Hi,
I still like Playboy a bit better, dollar for dollar, since Mr Hefner's stance on First Ammendment, and the War on Drugs, and on personal privacy, resonate with me.
Well, I started reading Playboy about 43 years ago (European liberal parents -- if that's not an oxymoron ;) ) and quit reading it about 31 years ago -- about the time Hugh the Hef started his third restatement of the "Playboy Philosophy". While he did (does? Is he even alive any more? Did his daughter completely expel him from his magazine?) have a number of good points, the justification for them sounded more and more hollow each time he re-hashed them. But, I will freely admit that those arguments did have an influence on my outlook. At least they taught me that there could be viable alternative viewpoints, to look for those and to examine them for their strengths and weaknesses. Would I have reached that point without Playboy? I don't know. When I started reading it, I was still a devote catholic, an alter boy, etc. Within four years I was an agnostic, an iconoclast. While Playboy had some influence on that, so did many other things, not the least a good Jesuit (he later quit the priesthood and the church) who forced me to think, to argue logically, refuted my arguments decisively, and then gave me references to further *my* viewpoint.
Given that it was the '60s and that I was an avid SF reader (another source for mind expansion that is often overlooked or maligned), the odds are good that I would have turned out much the same without the Playboy influence.
But of one thing I am glad. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was first published as a serial in Playboy way back when. That was my introduction to Fleming and the last three digits of his agent's phone number ;) If for nothing else, that alone made reading 12 years of Playboy worthwhile :)
--Pete
I still like Playboy a bit better, dollar for dollar, since Mr Hefner's stance on First Ammendment, and the War on Drugs, and on personal privacy, resonate with me.
Well, I started reading Playboy about 43 years ago (European liberal parents -- if that's not an oxymoron ;) ) and quit reading it about 31 years ago -- about the time Hugh the Hef started his third restatement of the "Playboy Philosophy". While he did (does? Is he even alive any more? Did his daughter completely expel him from his magazine?) have a number of good points, the justification for them sounded more and more hollow each time he re-hashed them. But, I will freely admit that those arguments did have an influence on my outlook. At least they taught me that there could be viable alternative viewpoints, to look for those and to examine them for their strengths and weaknesses. Would I have reached that point without Playboy? I don't know. When I started reading it, I was still a devote catholic, an alter boy, etc. Within four years I was an agnostic, an iconoclast. While Playboy had some influence on that, so did many other things, not the least a good Jesuit (he later quit the priesthood and the church) who forced me to think, to argue logically, refuted my arguments decisively, and then gave me references to further *my* viewpoint.
Given that it was the '60s and that I was an avid SF reader (another source for mind expansion that is often overlooked or maligned), the odds are good that I would have turned out much the same without the Playboy influence.
But of one thing I am glad. On Her Majesty's Secret Service was first published as a serial in Playboy way back when. That was my introduction to Fleming and the last three digits of his agent's phone number ;) If for nothing else, that alone made reading 12 years of Playboy worthwhile :)
--Pete
How big was the aquarium in Noah's ark?