This absolutely must appear on your first Greatest Hits compilation. It is classic Starkers.
Nothing to say re: the sight, but I’m pretty sure terminals inside a library are muted/don’t have speakers. I’m sure you’ve been shushed before by a (possibly hot) librarian who gave you the evil eye for daring to clear your throat inside her temple of knowledge.
Possibly because the hysteria comes almost entirely from your side of the political spectrum ? It’s the “morals and values” crowd, not the librulz, who nuked Janet Jackson from orbit you understand.
Cigarettes aren’t legal in public buildings, and at a guess I’d vouch public inebriation is a no-no in NYC as well (hence the brown paper bags - now that is, I’ll grant you, retarded).
Thus spoiling any hope of getting into her stacks, or her reserved collection.
That was the case when I was a kid. Everyone was supposed to speak in whispers and as little as possible. My library experiences the last ten or fifteen years or so has been that most people speak in normal speaking voices and with nary a dirty look…not even from the hot librarians. 
At any rate, a woman quoted in the article says that she could hear what was going on despite some sort of extendable privacy screen between her and the computer next to her. Do libraries these days allow earphones, perhaps? I’ve been in some over the last few years but never paid much attention to what was going on on the public computers.
Actually, quite a lot of it is visible on this very board.
Then pornography can be “not legal in public buildings” as well, yes, no?
The point is, the New York City library system is not engaging in some crusade to guarantee people access to what is legally available elsewhere; they’re using porn’s legality to justify what they want to do in the first place, which is to assert their distorted version of moral superiority over the masses. I am firmly convinced that 90% of liberalism is really just a way for people to think they’re morally superior to the masses. That’s the only way a lot of this shit makes sense. I have little doubt that if porn was old school and freely available everywhere, liberals would find some grounds to oppose it.
It can. But it’s not. So until it becomes, it will remain not. That’s how laws work, savvy ?
I don’t know about the status of New York, but in the three public libraries I frequent that have computers:
- unattended children are not permitted in the adult computer lab. Children’s area computers are kiosked to only show internal library resources.
- there are no speakers.
- there are partitions/carrels, such that you are only going to see what’s on someone else’s screen if you’re deliberately trying to do so.
Given THOSE constraints, where is the problem?
Also, still waiting for you to show me where the First Amendment says “political”. I mean, this liberal astigmatism is getting so bad, I wonder what other random adjectives I’m not seeing in there.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Even if that’s true, that’s still a better ratio than your posts here, 99% of which appear to be a way for you to feel you’re morally superior to liberals.
Er. In what world is porn NOT old-school and freely available pretty much everywhere? Hell, with all the smartphones kids have these days, the internet is in their pocket.
What is porno? Define it, in clear, empirical terms. Zero points for self-referential, subjective criteria, it must be objective and definitive. Double dog dare you.
I’m sure they’re just happy to see you.
Returning to the OP, and this is more of a “stupid liberal idea of the century,” but liberals think it’s not only practical but moral to bomb people until they like you or do what you say. Forever.
And where would that be, exactly? I never see pornography unless I look for it. (well, in my own case of course that’s not exactly true, since it’s strewn all over the house and unless I get it all put away I’m going to bump into it… ) I certainly never see the “sights and sounds of it being broadcast in a public venue where * have no choice but to encounter it”. Never. I’m 52 years old and I’m pretty sure that not one single time in my entire life have I encountered the sights and sounds of pornography in a public venue unexpectedly. And I live in the San Fernando Valley, which is ground zero for porn on Planet Earth.
Where the hell are you hanging out?
Where did this come from? Was this even mentioned so that you could fairly assess the general degree of disturbance we are all feeling or not?
When it comes to “the most vile shit human beings can dream up”, well, that stuff really requires some degree of intention and effort to find, so if kids are finding it, it must mean they’re interested, but I’m 52 years old and I would be hard pressed to say honestly that I understand why some people want to smear themselves in poop, apart from understanding that they enjoy it, which is something I’m pretty sure any kid who wants to check it out also understands.
And if they’re interested, I figure it won’t burn their eyes out of their heads, but it will certainly make for fabulously awkward dinner conversations. (My first encounter with beastiality porn was when I was 9 years old. I encountered it because I found some other, less exotic porn and it was stashed between the pages. I was fascinated. But oddly enough, the world did not open up and swallow me. And I did understand it: people wanted to feel good in the nether regions and found using animals helpful to that goal. Not very difficult to understand at all, really, once I had grasped the whole “feeling good down there” part, and by age 9, I had grasped it perfectly, having a “down there” of my own.)
Interesting that you put “legal” in quotes. Are they letting people look at ILlegal material?
Smoking in public interferes with the experience of people who are not smoking. Public surfing of legal websites doesn’t affect anyone that isn’t peeking over the shoulder of the surfer, and if you’re doing that, you shouldn’t be, so what you encounter is your fault for intruding. (I have no idea whether my local library has a policy about drinking scotch, but I’m pretty sure they have a policy against open containers of liquid of any kind, I know the law library does, and it’s a no-no, I’m pretty sure because of the mess factor.)
No we don’t. Smoking and open containers of liquid have a high probablility of causing problems that go beyond the individual smoking or slurping. Nothing special there. Surfing legal websites doesn’t have any probability of causing any problems for anyone at all.
Sensible rules to protect everyone = smart. Sensible lack of rules where no one needs protecting = “smart”
So none of it belongs in this thread.
Next.
“1001 Extreme Fuckholes” <-----porn.
Didn’t they define it as anything which appeals exclusively to prurient interest?
I don’t know how New York City’s libraries are configured either, but in every library I’ve ever been in all the computers are easily visible to anyone walking about the floor of the library. Unless the “adult” computers are all situated so that the customer in question has his back to a wall, I don’t see how it would be possible to prevent people passing behind them to see what’s on their screen. In the event that the computers used to access pornography were indeed situated so as to prevent the possibility of anyone other than the patron in question from seeing them, then I would admittedly have much less of a problem with it. However, there was nothing in either of the articles I linked to which would suggest that this is the case.
Apart from the fact that I never said the word “political” was included in the wording of the First Amendment, may I suggest you ask elucidator, since he was the one who first claimed “The Big One was intended to protect, especially and specifically, political speech”.
It’s that fancypants righty way of reading the Constitution: even though the Founders didn’t explicity say “political” speech, we are supposed to infer that they intended us to understand that they were limiting it to political speech, and even though the founders DID explicitly say “well-regulated militia” we’re supposed to infer they never intended any limitation on gun ownership.
IN other words, when it’s open ended, they meant a limitation we’re supposed to understand, when it’s specifically limited we’re supposed to understand that they meant no limits.
The Founders originally wanted to name the country OppositeLand.
Give me the power to enforce it, and I will be happy to set the terms. Otherwise, all you’re doing is asking for an opinion.
Now having said that, I reject wholeheartedly the fiction that pornography cannot be defined, as evinced by the fact that for most of this country’s history it was underground and relatively hard to come by (pun recognized but not intended :)). “Pornography” can be the depiction of any sexual activity legislated to be defined as such. You know, just like “hate speech” or “discrimination” or any other vaguely defined societal offense that we have nevertheless managed to bring under the jurisdiction of the law.
This is particularly amusing since it was elicidator who claimed it created for the express purpose of protecting political speech. (No, really, it’s true. You can look it up.)
What I said was that watching pornography is not “speech”.
You know what? You’re right. I’m thinking about this in too narrow a context.
And people say no one ever changes their mind around here.
Making it, yes. Watching it, no. Providing a venue for it, definitely not.
There are certainly circumstances under which I would be upset that a public library was censoring the material it provides but this is just stupid. Even if they did allow porn, there are clear and previously legally agreed boundaries to the extent to which pornographic images should be exposed [sic] to the public in public venues and I’d be surprised if this met those standards.
No, you misunderstand. It’s not that I have a problem with ideas which differ from mine, or conflict in general. Just perseverant assholes.