AMERICAN NOTES

SOME PREFER BRANDING TO TATTOOS

AMANDA DOLASINSKI, OHIO STATE LANTERN - Nick Wolak pulled a white-hot
iron from a blazing flame and pressed it into Jennifer Bucholz's chest.
Bucholz is among a growing number of young people from white, middle-
class families burning designs into their skin, according to Wolak and
others who specialize in the form of body art. As Wolak, who owns
Evolved Body Art on North High Street in Columbus, Ohio, used the hot
metal to etch a spiral design into her skin, Bucholz tried not to focus
on the pain. The first-year Ohio State University graduate student in
Russian studies said she concentrated on keeping still by occupying her
thoughts with a song her friend was singing earlier.

"Nick kept asking if I needed to take a break," she said. "But I knew if
I took a break, I wouldn't want to come back from it, so we went
straight through and did the whole thing at once. By the end I started
shaking and crying because it hurt like hell. It was more intense than a
tattoo, but nothing someone can't handle. As soon as it was over, I was
fine again."

Branding, a technique in which a mark or symbol is burned into the
flesh, has been around for centuries -- beginning with cattlemen who
marked the flesh of their animals to show ownership. Later the process
was adopted to identify criminals, and members of black fraternities
have been burning Greek letters into their flesh for years.

A small but growing number of people are now choosing to decorate their
skin -- not with tattoos or piercings -- but with scarring caused by
burns.

Tim Curry, associate professor of Sociology at Ohio State, said branding
isn't a new ritual; it's been done since as early as 1850. Curry said
one of the founding fathers of sociology, Emile Durkheim, studied
Australian tribes and wrote about their way of denoting their bodies.
These people would mark themselves to show which tribe they belonged to,
much like modern fraternities. . .

Bucholz spent about a month and a half discussing branding plans with
Wolak. Early in the process he warned her of menacing looks and
discrimination she might get if she decided to go through with it.
Fortunately, she has not experienced any negative criticism yet.

"More than anything, people are interested in it. People will come up
and ask me questions about it, including if they can touch it. I've
gotten a lot of positive feedback, which isn't what I expected. I didn't
think people would necessarily understand it."

http://www.uwire.com/content//topnews010507001.html

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DIAPER FREE MOVEMENT ATTRACTING NY WOMEN

UPI - A rapidly growing movement is taking speed among New York mothers
-- toilet training children from as young as just a few weeks.
Beth Schwartz's 15-month-old daughter, Eden, has been diaper-free for
more than a year. The movement is called elimination communication and
argues that it is wrong for parents to force their babies to wear
diapers, and inhumane to let a child sit in a wet or dirty one, the New
York Post reported. Advocates of the diaper-free movement say if parents
listen to children closely, they can train them from a very early age.
Movement adherents say they only use diapers on rare occasions, such as
a lengthy outing. Schwartz -- who is 40 and has three children older
than Eden -- said at first she thought the idea would be too
time-consuming, but it made sense after she saw how effective it was.
Eden rarely has accidents, Schwartz told the newspaper.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/18332.html

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HUGE CROWDS AT PORN CONVENTION

BBC - Thirty thousand people have gathered in the US city of Las Vegas
for the annual convention of the pornography industry. The scale of the
Adult Entertainment Expo reflects the huge growth in a business which is
said to be bigger than Hollywood and worth $57bn. Estimates of its
annual contribution to the US economy range from $12bn-$20bn.

One of the reasons for its recent success is the pioneering use of new
technology - video on the internet and use of moving images on mobile
phones. . .

There are an estimated 200 pornographic films shot in the United States
every week. Improving production and distribution methods has helped to
cut costs.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/americas/6258291.stm

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