Icelandic Birds Do It, Vietnamese Bees Do It...

Cole Porter may have known that all kinds of creatures fall in love, but he never conducted a comprehensive survey on global attitudes about sex.

Each year, condom manufacturer Durex surveys people the world over, asking a wide range of questions about bedroom behavior. This year they made 350,000 people blush with questions ranging from sexual concerns to who should teach sex education to who has the most sex (Yes, it's the French).

A host of fascinating statistics emerge from the survey, most of which are far too ribald for a family blog.

One stat that (sadly) caught my eye: More than one in 10 Indians (11%) surveyed had not heard of the common STDs mentioned in the "sexual concerns" portion of the survey. That's almost three times the global average (4%).

An Intersection Too Far

I think I may have a double standard when it comes to fuzz-busting car technology.

Unlike the Canadian police, I don't automatically think that the people who buy radar detectors are wanton law breakers.

American society has a touch-and-go relationship with speed limits. Whether it's on a 25 miles-per-hour residential avenue or the 65 miles-per-hour freeway, many otherwise law-abiding citizens find themselves speeding. Although the section of the populace that buys radar detectors may more aggressively speed, I still consider their sale appropriate.

On the other hand, I consider people who buy PhotoBlocker to be wanton law breakers.

People who decide to run red lights are in a completely different category than casual or accidental speeders. You don't buy this product unless you're planning on running red lights. I'm surprised that marketing something like this is legal.

Here's to Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential philosophers of our time, died on Friday at 74.

Highlighting the messianic and religious tones of professional philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (a book that rarely left my side during my undergraduate and masters degrees in Religious Studies) refuses to grant a personal entry for any philosopher who is still living. I guess now it's time for Jacques' entry, and for his intellectual history to join a history of ideas that he profoundly influenced.

My favorite philosopher, Richard Rorty, once said, "Of all the philosophers of our time (Derrida) has been the most effective at doing what Socrates hoped philosophers would do: breaking the crust of convention, questioning assumptions never before doubted, raising issues never before discussed."

Here's to you, Jacques.

Who's the Black Sheep?

Larry Lessig points out a video remix of the first Presidential debate which will delight Kerry supporters.

p/s For you music fans out there, the audio is Black Sheep's "The Choice is Yours" (iTunes link)

Frankly, My Dear, You're a Distraction From Our Work in Afghanistan

We need to work on President Bush's pronunciation.

When he says terrorists, I hear a marriage of tourists and terse.

Also, it's clear that the last 3+ years have constituted a War on Tara.

Good Grades For Incomplete Work

Add Grade Inflator to the list of names you could call Robert Novak.

Novak (to me, he'll always be White House Waterboy Extraordanaire) is convinced that Bush won tonight's debate, giving Bush's performance a A-/B+ average (B on content, A on delivery). Although he provided no online commentary after the first debate, Novak claims that Bush seemed a "ninny" back in Florida... a debate in which Novak gave Bush a B/B- (B on Content, B- on Delivery).

As you can see, in Novak's world the line between winner and ninny is a fairly narrow one; however, what I find odd is that Bush's ninny grade is still higher than his Yale GPA.

Wal-Mart: Its Own Private Bentonville

Congratulations, Wal-Mart.

In your relentless quest to homogenize the earth, you've just won permission from the Mexican government to build a discount store less than one mile away from the ancient and awe-inspiring pyramids of Teotihuacan. From the sound of it, most locals didn't like the idea, but those locals lost.

Sometimes I wonder why Wal-Mart insists on expanding into areas where they meet a lot of local resistance. Are they simply oblivious to the concept that a megastore might negatively impact a certain community?

I wonder this, then I search for "bentonville arkansas," the rural Arkansas town that is (quite incredibly) Wal-Mart's corporate headquarters. Wal-Mart is a very centralized organization. Big decisions, like deciding to build a discount store near ancient pyramids or to get Wal-Mart involved in local LA politics in an effort to build a superstore, are made in Bentonville.

Having grown up in rural America, I'm hesitant to culturally character-assassinate a place simply by virtue of it being located in a rural area, but look at Bentonville. Look again. Roughly 20,000 souls live in Bentonville.

Wanna visit Bentonville? Here are the closest major cities:
Little Rock, Arkansas is 214 miles away.
Kansas City, Missouri is 213 miles away.
Tulsa, Oklahoma is close. It's only 115 miles away.

I haven't visited Bentonville, but my experience is that the size of a community in the United States is a significant factor in determining the level of cultural diversity in that community. The other factor is distance from a major metropolitan area. People that live and work in small communities near big US cities encounter cultural diversity on a level akin to those who live and work in the city proper. On both these metrics, Bentonville looks quite rural.

My experience is that cultural diversity is the best teacher of cultural sensitivity. Here's what I'm wondering: If Wal-Mart's headquarters were located in a larger or more cosmopolitan community, would the organization itself be more culturally sensitive?

Sometimes Dick Cheney Lies When the Truth Will Do

In his comedy act, Steve Harvey famously (and hilariously) noted a distinct quality of all men:

Every man in here... (long pause)

LIES.

Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie!

OH GOD, we love to lie!

We will lie when the truth will do!

...we'll tell a lie anyway.

Our sitting Vice President is generally a master of the untruth, lying convincingly about matters of state both large and small.

Sometimes, however, Mr. Cheney is just off his game -- as when he told the all-but-pointless lie last night about never having met Senator Edwards. It turns out he's met Edwards on several occasions. (Of course, maybe Cheney's standard of "meeting" someone is just very high... I dunno, maybe it's like "knowing" someone in the Bible.)

It's a sad fact concerning this administration that a large portion of the populace just expects that they're lying when they talk. Jon Stewart knows this. Watch him catch the Vice President with his pants on fire (Quicktime link). (via mmeiser)

Faster, Cheaper, Built Ford Tough

Garth was on hand to take pictures of SpaceShipOne for Wired Magazine. That's super-duper cool.

I'd just like to point out that Burt Rutan's equivalent of the giant shuttle transport pad appears to be a Ford F-150 with a topper. This is one transport platform that I'm willing to bet somebody sleeps in.

Hey, hey. Ho, ho. We coeds want these dudes to go.

I've been on a name-calling kick since last Wednesday. Can't get our little social characterizations out of my mind.

A couple questions:

• Isn't it astonishing that it is still appropriate (in many circles) to refer to a collegiate woman as a coed? Of all the epithets born in the last century, that's on the short list of those I'm surprised to see in use. It seems to be a newspaper word, one you're more likely to see in print than hear casually spoken.
  
  


• Does anybody else out there think that the term dude has suddenly been stripped of its exclusively masculine charater? A woman who is one of my wife's best friends uses this term as a universal descriptor: Men are dudes. Women are dudes. I'm not sure, but I think pets might be dudes, too. Is this becoming the norm?