Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Leo Shanahan, sex surveys, sex in the city, and shite and sex, and did I mention Mark Day and sex?


(Above: gratuitous shot of Sex and the City chicks, from the movie).

Mark Day on Monday in Chairman Rupert's The Australian, which pretends to be a high falutin' intellectual rag, it's so elegant, so intelligent, here:

The Punch was the first local site to try to create a format to meet the habits of that part of the audience that had forsaken the traditional and more formal methods of news delivery. It spins off the news: rather than reporting the fact that, say, Kevin Rudd has announced new carbon reduction targets, The Punch is likely to ask: is climate change ruining our sex lives? It’s a collection of opinions, sometimes straight, sometimes off the wall, and it is designed to encourage reader feedback and participation.

The Punch is edited by David Penberthy, who was formerly editor of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph. Penberthy has found his niche here: his site is full of ideas and he presents his opinions strongly and with a sense of humour. Some of what he writes appears in News Limited newspapers, including The Australian, but on the site you get the full scope of the opinions and twittering which has positioned The Punch as one for my favourites list.

The Punch is essentially a wide-ranging, news-oriented blog. It has links to news stories but does not attempt to report the news except in passing. This reflects the way we “use” news - a part of a conversation may entice us to find out more by searching the subject.

So let's turn to The Punch today, Chairman Rupert's foray into intertubes digital content, which from reading reading Mark Day you might think is some kind of Shakespearian exploration of ideas, and what do we see but Leon Shanahan with this bit of shite, dressed up with the title How much sex can these women possibly be having?


Shanahan's conclusion?

It’s amazing what we’ll try and take from some of these things.

Last month one was released that showed men who had younger wives lived longer despite not looking at any other factors that might come into play with these men: like they could be richer and healthier.

Others included red heads have more sex, men think about football more than sex, most men have paid for sex: you can find at least one doing the rounds most days.

So why do we read these stories about stupid surveys that we should be able to tell from the outset that are complete bullshit?

Cause we like legitimising ways to read about sex, similar to the way you just waded through this I guess.

Come clean Mark Day. Explain how The Punch, Australia's daggiest conversation, is on your favorites list? Tell us all the stories you love best. And did you bother to explore the subject further after reading this story? Or did you feel your brain begin to seep and rot and pulsate with a frenzy of mind parasites, dropping ten IQ points in the process?

Well I know you won't worry, and it was a rhetorical question anyway, but of all the cheap half assed ways to pad a story so you can run a photo of the Sex and the City chicks ... and mention sex. Lordy, did I mention sex?

I mean, dear god, Leo blathers on in a post-modernist, feminist aware way about sampling (true he has no idea of statistics but never mind), and pandering to stupid stereotypes and the impossibility of generalizing, while having a fine old time generalizing in a stereotypical way. If you want to read the surveys, go to Leo for the links. Me, I'm too brain dead to play the game.

Meantime, there are plenty of solid, decent articles on the intertubes. Why not search for them. And if you want to see pictures of Sex and the City chicks, why not just do it? Google image search them, I mean. There are millions. Here's one:

(Below: a photo of sex goddess Kim Cattrall from Sex and the City).



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