Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Oprah Show: Porn and Adultery Good for Your Marriage

Oprah is a talented woman who has tackled innumerable topics but nothing like this has crossed her couches before. The show that aired Tuesday, September 25, 2007 was entitled: “237 Reasons to Have Sex” and featured numerous “experts” on intimacy and marriage.

First to the defense of aberrant behavior was Dr. Pepper Schwartz who took it upon herself to fly across the world experiencing one-night stands and writing a book about her adventures. Among other things Dr. Schwatz advocated to Oprah the notion of “friends with benefits” … read, casual sex:

"We get together, we have a great time," said Dr. Schwartz "We adore each other, we respect each other, we have great sex, and that's it. It stays in that little category and it doesn't get out of it."

Of course Oprah conducted a poll of her own audience bringing to light several choice examples of the slippery slope that families face in our culture. Take Winnie, for example, who says she saw a gorgeous home, and she told her husband of 44 years about it that night. "He hawed about it and I said, 'I'll give you the best sex tonight you have ever had. I don't care if it's all night,'" she says. "And so we did and I got the house the next day."

Next, Oprah talks to Janee who owns a small collection of pornography, or, eh, “erotica” – as she prefers to call it. "I think with respect to my mother's generation, her mother's generation, you know, exploring the adult entertainment industry was just unheard of. It probably wasn't even an option for them,"

Another expert, Dr. Saltz, chimes in advocating pornography to women for overcoming their concerns about the addiction that their spouses indulge. To her credit, Dr. Saltz notes: “The problem is, it can be a double-edged sword in that anything really pleasurable can become kind of addictive.”

Next, Oprah trots out the best of the breed Greg and Hollie, married with two children enjoying all the normal things that families do… and, oh yeah, practicing “open marriages”, read adultery. As Oprah recounts the story:

During a long car trip Gregg asked Hollie—who says she had never had sex with anyone besides Gregg—if she was curious about being with someone else. "And I said, 'Well, nothing's missing. I don't need it. I don't really think about it,'" Hollie says. "But sure, I mean, if you're curious, if you've only had one partner your whole life, I mean, sure, you'd wonder what it would be like with somebody else."


Eventually Hollie started dating and eventually sleeping with one of their mutual friends. Gregg says he's flirted with other women but hasn't started an outside relationship of his own.
"She just has more love in her life," Gregg says. "It doesn't take anything away from what the two of us have."
As we pointed out previously Oprah has aired numerous shows delving into the topic of pornography addiction. These included the sad tale of woman who killed her husband in self defense after he went on a porn-induced rage and a former gospel singer whose life was shattered by the addiction. Why Oprah, whose influence is unmistakable, would backtrack to advocate pornography and adultery is beyond us.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Black Out Across the Board

So... Columbia University isn't the only one blacking things out.

Here's the report filed with the Islamic Republic News Agency:
Despite entire US media objections, negative propagation and hue and cry in recent days over IRI President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's scheduled address at Colombia University, he gave his lecture and answered students questions here on Monday afternoon.

On second day of his entry in New York, and amid standing ovation of the audience that had attended the hall where the Iranian President was to give his lecture as of early hours of the day, Ahmadinejad said that Iran is not going to attack any country in the world.

Before President Ahamadinejad's address, Colombia University Chancellor in a brief address told the audience that they would have the chance to hear Iran's stands as the Iranian President would put them forth.

He said that the Iranians are a peace loving nation, they hate war, and all types of aggression.

Referring to the technological achievements of the Iranian nation in the course of recent years, the president considered them as a sign for the Iranians' resolute will for achieving sustainable development and rapid advancement.

The audience on repeated occasion applauded Ahmadinejad when he touched on international crises.

At the end of his address President Ahmadinejad answered the students' questions on such issues as Israel, Palestine, Iran's nuclear program, the status of women in Iran and a number of other matters.


Too funny. Apparently, this was a propaganda windfall for his craziness..

Labels:

Black Out

Thursday, September 20, 2007

The TechCrunch 40 - Part 1

TechCrunch is to technology what the Drudge Report is to politics... one of the most influential news rags that can make and break a man, a company or a country.

The TechCrunch40 is a list of top 40 start-ups that are making waves across the world. TC recently hosted the TC40 conference and featured these start-ups.

Here are some of the relevant start-ups you will want to follow and even try out if you part of the blog revolution.

Multimedia
Viewdle - Imagine if you could hone the google links around all of your blog assets to make sure that users would be even more inclined to click on them. For example, imagine if you could change the links dynamically based on who was in a 30-second clip playing on your blog. Say you plug an interview between Hugh Hewitt and Mark Steyn, and the links spanning back and forth between Hugh's Romney book and Steyns indispensible America Alone. Cool. Enter Viewdle.

StoryBlender - I bet the folks at HotAir will love this one. Online collaborative video building. Good stuff!

MusicShake - Koean-based company to help the non-Mozarts among us. Interesting story and approach to this one.

Social Networking
TruTap - We talked about something like this previously. IM, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and now Digg... all of these profiles. No way to manage them all. This is where TruTap comes in. Another one featured in the TC4 is Orgoo.

Flock - Quoting from TC40 :"A social web browser. When using Flock, people can easily discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites.

Teach the People - This of this site of How things Work with Social networking. Interesting field with a growing host of start-ups. 1 GB of storage, voting, docs, blogs, and other treats make this an interesting place to watch.

Publishing
8020 Publishing -
Publish your own magazine online! Become the next big National Review!

Honorable Mention
Faroo - Right now thousands of people are looking for Steve Fossett and his presumed downed plane using satellite images of the Nevada landscape. Faroo takes the notion of the power of individual computers to rival Google's network farms of massive servers. In short, imagine if you could index everypage a user actually visited on their own computer. Cool stuff!

I'll let you digest these for a moment. Back with more in a few...

Labels:

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

How bad is it? (part 2)

Crazy stuff. I don't like to hammer on the negative part of this effort but there are some things that need to get out there.

Take this little nugget. The graph below represents the graph of a certain porn-related website and the rocket-like growth it has experienced. Out of the millions of websites across the Internet this site is ranked at 3100. Thousands of people are viewing this website at any moment. What's the topic of the website? A free YouTube-like website with one type of video: bestiality.



I'm a bit worried. But nothing we can't fight in the end.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Bizzaro World

by Justin Hart

I've been an internet strategist, business management consultant, blogger and advocate for family values - and usually that was the order in which bills were paid. Now, I've been swept up into some "Bizzaro World" and list is completely reversed.

I am now a full-time representative of the Lighted Candle Society.

Founded by Ed Meese and John Harmer, the Lighted Candle Society has one focus: to support civil litigation against the pornography industry.

We recently launched our own blog: FamilyFragments.com to discuss these issues that are destroying the family. Ed Meese and Judith Reisman, both veteran warriors of the culture wars, will be ongoing contributors to the website.

The effects of pornography are felt at all levels of society but women are particularly affected. (Even Naomi Wolfe believes so!)

Today we are launching a special website to capture the stories, the successes and tragedies, that women experience across the country and around the world battling the forces of pornography in their own homes.

At HerStoryLives.com, individuals can read the stories of women who have been overwrought (and sometimes have overcome) the challenges of pornography in their lives.

You can also submit your own story to the website anonymously to demonstrate to other women that they are not alone.

Listen, this is a difficult subject. Half of the people I talk to want to ignore it and the other half think I'm crazy and wrong. Let me be clear... we're under no illusion that pornography is going away. That's not our goal.

But we envision a society where its widely shunned, spurned and recognized as a threat to our way of life; a world where the negative consequences of producing and distributing pornography will far outweigh the financial benefits.

Please, don't hesitate to call me up (or call me out if you think I'm crazy.) I've put my line in the sand and I intend to see it through.

Justin Hart
Vice President, Communications
Lighted Candle Society
justin@lightedcandle.org
http://www.lightedcandle.org
http://www.familyfragments.com/
http://www.herstorylives.com/

Labels: ,

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Pundits Souring on Thompson

If this seems like a hit piece on Thompson... I apologize in advance. Just note... I'm not doing the hitting... I'm just the librarian.

First, from CBN's David Brody. After noting that Thompson simply misspoke. claiming that no state legislatures had approved gay marriage (California has just this last week), Brody questions aloud:
[Thompson will] take some heat for that but the larger issue for social conservatives may be this: If California start to have legislatures endorse gay marriage and have a liberal Governor sign it into law then what Thompson is saying is that he'll live with that because it didn't come from an unelected judge but rather elected representatives. How will that go over with conservative pro-family groups?
Now from a largely pro-Fred camp, Erik E from Redstate has this to say about Fred's campaign and their faux pas using "Osama" and "due process" in the same sentence:

One would hope that on the fundamental, driving issue of national security -- the issue that is driving so many as we head toward 2008 -- having to backtrack on the very basic issue of what to do with Osama would be unnecessary.

The first Thompson statement was a tacit endorsement of the Clinton policy this nation repudiated after September 11th.

And at this stage in the game, even Hillary Clinton has answered more competently on that subject that the Thompson campaign's first stab at it.

That the campaign required a second stab at that basic question makes me shudder with disbelief.

Next from the Washington Post with George Will:
Fred Thompson's plunge into the presidential pool -- more belly-flop than swan dive -- was the strangest product launch since that of New Coke in 1985. Then, the question was: Is this product necessary? A similar question stumped Thompson the day he plunged.

...

"Right now"? He has been living "up there" in that upscale inside-the-Beltway Washington suburb, honing his "Aw, shucks, I'm just an ol' Washington outsider" act, for years. Long enough to have noticed that McLean is planted thick with churches. Going to church is, of course, optional -- unless you are aiming to fill some supposed piety void in the Republican field.

New Coke was announced on April 23, 1985, with the company's president piling on adjectives usually reserved for Lafite Rothschild -- "smoother, rounder yet bolder." Almost 80 days later, the public having sampled it, the company pulled the product from stores. Perhaps Thompson's candidacy will last longer than New Coke did.

Next up, Paul Weyrich from Townhall.com:
It is not entirely clear what Thompson believes. When he was Senator he seemed to support an open-borders approach to immigration. In recent speeches Thompson has not supported President George W. Bush's comprehensive immigration reform bill, which was soundly defeated.

...

If the Thompson balloon were launched high but then returned to earth, with Thompson falling behind other candidates, that would mean the several-month tease in the form of his exploratory committee would have been for naught.

Lastly, Gail Collines from the NYT:
When it comes to overhyped underperformers, Fred Thompson's entry into the presidential race was right up there with Britney Spears at the MTV awards.

The Republican Party's great tall hope announced his intentions on Jay Leno's show, and timed it to coincide with his avoidance of the candidate debate in New Hampshire. That was supposed to send the message of - what? A fear of crowds? A preference for answering questions only while seated? His performance certainly could not have been more low-key. You do not often hear somebody say "I'm running for president" in the same tone Jay's guests use to announce that they've signed on for the next season of "Dancing With the Stars."

Labels:

Some great Web 2.0 tools

The Fall is a great time to refresh your website and meet the growing demands of your audience by providing value through unique and original interactive tools. Here's a quick run-down of what lies beyond YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the like.


DYI Mash-up/Widgets - This is the holy grail of Web 2.0 applications. For those of your with kids its the equivilent of "stone soup" for the internet - taking open source applications, adding in a bit of this and a bit of that and creating a new beast altogether. Some of these (like FeedFlash) do one thing well, others (like Pageflakes) extend things a bit more.



Surveys - There's no better way to drive a bit of stickiness to your site than through interaction. Interactive surveys have been on the web for a while. Old stalwarts like Zoomerang are slowly falling by the wayside as these dynamic new apps will attest.

Email/Communications - As Patrick attests, this is and might always be the "killer app". The professionals use mostly Lyris as their software platform but the big and clunky interface may soon fall victim to one of these upstarts. Personally, I've started to use iContact and I find it effective, inexpensive and easy to use.

Multimedia - Whether you need a quick graphic fix or an interactive video embed for your site, these new upstarts offer some interesting apps. My favorite is Bubble Guru.

Blog marketing - Eyes are everything to a blog. Here's a unique start-up aiming to help the lowly blog out.

Content/Data - While widgets are the "in" thing right now... the next big thing IMHO are content and data services that can help you gather and present content in a unique way. Here are some initial approached to this issue.




Interactive tools
- Whether you need a google map or a PDF conversion tool... here's a host of interesting sites that can help.

Social networking - So you got the facebook group, your on MySpace and your YouTube is grooving. How what? Well how about managing all your profiles in one place. Here's an original idea for social networking.

Presentations - Everybody uses PowerPoint these days... How about putting those online. No problem.

Labels: