- An edgy, irreverent book by Kayt Sukel that examines all the ways our neurons can wreak havoc with our hearts.
By Kayt Sukel (CNN) As background research for my book, “Dirty Minds: How our brains influence love, sex and relationships,” I participated in a study at Rutgers University where scientists measured the activity in my brain as I self-stimulated to an orgasm in an MRI scanner.
During the course of my research for “Dirty Minds,” I asked neuroscientific researchers about the greatest challenges involved in studying human sexuality. I expected to hear concerns about finding study participants willing to be honest about their sex lives or if what was learned in the laboratory could really be applied to real-world behaviors.
But unanimously, the scientists I talked to said their greatest challenge was finding research grants and financial support for their work. Because so many of us are peevish about the study of sex, funding agencies can be, too. But none of us should be. Human sexuality is important – and its study is something we should all get behind. Because we can’t begin to have discussions about how to best deal with problems concerning sexual behavior, sexual function and sexual intimacy until we have a better handle on what’s normal.
Time and time again, I’m asked how I managed to have an orgasm in an fMRI scanner. But that’s not the right question. The important question is why I had an orgasm in an fMRI scanner. And that’s to help further our understanding of orgasm and human sexuality. When I say I came for the science — I mean it. And it’s my hope that more people will do the same in the future.
via Why I orgasmed in an MRI scanner – – CNN.com Blogs.
By Brian Maass (CBS4) Former Arapahoe County Sheriff Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. has been arrested, suspected of trafficking methamphetamine, a controlled substance.
Sullivan, 68, was the elected Arapahoe County Sheriff for 19 years. He retired in 2002 and went on to become director of safety and security for Cherry Creek Schools. He was a nationally-regarded law enforcement figure and in 2001 as the National Sheriff Association named Sullivan “Sheriff of the Year.”
Authorities say Sullivan agreed to meet a male informant and provide the man drugs in exchange for sex. That’s when Investigators and members of the South Metro Drug Task Force arrested Sullivan. The former sheriff is being held on $250,000 bond as of Tuesday evening.
Ironically, Sullivan will be jailed in the Arapahoe County Jail, which was named for the legendary sheriff — The Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility.
via Former Arapahoe County Sheriff Arrested On Drug Charge « CBS Denver.
By Paul Krassner (Huffington Post) Jim Jones, founder of the 8,000-member People’s Temple in San Francisco, once asked Margo St. James, founder of the prostitutes’ rights group, COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), how he could obtain political power.
She answered, sardonically, “Arrange for some of your women to have sex with the bigwigs.”
It was well known around City Hall that Moscone had a predilection for black women. Police almost arrested him once with a black prostitute in a car at a supermarket parking lot.
Soon after the Dan White trial, Lee Cole, an ex-Scientologist I had met in Chicago while researching the Charles Manson case, took me to see Lowell Streiker, author of The Cults Are Coming! and a deprogrammer who had counseled one-third of the Jonestown survivors. In the course of our conversation, I mentioned my theory that Jim Jones had served as a pimp at City Hall and maintained power by implied blackmail.
Dr. Streiker told me of his friend — a member of Jones’ planning commission — who had told him about the technique that People’s Temple had used on Mayor Moscone. They sent a young black female member to service him, as a gift, then called the next week about a serious problem — she had lied, said she was eighteen, when in fact she was underage, but don’t worry, we have it under control — just the way J. Edgar Hoover used to manipulate top politicians with his juicy FBI files.
So Jim Jones had taken Margo St. James’ sardonic advice after all, on how to achieve political power: “Arrange for some of your women to have sex with the bigwigs.” And he had taken it all the way to a mass suicide-murder — which occurred simultaneously with a mass demonstration by the women’s movement in San Francisco, called “Take Back the Night!”
Paul Krassner’s dialogue with Andrew Breitbart appears in the December issue of Playboy.
via Paul Krassner: Sex, Corruption and the Kool-Aid Massacre.
By Ben Muessig (AOL) A couple in Australia was rescued after attempting to float down a river near Melbourne on an inflatable sex doll.
The man and woman, both 19 years old, were drifting down the Yarra River in Victoria — a state recently afflicted by severe flooding — when the woman lost her grip on the sex toy in increasingly turbulent water on Sunday, according to The Daily Telegraph.
By Mark MacKinnon (Globe and Mail) It’s said that everyone has a secret. What was unique about Shigeo Tokuda’s fib was that everything he wasn’t telling his wife and daughter was on recorded on hundreds of videos, and that thousands of admirers knew exactly who he was and what he was trying to hide.
For a long time, Mr. Tokuda was not just the world’s oldest porn star, he was perhaps its most anonymous. His family didn’t know where the 76-year-old really went and what he did when the retired travel agent pulled on his blazer and went off to “work” in the morning.
But among his fans – and there are enough of them to justify the making of at least one new film a month – Mr. Tokuda is the superstar of the rising genre of “elder porn,” movies that feature older actors (at least the male ones) and plotlines in which the growing number of Japanese senior citizens (again, at least the males) can picture themselves. His most famous role is as a senior citizen who acts anything but his age with an assortment of nurses, as well as with his twentysomething daughter-in-law.
Elder porn is a fast-growing industry in Japan, which has a population that is both the oldest in the world as well as the world’s second-largest consumers of pornography (after the United States). By his count, Mr. Tokuda has appeared in some 350 films, with another project – Prohibited Elderly Care Vol. 45 – already in production.
Read the rest Husband, grandfather, retiree – and a Japanese porn star – The Globe and Mail.
(DailyFinance) Rob Berry and Josh Levitas’s “Ulysses Seen” webcomic is, by all accounts, an ambitious undertaking, as any adaptation of the Irish author’s nearly 1,000-page tome would be. And with a readers’ guide, translation into foreign languages and other complementary materials, it would seem like a natural for the iPad and its multitouch user interface.
But Apple had a surprise up its sleeve, thanks to its strict guidelines about adult content, and the nudity present in “Ulysses Seen” was verboten.
“While the first chapter of the book, the one now at iTunes, doesn’t contain ‘offensive language,’ our comic does have frank nudity. Something we figured we might have to pixelate or cover with ‘fig leaves,’” Berry told the comics blog Robot 6. “But Apple’s policy prohibits even that. So we were forced to either scrap the idea of moving to the tablet with Apple or re-design our pages.”
Berry and Levitas opted to stay on the iPad and follow Apple’s rules, so the iPad version of the webcomic is nudity-free (the unexpurgated version, however, remains online).
See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/a2boTN
Image and accompanying story can be found here: http://www.fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=552&mode=oneMedia images of the female body commonly represent reigning appearance ideals of the era in which they are published. To date, limited documentation of the genital appearance ideals in mainstream media exists. Analysis 1 sought to describe genital appearance ideals (i.e., mons pubis and labia majora visibility, labia minora size and color, and pubic hair style) and general physique ideals (i.e., hip, waist, and bust size, height, weight, and body mass index [BMI]) across time based on 647 Playboy Magazine centerfolds published between 1953 and 2007. Analysis 2 focused exclusively on the genital appearance ideals embodied by models in 185 Playboy photographs published between 2007 and 2008. Taken together, results suggest the perpetuation of a "Barbie Doll" ideal characterized by a low BMI, narrow hips, a prominent bust, and hairless, undefined genitalia resembling those of a prepubescent female.
J Sex Res. 2009 Nov 11:1-9. [Epub ahead of print]
Evulvalution: The Portrayal of Women's External Genitalia and Physique Across Time and the Current Barbie Doll Ideals.
Schick VR, Rima BN, Calabrese SK.
Center for Sexual Health Promotion, Indiana University.
Abstract
via Evulvalution: The Portrayal of Women’s External Ge… [J Sex Res. 2009] – PubMed result.
By Penn Bullock and Brandon K. Thorp
(Miami New Times) On April 13, the “rent boy” (whom we’ll call Lucien) arrived at Miami International Airport on Iberian Airlines Flight 6123, after a ten-day, fully subsidized trip to Europe. He was soon followed out of customs by an old man with an atavistic mustache and a desperate blond comb-over, pushing an overburdened baggage cart.
That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami — the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.
Rekers is a board member of the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization that systematically attempts to turn gay people straight. And the Huffington Post recently singled out Rekers as a member of the American College of Pediatricians — an official-sounding outfit in Gainesville that purveys lurid, youth-directed literature accusing gays of en masse coprophilia.
Read the rest: Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with “rent boy” – Page 1 – News – Miami – Miami New Times.
Those facing a lonely Valentine day’s may do well to visit a country where the chances of finding other singletons are highest.
Flight comparison site Skyscanner (www.Skyscanner.net) introduces the top ten most unmarried populations in the world; places where holy matrimony is low priority and love is free. Maybe.
Latin America seems like the place to find love with six of the top ten most unmarried people in Central and South America. With hot weather, hot dancing and hot people, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Argentina and Panama are perfect for romance hunters.
Only two European countries made the love list; Slovenia, whose tourist board aptly runs the slogan ‘I feel sLOVEnia’, and the tiny Pyrenean principality of Andorra which is already a popular winter sports destination whose lively après ski scene has doubtless led to plenty of lovin’ – if just for one night only.
Countries with lowest marriage rates Continue reading »
(The Smoking Gun) Like many educators nationwide, administrators at a Wisconsin high school are aiming to curb risqué moves at an upcoming school dance. To assure that Union Grove High School students do not get too footloose, school brass have issued official dance rules for the January 30 winter formal:
“While dancing back to front, all dancers must remain upright – no sexual bending is allowed. Examples are, no hands on knees, and no hands on the dance floor with your buttocks touching your dance partner. There will be no touching of the breasts, buttocks or genitals. There will be no straddling of each others’ legs. Both feet must remain on the dance floor at all times. Students will be given wrist bands at the door. One warning results in a teacher cutting off the wrist band. A student dancing inappropriately with no wrist band will be asked to leave the dance. This may result in loss of dance privileges for the year. The dance will be videotaped to insure the safety of all students attending.”
