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Screenshots via JMom

A few years ago, as online dating started to catch on, a new dating site emerged for a relatively niche demographic: Young people who wanted their Jewish mothers to set them up on dates. Though it seemed a bit like a bizarre piece of performance art, JMom got a fair bit of media attention when it was launched in 2010 by a pair of Jewish siblings and their programmer friend. Alas, on May 1 the site will officially shutter its doors. "As our families and lives have changed, and funding for the site is no longer feasible, we must move on to new ventures," the founders said in a statement posted to their website. "As always, we wish you the best in finding your child love."

JMom's quirky innovation was that you don't create your profile, send messages, or respond to potential suitors: Your mother does all that, meaning moms message each other and set up the dates. It's Fiddler on the Roof meets OkCupid, and I couldn't let the site die without giving it a test drive—with my own mother at the wheel, of course.

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Admittedly, my mother and I do not have a lot in common. We have completely different tastes in the things moms tend to bond over with their daughters: clothing, movies, music, men. Just last week, we got into a heated argument because I, a grown-ass woman, told her I wanted to get a haircut. After 20 minutes of going back and forth on this, she was somehow able to conclude that me having shorter hair would be the reason I end up a childless spinster.

I've never told her about the guys I've dated, knowing she would not approve. They either had too many tattoos, didn't make enough money, or they weren't Jewish. Often all three. Then again, I never really gave her a chance, so I was curious to see what would happen if I had her use JMom. Would she actually choose men for me that I would like? Or would she only choose men that she liked?

We started by filling out my profile on JMom. Our conversation went like this:

Me: What do you think I'm looking for in a significant other?
Mom: Funny, humorous guy. Educated. Easy-going. Likes to watch movies, read books. Jewish.
Me: This is a Jewish site. They're all going to be Jewish. Is that it?
Mom: Oh, and from a good family.
Me: From a good family? What does that mean?
Mom: You know, like he comes from a good foundation. Good base. From the base you can tell how the person will run his life.
Me: OK, sure.
Mom: And eats healthy.
Me: He has to eat healthy?
Mom: Yeah. Good nutrition.

The fact that my mom is so adamant about his being Jewish is rather hypocritical considering she married my father, an Irish-Italian raised in a Christian household. When I pointed out this hypocrisy, she said "and that's why we got divorced," which is logic that I can't argue with.

After filling out my profile, we looked at some of her potential sons-in-law.

Me: This is David.
Mom: [Scanning the profile] UCLA, that's good. Social worker? Let me see his picture. This is him?
Me: Yeah.
Mom: Oh. He's handsome.
Me: I don't think he's handsome.
Mom: What, why?
Me: No, not my type. Would you message his mom to try and set me up with him?
Mom: Yeah.
Me: Here's the next profile. Jeremy.
Mom: That guy? He's bald already?
Me: I think he's purposely bald.
Mom: Yeah, maybe you'll like this guy.
Me: You think I would like this guy?
Mom: Yeah.

I didn't.

Mom: Who is this guy?
Me: Nikolas.
Mom: He's not going to want you. Look at him.
Me: What does that mean?
Mom: He probably wants those model ones. Be realistic. He's looking good.
Me: You think I like this guy? I would never date this guy.
Mom: Oh, come on! Look at his muscles. I would date him.
Me: So you don't think he'd like me?
Mom: No. He's the type that likes slim, tall, blonde girls.

To summarize, the one person she would not set me up with is Nikolas, and it was because she didn't think he would like me.

I found it interesting that my mother cited what are widely considered non-Jewish features as the kind she thought Nikolas would want in a woman: tall, thin, and blonde. Most of the Jewish women I have encountered in my life have been some combination of dark-haired, short, and wide-hipped. My mom had basically told me that Nikolas desires what a lot of younger Jewish men desire: a non-Jewish woman. I wondered if other JMom users had a similar experience. As badly as some mom's want their sons to find a Jewish girl, a lot of the single Jewish men are not ready to let go of that shiksa fantasy.

On that note, Jewish girls aren't really a "type." We're not sexualized the way women of other ethnic and cultural backgrounds are. Personally, I consider this a relief, but at the same time I've always wondered why. It probably has a lot to do with the stereotypes built around us: We're bossy, we complain too much, we're needy, we're overbearing.

Growing up, I thought of my mother this way. I was embarrassed of her always being so mouthy. Today, I admire her for being headstrong (even though we still fight constantly). Not only that, but I see how I'm turning into her despite myself. Like her, I no longer act dismissive when I'm cut in line. I tell that person who cut me, that they just cut me. If I'm overcharged for shampoo, I go back to the store and tell them they charged me too much for that shampoo. The way I see it, all these negative descriptors are thrown at us to cover up the fact that we tend to stick up for ourselves and say what's on our mind. That's why I now choose to embrace these words. I view them as failed attempts to try and shut me up, the way I wanted my mother to shut up. Like her, I won't shut up. You shut up.

Moving on, we found the profile of a man named Colin, an attorney in Beverly Hills.

Mom: Colin is your type.
Me: You think I would date him?
Mom: He's an attorney.
Me: See, that's not attractive to me. I tend to not really like the types that are in business, or law, or anything like that.
Mom: Yeah, of course, what do you want? The type who will have no money? Alison. You're not realistic. You be the artist and someone else will bring the bread and butter. OK? You don't need another artist. Two artists?
Me: If we both make money doing it, why would you be against that?
Mom: You live in la-la land, you know that?
Me: Why is that "la-la land"?
Mom: You need to find a guy that will give you stability.

I don't care to find a man who will be a good provider. I want to provide for myself. My mom and I do not see eye-to-eye at all when it comes to not only the kind of men I see myself with, but also the kind of life I want to lead.

After looking at 15 different profiles, I realized that no matter how much my mom wanted to set me up, this was not going to work. Perhaps 20 or 30 years ago, a service like JMom would prove a lot more successful. But the modern North American Jew is less religious, and more inclusive. In fact, I asked a few of my Jewish friends what they thought about the idea of their mothers running their dating lives. Most of their answers were similar to mine. They told me that they couldn't see their mom being able to dissociate what they personally want versus what their child wants.

My friend Hana said, "They'd most likely be a wealthy Jew with zero personality." Another friend, Tal, told me, "Every time my mom thinks a young man is cute, he usually happens to be gay." Interestingly enough, most of the guys I asked were slightly more upbeat. For instance, my friend Jonathan said, "I'd be cautiously optimistic. Not expecting much but open to meeting someone she thought I'd like." It's probably boys like him who kept the site going as long as it did.

Mom, you can argue with me about haircuts all you want, but when it comes to my dating life, you're going to have to face the facts: Your opinion will not be a deciding factor. For better or for worse. I have already mentally prepared myself for the mountain of passive-aggressive voicemails.

Follow Alison Stevenson on Twitter.

[body_image width='640' height='427' path='images/content-images/2015/04/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/28/' filename='randy-boehning-body-image-1430244425.jpg' id='50675']Via Flickr user Amanda Hinault

Randy Boehning is a 52-year-old Republican who has been a state legislator in North Dakota since 2003. His district, like much of the state, is extremely red; unsurprisingly, he was one among the many state lawmakers who earlier this month voted down a bill that would have banned discriminating against someone because of their sexual orientation.

What makes Boehning's stance against the bill significant is that he's apparently "looking" on Grindr.

This came to light when a 21-year-old named Dustin Smith told a reporter from The Forum, a newspaper based out of Fargo, that he recognized the unmarried conservative from the gay cruising app. Smith says he chose to expose Boehning's proclivities in retaliation for his anti-gay voting record.

At first, Boehning refused to acknowledge that he was "Top Man!," the user who sent messages and a dick pic to Smith on April 12. But on Saturday he admitted to the Grand Forks Herald that he is gay, a fact which only a few people in his life had known. "The 1,000-pound gorilla has been lifted," he said.

Boehning, who clarified to the paper he's also attracted to women, added that he voted against the bill because that's what his constituents wanted. "You don't tell everyone you're going to vote one way and then switch your vote another way—you don't have any credibility that way," he said.

The story raises longstanding questions about the ethics of outing closeted politicians who are perceived as hypocrites on issues of gay rights. The most prominent outer is probably journalist Michael Rogers, who in 2004 started a website called BlogActive that, among other things, hosted "The List," which Rogers called "a listing of closeted, anti-gay politicians and high level political staff." That summer, Rogers leaked a recording of Virginia Congressman Ed Schrock, a stalwart conservative, calling a hook-up service looking for gay sex. The blogger wrote in Politico Magazine a decade later, "Had his story gone unreported, Schrock would most likely still occupy this solidly Republican seat."

Related: Watch our documentary on anti-gay "conversion therapy."

In 2006, Rogers defended his controversial tactics in a debate with Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, who argued that gay rights activists should challenge opponents' views on a political level rather than a personal level and threatened to bleep out any names he might utter on the program.

"What community is expected to harbor its enemies from within?" Rogers countered. "It's not about private lives. They are deciding to use sexual orientation as a weapon in the elections."

But it's not just right-wing pundits like O'Reilly who think that outing is wrong. There are plenty of people in the gay community who would argue that it's detrimental to "use sexual orientation as a weapon," as a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign once said.

Randy Cohen, the former New York Times Magazine ethics columnist, says that some people see a politician as a mouthpiece for constituents, while others think he or she is supposed to be an ethical leader who attempts to persuade them.

Most of the people who voted for Boehning were presumably happy with his vote on the bill, but as Cohen puts it, 1850 Georgians would have wanted their representatives to vote for the Fugitive Slave Act. Politicians should lead by example.

He also says that it's ethically sound to out a hypocritical, anti-gay politician, because the public has the right to know.

"If a representative is gay, has a direct stake in these things, and is voting against them, I think that is so odd that it becomes deeply relevant," he says. "I would want to know that."

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Today's video - Winnipeg's homeless on edge after two downtown murders, Baltimore erupts after Freddie Gray's funeral, a First Nation tracks down pipeline companies on its land, and saving Arctic history from global warming.

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[body_image width='1000' height='591' path='images/content-images/2015/04/27/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/27/' filename='greek-same-sex-marriages-nullified-ancient-law-365-body-image-1430138069.jpg' id='50064']

Photo via Flickr user Taymaz Valley

This article originally appeared on VICE GREECE

Herennius Modestinus was, according to Wikipedia, "a celebrated Roman jurist, a student of Ulpian who flourished around 250 AD." A legal adviser to the king, he was mainly concerned with what is now largely known as "family law." That's not just a bit of obscure trivia—in Greece, Modestinus continues to legislate to this very day, having a say on contemporary issues such as same-sex marriages.

On June 3, 2008, on the tiny island of Tilos, two same-sex weddings between two men and two women were carried out by the now deceased mayor Tasos Aliferis. Before going ahead with the ceremony, Aliferis had a long meeting with the municipality's legal adviser at which they reviewed the legality and legitimacy of these marriages. Under the "Family Law" section—as revised in 1981—they found no clear prohibitions concerning the union of two people of the same sex.

The very next day however, a Greek prosecutor requested for the weddings to be annulled on the grounds that they were illegal. Seven years later, the legal battle that has ensued between the couples and the Greek Supreme Court seems without an end in sight. I spoke to the couples' lawyer, Vasilis Hirdaris, who thinks there is a good chance they will be soon taking their case to the European Court of Human Rights.

"Because there were no legal grounds [for the annulment], the Greek prosecutor's entire case was based on an interpretation of a piece of ancient legislation which did not actually rely on anything concrete, but was instead based on what could have been the lawmaker's intent at the time he passed the law," explained Hirdaris. "That legislation was based on the teachings of Modestinus. The prosecutor basically said that the lawmaker had intended the concept of 'newlyweds' to refer to a union between a man and a woman—although this is not explicit in the law itself. The wording is clear and same-sex persons are not prohibited to marry. Nevertheless, the court went ahead and relied on that interpretation, disregarding the fact that Modestinus lived in the early Christian period, when wedding ceremonies were a religious function. Modestinus could not have been aware of the concept of civil marriage."

In a nutshell, the lawyers who annulled the two marriages were unable to find a clear reference within the law that says the concept of marriage should refer to different sex couples. So they turned to Modestinus.

Related: Watch our documentary on Gay conversion therapy

The ruling specifically states that "in regards to the term 'newlyweds,' the writers—both of the past and the present—who interpreted the Civil Code, suggest that the definition of marriage as given by the Roman jurist Modestinus, under the influence of Christian religion, concerns men and women." It also states that marriage "is the union of man and woman, under god, in a human and just society." It follows logically then, that in the interpretative literature of the Greek civil code, gender difference is referred to as the necessary and legal condition of marriage, despite the fact that several authors point out that this is not explicitly stated in the law.

I asked Hirdaris if ancient definitions are often used in the trial of contemporary issues. "The court considers that law should be interpreted in accordance with the present," he replied. "It must adapt legislation to current circumstances and take into account the manners and customs of the period so that the law can live up to the passing of time. You can not use a piece of legislation that was passed in the 1950s—as the Civil Code does—based on a legal thought dated ca. 250 AD. It is regressive and it shows that there are no grounds on which one can refute the marriage of same-sex couples."

In regards to the motive, Hirdaris believes that "it reflects the majority of the Greek people who view the subject of same-sex marriage with some hesitation. But the concept of human rights is not for the majority—it's for minorities. That's the value of individual and human rights. Their purpose is to defend the weak."

"The reason that our society remains regressive has to do with the decisions of politicians, the church and the judges—not Greek citizens." –Evangelia Vlami

Evangelia Vlami, one of the women who got married, disagrees with him about public opinion. "Greek society is extremely open-minded," she said. "When people heard about our wedding, they congratulated me and offered their support. I remember one woman—she had her child in her arms—stopped me on the way to the town hall. I thought she was going to swear at me or something, but she told me that she thought it was both right and brave that I defended what I believed in."

Vlami believes that the decision was political and not judicial: "We knew that we would have to take the case to the European court before any of this happened. I don't think anyone will stand for such a political decision though," she said. "The reason that our society remains regressive has to do with the decisions of politicians, the church and the judges—not Greek citizens."

When I asked whether she finds it funny that her case was "legislated" by a man who lived in 250 AD, Vlami replied, "I don't find it funny because I am here—living in the present. I feel like I am called upon to prove that the Earth isn't flat, even though some physicist wrote it was centuries ago."

As it stands, both cases have been brought to the Greek Supreme Court. The men's case is set for trial on May 11, while the women's case should be tried in November. Both Hirdaris and Vlami expect to be forced to appeal to the European Court in Strasbourg after that.

If you don't live in a car-dominated place like Los Angeles, you may not have even heard of Waze, but here in LA it's hard to imagine getting around without the Google-owned app. It works basically like Google Maps, but uses live feedback from the behavior of other drivers to detect traffic and update your route in real time to find you a better way to get to your destination.

The app has gotten so popular that it's begun to interact with the government—last week, LA Mayor Eric Garcetti announced that the city would be partnering with Waze to share traffic numbers and try to find new tools for dealing with kidnappings and hit and runs. Other elected officials, however, are focused on ways to make the way Waze works mesh a little more smoothly with city infrastructure.

See, the app's signature magic trick is sending users down obscure side streets in order to avoid congested major thoroughfares. This has created an issue residents complained about to the LA Times in January. According to that article, Waze had been "pushing cars into residential areas," and residents of affluent areas like Beverly Hills said they'd been trying to avoid traffic in LA, but because of the app, "There's nowhere left to hide. There aren't any smaller roads nearby. We're it."

Indeed, thanks to Waze, many younger LA residents who live on the East Side of Los Angeles but work in western areas of the city use the roads of rich neighborhoods like Windsor Square to avoid Wilshire Boulevard, one of LA's many clogged arteries. That's just one example out of hundreds.

But today, City Councilmember Paul Krekorian issued a press release—adorably titled "We've Got a-Waze to Go"—to announce he's planning to expand LA's partnership with Waze in order to reduce "cut-through traffic," which is another name for ducking down residential streets to dodge gridlock.

Ian Thompson, Krekorian's communications director, said that the details of this plan aren't set in stone; it's just something that Krekorian feels "should be a part of that partnership," in response to a "major uptick in traffic."

The actual motion, which Thompson provided to me by email, is a bit vague; it proposes that the app limit the number of daily trips on certain routes, or use "other means" to cut down on cut-through traffic. proposes the preventative measure of "or other means." According to Krekorian's press release, this is urgent because residential streets "were never designed to accommodate the volume."

To be fair, that much is clear to anyone who has ever tried to use LA's residential streets for high-speed travel. Convenient and rarely-congested streets with long straight sections, like Palms Boulevard, feature strange bends and odd intersections that can make for some unwelcome surprises.

Related: Watch our documentary about high-speed driving in the UK.

Perhaps the worst of these is something I'm calling "Waze Frogger" (I'm far from the first to make the comparison), a phenomenon in which Waze sends drivers to the stoplight-free junction of a residential street and a major artery, expecting the driver to cross high-speed traffic coming from both ways in order to continue down the residential street. The driver can either wait for four lanes of traffic to be clear, which can cost precious minutes, or just dash across the road like Vin Diesel jumping his car from skyscaper to skyscraper.

But in spite of it all, so far no big story about Waze causing accidents has emerged. Slightly scary maneuvers? Yes, they come with the territory, but to drivers in Los Angeles, that's well worth the time saved.

I asked Thompson if Krekorian really has the power to do something about these potentially problematic shortcuts, and Thompson told me, "It's a good question. That's what we want to find out." He added, "We just want to see if we can extend the partnership further."

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

There's a saying among journalists that if the headline of an article contains a question mark the answer is "no." For instance: "Was Harry Reid Roughed Up by the Mafia on New Year's Day?" or, "Did the Senate Minority Leader Get His Ass Kicked By His Drunk Brother Larry?"

For months, questions like these bounced around the right-wing conspiracy mill, as conservative bloggers pondered how the Democratic Senate Majority Leader wound up with severe facial injuries that nearly left him blind in one eye. The primary source of the rumors was attorney and writer John Hinderaker, who in a series of posts published on his Power Line blog, demanded to know "What Really Happened to Harry Reid?" To Hinderaker, it was apparently beyond the realm of possibility that the 75-year-old Senator and his staff were telling the embarrassing truth about how Reid broke his face: in a mishap with elastic exercise equipment.

Criticizing the press for having "studiously averted its eyes from Reid's condition," Hinderacker came up with his own theories about the source of Reid's injuries. "Some are speculating that [Reid] had a run-in with Las Vegas underworld characters," he told his readers in January, while admitting that "there is zero evidence for that." In a March 26 post, he doubled down: "It isn't hard to guess [Reid] ran afoul of mobsters," Hinderacker wrote, claiming that friend had recently visited Reid's home state and found that a "number of people" there assumed "that the incident resulted, in some fashion, from Reid's relationship with organized crime."

That's about as far as Hinderacker's investigation went—that is, until a gentleman identifying himself as Easton Elliot called March 29 with an alternate story.

It turns out, Elliott was actually a fifty-year-old former event planner from Vegas named Larry Pfeifer. Pfeifer told Hinderaker he was at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on New Year's Day when a bloodied, intoxicated man walked in, saying that he'd been in a fight with a family member and was worried the Secret Service was after him. Pfeifer told Hinderaker he later identified the man as Reid's brother Larry, after seeing a picture of in the paper of him in connection with a DUI charge, and decided to reach out to the media.

Hinderaker repeated Pfeifer's story on Power Line, and the rumor quickly made its way around right-wing media circles, popping up on Breitbart and Rush Limbaugh's radio show. No one, it seems, made any real attempt to verify the source.

Pfeifer finally came clean on Sunday, admitting to the Las Vegas Sun that the whole drunk brother story was a hoax—a lie, he said, aimed at exposing media stories as fabrications.

Curious to know more about this strange bit of political theater, I called up Pfiefer at his home in Las Vegas Monday. The former event planner told me he's never been much interested in politics—that he wove the tale about Reid and his brother in the spur of the moment, out of disgust over Hinderacker's muckraking.

I get the feeling he's still flying by the seat of the pants, turning his spontaneous prank into a crusade for journalistic accountability—that maybe its all part of one long con, the contours of which are not entirely clear yet, maybe not even to him.

VICE: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Larry Pfeifer: I had a company here in Vegas that did sponsorships and private events for a couple of hotels and I owned a restaurant. I had a gambling and prescription pill problem and five years ago I got sober. Now I'm a life coach for people in recovery.

What prompted you to reach out to this John Hinderaker character?
I was on the internet and Hinderaker's story popped up about the mafia. I wasn't looking for it. I'm not really politically inclined. I'm just interested in stuff about the mafia, just like I'm interested in stuff about cheerleaders and other things. The article said Harry Reid got beat up by the mafia.And I thought it was so preposterous. I thought it was a joke really. So I called the guy, originally to tell him off. Simultaneously, I was looking online and I saw this thing about Larry Reid, Harry Reid's brother. And so I made up the most outlandish story I could think of.

He said, 'That sounds so real. It's the most plausible explanation.'

You told him A.A. lets drunk people in on New Year's.
Yeah, which is a bunch of shit. You can call a million people that are in twelve-step [programs] and they will tell you [that] you don't let drunk or high people into a meeting where people share. It just doesn't happen. That should have been the guy's first red flag. Of course he never checked on that at all. He figured out my first name was really Larry, but I told him I gave the name Easton Elliot because I didn't want to be hurt by Harry Reid or the Democrats. I just made the whole thing up, it was total bullshit.

The next thing I know, Hinderaker is calling me up saying, "Hey, I can get this on Rush Limbaugh." And I'm thinking, I'm going to go on the Rush show, tomorrow or the next day, and say the story was a hoax and even if Rush cuts me off, I'll release something to the press to show how irresponsible the media is. So Hinderaker and I had a phone call with Rush,

How'd that go? Did they scrutinize your story at all?
Both of them asked the same three questions over and over again: "Can you tell us where the A.A. meeting was?" "Did the guy mention the name Harry?" "Could I corroborate my story in anyway?" I answered, "No. No. And No."

Rush was like, "I believe you, but I'm going to sit on this. I have a plan for this." And then he went on about how bad Harry Reid is, how he accused Mitt Romney of not paying taxes. I thought, 'what's society going to come to?' A day after the Rush thing, Hinderaker calls me and says, "Let's put the story up tomorrow." He sends me drafts of the piece and I agree to it and it comes out. Then Glenn Beck talked about the story on his show and on April 15, Rush took the bait.

But at this point you were trying to tell people it was all a lie?
I emailed Rush's show on the 15th and 16th saying, let me come on and tell the whole story. I started contacting CNN, other places, trying to get the whole story on, telling them it's a hoax. Nobody got back to me until last week, when I went to the Las Vegas Sun. It wasn't an easy sell. They vetted me. They looked at my id. They asked for references from friends.

Did you read Hinderaker's response to the Sun's article?
He admitted everything I said to him was a ruse. He only asked for someone to corroborate the story days after he ran it. I said, 'Yeah, I'll have somebody call you.' I might as well have told him Abe Lincoln was going to call.

Now that you've exposed your hoax, are you pleased with the outcome?
I hope more people say to themselves, I'm sick of getting reports from people who say they're journalists, using their power irresponsibly. People should boycott Power Line and Breitbart. And while they're at it, Rolling Stone. Look at what Hinderaker did. He exchanged his integrity for hate and money. He hated Reid and the Democrats and wanted money from advertisers and this Reid posts were popular. But one person can make a difference.

Weren't Reid and his family unwitting casualties in this stunt you pulled?
Yes. And I do regret that. But I thought about it later. Would Reid rather have a story out there about his brother beating him up or the mafia? I think the mafia is worse.

Do you support Reid politically?
I've never voted in my life?

What should the media focus on instead of Harry Reid's supposed smackdown?
Helping out homeless vets. Helping out homeless families. Kids that are being bullied. This story is about bullying, too.

Pfeifer asks that anyone who wants to join him to "stand up against lies" email him at werenotgoingtotakeitanymore@gmail.com.

Follow Peter Rugh on Twitter.

[body_image width='1200' height='589' path='images/content-images/2015/04/26/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/26/' filename='why-mental-health-disorders-emerge-in-your-early-20s-body-image-1430063054.jpg' id='49732']

Illustration by Joel Benjamin

There's a reason the image of the floundering, scared, shaky post-teen struggling to enter adulthood is a cliché. Between moving out of your parent's home, going to college and getting a job, lack of sleep, drugs, and unrestricted access to alcohol, becoming an adult is fucking hard. So it's no wonder that this period is popularly associated with having a mental breakdown. But is there any truth behind the pop culture trope? What about kids from wealthy families who don't have the stresses the rest of us do in early adulthood, or people whose most trying times come in their 30s or 40s? Is the appearance of mental illness in young people a matter of environment or biology?

To better understand these questions, I phoned Johanna Jarcho, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health whose work studies differences in brain development in healthy people versus those who have mental health problems, with a focus on anxiety. She explained how our brains interact with social conditions to influence our mental health, and why the best way to deal with a problem is to get it diagnosed early.

VICE: I've often heard it repeated that mental illnesses frequently begin in a person's late adolescence or early 20s. Anecdotally that seems consistent with what I've seen, but is there any scientific basis to this claim?
Dr. Johanna Jarcho: Yeah, the vast majority of mental health disorders do emerge during one's adolescence or early 20s. If you're going to have an anxiety disorder as an adult, there's a 90% chance that you'll have had it as an adolescent. Basically, you're not going to develop an anxiety disorder as an adult. You're going to develop it as a kid and then it'll carry through to adulthood. Emerging research suggests that this is because adolescence is a time when the brain is changing to a great degree. We once thought that the brain didn't change that much after earlier childhood, but what we've seen is that the brain continues to undergo really profound changes up until your early 20s. It's still quite malleable, so being exposed to different influences in your social environment can really have a profound impact on the way that your brain continues to develop.

You said that much has to do with brain development. At the same time, young adulthood seems to be a time where people are going through major upheavals, both socially and economically—things like college, entering the workforce, or living away from your parents. Is there a way to quantify the effect of environment versus biology?
Some types of mental health disorders are much more genetically based than others. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder have a much higher rate of inheritance. If you have a first degree relative like a parent or sibling who has one of those disorders, you're at a much greater risk for developing it yourself, and there are things in the environment that can potentiate that. For other disorders like depression or anxiety, it's less heritable. Whether or not you develop one of those disorders is a lot more contingent on your environment. Young adults go through all these different social changes, but we evolved to be able to make this big transition from being with parents to forging adulthood. What happens during this transition can definitely have a profound effect on whether you grow to be "healthy" or to have these types of disorders.

We're still finding out more about how much of this is biologically based and how much is environmental. We've learned from genetics that it's not just the genes and it's not just the environment, it's an interaction between the two.

So a mental illness is not just an inevitable thing that people either will or won't have?
No. A lot of us tend to focus on the negative, but it's really important to focus on the fact that there's a lot that can be done to protect against developing mental health disorders, even if you are at risk. The social environment could tip you over into becoming sick, but in a good social environment you can actually thrive.

What kind of things should people be aware of?
It's important to know what you're at risk for. Let's say you had a parent with psychopathology; that certainly is a risk factor. If you've had a difficult time engaging in your social world as a kid, that's another risk factor. If your parents sheltered you instead of giving you some exposure to difficult things and showing you how to cope, that's another risk factor. The type of parenting that you had as a child can really affect the way you cope with the new challenges as you launch into adulthood.

Let's say a person is starting to experience symptoms of a mental health disorder. What can they do to mitigate harm?
The most important thing that you can do to mitigate the effects that any kind of psychopathology might have is to get treatment earlier and when you're younger. It's like how habits are formed: they get strengthened over time and once they're established they become biological, in a way. It's much more difficult to break them and they stick around for a long time. If you think there's something that may be wrong, you should try to get help before things become a crisis, before you feel like it's having profound effects on your life.

Health care is so expensive and opaque that I think a lot people have a feeling that, "Maybe I'm depressed, maybe I have anxiety, but I'm probably fine." They don't want to potentially spend thousands of dollars seeing a doctor, so they wait until it's absolutely necessary.
If you wait on getting treatment, your symptoms can become much more intractable. You save money in the short term, but your long term spending is much higher. We do preventative care for physical illness, but as a society we aren't quite there with mental health.

What do you make of self-diagnosis forums, WebMD, and other online health tools?
I think that because health care has not been readily available in the past, and because there is still a stigma against going to see a mental health professional, people have relied on the internet to understand what's going on with them. That can be a good first step, and certainly it can underscore the fact that you're not alone in the types of symptoms that you're having. But that doesn't necessarily get you to treatment. It's important to be able to go to a professional and say, "I think I need help with this." Certainly the more resources the better, especially for people who haven't had a lot of exposure to receiving mental health care. It can be scary. The internet can be useful but it doesn't get you a diagnosis and it doesn't necessarily get you treatment. But more information is always better.

Is misinformation a problem?
Well, let's say someone diagnoses themselves with depression. For one person, giving themselves a label in that way may be harmful, but for another person it might be helpful. In terms of misinformation, everyone is different, so getting treatment that's specific to your situation is really important.

There are certain things that get put out online about, say, computerized health services or video games that make you have less anxiety and people are hopeful about that, but it's not there yet. I think that there is this false hope that there is an easy, inexpensive, low side-effect cure for certain things and the data just hasn't supported that. It's something to caution people about. There are sort of wacky strategies people are promoting on the internet that don't really have that much scientific backing. I think it's better to seek professional care than to try some of these things.

You're saying there's not going to be a quick and easy mental health equivalent of penicillin that makes everyone healthy?
That would be lovely, but it's just not happening. There hasn't been a new medication that really helps with mental health disorders in a really long time, which is disappointing.

With mental health and with health in general, what we "know" seems to always be changing. To pick an obvious example, I'm constantly seeing articles about new studies saying red wine is bad for you, and others saying it's good. For someone who's not too knowledgeable it can become very confusing. How much of what we think we know now will be different in a few years?
I think we all thought that by now we'd know more than we do. I go back to this example of genetics: When the human genome was decoded we thought, oh, now we'll know everything. We'll be able to fix stuff and it'll all become clear. By having a greater understanding of what's behind mental health disorders, we're learning that it's just really complicated.

One thing that happens a lot is that the lay press puts things in very simplistic terms that give people a false hope. They'll say, "Here's this spot on the brain where depression lives," as if we could fix this one spot and then everything would be OK. It's really so much more complicated than that. At this point we're just starting to know what we don't know. It's a little terrifying. It's a totally changing field. I really do hope that in 10 or 15 years we're in a place where we can better identify symptoms earlier. It's still pretty early in terms of neuroscience.

Is there anything else you think that the average young adult should know about mental health?
They should know that most of the mental health disorders that people have in their 20s do dissipate. That can give you hope. But they should also know that if you're one of the people for whom it's not going to dissipate, it's much better to get help sooner rather than later. Don't think of seeing a mental health professional as something stigmatizing that you only do in a moment of acute crisis. Think of it as a general wellness thing, like going for an annual checkup. Talk about problems early instead of letting things build up.

Follow Hanson on Twitter.

If you are concerned about your mental health or that of someone you know, visit the Canadian Mental Health Association website.

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Image via Flickr user Arlington County

My mom has obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her illness revolves around a fear of contamination—anything dirty or dusty, especially sand, is a trigger. Items she considers "dirty" she won't touch, and the items she deems "safe" will be repetitively cleaned.

As a kid of a parent with OCD, you often end up doing things that will alleviate that person's fears. Experts call this "enabling behavior." My enabling behavior was anything from opening doors so my mom didn't have to wash her hands again (doors were dirty), to explaining to the confused cashier at the grocery store checkout why nothing could be allowed to touch the conveyer belt (checkouts: dirty).

When Mom was at her worst, I'd have to undress at the front door after school, my clothes taken off me and bagged in individual supermarket carrier bags—like Whole Foods-branded crime scene evidence—to be dry-cleaned daily at exorbitant costs.

Everything was dirty.

Her OCD had a massive impact on my life growing up. Friends (dirty) weren't allowed over, ever. Sports (outside: dirty) was discouraged. Beach vacations were a no-go, because sand. I know better than anyone how awful and disabling OCD can be. So, as you can imagine, I'm pretty pissed off that I developed it, too.

My OCD is a lot less severe than Mom's and doesn't center on cleanliness. I have "safe" numbers (five and seven, since you asked), and need to conduct my life in multiples of these numbers. So that's five mouthfuls of pizza at a time, washed down with seven sips of Coke, then another five bites of pizza. If I miscalculate, I panic and start the counting from the beginning, while also tapping the table seven times with the fifth digit of my right hand to make up for it. If there's a plus side to all this, it's that having to multiply five and seven in my head all the time has made me fucking brilliant at mental maths.

When Mom was at her worst, I'd have to undress at the front door after school, my clothes taken off me and bagged in individual supermarket carrier bags.

Luckily, as a result of cognitive behavioral therapy, particularly Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP), it's under control. I only struggle when I'm really stressed—usually when I'm under a lot of pressure at work or in my personal life. And believe me, the last thing you need when you're stressed out is to have to get out of bed five times in the middle of the night to touch a door seven times. Dr. Jim Bolton, a consultant psychiatrist, told me that "around a third of OCD cases are catalyzed by stress."

There is also some genetic aspect at play. According to a JAMA Psychiatry study, OCD appears to run in families. The same study tells us that 40 percent of people with OCD have a close family member with the illness. And, while the OCD rate in the general population is between 1 percent and 2.5 percent, if you look at the relatives of people with OCD, it's closer to 12 percent. This means, in theory, that you're approximately six times more likely to have OCD if a family member also has it.

It's unclear whether this increased rate of OCD in families is caused by environmental or genetic factors. Frankly I've often blamed my mom for giving me OCD—reasoning that the enabling behavior I carried out for her caused me to develop obsessional thoughts of my own. As a result of these feelings of blame, there's definitely a big part of me that wanted to believe that OCD is genetic, that my mom's DNA, rather than her behavior, gave me OCD.

But although any kind of genetic predisposition for OCD has not yet been proven conclusively, Professor Gerald Nestadt of the OCD Research Center at John Hopkins University told me that "between 40-80 percent of OCD cases can be defined as being caused by genetic factors." He explained that there's probably not a single gene that causes OCD. Rather, it's polygenetic, which means there's a group of genes that cause it.

Nestadt hopes to one day be able to identify the exact pathway in the brain that causes OCD and target this with drugs. If he's successful, he'll create the first chemical treatment for mental illness that's more than just an educated guess aimed at a general area of the brain. As he explained, a "cure for OCD which specifically targets isolated biochemical pathways in the brain would be a world first in the medicine of mental illness, and it's what we're aiming for."

I can see why the idea of a magic pill to "fix" OCD is so enticing—mental illness can be a lot harder to treat than physical illness. It's not like an infection where you can just take a course of antibiotics to kill it. No, OCD is—like many mental health conditions—caused by myriad emotional and psychological factors, many of them environmental. For now, the most effective treatment option, according to OCD Action, is a mixture of CBT and, in more severe cases (like my mom's), SSRI medication. SSRIs work by helping the body to retain more of the serotonin that it naturally produces, and they've been found to be effective in treating those with OCD, who often have significantly lower levels of serotonin than is considered normal.

Dr. Eric Davis, a psychologist and OCD expert, believes that, while there is a genetic "leaning" for OCD, in his experience the "major contributory factor is environmental." In a nutshell, he says OCD is about "trying to deal with anxiety and communicate stress by trying to control things. It's about feeling out of control and trying to rectify these feelings."

Dr. Davis told me of his experience treating multiple members of the same family with OCD and said that, in some cases, family-based factors could make the illness worse. Examples of this would be when one person with OCD starts to demand other family members carry out enabling behavior on their behalf. This is exactly what my mom did with me when I was a kid, so it was interesting to hear Dr. Davis identify it as something which makes the illness worse, not better.

I do get fed up with people saying they're "so OCD" when they show off their gleaming white trainers, or explain why their vinyl collection just has to be alphabetized.

The best way to help families that are struggling with OCD, Dr. Davis believes, is through family-based clinical interventions. All the experts I spoke to agreed that there was a need for additional funding to help support the families, too—the children of people with OCD in particular. Sam Challis, a representative at Mind, told me that "there is a need for people with OCD who also have children to be given specialist help—for example, training in how to minimize aspects of their behavior so they don't pass compulsive traits onto their children."

Unfortunately, against the backdrop of chronic UK government under-funding for NHS mental health treatment, the odds of getting specialist help within a reasonable timeframe are about as likely as seeing my mom hit the beach in a skimpy two-piece.

We might make some headway, too, if we stop representing OCD in our culture as just needing to have all your pencils sharpened, or being really tidy. I can't lie: I do get fed up with people saying they're "so OCD" when they show off their gleaming white trainers, or explain why their vinyl collection must be alphabetized. Professor Nestadt agrees, saying, "No one [really] knew what OCD was until Hollywood starting representing OCD in films and on TV shows, but even now people don't really understand it."

Having true OCD is not being able to give your daughter a hug on her birthday because you're scared she's dirty. As Challis says, "OCD is a very serious health problem which needs dedicated funding and support." Because of my familial experiences, I knew this better than anyone, so I got help a lot quicker than a "normal" person might have done. As a result, I'm managing my condition very well.

But really, in the process of writing this piece and throughout my treatment, I've realized that it doesn't matter so much to know how or from whom I developed OCD. Getting confirmation from experts that my OCD wasn't necessarily my mom's fault made me feel guilty for blaming her all my life. I know she feels guilty, too, for not having given us what she thinks of as a normal childhood, which is fucking stupid, really.

You can't "blame" someone for having a mental health disorder—even when it's frustrating trying desperately not to laugh when your mom is trying to kick a car door shut because she doesn't want to touch the handle—any more than you can blame them for having hay fever or psoriasis. Because to feel guilty about something is to be responsible for it, and OCD is no one's fault. It's an illness, and one that can be crippling. But, crucially, with the right help, even if you've become afraid of sand like my mom, it is very treatable.

If you are concerned about your mental health or that of someone you know, visit the Canadian Mental Health Association website.

@thedalstonyears

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All things considered, New York has become lamer in ten years than just about any city in human history (maybe with the exception of St. Petersburg in 1917). There are sterile condos everywhere, droves of uppity public enforcers, and an entire social echelon of people who never stop eating brunch. Thank the lord for DVS, who's been killing the New York underground rap game for years after starting out as a hardcore singer. He's a thoroughly New York dude, reminding us that this city still has a nuanced personality if you look in the right places. He's consistently contributed fast-paced airtight verses with Heems, Kool A.D., Lakutis, Hot Sugar, and Big Baby Gandhi, among others, but refrained from releasing anything himself—until now. Give his outstanding album DVTV, a listen above.

Preorder the record here.

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Ardyaloon is a small Aboriginal community in northern Western Australia. It's located at the point on the Dampier Peninsula where the Indian Ocean meets the King Sound. Also known as One Arm Point, Ardyaloon has a population of around 330. The traditional owners are the Bardi Jawi people, who have a seafaring culture.

The community at Ardyaloon is living on country, practicing traditional customs and obligations to the land. They're also one of 274 remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia that could have their municipal and essential services cut. Last November, state premier Colin Barnett announced that up to 150 of these communities could face closure, deeming them economically unviable.

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"All communities face closure until such time that the government tells us what criteria they're going to use to determine which communities are viable," said Dean Gooda, chief executive of Ardyaloon Incorporated, the elected governing body of the community.

Last September, the federal government—which for decades had been providing funding for 180 of the communities—announced it was handing over the responsibility to the state government on July 1 of this year, with $90 million in funding to cover a two-year transitional period. Barnett said the funding was not enough and that over half the communities could be shut down.

However late last month, two leaked documents revealed that the state government had been researching the option of closing some of these communities since 2010.

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Following the leak—which implied the closures have little to do with the cut in federal funding—Western Australia Aboriginal affairs minister Peter Collier said a new framework to determine which communities will survive is being considered and that consultations with communities will take place before any closures.

Barnett turned his rhetoric to claims of child abuse in remote communities, asserting that closures were needed due to child safety. On March 19, he announced 39 cases of gonorrhoea in Aboriginal children had been found, but later admitted he didn't know if any of these cases were from remote communities.

According to Gooda, the state government is proposing the closures solely due to budgetary issues. The $90 million provided by the federal government is not enough for all the communities to continue. And subsequent talk of child abuse, education and employment is a case of the government attacking Aboriginal people to further justify their decision. [body_image width='960' height='704' path='images/content-images/2015/04/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/29/' filename='we-spoke-to-western-australian-remote-aboriginal-communities-facing-closure-body-image-1430283449.jpg' id='50760']

"This is about the provision of essential services. All we're saying to the government is we want clean water, functioning sewerage systems, rubbish collection, and waste management," said Gooda, adding that what the rest of the country takes for granted, "we're fighting for now."

But while Indigenous community leaders agree that moving people from these remote communities will have detrimental effects—such as homelessness, dispossession from land and culture, and a rise in suicide rates—not all agree the closures are due to budgetary concerns.

Kurni Nelson Bieundurry, a Walmatjarri and Wangkatjungka man, believes the real reason the government wants to move people from these areas is due to mining interests. "Most of those communities that he wants to close are all in the Kimberleys and there's a big push for mining companies to come through here," he said, citing the recent case of Buru Energy, securing agreements with three Aboriginal communities to gain access to the Ungani oil field.

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Wangkatjungka is an Aboriginal community of about 130, located in the central west Kimberley, on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert. It's part of the Kurungal communities: three communities with close ties to the desert that hold native title over the local area. Its largest employer is the remote community school. At present new houses are being built, which a few young men are working on.

Bieundurry, who lives in Wangkatjungka, is the chairperson of the Kurungal communities. He says it's important for people stay on the land because cultural practices take place there and it's where their ancestors are buried. He explained that due to the uncertainty of the situation, most people in the communities are living with a large element of fear.

Last month, 18,000 people turned out to marches around the nation to protest the closures. Bieundurry initiated this protest movement on social media. "I suggested we have one coordinated march across the Kimberley in every major town, then things just moved along really quickly from there," he told VICE. The Stop the Forced Closure of Aboriginal Communities rallies are set to take place again in capitals and regional centers across Australia on May 1.

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Jimmy Bieundurry, Nelson's father, was one of the leaders of the 1979 Noonkanbah standoff. This was the first Aboriginal resistance to mining in the Kimberley and the Kimberley Land Council was born out of this movement. Last week, two representatives from the council attended the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in New York and presented a submission condemning the proposed closures, which contravene the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Ebony Hill is a Gooniyandi and Jabirr Jabirr woman from Broome who lived at Ardyaloon on and off as a teenager. She credits a lot of her cultural knowledge from her time spent amongst the Bardi mob. "There are 20 communities from the Gooniyandi nation that are going to be closed around the Fitzroy Valley area, that's 20 communities just from my people," she said.

Many of the remote communities were part of the 1970s homelands movement that saw Aboriginal people returning to the land they'd previously been moved off. "It was people saying, 'I want to live on country. I'm happier and healthier living on country. I want to go back,'" Hill said.

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The reason people are now being pushed off their homelands once more, Hill believes, is due to the drive towards the industrialisation of the Kimberley. "Mining and industry are talking about making the Kimberley the next food bowl for the country. Up Kununurra and the Ord, they're still talking about damming our rivers," she said, going on to explain that the longer people are not occupying their land, the more diminished their claims of native title become due to the connection criteria.

Hill has heard rumors the unions might attend the rallies on Friday. "May Day is about a national response to Colin Barnett, to Tony Abbott and to the state of indigenous land justice in this country in general," the Sydney University law student said. "I hope to see Aussies out there: black, white, and brindle standing up to the government saying this is not right."

Follow Paul on Twitter.

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All photos courtesy of Will Russell

By all accounts, Will Russell should already be dead. Twenty years ago, Russell was homeless and alone. Seven years later, he slogged through a depression so thick he could barely make it through daily life. "My nickname was bottom rung," he told me. "I was bottom rung. I lived on $551 a month for eight years. I was working in a cubicle, I was on disability, I was really fat, and I would cry every day."

Then in 2002, a major shift occurred. Russell, who was working a tattoo convention in Kentucky, started quoting The Big Lebowski to pass the time. Soon enough, everyone was joining in on the fun. Seeing other people who loved the movie like he did sparked an idea: What if there was an event where Achievers (Lebowski fans) could gather together and celebrate the film together? Lebowski Fest was born.

Much to Russell's surprise, the fest was popular right out of the gate. He and his buddies only expected around 20 Dudes, but what they got was well into the triple digits. Then Spin magazine featured the event in its "19 Events You Can't Afford to Miss This Summer" spread. Right next to Lollapalooza and Snoop Dogg, there it was, plain as day: "Bowl with Jesus." Russell's life was forever changed.

For the past 13 years, Russell has been bringing Achievers together across all 50 states, and even internationally (the British version of the fest, "The Dude Abides" takes place in London). He's traveled the world, co-written a book ( I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski), inspired a documentary (The Achievers), and encouraged a new religion (Dudeism, a.k.a. the Church of the Latter-Day Dude). I caught up with Russell to hear about what he's been up to lately: dealing with his depression, learning to be a father, and, most recently, building a theme park in Cave City, Kentucky.

VICE: Did you have any idea when you started the Lebowski Fest that it would get so popular?
Will Russell: No, absolutely not. Basically, we started it on a lark as a joke. I knew about the bowling alley because I was on a service committee for AA, and we had rented out this bowling alley for a benefit for an event called "Sober Vets." It was a Baptist-run bowling alley and they had all these signs at the door that said stuff like, "No cussing, no drinking, all of denominations welcome for fellowship and Christian bowling." And another sign that literally said, "Please read all the signs."

It was like $300 to rent out the whole thing. To have unlimited bowling, that's like the backbones of the Lebowski Fest event—the bowling party. So we came up with the idea and we were like, "OK, wouldn't it be cool if like 20 people that we knew showed up?" I think we charged $7. And much to our delight, 150 people came out. A hundred and fifty. I couldn't believe it.

And it's only gotten bigger after that first one.
Right, we thought "one and done," but we did it the next year at the Rose Bowl and it was much bigger—700 capacity and we could serve White Russians and we could cuss! We moved the screening of the movie to a proper movie theater and we reached out to Jeff Dowd, who is someone who the character of "The Dude" is very very loosely based on. Very loosely—in name only I would say, maybe a little bit with the body language.

So it was like June, a month before the second Lebowski Fest. But we're fucking amateurs, we didn't know what we were doing. And then I got a call from Scott [Shepid] and he was like, "Dude. You're not gonna believe this. Fucking Spin magazine, we're in it." I said, "What do you mean?" "Dude. On the cover it says, 'Summer Events Guide, 19 Events you can't miss.' There's Lollapalooza, there's this Christina Aguilera tour, and then 'Big Lebowski Whathaveyoufest.'" And then all of a sudden we were in the shitstorm of attention and demand. And our tickets sold out in like two hours.

How did that change things for you?
That article came out and I got to a point where I could say, "Take this job and shove it up your ass! I'm gonna go out and work for myself and I'm gonna give Lebowski Fest everything I have." I gave it everything I had—and it worked.

Related: The two kids Who remade Indiana Jones shot for shot

It sounds like the Lebowski Fest saved your life, but I'm sure it's also saved a lot of other people too. Other people who've felt similarly like outcasts and just finding a culture and a community that can accept them.
Well, the Achievers are the most wonderful group of people I've ever known. It's such a great pleasure and privilege to be a steward of this event where I get to travel to various cities around the country, even overseas and be with people who are like me—who understand me, and have felt disenfranchised, outcasts, and now we are family. We're a tribe, if you will. Like last night, we went to this guy's house who won "Best Walter" at the Fest, who runs a brewery. His logo's like rhe Dude or something. And he's so fucking nice. It's just like, "God dammit. The Achievers are just so fucking nice."

From an attendee's perspective, part of the reason why I've kept coming is just meeting friendly strangers who welcome you in and are like, "Come bowl with us. Let's just do this!" I haven't found that anywhere else.
Yeah, if you're at Lebowski Fest, you're automatically accepted. Like, you go see Radiohead and thousands of people are watching five people—but at Lebowski Fest, it's not that at all. That's why we don't care if we get a big actor.

"I live in this universe of great things: I've got Lebowski Fest, I've got support now, I've got these people around me."

I want to talk about Funtown Mountain, your new theme park project. How does a normal guy just buy a theme park?
Well first of all, I wouldn't say that I could be classified as a "normal guy." I've done a lot of things that are abnormal. But three years ago, I was down in Cave City, Kentucky. I love Cave City—it's this great national park and it's supposed to be one of the biggest in the world. They have this area called Cave City. It's all souvenir shops and attractions; they have a dinosaur part, putt putt, alpine sleds, horseback riding, and WigWam Village, which is one of the oldest lodging facilities in the country. And it's beautiful. It's magical. So I went there about three years ago with a group and we were just running around. And then my friend turned to me and said, "Hey Will, did you notice this one part of it was for sale?" And I was like, "What?" And it was all over at that point.

From that moment, I have had in my mind that I was going to fulfill my dream of owning a roadside attraction. And that this was my chance. Cave City is one of my favorite places in the world—it's so inspirational—and then I had this idea of this Kentucky Mount Rushmore, and I was like, "Perfect. They've got the land in the Dinosaur World. We'll build this giant monument."

So then I came up with a business plan and we had funding and we were getting ready to purchase and right about this time I met a girl named Kate. In a cave. At a concert. And she loved Cave City too, and I took her down there and within a month we were sitting on a chairlift at Guntown Mountain and I asked her to marry me on the chairlift.

Oh man! What did she say?
She said yes. She moved in the next month and then quit her job and moved her cats in and then, four months in, she got pregnant. So, I was like, "OK, probably not gonna do this risky $5 million roadside attraction business plan right now. Gotta sell my pinball machine and my scooter and like grow up and become a father." So I did that, and I set that project down. And you know, I was terrified. Are you a parent?

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No, no, I'm not a parent.
OK, well, it's fucking terrifying. And wonderful. All of a sudden, this little girl was here and nothing would ever be the same. Not even close.

So I live in this universe of great things: I've got Lebowski Fest, I've got these retail stores, I've got support now, I've got these people around me. That's all on like Planet Will. Then there's this other planet in another solar system that's way bigger and way better and way wonderful, and that's the Planet Stella. She's bound for such greatness. And everything I have is hers now—like when she's old enough, she's gonna own Lebowski Fest, and she's gonna own an amusement park called Funtown Mountain.

So it's all been up from there?
So this last year, 2014, I was diagnosed in January with melancholic depression—which is a depression so severe that medication can't touch it. I tried several different medications, all at once, and none of it would touch it. I was hospitalized after nine months; I was unable to recognize faces.

[At the hospital] they said, "Well, your brain has atrophied and your brain is essentially shutting down, and if we don't take action immediately, you're going to be completely useless to anyone. Your businesses will fail, your daughter will not have a father." So I said, "OK, what are my options?" And they said, "Electroshock therapy." So they take me down there and it was the scariest fucking thing I've ever done in my life. And they hook me up to these electrodes and they delivered electrical currents to my body where I fucking blew off the table and they gave me like 60-second shock nine times over the course of a week. And it worked!

In November, I went back to Cave City. I was alive again and I had an appetite and I could love again. And I went to the Caves and saw that everything was shut down. I was like, "Fuck. If nobody does something, this place is going to be gone in like ten years and Stella won't be owning a dime of it."

What did you do?
I looked around and all there was, was me. I remembered a year prior, I had been approached to buy Guntown Mountain and I said, "No way." I was so overwhelmed, and so out of it. So I called my real estate agent and I said, "Dude. What's going on with Guntown Mountain?" He said, "I'll look into it." Then I was like, "You know what? What about Funtown Mountain?" They've got that little music venue, we could have Will Oldham play up here. We could have bands from Nashville and Louisville.

Then he said, "Well, somebody already bought it—they don't wanna sell it. It'll take this much money. And then he said, "But they're throwing in the Haunted Hotel." And I said, "Oh my fucking God, that is like my favorite haunted attraction, ever."And he said, "And there's a gift shop." And I said, "Well, retail's easy. That'll be a money maker."

I started coming up with all these ideas and in 60 days, we had a business plan, we had a date with the Tourist Department to present to receive funding from the government, and we had a Facebook page that now has like over 40K followers in just over two months. And so it was just like from nothing to everything.

Follow Julia Prescott on Twitter.

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Salman Rushdie, who called six authors "pussies" because of their protest against the honoring of 'Charlie Hebdo' at an awards dinner. Photo © Ed Lederman/PEN American Center

On Monday, the New York Times reported that six prominent writers—Peter Carey, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner, Michael Ondaatjte, Francine Prose, and Taiye Selasi—were withdrawing from their roles at an upcoming gala organized by PEN American Center, the international literary and human rights organization, in protest of an "Freedom of Expression Courage" award to be given to the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

Salman Rushdie, a former PEN president and author of the fatwa-inspiring novel The Satanic Verses, rebuked the authors in quotes he gave to the Timesas well as on Twitter, where he dismissed them as "just 6 pussies."

[tweet text=".@JohnTheLeftist @NickCohen4 The award will be given. PEN is holding firm. Just 6 pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character." byline="— Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie)" user_id="SalmanRushdie" tweet_id="592631127589965824" tweet_visual_time="April 27, 2015"]

"If PEN as a free-speech organization can't defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures," he told the Times, "then frankly the organization is not worth the name."

What's interesting here is the slippery conflation of defense and celebration. Rushdie is certainly not alone in calling out the six protesters. In his corner are Jeri Laber, founder of international watchdog Human Rights Watch, along with New Yorker writers George Packer and Adam Gopnik. Novelist Hari Kunzru, who weighed in the day of the Hebdo attack that left 12 people dead, had this to say Monday:

[tweet text="My view? One may dislike #CharlieHebdo's editorial line but we must vigorously defend their right to take it, without fear of violence." byline="— Hari Kunzru (@harikunzru)" user_id="harikunzru" tweet_id="592667702281535489" tweet_visual_time="April 27, 2015"]

But, other literary figures asked on social media, when did "vigorously defending" somebody become synonymous with giving that somebody an award at a posh $1,250-a-seat event? As sci-fi novelist Saladin Ahmed tweeted:

[tweet text="You can condemn murder without claiming the victims were heroes. This isn't that hard, people. http://t.co/b7arzC0WdX" byline="— Saladin Ahmed (@saladinahmed)" user_id="saladinahmed" tweet_id="592729839238553601" tweet_visual_time="April 27, 2015"]

Tin House editor Rob Spillman, chair of the PEN Membership committee, posted a public note on his Facebook wall Monday in which he conceded that the Hebdo cartoons were "gleefully racist and insensitive" and agreeing with Doonesbury cartoonist Garry Trudeau, who said this month that "by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech."

Spillman asked, "Do we only defend artful satirists?" He continued:

Do we only defend the artists we agree with, like Salman Rushdie and Pussy Riot? Unfortunately and unequivocally, no. If you believe in free speech, you must defend free speech. PEN is not celebrating the work of Charlie Hebdo at their gala. They are celebrating Hebdo's right to free expression, for which twelve of their colleagues were gunned down. Voltaire holds true: "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."

I find Spillman's take mostly convincing, but again, we're faced with the troublingly blurry lines between defending something's right to exist and praising it. Everyone involved in this debate agrees that PEN should be guarding freedom of speech regardless of its content. After all, the six objecting writers remain PEN members themselves. But are gleefully racist scribbles, or their artists, ever the cause for jubilation?

Related: An exclusive interview with surviving 'Charlie Hebdo' cartoonist Luz

Glenn Greenwald has done valuable work in unpacking the complexities and many contradictions of this issue. I recommend reading his article in full on the Intercept, but it's worth highlighting these two passages in particular:

Some of the most repressive regimes on the planet sent officials to participate in the Paris "Free Speech" rally, and France itself began almost immediately arresting and prosecuting people for expressing unpopular, verboten political viewpoints and then undertaking a series of official censorship acts, including the blocking of websites disliked by its government. The French government perpetrated these acts of censorship, and continues to do so, with almost no objections from those who flamboyantly paraded around as free speech fanatics during Charlie Hebdo Week.

[...]

It is simply inconceivable that Charlie Hebdo would have been depicted as heroes had their primary targets been groups more favored and powerful in the West (indeed, a Charlie Hebdo cartoonist was fired by the magazine in 2009 for mocking Judaism: where were all the newfound free speech crusaders then?). As the objecting PEN writers note, one can regard the murders of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists as repugnant, vile, and dangerous (as any decent person does) while simultaneously scorning the Muslim-bashing focus of their "satire."

Additionally, Greenwald published important if lengthy correspondence between writer Deborah Eisenberg and PEN executive director Suzanne Nossel.

In her initial letter to Nossel, Eisenberg asked:

In short: is there not a difference—a critical difference—between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable and enthusiastically awarding such expression?

In responding, Nossel maintained that Hebdo "broke taboos, raised questions, and sparked debates that expanded the expression and the exchange of ideas." She added that it is the Hebdo's cartoonists showing a "powerful commitment to free expression no matter the costs" that PEN wishes to honor. Nossel also mentioned the spike in PEN memberships expressing solidarity with the organization's mission, including anonymous testimonials such as this one:

While I have long written about freedom of speech issues, the recent massacre of staffers at Charlie Hebdo was a real wake-up call. I figured that purchasing an overseas subscription to the newspaper (in spite of my shaky French) and joining PEN were the least I could do.

(Hebdo, it's worth noting, also experienced a surge in subscriptions after the massacre, as reported by VICE News.) Nossel concludes:

We are honoring Charlie Hebdo not because of the material you find offensive, but because of their fearless defense of their right to express themselves, a defense that has made our spines stiffen here at PEN and throughout the free expression community as we recognize the depth of our obligation to stand firm in the force of powerful and dangerous interests.

In her response, Eisenberg allowed that Hebdo is "undeniably courageous in that it has continued irrepressibly to ridicule Islam and its adherents, who include a conspicuously and ruthlessly dangerous faction."

However, she cautioned:

Ridicule of Islam and Muslims cannot in itself be considered courageous at this moment, because ridicule of Islam and Muslims is now increasingly considered acceptable in the West. However its staff and friends see it, Charlie Hebdo could well be providing many, many people with an opportunity to comfortably assume a position that they were formerly ashamed to admit. This is not a voice of dissent, this is the voice of a mob.

The idea of dissent pops up again with Teju Cole. In a statement to Intercept, Cole, who published one of the most lucid essays on Hebdo back in January, identified himself as "a free-speech fundamentalist." He went on to say:

I support Rushdie 100 percent, but I don't want to sit in a room and cheer Charlie Hebdo. This distinction seems to have been difficult for people to understand, and any dissent from the consensus about Charlie Hebdo is read as somehow "supporting the terrorists," or somehow believing that they deserved to be murdered.

Another of the dissenters, Francine Prose, a former president of the PEN American Center, weighed in Tuesday morning with an essay in the Guardian titled, "I Admire Charlie Hebdo's Courage. But It Does Not Deserve a PEN Award":

As a friend wrote me: the First Amendment guarantees the right of the neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, but we don't give them an award. The bestowing of an award suggests to me a certain respect and admiration for the work that has been done, and for the value of that work and though I admire the courage with which Charlie Hebdo has insisted on its right to provoke and challenge the doctrinaire, I don't feel that their work has the importance—the necessity—that would deserve such an honor.

Prose cites "writers and whistleblowers" Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Lydia Cacho as worthier candidates, before continuing:

Our job, in presenting an award, is to honor writers and journalists who are saying things that need to be said, who are working actively to tell us the truth about the world in which we live. That is important work that requires perseverance and courage. And this is not quite the same as drawing crude caricatures and mocking religion.

In the midst of the debate, one thing that hasn't gotten much press is how, back on January 7, the day of the Hebdo attack, hundreds of writers across the world—including Carey, Cole, and Prose—signed this PEN open letter in no uncertain terms condemning the murders of the publication's staffers.

From the letter:

Today's effort to silence criticism by murdering the artists and writers who voice it must be met with a far wider movement to defend the right to dissent, which forms the spine of free expression.

The answer to hateful or nasty or just plain stupid speech, most free speech advocates agree, is more speech. Like it or not, Charlie Hebdo is allowed to print cartoons skewering Muslims in ways that people find racist, those people are allowed to call the cartoons out for being offensive, organizations can bestow awards upon the cartoonists who drew them, supporters of those organizations can make gestures of protest, and famous authors can call those supporters pussies. All this noise means the system is working.

Who gets the award for that?

The PEN American Center Gala takes place on May 5 at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan.

Follow James on Twitter.

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Image courtesy of the author.

[Editor's Note: You might know the terrifyingly young Brandon Wardell from his stand-up comedy or our interview with him. In addition to being professionally funny, he is the most millennial millennial we know, so we asked him for some helpful tips on how to identify millennials in the wild, approach them, and then fuck them.]

As millennials, we spend nearly every waking moment looking at screens, consuming and creating content until the oceans boil, mountains crumble, and the sun envelops the earth. We look at screens so much that we take it for granted. For example, what if I told you that you were looking at a screen right now? Impossible, but true. In the process of converting to an entirely screen-based existence, we've become isolated, and in our sad, meaningless existence, have forgotten what really matters: fucking. According to a 2013 study conducted by the University College of London, young people averaged between 1.3 and 1.5 fucks less per month than they did a decade ago. The Guardian and Business Insider both suggested that technology was to blame for our cold, fuckless lives, a premise that, for the purposes of this article, I will agree with. I want to change that. Through my guidance, you, millennial, will remember what it's like to feel the loving embrace of another human and enjoy some real-life sexual intercourse. Or, at the very least, you will eat some ass.

Curate a Better Version of Yourself Online

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Image via pixabay

Your social media should be nothing but the best version of you. Your Facebook should be filled with updates that function as thinly-veiled boasts about your accomplishments, your Twitter feed should consist solely of hip jokes based off of topical memes, and your Instagram should be populated by pictures of you looking beautiful in interesting locations. Hide all of your vulnerabilities, bottle those emotions, and start inspiring some jealousy from your peers. IRL, I'm constantly on the verge, or in the middle of, a mental breakdown, but if you check my social media, I'm doing nothing but succeeding and having fun with friends. It's not lying; it's curating. It's important to remember that you're only as fuckable as your Twitter feed. If you curate hard enough, you'll eventually start believing your own hype, and unjustified confidence is one of the biggest parts of successfully having frequent sex.

Make Correct Emoji Choices When Interacting with People via Tinder

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Image via Flickr

The number one way to meet a millennial is on Tinder, which is a dating app that penalizes people for being old. There are an estimated 50 million people on Tinder, with literally one million of them in New York, and all of them (OK, some of them) want to fuck. My personal Tinder message strategy upon matching with a Hot Millennial is immediately opening with just the sunglasses emoji. This indicates I'm probably cool and real good at fucking. It always results in a positive reply and almost always results in doing "It." If you use emoji technique properly, you might not even have to type or say words at any point (more on that here).

The pre-approved list (Pro Tip: Youths love lists) of Cool Emojis for Fucking Millennials:

1. Sunglasses (lets them know you're cool)

2. 100 (lets them know you "keep it 100," which is a very cool phrase that young people use)

3. Eggplant (the eggplant emoji is the one that looks the most like a penis, which lets them know you're down to have sex)

4. The girl who's like, "What?" (lets them know you're sassy, not afraid to look awkward, and random in a quirky way!)

5. Prayer hands (if someone tells you it's a high five emoji, they're a cop and definitely not a Hip Youth and you should definitely NOT have sex with them)

6. Fire (the only emoji to properly express a positive opinion)

7. The cancer astrology emoji that looks like the number 69 (the sex number)

8. Frog/warm beverage (Use both at once. Hip reference to the "That's None of My Business" meme wherein Kermit the Frog passive aggressively sips tea, a huge hit among youths who possess private parts)

9. Flexing arm (lets them know you live a very #fitspo lifestyle)

10. Winking face (obviously timeless since pre-emoji era)

Where to Hang Out With Cool Millennials and Then Fuck Them

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Image via Flickr

If you can avoid going outside to meet someone to fuck and just judge online, great, but it can also be useful to go places where Hot Millennials congregate. Be one of the roughly 115,000 people at EDC Las Vegas, America's largest EDM (electronic dance music for you old fogies out there!) festival. Walk around with a flower crown. Regardless of gender or appearance, you will fuck within ten minutes of arrival. Find hip restaurants that have livestreams of tweets on a screen. Go to the restaurant, point at the screen, and say, "Now that's a good ass screen," immediately identifying yourself as the Coolest Millennial in the room. Go to the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine website, enter your zip code, and go to one of those places. If your date isn't impressed by a touchscreen soda fountain with hundreds of flavor possibilities, they're not a worthy lover. You could also go to Soulcycle. I don't know what that is exactly, but I hear about it a lot! Try saying "Soulcycle" in the mirror three times. If you do it right, a millennial will appear out of nowhere and fuck you.

Have Access to Somebody Else's Netflix/HBO Go/amazon prime/Hulu Plus Account

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Image via Flickr

Any initial sexual encounter I've had within the past two years has been preceded by me pretending to peruse the menu of an online streaming service and eventually going, "Dang, I can't find anything. We should probably fuck." This is an easy, simple, and totally smooth move and it works every time. You may not have the courage to be direct, but you definitely have the courage to ask your friend for their aunt's ex-husband's cousin's HBO Go password.

The key here is to never actually pay a monthly fee and instead just know someone else's password. As every millennial knows, you're entitled to everything and should pay for nothing, ever. If you're paying for any of these services, you're not a real millennial, and are probably (again) a cop. Don't mention your borrowed account status, or else they might correctly assume you're broke. Instead, casually mention something about how it's totally your account. It might be a lie, but what is a lie other than the curation of reality? And if there's anything you should learn from this article, it's A.B.C.—Always Be Curating.

Keep Curating IRL

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Image via Flickr

Once you've impressed your millennial via access to "your" premium streaming account, make sure to keep up the facade of your perfect life as long as possible to ensure the sex keeps happening. You've created the impression of a perfect life online; there's no need to take off that mask just because you're face-to-face. It's important to be yourself, but just be your perfect, much-better-than-actual-you online version of yourself. Mention how you've been busy working at a tech start-up. They'll assume it's an app or something. Just keep it vague and keep it moving. Answer all questions about "what you do" with "We've gotten seed money from some angel investors and have had talks with some pretty legit interest big-name VC firms, but I can't really talk about it yet."

Before the date, lend your hand-me-down-from-your-parents car to your friend Steve. Either at the beginning or end of the date, say, "I'm gonna get an Uber" and then pull your phone out and while it looks like you're in the process of ordering an Uber, text your friend Steve. He'll roll up in your car, but it'll look like you just paid for an Uber. You can only use this trick once in a night, but it's worth the four to 20 dollars you would have spent on an Uber. By faking control of your life, you project an image of godliness, and as we all know, God is the ultimate DILF.

OK, millennials. Get out there and have some sex!

Brandon is on Twitter.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/RFinNxS5KN4' width='640' height='360']

The Jurassic Park movies have answered a lot of questions about dinosaurs: They move in herds, but they sneeze on each other. They'll eat you while you're pooping, but bust out some gymnastics while they're attacking and they'll run for the hills. Yet despite this wealth of knowledge, Spielberg and his paleontology consultants left out one glaring question at the front of everyone's minds: What's up with their dicks?

Will Jurassic World, with its new director, Colin Trevorrow, answer the question? Probably not. Hollywood counts on a PG-13 rating to guarantee boffo ticket sales, so some parts of dinosaurs' private lives will never make it to the big screen. That means for vital information on things like dicks, we have to turn to the second best place to learn about dinosaurs: science.

I contacted Dr. Sarah Werning, postdoctoral research fellow at Stony Brook University, who works in the fields of paleontology and evolutionary biology. She's something of an expert on dinosaur fuckin', so I gave her a call to find out what kind of heat dinosaurs were packing, as well as if they had anything weird going on down there like ducks.

VICE: Hi, Sarah. First and foremost, which dinosaur had the biggest dick?
Sarah Werning: That's a big mystery. The problem is that there aren't any fossilized dinosaur wangs. Or, we haven't found any yet. That's partly because most penises in the animal kingdom don't have a bony component. It's usually more of a liquid inflation system, so it starts out limp, and blood gets pumped into it. We have no reason to think dinosaurs would be an animal that had any bones down there.

Right, but different species had different characteristics. So we can make some educated guesses, right?
Well, in most species you'll have the male mounting the female. But there are lots of dinosaurs that had big spikes and stuff all over their backs. It's hard to think about how the hell you're going to mount something that's covered in spikes. From a practical standpoint it seems difficult. So what turtles did is they moved their cloacas [single holes for urine, feces, and reproduction] way back, not just to the base of their tails, but kind of onto their tails. So we know that the male cloaca is even further back, closer to the tip of the tail, so it can kind of curl around.

So does that mean the penis would have to be bigger to compensate for the cloaca's location?
No that's so the male can curl its tail under the shell to get closer to the female turtle's cloaca. I don't know if dinosaurs would have something like that. But there has to be some way of accommodating the fact that stegosaurus is covered in plates. Most dinosaurs don't have something sticking out of their backs.

Related: Watch our documentary about some impressive human penises.

So it's stegosaurus? Stegosaurus wins?
No. We would have to be much more speculative than that.

What would that speculation be based on?
What we do with things we can't observe in dinosaurs, or any extinct animals, is we look for their closest living relatives. The last remnants of the living dinosaur lineage are the birds. Outside of birds, the closest cousins are crocodiles and alligators, and they have really different genitals.

OK. What can we learn from birds and reptiles then, just in general?
Dinosaurs are a specialized type of reptile. So when I say "reptile," I mean that in the sense that it includes birds and dinosaurs. If you look at lizards and snakes, they have penises, but they look different from mammals' penises. If you look at turtles, they have penises. All the distant cousins have them. Some of the oldest lineages of birds, things like ostriches, emus... the big, flightless birds. But most birds don't even have penises. They don't have anything at all in terms of an organ that protrudes out of their body and shoots sperm into the female.

Are you suggesting that dinosaurs didn't have penises at all?
If all the distant cousins had them, and some of the bird groups that we think are some of the first to split off have them, then the ones that are in between—dinosaurs—they probably had them too.

What are some known penises we can use for reference?
Reptiles do penises a number of different ways. Snakes and lizards have kind of a two-headed penis that inverts. When they're feeling amorous they pump blood into it, and it sort of ejects out of their body. Crocodiles have a permanently erect penis hanging out inside of their body, waiting to be ejected at a moment's notice. They've got ejector muscles with a super-fast trigger that can push that thing out.

That's incredible! Please tell me dinosaurs had those.
It could be, but crocodiles and alligators are the only animals that have anything like that setup. Although I admit it'd be pretty amazing if they did. If you think about the sizes involved, and how fast they'd have to eject those things. Most animals with penises don't have permanent erections tucked inside a little pocket, though.

So that wouldn't be a standard dinosaur penis, then?
There's no such thing as a generic, standard-looking penis. Most of them get erect by pumping fluid into their penis like a giant water balloon. All the birds with penises do it that way, so it'd be pretty weird if dinosaurs evolved this very odd way of doing boners, and then for their descendants to go back the other way. Birds that have penises kinda have a flap of skin on the inside that they'll put lymph into, and that'll kind of eject it out. Some ducks have super-long corkscrew penises that shoot out so fast you need a high-speed camera to capture them unfurling. That's not my work, but some scientists at some point filmed that.

So you're saying even if there's a dick, it's not dangling down all the time?
Penises aren't hanging around on the outside in animals that have cloacas. Most animals, including platypuses and kangaroos, which are mammals, have a cloaca, and their penises are either deflated or tucked away inside a cloaca, and when it's time, it'll pop out of the cloaca, and they'll try and get it into the female's cloaca. Birds that don't have penises try and make their cloacas line up, male and female, and squirt the sperm in. That's called a cloacal kiss.

But how likely is a "cloacal kiss" for dinosaurs?
The cloaca's in a pretty inconvenient spot if you have to line them up, back underneath the base of the tail. Probably the fact that birds are able to fly makes the cloacal kiss a lot easier, because they can use their wings to help get into position.

A close relationship to birds doesn't seem like it bodes well for their penises. Is there anything else that separates dinosaurs from birds in terms of sex?
One thing that's interesting about dinosaurs: We were able to figure out how old they were when they hit puberty. Most birds grow to full size, wait a while, and then start reproducing, but all the dinosaurs we found medullary bone in, they seem to hit puberty pretty early on in life, while they were going through their big growth spurt. You know how we hit puberty right at the start of our big growth spurt? It's the same deal in dinosaurs.

Oh, cool, so they had awkward teenage years like us.
They have to deal with puberty on top of changing shape rapidly. So yes.

So crazy duck corkscrew penises and weird gator ejector-penises aside, what kinds of penises do animals with cloacas have?
Birds are the living dinosaurs, and most birds with penises have a pretty small, cone-shaped penis—a boring penis, as penises go. It inflates the normal way, with fluid. I don't know if you can find a picture of an ostrich penis online...

Looks a little like a tongue. OK. So that's pretty likely, huh?
Size and shape? Who knows. But you're asking if it's penis-in-cloaca sex? That's probably how it would work in dinosaurs.

But then again, lots of them have little spikes and bumps, and all sorts of weird things coming off the ends of their penises that might help them anchor onto the female better, or help get sperm in more efficiently. So whatever you want to imagine dinosaur penises looked like, let your imagination go.

Follow Mike Pearl on Twitter.

Via Russell Brand YouTube channel.

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

With the blazing inferno that is #Milifandom still burning, Labour leader and teen heartthrob Ed Miliband has moved his Operation Youth Vote into overdrive by recording an interview with Russell Brand for his vlog, The Trews, set to come out today. Reacting to the news, David Cameron was effortlessly statesmanlike, telling a vetted audience at a choreographed event in Enfield that he was "too busy" to talk to a "joke" like Brand, before leaving to write a letter of recommendation for Jeremy Clarkson's CV.

But the Brand-Miliband interview could be something more serious than a joke—speculation is circulating that Brand, a man famous for advocating, not voting, could be about to support Ed at the election. It could be the Jagger-meets-Richards-on-the-train-platform moment British politics has been waiting for. The dawn of Milibrand—a powerfully progressive movement capable of sweeping away the establishment politics of the past with a combination of buccaneering revolutionary rhetoric and fully costed, sensible policies.

In order to test the viability of this dream, I took a look at what Russell and Ed have had to say on some of the key issues of the day, in order to paint a picture of what would surely be the greatest socialist alliance since Fidel Castro shared a cigar with Nikita Khruschev.

THE ECONOMY

Revolutionary Russell: "The economy is just a metaphorical device, it's not real—that's why it's got the word 'con' in the middle of it."

Red Ed: "Our first principle is that we will set a credible and sensible goal for dealing with our debts... now that starts with getting the national debt falling as a proportion of national income as soon as possible in the next parliament."

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ITV/Jason Moon.

RADICAL POLITICS

Revolutionary Russell: "I believe in radical change, true change, revolutionary change... Imagining the overthrow of the current political system is the only way I can be enthused about politics."

Red Ed: "These strikes are wrong at a time when negotiations are still going on, but parents and the public have been let down by both sides because the government has acted in a reckless and provocative manner. After today's disruption I urge both sides to put aside the rhetoric, get round the negotiating table, and stop it happening again [Repeat]."

BUSINESS

Revolutionary Russell: "Profit is a filthy word."

Red Ed: "I want our party to stand up for small business and entrepreneurs."

BANKERS

Revolutionary Russell: "I think an orgy of any kind would be great, but one that focuses on banker bashing would be the best kind."

Red Ed: "The financial services industry in Britain is a major employer and it is important that it remains strong."

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The Trews

AUSTERITY

Revolutionary Russell: "Austerity means keeping all the money among people who have loads of it. This is the biggest problem we face today."

Red Ed: "I want to be clear: if we had won power in May [2010], there would have been cuts."

CONSUMERISM

Revolutionary Russell: "We are living in a zoo, or more accurately a farm, our collective consciousness, our individual consciousness, has been hijacked by a power structure that needs us to remain atomized and disconnected. We want union, we want connection, we need it the way we need other forms of nutrition, and denied it we delve into the lower impulses for sanctuary. We have been segregated and severed, from each other and even from ourselves. We have been told that freedom is the ability to pursue our petty, trivial desires when true freedom is freedom from these petty, trivial desires."

Red Ed: "I am determined to lead Labour into the next election as a One Nation party of the consumer."

IMMIGRATION

Revolutionary Russell: "In a way, aren't we all immigrants from another dimension, in that we used to be an egg and some sperm?"

Red Ed: "We will control immigration with fair rules. People who come here won't be able to claim benefits for at least two years. And we will make it illegal for employers to undercut wages by exploiting workers."

ED BALLS

Revolutionary Russell: "He's a clicky-wristed, snidey cunt."

Red Ed: "He'd make an excellent chancellor."

WATCH: A Quick Chat With Russell Brand:

THE MEDIA

Revolutionary Russell: "They just want a story. They just want to generate information. They just need to feed this vile beast because the reality of the media in this country is that three companies control 70 percent of national newspaper circulation... The media are nothing more than lobbyists for powerful corporate interests."

Red Ed: "I recognize the many decent people who work in our country's newspapers."

VOTING

Russell: "I will never vote and I don't think you should, either... Like most people I am utterly disenchanted by politics. Like most people, I regard politicians as frauds and liars and the current political system as nothing more than a bureaucratic means for furthering the augmentation and advantages of economic elites... I don't vote because to me it seems like a tacit act of compliance."

Ed: "Vote Labour... vote Labour... vote Labour... [Repeat]"

Perhaps it won't work after all.

Follow Oscar on Twitter.

[body_image width='633' height='392' path='images/content-images/2015/04/28/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/28/' filename='as-a-native-actor-i-applaud-those-who-walked-off-the-set-of-adam-sandlers-racist-movie-971-body-image-1430260401.jpg' id='50750']

Twilight Actor Tyson Houseman responds to Adam Sandler's latest.

When I was younger, I acted in some of the Twilight movies. I played a shape-shifting werewolf who was a member of a fictionalized version of the Quileute Tribe, a real Native American tribe in Washington. In light of the media coverage that Adam Sandler's newest racist pile of shit is receiving due to some Native American actors walking off the set because it's a racist pile of shit, I felt compelled to offer some insight up for public consumption from my own experiences as an Indigenous actor who has dealt with racism in the film industry. First of all I should note that I am fully aware of The Twilight Saga's problematic portrayal of Native Americans and the appropriation of real Quileute myths and traditions into fantasy. I say 'problematic' because these films offer the image of Native Americans basically as mythical creatures, but they are also some of the few Hollywood blockbusters depicting contemporary Native characters as opposed to fake historic relics of a romanticized early American frontier.

I knew that the character I was playing was problematic and I still did it because it was a huge opportunity. This problematic portrayal was never discussed on-set between actors or writers—it was kind of an elephant in the room. It's easy to take a moral stance on something but as we all know it's a lot fucking harder to stand by your morals when they are put to the test, which is why I have nothing but praise for the group of actors who were able to stick to their guns and walk off the set of Sandler's ridiculous shitpile. Indigenous actors face struggles of misrepresentation all the time, from racist typecasting to insensitive and false historical research, and I know from experience that it takes a great deal of courage to stand up to this. Unfortunately, the majority of the roles in film and TV for Indigenous actors are for characters like "the brave" or "the savage," one-liner characters that do nothing but add some colour to background shots or get killed when they foolishly attack the (white) protagonist (all of this comes from personal audition experience). So the attention this story has received over the past week goes to show that a good deal of people are ready to break free from the perpetuation of these ancient stereotypes. Regardless of that, this film will still be made.

[youtube src='//www.youtube.com/embed/NML1FR5NEBs' width='640' height='480']

So why have these stereotypes been allowed to persist in the Hollywood machine for so long? Why, in 2015, does Adam Sandler think it's okay to write female characters named "No Bra" and "Beaver's Breath" and to reduce an entire group of human beings into caricature? The "Hollywood Indian" stereotype has been allowed to endure because the image of an oppressed, colonized culture looks better from the perspective of the colonizers before that culture started being oppressed. Hollywood prefers its silent, stoic noble savage to any real modern day depiction of indigeneity in film. Colonial North American society is still more comfortable with their romanticized image of a proud race of people who once graced an untouched landscape and have since subserviently and willingly disappeared into the shadows to make way for the "rightful" owners of that landscape to manifest their destiny. This idea of the "vanishing Indian" has been vital to the relieving of colonial guilt because if we don't have to see them then we can just pretend their culture must be gone. Hence shoving us on tiny plots of land called reservations.

Postcolonialism sounds great as a concept—the idea that now that Indigenous-Settler relations are all cleared up we can comment, critique, and engage in discourse on North America's troubling history. But I've always had a problem with the semantics of that word in reference to North American society because the "post-" implies that we are past the stages of colonization, when in reality Indigenous society is still experiencing the oppressive and damaging effects of colonization today. We live in a contemporary colonial society, where the practise still runs rampant because the goals of complete colonization have not been achieved and, contrary to what Hollywood would have you believe, we have not been wiped out. Government efforts made to destroy our culturedid not work, and for the first time since European contact, the population of Indigenous people on Turtle Island is actually increasing instead of decreasing.

In the original article posted on Indian Country Today Media Network one of the actors who walked, Alison Young, was quoted as saying, "The producers just told us, 'If you guys are so sensitive, you should just leave.'" The ignorance of this comment lies in the insincere and common "fake apology" which usually sounds something like, "I'm sorry if you are offended," or "It's not my fault that you are offended" and usually always ends with: "You should just get over it." This ignorance lies in the distancing nature of thinking the effects of colonialism are over with, when in reality, the destruction caused by colonial measures such as residential schools have had effects so damaging that they have passed through generations and continue to affect our people to various degrees to this day.

Sandler's blatant racism and insensitivity adds a massive amount of insult to centuries of injury toward a group of people, given that just a little over 100 years ago it was perfectly acceptable to hunt down and sell their scalps for $25. There's an ignorance to this situation that's being displayed if this entitled old comedian and his producers think that they can get away with making fun of that same group of people that happens to still be marginalized and oppressed by their dominant settler colonial society to this day.

Follow Tyson Houseman on Twitter.

[body_image width='640' height='396' path='images/content-images/2015/04/29/' crop='images/content-images-crops/2015/04/29/' filename='the-very-serious-business-of-figuring-out-how-earth-will-handle-first-contact-with-aliens-514-body-image-1430322545.jpg' id='51099']A scene from The Visit.

If aliens landed in Central Park tomorrow, how would humankind respond? Would we point every tank and gun squarely on the spacecraft? Or would we offer a more neighbourly greeting? What questions would we ask these extraterrestrials? And what would we tell them about us?

The Visit, a documentary by Danish director Michael Madsen, presents a scenario: aliens have arrived on earth, we know nothing of their intentions, only that they are here. Madsen asks experts from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (this is a real office that exists at the UN), and other scientists, ethicists, government officials, and public relations personnel to explain how they would respond to this event. The result is a step-by-step guide for dealing with humanity's first-ever encounter with intelligent life from space.

We spoke with Madsen about getting scientists to agree to play pretend, what discovering intelligent life would really mean for humankind, and about choosing the ideal spokesperson for humanity.

VICE: I guess the first thing to ask is why? Why did you want to make a movie about how humankind would respond to an alien invasion?
Michael Madsen: I think that the greatest event for mankind to ever experience would be extraterrestrial life—to meet life from elsewhere. I think that would question everything that we hold to be true about ourselves and our particular place in the universe. In that respect, I think this is a unique scenario by which to explore something about human understanding and human self-perception and also, of course, ideally create a kind of a mirror. That's what I've been trying to do with The Visit.

So what sorts of questions did you want the audience to ask themselves while watching this? What were you hoping to achieve with the film?
I'm interested in having the audience be the main character in the film in a way. By that I mean that I'm interested in putting the audience in the shoes of an alien, so to say—if they are wearing shoes, that is.

I'm interested in using this outside perspective of a creature coming from elsewhere, I'm trying to create that viewing position outside of human understanding, outside of human self-evidence about ... everything in this world that we happen to inhabit. So hopefully, when watching this film, all the questions that these experts are struggling with—and some of them would, most likely, be appointed to perform these roles. I assume that a kind of a task force would be formed in such an event. But I'm interested in having everybody in the audience ponder these questions themselves. What would they be asking about? What would they be explaining about human beings? What's important to understand about human beings? These are the things that I'm interested in, and you can also say that, in a way, I'm trying to create a kind of philosophical launch within the audience, in terms of these questions.

Let's talk a little about the scenario itself. The UN doesn't actually have a plan, but the film features various experts who give their opinions on how they'd respond to an invasion. Can you explain how the scenario in The Visit was formulated? How did you choose which experts to speak to and also which steps to include in this scenario?
I think that the scenario in The Visit can only be understood as an ideal scenario. By that I mean things would not unfold as depicted in The Visit—although I think that the military aspects, or the concerns, and the perhaps calls for action, I think they are very close to what would most likely happen. And, of course, the film is made without a script, because I wanted all the individual experts to just respond as they would actually do if they were in this situation. So I didn't want to create a scenario that they would have to adhere to, it's all based on how they have chosen to react. But, it's an ideal scenario in the sense that these are experts—as far as you can be an expert in this field—but they are experts in [their fields]. And some of them have also been thinking a lot about such an eventuality. But who knows if somebody comes and they land in a field ... and address the cows in the field, not the farmer. Of course, you don't know about those things. Let's say the first contact is performed with children, for example. It might be better, I don't know, but it would be a completely different scenario in terms of the mechanisms in it. But I do believe that the question about what's a human being, I think that question would come into play in any encounter you can envision. Because we would come into play ourselves.

But it's an ideal scenario. This was the only way I could think of in which I, to some extent, could bring some kind of authenticity into this speculation. By means of using people in real decision-making positions and also, for example, positions within a government—in this case the UK government—people who had knowledge of a kind that would have to be used, for example, in terms of how to address the public and so on.

Was it difficult getting experts to agree to the film? I'd imagine that some might be worried about how this might be perceived.
I think this was a concern from all of the experts. I really understand it very well because they are, of course, putting their professional reputation on the line. There is no empirical evidence, et cetera, so you are taking a risk as a scientist. But this is also why I first approached the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs to accept to be in the film. And after they agreed to this—and that took about a year with different meetings and so on—after this, I could tell this to the other experts that I approached. Plus, I said that I would hope you would find the time to look at my previous film, Into Eternity, and you will see, I think, how I work and that will address some of your concerns, in terms of that this is not a UFO film, it's not a sensation film or a conspiracy or anything like that. I'm genuinely interested in some of these philosophical and existential questions that such an encounter would [bring forth] and also, of course, as I said earlier, this is a mirror. It's not a film about aliens, it is ultimately a film about ourselves. And this is what [the experts] understood.

But it was also, I think, for some of these persons—I mean, some of them told me, "This is the best interview I've ever given," and I think it's because, in a way, they were, by this sort of conceptual device of talking to the camera as if it was a visitor from elsewhere, it somehow freed some of the experts.

They got to indulge their imaginations.
Yes. They really dived into it.

How much of this scenario, or how we mentally prepare for this kind of event, do you think is informed by popular culture?
I think it's soaked in popular culture and popular imagination. And I think that is potentially disastrous. This is my opinion, although I share it, but it's another anthropologist who's been suggesting that because films, literature and so on [have been] dealing with invasions and hostile invasions [for the past 100 years]—beginning with, of course, War of the Worlds—that would inadvertently mean that we would respond ourselves in a defensive, therefore also a hostile, way. That we would most likely not be able to perceive even a friendly gesture. And the question is—this is something that I was very interested in exploring with the experts—the question is, of course, to which extent are we able to perceive something that is not like ourselves? How can we see something that is fundamentally different? And this is also of course what is being discussed in terms of lifeforms and so on. But how do we actually detect life that's not like life on earth? And, of course, with it comes other minds, other feelings, other emotions, other types of memory, other perceptual faculties, it's just exponentially more difficult. But, of course, and that is something that I hope is in the film in a way, of course there is something infinitely wondrous about this. Because what if somebody comes here and has a completely different experience of reality and we could learn something from that and could of course expand our own world? And then we aren't talking about fearful scenarios and so on anymore. But as we know from earth, people who think differently to oneself, can sometimes be very difficult to understand or just embrace.

It was interesting because you have some experts who are saying we might not even be able to detect that alien life is among us, and then you have others who make the very human assumption that, as humans, the most intelligent life form on our planet, we will be able to experience this event or to connect with these other beings.
This, of course, is something that's very contested philosophically, but it's a part of human self-understanding today, modern human self-understanding, to have this idea that ultimately we can gain access to everything by our understanding. I would say that this can also leave humans very lonely in a very, in my mind, cold place where everything is understood, where no mystery is left. But of course, this fear that is also in the film, this loss of control that I think would be a result of such an encounter, I think it's very interesting because we understand ourselves not only in the centre of the universe, but also in the centre of control. That we understand and we master reality, and I think that would be, just the presence of something else would tell us that we don't do that. That would be, for a modern human being, for a time that hails individualism and all those things, that would be very, very frightening.

If there's one thing the film can say definitively it's that we don't really have a clue what we'd be facing in the event of an alien invasion. So what is the point of a plan even? Would it just be a way for us to feel in control?
Yes, it's true that the military and the press begin to talk about this being interpreted as an invasion, but it's never clear in the film, it's just something turns up. But I think that the most difficult thing to prepare for is, of course, the event where you don't know exactly what it is, but where you sort of say, "Open your mind to what can this be for me."

I think what drives humans into space, and has already—we have skimmed the surface in a way. We have gone short distances in reality—but what drives us out there and what drove us across oceans and so on is ... curiosity and this might also help us in such an encounter. And also I think we should perhaps think about [the possibility] that other intelligent life might also be curious. It might also just cross space to see if there is life. They may also be scared shitless if they come here and meet us.

But hopefully there will be fascination, too. Perhaps that can be the common ground. I don't know, but that could be a hope.

The line that really stuck out for me was when one of the experts says that mankind would be plunged into despair if aliens do show up and then they leave.
I think this is connected to something deeply human and perhaps the whole thing why we do look to the stars and ponder if there is life out there. Because there is a very, in my mind, very interesting longing toward space and what's out there. I think it has to do with this hope or idea or longing towards being seen by something other. By being seen, also by something superior, you actually gain existence, because you're recognized as something. I think if somebody came here and left again without a word, more or less, without any [idea of] why they [came] and so on, I think, yes, that would plunge us into a collective depression, because we would get the idea that we were nothing. We weren't worth wasting more time on. It was just like they just stopped by on the road and there was nothing to see and then they just drove on in a way. Because that would give us a kind of inferiority complex, which we might already have.

At a recent panel discussion, a chief scientist at NASA said that we'll have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years. But she emphasized that this evidence wouldn't be "little green men," but rather microbes. That would be a huge step toward finding life as we know it, but still, I feel that if that's all we found, it would really disappoint a lot of people.
In my mind, its a strange statement to make, because why talk about [it] not [being] "little green men"? I think the reason why it's being talked about this way is that—yes, it might be the case actually. Yes, yes, yes, I agree that, you know, you might find fossilized bacteria and so on or similar things on Mars and so on. But I think the reason why the talk is only about bacteria is also very much, perhaps even more, connected to the fact that it will be much, much more difficult to understand and to decide what to do if higher lifeforms were encountered. Not to mention, of course, lifeforms with life like us, because then it's a whole different ethical and moral question. Can we land on this planet? Let's say we could do that. Can we interfere, can we contaminate, potentially, this world? So, it's much, much more difficult moral and ethical questions. Questions that have nothing to do with science alone, meaning that NASA perhaps cannot decide for themselves how to cut the cake, or whatever you say in English. So, much more difficult questions will come into play.

The film covers everything from how to best issue a statement to the public to if we should reveal humanity's worst traits to aliens. The question that caught me most off guard though was "Who should be humanity's spokesperson?" It's funny because movies have taught me that it's always the U.S. president who handles space relations. But when Sir David Attenborough was suggested I just thought, Oh yes, of course. There are other possibilities! So lastly, who do you think would make a good spokesperson for humanity?
I think that in the present day world the only super-national entity is, of course, the United Nations. There is, of course, the opinion that the UN is bogged down in bureaucracy, but it's the only thing we have. It's also, of course, very possible that if this were to happen, if these entities think like we do, then they will approach the strongest power on earth, which would currently be the US because they would think that they're the best ones to negotiate with. Because if we can agree with them then everyone else will also most likely agree. But, if they address the cows, of course, it's a different scenario. But it can also be that, I don't know, perhaps if somebody comes it is so value-changing that humans start to think in a different way, I don't know. If we know that astronauts who have been in space and have seen the Earth, they seem to have some shifts in their perception of values and so on. I don't know.

But of course, most of these sci-fi scenarios are coming from Hollywood, and American self-understanding is to be superior, at least after the Second World War and so on. But I think that if you see Japanese films then perhaps its the Japanese military who takes care of things. So its also about perspectives.

The Visit plays at Hot Docs documentary film festival on April 29 at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Follow Regan Reid on Twitter.