"Pornography is a driver of visual technology"
this is very very true. many of the early Edison Kinoscopes were naked ladies, and even Edward "Grandfather of Motion Pictures" Muybridge succumbed- after essentially discovering the secret to 'moving pictures' with his horse studies series, Muybridge made several nudie movies. Come to think of it, I believe Muybridge may just have made the first porn flick!

Pornography is a driver of visual technology (vaguely remember it being responsible for VHS winning over Beta?) so let's kick it old school for a sec:
http://www.retronaut.co/2012/01/exotic-dancers-1890s/
(I am enjoying this conversation very much, learning many things and challenging my assumptions/thoughts on this thorny topic, also have to give props to BMA for mentioning The Lover. Henry & June is another high-production value NC-17 classic)

also- are you all aware of xtube? it is essentially an x-rated version of youtube where people upload their homemade porns and related videos. it is not a place to find quality porn (or very attractive people for that matter) but iit is a pretty fascinating 'step' in this whole evolution of online pornography and social networking. it appears there really is a large population out there who wants to produce pornography for reasons other than monetary gain.

What I find totally stupefying about contemporary internet porn is the lost business opportunity of female-friendly pornography. Oprah sez that 1 in 3 watchers of porn are women but I doubt one flick in a thousand was made with female viewers in mind.
Where are the big, modern female-friendly porn purveyors? Everyone always brings up Candide Royalle but her production company wasn't able to stay afloat even through the video craze of the 90s.
Why have so few companies made a biiiillion dollars making mainstream porn for women's enjoyment?

So agree with LT and freddy
So agree with Dworkin needing to be taken a zillion times more seriously. I recently re-read her essay on Nicole Brown Simpson and felt that old-school feeling of my mind just being SLAYED. I just sat there, like, Uuuughhhhhhhhh. Talk about speaking fucking truth to power.
Honestly just go get any book of her essays and prepare to have a big hole blown in your reality
She's caricatured, but it's because there's so much power in her.
Even the second wave porn trials, with MacKinnon and Dworkin and the lady from Deep Throat, they were caricatured....everyone talks about how you know the feminists were on the "wrong side" of that issue because the religious right was also on that side. But you can support the right causes for the wrong reasons, I think we would all agree. The feminists' fundamental statement in that trial was "if porn is free speech, WHOSE SPEECH IS IT?" and that question was never answered and has still not been answered. To read Linda Lovelace's supreme court testimony, about being forced at gunpoint to let a Great Dane fuck her so that generations of frat boys could enjoy watching it, and then to know that it made no difference, and to know that legions of male legislators, thinkers, and people, just disregard it as not even being allowed to be part of the discussion--like oh, that was just ONE WOMAN'S experience, and oh, but most porn isn't made at gunpoint, and oh etc. etc. Totally unable to engage with the idea that countless theaters full of men, watching a woman get raped by a dog and GETTING PLEASURE OUT OF THAT VIEWING, says something fucking EPIC about our culture.
Like yeah, I don't know about legislating pornography, obviously the implications of that are dark, etc. etc. first amendment censorship etc. But this to me also seems like somewhat of a canard--like by just saying "it's free speech" we can wash our hands of having to engage in the much grittier discussion of what such things say about us, our society, the power dynamics we all exist completely within, and how we relate to one another as human beings. That conversation is too difficult, so we just comfort ourselves with platitudes about choice and free speech and "whatever floats your boat" and "well there's nothing to be done about it, boys will be boys" or whatever.
I prefer erotic fiction.

first you shave it, then you bleach it!
(???)
also I am interested in Cindy Gallup's project
http://makelovenotporn.com/
I'm not against porn, I realize that most dudes (and many ladies) indulge in some fashion, but I do have some reservations about its' ubiquity and the porn aesthetic seeping into general culture. Like the current social norm of public hair being "gross", and the rise of labiaplasty (!).
Academically speaking, pornography is really interesting as an adopter/driver of new technologies.

I should say that the other pet peeve of Greenwald's that I greatly admire is his antagonism toward journalistic practices that narrow the spectrum of "responsible" policy debates. He, along with people like Jay Rosen, Professor of Journalism at NYU, are very outspoken about the epidemic of anonymous attributions granted by the current generation of mainstream journalists. He makes a point of calling these people out by name and routinely citing the dangers of "stenographic" journalism.
It is not surprising that he is not popular among journalists in DC.

We all know it is a dumb manufactured holiday
that it is heteronormative and materialistic
that its color scheme is obnoxious
and that St. Valentine was shot with arrows til he died
every year my old man gives me a rant about compulsory heteronormative monogamy and its enforcement by the greeting card industry, which then devolves into a general discourse on capitalism. I look forward to this rant because it's how I mark the passage of time, and I like watching my old man's mouth move while he yells about corporate america. This year, though, he's in France! I'M NOT GETTING ANYTHING FOR VALENTINES DAY!!!!!
What are your thoughts on this stupidest of holidays?
Remember V Day in grade school when everyone had to give everyone else a valentine so nobody got their feelings hurt? And remember spending hours poring over the valentine your crush gave you, trying to see if there was any hidden information about how secretly he really did love you even though he showed no signs of this in real life? The one I particularly remember was from my decade-long crush, Patrick, and it was a Pizza Hut brand valentine that showed a piece of pizza being lifted from out of a Pizza Hut brand pizza pan, and the legend read: "You're a slice above the rest!" on the back he had written "PAT." I clutched this valentine for days, obsessing over it, trying to read clues in his handwriting, trying to figure out which other girl(s) in class had received the same valentine (you know they were just sheets of perforated cards you ripped off, there would be like 4 or 5 designs repeated again and again) and what that meant.
It turned out it didn't mean anything. Remember designing your valentine box that you hung on your desk? And then some people's crazy mothers had baked cupcakes for every student with hearts on them or whatever? And you thought "WHAT A WEIRDO" even as you stuffed cupcake in your mouth
Hey people with grade school aged children, is this still a thing? compulsory valentines? I remember it was like homework, your mom would nag you to do your valentines and you'd be like "UGHHHHH." Spending hours on the ones to your friends and then just writing your name on the ones to the lame-os. I remember it was so humiliating to have to give valentines to the girls in class who were mean to me

I am putting nog in my coffee instead of milk for a few days....tastes delicious!

It's interesting how my (lack of) experience with the jimmies is at variance to y'all. Partly it might be 'cause I'm older and so fell into a different era. I had a few years of activity before the first AIDS reports about 1983 and I was also a monogamist. Everybody I tumbled with ended up being a steady for a year or more. (OK. Slight exaggeration. SLIGHT!) My early partners had diaphragms and we dealt with getting them set up together. No biggie.
Lost in the jimmie dept.

-1 quart almond milk
-1/4 cup dates, soaked for 20 mins
-3 peeled bananas
-1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
-1 teaspoon cinnamon
-1 teaspoon vanilla extract
-1/4 teaspoon turmeric
Combine all ingredients in a blender and blend well. Serve the nog in festive glasses or mugs or sprinkle with a dash of cinnamon or nutmeg.
Copied this out of a hippie catalog I got.

the coconog is good but definitely is not as ol' fashioned noggy as we may crave.
HOWEVER I really think it is the best fake nog IN COFFEE that I have had thus far. It's just so thick and good and doesn't have that soy-y aftertaste.
I like the thickness and texture of the coconog better than regular soy nog, and then neither version is quite the taste I want, because the soy is too soy-y.
WHERE IS THE PERFECT VEGAN NOG

Pandering summation answer to a rhetorical question:
whitefish covered in a peanut butter and eggnog sauce with a side of pizza.

Not the earliest one ever, but the earliest I could access:
9/1/2005- Ethnographic Eyes: A Teacher's Guide to Classroom Observation

I don't know if you guys have this pantheon of variety in the Northland, but the grocery stores here in LA are overflowing with soy Nog varieties. Earth Balance makes a nog & it's a winner.

I would do this please.
I get back in town on Monday.
NOG PARTY
BRANDY NOG
BOURBON NOG
SOY NOG
COCONUT NOG?
SO MANY APPLES
lets do it before the apples go out of season!

Doesn't it seem like we should all get together to sample some Nog and Apples?
We did this three years ago.

I give the NEW Silk Coconut Milk Nog 3/5
It's kinda too coconutty.
I got used to it, but its not the old fashioned nog we all desire.

I saw Silk Nog and also NEW Silk Coconut Milk Nog. Intrigued.