Obama: Russia doesn't make anything

[Igel]

83. Stats without context are meaningless.

And they can be spun to mean something false.

Throughout the '90s life expectancy for Russian males plummeted. It was below 60--on average--at one point. This, of course, wasn't going to be true necessarily for the 3-year-old boy, but because the population of males that were in their 50s and 60s was shrinking quickly. Fat, drunk, smokers with a lot of stress who ate horrible food and who did stupid things. Drunkenness in Russia is a lot more dangerous than it often is in the US: You get drunk, sit on a park bench to sleep it off, and a few hours later you're frozen until spring.

The younger males have a problem with STDs, including HIV, as well as drugs. As an undergrad in the '70s and '80s as well as a grad student in the '90s, the general attitude was that summer school in Russia was a good way to relieve lots of sexual tension because the girls/women had what could be called a very, very laid back attitude towards sexual activity. Unlike American girls, who were frigid in the late '70s and in the '90s. ("Didn't have sex even by the end of the first date? Amazing!&quot Cynicism and ennui do that to people.

Since then the economy's improved, a different cohort of males reached that age (over-eating, over-drinking, smoking, diet aren't dictated by culture and are largely *mindset* dependent), and the puritanical (okay, Orthodox) government has put in place all kinds of measures to limit and discourage smoking and drinking, even though Orthodoxy never made a big deal about such things for, oh, centuries. Even if both are still problems. Average life expectancy for males in Russia is now about 64, the 'nets tell me.

The changes in life expectancy for women didn't change all that much over the years.