Gawronski may be and idiot and a moron... but he isn't THAT stupid.
IF the picture was obviously illegal, your points might carry more weight. The police advised only that it MIGHT be, and given the hardly secretive presence of the cover on the likes of Wikipedia and Amazon over a period of years with no prosecution having occurred, I hazard a guess that the courts are not likely to be quite so reactionary in their opinion. You say Amazon should be banning the image as well, I would ask if that also means you consider possession of the album should constitute a criminal offense that should put you on the register of sexual offenders?
The problem is the the IWF seem to have overreacted here. The image was not child porn, there was nothing sexual about it, and it contained nothing that could be considered abusive. To declare it as child porn is to reveal the system as problematically broken. I had respect for the IWF before, but this leads me to question whether they are any more effective as a moral guardian than a pack of rabid Daily Mail readers would be.
I have two concerns.
1. The IWF lacks transparency. There is no way to find out what they are blocking, and it is worrying to know they can make arbitrary decisions about artwork that could mean linking to images of the Sistine Chapel would be an offense. If this story had not broken, would we have known how crazy their decisions could be?
2. They lack accountability. Their web site makes it easy to complain about a web site, there is nothing on there to allow you to complain about the IWF or to challenge decisions.
The IWF is a self-appointed body, and it is disturbing in the extreme that it has the power to ban web pages with no apparent checks and balances being in place.
The IWF need to stick to what they should be doing, keeping illegal material blocked. They were completely wrong to cross the line into second guessing morality on what is clearly very far from being a clear cut case.
As a note, I own a copy of 'Nevermind'. Should I go and burn the cover of that album before the Stazi^H^H^H^H^Hpolice come breaking down my door?
"In the interests of good science, this hack popped out to have a shufti at a herd of around 20 local cows who were grazing away like good 'uns."
You were shuftiing at them? Isn't cow worrying a crime?
Mine's the leather jacket, I'm off for a fillet steak. That's the way I get excited by cows.
"It does no good to mention that all of, let's say Florida, Texas or a couple other states, would need to be turned over to [Jatropha biodiesel production]."
It doesn't? Sounds like a great idea to me. The whole of Texas and Florida, nothing but weeds.
Indeed, why stop there? How many other states are there?
[NOTE: I'm joking... well, other than about Texas]
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