sex
purepedantry | August 13, 2007I read this article in the Economist that summarizes a paper showing that men wanting to attract women spend conspicuously and women wanting to attract men volunteer conspicuously. All I could think about when I read it was, "Well, I guess Veblen was right about something." (I will get to the article at the bottom, but this is an interesting history lesson for those of you who haven't heard of Veblen.)
Thorstein Veblen was a turn of the century economist and social critic noted for coining term conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is when you buy something really expensive so…
omnibrain | August 6, 2007It was only a matter of time until someone created a sex toy for dogs.
From the description:
A dog is an animal with an enormous sexual appetite which can't be controlled. Many methods consist in artificial ways to stop dogs inborn caractere. These methods like castration or meds are going against the nature laws.
So... is this a joke?
omnibrain | August 4, 2007...just kidding! It's nearly every month that a new study comes out showing that abstinence only programs don't do shit. This time a study from Oxford shows, through a meta-analysis of 13 different U.S. trials, that
none of the abstinence-only programmes had an impact on the age at which individuals lost their virginity, whether they had unprotected sex, the number of sexual partners, the rates of sexually transmitted diseases or the number of pregnancies.
One trial did show a short-term benefit with participants reporting that they were less likely to have had sex in the month following…
clock | July 16, 2007Everyone seems to be blogging about sex (and reproduction) these days. Is it something in the air? Water? Anyway, here are some good recent examples:
Bush Administration Censored Talk On Birth Control And Sex Ed:
This administration got away with a trailblazer--using the FDA to decide a drug's (Plan B) availability based strictly on party ideology. It set the precedent for a future administration to behave equally as irresponsible.
When a future administration institutes a one-child policy, or executes officials who don't tow the party line, or makes stoning part of the treatment protocol…
omnibrain | July 16, 2007Wow... I knew that many animals had herpes and if you want to get a herpes free lab animal it costs many times what a 'normal' herpes carrying animal does. But wow... Chlamydia in Koalas?! Maybe some of you bio people out there can tell us whether it's the same Chlamydia humans carry. So basically If I go to Australia and nail a koala - can I catch it and give it to my sheep?
Here's the exciting details on how Australian scientists are going to protect the koala population from STD's.
Professor Peter Timms, from QUT's Institute of Health and Biomedical Innovation, said chlamydia was a…
clock | June 14, 2007I wonder if this new study was designed better than this one:
In a detailed study that served to investigate the actual nature and content of sexual dreams across a large sample of dream reports from men and women, approximately eight percent of everyday dream reports from both genders contain some form of sexual-related activity.
The percentage of women that reported such dreams can be due to the fact that either women actually experience more sexual dreams now than they did 40 years ago, or that they now feel more comfortable reporting such dreams due to changing social roles and attitudes…
purepedantry | June 12, 2007The NYTimes has a lovely primer on sperm. Money quote:
Sperm do not really hit their stride until they are deposited in the female reproductive tract, at which point chemical signals from the vaginal and cervical mucus seem to spark them to life. Released from the buffering folds of their seminal delivery blanket, they at first swim straight ahead, torpedo-style, "with very little back and forth of the head," Dr. Tash said. They may linger in the cervical mucus for a couple of days, or cross the cervix and enter the uterus.
If an egg has burst from its ovarian follicle and been plucked by a…
clock | June 4, 2007Renegade Evolution has collected the links for yesterday's Blogging For Sex Education day.
clock | June 3, 2007Remember to Blog For Sex Education. Put this logo on top of your post if you like. Then paste your permalink in the comments of this post and Renegade Evolution will put together a linkfest.
clock | May 25, 2007It's simple. Just write a post on June 4th that has something to do with sex education. Add this logo on top of your post and leave your permalink in the comments of the logo post.
Spread the word....
revere | May 4, 2007Some stories just force themselves on you. I know I'm not special in this regard, since this story was sent by reader and frequent commenter MRK with the note, "Couldn't resist this one. . . ." Maybe the fact we are both males has something to do with it. Mrs. R. would certainly think so. Anyway, this is The Right Moment (insincere apologies to Cialis's ad agency):
A Brazilian spider delivers more than a painful bite that sends most victims to the hospital.
Its venom stimulates an hours-long erection. Now scientists have figured out the chemical that seems to be responsible for the penis…
clock | May 2, 2007Of course, I was not the only one commenting on the recent duck phallus paper. You should check out the other blogospheric responses, e.g., by Carl, PZ, RPM, Grrrl, Laelaps, Neil, Belle, Zuzu, Guru and many others.
Unfortunately, most people link only to each other, or to the press release, or to the NYTimes article. The articles are fine, but they are simplified for the mass audience. If you are a scientist, you should read the original paper to get all the details.
Furthermore, many commenters on blogs have asked some very good questions about the research which remained unanswered, e.…
clock | May 1, 2007...because weird sex does not only happen on Fridays....
Remember this? Many have asked themselves (I did) where does it go, i.e., what kind of female genital tract can accomodate such a large penis. But one person actually did not stop at wondering but set out to find out. You can find out who and how and why in Carl Zimmer's today's NYTimes article about today's PLoS-One paper.
clock | May 1, 2007A guy 'jebo jeza', ahem, literally fucked a hedgehog in Serbia and ended up in the ER. Do kids there these days don't even know their slang? 'Jebo jeza' means something along the lines of 'being in big trouble' or 'having everything go wrong for you'. This guy accomplished that for himself, I guess....unless this is, as is likely, an urban legend.
clock | April 12, 2007Sperm Cells Created From Human Bone Marrow:
Human bone marrow has been used to create early-stage sperm cells for the first time, a scientific step forward that will help researchers understand more about how sperm cells are created.
Gives a new meaning to the word "boner", doesn't it? OK, too late at night - I am losing all sense of what is appropriate on a science blog. Actually, the study is interesting besides its potential for humor.
purepedantry | April 10, 2007Many of you will be shocked -- shocked -- to discover that ejaculation turns off men's brains. Well only briefly...
Janniko et al., after publishing an earlier paper on the subject in 2003, have chosen again to examine the activation in the male brain during ejaculation. They use PET scanning -- a technique that measures the metabolic activity of different parts of the brain.
Why a further paper on the subject, you ask? Did they not answer all the important questions in the prior paper?
Well unfortunately the early study had what we scientists like to refer to as a methodological…
purepedantry | March 28, 2007This is not just videos of hairy, fat people having sex. This is actual panda porn we are talking about:
Chuang Chuang the panda has been spending his days in front of a big-screen television watching panda porn.
Authorities at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand hope the images will encourage him to mate with his partner, Lin Hui, and serve as an instructional lesson in how to do it right.
So far, it's been a tough sell, the zoo's chief veterinarian, Kanika Limtrakul, said Tuesday.
"Chuang Chuang seems indifferent to the videos; he has no reaction to what he's seeing on TV," Kanika said…