It makes me feel good, as I wander off to read some science blogs.

That was the case this evening, and thank god for it or I’d never have seen The Intersection’s piece on Evolutionary psychology: the adaptive significance of semen flavor. I learned, via Jerry A. Coyne, Ph.D, a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, that semen tastes bad, it just does, and despite his initial confusion, as an evolutionary psychologist, and a man I’m sure, as to why nature hadn’t compensated the taste with some added sugars, making it at least tolerable, he finally came up with the truth.

Semen just tastes bad.

And guess what?

It tastes bad because it belongs in the vagina not the mouth, and until women vomit up their offspring the taste isn’t going to get any better.

Fact is if this stuff was meant to be swallowed nature would have made it taste like a root beer float, or at the very least a gin and tonic.

Thank you Professor.

It may seem obvious that men perceive women in sexy bathing suits as objects, but now there’s science to back it up, one which used 21 heterosexual male undergraduates at Princeton as the standard bearer. That this “study” was actually presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science is what is surprising, but there’s no doubt in my mind there was a preordained conclusion.

As I understand it photographs make brains react in a variety of ways but unless a brain is still developing, as with young men viewing pornography before they’ve an understanding of what a female is, and have learned to know females as human beings, it does not cause certain actions to take place. Photography effects on emotion are not typically longstanding, and certainly not strong enough to overcome environment, words, or lifelong education. So why are we studying reactions to pictures?

The research, conducted by Princeton psychology professor Susan Fiske, Mina Cikara GS and Stanford psychology professor Jennifer Eberhardt, was performed on 21 undergraduate male students at the University who identified themselves as heterosexual. Fiske’s team used an MRI machine to scan the brains of the students while they viewed a series of photographs of men and women, some of whom were fully clothed and others of whom wore only swimsuits.

The pictures of bikini-clad women activated brain regions associated with objects or “things you manipulate with your hands,” Fiske said. The students also remembered the photos of the half-naked women better than they did any of the others, she added, noting that the subjects remembered the bodies, not the faces, most clearly. Fiske said the results indicated that some men may objectify or dehumanize partially clothed women, though further research is needed to confirm these findings.

This study is useful for not a thing besides being able to say “nah, nah, I told you so”. And though it may help to make some take more serious the issue of young males viewing pornography on the web, something we already know seriously skews their view of women, but other than that do you really think most work places have pictures of half clothed women hanging around? Does looking at a still picture elicit the same response as looking at living breathing humans? Does looking at a girl in a bikini cause someone to go home and treat their girlfriend like a power tool if they weren’t already treating her like a power tool? Does this study solve the issue of media and sexualizing little girls, or parents buying their ten year olds thongs, make-up and bustiers?

“This research appears to provide evidence of a more hardwired, less socially constructed tendency to objectify women, which will make eradicating the problem that much harder.”

Ya, well replacing parts of the brain isn’t that easy just yet. It seems we are up against something called “what human beings are made of” here. Do you think this was funded by some organization which hopes to cash in on their “brain part replacement therapy”?

Please no further research. I know what I know.

title thanks to Paul Simon, I Know What I Know

Study Tallies Corporations Not Paying Income Tax

—

How The Democrats Can (are blowing it) Blow It …In Six Easy Steps

I’m not Michael Moore’s greatest fan, but he has 5 very good points.

1. Keep saying nice things about McCain.
2. Pick a running mate who is a conservative white guy or a general or a Republican.
3. Keep writing speeches for Obama that make him sound like a hawk.
4. Forget that this was a historic year for women.
5. Show up to a gunfight with a peashooter.
6. Denounce me!

—

Things I would have said.

From Savage Minds, Alex Golub in Well I guess we should say something about the Olympics while pondering whether the Olympics are about individual achievement or national pride.

Every time I see a swimmer dive into the water at the start of a race I sort of imagine them being shot out of a gun composed of trainers, family, friends, swimsuit manufacturers, and chlorine manufacturers. Anthropology, I think, would insist that individual performance is the result of collective effort.

—

Things I learned.

Panda’s watch vidoes of other panda’s having sex to encourage their mating. This strategy has been fairly successful. Not because viewing other Pandas doing the dirty turns them on though. They watch it because they aren’t very good at having sex, but they are great imitators. It’s an instructional video.

—

Pride and shame though tempered by our culture are innate, a study from
University of British Columbia. intersting because I always viewed pride as learned, not really relating our behavior to that of peacocks.

—
Things which made me happy.

The author of one of my favorite quotes (a quote you’ll find on the SBF site), Margaret Cho

I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.

premieres her new show on Vh1 August, 21st.

—

FYI

This weeks OSH theme will be Political/Socio-political Songs.

Peace