As I was reading the newspaper this week, one story in particular caught my eye. It didn’t involve impeachment hearings, international space stations, or even Michael J. Fox. The story that peaked my interest involved bombs and pornography.

For those of you who didn’t hear about it, earlier this week an Iowa State student drew statewide attention for his Web site which contained bomb recipes and pornography.

It never ceases to amaze me what people will be outraged by. I mean, come on, bomb recipes and pornography? Are we really so innocent?

I hasten to say that anyone with at least a third grade education is quite capable of making a bomb. Fairly early on in life, you learn that some things burn and some things don’t.

Shortly after that, you learn that some things don’t just burn, but they make one big-ass explosion.

With this knowledge in hand, I feel that myself as well as many other people would be able to make a bomb, should we so choose. It may not be pretty, but combustion ain’t rocket science … exactly.

Then there’s the pornography found on this Web site. At this point in time, anyone still shocked by pornography on the Web has been living under a rock. Turn off the 700 Club and join the rest of society.

There is so much porn on the internet you can’t help but run across it, even if you’re not looking for it. I’ve done searches for everything from INXS lyrics to tax information and accidentally run into porn.

Let’s face it — every idiot with a PC has his own Web page now, so of course they fill them with links to their favorite things.

There’s bird watching clubs with homepages that allow you to watch the Tommy and Pamela Lee sex tape. I wouldn’t be surprised one day to find the ISU homepage offering links to erotic stories.

Any medium for communication quickly becomes a medium for sex.

It didn’t take the earliest photographers too long to figure out that there were certain pictures that would sell a hell of a lot better than the old family portrait.

I’m sure I don’t need to point out how much porn can be found on film and video. Anyone with Skinamax, or even just USA, can have sex flow through the cable into their home every night.

The 900 number is a fairly new development, but I’m willing to bet there was a fair amount of phone sex going on during the Eisenhower administration, “I like Ike” and all.

So why is anyone surprised that the Internet is littered with booby pictures?

I remember hearing President Clinton talk about how the “information super-highway” was going to connect all the people of the world. But did anyone really believe that this new information system was only going to be used to discuss post-modernism and political ideologies? Check your upper-class utopianism at the door; folks like porn.

Given the high expectations of the World Wide Web, I find it amusing and appropriate that for every site with educational value, there are 47 X-Files fanzines. The truth may be out there, but it sure as hell ain’t on the Internet.

People seem to be arguing that what makes the porn on the Internet fundamentally different is that it’s too accessible to children. I keep hearing about high-tech security programs that will prevent the young’ins from seeing anythin’ ma and pa think they aughtn’ta.

I hate to break it to you, Doug and Connie Familyvalues, but little Bruce is going to find it anyway.

When I was a kid there was no Internet, but my friends and I still managed to find porn. You know why? Because, as I’ve already established, it’s everywhere.

The same nine guys are not running every porn site, publishing every magazine and shooting every video. The pornography industry around the world is huge. It’s time for everyone to give up the notion that it’s a few sickos that are perpetuating it.

It’s a silly puritan ideal to try to cleanse society of things that are inherent to society. No matter what medium we are using to communicate, we cannot escape our most base desires.

And some of our most base desires are the desire for porn and the desire to blow things up.

So what’s a bigger crime against society: putting those things on your Web site or pretending you didn’t check them out as soon as you heard the URL on the news?

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Ben Godar is a junior in sociology from Ames, and all he wants for Christmas is a baby brother.