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The Orgasmic Mind: The Neurological Roots of Sexual Pleasure

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:08:35 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Achieving sexual climax requires a complex conspiracy of sensory and psychological signals—and the eventual silencing of critical brain areas

Sexual desire and orgasm are subject to various influences on the brain and nervous system, which controls the sex glands and genitals.

The ingredients of desire may differ for men and women, but researchers have revealed some surprising similarities. For example, visual stimuli spur sexual stirrings in women, as they do in men.

Achieving orgasm, brain imaging studies show, involves more than heightened arousal. It requires a release of inhibitions engineered by shutdown of the brain’s center of vigilance in both sexes and a widespread neural power failure in females.

Tags: sex, neuroscience, behavior

20 Things You Didn't Know About Sex

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 08:16:45 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: 6 Barbary macaques have a distinctive way to get their mates to make a sperm donation: yelling. If the female does not shout, the male almost never climaxes.

7 How do we know this? German primatologist Dana Pfefferle watched a group of macaques, counting the females’ yells and the males’ pelvic thrusts. She says this work is “quite weird, but it’s science.”

8 Here in the US of A, that kind of stuff ends up on YouTube.

9 Because Barry White sounds terrible underwater: Fish can produce a variety of noises with their bones, teeth, and gas bladders. Grant Gilmore of Estuarine Coastal and Ocean Science Inc. says that male fish probably use some of these sounds to woo females.

10 The spiny anteater, an egg-laying mammal native to Australia and New Guinea, has a penis with four heads, but only two fit into the female at once.

11 The tiny male paper nautilus, an octopus, impregnates the much larger female by shooting his penis (a modified tentacle) into her—and leaving it there.

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

And you thought you knew everything...

1 Life emerged on earth about 3.8 billion years ago, but sex did not evolve until more than 2 billion years later. Dirty limericks emerged only quite recently, geologically speaking.

2 Sex—what is it good for? Scientists are not sure, since asexual reproduction is a better evolutionary strategy in some important ways.

3 For those who refuse to commit to one strategy: The hermaphroditic earthworm Dendrobaena rubida has both male and female genitalia. If it cannot find a partner, the worm doubles up so that its female bits and male bits can go to town.

4 Although famously monogamous, female Adélie penguins slip away from their mates occasionally to couple with unattached males. They exact a fee (pdf) for such a dalliance—stones to bolster their nests—not unlike certain people.

5 Some talented penguin teasers can get a gift even without putting out. Again, not unlike certain people.

Tags: sexual behaviour, sexuality, animals, nature

Mapping Kerouac: The Grammatical Artwork of Stefanie Posavec

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:14:40 GMT

clipped by: Kore7
clipper's remarks: Posavec dissects every word, phrase, sentence, and subject of Kerouac's On the Road to invent new ways of looking at the familiar masterpiece. The diagrams make for beautiful art in their own right. (See source for high-res pictures.)

In her structure analysis, each chapter explodes in a color-coded starburst of topical breakdowns. At a glance, you can see Kerouac's focus wander from the sketches of local life in the beginning, to depictions of work and travel in the middle, with women and the subject of love dominating the latter chapters.

The comparative sentence diagrams are what really drew me in. It's fascinating to behold an entire literary work all at once on one page. What's more, Kerouac's casual prose style can be differentiated immediately from the stately, grandiose writing of Faulkner, not to mention the terse, claustrophobic style of Orwell's fiction.

Literary reductionism at its most fun and beautiful.

Clip Source: www.notcot.com

Stefanie’s maps capture something above and beyond that of the others. Rather than mapping physical geography, her maps capture regularities and patterns within a literary space.

The maps visually represent the rhythm and structure of Kerouac’s literary space, creating works that are not only gorgeous from the point of view of graphic design, but also exhibit scientific rigor and precision in their formulation: meticulous scouring the surface of the text, highlighting and noting sentence length, prosody and themes, Posavec’s approach to the text is not unlike that of a surveyor.

Tags: art, artwork, literature, kerouac, grammar, map

Is this the beginning of water wars?

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 10:02:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: environment.newscientist.com

As Barcelona runs out of water, Spain has been forced to consider importing water from France by boat. It is the latest example of the growing struggle for water around the world – the "water wars".

Barcelona and the surrounding region are suffering the worst drought in decades. There are several possible solutions, including diverting a river, and desalinating water. But the city looks like it will ship water from the French port of Marseilles.

The water services authority in Marseille say that no contracts have been signed, and would not say how much the water would cost, although it is unlikely to cost any more than it costs the inhabitants of Marseilles. And the amounts of water than have been discussed are small – 25,000 cubic metres, less than what's needed to grow an acre of wheat, and not enough to keep 30 Spaniards going for a year, based on their average consumption.

But the proposal is interesting because it turns a local drought into an international situation.

Tags: water, future, tension

size of countries based on population

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 14:59:35 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: interesting pic

Clip Source: www.xist.org

note: this graph only shows countries with a population over 5 million on July 1, 2002 (est.).
The color indicates the size:
Orange means a country > 100 million
Blue means a country between 50 and 100 million
Green a country between 40 and 50 million
Yellow a country between 30 and 40 million
Lavender a country between 20 and 30 million
Pink a country between 10 and 20 million
Grey a country between 5 and 10 million.
note: two-letter code refer to ISO codes of countries.

Tags: interesting.

What is a Confessing Sam?

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 16:36:46 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: Researchers ironically note that it is often just as difficult to know whether or not someone is telling the truth when they plead against themselves as when they plead for themselves.

Dr S M Kassin and two colleagues from the Department of Psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts report in the April, 2005 Law and Human Behaviour that when college students and police investigators judged 10 prison inmates confessing to crimes (half the confessions were true, half were false as they were concocted for the study), the students were more accurate than the police in determining who told the truth.

-More than 50 people confessed to having committed the famous and still unsolved Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles in 1947.
-At least six people have confessed to being the Zodiac Killer.
-At last count, 20 individuals have confessed to the 1996 murder of child beauty queen Jon Benet Ramsey.

Clip Source: www.theregister.co.uk

What is a confessing Sam?

"Confessing Sam" is the term in criminal psychology for a person who makes a false confession after a particularly widely publicised crime has taken place.

The first genuine Confessing Sam was Robert Hubert. In 1666, the Great Fire of London destroyed 80 per cent of the city. Hubert confessed to having started the fire by throwing a crude fire grenade through an open bakery window. At his trial it was proven that Hubert, a sailor, had not arrived in England until two days after the fire started, was never near the bakery where the fire started, and was so badly crippled that throwing anything was beyond him. If that were not enough, the bakery had no windows.

a perfect scapegoat

brought to trial, found guilty, and duly executed by hanging

Why does someone become a Confessing Sam?

mental illness, mental retardation, attention-seeking, publicity-seeking, or a combination

Often a psychiatric disorder

involving severe guilt feelings completely unrelated to the crime

What if you could eat a rainbow?

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 22:53:07 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: It seems so easy and so fantastic.

Clip Source: dobetter.wordpress.com

I picked up a 6oz box of blue, yellow and red jello plus a box of knox gelatin. To get these fabulous layers, mix the blue jello with an envelope of the knox gelatin. Pour in two cups of boiling water. Dissolve the gelatin. Add 1/2 cup of ice. Stir until thick. Remove any remaining ice cubes and any bubbles that may have formed. Pour into a 9×13 inch pan. Let set in the refrigerator.

Repeat with the yellow jello and pour it over the set blue. Repeat with the red jello and pour it over the yellow. And there you have it, Rainbow Jello.

I won’t go into the whole primary and secondary color thing, but these colors, when stacked upon each other, create other colors. There is not an orange or green layer. It just looks like it when the red and yellow layers touch and then yellow and blue layers touch. Pretty cool.

Tags: jello, dessert, childhood, recipe

‘World’s oldest tree’ discovered in Sweden

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 04:42:16 GMT

clipped by: boozich

Clip Source: www.thelocal.se

Swedish researchers have uncovered a stand of spruce trees with an 8,000-year-old tree root system in Dalarna, making it among the oldest in the world.

Carbon-14 dating tests carried out by a lab in the United States on three spruce tree root samples revealed that the trees’ roots were 5,000, 6,000, and 8,000 years old

while any individual tree growing in the area would itself not be more than a few hundred years old, any tree found on site over the centuries would be generated from the same genetic root system.

“There is constant turnover in what is actually growing above ground,”

Prior to the finding, researchers had estimated that spruce trees had only been growing in Sweden for about 3,000 years

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the oldest living individual tree is a bristlecone pine in California’s White Mountains estimated to be 4,733-years-old

The story of Sartre and de Beauvoir as never told before

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 15:37:21 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: If this couple expected their arrangement would spare them the trials and heartache of a conventional marriage, they were wrong.Their multiple affairs went on until World War II when Sartre was called up and their sex games had to be conducted through letters.Left behind in Paris, Simone continued to seduce both men and women, writing titillating descriptions of her activities to Sartre behind the Maginot Line, which reveal her heartlessness and the vulnerability of her conquests.Tragically, the lives of these girls, who were pathologically jealous of each other over their teacher's attentions, were permanently blighted.One took to self-harming, another committed suicide. Most remained pathetically unfulfilled and dependent on the childless Simone, who perversely referred to them as her 'family'.

...

Sartre had always said the best way to learn about a country was to sleep with its women.

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Their legendary love pact - they never married but swore mutual devotion to each other with the freedom to have affairs - was an attempt to overthrow the stifling hypocrisy that, for so long, had dictated most people's lives.

Yet a fascinating new book paints this supposedly high-minded duo as serial seducers bent on their own gratification and as a couple who used their apparently lofty philosophy as a springboard to excuse their multiple liaisons, often with under-age teenagers who were broken by the experience.

And while Simone de Beauvoir preached her ideal of feminist independence and equality, eschewing such 'bourgeois' concepts as marriage and children, and claiming women should behave just like men, the truth is such a lifestyle made her bitterly unhappy and she became obsessively jealous over Sartre's countless conquests.

In this sordid relationship of supposed equals, he was always one step ahead of her - though it didn't start that way.

Tags: philosophy, feminism

nine most terrifying words in the English language

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 20:52:06 GMT

clipped by: swampfoxz
clipper's remarks: Greener grass.....

Clip Source: aslowerpace.com

Greener grass.....

It's important in life to reach out, to strive for greater achievements, to go for that greener grass that is on the other side of the fence.....

But one must also be careful……

Sometimes you can reach too far!

But when you find yourself overextended and you’re stuck in a situation that you can’t get out of, there is one thing that you should always remember.....

Not everyone who shows up is there to help you.

It kind of reminds me of Ronald Reagan's quote --

"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.' "

Tags: greener grass.....

The Origin of the Crossword Puzzle

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 09:24:14 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: Crossword Casualties

Some folks were driven over the edge by the craze. In 1924, a Chicago woman sued her husband for divorce, claiming "he was so engrossed in solving crosswords that he didn’t have time to work." The judge ordered the man to "limit himself to 3 puzzles a day and devote the rest of his time to domestic duties." In 1925, a New York Telephone Co. employee shot his wife when she wouldn’t help with a crossword puzzle. And in 1926, a Budapest man committed suicide, leaving an explanation in the form of a crossword puzzle. (No one could solve it.) Eventually, the craze died down. It took The New York Times to revive it.

Today, The New York Times crossword puzzle is considered the puzzle of choice for hardcore addicts, but that hasn’t always been true. Believe it or not, the Times resisted crosswords for more than two decades.Here’s the story of how the newspaper changed its mind...<<

Clip Source: www.neatorama.com

Arthur Wynne was a writer for the game page of the New York World at the turn of the 19th century. One winter afternoon in 1913, while trying to think up new types of games for the newspaper’s special Christmas edition, he came up with a way to adapt the "word squares" his grandfather had taught him when he was a boy.

But in the new puzzle Wynne came up with, the "across" words were different from the "down" words.

Wynne’s puzzle, which he called a "Word-Cross," debuted on Sunday December 21 as planned. And it was well-received.

Four weeks after the puzzle first appeared, typesetters at the newspaper inadvertently transposed the words in the title to read "Cross-Word."

the name stuck

M. Lincoln Schuster (R) and Ricahrd L. Simon (L)

made a deal with the paper’s crossword puzzle editors

They would pick the newspaper’s best crossword puzzles and

publish them in a book. The pair then used all their money to print The Cross Word Puzzle Book.

literally an overnight success

Veiled women

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:19:16 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

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The Daffodil Principle

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 13:23:00 GMT

clipped by: egsnyder
clipper's remarks: For the past 10 years or so, the story of "The Daffodil Principle" begins to circulate at this time of year.

This is one of the most inspirational stories I've ever read. It deserves to be read and to be passed along!

Please "pop" it, and "Pay it Forward" -- tell 3 or more people about this great story.

Clip Source: www.raamakants.com

The Daffodil Principle!

"Who did this?" I asked Carolyn. "Just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house, small and modestly sitting in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house.

On the patio, we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking", was the headline. The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet, and one brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

Stalin's body double finally tells his story

Sat, 12 Apr 2008 21:57:15 GMT

clipped by: michellezm

Clip Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

The narrow, baggy eyes and droopy moustache are unmistakable – features that terrified half the world, condemned millions to a cruel death and which even today are an instant symbol of monstrous despotism.

Yet the man who so clearly has Joseph Stalin's face upon his shoulders is not Stalin at all.

Convincing: Felix Dadaev (left) in the late forties and the real tyrant Joseph Stalin, who feared for his life

Despite the careful curve of the brows and the immaculate hair, these pictures show someone else entirely, someone who has never been supreme leader of the Soviet Republic.

This, as the Russian public has been learning, is Felix Dadaev, a dancer and juggler who, amid the desperate defence against Hitler's invading armies, was ordered to the Kremlin to work as Stalin's body double.

For more than half a century, Dadaev remained silent, fearing a death sentence should he dare to open his mouth.

But at the age of 88,

he has finally come forward to tell a quite remarkable story.

Dadaev (left)