Despite what’s written in sex advice books, the scientific search for the female erogenous zone known as the G-spot has proved surprisingly elusive. But now one physician claims to have found the first anatomical evidence of the fabled structure.

Gynecologist Adam Ostrzenski of the Institute of Gynecology Inc. in St. Petersburg, Fla., reports online April 25 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine that a surgical dissection revealed a sac of erectile tissue in the front wall of a woman’s vagina that Ostrzenski believes is the G-spot. If he’s correct, the discovery might help pave the way for therapies to treat female sexual dysfunction, Ostrzenski says.

Yet several respected sex researchers, including one who helped name the G-spot, are skeptical of the claim. (…)

In the new study, Ostrzenski dissected the vaginal wall of an 83-year-old woman who had died of a head injury less than 24 hours earlier.

{ ScienceNews | Continue reading }

photo { Pina Bausch, Bluebeard, 1977 }

{ Awful Library Books }

Lots and lots of papers have now studied this question and the evidence is rather clear: the types of austerity that are most-likely to a) cut the debt and b) not kill the economy are those that are heavily weighted toward spending reductions and not tax increases. I am aware of not one study that found the opposite. In fact, we know more. The most successful reforms are those that go after the most politically sensitive items: government employment and entitlement programs.

{ Mercatus Center | Continue reading }

photo { Nick Meek }

{ Back in late 2009, an Apple patent application surfaced showing that the company had explored ad-supported operating systems, with the user receiving free or discounted goods or services in exchange for viewing the advertisements. | MacRumors | Continue reading }

A team led by psychology professor Ian Spence at the University of Toronto reveals that playing an action videogame, even for a relatively short time, causes differences in brain activity and improvements in visual attention. (…) This is the first time research has attributed these differences directly to playing video games.

{ University of Toronto | Continue reading }

The worst part of philosophy is the philosophy of science; the only people, as far as I can tell, that read work by philosophers of science are other philosophers of science. It has no impact on physics whatsoever, and I doubt that other philosophers read it because it’s fairly technical. And so it’s really hard to understand what justifies it. And so I’d say that this tension occurs because people in philosophy feel threatened, and they have every right to feel threatened, because science progresses and philosophy doesn’t. (…) Well, yeah, I mean, look I was being provocative.

{ Lawrence Krauss | Continue reading }

artwork { James Rosenquist, Pink Condition, 1996 }

In the mind of cryonicists, it would be entirely inappropriate to refer to a frozen corpse as a corpsicle. In their lingo, after all, a patient is not dead, but rather, “deanimated.” (…)

However appealing the notion of a second life may be, the number of people who’ve actually been frozen is miniscule: about 250, according to the Cryonics Institute. But far more people appear interested in being frozen. Membership in the two biggest cryonics providers in the United States — the Cryonics Institute and the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona — is close to 2000.

{ CMAJ | Continue reading }

Forget your personal tragedy.

We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it—don’t cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don’t think anything is of any importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.

{ Ernest Hemingway to Scott Fitzgerald | Continue reading }

Food intended to be eaten hot, and supplied hot, is subject to 20 per cent VAT. Food intended to be eaten hot, but not supplied hot – fish and chips bought in a supermarket – is zero rated. But what of food supplied hot and intended to be eaten cold such as freshly baked bread? (…)

Fine, but arbitrary, distinctions, are endemic in tax systems. But problems such as these are not confined to tax policy. When we regulate bank capital, we observe that a loan to another financial institution differs from a mortgage. But what of a loan to another financial institution whose repayment depends on the performance of a mortgage?

{ John Kay | Continue reading }

photo { Bill Owens }

I stopped shaving. Legs, pits, bits – I ceased cultivation and let them revert to a state of nature. (…) I smell exactly the same as I did before. (…) I have changed the way I dress a little.

{ Vagenda | Continue reading }

photo { Edward Weston, Legs, 1934 | Edward Weston, Charis Wilson, 1934 }

related: Edward Weston, Nudes, Oceano Dunes, 1936:

Although Weston preferred an 8 X 10 camera, he made increasing use while in Mexico of his 3-1/4 X 4-1/4 Graflex - hand held even at exposures as long as 1/10 second. To enlarge these negatives on platinum or palladium paper was tedious. An enlarged negative had to be made. First an 8 X 10 inch glass positive was made from the small negative. From this, in turn, he made a new negative, which he then printed by contact. Apparently he never printed by projection -although it was entirely practical to do so with gelatino-bromide papers which were then readily available. On his return to California he abandoned platinum and palladio papers, and settled on glossy chloro-bromide papers — which he invariably printed by contact.


{ Edward Weston’s Technique | Continue reading }

I call it the Argument from Hypocrisy. It goes something like this:

1. Lots of people say that X is wrong.

2. But these people almost always do X.

3. Therefore, even the opponents of X don’t really believe X is wrong.

4. So X probably isn’t really wrong.

{ Bryan Caplan/EconLib | Continue reading }

Efforts to “recruit” subjects were often illegal, even though actual use of LSD was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966. In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels in San Francisco, California to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The men were dosed with LSD, the brothels were equipped with two-way mirrors, and the sessions were filmed for later viewing and study.

Some subjects’ participation was consensual, and in these cases they appeared to be singled out for even more extreme experiments. In one case, volunteers were given LSD for 77 consecutive days.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

Commercial airline passengers will routinely fly in pilotless planes by 2030.
The Stake: $1,000

(…)

In 2108, an independent, sentient artificial intelligence will exist as a corporation, both providing its services as well as making all financial and strategic decisions.
The Stake: $400

(…)

Large Hadron Collider will destroy Earth.
The Stake: $1,000

{ Longbets.org | Wired }

related { How to Spot the Future }

{ The Descriptive Camera works a lot like a regular camera–point it at subject and press the shutter button to capture the scene. However, instead of producing an image, this prototype outputs a text description of the scene. | Matt Richardson, Descriptive Camera, 2012 | thanks Tim }

On March 23, 1994 a medical examiner viewed the body of Ronald Opus and concluded that he died from a gunshot wound of the head caused by a shotgun. Investigation to that point had revealed that the decedent had jumped from the top of a ten-story building with the intent to commit suicide. (He left a note indicating his despondency.) As he passed the 9th floor on the way down, his life was interrupted by a shotgun blast through a window, killing him instantly. Neither the shooter nor the decedent was aware that a safety net had been erected at the 8th floor level to protect some window washers, and that the decedent would most likely not have been able to complete his intent to commit suicide because of this.

Ordinarily, a person who starts into motion the events with a suicide intent ultimately commits suicide even though the mechanism might be not what he intended. That he was shot on the way to certain death nine stories below probably would not change his mode of death from suicide to homicide, but the fact that his suicide intent would not have been achieved under any circumstance caused the medical examiner to feel that he had homicide on his hands.

Further investigation led to the discovery that the room on the 9th floor from whence the shotgun blast emanated was occupied by an elderly man and his wife. He was threatening her with the shotgun because of an interspousal spat and became so upset that he could not hold the shotgun straight. Therefore, when he pulled the trigger, he completely missed his wife, and the pellets went through the window, striking the decedent.

When one intends to kill subject A, but kills subject B in the attempt, one is guilty of the murder of subject B. The old man was confronted with this conclusion, but both he and his wife were adamant in stating that neither knew that the shotgun was loaded. It was the longtime habit of the old man to threaten his wife with an unloaded shotgun. He had no intent to murder her; therefore, the killing of the decedent appeared then to be accident. That is, the gun had been accidentally loaded.

But further investigation turned up a witness that their son was seen loading the shotgun approximately six weeks prior to the fatal accident. That investigation showed that the mother (the old lady) had cut off her son’s financial support, and her son, knowing the propensity of his father to use the shotgun threateningly, loaded the gun with the expectation that the father would shoot his mother. The case now becomes one of murder on the part of the son for the death of Ronald Opus.

Now comes the exquisite twist. Further investigation revealed that the son, one Ronald Opus, had become increasingly despondent over the failure of his attempt to get his mother murdered. This led him to jump off the ten-story building on March 23, only to be killed by a shotgun blast through a 9th story window.

The medical examiner closed the case as a suicide.

{ Snopes | Continue reading | thanks Caitie }

{ Roy Lichtenstein’s estate claims copyright over the images he appropriated, 2010 }

Retrocausality is any of several hypothetical phenomena or processes that reverse causality, allowing an effect to occur before its cause.

{ Wikipedia | Continue reading }

related { Quantum decision affects results of measurements taken earlier in time }

Some scientists argue that the purpose of sleep may not be restorative. In fact, they argue that the very question “why do we sleep?” is mistaken, and that the real question should be “why are we awake?” (…)

The world record for going without sleep is eleven days.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

photo { Adrienne Grunwald }

Researchers have shown that by becoming carnivores, our ancestors were able to give birth to a greater number of offspring.

“Eating meat enabled the breast-feeding periods to be reduced and thereby the time between births to be shortened,” said lead author Elia Psouni from Lund University in Sweden. “This must have had a crucial impact on human evolution.”

Past research has tried to explain the relatively short breast-feeding period of humans based on social and behavioral theories of parenting and family size. For an average human baby, the duration of breast-feeding is two years and four months. This is not long in relation to the maximum lifespan of our species - around 120 years. It is even less if compared to our closest relatives - female chimpanzees suckle their young for four to five years, whereas the maximum lifespan for chimpanzees is only 60 years.

{ Cosmos | Continue reading }