Spanking for Love

Spanking Paddle

Spanking Paddle

I had a hard time with this. I found it so bizarre that I thought it must be a hoax or a parody. But I went to the Learning Domestic Discipline website and found it to be so earnest and sincere that I had to accept its reality. There actually is something called Christian Domestic Discipline and it really does recommend that men hit their wives. It even has a blog, complete with a section on the Women’s Perspective, to explain and justify it. In addition it has:

Corner Time

Corner Time

Punishment One: Corner Time

“Within a Domestic Discipline marriage, there are several different types of punishments that can be administered, most of which are pretty straight forward. I plan on going into elaborate detail with each one, and we’ll start with one of the most basic punishments – corner time (also referred to as a time out).”

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and

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Wife Crying

Wife Crying

The Importance of Crying

“I’ve always found it difficult to stress the importance of the wife crying at some point during the spanking process.”

Notice that it is assumed that the man will do the hitting and the woman will do the crying.

and

Maintenance Spankings

“Maintenance spankings provide a way for the husband to keep the wife on the right track, as well as provide a means for the wife to get an emotional release.”

She hasn’t broken the rules. He just needs to hit her to help her remember. “Emotional release?”

and

Punishing In Public – How To Handle It

“I regularly get asked how to handle the wife when she’s acting out in a public setting.”

and

Head of the Household (HoH)

The man, of course.

Okay, I admit that this seems to be real. That people do this. That the victims go along with it. They have a PDF file (54 pages) for beginners, and they’ve even published an ebook. I still find it bizarre, though.

All photos credit the Learning Domestic Discipline website.

rjb

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Happy Birthday – Pay Up

Photo credit: Christophe Verdier / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Photo credit: Christophe Verdier / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

The Happy Birthday song has been around for a long time. It is so popular and so ubiquitous that it’s part of the Commons. It’s obviously in the Public Domain, belonging to everyone, free for everyone to sing.

Photo from Jennifer Nelson's website

Photo from Jennifer Nelson’s website

If you believe that, then it could get you in trouble. It cost filmmaker Jennifer Nelson fifteen hundred dollars. She was making a documentary about the song and found out during the process that someone holds the copyright on it and wanted her money. She paid the ransom so she could get on with her project, but now she’s taking them to court to try to set Happy Birthday free. Here’s a copy of the complaint on Scribd, the document sharing site. The Hollywood Reporter also has an article on the class action lawsuit.

Photo from Oliver Sacks' website

Photo from Oliver Sacks’ website

With another angle on the harm caused by excessive copyright, here’s an article concerning the problems it is causing for Oliver Sacks. It contains a link to an essay by Sacks in the New York Times Book Review, where he complains about the dearth of large-print books. From Sacks’ essay:

“I came out frustrated, and furious: did publishers think the visually impaired were intellectually impaired too?” – Oliver Sacks

When something like Happy Birthday can still be shackled by copyright more than a century later, something is wrong with copyright law. You can find my previous posts on copyright here, here, here and here.

rjb

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Pronoid

Photo credit: Eileen Delhi / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Photo credit: Eileen Delhi / Foter.com / CC BY-NC

Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean no one’s out to get you. That old saying is true for some people. Paranoia can be a useful trait for a spy, say. Or a despot. But for most people it’s just a problem. Paranoia, loosely defined as a psychological disorder involving delusions of persecution or grandeur, can cause intellectual impairment, hallucinations and just plain crotchetiness. At the extreme it can lead to homicidal tendencies or the need to rule the world. It causes suspicion of other people and can make for a very difficult social life. Paranoia is not a viable survival trait outside of a few very specific situations. It’s not a good evolutionary trait either. The human species wouldn’t be successful if everyone was paranoid. Still, it would be just as bad for us if we were completely free of suspicion. If the tiger didn’t get us the loan shark would. Continue reading

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