sex
clock | March 19, 2007You know how on comment threads on blogposts about evolution you, sooner or later, get a commenter saying something that reveals complete lack of understanding of even the basics of evolutionary biology? It is usually accompanied by some creationist canard as well. What do you do? If you stop to explain the basics, the thread gets derailed. You REALLY want to discuss that latest study, not go back to basics over and over again.
So, instead of explaining the basics, you post a link to the appropriate page on the TalkOrigins FAQ or Index of Creationist Claims and move on with the…
clock | February 20, 2007You know that I think that Wimp Factor is one of the most important yet least appreciated books about ideology and politics in recent years. So, I was really glad to see an excellent review of it by Amanda:
Regardless of you feelings about whether or not he's got the right reasons for why anxious masculinity exists, his examination of the effects of it is right on the money.
clock | February 19, 2007But, apparently, that is the least of the problems of this study of sexuality in West European menopausal women.
BTW, a "visual analogue scale" looks like this:
You jot a mark where you feel is the best spot that reflects your answer. The researcher than uses the ruler to put a number on it. Perhaps once iPhone is out in July, this kind of research will be possible.
purepedantry | February 15, 2007In light of the Lisa Nowak love triangle/kidnapping/nutness NASA is re-evaluating how it...well...evaluates astronauts for psychological fitness for space flights.
Part of the problem is one of sex frankly; astronauts are not allowed to have it while on duty.
NASA has been intransigent about the idea of the astronauts have intimate relations, justifying this policy because they would rather not deal with any of the associated problems on manned missions. On the other hand, for particularly long flights -- such as trips to Mars -- sex could be a stabilizing force. Anyway, an interesting…
purepedantry | February 12, 2007Oh wow.
Oh wow.
This press release is simply astonishing. Maybe it is because it has been a long time -- and as a consequence I have a mind for dirty press releases. Maybe it is just because I quite generally have a dirty mind. However, this is the singularly most amazing press release ever to be released in the history of science. This is not hyperbole. Read for yourself:
In the context of sexual reproduction, natural selection is generally thought of as a pre-copulation mechanism. We are drawn to features of the human body that tell us our partner is healthy and will provide us a…
clock | February 5, 2007
Last week I asked if you would be interested in my take on this paper, since it is in Serbian (and one commenter said Yes, so here it is - I am easy to persuade):
Stankovic Miodrag, Zdravkovic Jezdimir A., and Trajanovic Ljiljana,
Comparative analysis of sexual dreams of male and female students (PDF). Psihijatrija danas 2000, Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 227-242
Here is the English-language Abstract:
The subject of research is analysis of connection between sexuality as instinctive function and dreams with sexual content as cognitive function. The sample consisted of 656 students, 245 males and 411…
clock | February 3, 2007A-ha! Finally! Now I understand the connection between Creationism and the overall anti-sex sentiment of the Fundamentalists!
New reseaarch shows that E.coli swim upstream due to the Design of their flagellum! And where do they swim from and swim to? Yes, you guessed it right! And you can also watch the movie.
clock | February 2, 2007I was in the middle of writing a serious review of a paper meant for Friday Weird Sex Blogging, when reading this paralized me (hopefully only transiently and I will finish it by next week).
So, when in trouble, I can always go back to Physics Of Sex and see if Buzz has someting new up. And he does.
Is the Select Comfort air mattress good for sex? To answer that question, a good scientist performs an experiment.
The Brownian motion of bar-hopping is something you need to know about if you are single and on the dating scene (thank FSM I am not, and hopefully never will have to be again).
And…
clock | February 2, 2007Continuing with the last week's topic (originally posted on March 11, 2005 - click on the spider-clock icon to see the comments, including by Mark O'Connell - who I subsequently met and blogged about, on the original post)
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Last night I listened to NPR's "On Point" about adolescent sex (http://www.onpointradio.org/shows/2005/03/20050310_a_main.asp). As you may have guessed, I am interested in this topic as it can reveal something about the current fixated-on-sex femiphobic culture, as well as evolution of the institution of marriage (http://…
clock | January 30, 2007Parenting is hard. Are you ready (re-posted from October 20, 2005)
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Earlier today Mrs.Coturnix and I took Coturnix Jr. and Coturnietta to the pediatrician (and the dentist - they are in the same building). While sitting in the waiting room we saw a strange scene. A father and a son (about 14-years old, I'd say) walked out of the office, the boy vigorously rocking a little baby, the father saying "It's great we have a car. Cars are good things".
I guess I made such a face that the receptionist started laughing: "It's a doll". A girl waiting in…
clock | January 26, 2007This is two years old (February 16, 2005) but still as provocative....(also my belated contirbution to the Blog For Choice Day) and I'll repost the second part of it next Friday.
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William Raspberry wrote an editorial in Washington Post last weekend (I picked a link to a syndication that does not require registration instead of dinosaurid WaPo) about the sexual practices of young people, mainly college people. This is not the first time he wrote on this topic. For instance, he wrote a column a few years ago, immediately after the release of the…
purepedantry | January 24, 2007It would appear that today will be Sex Day at Pure Pedantry. So be it.
I didn't know this but mouse and rat sperm have funny shaped hooks at their tips. To the right is a picture of sperm from a variety of mouse and rat species (click to enlarge).
A) Variation in hook design across nine murine rodent species: (1) Bunomys fratrorum, (2) Mus musculus, (3) Rattus norvegicus, (4) Dasymys incomtus, (5) Pseudomys oralis (6) Maxomys surifer, (7) Melomys burtoni, (8) Apodemus sylvaticus, (9) Apodemus speciosus.
Interesting, but scientists didn't know what this significance of the hooks were.…
purepedantry | January 24, 2007Researchers have discovered a way to prevent premature ejaculation. You just cover your penis in lidocaine, the stuff the dentist uses to numb your face:
Patients with premature ejaculation who used a topical anaesthetic spray were able to delay ejaculation for five times as long, according to a study in the February issue of the urology journal BJU International.
Researchers from the UK and Netherlands studied 54 men with premature ejaculation, randomly assigning them to a treatment and control group. Both groups reported that without any therapy they normally ejaculated an average of one…
clock | January 22, 2007Adjust your sleep number for the best performance! Or, what does your sleep number say about your performance?
clock | January 12, 2007In a time-crunch like this, one can always count on Buzz Skyline to save the day.....
purepedantry | January 11, 2007Ouch. I know I am going to catch hell for posting this, but it is too interesting to pass up. Devendra Singh from UT performed a search of British literature from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. The only consistently reported good bodily feature on women was a narrow waist:
A team in the United States surveyed accounts of female beauty in British literature from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and found that the only feature that consistently got authors' pulses racing was a slender midriff.
"The waist does not sound an intuitively sexy body part,"…
purepedantry | January 10, 2007It's all about the serotonin:
In a relatively small study, 68 young men and women were surveyed about recent headaches and sexual desire.
Migraine sufferers reported levels of sexual desire 20 percent higher than those suffering from tension headaches.
Overall, men in the study reported levels of sexual desire that were 24 percent higher than women. But women with migraines had levels of sexual desire similar to men with mere tension headaches.
...
Sexual desire and migraine headache have both previously been linked to levels of serotonin, a brain chemical that also plays a role in depression…
omnibrain | January 9, 2007Ohh boy...here we go. From the New Scientist Blog:
An ongoing US experiment to turn "homosexual" rams straight by altering their hormone levels has sparked the ire of both gay activists and animal rights groups. The work is reportedly being carried out at Oregon State University in the city of Corvallis and at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
I can imagine what groups like Love in action are going to do when they get their hands on this. From wikipedia (this article also highlights other groups like this):
Love in Action, or LIA, was founded in 1973 by John Evans and the…
revere | December 21, 2006Americans have never been good at saving. Especially, "saving themselves for marriage."
Almost all Americans have sex before marrying, according to premarital sex research that shows such behavior is the norm in the U.S. and has been for the past 50 years.
The new study shows that by age 20, 75% of Americans have had premarital sex. That number rises to 95% by age 44.
Even among those who abstained from sex until 20 or beyond, 81% have had premarital sex by 44, the survey shows. (WebMD Medical News)
The data come from four cycles of the National Survey of Family Growth, done between 1982 and…
clock | December 20, 2006The 29th Carnival of Feminists is up on The imponderabilia of actual life containing posts by several of my favourite bloggers, including Zuska who has her own pick of favourites there.
Speaking of Zuska, she also has a cool article in the inaugural issue of the new science-culture Inkling Magazine, the brainchild of the magnificent blogging Trio Fantasticus of Inkycircus.
And while we are on the topic, Razib exhibits a complete lack of sense of irony, i.e., the inability to see sarcasm and seeing seriousness instead.