No matter how impractical or uncomfortable they may be, I still have a soft spot for killer heels. I especially like footwear that looks like it might suddenly become sentient, rear up by itself and stab you some new facial orifices. Yet all the shoes I own at the moment have been lacking something. I now realise what that something is: tentacles.
See more of Alexander McQueen’s “Alien Fantasy” footwear at StyleNoir.co.uk.
Here’s a little tale for all those SPH fetish enthusiasts out there. A Helsinki study recently compared the average length of a chap’s erect winky with GDP per-capita. The results would appear to suggest that the rate of growth of a country’s economy is inversely proportional to its residents’ recorded penis size. I will say nothing on the subject except “ooh look, an impending recession!”
Here’s a snippet from GlobalPost.com:
“…Today, thanks to the world wide web and Google, those interested in either (or both) penis sizes and the global economy can find economic papers with titles like this: Male Organ and Economic Growth: Does Size Matter?
Written by Tatu Westling at the Helsinki Center for Economic Research (and, yes, we’re fact-checking), here’s the paper’s abstract:
This paper explores the link between economic development and penile length between 1960 and 1985. It estimates an augmented Solow model utilizing the Mankiw-Romer-Weil 121 country dataset. The size of male organ is found to have an inverse U-shaped relationship with the level of GDP in 1985. It can alone explain over 15% of the variation in GDP. The GDP maximizing size is around 13.5 centimetres, and a collapse in economic development is identified as the size of male organ exceeds 16 centimetres. Economic growth between 1960 and 1985 is negatively associated with the size of male organ, and it alone explains 20% of the variation in GDP growth. With due reservations it is also found to be more important determinant of GDP growth than country’s political regime type. Controlling for male organ slows convergence and mitigates the negative effect of population growth on economic development slightly. Although all evidence is suggestive at this stage, the `male organ hypothesis’ put forward here is robust to exhaustive set of controls and rests on surprisingly strong correlations…”
To further illustrate this story, the Huffington post supplies a handy graph, populated by dancing banana .gif images, and Target Map has a colour-coded map of the world that will tell you which countries have the largest (and smallest) average size of erection from one year to another. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to THE INTERNET.
(I actually wrote this last week, but a my computer came down with cyber-lurgi and spent several days offline, so I haven’t been able to upload it until now. I can only imagine that it was an angry god smiting my antivirus software.)
It’s that time of year again. A decade on from the 9/11 tragedy, our screens fill with grief porn, social networks swirl with bickering and racism, and any serious questions about the event, the iffy science in the official report or that day’s devastating legacy are largely ignored in favour of mawkish sentimentalism and gratuitous death footage.
There have been other changes over these last ten years too. North America’s brand of popular fundamentalist Christianity has gradually changed into something even more aggressive and politically motivated than its pre-9/11 persona. Like a drunk in a pub who’s had his pint spilt, the heady hormonal rush of patriotism and perceived threat has caused certain denominations of Christianity to raise their heads high, puff their chests out and throw aimless punches into the air.
Of course, there are many moderate and entirely rational Christians who put spirituality before macho posturing. However, a major sector of an already patriarchal religion has now morphed into an exaggerated caricature of masculine traits and overt misogyny. The my-god-is-bigger-than-your-god ideology is spreading. Here’s part of a wonderful, if slightly disturbing, article from the Guardian:
“…The macho Jesus movement has been bolstered by books like No More Mr Christian Nice Guy and The Church Impotent – the Feminisation of Christianity. But it’s artist Stephen Sawyer, whose paintings of the Son of God as a tattooed biker and boxer have captured the imagination of Christian men searching for a more manly role model.
As Kentucky-based Sawyer, 58, points out: “I scarcely think Jesus could have overturned the tables of the money-lenders and driven them from the temple if he was a wimp. The model I use for my paintings is a surfer guy who’s built like a brick shithouse.”
But while you might expect this thinking to flourish in the American South, it’s probably more surprising that it’s gaining ground in the UK.
According to recent polls, the ratio of women to men worshippers in this country is 65% to 35% – and too much girliness is getting the blame for the gender imbalance.
Hence the rising number of conferences and sermons aimed at men that present a more muscular version of Jesus, along with the continuing success of Christian lad’s mag Sorted…”
Full article here.
