How Women Got Their Curves and Other Evolutionary Enigmas
Chapter 5: The Enigmatic Orgasm
It used to be conventional wisdom among biologists that human beings are unique in experiencing female orgasm, but no longer. Nonetheless, female orgasm remains both a marvelous phenomenon and a contentious, unsolved mystery among evolutionary biologists. Given the longstanding and widespread sexual repression of women in both Western and Eastern societies, it is not surprising that only recently has anorgasmia (failure to experience orgasm) been identified and treated. Nonetheless, the real biological mystery isn’t why some women don’t climax, but why some do….
An explanation.
Here are Hrdy’s own words: “It is possible that as in baboons and chimps the pleasurable sensations of sexual climax once functioned to condition females to seek sustained clitoral stimulation by mating with successive partners, one right after the other, and that orgasms have since become secondarily enlisted by humans to serve other ends (such as enhancing pair-bonds).”
(via marginal revolution)
In retrospect
You know that someone who wants to talk about why you don’t come around much anymore and ends the conversation with ‘you have the world’s ugliest dog’ isn’t someone you need to feel an obligation to.
from the spam
Then who could ride some monster noise and them off tail into anything blub bloop all came can enter walking three any reason golden tree his simple feel about would succeed some monster dragon slayer making the their two could step.
from the spam
Lily started any moment was disappointment snakes lifted are another destroyed fantasy city tilted vertically doorway slanted would that real child.
Cooking yer books
Ok, they’re calling it an espresso book machine because it prints up a whole entire book in minutes, but you know, it’s hot when it comes out. Yum. It launched on Friday at Blackwells on Charing Cross Road, and it is expected to revolutionise bookselling. The people who made the machine are hoping this means that ‘out of print’ will soon become a meaningless term. It is called The Espresso. The biggest revolution in publishing since Gutenberg, they say. It seems like a good idea.
“This could change bookselling fundamentally,” said Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings. “It’s giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon … I like to think of it as the revitalisation of the local bookshop industry. If you could walk into a local bookshop and have access to one million titles, that’s pretty compelling.”
“What to Loll In” | Robert Benchley
[Collected in My Ten Years in a Quandary, and How They Grew. Collection first published 1936. Via Project Gutenberg Australia and very likely a violation of copyright. Go and buy the book.]
The problem of what to wear while lolling about the house on a
hot Sunday afternoon is becoming more and more acute as the
fashions in lolling garments change. The American home is in
danger of taking on the appearance of an Oriental bordello.
Lolling
A first crude attempt at putting it all together:
drop that weapon you will
The Strathclyde Police have the Force on their side:
A spokeswoman for Strathclyde Police confirmed: “At the time of the request, 10 (eight police officers and two police staff) had recorded their religion as Jedi.”
From the Church of Jediism website:
Religions base their faith on holy texts such as the bible and the Koran to name only two, but we base our faith on the impartial and highly accessible stories George Lucas has brought to us in both film and book. We obtain this information and rather than creating strict rules to live by we take it as a guide to living a better and more worthwhile life.
Sakura Gourock
cherry trees in the center of Gourock
Today in a Parking Ramp at Houston’s
We saw a woman facing away from us putting a baby in an SUV seat. I first noticed her turquoise boots stitched in what I would call a vague colorful navajo motif. Rising from the top of the boots, knee hose, I remember them being red or orange they had a dark band at the top. A mid-thigh khaki (micro-fiber?) skirt that I believe the lace edge of the slip she wore, intentionally I believe, to be seen hanging below the hem of. I can’t tell you about her blouse because over her shoulders she wore a capelet of eye-catching unbelievability. It appeared to be a loose net macrame construction, quite conceivably made by the hand of the wearer. The cord must have been as big around as my little finger. The diamonds created by the cords draped off the shoulders to the level of her shoulder-blades and the points each ended in a knotted and frayed cord, creating a tassle of a size which could easily have stood the scale of fourteen-foot velvet draperies in the palace of Versailles. Mind you I took all this in in a nano-second, I could have a detail or two wrong.
Danny leaned into me, “There’s a look.” he said.
I replied, “Avant Turde.”
One of the most
beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard is Krishna Das’s “Sita’s Prayer/Hey Mata Durga” from the record Door of Faith. I couldn’t find a full-length version on YouTube, but here’s where you can listen to a snippet. And hey, you can buy the whole 11 minute thing for 99 cents. As for devotional music, it may even edge out “Ave Maria” for me.
Queenie’s In Trouble
(Via Designer Jots)
Goats and Sheep (Sheep and Goats)
iPhone photos: Phil Bebbington. Goats and sheep.
Lassithi Plateau, Crete (Οροπέδιο Λασιθίου, Κρήτη).
“Lassithi goats and sheep.” (Transmitted 1:23 PM CDT.)
Read more
Y’all seen this?
There are so many ways this is incredibly appalling, not least of which is the failure to understand basic grammar.
psychology today
After a week’s-worth of revelations about the U.S. torture program, have people changed their minds?
Nope.
Isn’t that odd?
Well, not if you know the story of Marian Keech. In the early 1950s, Keech, a Chicago housewife, started receiving mysterious messages from extraterrestrials, telling her that the world would be destroyed by a giant flood on December 21, 1954. However, by having faith in God, she and her 11 followers would be saved by a UFO. As you may recall from history class, the world was, in fact, not destroyed in a giant flood on December 21, 1954. So, what happened to the beliefs of the “Seekers” (as Ketch’s cult called itself)? Well, two members did leave when the prophesy went blatantly unfulfilled. But something strange happened with the rest: Their beliefs were actually strengthened. These people, after all, had made a significant investment in Keech’s being a prophet. Some had quit their jobs, sold their houses, given away their possessions. When 4:45 a.m. rolled around, with no UFO and no flood, Keech said she had a new revelation: God had spared the world because of the Seekers’ faith. Seekers poured into the streets, elated, grabbing passers by and trying to convert them. Soon after, the once-publicity-shy group started sending out press releases seeking to proselytize new believers.
(via andrew sullivan)
the lonely prankster
(via buzzfeed)
The State of Oklahoma and Flaming Lips
Oklahoma legislators voted against making the Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize??” the official state rock song, but the Governor intervened.
Most state House members voted for a resolution recognizing 2002′s “Do You Realize??,” but conservatives who said they were offended by the band’s clothing and language mustered enough votes to keep it from being adopted.
“Me, I just say look, it’s a little minority of some small-minded religious wackos who think they can tell people what kind of T-shirts and what kind of music they can listen to, and the smart, rational, reasonable people of Oklahoma are never going to buy into that,” frontman Wayne Coyne told Tulsa World in an interview Friday.
Gov. Brad Henry resolved the issue by announcing he would sign an executive order proclaiming “Do You Realize??” the official rock song of Oklahoma. The song earned more than half of the 21,000 votes cast in an online contest.
A lip flap?
Roky: “I Walked
with a Zombie“–a fine song.
(Lucy, when you and I record this for our album, I’ll sing “I walked with a werewolf” while you sing “–zombie”.)
Make Something Cool Everyday Every Day
Click the picture for more. (via thinksmith)
Twine Time
Alvin Cash and the Crawlers.
On account of Deron asked but then it got to be closing time.
Dear Clusterflock
Could you be friends with a mouth breather?
UPDATE: Apparently, nobody has heard of this song. Sheesh.
I’m calling this
study in shadows Don’t Slander Me Nil. I hope Roky doesn’t mind.
Song
David Wright on the human voice:
But I also knew that my individual voice mattered. I had to stay on pitch, to sing in rhythm, and, most importantly, to listen. Singing in parts helped me to learned what poet Jean Janzen calls “the world’s secret . . . to enter and be close, yet separate.”
I hear this secret not only in traditional choral or church music. The high harmonies of Appalachian folk songs, the guttural loveliness of Tuvan throat singers, the call and response of the Jewish cantor or Muslim Imam, these also show what it is like to sing in relation to others, to have bare human voices responding to each other in time.
Ye gods, do I love singing.
Doshi Levien — My Beautiful Backside
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this before, but I fucking love this couch.
dear clusterflock
What time is it where you are?
