completely off-topic (apologies) but I'm really curious as to whether you have any comment on this item found by Ezra Klein that says that middle easterners as a whole actually go to church less often than Americans. Like Ezra, the impression that has been fed to me was that muslim religious observance was more strict than ours.
Hey, this is a great opportunity for laptop manufacturers. I mean, how much does a vasectomy, which doesn't come with a free computer, cost, anyway?
Michael, I followed some of the links, and the results are a bit odd. First, as I think I've mentioned here in the past, Iranians just aren't very religious. There's a lot more sneering secularism there than here, and old folks will use religious language, but that's mainly in the service of good old-fashioned Iranian fatalism..."inshallah," and all that.
But this "go to Church" metric is very strange. Even Iranians who pray five times a day don't necessarily go to a mosque to do it. They get out a prayer mat, put it down at home or in the back of their shop, and pray. And sure enough, according to the same survey, the percentage of Iranians who "consider themselves religious" is 81%. The problem is, what the hell does that mean? And who was asking? And how confident were people that the questioner wasn't an informer?
Oh, that article is *such* good news. B/c my laptop did, finally, die, and though I have ordered another, I won't have it for a little while, and in the meantime Mr. B. and I are now fighting over his laptop. So I can show him this article and then explain that letting *me* use the laptop is really the best thing for him to do, and that surfing porn with the laptop is really counterproductive for him.
Though in order to show him the article, I'd have to hand him the laptop, and what if he refused to give it back?
I guess married life is pretty complicated. The study really only measures temperature though, so if he doesn't keep the laptop right on his lap, but on his knees, and keeps his knees a bit apart, he should be able to retain some potency. And if he just points a fan at his nether regions while he's surfing for porn, soon you'll be talking about pseudonymous kids.
God, don't suggest it. He is such a total tech geek that he *would* create a setup for himself with a goddamn fan and I'd have to fucking trip over the thing all the time.