The Daily Newds 1/10/09

• In Belmont, California, it's illegal to smoke a cigarette in your own home. Dave Warden, the former councilman who supported the ordinance, explains his position:
  

  "You can't walk around naked in your house with the blinds open, or you'll get arrested. You can't shoot a gun in your house, can't do drugs in your house, can't play loud music in your house and bother your neighbors. It's illegal."

• Massachusetts at long last has passed a breastfeeding bill, with God being the only dissenter.
  

  Gov. Deval Patrick signed a bill into law yesterday protecting nursing mothers from harassment, discrimination and prosecution for breast feeding in public. The only exception is in a church or place of worship.

• An Australian man has been placed on a sex offenders list for several instances of indecent exposure "for the protection of the public", even though there is no evidence of any sexual activity associated with his behavior.
  

  Sheriff Michael Fletcher said: “I don’t have much room for manoeuvre. The offence itself was a very strange one but not particularly serious in itself.”

• UK artist Edi Richter was given two years probation, ordered to attend a sexual offenders treatment program, required to register as a sex offender for five years, and was banned from working with children for possessing 39 "indecent" images of children out of a collection of 60,000 pictures he downloaded from the Internet. I can't find the original news story on this man, but my recollection is that the photos were originally described to be from naturist web sites.
• "Welcome to Topless Town" is the title of an editorial in the Bangor Daily News. Does anyone really believe that incessant publicity about the topless coffee shop in Maine will lessen the impact? The owner of the shop should start selling shares.
• The North County Times has a profile of Kelli Roman, the mother who started the Facebook protest.
  

  Roman said she feels that seeing pictures of breast-feeding is not detrimental to kids, as opposed to viewing nudity that is sexual in nature."Children need to see women breast-feeding," she said. "They need to see that breasts aren't for sex or to sell you things ---- especially the boys ---- but they're for nurturing and feeding your children."

• Kanye West wants to pose nude.
  

  "I definitely feel, like, in the next however many years, if I work out for two months, that I'll pose naked. I break every rule and mentality of hip-hop, of black culture, of American culture."

• The state of North Dakota is looking for new ways to make criminals out of women who take their clothes off for a living.
• More support here for the mothers protesting Facebook.
  

  The bigger issue of course is Net censorship. Trying to define obscenity is like trying to drive a nail through a bar of wet soap while wearing roller skates. Nobody wants Facebook to turn into a porn palace (except maybe the porn industry) but why it's picking on lactating moms is a complete mystery. If watching a suckling babe in arms gets you all warm and wiggly, you have bigger problems.

• Tam Leach describes her nude sauna experience in Sweden.
  

  Nakedness is not enforced but is expected; five minutes in and sitting around starkers seems almost comfortable. Fifteen minutes of heat and it's time. Warmed to the core but still not convinced, I step outside, gingerly, keeping hold of the banister. The impetus to submerge comes when I glance to the left, and realise that the steps from the men's side of the bathing house are within view. Quite detailed view, in fact. I'm naked, the old Swedish bloke over there is naked, and suddenly the water looks far more inviting.

Tags: nudism, naturism, nudist, nudists, naturist, naturists, nudity, nudes, bare, au naturel, nude, naked