From William Bragg comes the truly mindboggling news story that a 15 year old girl has been charged with sexual abuse of a child, possessing child pornography, and disseminating child pornography for taking pictures of HERSELF and sending them to people in chat rooms.
So what, she's being charged with child abuse for abusing herself?? If you're under 18, having naked pictures of YOURSELF is illegal? I could maybe see the bit about disseminating it.
Okay, it's creepy, sure. I wouldn't want my little sister doing this. But for crying out loud, this is just WEIRD. How can you be charged with child abuse for "abusing" yourself??
I wrote a whole paper about how child pornography laws and public attitudes towards same are moving in a wholly inappropriate direction--don't get me wrong, taking pictures of kids in sexual poses or whatever, for some dirty person to look at, is wrong. But we're talking about people getting arrested for taking snapshots of their kids splashing in the swimming pool or the "naked baby pictures" that moms to everyone my age or older have in the family album. I think it's a mistake to oversexualize everything in this manner, to assume the worst of everyone and every photograph.
Back to the girl, I'm curious where this will go. You lawyers, can a 15-year old be charged with child abuse when the abused child is herself?? It seems like a judge would laugh that right out of the building. I'm guessing that this arrest and the ensuing publicity is going to be worse for this girl than taking some dirty pictures of herself.
The Very Big Corporation I work at (or, more accurately, I am a temp worker at) is Very Serious with moments of mirth mixed in. But on April 1, they really go all out on the corporate intranet home page. It's a total riot. I wish I could post a screenshot, but then you'd know where I work...;)
In other news, said Very Big Corporation has a few openings for an admin and if they can't find a suitable internal candidate, they are allowed to consider me. Now *that* would rock. The VBC has great benefits for their employees.
Otherwise, I have gotten nary a nibble in my job search. We are T-30 days and counting, now, until unemployment...
Isaac Laquedem (blog here) has a great post about the massive waste of money that is Portland's plan to relocate Fire Station 1.
I went to the Portland Public Market site (here) and was pretty alarmed to see that this plan means totally displacing the Portland Saturday Market. Yeah, yeah, they give a one-liner about how they're not "replacing" the Saturday Market, but somehow it looks like a death knell to me. The market has been at that location for 31 years and it looks like we're going to get steamrolled by people with more money.
I couldn't see anywhere on their plans where they intend to move us to, and with my knowledge of the area, I can't figure out where we'd end up (there just isn't that much room around there for both). Besides, I can assure you personally that it's not gonna work taking away our under-bridge space -- sales will be SO BAD if we are entirely outdoors (the folks stuck outdoors on rainy days do poorly, as a rule) that the market will collapse. The market runs from March - December. I just can't see that being possible if we are entirely outdoors. It's the allure of shopping UNDER THE BRIDGE WHERE IT'S DRY that draws so many people on rainy days. How can we survive if they take that away?
This whole thing makes me so sad. I guess I'll start attending PSM board meetings to find out what's going on, and if possible, voice my objections. I don't think I'm the only member who finds this whole thing a total scam.
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My new website is almost finished. I'm rather proud of it...:)
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[/shameless self-promotion]
There's a good article by Barbara Ehrenreich (who's going to speak at OSU in April, for any Oregonians interested) at Common Dreams -- read it here.
I think it's unbelievable that military families are on food stamps. Unbeliveable.
