Sex, plants, GOP, mass extinctions, crack, dirt, IUD

[mindstalk]

Slush and sleet. Winter sucks.

* Female desire
* Old Newsweek article on the Bible and gay marriage
* Old Chomsky interview on anarchism; as vague as most things on anarchism I see, plus talk of "spiritual transformation".
** I saw someone say today that the anarchist conception of the state is of minority (including traditional elected representatives) ruling a majority, and that if I think of their vision not as no-state but as direct-democratic state it'd make more sense. That does help, though at the same time they often talk about direct representation, which I favor but isn't clearly not-minority, and of having no money, which makes no sense.
* Using plants in RPGs.
* Urban farming
* Mercury found in corn syrup
* Kansas GOP: cut the school budgets!
* Yesterday's Krugman column, Bad Faith Economics, was listed on the front page as "Bad Economics". Also appropriate, but an interesting difference.
* No unified theory for mass extinctions. Impact here, vulcanism there and there, glaciation over there...
* Caltech's magazine "Engineering and Science has an article (PDF) on the crisis, by two Caltech economists.
* Tracking Obama campaign promises
* Perspectives (by a nuanced pro-lifer) on birth control, abortion, and adoption in the Philippines.
* 1990s crack baby epidemic: didn't happen.
* Babies eat dirt for health
* Wikipedia on the IUD. I'd never known much about them. Seem pretty effective, even usable as emergency contraception, oddly unpopular in the US.

Comments

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Interesting (and admittedly not terribly surprising) data on so-called "crack babies" - yet another case of doomsayers vastly overstating something.

The article on female desire was interesting, but also seriously flawed. When you have passages like

Are men simply more inhibited, more constrained by the bounds of culture? Chivers has tried to eliminate this explanation by including male-to-female transsexuals as subjects in one of her series of experiments (one that showed only human sex). These trans women, both those who were heterosexual and those who were homosexual, responded genitally and subjectively in categorical ways. They responded like men. This seemed to point to an inborn system of arousal.

I know there is serious bias against cultural explanations for sexuality involved. The article did go on to say that these responses could be attributed to early upbringing, but I did detect a vast bias against the rather obvious idea that men in most western cultures and especially in the US are heavily trained and enculturated against bisexuality and flexible sexual response, while women do not receive training and enculturation that is nearly as intense.

I also see a very easy answer - large-scale cross cultural studies, there are cultures where male homosexuality is not as heavily stigmatized, as well as (I think) a few where female homosexuality is heavily stigmatized. I'd be very interested in seeing cross-cultural data. However, what I see here (as in almost every other article I've ever read about gender sexuality and especially sexual preference) is at least some degree of reification of US cultural norms *sigh*.

[nekomata.livejournal.com]

I have had my IUD almost 5 years and will be due for a new one in April. I obtained it for free from a non-profit organization and haven't have any big issues with it. They're mostly unpopular due to something known as the Dalkon Shield. This IUD was shaped poorly and caused a lot of issues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalkon_Shield

Our parents, like my mom for example, remember this as -the- example of an IUD. It's also very hard to get one if you haven't had children due to the sue-happy American way. There are risks of uterine damage resulting in infertility and many doctors just don't want to go there.
Happily, IU seems to have no problem providing them to interested, informed patients. (They do want you to be in a long term relationship or married.) I actually learned about the option when someone from the Health Center guest lectured for our Women's Health course.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

5 years -- you've got a hormonal rather than copper one, I take it?

I got the impression the modern risks are low?

LTR or married, geez, that seems intrusive. Thanks for the info.

[nekomata.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have the Mirena.

There's actually a decent reason for the LTR/Married thing. It does irritate the uterus for the first few weeks/month and make you more prone to infection. I think they may also want to make sure you're committed to spending the money ($500 for the IUD, $100 for insertion in 2004)for something that may see little use, depending on the situation. Compared to the drama people without kids go through to get these, I don't think that's nearly so bad.

If you're ever bored read
http://community.livejournal.com/iud_divas/
You'll learn all sorts of squicky things and find decent info.