A Silly Sex Post

Most magazines these days seem to have a type of article I'll call the "Silly sex article".  Sex must sell, or something.  Any I collect these, and every once in a while I put out a compendium of them:

Top - male brain, Bottom female brain

New study finds male and female brains wired differently:

Scientists have drawn on nearly 1,000 brain scans to confirm what many had surely concluded long ago: that stark differences exist in the wiring of male and female brains.

Maps of neural circuitry showed that on average women's brains were highly connected across the left and right hemispheres, in contrast to men's brains, where the connections were typically stronger between the front and back regions.

Ragini Verma, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, said the greatest surprise was how much the findings supported old stereotypes, with men's brains apparently wired more for perception and co-ordinated actions, and women's for social skills and memory, making them better equipped for multitasking.

"If you look at functional studies, the left of the brain is more for logical thinking, the right of the brain is for more intuitive thinking. So if there's a task that involves doing both of those things, it would seem that women are hardwired to do those better," Verma said. "Women are better at intuitive thinking. Women are better at remembering things. When you talk, women are more emotionally involved – they will listen more."

She added: "I was surprised that it matched a lot of the stereotypes that we think we have in our heads. If I wanted to go to a chef or a hairstylist, they are mainly men."

I mean, just because men and women's bodies are almost entirely different, including exterior appearance, whole organ systems and hormonal balances, who would think that their brains might just be a little different, too? 

Well, if you belong to that logically handicapped grouped called liberal academia, you are practically mandated to believe the opposite, regardless of evidence:

Why it's time for brain science to ditch the 'Venus and Mars' cliche

As I have said, I have read this sort of thing before. I didn't believe it then and I don't believe it now. It is biological determinism at its silly, trivial worst. Yes, men and women probably do have differently wired brains, but there is little convincing evidence to suggest these variations are caused by anything other than cultural factors. Males develop improved spatial skills not because of an innate superiority but because they are expected and encouraged to be strong at sport, which requires expertise at catching and throwing. Similarly, it is anticipated that girls will be more emotional and talkative, and so their verbal skills are emphasised by teachers and parents. As the years pass, these different lifestyles produce variations in brain wiring – which is a lot more plastic than most biological determinists realise. This possibility was simply not addressed by Verma and her team.

And he has a point, up to a point.  Brains vary within sexes, and recent research shows the brain is a flexible organ, generating new axons, making new connections, and adapting throughout life.  However, there is one area in which such thinkers fail to follow through on the their beliefs; homosexuality.  If homosexuality is just another environmentally induced adaption (to however bizarre an adaption that would be), it would follow that homosexuality is a metal condition of learning amenable to conditioning and treatment and not a "hard wired" condition, as all right thinking lefties insist.

Anyway, a lot of people seem to spend a lot of time thinking silly things about vaginas...

Sarah Silverman thinks people are afraid of vaginas:

Asked if comedy can help break down the “taboo” surrounding abortion, Silverman answered, “I think vaginas really, really scare people, honestly.” Before the segment ended, she added, “I think the people of New York have made it clear that they don’t like to told what to do with their bodies… when it comes to taking away their 20-oz Coke!”

I can't speak for everyone, but I think I can speak on behalf of most of one half of mankind that rather than finding vaginas scarey, I find them intriguing.  But hers?  Meh (NSFW link).

Another woman is "fighting the patriarchy" or making some important statements by pulling wool out of her vagina.  Seriously!

This curious form of performance art comes to us courtesy of feminist artist Casey Jenkins, a self-professed "craftivist" who is knitting using wool placed -- you guessed it -- inside her vagina.

"I'm spending 28 days knitting from wool that I've inserted in my vagina," the Melbourne-based artist explains in the video above. "Everyday I take a new skein of wool that's been wound so that it will unravel from the centre and I stick it up inside me... and then I pull out the thread and knit."

Do you wash them before you sell them, or does the smell raise the price?

And the new fad is steaming those scarey hoo-hoos...

A popular, new trend in the United States is vaginal steaming and it is being offered through spas and holistic health centers from southern California to New York in order to address a variety of health issues. While it is technically not new as it has been used in ancient medicine for centuries, it is a re-emerging trend to those in the United States and is also known as 'chai-yok' in Korea and 'bajos' in Central and South America. For those not familiar with what vaginal steaming is, think of it like a medicinal, herbal, steam facial for the vagina.

In other words, bullshit.  But possibly a good idea if you have been using it as a wool repository.

And there's worse: 17-Year-Old Girl Injected Flesh Eating Drug Into Genitals

MEXICO - A 17-year-old girl reportedly addicted to the flesh eating drug known as Krokodil, shocked doctors in Puerto Vallarta recently when she showed up with "severe lacerations" to her genitalia. Jose Sotero Ruiz Hernandez, an official of the National Migration Institute said, “There’s a case that we had to see at the Social Security: the girl consuming this drug, had an infection in her private parts," which Hernandez said wasn’t caused from sexual intercourse." Her genitals had already begun "rotting."

But some good health news, sex is better than aspirin for headaches!

According to The Daily Mail, in a study at the University of Munster in Germany (reported in Cephalalgia, the journal of the International Headache Society), neurologists collected data for longer than two years on 400 people who had two different types of headaches. Turns out that some people either didn't care that their head was hurting, or maybe knew that sex could help, because 33 percent of those surveyed made love while having head pain. "Of those, 60 percent of migraine patients and 36 percent of men and women with cluster headaches had an improvement in symptoms."

"Our results show that sexual activity during a migraine attack might relieve or even stop an attack in some cases, and that sexual activity in the presence of headache is not an unusual behaviour," researchers told the newspaper. "Sex can abort migraine and cluster headache attacks, and sexual activity is used by some patients as acute headache treatment."

 So women are doing exactly the wrong thing by telling her husband or boyfriend to do without because she has a headache?  I knew it! Almost instinctively, in fact.

The only problem? It's not always convenient to have sex when you get a headache; and over-the-counter drugs are discreet and easy to take.

Mother, 30, enjoys sex for first time with her husband after 13 years of rejecting him because it always 'felt like a chore'

A mother-of-two has finally achieved a 'mind-blowing' orgasm with her husband of 13 years after years of rejecting him.

Fiona Potter, 34, from Mundon, Essex, had such a low sex drive it almost cost her her marriage, until the couple sought help from a sex therapist.

Fiona admitted she would have been content to only have sex with husband, Adam, three times a year, explaining: 'It feels like a domestic duty, and that's why I don't want to do it because it feels like a chore.'

No word on whether her 13 year old headache lifted.

And more good news, Microsoft is developing the "Smart Bra" that will help women maintain their diet by monitoring their vital signs, and warning them of impending attacks of "emotional overeating."

Microsoft is working on a smart bra with sensors to monitor a wearer's mood and trigger a smartphone app to reduce emotional overeating, U.S. researchers said.

Alerts from the wearable technology would be constantly refined by user feedback, enabling the bra to improve its ability to read a specific person's feelings, InformationWeek reported Thursday.

Microsoft researchers worked with the University of Rochester and Britain's University of Southampton on the project, attempting to associate emotions with poor eating habits and to determine whether wearable devices can help reduce the resulting weight gains.

A wearable smart bra was chosen primarily because it allows sensors to be placed near the heart, the researchers said, but follow-up research is intended to yield more gender-neutral devices such as bracelets.

 Any number of important questions come to mind:

1. Will NSA have access to the live streaming data?
2. What will the smart bra equivalent of the "Blue Screen of Death" entail?
3. Will Victoria's Secret feature them in a future show?

Wombat-Socho got the master Rule 5 Sunday post up on "Rule 5 Monday" this week.