Other socialization yesterday: Religion in Europe, talked with some Brits.

Yet another Dutch girl was telling me about surveys about the state of religious belief among European youth. It turns out, she said, that people who like Harry Potter and the Lord of the Rings are a lot more religious and a lot younger than Europe at large.

Last night I was drinking water with some British and Scotch people -- no water-drinkers they! -- and the one prof was talking about how he slips in pederasty jokes into his lectures, stuff like, "It's just like the Boy Scouts motto, 'Never leave your fellows behind.'" One girl who studies the oikos in ancient Athens also was telling me how she was a New Romantic and used to run around her town in heavy makeup and dyed hair and frilly shirts and listen to Duran Duran all the time. The one prof also started talking about how even though he still listens to rock bands like Yes and Genesis, he's changed a lot because of his four year-old daughter, and how he's already hoping for a son-in-law he can "go drink a pint with" since there's many awful kinds of boyfriends out there. He started going into some stories about awful boyfriend-types that really weren't all that awful, it seemed like, so I started telling him about a friend of mine from high school who was dating a dropped-out-of-high-school drug dealer who used to come up to her like he was going to give her a kiss, but then stick his hand in his pants and then wipe his fingers across her face and be like, "Hairy ball sweat!" He would do this at least a couple times a week. No one knew what to say, so I reaffirmed how fucked up it was and how he should hope that his daughter never dates a guy like that.