Let's Talk About Sex, Baby
mikethemadbiologist | February 14, 2011You might have heard of by now rightwing activist Lila Rose's attempted sting operation of Planned Parenthood, which resulted in the shocking finding that Planned Parenthood workers follow the law (and don't endanger themselves or their patients by physically confronting potentially dangerous people). Suffice it to say, it was a bullshit smear, but that's not stopping Planned Parenthood from catching flak. I have a personal reason for supporting Planned Parenthood (no, I'm not coming out of the closet or announcing that I am HIV-positive)--but, first, here's the breakdown of what Planned…
mikethemadbiologist | January 4, 2011This report suggests that we either have a major public health problem or a significant theological event:
More than 10 percent of teens who said they were abstinent also tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease, says a study in Pediatrics released Monday -- a figure public health advocates say justifies screening all teens for such diseases....
In Wave 3 of Add Health, about 14,000 youth agreed to provide a urine specimen to check for three STDs -- gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis.
More than 11,000 of these youth said they had had sexual intercourse in the last 12 months,…
mikethemadbiologist | December 7, 2010Amanda Marcotte makes a very interesting observation about the continued popularity of the movie Dirty Dancing:
I have to say that actually its popularity probably has little to do with its "innocence" and more to do with its lack of it. What immediately comes across is that this is an extremely sexy movie. But it's sexy in a way that you almost never see in movies---from a sex-positive, feminist-minded, heterosexual point of view.... Attention is lavished on Patrick Swayze's body, of course, but it's more than that. Most sex in most movies, at least dramas, is shown as deadly serious, but…
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2010
(from here)
One of the models for the evolution of new species is allopatric speciation, where a small isolated population diverges from a larger ancestral population. Many of these peripheral populations become extinct, but some persist and give rise to new species if they can remain reproductively isolated (unable to breed with each other). Lots of things can cause populations to diverge to the point where they can't interbreed, but one key factor is the divergence in sexual signals--that is, individuals don't mate with each other because they don't think they are in the same species (…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2009"If the president's [budget] proposal is enacted similar to what he recommended, it will have a chilling effect on abstinence education across the country...We're in a race against time to keep these people in business"
So says Leslie Unruh, rightwing nutjob extraordinaire (and a driving force behind this). I'm not sure why anyone in the Coalition of the Sane should care, in light of these results of abstinence-only misinformation (italics mine):
In the beginning, the public-health community was open to the programs. The United States did, after all, have the highest teen pregnancy rate in…
mikethemadbiologist | August 2, 2009You'll never guess. From Amanda Marcotte:
It's the most common outpatient procedure in the country, and yet we write it off as fringe. There's only 694,000 open heart surgeries a year on average, 600,000 hysterectomies, and 193,000 hip replacements a year---but there's 1.2 million abortions performed every year. But I'll bet you could find more people who claim they don't know anyone personally who's had an abortion than make the same claim about hysterectomies, heart surgery, or hip replacement. Of course, they do know someone who's had an abortion, most likely, but she's mum about it,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 29, 2007
There are no NASA scientists in this picture (from here)
Because if NASA scientists do science, the terrorists win. Or something.
Over at Culture Kitchen, there's a good series of posts about the new NASA security procedures that apply to all NASA employees. Parts one and two are worth reading, but the categories of offenses that are part of the "Suitability Matrix." Here's the description of the lowest level of offenses, Class A (italics mine):
Severity A:
Infrequent use or possession of marijuana. Abusive language (Hey...we live in NYC here!). Unlawful assembly (which some protests we…
mikethemadbiologist | June 8, 2007When you do 'faith-based' science, you have problems when you don't follow the tenets of that 'faith.' From the AP:
The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.
After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.
"We are currently investigating the veracity of these serious claims of his participation in projects that don't align with the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2007
This is only 'petting' so it's OK
...Senator and Republican presidential candidate John "Snuggles" McCain do it? For that matter, evangelicals do it--even before getting married. This makes McCain's support for abstinence-only sex education even more ridiculous. But let's talk more about sex, baby.
What's always struck as ludicrous is that, as one study indicates, almost no one is a virgin when they get married. I don't think I know any married couple who were virginal on their wedding night because they were living together before they got hitched. Maybe they were sleeping with one…
mikethemadbiologist | December 24, 2006...so no blogging. Instead, I'll leave you with a "make sexy time" photo (to steal Borat's phrase):
It's E. coli having sex. Well, actually it's conjugation. Many bacteria have plasmids which are 'mini-chromosomes' (antibiotic resistance genes are often found on plasmids). The bacteria are able to build protein tubes ("pili") and send copies of plasmids to another cell.
mikethemadbiologist | December 20, 2006The Guttmacher Institute has released a report showing that 90% of Americans have engaged in premarital sex. This isn't really an increase either: premarital sex was nearly as common among women in their sixties. Hopefully, that will dispel the notion that slutiness [/snark] is on the rise. I wonder what the right-wing nutjobs will make of this. I doubt anything other than abstinence-only education will be on their agenda. Oh wait, one other thing will probably be discussed:
BILL CLINTON'S PENIS!!!!!
Maybe this will move things away from faith-based public health, and towards the realm…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2006Because if I had been born in 1969, I would be 36 years old, and the Bush administration's new abstinence program which is now targeting people up to 29 years old would ignore me. Said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education:
They've stepped over the line of common sense. To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.
Maybe the Republicans are just trying to drum up business for their…