She's Fast and Thorough and Sharp as aTack

So much for the stereotype of the dumb cheerleader. A British led survey published last month says that attractive people are more intelligent than average people. The study seems to be more reliable than many others due to its large number of participants (52,000 from Great Britain and the United States) and the statistically significant increase in IQ that was measured in attractive people.

Good looking men had IQ's 13.6 points higher than average and attractive women's intelligence quotients were on average 11.4 points higher than average. There is a 10 point spread between people of different IQ levels. An average IQ is between 100 and 110, and an above average IQ is between 110 and 120. This was determined by researchers at the London School of Economics.

"Given that both intelligence and physical attractiveness are highly heritable, there should be a positive correlation between intelligence and physical attractiveness in the children's generation," said lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa. Since more intelligent people are more successful in life, they will have more attractive partners, Kanazawa says.

Let Me Be Pacific, I Wanna Be Down in Your South Seas

Ok, clearly this picture may be the biggest "What the fuck?!" you have ever seen. Its called tentacle porn and its big in Japan. Squid and octopus are seen as symbols of lust in Japanese culture. No, it does nothing for me. At all.

Clearly, sexual behavior is done in a lot of very different ways around the world. That's just part of being human, I think. The basic "in out, in out" is the same all over the planet but everyone has different thoughts on the subject. Human beings are very fluid, versatile creatures, which has helped us over the millenia to overcome unexpected challenges. Different experiences in different parts of the globe lead to very different cultures. Clearly.

This difference of approach to sex can both confuse and improve our understanding of human behavior. Do we as a species instinctively know how to have sex? In my American culture, it would seem like we do. Then again, we are surrounded by sexual metaphors, jokes, images and innuendos. We learn quickly and at a fairly young age. (I was attending sex education classes at age ten.) Other countries have more more strict ways of dealing with sex, if they deal with it before the act at all.

China is very much an example of a country with little to no sex education. This seems counter productive, considering China's notorious One Child Policy, which tries to limit and even reverse that country's huge population. The Chinese government has had no problem in the past with forcing abortions on women that have more than one child, so it was surprising to hear that that nation's 13 million abortions every year is a cause for concern for Beijing.

As with American women who have abortions, the majority of Chinese women who have had them are in their 20's (62%) and single. Unlike American women, half of the Chinese abortion seekers didnt use any form of birth control. "Sex education needs to be strengthened, with universities and our society giving more guidance," said Peking University professor Li Ying. That may sound like something you might also hear in America, but the facts are different in China. A survey of callers to a hotline found that only 17% knew about the existence of sexually transmitted diseases and 30% knew how to prevent pregnancy.

The college age generation is now more sexually liberal than even slightly older Chinese, but have no more formal sex education. College student Hu Jing entered college a virgin and by the time she and four of her room mates had graduated, all of them had had sex. One of the girls had three abortions in one year. When Hu and her boyfriend first tried to sleep together, they knew to use a condom, but didnt know how. She tried to learn about contraception from an ancient Chinese poem.

What's this got to do with evolutionary biology? Just my thoughts: Here in the US, birth control usage is common. This makes it difficult for researchers to find out what would happen in a place with a "pre industrial" society, one that is closer to the world that our ancestors evolved in. China provides such a place. Contraception seems like it may as well not exist. Take the woman that had three abortions in one year, just because she and her boyfriend likely knew nothing about birth control. This young, probably healthy woman managed to get pregnant three times in one year. Another on a message board claimed to have had four abortions in a year. This should say something about the ease in which young people can procreate, as well as their desire to do so even after several abortions. They certainly dont seem effected by Post Abortion Stress Syndrome.

Source:

(Not So) Pretty When You Cry

Let's face it, there is nothing good about crying. Sure, you can have tears of joy but it seems most often in life, crying is started by a feeling of sadness, rage, betrayal or some other unpleasant emotion. Its really a mood killer. That may be the idea.

Everyone cries, but not all animals cry tears of emotion. Tears of physical pain or if something is irritating their eye, but not of emotion. Researchers found that men who smelled the tears of emotion cried by women, their feeling of lust was reduced. The tears were compared to a salt and water mix that had been dribbled down a woman's face. The results were found in the testosterone levels on men who smelled the tears (the levels dropped) the brain scans of the men, their skin responses and the reports of their feelings of lust.

The tears did not increase the mens feelings of empathy or mood, but seemed to purely effect their libido, which surprised the scientists. While the scientists do not yet understand why tears are like a cold shower to men, they agreed that the tears clearly reduced sexual interest. After watching the extra sexy version of the film "9 1/2 Weeks" men lay in an M.R.I. machine to measure their arousal. The men then watched a sad movie. While all of the men reported feeling sad after seeing the movie, only the real tear smellers felt a reduction in sex drive. Thats right, men can feel sad and still want to have sex.

The researchers advised women to not cry to try and turn off their husbands or boyfriends. Saying "no" is still better.


Source:

In Defense of Barbie

I'm sure that Barbie's infamous figure doesn't maker her very popular with the feminist crowd. Neither are many of the findings claimed by biology researchers. With all due respect to the feminists, science isn't politically correct. By all means, fight for female equality in society but if a scientific discovery doesn't match up with a preconceived notion of how women should be seen, that's just too bad.

Feminists don't care for the ways that men are attracted to women. They don't like that we are so attracted to them physically and "objectify" their bodies. I'm sure that women are MUCH more civilized in their thinking of their attraction to men. (Sure they are. Tell that to the woman in the previous post who called men "meat" and "prey" when she was ovulating.) The theories of sexual partner selection provided by scientists have been called "the tits and ass theory of evolution" by feminists, who say that a woman's looks should have nothing to do with her ability to have a child.

A 2004 study would beg to differ. A Polish study took saliva samples from 119 women and measured them for 17-b-estradiol, an important fertility hormone in women. The women ranged in age from 24 to 37, were not using hormonal birth control and were not extremely over or under weight. They found that the women with narrow waists, wide hips and large breasts were more fertile than women of other body shapes.

Those women had a 30% higher estradiol level than others, meaning that they were three times easier to get pregnant. While large breasts are not necessarily tied to larger amounts of progesterone, another important fertility hormone, women with low waist to hip rations did tend to have higher progesterone levels. They article also mentions how a preference for low waist to hip ratios is a "universal feature" of male psychology.

Side note: The young women at the top of the post's name is Iga Wyrwal, a Polish born model living in Great Britain. She illustrates the point of this study very well. Not only does she have the body shape, she got pregnant at age twenty with her first child. Think back to the 2007 Polish study (posted May 11, 2010, "I Like Big Butts") that also claimed that voluptuous young women tended to get pregnant earlier in life. Case in point.

Source:

Top Picture: A surgeon noticed that a woman started to ovulate while in the middle of a surgery. Ovulation had never been seen with the naked eye, so the doctor took pictures. The yellow spot is the egg erupting from the corpus luteum (the red part). Below: What women tend to want to do when the above picture happens to them.




I got this from a WebMD forum, so its not scientific but its interesting. Someone claiming to be a college girl posted her experience of wanting to have sex while in her fertile phase.

but i've literally taken note that when i ovulate, my cute male friends down the hall start lookin even better and i almost prey on them. i tell my roomie "this week, my goal is (insert name here)". like clockwork..when i feel like being extra friendly and flirty, i know i'm ovulating. each time i've made out -...and such- with any of my male friends, i was ovulating..and sober.

I just assumed that was a fact. i didn't know people had to actually have a study to figure that out...especially if responsible young adult women will lose some modesty and inhibition and shed some clothes with a random hot friend in the nearest dark room..

i've even explained to the guys WHY we ended up making out and not to expect it to happen every day; "when women ovulate, we get crazy horny. i mean, i love you like a friend and you're totally cute but under normal circumstances, i doubt that would've happened. i kinda hunted you like a piece of meat. you didn't 'conquer' me by any stretch of the imagination..but the effort to get me was cute. but really..if women didn't get horny one week a month, we would probably never have sex. we would just deny men sex unless we wanted children. so half the world's population would be nonexistent."

..if it was one of those weeks, they had to be conquered. they're cute and funny and sweet and smart guys..but it really had very little to do with them.. i just bait the 2 usual suspects and see who bites first. even my hetero life partner gets baited. but he goes to school out of state..hence the need for fresh meat...which he allows. and it's horrible that these young men are prey but 3 weeks a month, they're my best friends...so i DO see them as people more often than not. but it's currently one of those weeks. they're prey.

Too bad that woman didnt talk about her contraceptive usage during those trysts. A study from 2007 found that women that are ovulating are more interested in risky behavior. Women laying in an fMRI machine were asked to look at pictures of men during their fertile and non fertile stages. They were told that some of the men always used protection during sex and some rarely did. They were then asked which of the men they were most likely to sleep with. At the time of ovulation, the women wanted to sleep with the men that rarely used birth control and were more likely to sleep with the "safe" men when not fertile.

The fMRI images found that the parts of the brain that are involved with risk taking were more active during ovulation. This part of the brain is stimulated by alcohol, drugs and gambling. The study suggests that women are more likely to engage in alcohol, drug abuse and unprotected sex while fertile.
Nightline did a story on girls and binge drinking in 2012 and the reporter mentioned a fact that caught my attention. She said that 80% of teen pregnancies occurred when the girl was drunk. This reminded me of post that I mentioned and how it said that women drink more and are bigger risk takers while ovulating. The Nightline story and statistic seemed to back that claim up.





Source:
http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewarticle.asp?AuthorID=68530"

http://abcnews.go.com/watch/nightline/SH5584743
http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20071107/women-risk-risky-sex-at-worst-time"
http://forums.webmd.com/3/gynecology-exchange/forum/6967/9#9">

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Relax. Breathe. Enjoy. Get Pregnant.

Amazing, isnt it? People who want to have kids have the hardest time doing so and people that try to avoid getting pregnant end up that way. Now personally, I think its all about stress. People that want to get pregnant wait until ovulation, set a date, worry about orgasm and generally are nervous wrecks. Now the college kids that end up with bad news? They just went for it, despite most likely trying to avoid getting pregnant. Sounds like ocytocin can do a lot to help that.

Ocytocin is a hormone released in the body when you are being touched, are having a pleasant conversation, feeling warm, eating or getting psychological support from another person. After it is released, it promotes lessening stress and increases positive social interaction. Some researchers also think that it reduces the anxiety of meeting a new person, making it possible to have sex.

Look at the previous post that says there are more miscarriages after a natural disaster, even among women that were not directly involved in whatever the catastrophe was. After 9-11, there was a nearly 11% (10.7%) increase in miscarriages in the month of September in New York. Stress is bad for pregnancy, before and after fertilization.

So its not surprising that people want to touch each other before sex. Its part of the experience. We aren't like animals that just go at it, finish and walk away. There is a lot more caressing and foreplay involved. At least, ideally there is.

Sources:

Pass or Fail on Post Abortion Stress Syndrome?

Just so you know, the picture is of a pelvic exam. Not an abortion in progress.









Ok, I admit it. The abortion phenomenon is an interesting aspect of evolutionary biology. I don't know if abortion is actively researched as a part of E.B. but I'm treating it like it is. After all, abortion patients seem to experience first hand nature's desire to have humans breed whether they want to or not. This is very different from people that go out of their way to have children. The difference is between conscious human will in creating life and unconscious, natural desire in procreation.

Let's face it. People can express love and emotional closeness in many ways that don't run risk of pregnancy. Whether you want to get pregnant or not, it may well happen if you have sex. You cant separate the potential for pregnancy from having sex. On a subconscious level, two people have decided that the other person is good baby making material. Why would you sleep with someone if, on some level, the thought of having a baby with them is completely repugnant? People you love but don't have sex with are called friends and family.

You probably cant find a person out there that hasn't taken a side on abortion. God knows, you search the internet for solid facts on the subject and you more likely find people screaming their opinions. Clearly, any woman that has an abortion will likely have a totally different experience than another woman. Its hard to say if more women feel sadness or relief after ending a pregnancy. Probably a lot of emotions, but what is the overall feeling?

Thats what I wondered after hearing about Post Abortion Stress Syndrome (PASS). Some say its very common, some say its a myth. Either way, the question is being asked "Do women care about their aborted fetuses?" From an evolutionary view point, when is the fetus worth keeping alive? When does the mother begin bonding with the fetus?

Even those women that seem to handle it well appreciate support from clinic staff and friends. That's the findings of a 1997 study that measured one hundred womens assessments of satisfaction with their abortion, as measured by surveys taken an hour after the procedure. Most of the women were single (82%), were college students (52%) and the pregnancies were in the first trimester 95% of the time. Their average age was 24.2 years.

Many of the women (56%) said they were "very satisfied" with the experience, 31% were "moderately satisfied" and 12% were unsure. One third reported that their emotional and physical health as fair or poor after the operation. The thing that made the difference is the preparation before the procedure. Those that were adequately explained to about how long, how painful and how the procedure would be expressed the most satisfaction. Satisfaction was highest among women that had a friend or boyfriend with them as support. The report suggested the importance of pre-procedure counseling and social support.

Another, more grisly study asked women before the abortion if they would be willing to look at the product of conception after the abortion. Of those that agreed to look (28.7%), eighty one percent of them did not find that it made the experience more difficult emotionally. However, it is important to note that older women, or women that already had children, were less likely to look and found it more difficult when they did.

What I gather from this is that if PASS is as common as abortion opponents say it is, the reactions to the procedure and the reactions to seeing the products on conception would have been much more negative. That's not to say that the syndrome doesn't happen. After all, one third of the women claimed to feel emotionally "fair or poor" after their abortions and the vast majority of women did not want to look at the fetus. I would guess that the women without the social support, without the pre-abortion counseling or already had children may be more likely to develop PASS than other women. This shows that stress after an abortion is more of a social nature than an biological one. Nature seems willing to let a woman move on.

Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9094215
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19913153
http://www.silentnomoreawareness.org/testimonies/testimony5009-1.htm

No Kids? No Problem!

I am 30 years old, very single, no kids and in no rush to change any of it. I'm one of the last of my buddies to not be married. Sure, I wonder what it would be like and sometimes it even sounds like a good thing. I get the feeling that if I really wanted to get married and have a family, I'd be in a panic right about now. But I'm not. I have other things that are more important: I need to finish grad school (three more years at least), move out of Dad's place, be alone for a while and do a lot of traveling. If I get married now and have kids like many people my age, I would miss out on much of that. If I get married as soon as I get a place of my own, I feel like I've never really lived for myself. It would be like going from teenager to "Dad" without any in-between. Not for me.

As already talked about in previous posts, people's fertility declines with age. So if I wanted kids, I'd be running out of time. There is a good chance I will never hear the pitter patter of little blah blah blah. That's not necessarily a bad thing. A news report claims that childless people are happier than parents.

Its a cliche to say that parenthood is the toughest job that you can have. Still, maybe it holds true. People with children are more likely to be depressed than non-parents. They are more depressed when the kids are grown and left home, when thy kids are adopted, when they are stepparents and the parents don't have custody of them.

"Don't feel guilty about resenting your children," says psychologist Susan Jeffers, PhD. "We all as parents go through these emotions. It is part of the process of having a child. You have to take responsibility for creating a meaningful life for yourself, so you don't get depressed. Parenthood is very hard. "



Source:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184713,00.html

"To err is human, but it feels divine."

I'm a fence sitter. I believe that science can give us answers where religion gives us mysteries. Still, does science make us better people? Sometimes, maybe. Science tells us that if we are male or female, straight or gay, its not because God looks on us more or less favorably than anyone else. It tells us that we were just born differently. This levels the playing field. On the other hand, religion reminds us to be honest, fair, forgiving and compassionate. Science tells us that these are mere chemical reactions.

Women aren't seen very highly in many religions. According to 1 Corinthians 7: 1-2, "Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband." Moving on to 1 Corinthians 7: 27-28: "Art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed to a wife? seek not a wife." So basically, if you are unmarried, stay that way. If you are married, stay that way but its better to be unmarried and stay a virgin. Wouldn't that be the end of humanity, if no one ever had sex?

Matthew 5: 27, 28 says much the same thing. "Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." So don't get married, stay a virgin and don't even look at a woman with lust. That's going to be difficult, considering that the sexes are visually stimulated.

Religion does seem counter factual at times, but it does call on us to expect better from ourselves. The morality of things like homosexuality can be debated ad naseum so I wont go into it here. (Frankly, I don't have much interest in gays, one way or the other. If a person is homosexual, that is their business. It doesn't make them a wonderful person or a horrible one. It makes them someone with an atypical sex life, nothing more.) I guess its old fashioned of me, but I don't like people acting excessively. People that seek pleasure in excess are often compared to animals, but some animals have greater restraint than some people.

Some news reports say that sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise. Reasons for this are unknown, but some say that the increase in numbers is just the result of better methods of detecting disease. Chlamydia is just that example. Syphilis also increased by 11,000 cases in 2007. I admit that's not drastic, but its not what should be happening. It was nearly erased ten years ago and is now rebounding? That's not right.

Various religions are not exempt from blame either. The Center for Disease Control claims that male condom use, when done correctly, "provide an essentially impermeable barrier to particles the size of STD pathogens." Compare that the the Vatican, that claims that condoms have tiny holes that lets HIV bacteria pass through. Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, told Sex and the Holy City: "The Aids virus is roughly 450 times smaller than the spermatozoon. The spermatozoon can easily pass through the 'net' that is formed by the condom." No. It cant. In the Church's defense, it did reverse this idea this past year, saying that condoms are less evil than AIDS. Glad the Pope is finally on board.

Many people say that they trust religion over science because religion has stood unchanged for thousands of years, while science can change after a new study is released. While it doesn't make sense that religion is better because it doesn't change (that just makes it stubborn), I have to admit, the reports in the news aren't always fully reliable. To be reliable, a study needed to have hundreds or thousands of participants to get a full picture of human behavior. Many studies that claim to have made a discovery have used only a few dozen participants. This is like trying to see a mountain with one eye shut. More research is often needed to verify what was found. Meanwhile, people may have a false impression based on the research.

I do think that people need to take more responsibility for protecting themselves from STD's. Getting caught up in the moment is a weak excuse for spreading an infection. Plan ahead. Have the uncomfortable "Are you healthy?" talk with your partner. Have some kid of birth control available. Religion asks us to be in control of ourselves, which I think we as a people need to do more often. I certainly don't want people to be condemned for looking at someone with lust and I don't want people to stay virginal forever. Just be responsible.

Source:
http://www.cdc.gov/condomeffectiveness/latex.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/oct/09/aids
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/13/sexually-transmitted-dise_n_157720.html
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_pope_condoms