Indeed.

(The _really_ contrarian case to make here would be to say that feminism is responsible for the rise of BDSM, because patriarchy was (is) a M/f scenario which went on for thousands of years and was neither safe nor sane nor consensual. Feminism having brought us out of that scene, people can now explore that space self-consciously. [Slate writers should feel free to make us of this.])

Being a review of Paula Merriman's _Mungojerrie: A Brief History of the Cat Corset_.

How does anyone _not_ read this paper and think that they were correlating everything they could until they got a "significant" effect?
--- I am very tempted right now to make this a problem set in ADA, but that's just asking for trouble, yes?

It goes the other way too, of course.

I am sure it says something bad about me that the title immediately makes me think "neurobiological substrates of BDSM".

Memo to self: ask J.R. what she thinks about this.

Obviously inspired by the myth of the double-bodied original humans in Plato's _Symposium_.

"If average-looking junk and a slightly increased risk of heterosexuality are side effects of preventing birth defects, that's a small price to pay."

On its face, this is bad news for the Westermarck effect, but one would need to look _very_ carefully at the experimental design and in particular its controls. (Also, the big question of the ecological validity of  "rate these faces for attractiveness, sitting in the lab" as an indicator of "I'd hit that, for reals".)

"Obviously, this data I’ve cited is perhaps open to some criticisms or alternate interpretations. But Flanagan doesn’t dispute it, doesn’t cite alternate data, and doesn’t even seem to be aware of the possibility of discussing social trends in terms of evidence rather than assertion."

... in which Ta-Nehisi Coates schools the Freakonomics crowd in the concept of "sample selection bias".

"Seeing red leads men to view women as more attractive and more desirable despite them not being aware of any change in their perceptions. A delightful study from last year that, as the authors note, has 'clear practical implications'!"

"Like many gentlemen of his time, Charles Darwin married his first cousin. In fact, marriages between close relatives were commonplace in nineteenth-century England, and Adam Kuper argues that they played a crucial role in the rise of the bourgeoisie.

Incest and Influence shows us just how the political networks of the eighteenth-century aristocracy were succeeded by hundreds of in-married bourgeois clans—in finance and industry, in local and national politics, in the church, and in intellectual life. In a richly detailed narrative, Kuper deploys his expertise as an anthropologist to analyze kin marriages among the Darwins and Wedgwoods, in Quaker and Jewish banking families, and in the Clapham Sect and their descendants over four generations, ending with a revealing account of the Bloomsbury Group, the most eccentric product of English bourgeois endogamy."

"The arc of political scandal is long, but it bends towards attractive young staffers."

"GALFRIDUS CHAUCERES LYNES OF PICKE-VPPE"; of which I think the best is "Ich haue the tale of Lancelot yn myn roome. Woldstow rede of yt wyth me?"

... the unfortunate Strogatz column is made worse by the fact that there are actual dynamical models of marriage, with at least some connection to empirical data, rather than being derived _ex ano_.

This is really not good. Strogatz knows much better --- why is he doing this?

Of course, this is asking people questions about sex, so one always has to wonder about honesty... but it's hard to see how this would skew things _towards_ saying that they had premarital sex decades ago.

Possibly best line: "It sounds brutal, but it’s the only way to turn red-blooded American men into anti-war activists."

There are some things which are sufficiently horrifying that I don't like to think about them. This is one.

The thing is, I can't tell if this is serious or not: "[We] call for a new kind of porn – porn that upholds the Christian ethos. Christ-centered porn, made to be viewed by Christians and tailored to their unique needs. We challenge Christians in the adult industry (yes, they do exist – and you know who you are) to step up and truly walk their walk and live their faith by producing pornography that men and women of God can view without compromising their relationship with their Savior, or their relationship with their spouse."

"Drawing on his background in finance and economics, Kara provides a rare business analysis of sex trafficking, focusing on the local drivers and global macroeconomic trends that gave rise to the industry after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He quantifies the size, growth, and profitability of sex trafficking and other forms of modern slavery—metrics that have never been published before—and locates the sectors that would be hardest hit by specifically designed interventions and penalties."

"How to attract members of the opposite sex". (Ans.: Skulls!)

Completely ducking the question of whether the assignments of particular animals to particular categories is right, and for that matter whether the concepts mightn't need revision. (Cf. Gellner on Wittgenstein.)

With bonus William Saletan bashing!

When oh when will people learn not to confuse self-reports --- especially self-reports about sex, especially self-reports from sub-populations selected for bragging and lying! --- with reality?

I am not sure if "daisy chain of deals" is quite the best phrase, in this context...

Very nice.

Man, what a cluster-fuck of stupidity. (There is a decent behavioral experiment lurking underneath the, in this case, totally uninformative fMRI.)

Compare to the previously-saved post. WJW is an excellent writer (one of my favorites), a smart man and trying to be funny, but it's fascinating to see how the process of cultural transmission works...

I like the definition of the "helga".

Hell of a way to run a medical system.

Opinions you should have (mostly; not about food).

Men, women, "babes", desires --- I hesitate between going "Yes!" and "Yes!, but...", since I think I also understand her friends. Without over-sharing, I think there is a gap between fantasies and desires which Warner might be overlooking. (Or that migh

To read in my copious spare time...

"The Game is like the AI version of dating." Funny, and insightful, but somewhat unfair to functionalism (and even behaviorism)

Some sensible-sounding remarks on the genetics (or lack thereof) of sexual orientation. (See also: English public schools, monasteries.)

"In this article, I not only challenge the commonly held notion that inbreeding is injurious, but also argue that inbreeding is often harmless and even fitness-enhancing. If so, Westermarck's hypothesis that children raised together naturally trigger sele

"you must be looking forward to Halloween"