This Will Catch on any Moment Now

So, if you haven't seen, United Russia* has developed what the media is characterising as a counter to the 'gay-pride' rainbow-flag.  The design of which being stolenborrowed from a French group opposed to same-sex marriage, La Manif Pour Tous, except that the Russian version has one extra child, which is supposedly symbolic of traditional Russian values.

I had thought that the three kids was a little optimistic for ya know...Russia, but checking the stats., turns out Putin has instituted various bribes to would-be mothers that have helped bring the birthrate up now to a rate of 1.7 children, which is apparently better than other European countries.  Who knew ?

Not sure at what event the flag of the French group is flying, but it looks ever so slightly better attended that the Russian event, which I gather from Russian sources, was expected to attract more than a thousand families.  Perhaps would-be supporters were put off by the fact that they found the flag just a little bit 'gay' for their liking...

But, still, I'm sure it'll take off on the internet and go viral any moment now...

The slogan on Putin's ruling party's anti-gay flag is "#realfamily": #настоящаясемья Here are some improved versions. pic.twitter.com/afCBhlj0wW

— Ystri Ya (@ystriya) July 10, 2015

All families where love rules are #realfamilies #настоящаясемья pic.twitter.com/78idnNMKtm

— 茶色猫 (@biglittlecat) July 9, 2015

Love you internets #настоящаясемья via @dim_stoff pic.twitter.com/9W3O1y1shu

— Laura (@LauraHuu) July 9, 2015

Oh dear.


* IE, the one party of the increasingly one-party state.  IE, the party that Putin represents.

Male Preference for Optimal Lumbar Curvature, or...

Huh, this is interesting I guess.

A psychology study from The University of Texas at Austin sheds new light on today's standards of beauty, attributing modern men's preferences for women with a curvy backside to prehistoric influences.

The study, published online in Evolution and Human Behavior, investigated men's mate preference for women with a "theoretically optimal angle of lumbar curvature," a 45.5 degree curve from back to buttocks allowing ancestral women to better support, provide for, and carry out multiple pregnancies.

"What's fascinating about this research is that it is yet another scientific illustration of a close fit between a sex-differentiated feature of human morphology—in this case lumbar curvature—and an evolved standard of attractiveness," said the study's co-author David Buss, a UT Austin psychology professor. "This adds to a growing body of evidence that beauty is not entirely arbitrary, or 'in the eyes of the beholder' as many in mainstream social science believed, but rather has a coherent adaptive logic."

This research, led by UT Austin alumnus and Bilkent University psychologist David Lewis, consisted of two studies. The first looked at vertebral wedging, an underlying spinal feature that can influence the actual curve in women's lower backs.

About 100 men rated the attractiveness of several manipulated images displaying spinal curves ranging across the natural spectrum. Men were most attracted to images of women exhibiting the hypothesized optimum of 45 degrees of lumbar curvature.

"This spinal structure would have enabled pregnant women to balance their weight over the hips," Lewis said. "These women would have been more effective at foraging during pregnancy and less likely to suffer spinal injuries. In turn, men who preferred these women would have had mates who were better able to provide for fetus and offspring, and who would have been able to carry out multiple pregnancies without injury."

The second study addressed the question of whether men prefer this angle because it reflects larger buttocks, or whether it really can be attributed to the angle in the spine itself.

Approximately 200 men were presented with groups of images of women with differing buttock size and vertebral wedging, but maintaining a 45.5-degree curve. Men consistently preferred women whose spinal curvature was closer to optimum regardless of buttock size.

Hmm, I wonder how this is being covered by other news outlets...

Really ?

Classy headline yo.

Business Insider Australia, huh.

That's...not...what they said.

'Better workers' ?  Well credit for least sexy picture, Telegraph.

Maybe I should just stick to the BBC.  Gah, and now I'm blinded by excessive whitespace, as the BBC push what was the mobile site onto the desktop.  And another site falls victim to the cult of flat design.  Well at least they've lost the hyper-pixelated pictures that used to plague the mobile site.