Care for a shag?

Globally Men Average 13 Sexual Partners, Women Seven

Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Following are the results of a
survey of 26,028 people on sexual practices conducted by
Harris Interactive on behalf of Durex.

Men have had more sexual partners than women in every
country surveyed with the exception of New Zealand, where
women average 20 partners compared to 17 for men. The
following results are for heterosexuals only:

Country	Men		Women			Difference
Austria	29		17			12
Russia	28		17			11
Greece	28		10			18
Brazil	27		11			16
Australia	25		10			15
Switzerland	24		14			10
Canada	23		10			13
Spain	21		8			13
Italy	19		7			12
South Africa	18		7			11
New Zealand	17		20			-3
Germany	17		9			8
France	17		7			10
UK	16		10			6
Netherlands	14		8			6
Japan	14		8			6
Mexico	14		6			8
Hong Kong	14		4			10
USA	13		9			4
Poland	12		5			7
Thailand	12		2			10
Nigeria	9		3			6
Malaysia	9		2			7
Singapore	8		3			5
India	6		2			4
China	4		2			2
Global average	13		7

NOTE: The survey was conducted from Aug. to Sept. 2006.

On average worldwide:
Heterosexual men have had 13 female partners.
Heterosexual women have had 7 male partners.
Homosexual men have had 108 male partners.
Homosexual women have had 11 female partners.
Bisexual men have had 21 male and 14 female partners.
Bisexual women have had 13 male and 3 female partners.

I don't know about you, but I wonder if the fact that New Zealand has more sheep than people has anything to do with the fact that the women there have more sexual partners than the men? If only the sheep could talk....

The data on homosexuality is interesting. It's been widely publicized that men think about sex on average every six minutes, so it should come as no surprise that homosexual men have far more partners than heterosexual men. Also interesting is that bisexual men prefer men, and bisexual women also prefer men. It would seem that ya just can't beat a good ol' fashion rogering.

Something worth considering when looking at this data is the conventional wisdom that says men generally overstate the number of partners they've had by a factor of three, and women understate the number of partners they've had by the same factor. Ah you promiscuous hussies--we love you!

In case you were wondering who has sex the most often, wonder no longer:

Greeks Have the Most Sex, Japanese the Least

April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Greeks have the most active sex
lives while Japanese are the least active, according to a
survey conducted by Durex.
The survey found that 87 percent of respondents in Greece
have sex weekly while only 34 percent of those in Japan
reported having sex weekly. Greece has one of the lowest
birth rates in the world according to World Bank data.
The survey questioned 26,028 people, of which 22,040 were
non virgins, in 26 countries. Following is a table based upon
the latest report:

Country	% of respondent having sex weekly	Birth rate per 1,000
Greece	87%	9
Brazil	82%	20
Russia	80%	11
China	78%	12
Poland	76%	9
Italy	76%	10
Malaysia	74%	22
Spain	72%	11
Switzerland	72%	10
Mexico	71%	19
South Africa	71%	24
Austria	70%	10
France	70%	13
India	68%	24
Germany	68%	9
Thailand	65%	16
Netherlands	63%	12
New Zealand	63%	14
Hong Kong	62%	7
Singapore	62%	10
Australia	60%	13
Canada	59%	10
UK	55%	12
Nigeria	53%	41
USA	53%	14
Japan	34%	9

Interestingly, the Greeks have the most sex and one of the lowest birthrates. Either they take their contraceptives very seriously, or there's a kernel of truth to the old joke, "how do you separate the Greek men from the boys?" (answer: with a crowbar)

Let's look at China for a moment shall we? The survey says the average man has 4 partners and the average women 2, yet the second dataset puts them near the top in frequency of sex per week at 78%. Sounds like the ladies might be getting a better work out than they're telling us.

What's going on with the Japanese? I have a feeling they're not quite telling the whole truth. My wife (then girlfriend) and I traveled to Japan about 8 years ago, and based on the number of "love" hotels where you could rent virtually any kind of fetish room imaginable by the quarter hour, I'd have guessed that sex was on the menu for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Whether or not Mrs. Myagi was involved is another question altogether, and may be why the number is so low. Conversely, the answer may have been found in those creepy vending machines where you could buy teenage girl's used underwear, but this practice was unfortunately outlawed some time ago; or maybe it was just forced underground. Either way, I imagine putting a pair of pre-owned "hello kitty" thong undies over your head and breathing deeply in between sake bombs would go a long way towards dulling the urge to "service" Mrs. Myagi after an 18 hour day at the office.

Conspicuously absent from the survey are any Scandinavian countries; specifically Sweden. Everybody knows the Swedes screw like we shake hands. I'll wager they were too busy getting "busy" to answer a silly survey.

The Study of War

War has been apart of humanity since man first delineated an "us" which in turn created a "them." Despite the yearnings of pacifists and those that feel we should by now be able to transcend war and all live together on a higher plane of harmonious consciousness, war remains as real as its ever been. Unfortunately, most people's understanding is limited to images on CNN or sensationalized stories read in the newspaper. In other words, it doesn't go very deep. It's not a pleasant subject, so one can be forgiven for not wanting to think too much about it. Because ours is an all-volunteer military, it is not even necessary for the average citizen to acknowledge a change in their lifestyle or make any sort of day to day sacrifice when war rears its ugly head.

Victor Davis Hanson has an outstanding piece in the City Journal this month titled, "Why Study War?"

It’s no surprise that civilian Americans tend to lack a basic understanding of military matters. Even when I was a graduate student, 30-some years ago, military history—understood broadly as the investigation of why one side wins and another loses a war, and encompassing reflections on magisterial or foolish generalship, technological stagnation or breakthrough, and the roles of discipline, bravery, national will, and culture in determining a conflict’s outcome and its consequences—had already become unfashionable on campus. Today, universities are even less receptive to the subject.

This state of affairs is profoundly troubling, for democratic citizenship requires knowledge of war—and now, in the age of weapons of mass annihilation, more than ever.

It's a shame that more people do not take an interest in military history. It goes a long way towards explaining the present. Recently it occurred to me that the leftist group think that paralyzes many fine academic institutions takes great pride in its general ignorance of all things military. Of course, that does not stop the hard left from vociferously speaking out as though they were experts.

VDH seems to agree:

The academic neglect of war is even more acute today. Military history as a discipline has atrophied, with very few professorships, journal articles, or degree programs. In 2004, Edward Coffman, a retired military history professor who taught at the University of Wisconsin, reviewed the faculties of the top 25 history departments, as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. He found that of over 1,000 professors, only 21 identified war as a specialty. When war does show up on university syllabi, it’s often about the race, class, and gender of combatants and wartime civilians. So a class on the Civil War will focus on the Underground Railroad and Reconstruction, not on Chancellorsville and Gettysburg. One on World War II might emphasize Japanese internment, Rosie the Riveter, and the horror of Hiroshima, not Guadalcanal and Midway. A survey of the Vietnam War will devote lots of time to the inequities of the draft, media coverage, and the antiwar movement at home, and scant the air and artillery barrages at Khe Sanh.

Winston Churchill said, "If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future".

Unfortunately, this is what I feel happens every time I hear Iraq compared to Vietnam by people who frame all of history as though it started in the 1960's.

Book Review: The Omnivore's Dilemma

Going to the grocery store can be downright confusing. For a long time now I've felt that there is such a thing as too many choices, especially when it comes to the supermarket. When Michael Pollan touched on the same subject in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma, I was glad to see that I was not alone with this feeling.

The "omnivore's dilemma" revolves around the age old question of, "what's for dinner?" Since we humans have the capacity of memory and speech, we are able to pass along the vast body of accumulated knowledge regarding what tastes good and is healthy, and what tastes bad and can kill us. Koalas, for example, do not have this problem because they know what's on their menu every day for every meal: eucalyptus leaves. Mr. Pollan's thesis is that we've arrived back at the point in time when we are at a loss to know what to eat because we have so many choices, many of which aren't really choices at all, but rather clever re-packaging of the same products. Walking down the supermarket aisle trying to decide what is good and what is bad reasserts the omnivore's dilemma.

When I picked up this book I was skeptical. I did not want to waste my time reading a diatribe against the corporate food structure, the sins of animal protein and the virtues of veganism. For some, eating food is a supremely political act, and these people seem to get published in spades. For me, eating food is just lunch most of the time--unless it's breakfast or dinner. Ultimately though, I believe in eating locally; I prefer to BBQ the flesh of a happily raised, drug-free animal, and I like to know where my food comes from.

Mr. Pollan follows four meals from production to the plate. The first part of the book is devoted to corn, and how it permeates virtually every corner of the supermarket (and beyond) in some form or another. He visits a farmer in Iowa and delves deeply into how subsidies motivate farmers to grow an ever increasing corn yield even when it makes no economic sense. He also highlights exactly how entrenched the military-industrial complex is in our food chain, and the tremendous amounts of toxic waste created from field runoff and industrial scale feedlots. Not much about industrial corn crops and farm subsidies was new to me; and having driven past "Cow-schwitz" on interstate 5 in the Central Valley numerous times, I was familiar with the stench and the layout of a cattle feedlot. The meal derived from this exercise turns out to be lunch from McDonald's for his family eaten in their car while traveling down the highway.

More informative was the section where he shops at his local Whole Foods Market for an organic/free-range meal. After interviewing and visiting a handful of 70's hippies-turned-capitalists farmers, he determines that the whole "organic" craze is basically a clever way of marketing to guilt-ridden mothers trying to do the right thing. Turns out the massive organic farms that cater to Whole Foods are virtually as industrial as "industrial" farms--they just don't use chemical pesticides which brings into play a whole host of other problems; and "free range" hardly lives up to the images the term inspires in the mind's eye.

Mr. Pollan then visits Polyface Farm and spends a week working with the owner, Joe Salatin. Polyface Farm is "beyond organic". It is a perfect example of zero-waste and low impact farming; the way farming used to be. Everything produced is part of a self-perpetuating cycle. Mr. Salatin thinks of himself as a great conductor, orchestrating the natural rhythms of his farm. He believes, correctly, that an animal is happiest when it is free to do its animal "thing". All of his cows, pigs, rabbits and chickens are allowed to live this way before they are slaughtered. Clearly, Polyface farm is the antitheses of industrial farming.

Being an amateur mycologist myself, the last part of the book is what resonated most deeply with me as it was devoted to a "hunter and gatherer" meal. He learned to hunt, shot a wild boar, foraged for morel and chantrelle mushrooms, picked fruit from around his neighborhood, and prepared a wonderful meal from scratch for all the people that assisted him in his quest.

I found the entire book well written, well researched, informative and often humorous, but it is the following paragraph that really stuck with me for some reason:

The fact that you cannot come out of hunting feeling unambiguously good about it is perhaps what should commend the practice to us. You certainly don't come out of it eager to protest your innocence. If I've learned anything about hunting and eating meat, it's that it's even messier than the moralist thinks. Having killed a pig and looked at myself in that picture and now looking forward (if that's the word) to eating that pig, I have to say there is a part of me that envies the moral clarity of the vegetarian, the blamelessness of the tofu eater. Yet part of me pities him too. Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris. Ortega suggests that there is an immorality in failing to look clearly at reality, or in believing the force of human will can somehow overcome it. "The preoccupation with what should be is estimable only when the respect for what is has been exhausted."

Those last two lines are brilliant; and unfortunate examples of this state of mind can be found far outside the pages of this book.

I'm a foodie at heart and I've always had more than a passing interest in nutrition. If it were not my job to babysit rich people's money every day and I was looking for an alternate career, I might choose to be a nutritionist. Back in my culinary school days, nutrition classes were my favorite, and "you are what you eat" has always resonated with me because it is important to know what you are putting into your body every time you sit down to a meal. None of this is to say I treat my body like a temple, but most of the time I eat right; at least what I view as right. Milk is for cows, processed food is the devil, you cannot eat too many leafy green vegetables, there's no reason to drink soda unless there's bourbon in it, too much fatty meat will clog your arteries, fast food always smells better than it tastes. Those are my general guidelines, but above all I enjoy tasty, well prepared, quality, food; and like the French I believe it's bad manners to not eat "this" or abstain from "that" when in social settings.

Ultimately, good nutrition boils down to the timeless wisdom of grandpa: "moderation is the key". A healthy state of mind is a big component of good overall health. Eat what makes you feel good, just don't eat too much of it and don't eat it everyday. That way, when you choose to eat a chili dog topped with a fried egg, sausage and cheese, know that you should probably forget the regular coke and wash it all down with a diet coke instead.

Burning Man 2007

Third time's a charm they say; I can't argue with that. Now that I've attended Burning Man 3 times the playa seems familiar to me. The taste of alkaline dust, the angle of the sun, the direction of the breeze, the dry, hot air, the cool of the dawn and the freaks that surround me--all strangely familiar; all strangely warm and comforting. It amazes me how so many are quick to judge the event; so quick to put this or that label on it. I alluded to this fact the first time I posted about my Black Rock City experience in 2005. Burning Man is this, Burning Man is that, blah blah blah. Here's what Burning Man is--it's exactly what you make it.




This year I did not purchase tickets early when they are the cheapest due to the fact I did not think we would be attending since we now have a 7 month old daughter at home. I am not opposed to taking a child to the playa, in fact I think it's a great place for a kid of the right age under the right circumstances. However, I am of the opinion that it is no place for a 7 month old. If you're too young to verbalize what is making you uncomfortable, you're too young for the playa. What I did not expect was how bad my wife wanted to attend this year after sitting out last year due to her pregnancy.




As the event drew near, I could see she was serious, so I started to make plans. The first order of business was securing a motorhome. It's perfectly fine to camp on the playa--most people do--but I know enough to know that a comfortable wife means a happy husband; and the only place where comfort is guaranteed on the playa--for happily married people at least--is the inside of their own motorhome. Though I've never been a particular fan of RV living, being new parents, I could see the benefits of owning a motorhome beyond the comfort it would ensure while at Burning Man. As luck would have it, our friends Mark and Shannon who live outside of Sacramento and also have a young daughter decided they were in the market for an RV as well, so we thought it wise to pool our resources and partner in the purchase of one. We certainly did not want to buy a brand new model as they depreciate quicker than an automobile, so we figured a well maintained used RV would be our target. It did not take us long to find what we were looking for, which turned out to be a 1993 31 ft class "A" Bounder. It was a little bigger than what we had idealized, but the price was right and the features and floor plan exceeded our expectations. Burning Man would be "Thumper's" maiden voyage, and I would be the captain.



Labor day weekend being what it is, we already had plans to be in Mexico for a big 40th birthday party, so the time we could be on the playa was limited to a few days at the front end of the week. Fortunately a few members of our camp had planned on arriving even earlier than us, so we pulled into an already constructed camp just before dawn on Monday morning. Sunrise on the playa is by far my favorite time, so we quickly unloaded our bicycles, greeted our camp mates who were in various stages of sleep and headed out to say good morning to the "work week."



One of the more striking differences between the first and last days of Burning Man is the relative tranquility at the beginning. In my mind the playa resembled a meadow just after a fresh snowfall: unsullied and serene. Much of the art remained in various stages of completion, and the prevailing mood of the people I met seemed to be relaxed and rested, sort of like the mood of most cities early in the week.




We decided to call our camp the Garden of Heathens, and it was our best camp to date. Pretty much from the day Burning Man ended last year up to the commencement of this year's event, my friend from high school Steve had been planning for our camp, and he did not disappoint. His contribution included a military surplus desert tent that acted as our living room, a bar and bar stools; he even put a beer tap on the outside of his small RV that was connected to a keg (6 actually!) chilling in the closet inside. Pure genius. Dave, in what has become his custom and trademark, provided the "mini-mog" sound system and hours of full spectrum beats. Banyra, in a demonstration of dream-into-action, built a carnival wheel that morphed into the "Wheel of Miss Fortune" and became the centerpiece of our bar. That wheel took on a life of it's own. Games were created, rules were invented, and a naked barbie was eventually ritualistically nailed to the center. Mrs. Jrod and a random denizen of BlackRock City painted and decorated the bar. Goldie provided the "Garden of Heathens" banner. It's great to see the gang rise to the occasion.





Despite early reports of severe wind and dust storms, the weather while we were there was nothing short of perfect. We were even treated to a full lunar eclipse Monday night that turned the playa from a full moon playground to a dark and mischievous fun house in a matter of minutes.







And mischievous it was. For the first time ever, the Man burned before his time. The most shocking thing about this is that it took this many years to happen. Though we'll never really know exactly how it happened, conventional wisdom holds that a fella by the name of Paul Addis decided to climb the Man just as all eyes were on the lunar eclipse and toss a molotov cocktail at him. Mr. Addis then jumped onto the green canopy underneath and slid down to the ground where he was apprehended by BRC rangers without incident.


At the time, I had been taking a "nap" after an initial 36 hours of being up and at 'em. Mrs. Jrod had just come back to camp to get me up for the eclipse--I definitely did not want to miss that. We were heading back out to the Opulent Temple to meet our friends. When we approached the playa, we heard the tremendous roar of a crowd--similiar to what one might hear at a baseball game. I though, "man, there must be something really good going on out there." As we got closer, we could see that the Burning Man Pavillion was surrounded by art cars and a sea of people. It looked and sounded just like it would on the Night of the Burn. It was then that I spotted what looked like two giant gossamer sheets of silk undulating hypnotically on either side of The Man--but something about the whole scene felt slightly out of place. As we got closer, we could see that several of the blinking lights were real live fire trucks. There may be any number of "fire trucks" on the playa at any given moment which makes it next to impossible to tell what's real and what's not, but clearly these were the real things. What I had mistaken for beautiful pieces of silk flapping in the breeze were actually two powerful streams of water, *gasp*, trained on The Man!


They were hosing down The Man.

The "man" was extinguishing The Man.

Chuck, they were Saving the Man.


The irony of this whole unscheduled event is self-evident, so this is the part where I fight the urge to wax philosophical...


As the full moon passed outside of the earth's shadow and dawn slowly crept over the horizon, the full extent of the damage was brought into plain view. The Man was singed badly, but not mortally wounded. Too bad He wasn't packed with a cocktail of explosives and fireworks yet, that would have been quite a sight to behold! The green canopy underneath was melted in certain places, but it was far from destroyed. All in all, it looked like the Man would survive; though that did not stop the "man" from removing him with a giant crane before the sun was high in the sky. Judging by the reaction of some, taking the Man down was akin to holding a magnet in front of their compass--they were utterly "lost." For me, I was just happy that our planned early departure didn't force me to miss the Burn like I thought it would.



The remaining day and a half we had left to enjoy BlackRock City was spent doing "more" of "the same." Silliness was witnessed, yuks were had, art was interacted, jams were kicked out, bikes were pedaled. I wish we could have stayed a few more days to have some fun with the rest of our campmates as they rolled into town, but we were fortunate to have even gone at all. Afterall, grandma can only take care of the daughter and the doggie for so long. I will say the Exodus on a Wednesday afternoon is incomparably better and more relaxing than it is at the end of the week. As usual, in retrospect it was another surreal experience. So fleeting physically, but the memories remain.



It will be interesting to see how Burning Man shapes up in the future--especially in the wake of Mr. Addis's decision to start the campfire a little early. It's getting really big, and for the first time I am beginning to see the point certain veteran burners have when they bemoan what it's become and pine for the "good ol' days" when it was small and there were no rules. I don't necessarily agree because I think Burning Man is dynamic above all else, but I can see a difference in just three years.




Annoyingly, this year's theme seemed to be politically motivated: "The Greening of the Man." The contradiction is obvious; how do you (or why should you) "green" a festival that celebrates fire?


Here's what a friend of mine had to say about his experience. He is a 6 year veteran who returned this year after a two year hiatus:

i LOVED the art.... some of the best i have ever seen... opulent was off the hook evry night i went .... better than prior years... personally had a really good time... NOT on par with a couple of my other burns, but that is solely because a couple of my closest friends in the world didnt make the trip this yr.... i missed em.... definitely saw some JV shit go on... i picked up cups and beer cans in a number of places which was disappointing... also witnessd one episode where some burningman volunteers were agro and nasty which was disappointing too.... but it still is undoubtedly the greatest show on earth.... this year was just BIGGER

Trash talking and trash tossing: two hallmarks of any city. For better or worse, it sounds like BlackRock City is experiencing growing pains. Unfortunately, when a community gets dissolved into the anonymity that a city affords, people often act like the twat-waffles they really are.



I'll reiterate what I said at the beginning of this post: Burning Man is exactly what you make it. The excitement and anticipation many people feel when talking about, planning and participating in it is genuine--and that cannot be discounted.

Nevertheless, I can't shake the feeling that the Man has become "the man."