Friday, June 18, 2010

Ninja's must evolve.

an interesting opportunity has come my way to assist a buddy in developing a christian ministry website. I have been hoping to do something like this for a long time (and is in part why I made this blog), but feel I cannot do both this blog and that ministry website properly if done at the same time. Therefore, I am going to end this blog, really before it got going. I will link the new website to this blog so people can find it if they happen to come to the ninja truth website :D Stay tuned in the fall for the new ministry site.

Ninja

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Apple Ninja!

Every once in a while there is a wonderful realization of God's word in the world. It puts a big juicy smile on my face. Steve Jobs, founder and mind behind Apple Products, has taken a public stand that Apple products are intended to be pornography free. British Newspaper, The Guardian, headlines their story with "'I want the iPad porn-free', says Jobs".

Amen.

The article goes on to state that "...many magazine publishers developing 'apps' for the new iPad, which launches in the UK on Friday, have had to self-censor. In the offices of the lifestyle magazine Dazed and Confused, the iPad version is mockingly known as the 'Iranian version', because of the amount of censorship required to get it approved for Apples App Store. Germany's Stern magazine saw its app pulled because it runs topless photo spreads, while the newspaper Bild has added bikinis to its topless models.
Jobs has made his thoughts on the topic very clear twice this year. In April, he told a press conference: "You know, there's a porn store for Android [phones using Google's software]. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That's a place we don't want to go – so we're not going to go there."

In the spirit of these statements, I have taken it upon myself to do some ninja investigation.

the Pornographic industry is absolutely massive, to say the least.

Here are some statistics pulled from The Internet Filter Review, an online company put in place to research, review, and rank various internet filter software brands (e.g. Net Nanny, Safe Eyes, CYBERsitter). They did a massive research study in 2006, here is some of what they found:

Pornography Time Statistics
  • Every second - $3,075.64 is being spent on pornography.
  • Every second - 28,258 internet users are viewing pornography.
  • Every second - 372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines.
  • Every 39 minutes: a new pornographic video is being created in the United States.

If those numbers don't do it for you, try these 2003 statistics taken from "Healthy Mind", a website authored by various individuals (including United States clinical psychologists) who are dedicated to educating the population regarding positive mental health.

Sex Industry Statistics

  • $57.0 billion revenue world-wide
  • $12.0 billion of this is US revenue, more than all combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises or the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC (6.2 billion). $2.5 of the $12 billion is related to internet porn.
 so...in other words, The United States (population 300 000 000 or ~ five percent of the world population) is generating, approximately, 21 percent of the world's sex industry profits) 

Also (and all the more disturbing), are these Government of Canada statistics regarding child pornography:

The scope of the problem

  • Commercial child pornography is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide.
  • Tens of thousands of new images or videos are put on the Internet every week and hundreds of thousands of searches for child sexual abuse images are performed daily. 
  • It is estimated that there are over 5 million unique child sexual abuse images on the Internet.
  • The children in the images are getting younger:
    • 83 percent of children are 12 years old or younger.
    • 39 percent had images of children between the ages of 3 and 5.
    • 19 percent had images of infants under 3 years old.
  • The content of the images and videos is becoming increasingly violent:
    • Over 80 percent of the images involve penetration.
    • 20 percent of the images involve torture or bondage.
    • The number of images of "serious child abuse" has quadrupled between 2003 and 2007.
    • 87 percent had images of prepubescent children that were highly graphic.

Offenders

  • The number of charges for production or distribution of child pornography increased by 800 percent between 1998 and 2003.
  • Most child sexual abuse image producers are known to the victims:
    • 37 percent are family members.
    • 36 percent are acquaintances.
  • Over 30 percent of those convicted of possessing child pornography were living with minor children; almost 50 percent had access to minors at home, socially or as part of their jobs.
  • Currently, an estimated 500,000 individuals are actively involved in the trafficking of child sexual abuse images on the Internet.
Pornography accessibility (and I am speaking strictly of online sources) is unbelievably frightening. Think about it, there are over 1 million full blown pornographic sites online right now, and those sites contain various pages numbering up to approximately 260 million pornographic pages. The population of the U.S.A is around 300 million, and Canada has around 35-40 million. If two people shared one pornographic page, that would mean we could easily (with millions of pages to spare) have the entire continent accessing pornography at the same time. This is a serious problem. I can't imagine the amount of wrath being stored up for those who do not repent of sins such as these. I furthermore cannot fathom God grace to us, we are all such fools.

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the women and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error. And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper." Romans 1:22-28

I am so glad for people like Steve Jobs, and all the more glad for God  because he uses fallen men for His good works in this sick and cursed world.

Praise God.

References:

Arther. C. (2010). I want iPad porn-free, says Apple's Steve Jobs. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/may/25/ipad-porn-free-steve-jobs

Bissette. D.C. (2004). Internet Pornography Statistics: 2003. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://www.healthymind.com/s-porn-stats.html

Government of Canada. (2009). Every image, every child backgrounder: Fast facts and statistic. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://www.victimsfirst.gc.ca/news-nouv/bg-di/doc_ma072009c.html

Ropelato, J. (2010). Internet pornography statistics. Retrieved June 9, 2010, from http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/internet-pornography-statistics.html

Safe Families. (2010). Statistics on pornography, sexual addiction and online perpetrators. Retrieved June 9, 2010 from http://www.safefamilies.org/sfStats.php

Ninja Blog Kickoff

Everyone thinks their opinion matters, and I am no different. Besides, Nearly every person and their dog has blog, so why not me?

This blog is designed for ninja's (and normal people) who want to learn a little bit about how God works in contemporary society. It will also serve as a place where I can present my thoughts on various bible difficulties (e.g. how can God sanction slavery?) My thoughts are my own, but I like to think they are educated, credible, unbiased, and whatever else. You can take them for what they are worth.

Ninja out