Akkam’s Razor

This post was prompted by Tom Ferrick’s whining and Mark Bowden’s attempt at outrageousness.  I’m not going to bother parsing their statements (Ferrick’s on Casinos aren’t bad for Philadelphia’s waterfront followed by the usual journalists’ waaaaahumbulance cries that he gets hatemail, and Bowden’s Waterboarding isn’t torture and it’s A-OK with him if it works) in current and recent columns.

Brian Tierney, in a Philly Mag interview called Press Lords 2.0 laid out his vision for Philly.com, one where it became a MySpace with User Generated Content (UCG) including those wacky Mentos-and-Coke videos, along with online content created by those in his employ in the analog properties (ie. the papers). 

There was a segment on NPR's On the Media (I think) recently about how porn is being left-behind in the great social networking gold rush.  This is quite surprising, given the internet's indebtedness to pornography.  Without the demand (& market) for pornography, the internet as we know it would never have come into existence. In the beginning the internet was a dark & silent place.

In the beginning, all the content that existed was text based - fan fiction, MUDDs, stories, and the like. Eventually, the web came to be - and what followed was a world of color, sight, & sound. And what drove that market? Peoples desire to watch and listen to porn created the market necessary for innovation.

South Jersey girl Antonella Barba has had someone leak some erotic (and pornographic, go look for them yourself if you want them - NSFW) photos of her on the internets, prompting some to say that she may get the boot from American Idol.  Is this yet another example of schadenfraude gone wild? Are Americans too anxious to see the rich and famous, infamous, and newly-famous fall from grace?

Perhaps Craig Ferguson had the right answer in some cases. And in a time when nearly everyone has digital cameras, there's mountains of homegrown pron out there [survey, no images, just text, probably SFW]. Even the judge in Brittney's "sex-tape" libel suit [pdf, 3rd page, lines 3-9] thought it's not that big a deal.

"Applying any legal standard propounded by the Plaintiff, is it "sexually deviant,"¹ "immoral sexual condict,"² "lustfull and sexually promiscuous,"³ pornographic,⁴ "extremely promiscuous,"⁵ or "serious misconduct"⁶ for any married couple to tape themselves having sex for their own personal use, in this day and age?  Arguably not."

Is it really a big deal? Is the big deal that the photos exist, that they were leaked, or that she allowed them to be taken?  And what of the guy in the pictures?  Is this the double standard at work?  When you read some of the comments by people criticizing her, it sounds like they are making an analogy to American Indians and fears that having their pictures taken would steal their souls - does Barba become cheapened by those photos?

• Cosmic Log : Science fights the fakes
  “Just as a handgun leaves a signature on bullets for ballistics experts to analyze, digital cameras leave a signature on the pictures that they record - in the subtle pattern of electronic noise distributed through the data, as well as in the algorithms u
  (tags: photoshop photochop fauxtography)
• The Raw Story | ‘Timid’ Congress drives GQ correspondent to draft six articles of impeachment for Vice President Cheney
  “Hylton crafts six “articles of impeachment” because “a timid Republican Congress and a refusal to act by the new Democratic leadership” means that “the Fourth Estate” must “take the mantle of indictment unto ourselves.”"
  (tags: articlesofimpeachment dickcheney)