Archives for June 2013

Have you ever been naked with another person? Of course you have. Odds are you enjoyed the experience. I am excluding prison showers and other related experiences. I am also excluding any visit you may make to Tulsa, Oklahoma where robbers tend to steal your pants as well as your money. Okay, so, yeah, sometimes being naked with someone else isn’t all that fun. Still, overall, it’s a positive experience. You and your special someone get all giggly and warm and then you find a private place or, if you’re me and in a bit of a pinch, the top of a police car and have at it. Then, once you get out of jail, you get to smile and have memories that will last you a lifetime. Also, getting naked with your special someone, even if that special someone is someone you just met, is a time honored way to get to know them better.

But, in Florida, it only seems to lead to trouble.

David Moye is reporting that Shaun Paul Williams met his special someone and, before he had an ounce of fun, found himself beaten, robbed and stripped naked.

A lot of guys would love to end up stripped naked on the first date, but not in the way experienced by a man in Florida.

Shaun Paul Williams, 34, told deputies in Flagler County, Fla., that he was beaten, robbed, forced to strip naked and abandoned on the side of a road Friday evening during a first date with a woman named “Tree.”

Authorities found Williams nude and bloodied walking on the shoulder of a road in Bunnell, Fla., late Friday near a cow pasture, NBC News reported.

According to the police report, Williams met Tree two weeks ago and they set a date for June 14. When she picked him up, there were two other men in the vehicle and Tree explained that one of them was her brother and she was going to drop him and the other guy off at his home.

Instead, the brother asked to stop at a cow pasture and Williams chose to jump out and urinate. At that point, he said he was hit in the head with a hard, metal object while one of the men yelled, “Give me all your money and your clothes,” RawStory.com reported.

Williams looked up and saw a semi-automatic pistol pointed directly at his face, so he took off all his clothes and gave his assaulters $200 in cash, a cell phone, his Florida driver’s license, a gray tank top, a pair of black Dickie shorts and a pair of gray and black DC sneakers. The two men — who were both described as being around 30 — then fled with Tree, FlaglerLive.com reported.

Williams, a professional painter, told the Daytona Beach News-Journal that, unless he gets surgery, he could lose his right eye and that his cheekbone and jaw are fractured.

He’s also expressing regrets at how the date turned out.

“I was going to take the girl on a nice dinner, trying to be a nice guy and next thing I know, I got beat up over a couple dollars,” Williams told the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “Basically, it was my stupidity,” Williams said. “I should have realized there was something funny about it.”

Police are looking for an African American woman and two African-American men in a late-1990s model dark blue four-door sedan.

Her name was “Tree?” That is never a good sign. Willow I could understand, but Tree? And, yes, first dates that include two armed chaperons rarely turn out well unless your dating the president’s daughter.

Also in Florida, a nice man went to a nice motel with a nice young lady who only cost a nice $500 and she, much to his surprise, turned out to not so nice after all.

A Florida woman and her buddy were arrested Friday after attacking and robbing a man who thought he was going to have sex for money, police said.

Jennifer Leigh Robbins, 20, lured the victim to a Melrose Super 8 motel room at about 6:30 p.m., according to the Gainesville Sun. The victim placed $500 in $20 bills on the microwave and closed the blinds, but when he turned around Robbins allegedly attacked him with pepper spray.

Moments later, Robbins’ alleged accomplice, Matthew Stuart Pauley, 24, entered the room. The three started fighting, and the melee spilled out into the hallway. Other hotel guests separated the two men. Robbins and Pauley then fled.

But they left some of the cash and a motel key card, which led police to the suspects, the Sun-Sentinel reports. Robbins and Pauley were arrested after police interviews.

Theft and sex never mix.

Nobody knows that better than Chelsey Coutts, whose $500 worth of sex toys were stolen from the trunk of her car earlier this month. The hot-and-bothered victim had been saving the toys for a bachelorette party in Oregon.

Okay, let’s recap; both thefts involved $500. The first with cash in a microwave (??) and the other a box full of sex toys that this woman was planning on sharing with a room full of other women.

Okay, yeah, I want to party with her.

So do you.

Now, what have we learned here today? Probably nothing you didn’t know already.

Yeasayer – Ambling Alp from Spy Films on Vimeo.

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The science, if I may use that term here, behind Star Wars is about par with asking any random six year old to explain quantum mechanics. In fact the six year old might be more accurate. But just as a blind squirrel can occasionally find a nut sometimes even the most pathetic scientific nonsense can prove to be true. No, there is no such thing faster than light solar sails. Nor will there ever be. There is also no need for a space craft to have extendable wings in space. I could spend hours lamenting the idiotic notions those movies have put forth but will, instead, focus on the one they got right. In a week that has seen the Chinese government forced to admit that one of their fine citizens hadn’t really electrocuted an alien and kept it in his freezer, which was probably made by Kenmore, we need to have some actual facts to work with.

Nola Taylor Redd, from Astrology Today, says that the world of Tatooine, which orbited a binary star system, could be the template for for where life would prosper.

Planets orbiting binary star systems have to deal with the stresses of more than one star. But new research reveals that close binaries could be as good as singles when it comes to hosting habitable planets. Low-mass twins could make the best hosts, because their combined energy extends the habitable region farther away than would exist around a single star.

After modeling a variety of binary systems, two astronomers determined that stars 80 percent as massive as the Sun, if close enough together, could allow for conditions that would be ideal for hosting habitable planets.

“Potentially, life could exist even more in binary systems than it does in single systems,” Joni Clark, an undergraduate at New Mexico State University, told Astrobiology Magazine. Clark worked with astrophysicist Paul Mason of the University of Texas at El Paso.

Pushing the boundaries

Low-mass stars are two to three times more common than the Sun. Their sheer numbers may give them greater odds forhosting planets. But their smaller size also means they have more ultraviolet radiation early in the life of the star and dangerous solar winds in the habitable zone, both important when it comes to maintaining a niche for life to exist. Planets must lieextremely close to small single stars to reap the benefits, a position that brings a number of challenges. Such planets are more prone to be tidally locked, with one face permanently turned toward its sun, and to receive the brunt of any stellar activity. [9 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life]

Binary system Kepler-47 contains at least one planet in its habitable zone. The two stars have different masses, however, and so the habitability of such planets is limited by the shorter lifetime of the larger and more massive star.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle

But when two such stars are closely paired, their combined energy extends the habitable region farther away and makes it larger, minimizing some of the threats faced by planets orbiting low-mass stars.

“We have much more room here for planets to hang out,” Clark said.

Not just any binary system will work, however. Habitable zones receive the best effect when the low-mass stars are close together, circling each other every ten days or less. Radiation of all types coming from two such closely bound stars would be more consistent, and the planets orbiting them would resemble that of a planet orbiting a single star.

But when the stars are farther apart, the planet’s orbit is more likely to be unstable as it feels the tug of gravity stronger from first one star and then the other. When stars are spread out over a distance, orbiting planets would experience significant changes in temperature. With a large enough gap, planets would travel around only one star, with the possibility of occasionally entering the danger zone of the other.

“There are many regions around binary star systems where having a stable orbit simply isn’t possible,” said Stephen Kane, of the California Institute of Technology. Kane, who studies the habitable zones of planets orbiting binary stars, was not involved in Clark and Mason’s research.

Living conditions

Living conditions on the planets would vary based on cloud cover, which could help to both insulate the planet and shelter it from ultraviolet radiation. Such cloud cover could help to protect the planet from the changes it would encounter as it orbits closer first to one star and then to the other.

“How the temperature at the surface of the planet will vary depends on the properties of the atmosphere and its ability to absorb this flux and temperature variation,” Kane said.

Clark and Mason simulated a number of close binary systems, calculating the temperatures and radiation that could exist for planets in orbit over the lifetime of the star. They presented their results at theAmerican Astronomical Society meeting in January. After factoring in cloud cover and flux from the stars, they determined that the steadiest situations would come from binary twins, stars of approximately the same mass. Of these, a pair of stars 80 percent as massive as the Sun would hit what Clark called “the sweet spot,” though a range of twins and other special combinations would also work well.

 

Mergers between stars, the ultimate fate of around 20–30% of O-type stars, are violent events. But even the comparatively gentle scenario of vampire stars, which accounts for a further 40–50% of cases, has profound effects on how these stars evolve.

CREDIT: ESO

For close twin stars, “because they’re similar masses and so close, it is very likely that they were, if you will, born at the same time,” Clark said.

Such stars would have similar lifetimes, dying out in approximately the same time frame, but have a habitable zone 40 percent farther away than the single star counterparts.  In the case of the lower-mass stars, such periods could far supersede the Sun’s lifetime, lasting as long as twenty billion years.

“Other groups have recently shown that planets close to stars of any type suffer water loss, like Venus, and atmosphere erosion, mostly early in the star’s life. These effects may occur even for planets with magnetic field protection,” Mason said.  “The beauty of close binaries is that their habitable zones are located farther out.”

Tatooine system

Kepler-47 provides a different system with fascinating properties. Instead of twins, the famous “Tatooine” system contains one star as massive as the Sun, and another only a third the size. A single planet orbits in the habitable zone, though it is too massive to be considered a good candidate for life. Eventually, the larger star will suffer the same fate as our Sun, swelling up into a massive red giant and changing the survivability for the planets orbiting the pair. The smaller star would live on, scant comfort for the planets that saw their habitable regions shift. Still, over the lifetime of the more massive star, the smaller star would provide extra light and heat that could be a bonus to potential life. [How 2 ‘Tatooine’ Planets Orbit Twin Stars (Infographic)]

Because low-mass stars are so pervasive, and because most stars in the galaxy are locked in binary pairs, the chances of finding close, low-mass binaries is high, according to Clark and Mason. Though they caution that they haven’t run the exact numbers, Mason says that such systems would be “not uncommon at all,” potentially ranking such pairings as numerous as Sun-like single stars.

“I can imagine that a 0.8 solar mass binary, with a separation of less than a tenth of an astronomical unit [the distance from the Earth to the Sun], would have many possibilities of stable orbits within the habitable zone,” Kane said.

Thewerer was a story written by a guy named Frederic Brown called Placet is a Crazy Place. In it he made some humorous observations on what could happen to a person’s vision when two suns emitted conflicting gravity fields. Think wild hallucinations every other day. You know, talking gorillas, laughing bananas, that sort of stuff. His story also has a plot which may confuse Star Wars fans.

But my regular readers should like it.

One thing we have learned from the many amazing discoveries that the Kepler Telescope has given us is that there is less and less chance that we are alone in the cosmos.

Now, what our neighbors will look like will be a discussion for another day.

Cortana Halo 4 Cosplay Body Paint NSFW from Roustan

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Now seems like as good a time as any to address this subject. Because somewhere between the crushing pressures of rampant xenophobia and the blindly encompassing embrace of egalitarianism, we live in the real world. And that world includes more than Boise. Nothing against Boise, but there’s more to be seen. As someone who has traveled further than the end of my block I have encountered people from foreign lands. Often while in those self same lands. You learn a few things rather quickly when you travel; (1) The English put mashed potatoes on pizza; (2) the French put Mayonnaise on everything, including pasta; (3) the Chinese will want you to eat goat’s eyes with them (not bad); (4) you cannot out drink an Australian, and (5) stuff that means one thing here may mean something very different there.

For example, if an English person asks you if you want a fag he is not getting kinky with you. He is asking if you would like a cigarette. If a French girl offers to “buzz your handy” you will not be getting lucky. However you will be getting a call on your cell phone. Which, if you work things right, could lead to you getting lucky.

As it turns out you not only have to be careful what you say to people of different cultures, Gayle Cotton says you have to be EXTRA careful what you gesture.

Success leaves clues, or in some instances, the lack of success leaves clues! Gestures are one of the first things to come to mind that can cause a major cultural faux pas. They can quickly sabotage anyone, including the most savvy business professionals. People from every culture, including various country leaders and several U.S. presidents, have been guilty of unintentionally offending people from different cultures through the use of inappropriate gestures. When it comes to body language gestures, the wisest advice might be to keep your fingers to yourself!

In Brazil, Germany, Russia, and many other countries around the world, the OK sign is a very offensive gesture because it is used to depict a private bodily orifice. The OK sign actually does mean “okay” in the United States, however in Japan it means “money,” and it is commonly used to signify “zero” in France. Clearly the OK sign isn’t offensive everywhere; however, it is not OK to use in many parts of the world, nor does it necessarily mean “okay”!

Most people are aware that the V for victory or peace sign was made popular by Winston Churchill in England during WWII. However, it’s important to take heed of where you are in the world, because if you make this gesture with your palm facing inward in Australia, the United Kingdom, South Africa, and several other countries throughout the world, it in essence means “Up yours!”

On Inauguration Day 2005, President George W. Bush raised his fist, with the index and little finger extended, to give the time honored hook ’em horns gesture of the Texas Longhorn football team to the marching band of the University of Texas. Newspapers around the world expressed their astonishment at the use of such a gesture. Italians refer to it as “il cornuto,” which means that you are being cuckolded (that is, that your wife is cheating on you!). It’s considered a curse in some African countries, and is clearly an offensive gesture in many other parts of the world.

The thumbs-up gesture is commonly used in many cultures to signify a job well done. However, if it is used in Australia, Greece, or the Middle East — especially if it is thrust up as a typical hitchhiking gesture would be — it means essentially “Up yours!” or “Sit on this!” The thumbs up gesture can also create some real problems for those who count on their fingers. In Germany and Hungary, the upright thumb is used to represent the number 1; however, it represents the number 5 in Japan. Take heed all you global negotiators: there is a big difference between 1 and 5 million!

As a professional speaker, I am all too aware that simply pointing with the index finger at something or someone can be offensive in many cultures. It is considered a very rude thing to do in China, Japan, Indonesia, Latin America, and many other countries. In Europe, it’s thought of as impolite, and in many African countries the index finger is used only for pointing at inanimate objects, never at people. It’s best to use an open hand with all your fingers together when you need to point at something or someone.

Curling the index finger with the palm facing up is a common gesture that people in the United States use to beckon someone to come closer. However, it is considered a rude gesture in Slovakia, China, East Asia, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, and many other parts of the world. It’s also considered extremely impolite to use this gesture with people. It is used only to beckon dogs in many Asian countries — and using it in the Philippines can actually get you arrested! The appropriate way to beckon someone in much of Europe, and parts of Asia, is to face the palm of your hand downward and move your fingers in a scratching motion.

The open hand or “moutza” gesture is insulting in parts of Africa and Asia, Greece, Pakistan, and in several other countries. It is formed by opening your palm with your fingers slightly apart and extending your arm toward someone, much like a wave in the U.S. This may seem harmless enough to many Westerners, however if someone does it with a more abrupt arm extension, its meaning changes to, “Enough is enough,” or “Let me stop you right there.” In other words, “Talk to the hand, because the face isn’t listening!”

When it comes to body language gestures in the communication process, the important thing to keep in mind is that what we say, we say with our words, tonality, and body language.

Our body language often conveys more than the words we use. At times, it can completely change — or even nullify — our words’ meaning.

Almost every gesture using fingers is sure to offend someone, somewhere, at some time. As a rule of thumb (no pun intended!), it is best to avoid using any single finger as a gesture — unless you are absolutely sure it is appropriate for a particular culture or country. Open-handed gestures, with all fingers generally together, is usually considered the safest approach.

There are countless additional gestures that mean something different in every culture. Gestures have such a profound influence on communication that it really is best to keep your fingers to yourself!

I have, over the course of my life, managed to offend someone from every continent. It is very easy to do. Let’s face it, American idioms are confusing enough for Americans, adding in alien cultures just makes it harder. So keep your hands to yourself, your mouth shut and just smile.

Unless you’re in Bangok. It seems that a single man smiling is an open invitation to have strangers do bad things to his bung hole. Of course, if that’s what you’re in to, have at it.

Grubby Little Hands – Unring A Bell (NSFW) from Brian Melton

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If you’ve ever been to a bar at 3:00 AM, you know the intelligent discourse that abounds. You’re laughing at me but you shouldn’t be. No great ideas ever started with a refreshing glass of water. A while back I wrote about how beer was the first step towards peace in Pakistan. Well, nothing else has worked and, at least, this has the benefit of bringing a frosty cold beer to the table and not sizzling hot semi-automatic weapons. I have also written about many great religious moments and scientific discoveries; all of which are all attributable to alcohol. As you can see there is plenty of empirical data to suggest that society has benefited from alcohol. But why? After all, it’s no secret that alcohol doesn’t make you a good dancer or an Irish tenor. It does, however, make you drunk. And, if you’re not careful, it makes you a danger to the safety of yourself and others.

As always, science has the answer. Satoshi Kanazawa from Psychology Today says it’s because smart people are more attracted to alcohol than others.

Drinking alcohol is evolutionarily novel, so the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent people drink more alcohol than less intelligent people.

The human consumption of alcohol probably originates from frugivory (consumption of fruits). Fermentation of sugars by yeast naturally present in overripe and decaying fruits produces ethanol, known to intoxicate birds and mammals. However, the amount of ethanol alcohol in such fruits ranges from trace to 5%, roughly comparable to light beer. (And you can’t really get drunk on light beer.) It is nothing compared to the amount of alcohol present in regular beer (4-6%), wine (12-15%), and distilled spirits (20-95%).

Human consumption of alcohol, however, was unintentional, accidental, and haphazard until about 10,000 years ago. The intentional fermentation of fruits and grain to yield ethanol arose only recently in human history. The production of beer, which relies on a large amount of grain, and that of wine, which similarly requires a large amount of grapes, could not have taken place before the advent of agriculture around 8,000 BC and the consequent agricultural surplus. Archeological evidence dates the production of beer and wine to Mesopotamia at about 6,000 BC. The origin of distilled spirits is far more recent, and is traced to Middle East or China at about 700 AD. The word alcohol – al kohl – is Arabic in origin, like many other words that begin with “al,” like algebra, algorithm, alchemy, and Al Gore.

Human experience with concentrations of ethanol higher than 5% that is attained by decaying fruits is therefore very recent. More importantly, any unintentional, accidental, and haphazard consumption of alcohol in the ancestral environment, before the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, happened as a result of eating, not drinking, whereas alcohol is almost entirely consumed today by drinking, not eating. (Deep-fried beer is a very recent exception.) The Hypothesis would therefore predict that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to prefer drinking modern alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, and distilled spirits) than less intelligent individuals, because the substance and the method of consumption are both evolutionarily novel.

Consistent with the prediction of the Hypothesis, more intelligent children, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, grow up to consume alcohol more frequently and in greater quantities than less intelligent children. Controlling for a large number of demographic variables, such as sex, race, ethnicity, religion, marital status, number of children, education, earnings, depression, satisfaction with life, frequency of socialization with friends, number of recent sex partners, childhood social class, mother’s education, and father’s education, more intelligent children grow up to drink more alcohol in the UK and the US.

The following graph shows the association between childhood intelligence (grouped into five “cognitive classes”: “very dull” – IQ < 75; "dull" - 75 < IQ < 90; "normal" - 90 < IQ < 110; "bright" - 110 < IQ < 125; "very bright" - IQ > 125) and the latent factor for the frequency of alcohol consumption. The latter variable is constructed from a large number of indicators for the frequency of alcohol consumption throughout adult life and standardized to have a mean of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.0. The data come from the National Child Development Study (NCDS) in the United Kingdom. There is a clear monotonic association between childhood intelligence (measured before the age of 16) and the frequency of alcohol consumption in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. “Very bright” British children grow up to consume alcohol nearly one full standard deviation more frequently than their “very dull” classmates.

The following graph shows the association between childhood intelligence and the latent factor for the quantity of adult alcohol consumption decades later among the British NCDS respondents. Once again, there is a clear monotonic association between childhood intelligence and the quantity of adult alcohol consumption. “Very bright” British children grow up to consume nearly eight-tenths of a standard deviation more alcohol than their “very dull” classmates.

The following graph shows the association between childhood intelligence, measured in junior high and high school, and adult alcohol consumption seven years later in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data in the United States. The association is clear and nearly monotonic. The more intelligent Americans are in their childhood, the more alcohol they consume as young adults.

It is important to note that both income and education, as well as childhood social class and parents’ education, are controlled in multiple regression analyses of these data from the US and the UK. It means that it is not because more intelligent people occupy higher-paying, more important jobs that require them to socialize and drink with their business associates that they drink more alcohol. It appears to be their intelligence itself, rather than correlates of intelligence, that inclines them to drink more.

Indicators of alcohol consumption in the Add Health data include the frequency of binge drinking (drinking five or more units of alcohol in one sitting) and the frequency of getting drunk. That such behavior is detrimental to health and has few, if any, positive consequences, is irrelevant for the Hypothesis. It does not predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in healthy and beneficial behavior. Instead, it predicts that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in evolutionarily novel behavior. Since the consumption of modern alcoholic beverages – including binge drinking and getting drunk – is evolutionarily novel, the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to engage in it, and the empirical data from the UK and the US confirm it.

She was kidding. Al Gore isn’t really Arabic.

Also, drinking is, largely, a social activity. Yes, there are the lonely drunks who drink at home or in solitude at the bar but they are the exception, not the rule. Intelligent people like sharing ideas. Alcohol is a relaxant that makes people more comfortable talking. And a free exchange of ideas is good for all of humanity.

Thus, as noted in the title, you can’t lose with booze.

Margaret – Thank You Very Much from Extensive Music on Vimeo.

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Modern Russia is a country coming to terms with a modern world. Or, more accurately, it has a plethora of citizens who want to know what they need modern stuff for. Much like here they have people who resist change. Any change. They would march against light bulbs if they were presented anew. And, just like here, the dichotomy between what’s coming and what came before grows wider and more ominous. In parts of the US, for example, they are testing driverless cars. Here in Illinois we can’t even make a road stay flat for an entire winter. I can”t wait to see one of those wonder cars hit a Chicago pothole. In Russia the differences are even more stark. While the country is not as religious as America they are rabidly anti-gay. When you ask why you will get the following answer; “Why? Because …. (screw) you!” They are very puritanical, if I may use an Americanism here, but cheered on wildly when Vladimir Putin appointed Maria Kozhevnikova, a former Playboy model with no political experience, to a sensitive ambassadorial post. Since war hasn’t broken out I guess she’s done okay but how would you like to be the country on the receiving end of that gesture? Especially since her claim to fame before getting naked was doing low brow comedy on TV. Doesn’t that just scream respect?

Russians always talk about how their country deserves international respect and then they announce the Krivovo cow dung tossing festival. Now, normally, quaint rural customs can be fun. See the entire life of Route 66 here in the U.S. as example “A”. But if that’s your “go to” event, you’re in trouble.

RiaNovosti, an English language Russian site notes some more fun.

Elsewhere in Russia, the tiny town of Kologriv in Kostroma Region is known for its Goose Day, and select cities across the country hold regular Monstrations, or public rallies marked by absurd slogans such as “In Sex We Trust,” “Do You Know How Squirrels Sound?” and “Eyjafjallajökull for President.”

And, yes, this is the same county where Pussy Riot was jailed for chanting “Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!” So that chanting thing still has some bugs to work out.

Russia, pre-freedom (such as it is), used to be known for its art, culture, circuses, vodkas and cutting edge space program. Now? Not so much.

Sure they were a totalitarian regime, but they were a totalitarian regime that offered the world something. And they made great villains in Tom Clancy novels.

Now? I’ll let RiaNovosti tell you what’s new and exciting.

Russia never sanctioned a gay pride rally, but maybe it is because those just are not quirky enough: After all, this is the country that is about to hold a celebration of its flying pests, with an “army of blondes” to support it.

The first Russian Mosquito Festival will take place in Perm Region’s town of Usolye in the Urals on July 19-21, organizers said on their website, Ruskomar.ru.

The program will include a mosquito-catching competition, an enigmatic event titled “The Tastiest Girl,” a children fashion show and contests for the best mosquito-themed song and the tastiest shashlik, or meat grilled on skewers – a prerequisite of Russian outdoor parties.

Alcohol will be banned, but organizers plan to enlist a volunteer “army of blondes” to make the event more entertaining.

In 1998, in an effort to promote family values, Russia lowered the age of consent to 14. There were lots of good reasons that all made sense if you weren’t paying too close attention. In 2003, after a spate of VERY young girls turned up in “naturist” videos designed to entice older men to spend their money at nudist resorts, and that’s the polite stuff that happened, they raised the age back to 16.

Oddly, while the age of consent law protects any one of any gender identity, the same people who wrote it voted 436-0 to outlaw “gay propaganda” or pride rallies.

I noted above that the majority of Russians are not religious. The same can not be said of Russia’s current political elite.

A widespread hostility to homosexuality is shared by much of Russia’s political and religious elite. Lawmakers have accused gays of decreasing Russia’s already low birth rates and said they should be barred from government jobs, undergo forced medical treatment or be exiled.

The State Duma passed another bill on Tuesday that makes offending religious feelings a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. The legislation, which passed 308-2, was introduced last year after three members of the Pussy Riot punk group were convicted of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” for an impromptu anti-Putin protest inside Moscow’s main cathedral and given two-year sentences.

Thank God there will be an army of hot blondes to keep me on the hetero path at the mosquito festival.

One thing that is the same the world over is this; people who are afraid of human sexuality are big fans hyper-violence and female exploitation.

Biting Elbows – ‘Bad Motherfucker’ Official Music Video from Ilya Naishuller on Vimeo.

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