News Round-Up

[robinturner]

We have just had the year's biggest full moon, which I didn't notice because the sky over Ankara was so cloudy. However, I have now found out that there is no evidence that the full moon makes people crazy so that's one less thing to worry about.

I never thought I would live to see this headline: "Women's Institute releases sex tips video." Baking tips, jam-making tips, tips on how to get rid of jam stains, even, in these days of "women's lib", DIY tips, but not sex tips. Please. I'm all in favour of sex in theory, and I don't mind a few tips, but I do not want to get them from the Women's Institute any more than I would want to get them from the Church of England or my mother. Some things should stay the way they were. On the other hand, the same video also contains advice on how to knit an iPod holder. Now that is what "moving with the times" should mean!

[It has occurred to me that my non-British readers may not know what the WI is. If you know Desperate Housewives, think of an organisation made up in equal parts of Bree Van der Kamps and Mrs McCluskeys.]

Speaking of sex and the British, it looks like "No sex please, we're British" is as anachronistic as, um, a knitted iPod holder. A recent survey indicates that the British are the most likely of the major industrialised nations to engage in casual sex. The Finns are actually the most likely overall, but they're not regarded as a major industrialised nation. Looking for my adopted country, Turkey (which somewhat to my surprise is counted as a major industrialised nation), I found that it came a respectable eighth, which either means the current "Islam Lite" government is wasting its time or they only interviewed people from the fleshpots of Istanbul.

On a more serious note (and a bad pun), musicians are speaking out against the use of music as torture. The fellow who wrote the music for Barney the Dinosaur was justifiably upset that his songs were used to break down prisoners in Guantanamo; on the other hand, according to one former inmate, the thing that had people literally banging their heads against walls in agony was Eminem, and there's nothing we can do about that: it's torture whether it's played in Guantanamo or anywhere else.

Finally, another piece of patent absurdity: a Russian businessman has filed a patent on an emoticon. All I can say to that is :-þ

Comments

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

I think Christmas music is the best to use for torture. There are two months of the year during which I cannot go shopping, or if I do I have to try to get everything done in five minutes. Maybe that music doesn't carry the same baggage for someone raised in an Islamic country, though. Do you have an equivalent to annoying, cheesy Christmas music in your part of the world?

[solri.livejournal.com]

In shops in Ankara in the build-up to New Year, they generally play the same corny Christmas music you'd hear in Europe or America. In the Muslim religious festivals there are some tunes that keep coming up, but it's nowhere near as ubiquitous.

[solri.livejournal.com]

:Þ (Oops--emoticon!)

Is that a thorn or some other character? I thought I had the patent on the use of Anglo-Saxon characters in emoticons ;-)

[vret.livejournal.com]

There was an interesting article in the Telegraph a few months ago, about a survey carried out jointly by a German sexuality research society and London City University. The report has numbers in it, which the Telegraph is notoriously bad at, but it looks like they copied them straight out of the report, so they are probably reasonably correct.

They found that about 98% of men and 90% of women enjoy porn, and around 30% and 10% respectively do so every day. This is in Germany, would I haven't have thought the figures were vastly differently elsewhere in Europe. I've always suspected that puritans are a very small %ge of the population, and it's just easier for everyone else to keep quiet and let them have their way.

Internet porn is changing German sex lives

[solri.livejournal.com]

When I was teaching a class on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, I found an easy way to illustrate the idea of the "tyranny of the majority": I said "Put up your hand if you look at porn on the Internet." But if these figures are correct (and they're even more likely to apply to a bunch of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds) then what I was demonstrating was more like the tyranny of the imaginary majority.

What I found a little disturbing is not that the vast majority of Germans look at porn, but the idea that a lot of them are trying to make their own sex lives resemble it. This is about as realistic as the more pervasive attempt to make relationships imitate romantic films. What happens when the two cases of life imitating art collide, I dread to think.

[vret.livejournal.com]

The unstoppable urge meets the irresistible object?

Bear in mind that the story came from the Telegraph, and they are bound to have picked out the most damning spin they could find.

Most people probably give up trying to out-perform (out-porn-form?) porn stars after a few attempts, when they find they aren't fit enough even to be able to attempt the effort.