Friday, January 18, 2008
Blowing (up)
In news that may, depressingly, be a real shock to many people, it turns out that you can't tell which guys have an STD just by looking at them. Emory researchers found that African-American girls often use "selective avoidance" - that is, only hooking up with guys they think are clean - as a substitute for proper prevention. This technique of course ignores the entirety of human history, wherein only a fairly small minority are likely to have sought to have sex with people they knew would give them chlamydia. But then again, this is Georgia, where sex ed isn't precisely comprehensive.
Chlamydia isn't usually fatal, however, so these girls may be in a better position, sexually, than the newly-discovered Malagasy palm Tahina spectabilis. When these tall characters finally go in to bloom, the show is so spectacular it kills them. I guess dying in the throws of passion is many people's fantasy, so maybe it's not all bad!
Chlamydia isn't usually fatal, however, so these girls may be in a better position, sexually, than the newly-discovered Malagasy palm Tahina spectabilis. When these tall characters finally go in to bloom, the show is so spectacular it kills them. I guess dying in the throws of passion is many people's fantasy, so maybe it's not all bad!
Labels: behavior, botany, death, disease, funny, health, Madagascar, research, science, sex, sex-ed, STDs, stupidity, trees
Monday, April 16, 2007
Passing Blame
The American Taliban is really obsessed with sex. They don't want people to have any fun with it, for starters, and they certainly don't want anyone who isn't Just. Like. Them. to be having it. And since they are mostly middle-aged or older, we get "abstinence-only sex ed." Which, aside from being ridiculous, is now officially ineffective. But we all knew this - if abstinence rules, as are claimed to have been followed "in the good old days," were followed, the human race would have dies out long ago. But of course these folks (who also claim to be big on "fiscal responsibility") want to keep spending hundreds of millions of dollars on abstinence-only programs.
Once you've had sex, they really, REALLY don't want you to be able to control whether or not you get pregnant. Luckily, the Washington State government has just passed a law requiring that pharmacies (though not necessarily individual pharmacists) must fill any and all legal prescriptions. This will hopefully defuse a particularly odious tactic employed by the AT - that of health care providers (all of whom took an oath of one sort or another to provide care) refusing to fill certain prescriptions or care for certain patients on "moral" grounds.
And speaking of things that you can justifiably blame for all your problems: UK researchers have found that hypertension may be due to brain inflammation, in addition to or as opposed to (it's not clear which) circulatory causes. The culprit seems to be a newly discovered protein called junctional adhesion molecule-1 (JAM-1)...for once it may be time to, errr ... pump down the JAM.
Speaking of blame and stomach-turning puns, Pittsburgh researchers have identified three more genes which appear to contribute to Crohn's disease: PHOX2B, NCF4, and autophagic gene ATG16L1. Cool!
Once you've had sex, they really, REALLY don't want you to be able to control whether or not you get pregnant. Luckily, the Washington State government has just passed a law requiring that pharmacies (though not necessarily individual pharmacists) must fill any and all legal prescriptions. This will hopefully defuse a particularly odious tactic employed by the AT - that of health care providers (all of whom took an oath of one sort or another to provide care) refusing to fill certain prescriptions or care for certain patients on "moral" grounds.
And speaking of things that you can justifiably blame for all your problems: UK researchers have found that hypertension may be due to brain inflammation, in addition to or as opposed to (it's not clear which) circulatory causes. The culprit seems to be a newly discovered protein called junctional adhesion molecule-1 (JAM-1)...for once it may be time to, errr ... pump down the JAM.
Speaking of blame and stomach-turning puns, Pittsburgh researchers have identified three more genes which appear to contribute to Crohn's disease: PHOX2B, NCF4, and autophagic gene ATG16L1. Cool!
Labels: abstinence, America, anal sex, brains, conservatives, crohn's, fascists, genes, government waste, hypertension, IBD, inflammation, JAM-1, prescriptions, sex-ed, taliban, Washington
