Posted on by Amanda Brooks

strip clubs and the $2 bill

There are 2,762 strip clubs in the US (my informal tally from TUSCL.com). Enough money flows through these clubs that the Federal Reserve has taken notice. Not because of anything illegal, but because strip clubs nationwide have started using $2 bills. According to this article on CNN Money, depository institutions ordered $122 million in $2 bills in 2005 alone. That’s more than double the average yearly amount ordered from 1991-2000.

Strip clubs aren’t responsible for all the $2 bill usage, but they’re responsible for a large portion of it. Anyone who’s visited the Baby Dolls clubs in the DFW metroplex knows that giving change in $2 bills is a tradition. It’s fairly well-known in Dallas that if you have a pocketful of $2 bills, then you were in Baby Dolls. Of course, this reputation impels men to rid themselves of the pesky bills before they leave the club, which makes life a little better for the workers in the club.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

bad day for free speech

Fox News Corporation (who controls Regan Books) has pulled the plug on O.J.’s book due to the controversy it created. In other words, O.J. has been censored. And why? Really? Is it because the Board of Directors at Fox care about two dead people and their families? Or is it because they want to avoid financial fallout from the book? You get three wild guesses and the first two don’t count.

As more than one person has pointed out, this is the same Fox News Corp. that is totally behind the war in Iraq and gives a public forum to people like Sean Hannity.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

exploration of the first amendment

In a posting yesterday on the Small-Pub Yahoo Group, founder Marilyn Ross was embarrassed by the publishing industry for the first time. The new book by O.J. Simpson, which may or may not be fictional, has thoroughly disgusted Ross. The reason? She sees it as greed triumphing common decency.

Not surprisingly, Regan Books is the publisher. Regan seems willing to touch books no one else will. (I thought of contacting them but they only accept submissions through an agent and that’s a whole process I didn’t want to get into.) I don’t like the idea of this book but I’m not going to say that O.J. doesn’t have the right to publish his thoughts on his own personal history.

Ross ended her posting by saying:

Oh, I hear some of you screaming “First Amendment Rights” already. But really think about it: How would you feel if this were personally happening to your family?

A humane argument; but the First Amendment is there for a reason and protecting the feelings of someone else is not that reason.

Little does Ross know that the self and small publishing industry she helped bring to the mainstream is not a believer in free speech. Sure, there are organizations who purport to support free speech and booksellers who belong to these organizations. (Everyone gets to put a little button on their Web site and feel proud of themselves.) There are libraries, booksellers and authors who celebrate Banned Books Week (in September). But what I’ve experienced leads me to believe that the only free speech they wish to protect is speech that they agree with. The banned or dangerous books they defend are usually older than I am or have been around so long they’re already considered classics. Cutting-edge thinking indeed.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

glamour magazine and HIV/AIDS

There is a chilling article in the December 2006 issue of Glamour magazine. It’s worth picking up off a newsstand and flipping to page 168.

The article is a profile of three women who are ‘living’ with AIDS. I found their stories very interesting, especially in light of the conversation I had with Bob on this prostitution post.

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Posted on by Amanda Brooks

blogging and online privacy survey

I took an intelligent survey about blogging and privacy. The survey was as anonymous as anything can be on the Internet. It’s part of the work that Karen Mc Cullagh is doing. She’s a PhD researcher at CCSR, University of Manchester, England. She’s sponsored by the ESRC and Office of the Information Commissioner, UK.

To take part in her survey, click here: http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/privacysurvey/. Find out more about Karen and her research.

The survey asks a lot of the questions that need to be asked. It only takes a few minutes.

The UK seems to have bigger privacy issues than us here in the US. According to this very interesting map, the UK is the worst privacy offender (aside from the usual suspects like China and Russia). The US is second to the UK, but most of our bad marks seem to stem from corporate offenses. (Which I’ve been suspecting for some time.)

If you blog or otherwise publish online, Karen’s survey asks questions you need to be asking yourself, whether or not you fill out all the answers and send it in.

From her e-mail to me

If you participate you will be asked to answer questions anonymously about your blogging practices and your expectations of privacy when publishing online. All answers will be stored and analysed on a confidential basis. The responses will be used to inform academic and policy discussions on blogging practices and attitudes towards privacy.