What age should i get an iphone 3g the new one, because its almost Christmas and im 14 years old and im in the 9th grade and i have no cell phone with me but i really want the iphone. Also i want it because i have no way to contact my parents or my friends, and i always have to ask one of my friends if i can use there phone to call my parents and ask permission to go somewhere. Also because i can use my brothers cell phone but he is about to graduate in june somthing and he i already in the 12th grade. So is it the right time to get a cell phone, in my case the iphone 3g. So please respond back because i know how to use an iphone because one of my friends has one and i have an ipod touch 2g that i got from my birthday. RESPOND BACK PLEAAAASE!!!! :(

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opensocial_birthday_logo.jpg" /A couple of weeks ago we celebrated a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/opensocial_one_year_later.php"the first birthday of Google's OpenSocial project/a, an open API framework for social networks and websites. Google's OpenSocial Blog recently presented a href="http://opensocialapis.blogspot.com/2008/11/opensocials-birthday-wrap-up-its-good.html"some statistics/a, including that OpenSocial now reaches nearly 675 M registered users and there are 7,500 applications./p pWhat's interesting about these numbers is that the single largest number of registered users isn't coming from MySpace, hi5 or even Orkut. The largest user base appears to be from 51.com, which as we've reported before is one of a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_targets_chinese.php"China's largest social networks/a with a href="http://opensocialapis.blogspot.com/2008/11/51com-launches-opensocial-to-31m-unique.html"130M registered users/a. /p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12775amp;cb=12775' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12775amp;n=12775' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pChina is obviously a key market for OpenSocial, with another recent Chinese addition being the social network Xiaonei (30M registered people)./p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opensocial_reach08.jpg" //p pHere are the other stats that Google mentioned:/p ul li 315M+ app installs/li li85M+ daily canvas page views/li li7,500+ applications/li li20+ live containers/li /ul p2,100 of the 7,500 apps are attributed to hi5./p pAs we noted in a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/opensocial_one_year_later.php"our previous post/a, for the first year OpenSocial has seen tremendous uptake in the online community. The list of organizations developing apps includes AOL, Bebo, hi5, Google, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, Yahoo!. Of course still missing from OpenSocial are Facebook and Microsoft./p pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/opensocial_stack08.jpg" //p pPerhaps with MySpace covering the key U.S. base and the Chinese social networks coming on board OpenSocial, Facebook will find itself on the outer. Google looks to be well on its way to defining the quot;new open stackquot; and populating it with large social networks - so we have to wonder how long Facebook can hold out. Check out the a href="http://docs.google.com/Present?docid=dgj67kk4_20gpt6qpcjskipauth=true"full OpenSocial slides here/a./p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/googles_new_open_stack_sans_facebook_microsoft.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/K2IdtE7djdezyWQ4DmaaHsVMbZY/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/K2IdtE7djdezyWQ4DmaaHsVMbZY/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=mJTSnYQg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=AnaYC8Ed"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=5uhrS30W"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=5uhrS30W" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=wyA8vZf0"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=wyA8vZf0" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=hqgmnGrH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=hqgmnGrH" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=MfV2UBzh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=vaZWNBf2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/o7ZEitrl8z8" height="1" width="1"/

centerimg title="TOPLESS Project Offers White-light OLED Desk Lamp" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="TOPLESS Project Offers White-light OLED Desk Lamp" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/topless-panel.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pNo, don't get the wrong idea when TOPLESS project is mentioned - you won't find vixens in their birthday suits prancing around, that's for sure! Best save that kind of risque images for the Incognito window in Google Chrome, as the TOPLESS project here features a whitel-light OLED desk lamp that is built from five panels, each one measuring a mere 0.7mm thin. What you see above is the panel itself, so let your imagination run wild on how the lamps themselves will look like. More creative design teams will probably come up with something astounding that is sure to be a conversation piece in your home./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/topless_project_offers_whitelight_oled_desk_lamp.html"TOPLESS Project Offers White-light OLED Desk Lamp/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081201184458" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081201184458?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081201184458" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081201184458amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Ftopless_project_offers_whitelight_oled_desk_lamp.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/pkWc1XBRJHW-0zOBaBxbqZ5xxp8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/pkWc1XBRJHW-0zOBaBxbqZ5xxp8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=mtcrV8zU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=63WtTa2s"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=63WtTa2s" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=nYMrDrTN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=0q6rnD1m"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=0q6rnD1m" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=2kGpDVIn"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=2kGpDVIn" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/t7_wFTBiS78" height="1" width="1"/

**Skip to Nick's birthday!** *Adrienne's in Nick's bedroom about to wake him up* Adrienne: Nick? (a little louder) Nick?? (almost yelling) Nick! Nick: Who is it..eh it's early. Adrienne: It is your girlfriend, of course, and we have to get up early! You have a suprise waiting. Nick: Hey darlin *sits up* Adrienne: Good morning and happy birthday! *hugs and kisses him* Hurry and get ready. Suprise is waiting Nick: Ok.. Adrienne: I'll be in the living room waiting. Nick: Who's driving us? Adrienne: Big Rob, who else? *laughs* Nick: *laughs* I'll be down in a few minutes Adrienne: K *walks downstairs and Nick goes and gets ready* *In the car on the way..to somewhere!* Nick: Is it mandatory for me to be blindfolded? Adrienne: Yes. We're almost there! Correction, we're here. *helps Nick out of the car and into an AIRPLANE! A private one to be exact* Nick: We're going somewhere?? Awesome! Where? Adrienne: Where's a place that you want to live one day? Nick: Chicago.. **BTW they're at their house in Texas! Don't ask about why Adrienne and the girls are there..b/c I don't know** Adrienne: Yep. Nick: We're going to Chicago?? Adrienne: We sure are! Where do you want to go when you are there?? Nick: Um, see the sights and it would be cool to see a baseball game at Wrigley Field someday Adrienne: *quickly pulls out something out of her purse* Nick: Are you serious? Adrienne: Oh. Yeah. Yankees vs. Cubs. Today. We're soo going. Nick: Thank you! That's so awesome! I love you! Adrienne: You're welcome, yes it is, and I LOVE YOU TOO! *smiles* **They're at the stadium. Big Rob is there, too. Of course people have noticed them.** Random Fan #1: I LOVE YOU NICK!!! #2: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I LOVE YOU #3: OHMYGOSH! IT'S NICK JONAS!! AND ADRIENNE! I LOVE YOU BOTH!! #1: (to #3) You love HER? Really? Adrienne: (to Nick) Hey..that's so not cool. #3: Yeah. She's AMAZING! And how good to her and Nick look together?? VERY GOOD! #2: I bought her CD the day it came out! I LOVE it! Adrienne: (yelling to them) Thanks!! We love you, too! Nick: Thanks!! #1,2,3: AHH! #2: They talked to us!! Ahh!!! Adrienne: Wow! They're sooo loud! Nick: You were louder than that! Adrienne: That's true *laughs* *they get to their seats, and Nick sees something* Nick: What's that? Adrienne: Why don't you go see? Nick: Aw, it's someones puppy..it has a tag *reads the tag outloud* It's name is Muffin, and it's owners name is *pauses* You didn't Adrienne: Oh yeah. I did Nick: Thank you so much! I've always wanted a puppy like this! Adrienne: You're welcome! She's sooo cute! I couldn't resist! She was just staring at me from the pet shop window, and I knew that she had to be ours! Nick: She's so fluffy. I love her! Where'd you get the name Muffin? Adrienne: You Nick: Me? Adrienne: Yeah, remember Joe saying that you were a StudMUFFIN? It fit Nick: Oh haha Adrienne: And, back before we met, Tayy called me Hotmuffin... Nick: Should I ask? Adrienne: Probably not..haha **They watch the game then go out to eat. Now we're with Taylor and Joe.** *****NO COPYRIGHT CLAIM. All copyright goes to the owner.*****

Author: iheartnickjonas13245 Keywords: Brothers Jonas OneTrueMedia Added: December 1, 2008

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/33226?ns=guardianpageName=Music%3A+Bold+as+brassch=Musicc3=The+Guardianc4=Classical+music+and+opera%2CMusic%2CCulture+sectionc5=Classical+Music%2CNot+commercially+usefulc6=Tom+Servicec7=2008_12_02c8=1127264c9=articlec10=GUc11=Musicc12=Classical+music+and+operac13=c14=h2=GU%2FMusic%2FClassical+music+and+opera" width="1" height="1" //divpFortieth birthdays are always hard. Are you 40 years young, or getting long in the tooth? When the London Sinfonietta started out in 1968, it was the only ensemble of its kind anywhere in the world: a place where young composers could hear their music played alongside modernist greats. The group's first-ever programme, in January 1968, looks bizarre to anyone who has been to a Sinfonietta gig in the past decade or so: music by Hans Werner Henze, the world premiere of John Tavener's The Whale, Richard Strauss's conservative and inoffensive Symphony for Wind. These days, the Sinfonietta wouldn't touch Richard Strauss with a bargepole. A concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London tonight shows how far they have come: contemporary classics from Harrison Birtwistle and John Adams, alongside eight first performances./ppThe Sinfonietta was dreamed up by a group of twentysomething young turks - conductor David Atherton, impresarios Nicholas Snowman and Andrew Rosner - and quickly became an essential part of Britain's musical landscape. By 1973, Karlheinz Stockhausen was praising its unique commitment to music-making, and Pierre Boulez was performing his Domaines with the ensemble around Europe. "It was technically incredibly hard," says David Purser, a Sinfonietta trombonist for more than 34 years. "One simply hadn't thought of playing music that difficult. There's a real excitement in that challenge from a player's point of view, and in working with the giants of the 20th century." Xenakis, Carter, Ligeti, Berio, Lachenmann, Reich, Adams: the Sinfonietta's collaborators form a roll call of 20th- and 21st-century musical history./ppBut it is a commitment to British composers that runs like a golden thread through the Sinfonietta's story. Tonight's concert starts with Birtwistle, who first wrote for the group in 1969. Sinfonietta pianist Nicolas Hodges, who had a career-defining moment performing the world premiere of Carter's Dialogues four years ago, has fond memories of the concerts of the late 1980s, when "everything I went to was [performed by] the London Sinfonietta". But he sees the downside to this hegemony of new music. "Looking back, there were relatively few British composers the Sinfonietta promoted heavily. It was basically a bastion of the worst things about the clubs and cliques of British new music. In that time, they would shudder at performing Brian Ferneyhough or Michael Finnissy" - both composers whose complexity puts special demands on their performers. "But," Hodges adds, "it's testament to how the ensemble has developed in the past decade that they have now been included on their programmes."/ppThe people who set the Sinfonietta on that course were Oliver Knussen, music director from 1998 to 2002, and Gillian Moore, artistic director from 1998 to 2006. Knussen showcased a new range of international names and styles, but there were also cross-genre collaborations: dance from Akram Khan, live visuals from Peter Greenaway, and a partnership with the avant-garde electronica of Warp Records. /ppMoore says she was consciously trying to put new classical music at the heart of broader contemporary culture: "The reason for working with Warp and Radiohead" - the Sinfonietta regularly performs music by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood - "wasn't to create crossover, but rather to acknowledge connections between classical and other types of practice."/ppHer strategy has worked. The two Warp concerts at the Festival Hall, which have since toured the world, brought full houses and a new, younger audience. The Sinfonietta packed the place out again this season for a concert of Thomas Adegrave;s and Steve Reich. David Purser says the Warp events were the moment when the Sinfonietta broke out of its new-music ghetto: "We got through to people who are interested in contemporary culture, theatre and art, but who hadn't previously come to contemporary music. Gone are the days - mercifully - when you could shake hands with everyone in the audience because they'd been coming to all the concerts of the past 10 years." /ppNot everyone is so enthusiastic. While Hodges praises the ensemble's internationalism, he thinks that "they have also taken on projects and music of dubious quality - which presumably make them a lot of friends and a lot of money, but ultimately are artistically thin". Andrew Burke, the current artistic director, defends this kind of programming: "We have a responsibility to seek out new ways of engaging audiences, whether that's through other art forms or through technology. We have to be part of the digital chatter of people's lives." /ppBurke doesn't want to lose sight of what is at the core of the Sinfonietta's work: giving world-class concerts of music you can't hear anywhere else in the UK. "In a sense, we're a niche of a niche; not just 'classical' but 'contemporary classical'. Yes, this music is often more complex - and I don't think we should be scared of that word - and more deep, more challenging than other areas of music. But when you get into it, my God, the payback! We have a responsibility to take that message out, with religious zeal."/pp· The strongLondon Sinfonietta/strong's 40th birthday concert is at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London SE1 (0871 663 2500), tonight. There will also be a special celebration at the Royal Festival Hall, London SE1, on December 13. Details: a href="http://www.ldnsnf-40.com"ldnsnf-40.com/a/pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/classicalmusicandopera"Classical music and opera/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/bj_mTG9oZBj6DtXiyI2WyVT_Rm0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/bj_mTG9oZBj6DtXiyI2WyVT_Rm0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

Ok my Birthday is the 10th of December and i have no idea what to get. I already have an ipod touch, nano, psp slim, ds lite, ps3, wii, xbox 360, plasma tv, a brand new sony laptop, and i am getting an imac for Christmas.
By the way i am turning 15.

Be sure to check out and subscribe to http://youtube.com/kassemg Be sure to follow me: http://PhillyD.tv http://twitter.com/phillyd http://myspace.com/youtubephil http://blogtv.com/people/sxephil Stories: Nukes and you: http://tinyurl.com/5tevyn Walmart: http://tinyurl.com/6hmsak SWG Emu: http://tinyurl.com/6q22nc

Author: sxephil Keywords: sxephil birthday sxe not sexy phil defranco entertainment news web series Walmart trampled Added: December 1, 2008

pemsmallPhotos by Karin Dreijer Andersson/small/embr /br /I'll bake the cake, you round up the candles: November 2009 marks the 150th birthday of Charles Darwin's epochal evolution text emOn the Origin of Species/em. And who better to commemorate the occasion than, okay, stronga href="http://www.theknife.net/" target="_blank"the Knife/a/strong! With an opera?? Next thing you'll tell me Adam and Eve aren't actually my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents.br /br /According to their website, the Knife's Olof Dreijer and Karin Dreijer Andersson have been enlisted to write both the music and libretto (i.e., words) for Danish theater group stronga href="http://www.hotelproforma.dk/" target="_blank"Hotel Pro Forma/a/strong's upcoming production stronga href="http://www.hotelproforma.dk/side.asp?side=2amp;id=437amp;ver=uk" target="_blank"emTomorrow, in a Year/em/a/strong. The piece is set to debut in Copenhagen in November 2009, and takes as its inspiration Darwin's thoughts on evolution, change, transformation, and mutation.br /br /img src="/sites/default/files/tomorrowinayear1.jpg" border="0" /br /br /Quoth the press materials, the production "uses Darwin's way of observing and describing the world. Change as a process and the interrelationship of all things is the basic material of the performance...emTomorrow, in a Year/em points to evolution as a field of possibilities, where nature unfolds its great liberality, finding niches and new paths. The musical and visual components of the performance are shown as fragments, as parts of the world that are uncovered and studied. A recognisable sequence emerges, only to mutate and change into a number of subsequent species. There is a development from preliminaries to totality to renewed change." Sounds...artsy.br /br /As for the band's contributions, "The Swedish music group the Knife creates completely new compositions that challenge the conventional conception of opera. The form is experimental and exploratory. The music is written for three singers who come from different backgrounds: electronica pop, classical opera, and performance. They are the protagonists of the performance, displaying three ways of experiencing the world. They are the spokesman, the organiser, and the one who acts. They are structure, sensation, form, time, and thought." Hey, as long as I can dance to it, count me in.br /br /img src="/sites/default/files/tomorrowinayear2.jpg" border="0" /br /br /The Knife's site notes that brother Olof is presently in the Amazon doing field recordings of animals, fish, and plants, while sister Karin is credited with taking the intriguing-looking publicity stills for emTomorrow, in a Year/em you see here. Huh, looks stronga href="/article/news/39488-cmj-report-wednesday-amy-phillips" target="_blank"strangely familiar.../a/strongbr /br /In other news, Karin stronga href="/article/news/146818-the-knifes-karin-dreijer-fires-up-solo-project" target="_blank"has an album due early next year/a/strong under the stronga href="http://feverray.com/" target="_blank"Fever Ray/a/strong banner. Also, the Knife are kinda weird./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/PZJTXvfi20Qj23gttdxndGzkwvI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/PZJTXvfi20Qj23gttdxndGzkwvI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/9AJDCeaROOk" height="1" width="1"/

Gift-wrap your presents creatively as well as beautifully with these tips.

Auteur : Howcast
Tags : howcast how-to crafts holidays seasonal christmas birthday wrapping decorating gifts paper bows
Envoyé : 01 décembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

Pick the perfect present for your love according to how long you've been in the romance with our relationship-stage gift-giving guide.

Auteur : Howcast
Tags : howcast how-to holidays christmas shopping celebration birthday appropriate right perfect gift present
Envoyé : 01 décembre 2008
Note :0.0
Votes :0

Kind people,

I’m interested in making home movies that won’t bore the pants off family and friends :eek: This means I need to learn more about planning and shooting family events :cool: This community here has been great and very helpful, but I also need to find something more specific. Does anyone know of a good web site or two where people download and talk about how they made their own home movies? As much as I can watch unedited video of my daughter for hours on end, I also realize no one wants to see a 3 year old’s birthday party where the camcorder was put on a tripod and set to record for 30 minutes at a time. I figure there must be a cyber community out there somewhere that meets this description; I just haven’t found one yet.

Scott

div style="margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 10px;"posted by Neil/div spanThis is a bit long./spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" /spanspanApologies./spanspan style="font-weight: bold;" /spanspanI'd meant to talk about other things, but I started writing this morning and got a bit carried away./spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"br /br /I have questions about the Handley case. What makes lolicon something worth defending? Yaoi, as I understand it, isn't necessarily child porn, but the lolicon stuff is all about sexualizing prepubescent girls, yes? And haven't there been lots of credible psych studies saying that if you find a support community for a fetish, belief or behavior, you're more likely to indulge in it? That's why social movements are so important for oppressed or non-mainstream groups (meaning everything from the fetish community to free-market libertarianism) -and why NAMBLA is so very, very scary (they are, essentially, a support group for baby-rapists.)br /br /The question, for me, is even if we only save ONE child from rape or attempted rape, or even just lots of uncomfortable hugs from Creepy Uncle Dave, is that not worth leaving a couple naked bodies out of a comic? It is, after all, more than possible to imply and discuss these issues (ex. if someone loses their virginity at 14, and chooses to write a comic about it) without having a big ol' pic of 14 yr. old poon being penetrated as the graphic. I also think there's a world of difference between the Sandman story-which depicts child rape as the horrific thing it is (and, I believe, also ends with a horrific death for the pervert, doesn't it?) and depicting child rape as a sexy and titillating thing. I think there is also a difference between acknowledging children's sexuality, and pornography about children that is created for adults. Where on this spectrum does something like lolicon fall? And, again, why do you, personally, think that it should be defended?br /br /Thanks for reading my ramble, and for being accessible to us, and engaged in things like CBLDF. Mostly, they are a fantastic org., but I'm really on the fence with this case...br /br /Jess/spanbr /br /Let me see if I can push you off the fence, a little. I'm afraid it's going to a long, and probably a bit rambly answer -- a span style="font-style: italic;"credo/span, and how I arrived at that.br /br /If you accept -- and I do -- that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don't say or like or want said.br /br /The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don't. This is how the Law is made.br /br /People making art find out where the limits of free expression are by going beyond them and getting into trouble.br /br /LOST GIRLS, by Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore is several hundred pages long. (a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/06/lost-girls-redux.html"I posted the full-length review I did for span style="font-style: italic;"Publishers Weekly /spanhere/a. Describing it, I said,br /br /blockquote style="font-style: italic;"The boundary between pornography and erotica is an ambiguous one, and it changes depending on where you're standing. For some, perhaps, it's a matter of whatever turns you on (my erotica, your pornography), for some the distinction occurs in class (i.e. erotica is pornography for rich people). Perhaps it's also something to do with the means of distribution – internet pornography is unquestionably porn, while an Edwardian publication, on creamy paper, bought by connoisseurs, part works bound into expensive volumes, must be erotica./blockquotebr /br /and I went on to say,br /br /blockquote style="font-style: italic;"It's the kind of smut that would have no difficulty in demonstrating to an overzealous prosecutor that it has unquestionable artistic validity beyond its simple first amendment right to exist./blockquoteWhich was the kind of thing you put in a review suspecting that its real purpose may be to persuade a prosecutor that the case is already lost, and not to bother.br /br /In with span style="font-style: italic;"Lost Girls/span' many permutations of sexuality, we find some content featuring fictional characters under the current age of consent. It's a story about sexual awakenings, after all, and few of us wake exactly on our eighteenth birthdays (or whatever your local age of consent or representation happens to be). At one point we find ourselves reading a book within a book, a Beardsleyesque fantasia in which fictional characters discuss the fact that they are lines on paper, metafictional fantasies, while having underage, incestuous, sex. It's art, and it's brilliant, and it makes you think about what porn is and what art is, and where the boundaries are.br /br /The Law is a blunt instrument. It's not a scalpel. It's a club. If there is something you consider indefensible, and there is something you consider defensible, and the same laws can take them both out, you are going to find yourself defending the indefensible.br /br /I was born the day of the conclusion of the span style="font-style: italic;"Lady Chatterley/span trial in England, the day it was decided that span style="font-style: italic;"Lady Chatterley's Lover/span, with its swearing, buggery and raw sex between the classes, was fit to be published and read in a cheap edition that poor people and servants could read. This was the same England in which, some years earlier, the director of public prosecutions had threatened to prosecute Professor F R Leavis if he so much as referred to James Joyce's span style="font-style: italic;"Ulysses /spanin a lecture (the DPP was a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Bodkin"Archibald Bodkin/a, who also bannedspan style="font-style: italic;" The Well of Loneliness/span) , in which, when I was sixteen and listening to the Sex Pistols, the publisher of span style="font-style: italic;"Gay News/span was sentenced to prison for the crime of Criminal Blasphemy, for publishing an erotic poem featuring a fantasy about Jesus.br /br /When I was writing span style="font-style: italic;"Sandman/span, about eighteen years ago, I had thought that the Marquis de Sade would make a fine character for my French Revolution story (I loved the fact that at the time he was a tubby, asthmatic imprisoned for his refusal to sentence people to death) and thought I really ought to read his books, rather than commntaries on them, if I was going to put him in my story, and I discovered that the works of DeSade were, at that time, not available in the UK, and that UK Customs had declared them un-importable. I bought them in a Borders the next time I was in the US, and brought them through customs looking guilty. (You can now get De Sade in the UK. The arrival of internet porn in the UK meant that the police stopped chasing things like that.)br /br /The first time I got involved in fund-raising for comics freedom of speech was in late 1983 or early 1984 -- Knockabout Comics were having one of their frequent battles with UK Customs over what could and could not be imported into the UK. Some comics contained rude words, sex, or the use of marijuana in them, and Customs would seize any comics they objected to, forcing Knockabout to fight long, expensive, court cases to get them back. (I remember their outrage when, in 1996, Knockabout imported some Robert Crumb books to accompany a BBC TV documentary on Crumb, and UK Customs confiscated the books, forcing yet another court case. I'm pretty sure that it was over some autobiographical Crumb work which contained drawings of sexual fantasies including characters who were under 18. As a href="http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=1515"Tony Bennett, from Knockabout said in a recent interview,/a span style="font-style: italic;""The other case was with HM Customs in 1996 over Robert Crumb’s comics and explicit sexual imagery. We won this overwhelmingly as well and Customs were kind enough to write to me after the case setting out a list of what sex acts might be shown in comics. I haven’t actually framed it but it is a precious document."/span)br /br /The first time I ever came close to sending a publisher to prison was about 1986 or 1987, for Knockabout's span style="font-style: italic;"Outrageous Tales From The Old Testament/span: I'd retold a story from thespan style="font-style: italic;" Book of Judges/span that contained a rape and murder, and this was held to have contravened a Swedish law depicting images of violence against women. The case was only won when the defense pointed out that the words were from the King James version of the bible, and that the images were a fair representation thereof...br /br /(For those of you who are a bit shaky on your Book of Judges, here's a href="http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=judges%2019;amp;version=31;"an online Bible version of the scene that caused the prosecution/a.)br /blockquotebr /span style="font-style: italic;"While they were enjoying themselves, some of the wicked men of the city surrounded the house. Pounding on the door, they shouted to the old man who owned the house, "Bring out the man who came to your house so we can have sex with him."/spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"The owner of the house went outside and said to them, "No, my friends, don't be so vile. Since this man is my guest, don't do this disgraceful thing. Look, here is my virgin daughter, and his concubine. I will bring them out to you now, and you can use them and do to them whatever you wish. But to this man, don't do such a disgraceful thing."/spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"But the men would not listen to him. So the man took his concubine and sent her outside to them, and they raped her and abused her throughout the night, and at dawn they let her go. At daybreak the woman went back to the house where her master was staying, fell down at the door and lay there until daylight./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"When her master got up in the morning and opened the door of the house and stepped out to continue on his way, there lay his concubine, fallen in the doorway of the house, with her hands on the threshold. He said to her, "Get up; let's go." But there was no answer. Then the man put her on his donkey and set out for home./spanbr /br /span style="font-style: italic;"When he reached home, he took a knife and cut up his concubine, limb by limb, into twelve parts and sent them into all the areas of Israel./span/blockquotebr /And in each case, you could rewrite Jess's letter above, explaining that only perverts would want to read span style="font-style: italic;"Lady Chatterley/span, or see images of women being abused, or read span style="font-style: italic;"Lost Girls/span or the works of Robert Crumb, and mentioning that if only one person was saved from a hug from a creepy uncle, or indeed, being raped in the streets, that banning them or prosecuting those who write, draw, publish, sell or -- now -- own them, is worth it. Because that was the point of view of the people who were banning these works or stopping people reading them. They thought they were doing a good thing. They thought they were defending other people.br /br /I loved coming to the US in 1992, mostly because I loved the idea that freedom of speech was paramount. I still do. With all its faults, the US has Freedom of Speech. You can't be arrested for saying things the government doesn't like. You can say what you like, write what you like, and that the remedy to someone saying or writing or showing something that offends you is not to read it, or to speak out against it. I loved that I could read and make my own mind up about something.br /br /(It's worth noting that the UK, for example, has no such law, and that even the European Court of Human Rights has ruled thata href="http://www.secularism.org.uk/uploads/3543216b2ccd2e5738717582.pdf"span style="font-style: italic;" interference with free speech was "necessary in a democratic society" in order to guarantee the rights of others" to protection from gratuitous insults to their religious feelings./span/a)br /br /So when a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_diana"Mike Diana/a was prosecuted -- and found guilty -- of obscenity for the comics in his Zine "Boiled Angel", and sentenced to a host of things, including (if memory serves) a three year suspended prison sentence, a three thousand dollar fine, not being allowed to be in the same room as anyone under eighteen, over a thousand hours of community service, and was forbidden to draw anything else obscene, with the local police ordered to make 24 hour unannounced spot checks to make sure Mike wasn't secretly committing Art in the small hours of the morning... that was the point I decided that I knew what was obscene, and it was prosecuting artists for having ideas and making lines on paper, and that I was going to do everything I could to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Whether I liked or approved of what Mike Diana did was utterly irrelevant. (For the record, I didn't like the text parts of span style="font-style: italic;"Boiled Angel/span, but did like the comics, which were personal and had a raw power to them. And somewhere in the sprawling basement magazine collection I have span style="font-style: italic;"Boiled Angel/span 7 and 8, which I read back then to find out what was being prosecuted, and for owning which I could, I assume, now be arrested...)br /br /The first time the CBLDF did anything to defend one of my comics, it was the span style="font-style: italic;"Death Talks About Life/span comic at the back of DEATH: THE HIGH COST OF LIVING, in which we see Death putting a condom on a banana and talking about how not to get pregnant, diseased or dead. The Chief of Police in (if memory serves) Jacksonville Florida ordered a comic shop not to sell it, because she thought it was obscene and encouraged teen sex. In this case, it only took a letter from the CBLDF legal counsel, Burton Joseph, to the Jacksonville Police Department, explaining the concept of the First Amendment (and, by implication, that there was an organisation prepared to defend this stuff) and they shut up and went away. (That's what most of the CBLDF activity consists of -- small, quiet things that stop it ever getting to a court of law.) From the police chief's point of view, span style="font-style: italic;"Death Talks About Life/span was obscene. She wanted it off the shelves.br /br /In this case you obviously have read lolicon, and I haven't. I don't know whether you're writing from personal experience here, and whether you have personally been incited to rape children or give inappropriate hugs by reading it. (I assume you haven't. I assume that Chris Handley, with his huge manga collection, wasn't either. I've read books that claimed that exposure to porn causes rape, but have seen no statistical evidence that porn causes rape -- and indeed have seen a href="http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/06/rape-porn-and-criminality-political.php"claims that the declining number of US rapes may be due to the wider availability of porn/a. Honestly, it's a red herring. I'll leave that for other people to argue about.) Still, you seem to want lolicon banned, and people prosecuted for owning it, and I don't. You ask, span style="font-style: italic;"What makes it worth defending?/span and the only answer I can give is this: Freedom to write, freedom to read, freedom to own material that you believe is worth defending means you're going to have to stand up for stuff you span style="font-style: italic;"don't /spanbelieve is worth defending, stuff you find actively distasteful, because laws are big blunt instruments that do not differentiate between what you like and what you don't, because prosecutors are humans and bear grudges and fight for re-election, because one person's obscenity is another person's art.br /br /The CBLDF will defend your First Amendment right as an adult to make lines on paper, to draw, to write, to sell, to publish, and now, span style="font-style: italic;"to own/span comics. And that's what makes work you don't like, or don't read, or work that you do not feel has artistic worth or redeeming features worth defending. It's the stuff you like and the stuff you find icky, wherever your icky line happens to be. Because the law is a big blunt instrument that makes no fine distinctions, and because you only realise how wonderful absolute freedom of speech is the day you lose it.br /br /(And let it be understood that I think that child pornography, and the exploitation of actual children for porn or for sex is utterly wrong and bad, because actual children are being directly harmed. And also that I think that a href="http://news.cnet.com/Police-blotter-Teens-prosecuted-for-racy-photos/2100-1030_3-6157857.html"prosecuting as child pornographers a 16 and 17 year old who are legally able to have sex, because they took a sexual photograph and emailed it to themselves is utterly, insanely wrong/a, and a nice example of the law as blunt instrument.) div class="label_list" style="margin-top: 20px; padding-left: 15px; text-indent: -15px; font-size: 78%/1.4em; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: .1em;"strongLabels:/strongnbsp; a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/wittering%20on%20a%20bit" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"wittering on a bit/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/The%20First%20Amendment" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"The First Amendment/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Bible%20stories%20that%20nearly%20sent%20publishers%20to%20prison" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Bible stories that nearly sent publishers to prison/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Lost%20Girls" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Lost Girls/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/CBLDF" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"CBLDF/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Why%20I%20Support%20the%20CBLDF" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Why I Support the CBLDF/a/div

p style="text-align: center;"a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126887/jumpfesta_qjgenth.jpg?408222" rel="lightbox[article126887]" title="Square 20Enix 20Jump 20Festa 2009 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126887/jumpfesta.jpg 3F408222 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img alt="Square Enix Jump Festa 09 - Image 1" title="Square Enix Jump Festa 09 - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126887/jumpfesta_qjgenth.jpg?408222" align=""/anbsp;br/pbra href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/jump-festa/11409" id="tag" title="Annual event in Japan featuring anime and manga"Jump Festa/a '09 is drawing closer, with only but a couple of weeks to go before the event unfolds. a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/square-enix/281" id="tag" title="Game developer, Father of Final Fantasy series"Square Enix/a is making sure that you'll be dropping in as they prepare a hefty lineup of goods to show for you. brbrFrom what we gathered, only span style="font-style: italic;"Kingdom Hearts/span titles are announced as playable for now, but you never know. They might throw in a couple more others in the coming days. In the meantime, here's the Squeenix Jump Festa '09 list:brulliDragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito (DS) /liliDragon Quest Monster Battle Road II (Arcade) /liliKingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (DS) /lilia title="Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/category/Kingdom-Hearts-Birth-by-Sleep/cid/4419"Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep/a (PSP) /liliKingdom Hearts Coded (Mobile) /liliKingdom Hearts Mobile (Mobie) /liliLost Winds (Wii)/liliFinal Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (DS, Wii)/lilia title="Star Ocean: The Last Hope" href="http://xbox360.qj.net/category/Star-Ocean-The-Last-Hope/cid/5138"Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope/a (Xbox 360)/liliBlood of Bahamut (DS)/lilia title="Final Fantasy XIII news and updates" href="http://ps3.qj.net/category/Final-Fantasy-XIII/cid/1717"Final Fantasy XIII/a (PS3)/liliFinal Fantasy Versus XIII (PS3)/liliFinal Fantasy Agito XIII (PSP)/liliFinal Fantasy VII Advent Children Comple (Blu-ray)/liliThe 3rd Birthday (PSP)/liliFinal Fantasy IV The After (Mobile)/liliDragon Quest Battle Road Mobile (Mobile)/liliRomancing SaGa (Mobile)/liliCrystal Defenders (iPhone a href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/tags/3g/1223" id="tag" title="third generation technology for mobile phone standards"3G/a/iPhone Touch)/lilia title="Dissidia news and updates here" href="http://pspupdates.qj.net/category/Dissidia-Final-Fantasy/cid/3836"Dissidia Final Fantasy/a (PSP)/liliMahou no Ehon: Majo to Shoujo to 5-Jin no Yuusha (DS)/liliThe Last Remnant (Xbox 360)/liliChrono Trigger (DS)/liliChocobo no Fushigi na Dungeon - Tokiwasure no Meikyuu DS (DS)/liliPingu no Waku Waku Carnival! (DS)/liliSnoopy DS: Snoopy to Chuugen Taichi ni Ei ni Iku! (DS)/li/ulspan style="font-weight: bold;"brNote: /spanThose with are playable titlesbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=Go6fhF8h"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=849dlQxK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?a=7GkMn1Er"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/QJ/PSP?d=43" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/QJ/PSP/~4/gcsslxfY7cc" height="1" width="1"/