Mesh: Welcome to Culture Shock 101 I knew a woman who came to the United States from Poland shortly after graduating from college. She was completely amazed at how STUPID the people were around her. Naturally, she concluded that Americans, on average, were pretty damn stupid compared to Western and Eastern Europeans. The average art or political science student may agree with this accessment, but a statistician knows the real truth... That is: People living in a college town are on average, a LOT SMARTER than those NOT living in a college town (especially if the town was built around the college community, and not vice versa). That would mean that folks living in Ann Arbor would be drastically more intelligent than those living in Flint (U of M-Ann Arbor is a residential college; U of M-Flint is, and will remain, a commuter college) Since the Flint lifestyle is geared towards industry, manufacturing, depression, and unemployment; and Ann Arbor is primarily geared towards academics--it would make sense that folks interested in doing that "thinking" thing might consider Ann Arbor as a place to live. The same goes for artist communities. In an artist community, the sanctity of expression is a much stronger value than outside that community. It may seem absurd that a bunch of loosely defined criteria may actually become law--but given the hysteria of the masses, especially when it comes to "protecting the kids," it's not unreasonable to expect that our politicians might rally to pacify the voters by enacting completely useless laws. Renderosity is not condemning artists, or suddenly taking a holier than thou attitude--they're protecting their assets against public hysteria. Should Renderosity fight the mob rule? Why bother. There's the ACLU and an endless supply of equally hysterical art students willing to become cannon-fodder in the fight for free expression. The point is, a real artist will continue to create what they feel needs to be created, and a smart artist will be very picky about the audience that views his work. As my Polish friend assures me--Anti Communist art thrived in Poland before the fall of the USSR...they just became more creative in how they presented it. And--as far as the vocally conservative tone of this country, remember...during the 80's, while Jesse Helms was publically freaking out over the Maplethorpe exhibit, Reagan was busy castrating the FCC. It wasn't until the late 80's/eary 90's that some anonymous politican's wife started bellyaching about the violence in rap music. Under that conservative administration, everyone had their say, the government did nothing substantial, and Ice-T went home and had a good laugh.