Daze Reader

Sense About Science, a British non-profit promoting scientific literacy, publishes an annual list of stupid things celebrities said about science. One highlight from the 2011 year in review:

A bizarre quote from TV personality [Nicole "Snooki"] Polizzi, who declared recently: “I don’t really like the beach. I hate sharks, and the water’s all whale sperm. That’s why the ocean’s salty.”

I mostly know Snooki from Jersey Shore clips on The Soup and Beavis & Butthead, but I might just have to start watching that show. Or maybe read Snooki’s novel.

Another citation from the science sticklers:

Christian Louboutin, a French footwear designer, was taken with something a fellow party guest told him about shoes.

“She said that what is sexual in a high heel is the arch of the foot, because it is exactly the position of a woman’s foot when she orgasms. So putting your foot in a heel, you are putting yourself in a possibly orgasmic situation,” he explained.

Hmmm, female Daze readers, is there anything to this theory? Should dudes be bending your feet more during foreplay?

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This is no dumber than many real products with their own infomercials.

New Robot Warns When Someone’s About To Walk In On You Masturbating

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I have no idea if this story is true, but this is my favorite headline of the year: Saudi religious police HQ targeted by sex maniacs.

Three Saudi men parked their car close to the headquarters of the Gulf Kingdom’s feared religious police late night, got out and started having sex with a woman accompanying them just in front of the massive police signboard.

They were filming themselves with the aim publicising the shot to defame the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the most influential law enforcement authority in the Muslim nation.

The three were half way through their operation when one of them noticed the security camera next to the signboard in the capital Riyadh. They stopped filming, headed for the camera and smashed it before fleeing the scene.

If true, these four freedom fighters certainly deserve Profiles in Pornography Courage medals.

Unfortunately, security camera footage survived the smashing and identified the gonzo porn crew, two of whom were quickly arrested.

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The Literary Review has announced the shortlist of nominees for its 2011 Bad Sex in Fiction Award.

The Bad Sex in Fiction Award ostensibly aims “to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it”. Personally I’d like to see more sex in literary fiction, not less. And much of the supposedly crude, tasteless, bad writing singled out by Literary Review is actually very good writing. There’s something pathetic about a bunch of mediocre, little-known writers spouting snarky insults about the likes of Haruki Murakami and Jean Auel. But hey, it’s all in good fun.

This year the prize judges have been posting the nominations and short (by necessity) excerpts on Twitter.

• 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami — “A freshly made ear and a freshly made vagina look very much alike.” — “[Her breasts] seemed to be virtually uninfluenced by the force of gravity, the nipples turned beautifully upward, like a vine’s new tendrils seeking sunlight.”
• On Canaan’s Side by Sebastian Barry — “We got rid of our damned clothes, and clung, and he was in me then.”
• The Final Testament of the Holy Bible by James Frey — “Every part of my body sang some song I had never heard.”
• Parallel Stories by Péter Nádas — “They hit gracefully on this exceedingly advantageous position”
• 11.22.63 by Stephen King — “Her head bonked on the door. ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘Are you all right?’”
• Ed King by David Guterson — “at the moment of their mutual climax, Ed made sure Diane was on top”
• The Land of Painted Caves by Jean Auel — “It surged up, until, with volcanic release, it engulfed them.”
• The Affair by Lee Child — “Then faster and harder. Then we were panting. faster, harder, faster, harder.”
• Dead Europe by Christos Tsiolkas — “My tongue furiously worked the craters”
• Outside the Ordinary World by Dori Ostermiller — “We’re part of the same organism: some outrageous sea creature”
• Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy — “Henry reached up her thighs … as though quietly imploring”
• The Great Night by Chris Adrian — “His lady lifted to the stars on his impossibly stiff, impossibly elegant cock.”

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At the Society for Neuroscience annual conference this week, researcher Barry Komisaruk presented a five-minute movie called “Brain Symphony”, compiled from fMRI scans of a woman experiencing orgasm. Scientific American provides this titillating plot synopsis:

The opening sonata begins with activation of the genital sensory projection zone, the paracentral lobule, followed by a cueing of the limbic system (insula, anterior cingulate, amygdala, hippocampus). During the crescendo, other areas join in for the hallelujah: the cerebellum (perhaps because of a change in muscle tension), the nucleus accumbens (a reward and pleasure center), the hypothalamus (spritzer of oxytocin, often misleadingly called the ‘love hormone’) and even the frontal cortex.

That is absolutely the hottest thing I’ve read all week.

Komisaruk could barely control his excitement: “[Orgasm] seems to activate all of the major brain systems, which we didn’t know before. I don’t know of any other behavioral process that is so powerful.”

The Guardian article about Komisaruk’s presentation includes a one-minute embedded video. It’s not clear to me if this is an excerpt from the video Komisaruk showed at SfN this week or a completely different female orgasm MRI video.

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