This quintessence of dust

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how

infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and

admirable . . . . and yet,to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

The Prurient Interest


In Supreme Court Mythology, a work that gets men hard or women wet may is obscene ("appeals to the prurient interest", in the Court's curiously odd and reveling phrase) and be censored unless the work has a redeeming social value. Does the El Greco painting to St. Sebastian, above, appeal to a prurient interest?

Has the internet overruled the Supreme Court? Do the images on the internet of sexual activity and violence have a redeeming social value? Did Baroque images of martyrdom have it? Is there an essential difference? We shall see.

Note that every image in this blog is freely available to every five-year-old in the world who wishes to see and download it. There are perhaps 1.5 Million five-year-olds with internet access. And counting . . . .

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