The National Relationships Board

I recall being in a big city law library years ago and seeing four freshly-minted and most attractive young female lawyers. It was a Friday afternoon and I asked what wild and woolly plans they had for the weekend. They said, “nothing much.”

Nothing much?? No dates? No being taken out to restaurants and movies? No romantic weekends somewhere, far away from the drudgery of the law?

The general consensus among that sad little group of young ladies was that guys of their vintage were either intimidated by intelligent successful women or their tastes drifted toward the ‘easier and skankier’ members of their sisterhood. Guys their age tended to follow the path of least resistance, both intellectually and sexually.

(Why is she working Friday night instead of going on a date??)

I was agog and aghast. This situation, rather widespread according to that mopey little gaggle of girls, could not be allowed to continue. It was an outrage. An affront to common decency. Steps of some sort needed to be taken.

The need for Big Brother to step in and take things firmly in hand was obvious. Thus, the idea for “The Board” was born.

I have long believed that there should be some kind of government tribunal… The National Relationships Board or The Federal Dating Tribunal… something along those lines.

Guys… and by this I mean otherwise decent, appropriate and eligible young men [1]… would be hauled up before the panel to account for themselves as to why perfectly lovely, charming girls aren’t being taken out on dates by decent boyfriends who treat them right.

(You got some ‘splainin’ to do, son!)

Very severe penalties would be handed down to those who cannot give good reasons as to why so many gorgeous girls are left standing on the relationship sidelines.

Any guy who could not provide a good excuse (let alone string together a grammatically cogent phrase) would be dealt with in the most severe manner.

The Tribunal’s motto… Pull Up Your Pants; You Look Like an Idiot!

Naturally, I would be head of the tribunal because I see on a daily basis how so many wonderful young ladies are reduced to putting up with rude, crude, thoughtless, heartless, brainless morons. And that’s when they can find guys in the first place!

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[1] There being a glut of inappropriate guys and an apparent dearth of good guys, the Board would concentrate on the latter. As a girl can’t swing a cat without smacking some loser with it, The Board would concentrate on the eligible yet clueless within the pool of available men.

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Why I Miss The South (Part 6): Flirting

I’ve given this a lot of thought and have come to two conclusions.

One: most people don’t know how properly to flirt. This is because…

Two: most people don’t know what flirting is.

Flirting is as complex as it is fundamental.

Flirting is about communicating with a person through a careful procedure that involves a little curiosity, a bit of brevity and laughter, and some meaningful glances and smiles. While it can be aggressive and obvious, I personally put this overt style of flirting in the ‘hitting on someone’ category.

To me, flirting is quiet and subtle. A look that lingers a moment longer than it otherwise would. The tiniest of smiles. The most seemingly innocent double entendre or Freudian slip. A meaningful exchange of glances in reaction to what a third person says. The most subtle of body language. Ideally, only the most observant of bystanders would even know there was any flirting going on at all.

One popular fact that gets tossed around a great deal is that scientists believe there are as many as 52 “flirting signals” used by humans around the world.

I don’t know how or where the scientists picked up such information but speaking strictly for myself the Number One Undisputed Capital of Flirting, bar none, is The South.

There is something about the flirting that goes on south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

Flirting is not merely a skill way down yonder in the land of cotton… it has been elevated, refined and transformed into an Art!

It is through the art of flirtation that people in The South experience the pleasures of interacting with the opposite sex.

Flirting can be a means by which to get into a relationship, of course. It is certainly an enjoyable way to get to know someone initially.

But to me, flirting is an end in and of itself. It doesn’t have to lead anywhere else. To me, flirting is its own reward.

And when flirting with a Southern Girl… the rewards are immeasurable.

It’s been 12 years since I went down to The South. It’s been 12 years since I’ve experienced Flirtation as Art.

Nothing compares. Nothing comes close.

I miss it.

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When Sexual Thoughts Make You Sneeze Uncontrollably

Thanks to the geeks and nerdlings over at United Academics Magazine for this one!

It seems that sex isn’t that fun for all of us. Some men, for example, suffer terrible headaches during and after orgasm that may last for several hours or even a few days. In addition, there are women who are persistently in a state of sexual arousal and as a consequence may have hundreds of orgasms a day, making a normal life impossible.

Maybe less severe but definitely embarrassing is the condition in which sex triggers uncontrollable fits of sneezing. And this may happen not only when experiencing an orgasm, but also whenever someone just thinks about sex.

Researchers who investigated the link are not yet sure why sex and sneezing are linked in some people, but they suspect it is due to a faulty connection in the autonomic nervous system that controls both the sneeze reflex and sexual responses. This mechanism may also account for other reported unusual causes of sneezing, such as exposure to bright light (aka photogenic sneezing).

Although there are few reported cases of the sneeze reflex in response to sexual thoughts and orgasm, the researchers believe the bizarre phenomenon may be more common than expected. Possibly people are embarrassed and don’t want to talk about it, they argue.

“Further investigation in this field may help us to understand the sneeze reflex in more depth, and also allow us to give explanation and reassurance to the possibly significant number of people affected by this curious phenomenon,” the researchers wrote in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

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Lid Blown Off Pervert Penguin Cover-Up!

Sexual Perversion of Penguins Finally Revealed After Nearly a Century of Censorship

Hot chocolate! Finally! The down and dirty goods on that sickest, most sex-addled of creatures… the penguin!!

A study on the sexual habits of penguins with findings so graphic and “perverted” that it remained hidden for nearly 100 years is finally being revealed to the public.

Yes, boys and girls, you heard correctly! After 100 years under wraps, details of depraved sex acts by penguins during a polar exploration mission are finally published.

Curators from the National History Museum in Tring, England, have discovered an old paper written by Dr. George Murray Levick, a surgeon and medical officer who accompanied Captain Robert Scott on an expedition to the Antarctic in 1912, full of shocking revelations of the “astonishing depravity” among Adélie penguins.

(Perverted Adélie Penguin)

Details, including “sexual coercion”, recorded by Dr. Levick were considered so shocking that they were removed from official accounts.

Fortunately for us, a century’s worth of moral decay, depravity and desensitization has readied us for the unvarnished truth!

Let ‘er rip, boys!

Dr. Levick witnessed males attempting to mate with other males and also with dead females, including many who had died the previous year. He also reported that “hooligan males” would often “rape” or sexually coerce females, sexually and physically abuse chicks, occasionally killing them afterwards.

Levick was so horrified and shocked by the findings in his paper, the ‘Sexual Habits of the Adelie Penguin’, that he originally recorded his notes in Greek, and at one point even writing, “There seems to be no crime too low for these penguins.”

On his return to Britain, Mr Levick attempted to publish a paper entitled “the natural history of the adelie penguin”, but according to Douglas Russell, curator of eggs and nests at the Natural History Museum [1], it was too much for the times.

“I just happened to be going through the file on George Murray Levick when I shifted some papers and found underneath them this extraordinary paper which was headed ‘the sexual habits of the adelie penguin, not for publication’ in large black type.

“It’s just full of accounts of sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks, non-procreative sex, and finishes with an account of what he considers homosexual behaviour, and it was fascinating.”

The report and Mr Levick’s handwritten notes are now on display at the Natural History Museum for the first time. Mr Russell believes they show a man who struggled to understand penguins as they really are.

“He’s just completely shocked. He, to a certain extent, falls into the same trap as an awful lot of people in seeing penguins as bipedal birds and seeing them as little people. They’re not. They are birds and should be interpreted as such.”

Scientists now understand the biological reasons for behaviour Dr Levick considered to be “depraved.” Mr Russell said they simply did not have the scientific knowledge at that time to explain Mr Levick’s accounts of penguin behaviour.

Piffle! [2]

That’s just the sort of liberal twaddle one might expect from the head egghead at the Natural History Museum. [3]

The message to us right-thinking members of society is this, plain and simple…

All penguins are rapists, necrophiliacs and child molesters.

Consider yourselves warned!

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[1] This has to be in the running for “World’s Nerdiest Job Title!”

[2] Yes, I said ‘Piffle’ and, by gum, I meant it!

[3] It is a well-known fact that there’s a certain amount of tosh to anything said by someone admitting to being a ‘curator of eggs and nests’ at a natural history museum.

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Neuroscientists Show How Brain Responds to Sensual Caress

Uh huh…

Neuroscientists Show How Brain Responds to Sensual Caress

I can almost hear those little geeks and nerdlings over at ScienceDaily.com giggling over this one.

Try to imagine the grant application for this little bit of research!

(Neuroscientist hard at work on caress response research)

Okay, here it goes…

“A nuzzle of the neck, a stroke of the wrist, a brush of the knee – these caresses often signal a loving touch, but can also feel highly aversive, depending on who is delivering the touch, and to whom. Interested in how the brain makes connections between touch and emotion, neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have discovered that the association begins in the brain’s primary somatosensory cortex, a region that, until now, was thought only to respond to basic touch, not to its emotional quality.

The new finding is described in this week’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“The team measured brain activation while self-identified heterosexual male subjects lay in a functional MRI scanner and were each caressed on the leg under two different conditions. In the first condition, they saw a video of an attractive female bending down to caress them; in the second, they saw a video of a masculine man doing the same thing. The men reported the experience as pleasurable when they thought the touch came from the woman, and aversive when they thought it came from the man. And their brains backed them up: this difference in experience was reflected in the activity measured in each man’s primary somatosensory cortex.”

Alright, alright. That’s quite enough, gentlemen, thank you very much.

Straight guys like being touched by girls and don’t like to be touched by other guys. Thanks for the big breakthrough.

Now get your smutty little overdeveloped minds back to work on synaptic gaps or cerebral cortices or whatever it is that you guys do when you’re not trying to swindle money to pay for your grope sessions!

Honestly! Some people.

I mean really!!

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Read the full ScienceDaily.com article here!

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Are We Attracted To Our Opposite?

They say that opposites attract. That presumes that the attraction is mutual, I suppose.

(The gun totin’ Southern Redneck Good Ole Girl)

I’m not sure that is always, or even often, the case.

(Hitler Youth – more my son’s type than mine, really… but still…)

Take the example some of the kinds of women to whom I am attracted. [1] Now, I am not saying these are the types of women with whom I’ve ever been involved. I just feel drawn to them in some odd way.

(Goth beauty in black lace)

All are fantasies in one way or another. Figments of my imagination, as it were. Just the kind to which I feel a genuine, if somewhat confusing, attraction.

(Vampyre brides)

They are generally strong, somewhat dangerous women who know who they are and are at peace with that. Even comfortable with it.

(Warrior – Ancient)

If that is who they are, what does that say about what I think of myself? A disturbing thought. Are we attracted to characteristics that we lack… or to those we simply admire or value, whether we have them ourselves or not? Are we drawn to those who openly display traits that we choose to keep hidden?

(Warrior -Medieval)

This is not to say I am not also attracted to women who are ‘appropriate’… of course I am. But maybe it is the very inappropriateness of these ‘other types’ that forms part of the attraction. The whole ‘forbidden fruit’ thing. But even the forbidden fruit allusion implies that you can eat of it, if you choose, even though you know you mustn’t.

(Warrior – mix of new and old)

Conspicuously absent from this list are the types you might expect to see. Hollywood glamour types or blonde bombshells or scantily clad floozies with major league yabbahoes, to steal an expression from the movie Animal House. Aside from an initial ‘wow’ response when I first see them, there is no attraction for me. In fact, as a general rule (and as can be seen from the above sampling), I don’t really hold by what most people find ‘beautiful’ or even ‘attractive.’

(Warrior – Modern)

Hmmm… I just noticed that all but one of the women are ‘armed’ in one way or another [2] and that the last three ‘warrior women’ also happen to be vampyres! Bit of a cross-over of types there but… as I said… it can be confusing.

Luckily for me, I’m not the kind of person who revels in pop psychology. It’s a curious thing being drawn to these types of  women and while I don’t mind pointing this little quirk out, I’m not going to be spending an awful lot of thought on it.

 We all have our little idiosyncrasies.  This is one of mine.

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[1] I take it as a given that none of these types would even acknowledge that I am of the same species as they.

[2] The Goth Girl may give off the air of having a dark side, so the potential for harm is there… but not openly so. The others have weapons or, in the case of the Vampyre Brides, fangs and preternatural powers.

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Sex-starved fruit flies driven to drink more alcohol!

Let’s file this under the “Yew jus’ cain’t make this $#!t up!” category, shall we?

Apparently… and I am NOT making this stuff up… sexually deprived male fruit flies exhibit a pattern of behavior that seems ripped from the pages of modern man’s ‘That’s the Story of My Life!’

When female fruit flies reject their sexual advances, the males are driven to excessive alcohol consumption, drinking far more than comparable, sexually satisfied male flies.

(Fruit fly porn! Eeek!!)

It seems that a little molecule is what’s behind this sad and somewhat loserish behaviour.

According to our pals at ScienceDaily.com, a group of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has discovered that a tiny molecule in the fly’s brain called neuropeptide F governs this behavior – as the levels of the molecule change in their brains, the flies’ behavior changes as well.

So… why do we care?

Well, it turns out that the brain mechanisms that make social interaction rewarding for animals and can shed light on those that underlie human addiction. You see, a similar human molecule, called neuropeptide Y, may likewise connect social triggers to behaviors like excessive drinking and drug abuse. Adjusting the levels of neuropeptide Y in people may alter their addictive behavior — which, by the way, is exactly what the UCSF team observed in the fruit flies.

“If neuropeptide Y turns out to be the transducer between the state of the psyche and the drive to abuse alcohol and drugs, one could develop therapies to inhibit neuropeptide Y receptors,” said Ulrike Heberlein, PhD, a Professor of Anatomy and Neurology at UCSF, who led the research.

Clinical trials are underway, she added, to test whether delivery of neuropeptide Y can alleviate anxiety and other mood disorders as well as obesity.

Now the question that intrigued me was, “How did they get a whole bunch of jilted male fruit flies in the first place?”

Piece of cake, it seems!

It appears that despite being floozy as all get out when virgins, pregnant female fruit flies no longer show any interest in male fruit flies. It was just a matter of putting a whole bunch of horny male fruit flies  together with a whole bunch of “talk to the hand” pregnant female fruit flies. The result… sex starved and somewhat depressed male fruit flies.

But the weird thing is… the rejected males then gave up trying to mate altogether. Even when placed in the same cage as virgin flies, they were not as keen to have sex. Their drinking behavior also changed.

Now I was really interested. How do you get sexually rejected male fruit flies to drown their sorrows in booze?

Again, ludicrously simple!

(Set ‘em up, Joe!)

When placed by themselves in a new container and presented with two straws, one containing plain food and the other containing food supplemented with 15 percent alcohol, the sexually rejected flies binged on the alcohol, drinking far more than their sexually satisfied cousins whose advances were never spurned. The difference was not only apparent in their behavior. It was completely predicted by the levels of neuropeptide F in their brains.

“It’s a switch that represents the level of reward in the brain and translates it into reward-seeking behavior,” said Galit Shohat-Ophir, PhD, the first author of the new study.

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The Oldest Rock Art in the New World

A carving of a stick figure discovered by archaeologists in a cave in Brazil is believed to be the earliest example of rock art in the Americas and could shed new light on when the New World was first settled.

(No, not THAT kind of rock art!)

The team of archaeologists from the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil made the discovery during excavations in 2009 but unveiled their findings in this month’s PLoS ONE scientific journal.

“It shows that about 11,000 years ago, there was already a very diverse manifestation of rock art in South America, so man probably arrived in the Americas much earlier than normally is accepted,” explained Walter Alves Neves, the archaeologist and biological anthropologist leading the team.

The figure, scratched into a cave in Lapa do Santo in central-eastern Brazil, appears to be squatting with his arms outstretched. It is about 12 inches tall from head to feet and about 8 inches wide. The phallus is about 2 inches long, about the same length as the man’s left arm. (Yikes!)

“The figure, which we named ‘the horny little man’, is probably linked to some kind of fertility ritual,” Mr Neves said.

(Seriously? That was the best name they could come up with??)

Carbon dating and other tests of the sediment covering the petroglyph suggest the engraving dates between 10,000 and 12,000 years old – making it the oldest reliably dated example of such rock art found yet in the Americas.

Well, there you have it, boys and girls. Notwithstanding the puerile (and penile) humour, it turns out that people have been living (and drawing randy pictures) in the Americas for a lot longer than originally thought.

Who said Art History was boring?

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Just in Time for Valentine’s Day: The Science Behind the Kiss!

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Sheril Kirshenbaum [1], science writer and author of the recent book, The Science of Kissing: What Our Lips Are Telling Us, sheds light on exactly what goes on biologically when we lock lips. Kissing basically “acts like a drug by stimulating the natural chemicals in our bodies, yet unlike other human behaviors, science has barely begun to ‘put kissing under the microscope’ to study this intriguing evolutionary behavior,” says Kirshenbaum.

(The most famous kiss ever photographed – Times Square, August 14, 1945)

As recently reported in that bastion of scientific journalism, the Huffington Post, “Our lips are packed with sensitive nerve endings so that even the slightest brush sends a flurry of information to our brains that often feels very good. Although we often don’t think of them in this way, our lips are the body’s most exposed erogenous zone. When they are involved in a passionate kiss, our blood vessels dilate as our brain receives more oxygen than normal. Our pulse quickens and our breathing can become irregular. Our cheeks flush as our pupils dilate causing many of us to close our eyes. Five of our 12 cranial nerves jump into action as we engage all of OUR senses in interpreting what’s going on and anticipating what may happen next.”

(My personal all-time favourite – the upside-down Spidey kiss)

When there’s real chemistry between two individuals, a kiss sparks romance by triggering a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters that cascade through our bodies and brains! (Actually, that sounds kinda hot in a nerdy biochemical sort of way). Thusly (people don’t say ‘thusly’ enough), locking lips with our respective sweetie-pies serves as humanity’s most intimate experience because it conveys more than our words can possibly express. It’s nature’s ultimate litmus test telling us when to pursue a deeper connection with someone special or to step back because we’re incompatible with a partner.

And understanding the science behind how this happens doesn’t take any magic out of the moment. Well, not for me at any rate. Instead, it provides a better understanding and appreciation of our ourselves and our relationships.

So in this super-smoochy lovey-dovey ‘food tastes better when I’m with you’ time of year, let us not forget to blow kisses to the Sheril Kiershembaums of the world who remind us that, like the wonder of a kiss, science is indeed all around us.

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[1] Ms. Kiershenbaum is also Director of the University of Texas Project on Energy Communication (or as she puts it, “communicating science to a nation watching reality television”) and appeared last year as a speaker at TEDGlobal 2011.

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Science Headlines that Tickle Me!

While packing to go off on a bit of a Festivus vacation and spend some time with my dear SigOth, SG, I kept browsing the science sites.

Here is a small sampling of some of the more amusing titles out there today, all of them legit!

Scientists Discover Deep-Fried Planets!

Whole New Meaning for Thinking on your Feet: Brains of Small Spiders Overflow into Legs!

Infectious Fungus, Thought to be Asexual, Isn’t!

Was Saint Paul Struck Blind and Converted by Lightning?

Robots Interact, Snub Humans!

How to Break Murphy’s Law!

Why We Feel Nostalgic During the Holidays!

Evolution of Genitals: Shape Matters More than Size!

And they say scientists are boring!

Kosher Samurai is shutting down for the holidays!

We’ll be back in the first week of January.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

Happy Hanukah, Happy Festivus,

Merry Xmas and a very Happy New Year!!

Sincerely, The Kosher Samurai

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