Have any questions or comments related to class or otherwise? If so, fire away.
Students take on Michele Bachmann.
Women rank rock climbing sexiest sport.
in Attraction
From Matador Sports:
A study by a University of Hertfordshire professor suggests that women are especially attracted to men who rock climb.
Working with fitness expert Sam Murphy, Prof. Richard Wiseman polled over 6,000 people to find out which of 15 sports they thought would make a member of the opposite sex more attractive. Climbing topped the list for women with 57%, edging out extreme sports, soccer, and hiking.
I can’t say I’m surprised. Climbing is just a sexy sport in and of itself. It’s adventurous, acrobatic, and takes place in some of the most beautiful spots in nature. Climbers themselves tend to be trim, muscular, extremely flexible people with a penchant for taking their shirts off. Who wouldn’t want that?
Men, apparently. Among the survey’s male participants, climbing didn’t even make it to the top five. Men overwhelmingly picked aerobics (70%) as the sexiest activity, followed by yoga/pilates, going to the gym, and running.
On his site, Wiseman offer a possible explanation for the gender gap:
Women’s choices appear to reflect the type of psychological qualities that they find attractive – such as bravery and a willingness to take on challenges – whilst men are more shallow, looking for a woman who is physically fit but not challenging their ego by being overly strong.
Read the rest here.
Any other nominees?
Insult to sex, or golf?
From Science Daily:
Sex No More Strenuous Than Golf, Expert Says
ScienceDaily (Jan. 23, 2012) — Good news for heart disease and stroke patients: For most patients, it's probably safe to have sex. "For a patient who has sex with a familiar partner in a familiar setting, sexual activity generally is safe and no more strenuous than golf," said Loyola University Health System cardiologist Dr. John Moran.
Moran concurs with a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association, which says that men and women with stable cardiovascular disease and no or minimal symptoms during routine activities can engage in sexual activity.
Loyola stroke specialist Dr. José Biller said that resuming sexual activity and intimacy is important both to patients and to their partners.
"Enhanced communication and post-stroke sexual education are paramount to a healthy, ongoing relationship," Biller said.
Wedding Crashers on aphrodisiacs.
Passed along by Laura (thanks!). NSFW language:
Tubecrush: man ogling.
From The New York Times:
One More Thing Goes to the Web: Subway Ogling By Austin Considine
As a personal trainer, Ed Norman knows he has good biceps. But he didn’t realize they had their own secret admirers until he rode the London Underground earlier this year.
Thanks to a Web-trawling friend, Mr. Norman, 27, learned that his photo had been taken surreptitiously on the Underground and posted on a new Web site, TubeCrush.net, under the title “Popeye Guns!” There he was (“Popeye”) in a black T-shirt with bulging arm muscles, reading a newspaper.
Mr. Norman, who lives and works in London, was checking e-mail in bed with his girlfriend when he got the flattering news. “I think she was a little more freaked out about it than I was,” he said.
Equal parts photo blog, personal ad and online stalking tool, TubeCrush was started in London last spring as a place for Underground riders to upload and share photos of men on the train who caught their eye. (Yes, only men.)
Stephen Motion, 30, a sales manager, said he and his roommates started the site for fun. Within a few months, the press had seized on it, and the site was receiving thousands of unique visits daily.
The natural next step was New York. In July, they announced that they had created an M.T.A. version, SubwayCrush.net. Mr. Motion said it has 4,000 to 28,000 unique visits a day. Next year, the founders plan to add photos of women and a means for crushes to independently connect with admirers.
In some ways, the TubeCrush concept is the 21st-century incarnation of a lost variety of printed personal ad, in which people wrote seeking connection with that attractive regular at the bus stop or cafe. In 2000, Craigslist introduced its own free version, called Missed Connections, and it was only a matter of time before photos entered the mix, the perfection of the camera phone having made stealth photography especially easy. To unsuspecting subjects, an admiring photographer is as likely to be checking e-mail as snapping a shutter.Read the rest of the article here.
And a sample:
tubecrush
Date: 16th January 2012
Line: Northern
Submitted by: MotioS
This crush’ee certainly is one for those tall, dark and handsome admirers. He looks a little startled as he realises his picture is being taken! Either that or he is chuckling at a comedy podcast of Michael McIntyre. Which do you think it is? Hmmm
Thursday mail - January 26.
Have any questions or comments related to class or otherwise? If so, fire away.
The Pope: Gay marriage a threat to humanity.
From Reuters:
Pope Benedict said Monday that gay marriage was one of several threats to the traditional family that undermined "the future of humanity itself."
The pope made some of his strongest comments against gay marriage in a new year address to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican in which he touched on some economic and social issues facing the world today.
He told diplomats from nearly 180 countries that the education of children needed proper "settings" and that "pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman."
"This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself," he said.
The Vatican and Catholic officials around the world have protested against moves to legalize gay marriage in Europe and other developed parts of the world.
One leading opponent of gay marriage in the United States is New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, whom the pope will elevate to cardinal next month.
Dolan fought against gay marriage before it became legal in New York state last June, and in September he sent a letter to President Barack Obama criticizing his administration's decision not to support a federal ban on gay marriage.
In that letter Dolan, who holds the powerful post of president of the U.S. Bishops Conference, said such a policy could "precipitate a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions."
The Roman Catholic Church, which has some 1.3 billion members worldwide, teaches that while homosexual tendencies are not sinful, homosexual acts are, and that children should grow up in a traditional family with a mother and a father.
Read more here.
The clitoris, in 3D.
Thanks for passing it along Lisa! From Loose Garments:
Yes – that is what a clitoris looks like. And we were finally able to create a 3D model of the erect clitoris using magnetic resonance imaging 3 years ago in 2009!! Even though we know almost every detail of the male penis, the clitoris has always remained more of a mystery. I suppose you could chalk this up to both to the fact that our sexual organs are more internal and thus harder to observe, and the fact that most scientific and medical fields are male dominated. But what helped bring about the better understanding of the internal clitoral structure was the advent of MRI machines, which allow us to perfectly model structures within the body.
New paper on clitoral location and orgasm during intercourse.
Image courtesy of Danielle Corsetto at Girls with Slingshots.
Originally posted back in February, 2011:
Drs. Kim Wallen and Elisabeth Lloyd have reanalyzed some old data and found support for the idea that the closer a woman's clitoris is to her vaginal entrance, the more likely she is to experience orgasm from intercourse alone. This adds to the controversy about the nature of women's orgasms, and whether or not vaginal and clitoral orgasms are the same.
From the abstract:
In men and women sexual arousal culminates in orgasm, with female orgasm solely from sexual intercourse often regarded as a unique feature of human sexuality. However, orgasm from sexual intercourse occurs more reliably in men than in women, likely reflecting the different types of physical stimulation men and women require for orgasm. In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity. The proximal mechanisms producing variability in women's orgasms are little understood. In 1924 Marie Bonaparte proposed that a shorter distance between a woman's clitoris and her urethral meatus (CUMD) increased her likelihood of experiencing orgasm in intercourse. She based this on her published data that were never statistically analyzed. In 1940 Landis and colleagues published similar data suggesting the same relationship, but these data too were never fully analyzed. We analyzed raw data from these two studies and found that both demonstrate a strong inverse relationship between CUMD and orgasm during intercourse. Unresolved is whether this increased likelihood of orgasm with shorter CUMD reflects increased penile-clitoral contact during sexual intercourse or increased penile stimulation of internal aspects of the clitoris. CUMD likely reflects prenatal androgen exposure, with higher androgen levels producing larger distances. Thus these results suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during sexual intercourse.
Dr. Wallen provided some more commentary to explain what he believes in going on:
As I speculate in the paper, I suspect that the relationship between short CUMD and orgasm is not the result of moving the clitoral glans closer to the vaginal opening. In some cases it might be the case that there is increased penile-clitoral glans contact, but it may be that smaller CUMD is a proxy for the internal portion of the clitoris being forced in closer proximity to the vagina. Alternatively, or maybe in combination, smaller CUMD may be a proxy for a more diffuse clitoral eroticism. I suggest that prenatal androgen not only produces a rostral migration of the genital tubercle, but also focuses genital eroticism to a small area of the penis, primarily the area around the frenulum. Evidence from women suggests that their genital eroticism is spread over a larger area than in men. Possibly one of the effects of androgen exposure is to concentrate erotic sensation in a small area of the clitoris. Thus women exposed to higher levels of prenatal androgen have a longer CUMD and have more punctuate clitoral arousal, centered on the clitoral glans. There is a lot of research that needs to be done, but I suspect that the effects of androgens on genital differentiation are more than simply determining the final location of the genital tubercle derivatives.
He also sent along the paper, for those who are interested: download here.
More Damn You, Auto Corrects!
in Humour Etc.
Dubious sex education program suspended in Surrey.
From CTV, via Options for Sexual Health:
Volunteers at a Surrey Christian charity are warning women about risks of abortion that may be common in back-alley operations but are rare in modern Canadian clinics, a CTV News hidden camera investigation has revealed.
Warnings of catastrophically scarred uteruses that would leave a woman infertile are not realistic in a legal abortion, doctors say, but that was one of the risks discussed with a volunteer counsellor at the South Fraser Pregnancy Options Centre.
"Thankfully that's a rare condition in Canada in modern times," medical ethicist Dr. Dan Reilly told CTV News in an interview where the footage was discussed. "It's something you would see more in a place where abortions are being done not in a medical setting."
The Crisis Pregnancy Centre in Vancouver and the Surrey Pregnancy Options Centre in Surrey are both affiliated with the Canadian Association of Pregnancy Support Services, which operates about 80 such centres in Canada, serving an estimated 6,800 people a year.
But some providers of sexual health services have expressed concerns that these centres aren't giving women the full story.
To learn more about the advice offered by the charity, CTV News sent staff member Sheila with a hidden camera to the Christian group's centres in B.C.'s two biggest cities to pose as a pregnant woman in her first trimester with some questions.
During her two visits, Sheila heard that abortion is associated with risks ranging from breast cancer to depression to fetal body parts forgotten inside the womb.
Read the rest of the article here.
You can watch the CTV hidden camera investigation here: part 1 - part 2.
The program has since been suspended. Read about it here.
What girls and guys think about during sex.
NSFW language!
The Kinsey scale.
Passed along by Brendan (thanks!).
Another woman with two vaginas.
I've posted about a woman with two vaginas (more accurately, two vaginas, uteri and cervixes) previously: post here. Brendan (thanks!) shared a link about another woman with the same condition (uterus didelphys). The story made news as she turned down an offer by Vivid Entertainment to star in a porn for $1 million. From The Mail Online:
'I would never consider doing it in a million years': Woman with two vaginas rejects $1million offer to make adult film
A woman with two vaginas who has captured the attention of the porn industry has said she would never consider accepting any role in a film.
Hazel Jones appeared on TV earlier this week, where she revealed she was diagnosed with 'uterus didelphys' - a condition which means she has two wombs and two cervixes.
The 27-year-old has since been approached by Vivid Entertainment, a U.S. adult film production company.
But the horrified blonde, from High Wycombe, claims she would turned down any deal.
According to This Morning, she said: 'I have never received any offers of this kind of work nor would I never consider doing it in a million years.
'I just want to be left alone.'Read the rest of the article here.
And the clip:
Slut shaming.
This locally-made video has gone viral, culminating with an appearance on Anderson Cooper's show:
High tech thermometer.
Passed along by Oscar (thanks!):
Jizz in My Pants.
in Orgasm, Humour Etc.
A classic, courtesy of Lonely Island (Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone):
Thursday mail - January 19.
Have any questions or comments related to class or otherwise? If so, fire away.
Sex myths, explained.
in Humour Etc.
From Cracked, passed along by Jenna (thanks!):
#6. Beer Goggles
Science Shows...
As it happens, beer goggles are a real live scientific phenomenon. Scientists tested a group of 84 British students with some lime-flavored drinks. Some of those drinks were non-alcoholic, some were spiked with vodka to get the subject good and sauced. We like to think they served these drinks in beakers and graduated cylinders, in true nerd fashion.
In a laboratory simulation of 'cruising for chicks on Facebook after downing a six pack,' the scientists showed the college students photos of both males and females and had students play the scientific method's first documented instance of would you rather. What they discovered was that the students with the spiked drinks found the people in the photos more attractive--even the heterosexual students looking at people of their own gender.
The other 5 myths are discussed here.