Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘science’ Category

Need a long schlong for your dong sarong?

Posted in Health, science, Sex, tagged , on April 22, 2009| 8 Comments »

I’ve had about enough of the blah blah on the UN’s Racist on Parade Fiasco. Even though taking that group to task is a favored topic, I do have others.

Penises, for example.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the favorite appendage of males came up here … on the blog, I mean … and, golly gee! here it comes again.

Today’s ejaculatory comment … that would be the “golly gee!” … is inspired by this tasty little tidbit from the BBC titled: Condoms ‘too big’ for Indian men.

Not big as in so-popular-they-just-can’t-get-enough, but rather big as in are-you-happy-to-see-me-or-is-that-a-derringer-in-your-pocket.

A survey of more than 1,000 men in India has concluded that condoms made according to international sizes are too large for a majority of Indian men.

The study found that more than half of the men measured had penises that were shorter than international standards for condoms.

Hmmmm. Where to begin …

Okay … here’s a thought … I wonder how many of those 1,000 men are admitting to being part of the survey, and can’t help but go down the road of imagining how it was conducted.

Were these guys simply asked, “Hey, Dude, how long is your schlong?”, or was there actual measuring involved … and if so, under what conditions? (I’m guessing there’d be no problem lining up volunteers if it was made clear that the only accurate readings involved some fluffing.)

Now that that’s out of my system, spending a few lines on the very real problems ill-fitting condoms cause sounds like the right thing to do since India has the highest number of new HIV infections in the world at the moment and an incredibly high birth rate. WIth a good part of the reasons being that one in five of the things used in that country either tear or fall off, giving men the latte grande mug instead of the espresso thimble isn’t doing anyone any favors.

There are options, but …

“Smaller condoms are on sale in India. But there is a lack of awareness that different sizes are available. There is anxiety talking about the issue. And normally one feels shy to go to a chemist’s shop and ask for a smaller size condom.”

And that’s about the size of it in a nutshell. Not only does there need to be concern about protection from STDs and unwanted pregnancies, there’s that ever-so-delicate ego that needs covering, too, and it seems that might be the bigger motivation when hitting the johnny shop.

Guys! Guys! I’ve done a study myself and am here to tell you that it really ain’t the meat, but the motion … well, the motion including all the extras. (An, no, I will not be releasing info on those who stepped up to take part in my survey, although I will reveal that they were pretty close to unanimous on the “what it really takes to rock my boat and keep it floating” answers.)

That, guys, is the meat of the matter, not the version given by a dude who used to be an editor for an Indian men’s mag who said …

“It’s not size, it’s what you do with it that matters,” he said. “From our population, the evidence is Indians are doing pretty well.

If “what you do with it” is simply passing along a packet of genetic material, that’s one thing … hey! you can phone that in … but it seems to be missing the point completely, since knocking someone up and curling a girl’s toes are far too often two different things.

And if it’s not the toe-curling bit that men fret about, why the big deal about a little deal?

I know some people are making a fortune off the “add a foot to your dick” ads that spam the world, but for most of us girls, that just doesn’t conjure any image we find stimulating.

It must be a guy thing …

Anyone else wonder how much peeking goes really on in the gents?

Read Full Post »

A world without men? Check out the ants …

Posted in science, Sex on April 15, 2009| 6 Comments »

Back before Amazon was synonymous with online shopping, the word meant Girl Power writ big … please forego the temptation to put “shopping” and “girl power” together … where more than one breast was superfluous to need and women ran the show.

Turns out that on a tiny level this is still the case.

As this from today’s news reports, Amazonian ants have figured out that they don’t need any representatives of the male gender in their world.

No opposite sex, no sex.

There are advantages to life without sex, as Dr Himler explained.

“It avoids the energetic cost of producing males, and doubles the number of reproductive females produced each generation from 50% to 100% of the offspring.”

Don’t get me wrong here … I adore men, and sex is in the top one of my favorite recreational pastimes, but … lordy, lordy! … is there an “energetic cost”.

At the moment, I am up so steeped in male-induced drama and trauma from every direction … mine and that of so many friends … that the thought of an Amazonian world has some appeal.

There does seem to be a shift in this direction outside of antdom, as well, with songs like “I Kissed a Girl And I Liked It” sounding almost anthem-like as more women I know follow a trend to throw their hands up in horror at the thought of plighting their trough alongside that of some dude.

Our biological imperative may keep dangling an engorged carrot in front of us, but ending up with the shit end of the stick has taken a toll, so the lifestyle of Mycocepurus smithii … female ants cultivating asexually produced fungi farms … has a certain symmetry to it.

Imagining a world without men does make me sad when I think of missing out on all the guitar I get these days, that whiff of testosterone on the breeze I find so refreshing, the silhouette of shoulders, beefy hugs and such, but if I could take all the energy I have put into keeping those of the male gender in my life either happy or unhappy, depending on the agenda, and put it to other uses I could have cranked out as many novels as Tom Clancy, built a palace out of popsicle sticks, hiked the Atlas Mountains and cured the common cold.

What the hell, though. I have to admit to myself that ant Amazona is not my Utopia. I could no more live without men than I could survive on mushrooms.

Doomed. Doomed, I say …

Read Full Post »

An Easter Gift

Posted in Hopeful thoughts, science, Smarten up on April 13, 2009| 3 Comments »

Way back when, when my big kids were little, I opted out of the whole Bunny thing at Easter. The late-night visitor at our house ladened with chocolate was, instead, the Easter Ape.

Working as I did at the time with various non-human primates that charmed me daily … and even being peed at and threatened repeatedly by one perpetually pissed off Golden Bellied Mangaby (RIP, Pinot) didn’t tarnish the experience … certainly put the color in my jellybeans, so the substitution made perfect sense.

After all, an orang utan nest looks much more like the contents of an Easter basket than anything a rabbit would leave behind.

Imagine my delight, then, when this story popped up at the tail end of my Easter weekend!

A hitherto unknown population of orangutans numbering perhaps 1-2,000 has been found on the island of Borneo, conservation researchers say.

What a gift!

Not that 1,200 individuals will be enough to resurrect an entire species from the threat of extinction, but if this population is genetically diverse, it sure won’t hurt.

Finding more than 200 night nests in a few kilometers of forest has researchers speculating that this might be, ” … a kind of orangutan refugee camp – with several groups moving into the same area following widespread forest fires.”

That is not only worrying, but extremely interesting, as orangs are solitary living beings by nature and any version of communal congregating is very unusual outside the captive population that is forced to adjust to constant proximity of others.

This says a lot about the adaptability of these great apes. If, indeed, it is the case that in times of habitat loss and the tremendous stress that creates orang utans are able to forgo their reclusive wanderings, gather together and coexist in a self-made “community” without artificial prompts like reintroduction of captives into the population or feeding stations, their resourcefulness should be noted and admired.

Now, if the humans around will just leave them alone, stop destroying the forests for the environmental and eventual economic nightmare of monoculture and develop at least a fraction of the good sense the apes have … well, I for one will be happy to leave Easter to the rabbits.

Read Full Post »

Filling Blind Spots With Vision

Posted in Health, Hopeful thoughts, science on April 11, 2009| 1 Comment »

This story from the BBC about eyes caught mine today.

Partially sighted and registered blind people can be taught to read and see faces again using the undamaged parts of their eyes, say experts.

Very interesting, especially to me since every eye examination I have reveals to yet another eye guy that I have a “blind spot” in my macula.

This isn’t anything I notice on a day-to-day basis, but under the conditions of the examination it becomes glaringly apparent … a honkin’ big hole in the screen on which my vision is projected.

No idea if I was born this way or sustained some injury I don’t recall, but I have, apparently, lived with this defect for a very long time.

As the BBC article points out, compensation occurs … the brain fills in the gap to the point that I perceive nothing of what I don’t see, or, as the title puts it: Eye ‘compensates for blind spot’.

Now … if this could just translate from literal blind spots to those more figurative.

I know I have a few, and although I’m happy enough with the blind spots I have when it comes to my kids, I could use some blending of the edges in other areas.
How convenient would it be if my brain could fill in the gaps I don’t quite grasp?

Math has always been an issue for me no matter how much time and effort I’ve focused toward getting a handle on formulas and equations and such, and it would be a big help if the bit of my head that doesn’t see the connections could have some other bit take up the slack.

Taking this a step further, I’m thinking the world would be a better place if, as with vision, compassion deficits … blind spots in tolerance … got the same treatment.

Imagine if this amazing biology we’re evolving were to develop a capacity to fill emptiness with empathy and apathy with appreciation.

Read Full Post »

PP Reader Survey … Inquiring mind wants to know

Posted in Adoption, American thoughts, Cambodia, Celebrities, Entitled to opinions, Family, Fun, Health, I wanna, Island life, love, Music I like, My Chinese Checkered Past, Older women, science, Sex, Seychelles, Writing for a living, Writing for fun on April 9, 2009| 5 Comments »

Please click here to fill out a few little boxes that may lead me out of some of my cluelessness …

Read Full Post »

Throw a girl a bone … ?

Posted in love, science, Sex on April 8, 2009| 7 Comments »

Anyone in doubt about the close relationship between chimpanzees and humans need only take a look at this bit of the BBC.

Chimpanzees enter into “deals” whereby they exchange meat for sex, according to researchers.

“By sharing [meat], the males increase the number of times they mate, and the females increase their intake of calories,” said Dr Gomes.

“What’s amazing is that if a male shares with a particular female, he doubles the number of times he copulates with her, which is likely to increase the probability of fertilising that female.”

Having observed chimps up close and personal for years, this comes as no surprise to me.

Many behaviors, including what could be called dating rituals, run obvious parallels between humans and chimps, so offerings akin to “Wanna join me for dinner, Babe?” are no less expected than clever innovations that make life easier or rival gang warfare.

For all our self-aggrandizment, our inclination to think ourselves smooth and sophisticated, lofty, above the baser instincts of “lesser” animals, when it comes down to it, we, too, are all about sex.

Not that we’re any more aware of what drives us than are the chimps … after all they, too, may attribute more to their motivation than a simple poke in the bush … but when push comes to shove, so much of our need to be loved, our desire for the perfect partner, even our facebook flirting facryinoutloud, arises from ancient genetic coding that hardwires us.

Basically it boils down to males needing to pass along their genetic material and females needing get something out of the deal that will allow them to reproduce; the rest is fluff.

Hail to the fluff, though, heh? A glass of Merlot is a nice touch …

By the way, the average copulation time for a male chimp is around 29 seconds, so the premature ejaculation issue I wrote about yesterday doesn’t seem to translate species to species. (Females are known to go 40 to 50 times a day, though, but they do save it up all month … )

Male orang utans, however, copulate much longer, even up to an hour or more. An aside: orang utans are only one of two primates that rape; humans being the other.

Read Full Post »

Sex: a “sensitive” topic

Posted in Fun, Health, science on April 7, 2009| 5 Comments »

I’m going to limp into this post, because although I should soft pedal my reaction, it’s hard to penetrate the sheath that protects my annoyance, even with a shaft of acknowledgment … a nod of the head, so to speak … toward a need to sit up and take notice of what, for some, is a thorny issue.

It’s this piece from the BBC that has me juiced up today about …

A spray [that] can help men with premature ejaculation problems prolong the length of time they have sex by six times …

… The spray, developed at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, contains local anaesthetics that numb the penis.

Okay, okay … premature ejaculation is a problem for some men. I’m sure it has all sorts of negative impacts, and I don’t mean to belittle those, but I can’t help but hear strains of “SIX TIMES AS LONG … BWAH!!!!!” coming from guys who would be just as thrilled if it was size, not time, on offer, or, even better, both.

Sorry, but this seems to be more a guy thing than a couples thing.

It’s been reported that a “premature ejaculation gene” has been found, so apparently the apparatus delivers the goods regardless the duration. (And I won’t even venture toward the part of the story that has this research conducted in Ireland … a country where women have for centuries been popping out babies every 10 months or so … )

Quite frankly … and, girls, please tell me if I’m wrong on this … there are SO many ways to compensate for for limited thrusting time, and none that I know of get complaints.

Get with the program, doods. In this age of Viagra, more sensitization, rather than less, would be more climactic.

Read Full Post »

Brave New Pants?

Posted in science on April 2, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been thinking about the new invention I wrote about yesterday, the wearable version of emoticons that will allow moviegoers to experience the physical manifestations of what’s happening on screen, and although the idea of sitting through a steamy flick while Brad Pitt stokes a fire that kindles in a special pair of emotipants does sound like a kick in the knickers, I have thoughts.

Spending as much time online as I do, I am often put in mind of Aldous Huxley’s fears of the future world … that at some point there would so much information that humanity would drown in a sea of irrelevance.

Social networks like facebook could easily be renamed “Sea of Irrelevance”, and although the value of ease of access between loved ones, international communication and “friend” morphing from noun to verb … and I do like the active application of the word … the shift from the search for intelligent life to seeking a personality to call one’s own feels like a scaling back of grand goals and the sinking of a noble vessel.

“Brave New World” was Huxley’s 1931 version of the time we now approach rapidly, and contemplating his foresight in an interesting use of time.

I would love to see some recent stats on time spent in the company of a good book these days, and how far, after all, is cyber sex, the pastime of more people than I choose to contemplate often, from the soma vacation orgies of The World State?

With “company” available instantly, are we, like the citizens of Huxley’s version, being conditioned to eschew alone time?

There’s no doubt that his emphasis on consuming consumerism is a fait accompli … a reality that is doing some butt-biting these days.

Don’t get me wrong … I’m not saying that I wouldn’t give the Hot Pants a spin from time to time, but I would think twice before wearing them to bed every night, no matter the collection of movies on the receiving end of my remote.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts