Google Earth has captivated The Green Man and clearly the artists at The Glue Society. Here are a couple of their images of biblical scenes as they may have appeared from Google Earth.
Noah's Ark as the time of floating approaches
The parting of the Red Sea for Moses.
The crucifixion
Having problems with your marriage? Do you think that divorce is the answer?
Well it probably is but don't expect to be happier afterwards. New research has shown that as a person approaches divorce their happiness levels drop and following the divorce they rebound but NOT to the level that they were before the whole divorce incident happened. That's right, you end up unhappier. It may not be a reason not to divorce but don't think you are doing it to improve your happiness.
Masculine overcompensation is the idea that men who are insecure about their masculinity will behave in an extremely masculine way as compensation. I wanted to test this idea and also explore whether overcompensation could help explain some attitudes like support for war and animosity to homosexuals.
Says Robb Willer, a sociology doctoral candidate at Cornell University. Guess what he was right. Threaten your ordinary man's masculinity and the most common outcome is that his support for the war in Iraq grows, his distrust and dislike of homosexuals increases and he starts looking to buy himself a SUV.
The irony of this, in Australia at least, is that the SUVs ("Four Wheel Drives" we call them) are too expensive to run to use to commute to work so the wife gets given the SUV to drive the kids to school. I gather from a recent episode of The Simpsons, our window into the lives of middle America, a similar phenonemon exists in the USA.
Not only did men who felt that their masculinity was threatened behave in an overly gung-ho manner but they also reported feeling ashamed, guilty, upset and hostile. Doesn't sound like the ingredients for a rewarding existance.
"So does this overcompensation extend to violence against women in these threatened men's lives?" I hear you ask and the answer is probably and Robb Willer intends to extend his study to investigate this aspect of male behaviour.
Much of this insecurity that exists in contemporary men about their masculinity can be directly attributed to the lack of objective milestones in masculine development in modern society combined with few and perverted masculine role models. To a female it may be completely incomprehensible however for a young man the question of when you become a man and how do you prove to yourself and others that you are one is the cause of much of the anti-social behaviour that this demographic exhibit. In primitive societies this was not a problem because there was specific trials and initiation practices that boys undertook, with the guidance of adult males, that aided them in this transition. Clearly it is inappropriate to try and artificially reintroduce these ancient practices but it is important to young men, and to the broader society, that some form of transition ceremony is undertaken.
Returning to the findings of Robb Willer's research, it is clear that measures taken in the name of femininism to advance the status of women within the society will be most effective if they do not threaten men's masculinity. From this research we can see that such threats, even if they are unintentional, damage the progress of women's rights because they make men more macho and less inclined to embrace change.
Anyone who has met Phil of Signposts , and more recently of GeekyInfo, could not accuse him of being on the girly side. He is not exactly petite or femine for that matter. It doesn't matter for him because he is a minister in his church. It is about the only post in the modern church that still has a serious masculine feel. The church of today is a feminine domain. The workers and employees are women, the congregation are women. The modern church reeks of estrogen. There is a small niche for quiet introspective men but they are more tolerated than embraced. Here are some interesting factoids, they are from an America study but they are probably just as applicable here.
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The typical U.S. congregation
draws an adult crowd that is 61 percent female, 39 percent male -- a gender
gap that shows up in all age categories. |
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On any given Sunday, there are 13 million more adult women than men in America's churches. |
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The majority of church employees are women. |
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According to a 1999 study by Christianity Today magazine, inner church leadership tends to be mostly female, even in churches that have male ordained leadership. |
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Ninety percent of boys raised in church will abandon it before their 18th birthday. |
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More than 90 percent of American men believe in God, and five out of six call themselves Christians. But only two out of six attend church on a given Sunday. |
David Murrow of Baylor University believes he knows why, he says
the modern church is too chatty, too touchy-feely and full of hokey rituals that don't affirm a guy's manhood. In short, the faith founded by one man 2,000 years ago needs a testosterone shot
Of course you could argue that this is precisely the role of the church. You could argue that the church is not so much about worship and more about the sugar coating that makes worship pallitable and the sugar is laced with estrogen. It is precisely why every self respecting testosterone filled adolescent male feels he must make the choice - desert the church or desert his masculinity. Most choose to desert the church.
This is a serious problem for the church and some radical thinkers have been proposing alternative models to spirituality that go to the core of being masculine. John Eldridge in his book Wild At Heart says
If Christian men are going to change from a pitiful, wimpy bunch of "really nice guys" to men who are made in the image of God, they must reexamine their preconceptions about who God is and recover their true "wild" hearts
John Hall and David Brown created Warrior Heart Ministries based on Eldredge's premise: that men were created to be wild, to take chances and to act when God calls them to act even as modern society calls them to be tame, predictable and reliable and to reason things out before acting on anything.
Part of the problem is that young men require "male-only" space. It can be found at the football club or in the surf but the Church rarely provides this. In its rush to embrace equality the Church has, from a male perspective, created an very unequal space. Instead of providing an environment where young men can learn to be male through guidence and modelling themselves on the strong adult men of the church all they can hope for is clones of their mothers treating them in the substantially the same way their mothers do. When you are 16, 17, 18 who wants that.
Is there a solution, well maybe, but the church as been dominated by women and feminine culture for so long it is difficult to see it happening quickly, if at all.
It may be, of course, that for most men the church is simply unnecessary, or at best, irrelevant. Spirituality is an extremely personal thing and exists entirely separately from the Church. To discover and practice their spirituality and worship men may simply not need the nurturing and support that the Church offers.
It has been observed that people with a low BMI (body mass index < 25) are generally healthier those who have a high BMI, that is classified as overweight or obese. However new and intriguing findings by researchers at the University of Helsinki, Helsinki and Copenhagen University Hospitals, Danish Epidemiology Science Center and National Public Health Institute in Finland have shown that those overweight individuals who wish to loose weight and succeed have a higher mortality than those who do not loose weight.
Similarly those who had a low BMI and gained weight also had an increased mortality.
It seems that the thing that damages health the most is fluctuations in weight rather than the actual weight of a person.
Critics of studies of this nature in the past have pointed to weight-loss associated with illness, in particular cancer, as confounding the results however the Helsinki study removed those subjects with illness from the study.
They say
In people who have medical conditions related to obesity, losing weight is obviously desirable, emphasize the researchers. But overall, preventing people, especially children, from becoming overweight in the first place seems crucial, since this work suggests that once weight is gained losing it again may not be good for health.
Read a little bit more here.
Or a lot more here (if you speak Finnish)
If you are talking anger then you need look no further than the Maori. They have taken anger and turned it into an art form, called the Haka.
Here is a photo of the New Zealand All Blacks performing a traditional Haka, as they do at the start of each international rugby match they play. It is an awe-inspiring sight and if you have never seen it take time to tune into the start of an international rugby game in which the All Blacks are playing (They are playing the British Lions on 25th June 2005).
Let's face it, Rugby makes most other football codes look positively effeminate and the All Blacks have embraced the sport and added a layer of Maori ferociousness of which the Haka is a most graphic expression. Click on the image to learn more.
Anyway, that has nothing to do with article, which is on anger in the west. Below are some interesting factoids that have been gleened from new research by Economic and Social Research Council in England.
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Children from lower social classes are more likely to be reported as frequently irritable or having tantrums. |
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Women are more likely than men to report being persistently angry in adulthood. But boys are more likely than girls to be reported as frequently angry. |
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Thirty-somethings with no partner are more likely to report angry feelings than people with partners. |
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Anger seems to wane with age in both childhood and adulthood. |
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People now in their 40s, were less angry as young men and women than younger people now in their 30s. It is not clear if this is because anger was measured at slightly different ages or because the younger people were more stressed and depressed as well as more likely to 'act out'. |
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Angry children do not necessarily become angry or unhappy adults. But there does appear to be a raised chance that people who were persistently angry as children turn out to be frequently and persistently angry as young adults. |
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Similarly, anger in adulthood is not always associated with adverse health outcomes. But anger in adulthood is positively associated with poor self-reported health after controlling for gender, parents' social class and ethnicity. |
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People who were not frequently angry in the adult surveys had better self-reported psychological health than those who reported anger. This mildly supports the idea of anger having negative (though perhaps not deadly) associations. |
Source Economic and Social Research Council in UK
Well here is an opportunity, under the guise of science, to post a bit of porn on The Green Man, specifically an image of a naked woman with a number of naked men with huge erections, and for the highest and noblest of reasons. Namely boosting the failing sperm count of the men of the western world. Sadly however The Green Man happens to be at work at the moment and trawling the net for images of porn as detailed above has become somewhat unfashionable in the comtemporary Australian workplace. Consequently you will just have to cast your mind back to the last time you "accidently" stumbled on images of this nature.
If you are a woman it doesn't matter, you can think of dolphins frolicking or something, it is the men who have to keep these images of porn fixed firmly in their minds. Not that The Green Man has to ask, most of the male readership are probably doing that anyway.
On to the topic: Dr Leigh Simmons of the University of Western Australia in Perth, like all good academics, is focused on the challenging task of combining research and pleasure and what better way to do this than to initiate a study of the effect of pornography on males. Fortunately for Dr Leigh, he has ended up with some interesting results (as well as an exceptionally comprehensive image library of pornography). It seems that men exposed to images of a naked female in the presence of two or more naked males produce much higher quality sperm than those who are exposed to images of naked women only. He hypothesises
males (of many species, including humans) should produce better sperm when faced with a female who has other mates, because this stimulates them to boost their chance of procreation.
The study also found that
men who keep their mobile telephone near to their testes may be harming the quality of their sperm
The Green Man must mix in very conservative circles because he cannot think of one male acquaintence who keeps his mobile phone stuffed in his underpants. It raises some vexing questions,
Is this the real reason for the vibrate mode?
What is the ettiquette of retrieving said phone in mixed company if it rings?
What do you say if it is your companions phone that is ringing? "Excuse me but your crutch is vibrating." perhaps?
Dr Leigh says
further experiments and animal studies should be carried out to investigate the effects of mobile phones on fertility. At least one previous study has shown a possible link between phones and sperm count. But experts have cautioned that confounding factors, such as the fact that phone-users may have more stressful lives
The Green Man humbly suggests that not storing your mobile phone in your underpants might be a good first step at reducing the amount of stress in your life.
Tim Birkhead, who studies sperm competition at the University of Sheffield, UK is not at all happy with his collection of pornography he says
Good luck Tim!
Inexplicably and in spite of the fact it is Friday afternoon you may be interested in a drier, more academic, coverage of the research you can read it in Nature.
I dare say many of the readership have mulled over the related concepts of motivation/satisfaction/happiness. A percentage of the worlds deforestation has been for the purpose of printing self help books specifically on these concepts.
Those of you who have let your pop-psychology readings slip in the area of motivating sports people and business executives may be unaware of the fact that internal (or intrinsic) motivation has been touted as being far superior to external (extrinsic) sources of motivation such as money or material success.
Certainly money and material success have flowed to the authors of the books which may lead you to wonder whether they are truely happy, having derrived their happiness from such an external source. The answer is "To right they are". In spite of the mantra that "Money can't but happiness", I think it is fair to say that it is a lot easier to be happy when you have a full stomach and a warm, safe abode.
Professor Steven Reiss of Ohio State University goes even further, questioning the very existence of intrinsic motivation. He says
There is no reason that money can't be an effective motivator, or that grades can't motivate students in school. It's all a matter of individual differences. Different people are motivated in different ways.
Taking the example of children playing sport as compared to professional sports men and women he cites the assertions of others that the children find the sport inherently more satisfying because they are playing for the pleasure of playing rather than for external reward. Prof Steve argues that both may find it equally satisfying or dissatisfying because both are merely satisfying a need. The child the need for exercise and the professional the need for money to support his/her family.
So why are extrinisic rewards supposedly less motivating? Well quite possibly different the different value systems held by different people mean that for some these rewards have less value. For those who do not have much interest in possessing wealth above that which is needed for a simple life, then extrinsic rewards that are based on a desire for wealth will be quite unmotivating. If, on the other hand you are a person who judges your self worth by the amount of wealth you possess then these forms of motivations can be highly effective.
Life is so much more complicated than the view described cited in those personal improvement/self help books. There is no panacea, read the books with a degree of scepticism then put them aside and choose your own path. All the truely happy people have and they are not necessarily the rich ones.
How sad that the nursing home placed such a high price on their reputation. Boring young farts!
Here is a photo of a man that is typically a consumate political being. Skilled in the practice of manipulating public opinion and one of the Liberal party's rising stars.
His name is Tony Abbott and those on the left of politics dispise this man mainly because he is so good at what he does. No matter what side of politics you inhabit no compassionate person could do anything but feel for Mr Abbott and the emotional turmoil that has been thrust upon him.
Twenty seven years ago, at university, he was sexually involved with a young woman who became pregnant. Both thought he was the father. The decision was to place the child up for adoption, which is consistent with Mr Abbott's long held anti-abortion stance.
For 27 years he believed that there was a child out there that he had fathered and, whilst he and the woman went on to marry other partners, they retained a bond from this shared parentage. Last December a young man contact them to say he was their son that they had put up for adoption. It was a reunion that often happens and provides some answers for the couple and if Mr Abbott had been an ordinary person it would have ended there but he was not and it was spread across the media.
The media coverage allowed another man who knew the boys mother, obviously in the biblical sense, recognised the similarity of the young man to his own boys. A paternity test was conducted and Mr Abbott was informed he was, indeed, not the father.
Mr Abbott has said
To find the boy that I thought I had all those years ago. To go through a reunion and now to lose him like this is pretty shocking and I feel a bit numb about it all.
You may not like Mr Abbott but any caring person cannot help but feel for him in this predicament. It is at times like this that we must put aside our own normal feelings about him and hope that he receives support and counselling that he will need to get him through this.
We can choose to grow from experiences such as these and become more compassionate and wise or we can allow them to harden and wither us emotionally. Let us hope that Mr Abbott chooses the former.
Read more in The Age
It seems that when it comes to employing people we still have very different expectations of men and women. If there are a number of applicants for a job who, hypothetically have identical qualifications and experience and, as such, are all equally suitable for the job, here is how we hire/promote:
1. Married man with children
2. Unmarried (either sex) with no children
3. Married woman with children
If you are a married man with children you are likely to be first choice. If you are married woman with children then the expectation is still that you will be looking after them as your primary role and you can kiss goodbye to that job or promotion.
Our society, it seems, is still locked into the concept that women are primarily carers of children and men are the breadwinners. Which of course simply reflects the reality. In 2004 only 5% of married couples reported the woman as the "breadwinner" and in a large number of these cases it was because of a situation forced on the couple rather than one of choice, for example where the husbands earnings are reduced because of illness or unemployment.
Women can temporarily be the breadwinner, during the unemployment of the husband, or permanently the breadwinner within the household. Typically women only become the permanent breadwinner when they are capable of earning a significantly large amount of money to make this departure from the norm worthwhile. (79% of permanent female breadwinners fall into this category). Accordingly these households are, on average, significantly wealthier than those where the husband is the breadwinner. The poorest are those where the wife is temporarily the breadwinner, presumeably taking a rather lower paid job to support the family through the husbands infirmary or unemployment.
Supporting this general view is the fact that permanent female breadwinners are much more likely to hold a degree and be employed in a professional or managerial position.
Whether we like it or not, it is not usual for women to be the breadwinner and society still expects them to be mothers and housekeepers as well. It is clear that these women embrace these expectation because mothers who are breadwinners still spend more time with the children than the father (8.1/5.8 hours) and spend more time on the housework (15.3/8.3 hours)
The only real plus for the female breadwinner is that they work significantly less hours per week to earn their money than their male breadwinner equivalent (37.1/45.8 hours)
Read more on research gender bias in employee selection by Kathleen Fuegen, who is Professor of Psychology at Ohio State University (click here) and more on breadwinner characteristics by Robert Drago of Pennsylvania State University and David Black and Mark Wooden at University of Melbourne (click here).
It is drawing a bit of a long bow to equate levels of unhappiness with suicide rates but not completely unreasonable. That being said it is interesting to look at the general level of unhappiness in the USA.
Greater than 14.92 suicides per 100,000
Between 12.55 and 14.92 suicides per 100,000
Between 10.41 and 12.55 suicides per 100,000
Less than 12.55 suicides per 100,000
It seems that west is a lot unhappier than the midwest and the east, with the exception of Florida which is the pits. If you are looking for the really unhappy people try Sierra, New Mexico with a whopping 42.21 suicides per 100,000 people.
Compare this with Rockland, New York that has only 3.63.
Suicide rates in Australia continue to fall, in direct relation to the uptake of anti-depressent drugs The Green Man assumes. Not that that is a bad thing of course, it is just that we don't want to assume that the underlying causes for the suicide have alleviated in fact they have probably got worse.
The number of suicides fell to 2213 last year, about 100 fewer than the 2320 in 2002 and down from an all time high of 2720 in 1997. 78% of all suicides were by men and men in the age group 30-34 were at the greatest risk. Tragically, we know that the vast majority of these men did not want to die it was just that they could see no other way out of their problems.
Here is the thing. Most people, at some time in their lives find that things are getting on top of them. Generally speaking women have better social networks to see them through these times than men do. Help is available to all but you have to ask for it. It does not diminish your manliness to seek help. You can find it at the Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251, Lifeline on 131 114 (both 24-hour lines), SANE on 1800 688 382 or Kids Help Line on 1800 551 800
Go on get outraged (if you are a woman) or deny it (If you are a man).
A study in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior by University of Michigan academic Stephanie Brown shows that when men are looking for a long term mate they find subordinate women more attractive. Oooh look at that cute young thing that that older businessman has conquered.
Compare that to when men are on the look out for a bit of casual rumpy pumpy. In these circumstances they are quite happy to, well let's say, engage with more superior females.
We all know what an excellent hunting ground the workplace is when seeking that ellusive life time partner and Dr Stephanie found that in this environment men found women holding subordinate positions to themselves more attractive than those who were peers or superiors. Dr Stephanie says
Our results demonstrate that male preference for subordinate women increases as the investment in the relationship increases. This pattern is consistent with the possibility that there were reproductive advantages for males who preferred to form long-term relationships with relatively subordinate partners.
It all gets back to parentage of the womens future children. Evolutionarily speaking it is a big bummer to invest huge amounts of resources in raising another males offspring particularly in situations where the resources are relatively scarce. The more powerful and independant the woman the higher the risk of infidelity is perceived and this diminishes the womans attractiveness. Consistent with this hypothesis is the observation that adult males typically prefer partners who are younger and make less money.
To add to this rich tapestry of conflicting objectives Daniel Kruger, one of Dr Stephanie's compatriots at the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research, found that a woman who is out for a bit of casual action actually prefers your "screw around" sort of guy. As long as she has a reliable SNAG at home to raise the kids afterwards it is in her evolutionary interest to get impregnated with genes that are particularly good at getting themselves into the next generation. This may go some way to accounting for the fact that current paternaty testing results are showing that 20% of men are not in fact the father of at least one of "their" children.
Read more on Dr Stephanies research here. and Dr Dans here.
Who are the ones that are built to have babies? If you put ideology aside, if you have to, biology says it is young women. Yep, your average 16, 17, 18 year old female is built to have babies and she is at an age where it is simple and usually quite successful. As these young women age their suitability for the task diminishes, not only physically, but emotionally as well.
These biological facts are completely out of kilter with our current lifestyle and expectations. Fortunately IVF goes a long way to addressing the short comings that older women typically experience in the pregnancy stakes.
Last year one in every nine Victorian women aged 30 to 34 gave birth to a child, making them almost the most fertile group of women in the Australia. What is more, one in every 17 women aged 35 to 39 gave birth, and so did one in every 93 women aged 40 to 44. These women are typically much more risk adverse that their younger compatriots. One has to wonder on the characteristics of the next generation of Australians given that they are being raised by these ageing mothers.
Read more in The Age
Here is a photo of Karen Ellis. She is 36 years old and used to be a physical education teacher at a secondary school. Yesterday she was found guilty of having sex with one of her 16 year old students. She received a 22 month jail sentence, wholly suspended. Contrast this with Gavin Hopper, a tennis coach at a secondary school, who earlier this year was sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment for having sex with a 14 year old female student.
It is always difficult to compare individual cases because there are so many factors. One factor is the "damage" done to the victim. The female victim of the latter case claimed that she had been permanently scarred by the incident. The male victim of the former claims that he has suffered no damage from the affair which he claims he initiated. Further he says he would be damaged if Ellis were imprisoned.
There are so many interesting facets to this case it is hard to know what to focus on.
Is a female teacher having sex with a male student not as bad as a male teacher having sex with a female student?
Does the claim by the male student that he was not harmed matter, given that Ellis had no way of knowing before hand whether harm would result?
Should the fact that the victim claims he will suffer psychological harm if Ellis is imprisoned alter the sentencing?
However a more complex issue, and one I would like to explore here, is the extent to which societies expectations affect the degree of harm experienced by the victim. With respect to the victim in the Ellis case I can say quite confidently that the first thought of most young males and many adult males is "lucky bastard". Most of his peer group will be in awe of him and our culture will view him more as a conquerer rather than a victim. He may have been damaged by the experience, even if he does not know or acknowledge it, but the support and admiration that he will receive will go a long way to fixing that.
The female victim of Gavin Hopper on the other hand is clearly viewed as a victim by the bulk of society. The spotlight has been on her victimisation and there is little or no opportunity for her to feel good about herself with respect to the whole incident. The legitimate psychological damage that she sustained will take longer to heal precisely because of societies expectations of teenage girls are so different to that of teenage boys.
One of the most complex issues that surround sexual abuse of this nature is the extent to which society causes the psychological damage that arises from the abuse. The initial damage is clearly inflicted by the perpetrator, whether that damage is minimised or exacerbated depends on how the victim is treated and the messages they receive from those around them and society generally.
Here is a completely hypothetical example which you can consider. Let us suppose a sexually mature teenage girl, say 15, has sex with a 36 year old male teacher upon whom she has a crush. She initiates the affair which lasts 6 weeks and ends amicably with her feeling really good about the whole thing. (This is exactly the Ellis case above except that the gender of the victim and perpetrator are reversed.) Society may regard the girl as a victim but she doen't think she is. Is it societies role to damage her by convincing her that she is?
Before you start flaming, let me state unequivically that I believe that the sexual abuse is inexcusable. We must however be careful that societies attitude and the process of prosecuting the perpetrator does not do more damage to the victim than the original incident.
Read more in The Age.
Below is a map of suicide rates world wide. It is interesting that many of the countries with the best social services also have high suicide rates. Whilst good social welfare programmes may be honourable they don't do much for the mental health of the community.
See the full list here.
Data sourced from World Health Organisation
Most of you will be aware of the concept of women getting "clucky" when in the presence of female friends who have new babies and are breastfeeding. Of course we all know what an essential precursor to pregnancy is and new research by Professor Martha McClintock of University of Chigago has identified chemical signals emitted by these breastfeeding women that stimulate sexual desire.
Tests show that women indulging in sex, that is those with a partner, experience a 24% increase in sexual desire when they have been in the presence of breastfeeding women for a period of 2 months. Those women who do not have regular access to an appropriate male reported a 17% increase in sexual fantasies over the same period.
Work is still underway to determine whether these chemicals are pheromones or some other type of chemical.
Ah there is so much good material here. The Green Man has the opportunity to outrage a significant percentage of the readership. Showing exceptional restraint however, he will merely observe that, as much as we like to pretend differently, we are still animals and our bodies still respond the way they have been programmed to through the millenia. Neither feminism or religion has succeeded in changing that.
This attractive potion on the right is good for more than a fun night out. Janet L. Stanford of Fred Hutchinson's Public Health Sciences Division has found that it is most effective in the prevention of prostate cancer. It seems that a bottle a week of the red stuff reduces the risk of prostate cancer by approximately 50% and, even better, the type of prostate cancer it prevents is the most aggressive sort. They are not sure why exactly but an antioxidant called resveratrol, which is abundant in the skins of red grapes but much less so in the skins of white grapes seems to be the most likely candidate.
They think that it works in the following ways
- As an antioxidant, it helps sweep dangerous, cancer-causing free radicals from the body.
- As a potent anti-inflammatory agent, it blocks certain enzymes that promote tumor development.
- The compound also reduces cell proliferation, curtailing the number of cell divisions that could lead to cancer or the continued growth of cancer cells.
- It also enhances apoptosis, or programmed cell death, which helps rid the body of cancerous cells.
- It may act as an estrogen, reducing levels of circulating male hormones such as testosterone that fuel the growth of prostate cancer.
hmmm a bottle a week, that means The Green Man should be right until about 2050.
She found no significant effects – positive nor negative – associated with the consumption of beer or hard liquor and no consistent risk reduction with white wine. The Green Man will still be consuming it anyway. You can't be too careful can you?
Mrs Green Man is away on a conference at the moment so it was an excellent time to indulge in a little rescreening of The Lord of The Rings. "The Return of the King" got the guernsey on Saturday. Hard as it is to believe, rumours have it that some people may not have seen the movie and, even more unbelievably, not read the book. For the culturally deprived amongst you, the four main characters are male hobbits, meant to symbolise simple farming folk from Devon in England.
It is clear in the book and even more so in the film that relationships exist between these hobbits, Merry and Pippin seem bound to one another and Sam and Frodo share a deep long lasting bond. There is no suggestion that these relationships are sexual so to portray them as homosexual relationships is inappropriate however they go far beyond our notion of friendship. A one point in the novel/film Merry and Pippin are separated, Pippin being taken to Gondor and Merry remaining in Rohan. They are clearly grief stricken at this turn of events. Grief stricken in a way that most married couples would not even be.
Considering Frodo and Sam, when they return from their adventure Sam takes a wife. This fundamentally alters the relationship between Sam and Frodo. That fragile intimate bond has been broken. This perhaps more than the damage Frodo has suffered from possessing the ring of power is why he must leave. At the time of their parting the tenderness between the two is heart renching.
You can find these types of relationships between men represented in literature from the early classics through to relatively recent times but they are rarely portrayed these days. One of the few instances that springs to mind is in "Love Actually" where the ageing popstar leaves a party with Elton John to be with his manager on Christmas. The two men have shared their lives and he does not want them to be apart at this special time.
Our society today is very sexualised and relationships are assumed to have a sexual component. One can presume that these deep nonsexual relationships still exist between some men in our community but perhaps we have lost the ability to accept them. We certainly seem to be reluctant to represent them in modern literature.
You may question the wisdom of America waging a "war against terror", but noone could say America is not enthusiastic in its prosecution of the said war. This is manly business fighting wars and it is just not done to have any girlies getting in the way.
Now now, don't go getting your hackles up. This is not The Green Man's opinion. It is the opinion of the voting public in the USA. It seems that in times of war women may as well not stand for office, the public will just not vote for them. Surveying the unwashed masses Brown University found
95 percent indicated that men are better able than women to deal with military crisesVoters perceive male candidates as more competent than females to legislate on issues of military crises, crime, the economy and agriculture; voters perceive female candidates as having expertise when the issues are gender equity, education, health care and poverty.
Generally speaking the people interviewed had no opinion vis-a-vis foreign policy. "Foreign what?" was the general response.
Ahhh, The Green Man is in a mischievous mood this morning and what better science related topic to benefit from The Green Man's distorted view of the world than Viagra.
It is fair to say when you are using the terms "performance anxiety" and "man" in the same sentence then it is almost always in reference to their bedroom antics. It would be a brave man who claimed that this had never been a problem and so it was that the male 50% of the population of the developed world breathed a sigh of relief with the advent of this range of wonder drugs, Viagra, Levitra and Cialis. Not that they all use them of course but is nice to know they are there, just in case.
When Viagra was first released it was marketed as a chemical support for those men of later years who were having problems in the downstairs department. This was a serious marketing oversight since it seems that the demographic that is embracing biotechnologies gift to men, and indirectly women, is the 18-45 year old man. Suddenly, your average young man's staying power is in the same ballpark as those characters in the Mills and Boon romance novels. Usage rates by this group of Viagra alone increased 31% during the 1998-2002 period and it is still growing. Older men are still the biggest users but not for much longer probably.
In 2002 in America more than five million men claimed Viagra on their medical benefits scheme. This represented 1.4% of the adult male population. (Presumably many more happily forked out for it out of their own pocket.)
Sadly economic rationalism has made it into the bedroom and the men who manage the large American Health Plans, instead of being happy for the increased performance that Viagra is delivering to their brothers are having their own performance anxiety. This time over the size of their performance bonuses as the supply of these drugs eats into the overall profitability of the health funds.
Already concerned with the impact Viagra has had on their pharmacy budgets, health plan sponsors now face the prospect of increased use among a younger, healthier generation of patients
Says Dr Tom Delate who conducted the research. Dr Tom works for Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy groups in the US who are laughing all the way to the bedroom, errr bank.
It sometimes takes an academic years of meticulous research to stumble of the blindingly obvious particularly if that academic is one of the beige cardiganed variety.
The gentleman who is pictured on the right is David Blanchflower who has recklessly cast aside his beige cardigan in response to a barmy Dartmouth afternoon. He is an economist with Dartmouth College Office of Public Affairs and he has had an epiphany. David says
There's a growing body of research that is finding that more income does not necessarily correlate to increased happiness. We are learning that things like employment, marriage and good health contribute to happiness more directly. This report makes it clear that economic policies should not be divorced from social and health policies.
Wow, fancy that!
This flash of insight has arisen through his study of Scotland where he found that, although they are now significantly wealthier, the Scots enjoy little satisfaction in life and endure a variety of health problems.
Scots have high rates of obesity, AIDS, coronary disease, colorectal cancer, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis and asthma, for example. The rate of diabetes among people in Scotland younger than 15 is one of the highest in the world. Furthermore, more people in Scotland below retirement age were inactive (not working) due to sickness or disability than in the UK as a whole.
The problem, of course, is that in todays economic rationalist environment everything must be assigned a monetary value before it can be considered.
Here is the news flash, money means virtually nothing and being wealthier than you are now means nothing. Before you start protesting that you are poor consider that you have access to the internet and are literate enough to read The Green Man. This in itself means that you are one of the wealthier of the earths occupants.
How closely are we tied to our primative relatives? We might not think too much but there are pointers everywhere to the fact that we have not changed all that much in the last 50,000 years. One particularly unpleasant artifact of our primitive selves in the increase in risk of violence from their partners that women experience when they are pregnant. Sadly as many as 40% of women experience violence from their partner during pregnancy and for many this is the first time their partner has been violent.
For most women this is immensely confusing and upsetting. At this time where, more than at other times, they feel that they can command some degree of protection and safety from their partners they are the most vulnerable.
Rebecca L. Burch and Gordon G. Gallup Jr., in the current edition of Journal of Family Violence suggest that this phenonemon harks back to our most primitive of emotions. They say
Women endure pregnancy and childbirth, and as a result are certain of their relationship to offspring. However, because of internal fertilization men can rarely be certain that their children are actually their own. Unless the man consistently monitors his partner, or isolates her from other men, there is always a possibility, because of rape or infidelity, that the children she bears are not his.
This uncertainty can eat at the insecure man. Doubts of his paternity fester in his mind and he starts to see innocent and harmless events through the distorted lens of his jealousy.
the pregnancy, instead of serving as a marker of his own reproductive fitness, raises doubts about paternity and suspicions of infidelity. A man who thought he had reason to question his partner’s fidelity would also be more inclined not to invest in and possibly neglect the child once it is born, or even physically or psychologically abuse that child. In fact, some accounts taken from battered pregnant women suggest that their partner suspected that he was not the child’s father, regardless of actual paternity
All of this harks back to our primal days when survival of your genes was such a risky business that wasting precious effort in raising the fruits of another man's loins was completely intolerable.
Tut tutting and saying how terrible it all is or denying our animal past does nothing to help protect women. Understanding the risks that they face from their male partners at this most vulnerable time is critical for their wellbeing.
If you wish to read more on this fascinating and somewhat disturbing subject you can find the full article here but be aware you will need to pay $25 to read it.
A simple review of statistics from the Family Court in Australia will show the overwhelming bias against men when it comes to access and custody of children following divorce.
The Attorney General, Phillip Ruddock said
we will be amending the Family Law Act to refer to the need of both parents to have a meaningful involvement in their childrens' lives and the children have a right to spend time on a regular basis with both of them
How good is that? Sometimes the government gets it right. For too long many men in Australia have had cause only to grieve at the loss of their children. In certain instances children are left with abusive and neglectful mothers and the fathers can only watch, helpless, as their childrens lives are destroyed.
How would you feel if your son or daughter, who you loved more than life itself, was living with their mother who was drug addicted or psychotic and the law prevented you from providing your child with even temporary respite from the nightmare of their existence? This is the reality for some fathers. In some of these case the mothers falsely accuse the father of sexual abuse to protect their own position. Sadly the courts usually choose to believe the mother over the father. Not to put too fine a point on it but men are suiciding because they feel so helpless and discriminated against.
Now men who desparately want to care for their children have the support of the government.
