First of all, no one should kid themselves that any community would be able to effectively ban pornography, whether it's the sex porn, violence porn (rambo), or even crafty porn (martha stewart). That's 'cause the attractive or offensive (you choose) fantasies in porn come through the unstoppable internet as well as "legit" venues like fashion mags.

So really what this town would be about is narrowing people's options for dealing with real sex. In that light it's interesting to compare the idea of Ave Maria with the 19th century Oneida Community, another religious town that tried to enforce a kind of extreme sexual morality -- in this case one that declared that every man was married to every woman, and people should switch partners frequently so as not to get too possessive (and therefore, idolatrous). Sounds like a plan for a liberal porn movie, but these people were serious.

When I did a paper on them in college, one of the funniest things to come out of my research was one of the reasons the colony eventually dissolved. Kids born in the second generation couldn't accept the idea of communal marriage; they wanted to get married and be faithful!

So it just goes to show you, you can't create morality by sticking up a sign or making laws.

If Ave Maria goes through as described, it'll just become another town where the rules say one thing, the people do another, and those with too little money to skirt the rules will be the real losers.

gotta get it

i'm stumped!

i think i can i think i can i think i can i think...

I think any news of this kind is good. Mobile devices have so many cool and liberating possibilities, but one thing preventing them from being realized is the heavy control over usage and applications from both the phone vendors and cell phone carriers. For example cell phone providers will turn certain features OFF, or users of capable phones have to try to hack them to bring out their potential (e.g. see http://motorolafans.com or http://handhelds.org ).

Palm was the first really popular mobile OS, capable and standard enough to attract a zillion developers and users. A lot of apps developed for versions 3.5+ are still used by people every day.

Now that people need something better technologically, Linux is a pretty exciting choice as a basis... because of the huge enthusiasm of the Linux development community. If compatibility with old Palm apps helps mobile Linux compete with Microsoft, I'm all for it.

The real capabilities of mobile devices aren't really gonna be realized unless some relatively open and noncommercial standards develop -- both for hardware and software.

Me, I'm holding out for a Linux treo with gsm, wifi, grafiti, and zinf. :]

Actually, there's no guarantee that the porn DOESN'T show scenes from a committed and respectful relationship. It's just scenes of sex; maybe the models are married. :]

As a former(?) teen male, I'd say that any dramatic reaction to the porn is just going to reinforce the idea that whatever is in the porn is incredibly important and desirable. I doubt there is any way a parent could subdue an adolescent sexual drive, but a better way to temporarily dampen it (while getting in a social critique) would be to act incredibly bored and say "yeah, people act like that ALL the time.."