10 Things Your Dad Never Told You About Sex

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How did you learn about the finer points of sex? Maybe you watched that awkward sex education video that was filmed a good 20 years before your time and made sex out to be a clinical and methodical process. Some schools had in-class demonstrations of your 60-something teacher delicately peeling a condom down over a banana like some giant, yellow (and slightly curved) penis. The mere thought of that image alone is enough to remain celibate and move to a monastery in Tibet for the rest of your life! Other people found out about sex by getting stuck in to a good old fumble session in the drama studio during a free period. Whatever your story, it’s likely you had the talk from your old man at some point as well.

Talking about sex can be uncomfortable, particularly for a dad with his teenage son. A sex ed talk from your father usually consists of the following:

• Wear a condom.
• Treat the girl with respect.
• Don’t rush her.
• Save yourself for the right girl.

Of course, none of this prepares us for the harsh reality of a proper sexual encounter. Our fathers have failed us in our pursuit for sexual enlightenment. With this in mind, I present to you The 10 Things Your Dad Never Told You About Sex (But Really Should Have).

#10 – Sex Fetishes

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I really wish my father had told me what a fetish was before I started having sex. The first time a woman asked me if I was into “Formicophilia” I thought she was speaking Italian to me. It turns out she got a real sexual kick out of having bugs, insects and creepy crawlies all over her genitals and wanted to share this delightful experience with me. Apparently fetishes are a normal variation of human sexuality which range from vanilla to just plain weird. I don’t mind a bit of biting and spanking every now and again but I draw the line at inviting cockroaches to the party. Make sure you know a bit about fetishes before engaging in sex because nobody wants to find out their girlfriend has a scat fetish after the fact.

#9 – It’s not like a porno movie

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Imagine my surprise when, after years of watching Jenna Jameson bounce up and down on multiple guys and screaming with pleasure, I finally lost my virginity to a shy little red head with a freckled face, glasses and braces on her teeth. I thought sex would be all about screaming, dirty orgasms and filthy talk. Not only that, I thought that every seemingly innocent situation could be initiated into impromptu sex. If my friends mum offered me a cup of tea while we waited for him to get home from work, I thought she might jump my bones any second. Alas, it never happened. As for the red head, it was less like a speeding train and more like a brisk walk. Sex is nothing like it appears in porn. (unless you happen to be dating a porn star)

#8 – Pace yourself

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As a knock-on effect of the porn delusions I suffered from, I thought that going at it hammer-and-tongs for long periods of time was the norm. Those porn stars could last forever and so I was utterly disappointed when my encounter with the shy red head lasted a mere 2 minutes before I rolled over and fell asleep. If you’ve never heard the story of the tortoise and the hare, I’m sure it related to sex. Women want a stallion who can last the distance and although sometimes a quickie can be just as fun, nobody wants it to be over before it’s even begun.

#7 – Headaches are no excuse not to have sex

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At 21, my girlfriend of the time regularly used to tell me she wasn’t in the mood for a bit of nookie because she ‘had a headache’. New evidence has come to light though which says that the female orgasm releases endorphins (a natural painkiller). This means that sex is a headache cure. I’d go as far as to use this to try and have sex with your girlfriend for any number of ailments. Broken leg? Sex can ease your pain, baby. Your (hot)friend has a broken heart? I’ll give her an orgasm to make her feel better. Genital herpes? Er…you’re on your own there, darling.

#6 – Threesomes are not as common as you think

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A combination of porn and ‘true story’ articles in Maxim and FHM had me growing up thinking that a threesome was a natural part of everyday life and would happen regularly. After losing a couple of girlfriends through requests for their big-bosomed friend to join us for a session, I began to lose faith. Some people claim that “M?nage ? trois” is actually French for “In your dreams”. While I’m sure many people have had threesomes (or more) with other women, the sad reality is that the threesomes we could have would most often involve not another woman, but another man.

#5 – Impotence is a grounds for divorce

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In over 20 states in America, impotence can be cited as the grounds for a marriage breakdown and subsequent divorce. I’m sure a few wealthy businessmen who didn’t see the need for a pre-nup are now kicking themselves for their shortsightedness. It’s not enough that men have the burden of pleasuring the woman they love and rising to the occasion every time. Now we have the added pressure that if we can’t get it up and give our wife a good seeing to, she can divorce us. If you weren’t suffering from penile dysfunction before, you may well do now! I think there should be another reason for divorce created to cite women who don’t have the necessary fellatio skills to keep a man at full mast. Believe me, I’ve met a few of them.

#4 – Most women need clitoral stimulation to reach orgasm

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What? My dad never told me that. All these years I’ve been performing the sexual equivalent of stuffing a turkey and I never knew it. A lot of guys don’t even think about her pleasure during sex because it’s so easy to get lost in the moment. Thinking about it from a female perspective though, it makes sense. In, out. In, out. In, out. Yeah, I can see how that might get a bit boring after a while. The key is to master the clit using your fingers, tongue and any other body part you think can do the job. One of the best positions to get her clit going is doggy style with a manual reacharound. Try it and become a stud today.

#3 – Your penis can explode

I’ve watched an entire TV documentary on sex disasters and things that go wrong during sex and it has changed the way I look at sex forever. I remember one in particular involving a Romanian man and his sexy 18 year-old girlfriend. If you’ve ever had an erection so hard you felt like it could burst, imagine how this guy felt. His erection was so hard, firm and manly that the blood cavities in the penis actually burst. Can I get an overwhelming “Ouch!” from the guys reading this? And it’s not just your penis exploding you need to worry about. There’s something a lot more common that nobody told me about until it happened to me. The dreaded ‘banjo string’. If you don’t know what the banjo string is, it’s the piece of skin between the penis and the foreskin and is officially known as the frenulum. If you’ve been circumcised congratulations, you probably haven’t even got a banjo string. If you haven’t, there is a good chance that rough sex can ’snap’ this little bit of skin and it bloody hurts. And bleeds. A lot.

#2 – Only 1 in 400 men can give themselves oral sex

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While it’s not surprising that only 1 man out of every 400 has the size and/or flexibility to perform fellatio on themselves, what is really embarrassing is that most of, if not all of, the 400 men have tried to give themselves oral. I find it a slap in the face to evolution that men created the wheel, flew to the moon, invented electricity and learnt to fly, yet they still attempted to suck themselves off in the bathroom. If you’re laughing while you read this, then chances are you’ve tried this yourself. If you have a smug grin on your face while you read this, then maybe you should consider a career in porn.

#1 – Men have a G-spot too

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Men actually have a spot which, when stimulated, can induce pleasure in much the same way as the female G-spot. The irony of this is that to pleasure ourselves in this way we have to explore areas of our body that most straight men would prefer not to explore. For some reason, our prostate is the source of this pleasure and it happens to be buried deep in our dirtbox. If you want to explore the joy of rubbing this sacred spot, you need to insert one (or two if you’re feeling brave) fingers directly into your anus. I experienced this completely by accident one evening when an ex-girlfriend decided to surprise me with an impromptu anal probing. Needless to say, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing as a result. If you’re brave enough to try it, lube up. Trust me, it won’t be anywhere near as enjoyable going in dry.

I had to learn all of this (and much, much more) through my own investigation and experimentation because my father only ever gave me two pieces of advice before I became sexually active:

1. Shag as many women as you can while you’re still young.
2. Don’t get her pregnant or bring home any infections.

If you have any sex information or advice that you think people should know about, or you want to share the key points of your own sex talk with your dad, leave a message in the comments. Ladies, feel free to comment too on things guys do wrong in the sack or things they should do more often and if your mother gave you some brilliant sex advice then for the love of God, please share it with us too.

Sex is in the brain, for women

The brain may play a key role in some 40 percent of women who experience sexual dysfunction with lack of sexual interest, researchers said.

Such women, ages 18-59, experience sexual dysfunction with lack of sexual interest called hypoactive sexual desire disorder, known as HSDD.

Bruce Arnow and Dr. Leah Millheiser of Stanford Hospital & Clinics said the trial involved 16 women diagnosed with HSDD, along with 20 normal control subjects, who took part in the study involving brain scans. All subjects identified themselves as heterosexual.

Subjects were shown erotic video segments interspersed among footage of female sporting events. The segments were separated by intervening tranquil sequences of such subjects as flowers, mountains or ocean waves to bring the women's brains to a resting state between more active segments.

The subjects' brain activity was monitored by functional magnetic-resonance imaging. The women also reported their subjective levels of sexual arousal throughout the viewing, while the researchers collected objective measurements of the women's level of genital arousal.

The findings, published in the journal Neuroscience, found activity patterns throughout most of the brain were more or less identical among the HSDD and normal groups, but with a few notable exceptions. There was a bigger jump in relative activity in three brain areas of HSDD women -- the medial frontal gyrus, right inferior frontal gyrus and bilateral putamen -- compared with the control subjects when shown the erotic clips.

10 Things Not to Say to a Guy After Sex

So, we had sex. Awesome! But then you decided to go all John Madden and offer some post-game commentary. Follow Madden's lead some more, and retire from this perilous pastime.

And if you do keep talking, make sure you don't utter one of these confidence-kryptonite phrases, guaranteed to bum us out and blanket the post-romp air with awkwardness.

10. "That was nice."
Did we just leave a community theater production of "Our Town"? If you enjoyed yourself, that's fantastic. In fact, that was probably our only goal during the session. But, please, use any other word to describe it-"hot," "amazing," or "incredible" are good starters.

9. "Whaddya wanna do now?"
Often said in conjunction with finished homework, this question makes us thinks you viewed the sex as a chore.

8. "Why'd you stop?"
God must've needed a laugh. That's the only explanation we can think of.

7. "Are you OK?"
If we start crying, forgo the sympathy and just pretend not to notice. Seriously, though -- we're in bliss. The last thing we want is to feel self-conscious.



6. "It's not you, it's me!"
This one is salvageable, because we can reply with, "You're right. You're just too hot for a normal man to handle." Although, chances are we're too busy trying to fashion a noose out of the bed sheets to notice.

5. "Man, I'm starving."
This implies that, the whole time we were trying to please you, you were thinking about food -- which we're not (for once!).

4. "Wanna try again?"
Even the most goal-oriented dudes will shudder at the word "try" as it relates to the bedroom. Between the sheets isn't the place for the Little Engine That Could.

3. "Everyone has an off night."
Off night? Oh, right. Yeah. Too bad you're not the girl we hooked up with last weekend. We rocked her world.

2. "Do you mind if I finish myself?"
Of course not. But, rather than ask permission, just go for it. The show will definitely help stitch up our wounded ego.

1. "It happens to lots of guys."
If you utter this phrase -- the single most abhorred combination of words in the history of spoken language -- then you deserve not to be satisfied.

No dating, thanks, just sex

Dating culture is dead - instead, young New Zealand women are regularly getting drunk and cruising around in packs looking for men to have sex with.

That's one of the findings of a TVNZ Sunday investigation into the sexual behaviour of New Zealand women. The programme makers did the story after Kiwi women last year topped the Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey as the world's most promiscuous.

They are reported to have an average of 20 sexual partners, double that of their Australian and British counterparts and almost three times the global average of seven.

TVNZ Sunday correspondent Janet McIntyre said there was anecdotal evidence from the five women on the show that the Durex survey findings were valid.

"There's a new kind of mating ritual sex is the point of entry into the relationship."

If the first-up sex wasn't any good women weren't prepared to waste their time progressing the relationship.

"There's no dating culture any more." In candid interviews about their sexual experiences some of the women who are all in their twenties felt empowered by having sex and wanted to celebrate and enjoy it.

McIntyre said all the women who had experienced one-night stands had been affected by alcohol, a term described by at least one expert in a report as "getting pissed and hooking up".

Men are also feeling the impact from the new sexual tactics being employed by women.

The Sunday Star-Times' Being a Bloke survey last year found that 29% of the 5000 men surveyed felt they had been pressured into having sex or had had sex unwillingly.

History Studends have the most Sex

Historians enjoy the most active sex lives according to a survey of students at Oxford University.

The survey of more than 850 students by Oxford University student newspaper Cherwell also revealed that students who do not have sex more than once a month are most likely to get a first in their degree.

But students who claimed to have a more active sex life are more likely to attain a 2:1 or 2:2 in their degree.

Historians were found to claim to be more sexually active than any other undergraduate, closely followed by students studying politics, philosophy, economics and English literature.

According to the responses gathered by Cherwell, the most promiscuous colleges at Oxford University were Somerville and New, whilst in contrast, it was University College that had the greatest proportion of virgins.

The survey revealed that 15 per cent of students were still to lose their virginity.

More generally, however, the survey also threw up concerning results with regard to sexual health.

Although a mere 5% of students confessed to having had a sexually transmitted disease (STD) – much lower than the national average of one in three people – around half of respondents admitted to having unprotected sex.

Approximately 59% of students said they had never been tested for an STD.

Sam Tucker, a spokesman for St Anne's College, said he thought that the reason for a relatively high number of students having unprotected sex could stem from lack of knowledge about the risks.

He said: "I think people sometimes don't realise the consequences of their actions.

"If we make it easier for condoms to be accessible and to be obtained anonymously, then this number should drop."

Women with emotional intelligence have better sex lives

BEAUTY may bag you a man - but brains will bring you more fun in the bedroom.

Women blessed with "emotional intelligence" - the ability to express their feelings and read those of others - have better sex lives, research shows.

Those most in touch with their feelings have twice as many orgasms as inhibited sorts, the study found.

The finding could lead to new ways of counselling the 40 per cent of women who find it difficult or impossible to enjoy sex fully.

Researcher Tim Spector of King's College London said there were definite advantages to being a touchy-feely type.

"These findings show that emotional intelligence is an advantage in many aspects of your life, including the bedroom," he said.

Professor Spector questioned more than 2,000 female twins, aged between 18 and 83, about their sex lives.

They were asked to rate their ability to reach orgasm on a seven-point scale, ranging from "never" to "always".

They also filled in a questionnaire designed to gauge their emotional intelligence and covering traits such as self expression, empathy and contentment.

Those most in touch with their feelings had the most orgasms, the Journal of Sexual Medicine reports.

Lead author, psychologist Andrea Burri, also of King's College, London, said: "Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women's sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner.'"

Emotional intelligence may also make it easier for women to fantasise while in the bedroom.

Relationship expert Dr Pam Spurr said it was difficult, but not impossible, for women to lose their inhibitions.

Dr Spurr, whose books include Sizzling Sex and Fabulous Foreplay, said: 'It is not easy, the way we express ourselves is very habitual and affects our relationships and sexual relationships.

'It is not about waving a magic wand, it takes someone who is committed to learning new ways of communicating, to being open to intimacy and to putting their emotional self out there."

Other research has concluded that foreplay adds little to a woman's overall enjoyment of sex.

The main event itself is far more important, the study found. The recent finding contradicts traditional bedroom etiquette, which dictates that men must take it slow.

More than 2,300 women were quizzed about their sex lives for the study, with questions covering the division of time between foreplay and intercourse, and how often the women had an orgasm.

"In contrast to the assumptions of many sex therapists and educators, more attention should be given to improve quality and duration of intercourse rather than foreplay," the Scottish and Czech Republic researchers stated.

Intelligent women enjoy sex more than 'bimbos', research finds

Women with brains have more fun in bed than the average bimbo, new research suggests

A study of more than 2,000 female twins showed that those with greater emotional intelligence had larger numbers of orgasms.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to monitor and manage feelings and emotions in oneself and others.

The findings suggest that low EI is a risk factor for female orgasmic disorder, one of the most common sexual problems suffered by women.

Up to 30 per cent of women find it difficult or impossible to reach a climax during sexual intercourse.

Professor Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Department at King's College London and co-author of the study, said: "These findings show that emotional intelligence is an advantage in many aspects of your life including the bedroom. This study will help enormously in the development of behavioural and cognitive therapies to improve women's sexual lives."

A total of 2,035 female volunteers from the TwinsUK registry were recruited for the study, ranging in age from 18 to 83.

The registry consists of adult twins who have agreed to take part in studies to investigate the causes of common disorders. Using twins makes it possible to disentangle genetic and environmental risk factors.

All participants completed questionnaires giving details of their sexual behaviour and performance and also answered questions designed to test their emotional intelligence.

A significant association was found between EI and frequency of orgasm both during masturbation and sexual intercourse.

Women in the bottom 25 per cent of the emotional intelligence range had twice the normal risk of infrequent orgasm.

The results of the study appear today in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Lead author, psychologist Andrea Burri, also from King's College, said: "Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women's sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner."

She added that there was a possible connection with a woman's ability to fantasise during sexual intercourse.

"Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women's sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner," said Ms Burri.

Love, pleasure, duty: Why women have sex?

What makes a woman want to have sex? Is it physical attraction? Love? Loneliness? Jealousy? Boredom? Painful menstrual cramps?

Many women interviewed were having sex purely because they wanted the experience.

It turns out that woman have sex for all of these reasons and more, and that their choices are not arbitrary; there may be evolutionary explanations at work.

Psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss, both professors at the University of Texas at Austin, decided that the topic of "why women have sex" deserved a book of its own. They've woven scientific research together with a slew of women's voices in their new collaborative work, "Why Women Have Sex," published September 29 by Times Books.

"We do bring in men occasionally by way of contrast, but we wanted to focus exclusively on women so that the complexity of women's sexual psychology was not given the short shrift, so to speak," said Buss, a leading evolutionary psychologist.

The authors conducted a study from June 2006 to April 2009 that asked women whether they had ever had sex for one of 237 reasons, all of which had emerged in a previous study. About 1,000 women contributed their perspectives.

It turns out that women's reasons for having sex range from love to pure pleasure to a sense of duty to curiosity to curing a headache. Some women just want to please their partners, and others want an ego boost.

Research findings

Purposely made partner jealous?
31 percent women vs. 17 percent men have tried to evoke jealousy in a partner.
Had sex out of sense of duty?
84 percent wives vs. 64 percent husbands usually or always comply when a spouse wants sex but they don't.
Partner choice for casual sex?
63 percent of women prefer to have casual sex with a friend vs. 37 percent who prefer sex with a stranger.
Steal someone else's mate?
38 percent of women say they've "poached" someone for a short fling.

Buss said he found it surprising how dramatically and variably sexual experience seemed to influence women's feelings of self-esteem.

"Some sexual experiences that women in our study reported just had devastating effects and long-lasting negative effects on their feelings of self-worth," he said. "But then for others, their sexual experiences provided the soaring height of euphoria and made them feel alive and vibrant."

Meston said some 20-somethings defied the gender stereotypes that women should be more chaste than men and not sleep around as much.

"Many of the women were having sex purely because they wanted the experience, they wanted the adventure, they wanted to see what it was like to be with men of different ethnicities," she said. "Some women said they wanted more notches on the belt. They simply wanted to get rid of their virginity."

Some women have sex to make money, and not just in the conventional manner of prostitution. A woman from California who goes by "Natalie Dylan" garnered national attention this year with her campaign to sell her virginity and said in January that her top bid of $3.8 million came from a 39-year-old Australian.

There are more factors that influence a woman's sex drive than a man's, the authors said, and the factors that make men attractive to women -- personality, sense of humor, self-confidence, status -- are less important considerations for men when they are choosing women.

There is also evidence that sexual arousal is more complicated for women than for men, the authors report.

A study from Meston's lab showed a strong correlation between how erect a man's penis is and how aroused he says he is. By contrast, the link is much weaker between a woman's physical arousal (as measured inside her vagina) and the arousal she says she feels, the researchers found. This is why drugs to treat erectile dysfunction such as Viagra don't work as well in women, the authors said.

That makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, even though men and women may not consciously think about their choices that way, the authors said. If the goal of a man is to spread his genes, he would need to look for signs of fertility in a woman, which are historically associated with physical cues, Buss said.

"The adaptive problem that women have had to solve is not simply picking a man who is fertile but a man who perhaps will invest in her, a man who won't inflict costs on her, a man who might have good genes that could be conveyed to her children," he said.

In this context, women must also be more selective, because wrong choices can lead much higher costs than for men: pregnancy and child-rearing.

In studies, women have consistently shown preferences for men with symmetrical bodies, a subtle mark of genetic fitness and status, the book said. In fact, simply by smelling T-shirts that men had worn for two nights, women judged the odors of symmetrical men to be the most attractive, and the asymmetrical men's odors the least attractive, in one study.

Still, symmetry isn't everything, Meston and Buss said. They pointed to singer-songwriter Lyle Lovett as someone with other positive attributes, such as musical talent and personality, who has clearly done well with women despite asymmetrical features.

"Women are evaluating men on multiple attributes," Buss said.

Kissing also turns out to be more important for women than for men in some respects: In one study, 53 percent of men said they would have sex without kissing, but only 15 percent of women said they would even consider sex without smooching first, the book said. For women, kissing is "an emotional litmus test," the authors wrote.

The medicinal value of sex also comes into play for some women, the book said. Sex can help a woman relax and sleep better, and it can ease the pain of menstrual cramps and headaches -- and some survey participants cited these as reasons they've had sex.

A study from Rutgers University found that, during orgasm, women were able to tolerate 75 percent more pain. Though Meston has not studied the phenomenon in men, she said she would expect sex to have the same effects of reducing headaches and other pain.

The authors collected stories from 1,006 women from 46 states, eight Canadian provinces, three European countries and Australia, New Zealand, Israel and China. Participants came from a variety of ethnic and religious -- as well as non-religious -- backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. About 80 percent of the women said they were in a relationship at the time, and 93 percent said they were predominantly or exclusively heterosexual.

The book also explores how women's perception of sex may change over time, according to whom they're with and whether they are married.

A 26-year-old heterosexual woman wrote, "When I was single, I had sex for my own personal pleasure. Now that I am married, I have sex to please my husband. My own pleasure doesn't seem as important as his. I believe he feels the same way."

10 Science Fiction Concepts Ruined by Human Nature

The future is a bright, shiny penny of possibilities and if science fiction is to be believed, technological wonders and convenience will be waiting around every corner, not to mention hot aliens and robots to clean up all our messes. It’ll be the lazy deviant’s paradise. But alas, sci fi is such a dreamer it never brings its head out of the clouds long enough to ponder some of the myriad ways mankind, as a whole, can screw up all the wonders that await us. So let’s do that.

Flying Cars

Never mind the logistical issues with this idea, things like fuel and propulsion or the infrastructure necessary to make sky roads. The problem with flying cars comes down to a simple issue that can be expressed as a mathematical equation thusly:

Where X = flying cars, Y = morons behind the wheel, Z = all the future casualties below and $#!t = shit, as in the horrible shitstorm waiting to literally fall on mankind. People can barely manage driving in 2 dimensions, a 3rd one is like giving chimps sling blades and sending them into public schools. People talk on the phone, they eat, they get road head and they run into trees. Add in the terminal velocity that will be included when those same idiots get airborne and suck a pigeon into an exhaust fan and we have a problem. Then toss in everyone who runs out of gas or decided not to worry about getting the carburetor fixed and flying cars basically become steel wrapped meat bombs raining down like a monsoon.

Replicators

Star Trek, perhaps through lazy writing, popularized the idea of a machine that could just make whatever shit you wanted simply by requesting it. Rarely, if ever, was this idea exploited as it so obviously would be in real life, because in the Star Trek universe, humans have no actual human traits like greed or laziness. Other species do and why it’s never mentioned why the greedy races just don’t use replicators to get what they want is anyone’s guess. Regardless, back here on Earth, you can bet your ass that we’d all pretty much never leave the house again if these things existed. Free Cheetos, free tang, free wet naps and flavored lubricants. Why do anything? Need money to pay your bills? Replicate your ass some gold, devalue the dollar, destroy the economy totally and watch the world fall into chaos because someone invented the genie machine.

Alien Relationships

If there’s one thing humankind is known for it’s tolerance. Except for how the exact opposite is true. A sure fire way to get a bug in someone’s ass, other than with a speculum and generous amounts of lubricant is to present to them something they find unnatural. While Star Trek would have us believe Captain Kirk was getting his dick wet in anything that looked like it had a free hole across the universe, the truth is he’d be ostracized from the word go and would most likely have to warn people if he moved into their neighborhoods. There are portions of the world still uncomfortable with interracial couples, let alone interspecies couples. Maybe in time banging your Venusian girlfriend will be as cool as breastfeeding in public but at first, let’s be reasonable, you’d be giving everyone the creeps. Should the day ever come when we make contact with another species and you get friendly, make sure you drive him, her or it out to a secluded spot to see if it has any friendly orifices.

Living on Mars

Humans colonizing space is a popular idea. After all we already spread like herpes across the Earth, surely space is next. The problem with this idea, however, is inherent human laziness. Have you ever gone to visit the inlaws? Grandma? Your lazy-eyed cousin who finally got his own place that stinks of cured meats? The only thing worse than being there is going there. Who the fuck wants to commute to Mars? Despite all the kick ass futuristic shit that’d be there at first, as soon as everyone realized that Mars is the galactic equivalent of a highway rest stop, only the most desperately pathetic people would ever want to spend time there. Emo kids needing solitude and pretentious artsy types who want someplace to think. Mars would become a community college campus in no time.

And even if you are one of those types, what the hell is the point? You going to go on vacation later? Not on Mars, the whole planet may as well be North Dakota. Nope, you’re getting your ass back on a flight to Earth. A flight that’s going to take the better part of a year. Better bring lots of porn.

Robot Servants

Sci Fi has assured us that we will have robot servants one day and that they will hate the shit out of us and kill us to a greater or lesser degree, depending on which film or book you choose to believe. That, in and of itself, is obviously a concern. But that’s not the only problem with artificially intelligent day labor. The real problem is people. People have already shown an unnatural attachment to their Roomba vacuums, those little robot vacuums that putter around your house sucking up crap. When the day comes that we have walking, talking, thinking robots wandering around the house cooking meals and wiping our asses for us, it’s going to take all of 2 minutes for someone to decide “Hey robot, I wanna fuck you.” And then it’s all downhill from there. That may sound sick but you damn well know it’s true. About 10 minutes after that we, as a society, have to deal with robot girlfriends, robot spouses and people who want to free the poor robots to run free in their natural habitat, which is probably a scrap yard or some such.

Space Marines

An intergalactic team of ruffnecks seems like a grand way to defend the galaxy against alien invaders. Send in the grunts to storm some silicon beaches on a Krypton atmosphere planet full of filthy bug men who need a dose of human ass kicking so they stop laying their eggs in our celebrities’ brains. The problem with that is what we can witness in the here and now any time troops from pretty much any country need to be deployed overseas. Things gets out of hand. Troops starts doing crazy shit like stacking POW’s on top of each other and fisting them on camera, someone forgets to send ammo or gear that can withstand a beating from a broomstick, Sgt. Pepper gets a letter from his wife saying she’s banging the neighbor and the Fightin’ Aces get lost in the desert for 3 weeks and have to drink their own piss to stay alive. Does anyone really want to do that 6 light years from home?

Floating Cities

Lando Calrissian was a pretty bad ass dude, and not just because of all that Colt 45. The man ran a city that just kind of floated in the sky and seemed to be some sort of long time ago, far far away Vegas. Star Trek too had a floating city pop up and even Jonathan Swift had one in Gulliver’s Travels. The idea seems fun and cool at a glance but the potential for something to go horribly awry is pretty much everywhere.

People can’t climb the Empire State Building without wanting to throw off a penny or a used condom. If people lived in a cloud city, they’d be hucking shit out the windows all the time. Pop cans, diapers, used up porn, it’d all be raining on the poor saps below. Worse, as Luke Skywalker showed us, these things are full of holes. Maybe that’s a design flaw, but when your balcony hangs out over a 50,000 foot drop into God knows what, the chance for bad things to happen is astronomical. Some drunk wandering home after a night of debauchery takes a wrong turn in an effort to find a dumpster to piss on and spends his last vertigo-addled moments wondering why it’s so windy all of a sudden.

Death Sports

The future may possibly see the world united under a banner of peace in which conflicts are settled in a more civilized manner than war. Teams from the opposing sides strap on roller skates and try to kill each other while playing what looks suspiciously like Quidditch without brooms. Or maybe they forgo the roller skates and just let Schwarzenegger run free while Richard Dawson macks on some tang in the studio audience. Whatever. Point is, killing people for entertainment seems to be what the future has in store for us.

While this idea likes to believe humans are a blood thirsty lot whose lust can only be sated by the most extreme contests ever for the purpose of cheap thrills, the fact that only 5% of people who possess a full mouthful of their own teeth can be convinced to watch any “sport” that currently takes place on wheels takes some wind from this idea’s sails. That, and a big part of sport is playability and merchandising. Your sport is going nowhere if dad takes the kids out to the rink to play a round and ends up decapitated. And if you can’t have a star player due to remarkable mortality rates, who the hell is going to sell your shoes? Who’s endorsing the Gatorade? Who’s being fined for using league resources to film amateur porn?

Brain Implants

Terrible movies like Johnny Mnemonic remind us that, in the future, we’re all supposed to be cyborgs in vinyl trenchcoats. Chips will be implanted everywhere, but what could be better than the brain chip? A little implant to let us jack right into a computer would probably be convenient for the first week as we surf porno at dinner without anyone even knowing or order awesome tube socks from eBay while we’re stuck in traffic just by thinking it.

On the other hand, once you actually connect to a computer, you’re going to have to spend an awful lot of time trying to get rid of the pain in and the ass spyware someone put in your head. Brain spyware that lets companies know when you’re shitting and masturbating is way more intrusive than your average keylogger, and adware popping up before your eyes trying to sell you Cyber-Viagra or refinance your mortgage as you’re trying to sleep or, again, masturbate, would most likely drive a few people to violence. And while Norton and McAfee do their best to stem the tide of viruses, the first computer-brain virus that causes someone to crumple to the floor and start having bladder-voiding fits whenever they try to remember something from their childhood would probably stop the industry in its tracks.

Time Travel

The idea of going back in time to hunt a dinosaur or going forward in time to hunt your own great grandchildren has been a staple of sci fi for ages. H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in the 1800’s and don’t think for a second he didn’t consider how awesome it’d be to take a book of matches back into the caveman days to awe them all, become a living God and defiling their women.

All time travel stories warn us that if we go back and mess around we’ll destroy the space/time continuum. Pee in one Victorian era haberdasher’s soup bowl and you may negate the founding of the United States. That’s exactly why Marty McFly didn’t bang his mom. But by the same token, if it ever became a viable form of technology, not even the government could close Pandora’s box and stop some dude from making one in his garage and figuring it couldn’t hurt too badly to go back to ancient Egypt with a laser pointer, a shotgun and a Casio keyboard to loot every single ounce of gold in the place. Then, before you know it, all of us are living under the rule of the Kingdom of France, TV was never invented and everyone eats food in suppository form. Even Doc Brown couldn’t fix that mess.

What really makes women want to sleep with a man

What makes a woman want to sleep with a man? Is it true that a chap can laugh a woman into bed? Does he need to be tall, dark and handsome to stand any chance at all?

Today, in the second extract from the new book Why Women Have Sex, by psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss, we reveal the features that make a man appeal to a woman, and why, are far more fascinating and complex than you could imagine...

Rules of attraction: A fascinating guide to the complex features that will make a man appeal to a woman

SIZE MATTERS

What sort of body does a woman find desirable? Perhaps the most obvious physical characteristic she looks for in a man is height.

Studies consistently find that women consider tall men to be attractive. In analyses of personal ads, 80 per cent of women state they want to meet a man who is 6ft or taller.

Men who indicate in their personal ads that they are tall have also been shown to receive far more responses from women.

Other studies show women prefer tall men as husbands and put an even greater emphasis on height in shorter-term sex partners. Women even place importance on height when selecting sperm donors.

Two studies also found that taller-than-average men tend to have a greater number of live-in girlfriends and more children, confirming their popularity for romance and reproduction.

And there does seem to be an underlying logic in women's preference for tall men. In Western cultures, tall men tend to have higher socio-economic status than short men.

Each added inch of height has been shown to add several thousand pounds to a man's annual salary.

It is estimated that, on average, 6ft men earn more than £100,000 across a 30-year career than 5ft 5in men.

They also tend to be healthier than shorter men - and if they're policemen, they get assaulted less than their shorter colleagues, which suggests height commands more respect from other men. What more could a girl want?

THE SCENT OF SEX

According to new scientific research, a woman will literally sniff out a man's genetic make-up before she decides if he's right for her.

A woman's sense of smell reaches a peak around the time of her ovulation, the 24-hour window -during the monthly menstrual cycle in which she can become pregnant.

The genes responsible for fighting off disease-causing bacteria and viruses are found in a group of genes called the major histocompatibility complex, or MHC.

Different people have various versions of these genes - and it turns out that women can benefit in two ways from mating with men whose MHC genes are dissimilar to their own.

Such a mate is likely to have more dissimilar genes in general, so finding someone dissimilar attractive might help to prevent many of the birth defects associated with reproducing with close genetic relatives.

Sexy tone: Voice pitch is the most striking feature of human speech n]

A second benefit is any children of such a union will have a more robust immune system.

The interesting thing is that women seem to be able to sniff out men with dissimilar MHC.

In a revealing study, Brazilian researchers asked 29 men to wear cotton skin patches for five days to absorb their sweat - and thus their body odours.

A sample of 29 women then smelled each cotton patch and evaluated the odour on a scale from attractive to unattractive.

Scientists identified the specific MHC complex of each man and woman through blood tests. Women found the aromas of men who had a complex dissimilar to their own to be the most desirable.

The odours of men who had a complex similar to their own made them recoil in disgust.

This highly developed sense of smell can have a profound effect on women's sexuality.

Evolutionary psychologist Christine Garver-Apgar studied MHC similarity in 48 couples.

They found that as the degree of similarity between each woman and man increased, the woman's sexual responsiveness to her partner decreased.

Women whose partners had similar genes reported wanting to have sex less often. They had less motivation to please their partner sexually compared to the women going out with men with dissimilar genes.

Women with MHC-similar partners also reported more frequent sexual fantasies about other men, particularly at the most fertile phase of their ovulation cycle.

And their sexual fantasies about other men did not just remain in their heads. They also reported higher rates of sexual infidelity.

FIT FOR SEX

Height is not the only aspect of men's bodies that excites women.

Studies of mate preferences reveal that women desire strong, muscular, athletic men for long-term partnerships as well as for sexual liaisons.

Most women also show a distinct preference for a V-shaped torso - broad shoulders relative to hips. They are also attracted to a lean stomach combined with a muscular (but not muscle-bound) upper torso.

In fact, both sexes judge men with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio to be more physically and socially dominant.

This may give a clue to its appeal, since women are not attracted to men who appear as though they could be easily dominated by other men.

Men with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio begin having sexual intercourse at an early age - 16 or younger.

Sexual attraction: A woman will literally sniff out a man's genetic make-up before she decides if he's right for her

They report having more sex partners than their slim-shouldered peers. But be warned: they have more affairs while in a relationship.

And they report more instances of being chosen by women who are already in relationships for affairs on the side.

Scientific research, though, has discovered that men overestimate the degree of muscularity that women find attractive, assuming they need to pump iron and sport a honed six-pack to be attractive.

Images of muscle-bound men have almost certainly fostered men's misperception of what women find most sexually attractive - just as photo spreads of impossibly thin models have led women to overestimate the degree of thinness that men find most attractive.

One study compared the muscularity of men's bodies in Cosmopolitan magazine (whose readership is 89 per cent women) with Men's Health (whose readership is 85 per cent men).

The level of muscularity in Cosmopolitan was nearly identical to that which women rate as ideal in a sexual partner. Men, in contrast, mistakenly believe women desire a more muscular sex partner, which corresponds more closely with the muscularity of men in Men's Health.

After viewing repeated images of V-shaped bodies, men become more dissatisfied with their own bodies, just as women become more unhappy with their bodies after seeing images of size zero models.

THE FACE OF ATTRACTION

When it comes to choosing between a rugged, conventionally handsome man and an ordinary, less attractive partner, women have a difficult choice to make.

In a series of scientific studies, women found square-jawed, masculine faces to be the sexiest and the most attractive for a casual sexual encounter.

But they judged somewhat less masculine faces to be more attractive for a long-term relationship.

Women's sexual desires for testosterone-fuelled facial cues of masculinity were especially strong during the fertile window of their cycle.

The most plausible interpretation of these results is that women are attracted to men who are likely to be 'good dads' when choosing long-term mates, but are attracted to the signals of robust health that more masculine faces provide when they are most likely to become impregnated.

Why do more masculine faces signify health? High testosterone production actually compromises the body's immune functioning, leaving men less able to fight off diseases and parasites in adolescence.

Only men who are above average in healthiness during adolescence can 'afford' to produce the high levels of testosterone that masculinise the face.

Less healthy adolescents can't afford to compromise their already precarious immune systems, and so produce lower levels of testosterone at precisely the time when facial bones take their adult form.

So, a masculine-looking face signals a man's health, his ability to succeed in competing with other men and his ability to protect.

This interpretation, however, raises a puzzle: Why wouldn't women be attracted to highly masculine males for all mating relationships, from dangerous liaisons through to life-long love?

The answer lies in the fact that the more masculine men, with more testosterone, tend to be less sexually faithful.

They are more likely to be the risk-taking, womanising bad boys among the male population.

Consequently, most women face a trade- off: if they choose the less masculine-looking man, they are likely to get a better father and sexually loyal mate, but they lose out in the currency of genes for good health.

If they choose the more masculine man, they can endow their children with good genes for health, but must suffer the costs of a man who channels some of his sexual energy toward other women. It's a tricky choice.

A SEXY VOICE

Voice pitch is the most striking feature of human speech and, according to research, there is a definite sound of sexiness - something about male voices that gives women a sexual buzz.

Before puberty, male and female voices are similar. At puberty, however, remarkable changes occur. Boys experience a dramatic increase in the length of their vocal cords, which become 60 per cent longer than those of girls.

Longer vocal cords and tracts produce a deeper, more resonant voice pitch.

Testosterone triggers the change in boys at puberty and high levels of testosterone predict deeper voices among adult men.

Recent investigations show that whether women are looking for a short-term or long-term relationship is critical in how they choose among men's voices.

Evolutionary anthropologist David Puts obtained voice recordings of 30 men attempting to persuade a woman to go out on a romantic date.

Then 142 heterosexual women listened to the recordings and rated each man's attractiveness for a short-term sexual encounter and a long-term committed relationship.

Though women said the deeper voices were more attractive in both mating contexts, they dramatically preferred the deeper voices when considering them as prospects for purely sexual, short-term encounters.

Moreover, women in the fertile phase of their ovulation cycle showed the strongest sexual attraction to men with deep voices.

One hint as to why this is so is found in studies of female frogs. They gravitate towards male bullfrogs with deep, resonant croaks, which are a reliable signal - for frogs - of a mate's size and health.

Research on people has revealed two similar reasons that help to explain why women find some men's voices much more attractive than others.

The first involves bilateral body symmetry (when both sides of the body are symmetrical), which is commonly accepted as a sign of good health and good genes.

Body symmetry is also more likely to produce deep voices.

So when a woman finds the resonance of a man's voice even sexier during her fertile, ovulatory phase, she is attracted to the sound of healthy genes for her possible offspring.

SOMETHING IN THE WAY HE MOVES

The way a person dances reveals a huge amount of information.It broadcasts information about age - notice the difference between the

What REALLY makes a woman want to dancing prowess of younger versus older dancers. It also conveys information about energy level, health and biomechanical efficiency.

In fact, in our studies, we found that some women had sex with men simply because they'd been impressed by their dancing. Research reveals that women find certain body movements to be more attractive than others.

One study had women view digitally masked or pixellated images of men dancing. They were more attracted to men who displayed larger and more sweeping movements. They also rated these men more erotic.

Other patterns of men's movements provide women with valuable mating information. Nonreciprocal same-sex touching - when a man touches another man's back, for example - is a well-documented signal of dominance.

Women see 'touchers' as having more status, a key component of a man's mate value. Movements that maximise space, as when a man stretches his arms or extends his legs, are another dominance signal.

Those who display open body positioning - for example, by not folding their arms across the chest - are judged to be more potent and persuasive.

SEXY PERSONALITY

Sexual attraction isn't simply a matter of physical bodies drawn magnetically together in search of compatibility.

For some women, personality - in particular, a good sense of humour - is equally, if not more, important in generating a sexual spark.

One indication of the importance of a good sense of humour in a man is that it is one of the few personality traits that has its own abbreviation in online dating sites: GSOH.

Another is that research shows married women who think their husbands are witty are more satisfied with their marriages than women who do not.

Women rate it as a desirable trait in short-term sexual and long-term romantic relationships.

Why a sense of humour is so important in sexual attraction has been the subject of scientific debate.

One critical distinction is between humour production (making others laugh) and humour appreciation (laughing at others' jokes).

There's a sex difference - men define a woman with a good sense of humour as someone who laughs at their jokes. Men especially like women who are receptive to their humour.

Women, in contrast, are attracted to men who produce humour, and that's true for all types of relationships, from one-night stands to lifelong matings.

The most likely explanation for why women and men alike are attracted to those with a sense of humour is because laughing elicits a positive mood - it's a sign of confidence and intelligence, too.

Five Things That Women Hate in Bed

I believe that none of men could possibly be proud of being called “boring lover”, and none of the women would like spend their lives or even just one night with a “stallion” with such a reputation. Therefore, we are here to help you with a several tips on how avoid such a “label” on your back. Here are five things that women really hate in their sex life:

Don’t be too careful
The phrases like “can I?” are NOT sexy. They just kill the mood. A good lover knows how to let the woman know their next step and how to prepare her for it with no questions asked. Sometimes it is enough just to look in “undressing” way or a provocative touch your girlfriends’ body to give a signal for sex.

“Mechanical sex”
Most women would agree that sex with no passion is boring, just a time spent with no particular reason. No woman wants to become an “inflatable woman” (perhaps only with a very little exception). I’m not saying that every sex you have has to be exclusively tremendous, but just don’t ignore the fact that every woman want to be a “woman” and it's always a good idea to keep that in mind. Be sensitive and sometimes not just have sex, but also “make love” to her.

Monotony
If your girlfriend or wife know every crack in your ceiling – you are in a huge trouble. But don’t panic yet. A simple change of a place will help you out. Try doing it in your bathroom, kitchen, your car or even on a beach (of course find a place with no viewers), the possibilities are endless. Turn on your imagination.

Moaning and talking
Too loud moaning as well as too quiet is irritating for women. The silence is also not an option. You have to play careful here. Try to find the “golden middle” and to express your feelings to your girlfriend but not to all the neighbors. Try not to use all the same words during the sex as well, try to find phrases how to say how sexy she looks, how great she is in bed you don’t have to repeat all the same three words, which we all are so afraid of.

Unwillingness to experiment
If you are in a long-term relationship, don’t be afraid to experiment. Sex life does get boring, and there is a lot you can do about it. Try different positions, role-playing give a freedom to your fantasies. Do whatever you want to if your partner agrees with it, and if it would spice up your love life.

Discuss you fantasies with your partner at the glass of a good wine, and you would be surprised how fast they can turn into reality.

These are the main guidelines how to improve your sex life. What I wanted to say here is that women do not seek Casanova in every man. They just want you to make an effort to your relationship.

Remember that opposite of “boring” is exiting and unexpected, so if you try from time to time to surprise your partner, you will not be in trouble. The most important thing is that you would have a partner who would be w...

'I had sex with my father for 10 yrs'

Actress Mackenzie Phillips, the daughter of The Mamas & the Papas founder John, has claimed that her father introduced her to cocaine at the age of 11 and she maintained a sexual relationship with him for 10 years.

In ‘High on Arrival’, her new tell-all book, the child star says her first recollection of her father having sex with her was on the night before her wedding to Jeff Sessler, a member of the Rolling Stones entourage, reports FOX News.

“On the eve of my (1979) wedding, my father showed up, determined to stop it,” Phillips, who was a teenager and strung out on drugs at the time, writes.

“I had tons of pills, and Dad had tons of everything too. Eventually I passed out on Dad’s bed. My father was not a man with boundaries. He was full of love and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.”
“Had this happened before? I didn’t know. All I can say is that it was the first time I was aware of it,” she added.

Phillips told talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey that her relationship eventually became consensual and continued for ten years.

She also revealed how her dad introduced her to cocaine when she was just ten years old.

"I remember going into my room, I was crouched on the floor. He put the needle in my arm and put the plunger in and he missed," she said.

"He missed the vein and my whole arm went numb,” she added.

Where Does Sex Live in the Brain? From Top to Bottom.

Neuroscientists explore the mind's sexual side and discover that desire is not quite what we thought it was.

On April 11, 1944, a doctor named T. C. Erickson addressed the Chicago Neurological Society about a patient he called Mrs. C. W. At age 43 she had started to wake up many nights feeling as if she were having sex—or as she put it to Erickson, feeling “hot all over.” As the years passed her hot spells struck more often, even in the daytime, and began to be followed by seizures that left her unable to speak. Erickson examined Mrs. C. W. when she was 54 and diagnosed her with nymphomania. He prescribed a treatment that was shockingly common at the time: He blasted her ovaries with X-rays.

Despite the X-rays, Mrs. C. W.’s seizures became worse, leaving her motionless and feeling as if an egg yolk were running down her throat. Erickson began to suspect that her sexual feelings were emanating not from her ovaries but from her head. Doctors opened up her skull and discovered a slow-growing tumor pressing against her brain. After the tumor was removed and Mrs. C. W. recovered, the seizures faded. “When asked if she still had any ‘passionate spells,’” Erickson recounted, “she said, ‘No, I haven’t had any; they were terrible things.’”

Mrs. C. W.’s experience was rare but not unique. In 1969 two Florida doctors wrote to the journal Neurology about a patient who experienced similar spells of passion. She would beat both hands on her chest and order her husband to satisfy her. Usually the woman would come to with no memory of what had just happened, but sometimes she would fall to the floor in a seizure. Her doctors diagnosed her with epilepsy, probably brought on by the damage done to parts of her brain by a case of syphilis. More recently, in 2004, doctors in Taiwan described a woman who complained of orgasms that swept over her when she brushed her teeth. Shame kept her silent for years, until her episodes also caused her to lose consciousness. When the doctors examined her, they diagnosed her with epilepsy as well, caused by a small patch of damaged brain tissue.

Each of these stories contains a small clue about the enigmatic neuroscience of sex. A hundred years ago Sigmund Freud argued that sexual desire was the primary motivating energy in human life. Psychologists and sociologists have since mapped the vast variations in human sexuality. Today pharmaceutical companies make billions bringing new life to old sex organs. But for all the attention that these fields of research have lavished on sex, neuroscientists have lagged far behind. What little they knew came from rare cases such as Mrs. C. W.’s.

The case studies do make a couple of things clear. For starters, they demonstrate that sexual pleasure is not just a simple set of reflexes in the body. After all, epileptic bursts of electricity in the brain alone can trigger everything from desire to ecstasy. The clinical examples also point to the parts of the brain that may be involved in sexual experiences. In 2007 cognitive neuroscientist Stephanie Ortigue of Syracuse University and psychiatrist Francesco Bianchi-Demicheli of the Geneva University Psychiatric Center reviewed the case of Mrs. C. W. and 19 other instances of spontaneous orgasms. In 80 percent of them, doctors pinpointed epilepsy in the temporal lobe.

The temporal lobe is still a big piece of real estate, though. To zoom in on the regions associated with sexuality, neuroscientists needed to scan people’s brains while they were having sex-related thoughts. But using brain scans to study sex is not easy. Most brain imaging technology works the way cameras did in the 19th century: If you want a clear picture, you have to hold very still. Even then, brain scans provide meaningful information only in carefully designed experiments. If you want to find the parts of the brain that are crucial for reading, for instance, you can’t just take pictures of people’s brains as they read; the visual cortex carries out many functions other than reading. Scientists therefore have to craft experiments that allow them to compare what happens to brains during reading with what happens when people look at random strings of letters or checkerboard patterns. The same precision is required to study sex in the brain.

As a result, the first imaging studies of sex in the brain have appeared only in the past few years. Serge Stoléru, a neuroscientist at Pierre and Marie Curie University in France, published one on sexual desire in 2003. He and his colleagues showed a series of pictures and films—some erotic, some ordinary—to 15 men. To record the activity in the subjects’ brains, the scientists used PET scans: They injected radioactive tracers into the volunteers and then tracked how the tracers moved in the brain. The radioactive signal accumulated in areas where neurons became active, as their energy was replenished by the surrounding blood vessels.

Eight of the men were ordinary, sexually speaking. The other seven suffered from hypoactive sexual desire disorder. People with this condition rarely experience sexual desires or fantasies. Stoléru and his colleagues found clear-cut differences between the two groups. In particular, a patch of neurons near the front of the brain—a region called the medial orbitofrontal cortex—was active in the desire-impaired men but quiet in the normal ones. Among its jobs, the medial orbitofrontal cortex keeps our emotions from getting out of control. Perhaps men with hypoactive sexual desire disorder couldn’t feel desire because their brains were keeping their emotions bottled up.

Unfortunately, PET scans take several minutes to capture a single image. A lot can happen in that time, especially when sex is involved. So Stoléru and other scientists have switched to a faster method, functional MRI (fMRI), which monitors the flow of blood to active neurons by measuring levels of oxygen in the brain. This technique can capture an image of the working brain in just a couple of seconds and locate areas of activity down to a millimeter or so—about one-twentieth of an inch.

The parts of the brain that light up during sexual experiences are associated with some of our most sophisticated forms of thought.

Using fMRI, scientists have pinpointed a number of regions of the brain that kick in when people feel sexual desire. As expected, several of them are in the temporal lobe. One of those regions, the amygdala, orchestrates powerful emotions. Another, the hippocampus, manages our memories. It may become active as we associate sights and smells with past sexual experiences. But despite what Freud thought, sexual experiences are not just a matter of primal emotions and associations. The parts of the brain that light up in the fMRI scans include regions that are associated with some of our most sophisticated forms of thought. The anterior insula, for instance, is what we use to reflect on the state of our own bodies (to be aware of the sensation of butterflies in the stomach, say, or of lightness in the head). Brain regions that are associated with understanding the thoughts and intentions of other people also seem linked with sexual feelings.

Even fMRI studies are not fast enough to catch the flow of activity, however. They cannot tell us which regions of the brain become active first, which later. So Ortigue and Bianchi-Demicheli are updating one of the oldest brain-monitoring technologies. For decades scientists have taped electrodes onto people’s scalps to record their brain activity and create a readout called an electroencephalogram, or EEG. In the past this approach offered a blurry picture of what was going on in the subject’s brain. An electrode on the scalp can pick up electrical activity only after it has spread beyond the skull, getting weakened and smeared along the way. But the EEG process is fast; it can capture 1,000 snapshots a second.

What really DOES turn women on?

So is a successful and driven career woman more likely to have a high sex drive than her lesser-achieving sisters?

That was the conclusion drawn from research published this week which showed that women with high levels of testosterone are more likely to be risk-takers - and to have stronger sexual appetites.

It's just the latest piece in the jigsaw of the female libido, an enigma that now feeds a multi-million pound industry, with battalions of 'sexperts' racing to uncover the magic formula that will deliver the gift of better sex for all.

Baffling: A female sex drive is a complicated, multi-layered thing. Understanding desire may turn out to be as tough as understanding women

But it's also a battleground, with experts at war with each other over whether 'sexy' for a woman begins in her body or her brain.

Over the past decade - ironically, since the launch of Viagra for men had the unexpected side-effect of making drug treatments for sex a hot new market for both genders - millions of pounds have been poured into researching the female libido.

It has uncovered some big surprises and some baffling dead-ends. While male desire tends to be straightforward, a woman's sex drive is a complicated, multi-layered thing.

That said, some women, just like some men, do seem to have a naturally higher sex drive than others. The research just published in the U.S. would seem to back that up, showing that this may well be linked to hormones, and to testosterone in particular.

Women with high levels of testosterone are much more likely to be ambitious and assertive and to choose traditionally male careers in business and finance. They're also likely to want more sex (low levels of testosterone have been shown to produce the opposite effect).

Sex researchers have started to talk about the importance of just doing it whether you feel like it or not, to maintain your desire levels

'Eureka!' shout the biologists. This shows that female desire, like male, is rooted in body chemistry.

Simplistic rubbish, respond the psychotherapists.

They believe that female desire is made up of physical, emotional, social and relationship factors. If you have poor body image, an uptight family background, bad early sexual experiences or a partner who is insensitive, lazy or just not that nice, then your sex drive very likely would take a nose-dive.

Who's right, then? Let's just consider the subject these experts are spending so much time and money to argue about, using real examples from a group of women who agreed to talk honestly about their sex lives.

Susan, is 48, slim and attractive and happily married. Well, quite happily.

'To be honest. I don't care if I never have sex again,' she admits. 'I only do it to keep Gary happy'.

Monica is 35 and also uninterested in sex with her long-time partner, but feels ' overwhelming feelings of desire' for a colleague at work with whom she is having an affair.

Lucy is 54 and has the opposite problem to Susan. 'Since my late 40s, I've had the wonderful experience of a late-blossoming sex drive, and I absolutely love it.'

Claire is 24 and in a new relationship with Tom: 'We spend days at a time in bed. It makes me feel very close to him, but I also like the feeling of sexual power it gives me.'

Helen, who is 32, isn't interested in sexual power. 'I've got a full-time job and two children under five. I don't even think about sex.'

It's clear from just this handful of examples that female sexual desire is as various and unique as women themselves.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1209325/What-really-DOES-turn-women-on.html#ixzz0PPM9iTRX

If you can't do sex, let me do it for you: Friend told Jackson

London, August 22: Mark Lester, the long-term friend of Michael Jackson, has said that the King of Pop confided in him about his ‘difficult’ sex life.

Lester made the revelation while opening up about his decision to donate his sperm to the superstar. He claims he could be the biological father of Jackson's 11-year-old daughter Paris.

The former child star claims that the singer wanted his pal to donate sperm, because he was ‘nervous’ about sex and found it ‘difficult’, reports ‘The Daily Star’.

He tells US TV show Today, "We had conversations on the telephone and Michael was very shy when it came to women and he confided in me that he found it very difficult to actually do the sexual act. He knew I had three, at the time, lovely girls (daughters), so I jokingly said, ''Michael if you don't want to do it, why don't I do it for you.''"

Source: Zopag

"I don't know) whether e just wanted to increase the chances of the artificial insemination, but he just said he was very, very nervous and said he wasn't up to going through with the act."

Females prefer shorter sex, while males longer

Washington, August 22: A new study has shown that female fruit flies prefer keeping sex short and sweet because they get a reproductive boost from shorter intercourse.

Since males like sex to last longer, a fight ensues.

"After about a minute and a half (of mating), the female begins kicking and struggling," National Geographic News quoted Kirsten Klappert, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, as having written in the study report.

The researcher notes that when mating lasts longer, female flies have less time to mate again with a different male, if they do so at all.

Although that is good for males flies, as it means that their sperm have less competition, it can be disastrous for females.

"Many male Drosophila montana are infertile, so if you only mate with one you have a high risk of no offspring at all," Klappert said.

During the study, Klappert’s team paired live males with dead females to see how much control female flies have over mating length.
Source: Zopag