kottke.org posts about sex
Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson speculates about the Tyrannosaurus rex’s sexual equipment.
We now have a robust understanding of how sexual pressures — the pressures to find, impress, and seduce a mate — influence the evolution of males and females. So much so that if you tell me a fact, such as the average size difference between males and females in a species, or the proportion of a male’s body taken up by his testes, I can tell you what the mating system is likely to be. For example, where males are much bigger than females, fighting between males has been important - which often means that the biggest males maintain a harem. If testes are relatively large, females probably have sex with several males in the course of a single breeding episode.
(thx, bill)
Missed this a couple of months ago: the shortlisted passages in the Bad Sex Award 2007 competition.
She nods and smiles. She is absurdly beautiful. I start to slip off my jeans and I feel her gaze as I stand in my bra and pants. Why am I embarrassed about taking off my clothes right in front of a robot? I pull the dress over my head like a schoolgirl, untie my hair, and sit down. She is smiling, just a little bit, as though she knows her effect.
To calm myself down and appear in control I reverse the problem. ‘Spike, you’re a robot, but why are you such a drop-dead gorgeous robot? I mean, is it necessary to be the most sophisticated machine ever built and to look like a movie star?’
A list of Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail. And it’s on Geocities, no less…I had no idea that was still around and operational. Maybe this is the only page left, the end result of Yahoo’s $3.6 billion investment.
Update: The site above is currently down. Fun fact: I first linked to this almost 9 years ago. (thx, everyone)
Update: Geocities is gone but Reocities archived the Cartoon Girls I Wanna Nail page. Our shared cultural heritage is safe.
An attempt to decode the sex diaries of noted economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes kept two diaries related to his sexual activities. The first was a straightforward listing of who/where/when.
The other sex diary is more puzzling and, in a way, more informative. An economist to the core, Keynes organized the second sex diary also year-by-year, but this time in quarterly increments.
Unfortunately for us, however, this second sex diary is in code. And as far as I know, no one yet has been prurient enough to crack it.
Here’s what Keynes’ tabulation looks like. For every quarter-year from 1906 to 1915, he tallies up his sexual activities and totals them under three categories: C, A, and W.
For each of these headings, he records the number of times each activity occurred, and also when. For example, between May and August, 1911, he performed (if that’s the right word) C sixteen times, A four times, and W five times.
Long-exposure photo of two people having sex on a bed. (It’s mostly safe for work, believe it or not.) This reminds me of two things: the timelapse threesome scene in A Clockwork Orange and Jason Salavon’s work, specifically 76 Blowjobs and Every Playboy Centerfold. Those last tow links probably NSFW. (via the h line)
Update: Atta Kim’s work is similar too, particularly his “Sex Series”. (thx, jeff)
Very interesting paper on the economics of prostitution by Steven Levitt and Sudhir Venkatesh.
The transaction-level data we collected suggests that street prostitution yields an average wage of $27 per hour. Given the relatively limited hours that active prostitutes work, this generates less than $20,000 annually for a women working year round in prostitution. While the wage of a prostitute is four times greater than the non-prostitution earnings these women report (approximately $7 per hour), there are tremendous risks associated with life as a prostitute. According to our estimates, a woman working as a prostitute would expect an annual average of a dozen incidents of violence and 300 instances of unprotected sex.
The authors also noted that a prostitute was “more likely to have sex with a police officer than to get officially arrested by one”. (via marginal revolution)
Eric Gill was a respected British artist and typographer — Gill Sans is his most famous typeface — but according to his diaries, he also regularly engaged in sexual relations with his sisters, his daughters, and the family dog.
For some of Gill’s fans, even looking at his work became impossible. Most problematically, he was a Catholic convert who created some of the most popular devotional art of his era, such as the Stations of the Cross in Westminster Cathedral, where worshippers pray at each panel depicting the suffering of Jesus.
These details of Gill’s private life were revealed in a 1989 book by Fiona MacCarthy…here’s a NY Times review of the book soon after it was published.
On the erotic appeal of the Lands’ End catalog:
These are images more invasive than any Victoria’s Secret spread, because they don’t inspire lust. This is a pornography of regret, and the longer you stare, the more seductive it becomes. These sixty pages are a self-pity trap; any sane lonely man would do well to avoid them.
(via maggie)
NYC restaurant advice from a huge douchebag Don Juan about where to wine her, dine her, and then complete the rhyming trifecta later that evening.
I have given much thought to this question of romantic restaurants. In each case you have to study the girl and find the right restaurant for her. One If by Land, Two If by Sea. Forget it. A joke. The Terrace. Never. Never. The minute you walk in she knows what you have in mind. You might as well write her a note ‘Tonight I expect to do it.’ It’s too obvious.
(via eater)
Jason Salavon’s Field Guide to Style & Color, a reproduction of the 2007 Ikea catalog with everything but the structure and color excluded. You may remember Mr. Salavon from his composite photographs and videos of blowjobs, late night talk show hosts, and Playboy centerfolds.
A timeline of human history (mostly sex and violence) by Milo Manara. NSFW.
The director of the Rotterdam Natural History Museum is looking for someone to donate pubic lice, which lice are difficult to find these days, possibly because of a decrease in pubic hair due to waxing.
When the bamboo forests that the Giant Panda lives in were cut down, the bear became threatened with extinction. Pubic lice can’t live without pubic hair.
In the 1970s, Japanese photograhper Kohei Yoshiyuki stumbled upon a couple in a park engaged in sexual activity in the darkness and, somewhat more curiously, two men creeping towards the couple, watching them. Over many months, he followed these voyeurs in the park, befriended them, and outfitted his camera with an infrared flash so as to blend into the crowded darkness. The result is a fantastic series of photos called The Park. As you can see in the photo below, Yoshiyuki even caught some of the peeping toms touching their “visual prey”.
Yoshiyuki’s photographs explore the boundaries of privacy, an increasingly rare commodity. Ironically, we may reluctantly accommodate ourselves to being watched at the A.T.M., the airport, in stores, but our appetite for observing people in extremely personal circumstances doesn’t seem to wane.
The NY Times has an audio slideshow of some images from The Park, which is on display at the Yossi Milo gallery in NYC until October 20 (more photos). A book of Yoshiyuki’s photography is available at Amazon.
The Times article mentions several photographers whose work is similar to Yoshiyuki’s. Merry Alpern took photographs through a window of prostitutes plying their trade with Wall Street businessmen. Weegee used an infrared flash to capture kissing couples at the movie theater (although it seems that particular shot was staged) and on the beach at Coney Island (last photo here). Walker Evans photographed people on the subway without their knowledge.
Michael Specter gave spam the New Yorker treatment in last week’s issue. Probably not a lot new for kottke.org readers, but after reading this short passage,
But spammers aren’t stopping there. They are learning to send out polymorphic spam, thousands of variations of the spam message, which makes each message unique and therefore hard to categorize.
I noticed examples of polymorphic spam in my junk mail folder for a penis enlargement product called Mega Dik. Here are some of the variations:
Dames always smiled at me and even youths did in the not private lavatory!
Well, now I giggl at them, because I took Me_ga. d_ik.
for 3 months and now my pecker is extremely greater than civil.
Chicks always hee-hawed at me and even bucks did in the civil bathroom!
Well, now I laugh at them, because I took Meg, a dik.
for 4 months and now my putz is badly greater than world.
Baronesses always giggled at me and even youths did in the public WC!
Well, now I whoop at them, because I took Me - ga - Di k
for 4 months and now my pecker is dreadfully longer than usual.
Baronesses always smiled at me and even chaps did in the urban WC!
Well, now I smil at them, because I took M_E_G. ADI. K
for 3 months and now my tool is much preponderant than civil.
Chicks always laughed at me and even fellows did in the unrestricted bathroom!
Well, now I whizgiggle at them, because I took M eg ad ik
for 7 months and now my member is greatly largest than federal.
I’ve also updated my amusing penis enlargement spam imagery page. Most of the images are NSFW but are great examples of effective folk design.
Photoshopped series of photos of people kissing themselves. Sort of disturbingly erotic, in an erotically disturbing way.
Remember the guys humping the ottoman video from Friday? There’s a sequel of sorts: how to blog. (via dens)
OhMiBod is the ultimate iPod accessory: a vibrator that hooks up to the iPod and buzzes in time with the music. “I will never listen to music the same way again.” Don’t miss the playlists compiled specifically for OhMiBod use. NSFW. (thx, tania)
Area Man Accidentally Responds To Own ‘M4M’ Ad. “He lives right in my neighborhood, he’s a professional, and he loves to work out — he sounds sexy.”
It’s almost a shame that I don’t get to read more of my spam because it can be highly entertaining. Here’s one of the better ones I’ve seen in a long time, a clever ad for Viagra. Warning: NSFW but LOL nonetheless.
Hypothesis: people live in cities so that they can have casual or anonymous sex. “[In the suburbs,] MapQuest is not immediately handy for good directions, there are two cars in play, at least one of the persons may be drunk, and there is a trust issue of being trapped in some weird suburban cul-de-sac, surrounded only by sleeping, catatonic soccer moms with no one to hear you scream for help.”
Great SF Chronicle series on sex trafficking: Diary of a Sex Slave. The story centers around a young Korean woman who accrues massive credit card debt and then is sold into prostitution to pay it off.
Holding hands is increasingly seen as a sign of commitment and intimacy, while more seemingly intimate acts like kissing and sex are more likely to occur earlier in a “relationship”.
“Fisher Island millionaire Bruce McMahan loved his daughter so much, he married her.” See also genetic sexual attraction.
The wives and girlfriends of gang members in one of Colombia’s most violent cities are taking part in a “strike of crossed legs”, withholding sex from their men until they vow to give up their violent ways.
Update: Lysistrata, a play by Aristophanes, tells of women withholding sex from their husbands in order to end the Peloponnesian War. (thx, steve)
Andy on some recent baiting of people looking for sex on Craigslist. “In a staggering move, he then published every single response, unedited and uncensored, with all photos and personal information to [the web].”
The NY Times has a two part series on online pedophilia: what pedophiles are up to online (“pedophiles view themselves as the vanguard of a nascent movement seeking legalization of child pornography and the loosening of age-of-consent laws”) and looking at sites that promote nonnude but lascivious photos of children to pedophiles.
Update: In 2003, Black Table did an interview with someone working for a nonnude site called ChildSuperModels.com. (thx, kfan)
Newer posts
Older posts
Stay Connected