It’s pretty much a fail from the get-go; what amazes me is that anyone bothered to write this article at all.

A Recipe for Riches
by Duncan Greenberg
Friday, October 9, 2009

Want to become a tech titan or hedge fund tycoon?

Well yes, of course, who wouldn’t? And it’s really an option for all you Joe and Jane Sixpacks too—

Up your chances by dropping out of college

!!!! See?!? Most of you already got that part covered, don’tcha?

(and in a mumble)

or going to Harvard and working at Goldman Sachs.

(Oh yeah, those too! But let’s speed rapidly on past those parts—)

Are billionaires born or made? What are the common attributes among the uber-wealthy? Are there any true secrets of the self-made?

We get these questions a lot, and decided it was time to go beyond the broad answers of smarts, ambition and luck

We’re conspicuously leaving out the most accurate broad answer, which is being born wealthy. No, no, don’t thank us–self-satisified condescension comes to us as naturally as breathing!

Our admittedly unscientific study of the self-made members of the Forbes 400

Wait til you see how they defined (and that, barely at all, even implicitly) “self-made,” and I wonder just how tiny a percentage of the Forbes 400 even qualified under their rather, shall we say loose, guidelines? Since they make a point of not sharing that data point, tragically, we will never know….admittedly unscientific–which again makes me wonder, really–why did anyone even bother writing this article at all? Equally valuable time could have been spent, say, going to the bathroom, or pulling split ends, or even staring blankly at a wall.

After some blathering on about math genes, during the process of which the authors make it clear they don’t really understand what a high aptitude for math even consists of and are only including it to find something, somewhere, that doesn’t clearly and unequivocably require being born wealthy to result in being even a “self-made” billionaire—

Consistent with the rest of the population, more American billionaires and near-billionaires were born in the fall than in any other season. However, relatively few of them were born in December, historically the month with the eighth-highest birth rate.

However..?…there are only twelve months total. Which means, the month with the eighth-highest birthrate is actually also the month with the fourth-lowest birthrate, which means that it is a month with one of the lowest birth rates in the general population…what are you trying to do, be living proof that intelligence isn’t required to get a prestigious job..? Come on now! But no, the lure of the reverse statistics proved too strong–!

Of the 274 self-made tycoons on the Forbes 400, 14% either never started or never completed college. The number of precocious college dropouts is highest among those who forged careers as technology entrepreneurs: Bill Gates of Microsoft (MSFT), Steve Jobs of Apple (AAPL), Michael Dell of Dell (DELL), Larry Ellison of Oracle (ORCL) and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook.

So 86% of them, ie the overwhelming majority, did. Which is statistically way more than the number of people in the general population that have and way WAY more than the number of people hailing from the lower socioeconimic brackets of America who have…look, if you the author of this article have a college degree, I admit that in of itself presents a legitimate case for how meaningless having one is in terms of the actual intelligence of the holder, but we’re not talking about that–! Clearly we’re talking about winding up with lots of money, not actually being intelligent. And to wind up with lots of money, 86% of the time, apparently, you need a college degree.

The article’s author needed to give up at this point, but for whatever reason couldn’t bring himself to do it, and finished up the article chirping brightly about how being educated at Yale and working for Goldman Sachs is a really great way to end up being a self-made billionaire, because having a Yale education and being employed at Goldman Sachs are things that are really available to children of the middle class and below, right..?

Just reflecting, once more, on the article’s title:

A Recipe for Riches
by Duncan Greenberg
Friday, October 9, 2009

Want to become a tech titan or hedge fund tycoon? Up your chances by dropping out of college or going to Harvard and working at Goldman Sachs.

Well hell, while we’re at it:

A Recipe for Beauty
by Lisa Kansas
Sunday, October 11, 2009

Want to become a supermodel? Up your chances by developing a weight problem or having extensive plastic surgery and working for Vogue magazine.

My admittedly unscientific survey, which may have consisted of me getting drunk and discussing the matter seriously with my stuffed penguin–

Yeah. Laters!

*Actually a misquote, but it fit the tone of the article so well I couldn’t help recycling it.

2009 Hot 100 Girls of Maxim
At long last the stimulus package America really needs: The eyeball-searing, fantasy-fulfilling, brain-exploding return of the Hot 100!

93. Michelle Obama
He may be dealing with two wars, an economic meltdown, and a rapidly graying dome, but at least our Commander in Chief gets to come home to the hottest First Lady in the history of these United States.

My reactions, in chronological sequence:

1. That’s a very nice picture of Mrs. Obama.
2. Maxim is a really stupid magazine.
3. No, I’m not being sexist, it’s the exact same kind of stupid as Cosmopolitan–hey, equal-opportunity stupidity! How often do you get to see that in the real world–
4. Is that really the President’s wife on a Hot 100 Maxim Girl list?!
5. Oh my God, Maxim is such a stupid magazine!
6. She is pretty hot, actually. I don’t think I look that good now.
7. I wonder what the comments say…?
8. Okay, now I’m sorry I looked at the comments.
9. To really analyze this, I should look at the other 99 Hot Maxim Girls–
10. No, I just can’t do it. Not even for the blog!
11. Not only do Democrats get all the good musicians at their convention, now they get to have the hot first lady too–do you think Republicans ever get jealous of all this effortless cool..?
12. Maxim is really the stupidest, most sexist while simultaneously being the most brainlessly trivial magazine, ever. Gah!

Regina Benjamin’s Country Credentials: What Rural Medicine Taught America’s Next Top Doc

Since starting her practice in 1990, Benjamin, 52, has become an advocate for patients everywhere. She became the first African-American woman to lead a state medical society and has won numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” and a Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights. Still, she never strayed far from her roots, and currently serves as the CEO of Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic, which she founded. This week, President Obama tapped Benjamin to serve as surgeon general.

Well, that’s cool, I thought to myself. We are living in historic times…the first serious female Presidential contender…the first black man elected President…the first Latina soon to be confirmed to the Supreme Court…not that Regina Benjamin would be the first black woman to be chosen as Surgeon General, but she would be only the second one…

So I’m feeling a mild warmth towards humanity in general as I scan down the story…til I get to the very, very end:

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Member Comments
Posted By: pdskep (July 16, 2009 at 12:51 PM)

Well, it didn’t help her put down the Hagen Dazs. Should the government spokesperson for public health and healthy living be so grossly overweight?

Huh?

So I scrolled rapidly back up–I had noticed a picture of the Surgeon-General-to-be at the top of the article but had given it only a cursory glance, and honestly couldn’t remember having noticed that she weighed 1000 pounds–

OMG!! IT’S JABBA THE FUCKING HUTT!

…er, not. Well, I thought, maybe that’s a flattering picture of her and she’s somehow managing to hide the other 750 pounds below her neck. Let’s look for a whole-body shot–

…er, still not.

Aside from the fact that she’s not “grossly overweight” (hello?), why does her weight really matter, exactly..? Her weight specifically. Is the concern that the kids of America will look at her and go oooh look, the Surgeon General’s fat, that means it’s okay for me to be fat too! Yeah, because that’s what kids tend to base their eating decisions on…the Surgeon General’s weight. (Like the vast majority of kids, and adults if it comes down to that, even know who the Surgeon General is at any given moment.)

Is the concern that, because she is physically clearly not perfect, then her brain and her conscience and her dedication (which are presumably the things she was actually chosen for) are also not going to be perfect? (That raises the interesting corollary that someone whose weight is perfect, is more likely to have a perfect brain, conscience and dedication as well…oh really…?)

Because people with the magic BMI number are SO much more likely to be both smart AND saintly!

I am not the only one who has noticed this trend and commented on it–no indeed:

Since President Obama announced his pick for the nation’s Top Doc, Internet message boards have been atwitter with the observation that Dr. Regina Benjamin is fat.

Critics seem to believe it’s ironic that the nation’s top doctor would be overweight, and it’s led the most nattering of nags to conclude that she should not be picked for prom queen, er, I mean, surgeon general.

Thank God, too. C’mon, people, let’s make some noise–this is fatophobia at its most disgusting, and most ignorant as well. Spread the word.

But it’s happened again. And I’m no longer feeling so self-congratulatory. I don’t want to be able to read these people’s minds! I don’t want them to be an open book to me! I don’t want to understand them this well!

Yes, William Saletan is at it again, but this time, he isn’t writing about ladyparts or about any of the other stuff he usually expounds upon (which I mentally dubbed “Frankenstein medicine” a while back, though he’s made a few notable segues into race issues). He…is…writing…about…gays.

Before I go on, let’s recap something from my Saletan bitch session from last week:

…the place where I usually see [Saletan's tactics of "oh of course I'm pro-choice! and now that I've said that, let me do my best to completely undermine the pro-choice stance"] used over and over is in the gay/lesbian debate world, under the rallying cry of “Of course we don’t hate homosexuals themselves! What we hate is homosexuality. Hate the sin, love the sinner!”

Let’s recontext what Saletan has to say, and see if it starts to sound awfully damn familiar to you too:

Every abortion homosexuality dilemma is different, because every situation is different. The person best situated to make the right decision is the pregnant woman person having the homosexual feelings. A few years ago, I wrote a whole book on this point.***

So why do I keep bringing up abortion homosexuality as a moral problem? Because it is a moral problem. It’s the destruction of a developing human being the traditional family unit. For that reason, the less we do it, the better. When I say abortion having a homosexual relationship is bad, I’m not saying it’s necessarily worse than bringing a child into the world in lousy circumstances never marrying someone of the opposite sex. I’m saying it’s worse than avoiding unintended pregnancy in the first place having homosexual desires in the first place. That’s why I keep pushing contraception conversion therapy. If you cause an unintended pregnancy enter into a homosexual relationship and an abortion get married to that person because you didn’t want to wear a condom you didn’t want to undergo conversion therapy, you should be ashamed.

***He hasn’t written one about homosexuality. But I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that there was one in the works.

…and, of course, today’s offering from Lord Saletan IS:

Shades of Gay
The heterogeneity of homosexuality.

Researchers contacted more than 1,800 mental health professionals to find out whether they would ever try to change a client’s sexual orientation. Of the 1,328 practitioners who responded, one in six admitted to having helped at least one patient attempt to alter homosexual feelings. The total number of such cases reported by the respondents was 413. That’s nearly one case for every three therapists.

The study’s authors find this disturbing. Treatment to change homosexuality has proved ineffective and often unsafe, they argue. Therefore, therapists shouldn’t try it.

If only life were that simple.

It IS that simple, unless you’re a professional abortion concern troll turning your well-honed skills towards also becoming a homosexuality concern troll.

(OMG, he actually IS WRITING IN SUPPORT OF CONVERSION THERAPY, I thought I was just making a witty comparison..!!!)

In the big picture, the authors are right.

And Will Saletan agrees, women should have the right to choose!

But

I think we all saw that word coming…

…therapy isn’t about the big picture. It’s about lots of little pictures: the worlds unique to each of us. You and I may have the same sexual orientation, but our lives are very different. You know nothing of my family, my religion, or my community. You don’t even know how straight or gay I am. If I tell my therapist that I’d rather try to modify my feelings than give up my faith or my marriage, who are you to second-guess her or me?

In the British study, the therapists who admitted to collaborating in such cases weren’t anti-gay.

Well, of course they weren’t, and Saletan isn’t either, and he is ALSO pro-choice. One thing to love about the English language is the flexibility with which people are able to use it.

The rest of the article is typical Saletan concern trolling, liberally sprinkled with bizarre phrases that only make sense if you don’t think about them too closely, like

The therapists also distinguished between clear-cut and borderline homosexuality.

…”borderline homosexuality?” Like, your right hand yearns to touch Bob but your left hand would really rather stroke Susan?…wtf?

The idea of heterosexuality as a valid “lifestyle choice” turns the argument for sexual acceptance on its head. If a patient prefers to adjust his orientation to family or cultural circumstances, rather than the other way around, should the therapist challenge him?

…uh, the “patient” is always trying to adjust his orientation to family or cultural circumstances; it is NEVER the other way around–at least, this would be the absolute first time ever I have heard of the epidemic of people flocking to therapist’s offices to try to “convert” to homosexuality.

Sometimes, the substitution makes sense. When the patient is clearly gay

…”clearly gay?” Like, when he’s wearing lipstick and heels or she’s in steel-toed workboots and a buzzcut? Yargh…

…and when his discomfort with homosexuality isn’t fundamental to his personality, it’s logical to target the discomfort. But not every case is that simple. A friend once told me she was “primarily wired toward women.” She was my girlfriend for the next year and a half. Another friend told me he couldn’t countenance homosexuality because he was “obliged to believe it’s a mortal sin.” He came out of the closet a year later, but he never left Christianity or conservatism. Another friend lived as a gay man for years, then carried on a multiyear, monogamous relationship with a woman, then went back to the gay life.

“The evidence shows that you cannot change sexual orientation,” says King. But on the margins, I’ve seen it happen.

No, you haven’t. Rinse, repeat–NO, you haven’t, Dumb Ass! Good lord…case 1: your girlfriend told you she was bisexual. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but no, she wasn’t “borderline” or “marginally” straight and the magnificence of your manlyhood resolved her oh-so-confused feelings on the subject–she was bisexual, which is why she used the word PRIMARILY rather than EXCLUSIVELY. Case 2: Your friend was gay, from start to finish, which amazingly enough has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with having religious and political beliefs (I know, can you believe it?). Case 3: Is bisexuality something you just can’t comprehend? Either he’s taking it up the butt and therefore he is G-A-Y or he’s sticking it in the pussy and dammit for several years there he was STRAIGHT!! so he was clearly radically switching his orientation, back and forth, back and forth..! …er, or he’s just bisexual, like your girlfriend in case 1. (So anticlimactic, but the truth often is, I’ve found. Sigh.)

So, what’s going on with me..? Am I mutating into a conservative concern troll or Greta Van Susteren? How is it that my passing observations are coming so ickily true..?

I think I need a hug.

Via CNN:

When her baby girl takes an afternoon nap, or on those nights when she just can’t sleep, Sarah Andrews, 32, tosses off her identity as a suburban stay-at-home mom and becomes something more exotic: a “virtual deputy” patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border.

From her house in a suburb of Rochester, New York, Andrews spends at least four hours a day watching a site called BlueServo.net.

There, because of a $2 million grant from the state of Texas, anyone in the world can watch grainy live video scenes of cactuses, desert mountains and the Rio Grande along Texas’ portion of the international border.

When Andrews spots something she deems suspicious — perhaps a fuzzy character moving from right to left across the screen or people wading through the river with what appear to be trash bags atop their heads — she and the site’s 43,000 registered users can send e-mail messages straight to local law enforcement, who then decide whether to act.

“Today, there’s a couple vehicles that are parked side by side next to each other,” she said by phone, her 7-month-old cooing in the background, “but I can’t tell what’s going on, you know?”

You know, I don’t generally pontificate much on the waste of taxpayer dollars. But this particular scheme struck me as, er, a pretty pathetic example of that…and that was before I even got to this part:

Since the site was launched in late November, only four arrests can be attributed to the cameras, said Don Reay, executive director of the sheriffs’ coalition, which runs the project with money from Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s office.

All of those arrests were related to marijuana trafficking, he said, with about 2,000 pounds of the drug seized.

Those aren’t the kind of results planners were looking for when they started the program, but Reay says the program’s unseen value is in the fact that it prevents drug-related violence and trafficking.

Yeah, marijuana, the drug scourge of the United States! (eye. roll.)

He said sheriffs along the border have seen decreased crime in recent months, partly because of the camera program, although he said he could not cite statistics to back up that claim.

Further descent into ludicrousness:

Abernethy and Andrews, the two “virtual deputies,” said they would like to see greater transparency in the project. Both said they have e-mailed notes of suspicious activity to law enforcement, but neither has heard whether their alerts were of any help.

“It’s interesting. You see different things on there, but I just — I don’t know that it’s doing any good,” said Andrews, the stay-at-home mom. “I wonder if it’s a waste of time.”

Answer: YES!! …hello?!

She also said the site draws her interest because she’s nosy

Gah!

Abernethy said he will continue to watch the cameras because he feels like he’s part of an altruistic group of volunteers. Friends tease him about watching the site, he said. But he sees it as no worse than any other form of quick entertainment — and maybe he can be of some help in the process.

“It’s no different than watching ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ reruns,” he said. “It’s just something to do.

DUDE…TV shows at least pretend to have a plot. With people. Speaking dialogue. To each other. Security cameras are not entertainment…the fact that you are able to think so is not something I would admit in public if I were you. Ever thought of taking a correspondence course? or going bowling? buying a kitten..? something?

Sad.

Joy Behar, guest host Thursday night on “Larry King Live: …at least you guys enjoyed having the babies, you went through the sex then the giving birth. This woman didn’t have any of that, except the giving birth, which must have been rough, don’t you think?

Michelle Duggar: Oh, my, I can’t imagine. I had twins, but I have — I just can’t imagine having eight at once and the responsibility that that brings.

Behar: Why do you suppose this woman has provoked such negativity? They have a “USA Today” Gallup poll saying 70 percent of those surveyed are unsympathetic to this woman. What is going on?

Michelle Duggar: Well, you know, I feel like probably more than anything it’s just the fact of the responsibility issues from their perspective, and I, you know, I imagine that’s probably more of the animosity that’s out there. And so — but I do — I just can’t imagine, you know, her — how she’s going to handle that many little ones under the age of 8. That’s a lot of little ones all at once.

Yes, having them serially gives you the invaluable option of built-in babysitters at each developmental stage by the time the sheer kid-volume starts to get unwieldy! You’re one smart broad, Michelle!

The Duggars are surprisingly restrained on the subject of Nadya, in spite of the blatant attempts by the interviewer to suss out a negative opinion from them towards her, given how loudly they generally wax on about the glories of having a traditional, Christian-American family…which clearly and unequivocably requires a man and woman united in unholy matrimony. I suspect they’re a little nervous about saying anything that might possibly, possibly ever be taken as casting even the slightest negative connotation on the idea of reproducing as massively as possible, given the fragility of their own glass house on that subject.

Way back in the day, we had two (major) different schools of thought about the Constitution. There were the Federalists, whom included Alexander Hamiliton, James Madison, and John Jay, and the Anti-Federalists lead by Patrick Henry. There where any number of difficulties between these two groups, but I’m going to focus on the Bill of Rights.

The Anti-federalists wanted a written Bill of Rights, and the Federalists did not. The Anti-federalists felt that without a Bill of Rights, the government would inevitably steal authority for themselves that violated human rights. Henry, in “Need for a Bill of Rights” said quite forcefully:

You ought to be watchful, jealous of your liberty; for, instead of securing your rights, you may lose them forever… I beg gentlemen to consider that a wrong step made now will plunge us into misery, and our republic will be lost, and tyranny must and will arise…

The necessity of a Bill of Rights appears to me to be greater in this government than ever it was in any government before… All rights not expressly and unequivocally reserved to the people are impliedly and incidentally relinquished to rulers, as necessarily inseparable from the delegated powers…

This is the question. If you intend to reserve your unalienable rights, you must have the most express stipulation; for, if implication be allowed, you are ousted of those rights. If the people do not think it necessary to reserve them, they will be supposed to be given up.

The Federalists, on the other hand, thought a Bill of Rights was at best redundant and at worst something to be feared. A Bill of Rights would be redundant in the sense that the Constitution already limited the power of the federal government. It would be dangerous in the sense that, if written down, the government would think that those were the only rights in which a person/ state had, and that a specific prohibition would be taken as an invitation to push their powers. Alexander Hamilton stated in the Federalist Papers No. 84:

I …. affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.

But, the Anti-federalists had enough political capital to force an explicit Bill of Rights. However, in order to do this, they had to address the concerns of the Federalists. Thus enters the 9th Amendment.*

The 9th Amendment states: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people**

In very plain language, this amendment states that just because the Bill of Rights doesn’t explicitly say you have any particular rights, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. For that, you have to go to the common law.

To back-track just a little bit, I need to tell you that there are two different kinds of law in the US: statute, and common law. Statute law is the laws that legislative bodies pass; the text of any particular statute. Common law is the law that results from judicial delibration; ie what the courts have determined what certain laws mean. For example, if the state of North Dakota was to ban red-headed people from driving on Sundays, the statute law would be the text that says “red-headed people may not drive on Sundays”. The court would then hear a series of cases, and from those cases we would get an idea of what the words “red-headed” “driving” and “Sunday” meant for the law. You may get a bunch of judges that decide that this is the dumbest law ever, and decide to very narrowly interpret it so that “red-headed” means “only people who are 90% or more on the red spectrum” and “driving” means “in a four-wheeled vehicle, that is started, in motion” and “Sunday” means “from the hours of 7 am to 10 pm on Sunday”. If the legislator gets really irritated by this series of actions, they can pass a new law, specifically writing what these words mean, that would constrain the judges interpretation.

In the case of the 9th Amendment, the common law has already clarified a number of rights that the people have. In Lochner v. New York the right to contract was stipulated. Skinner v. Okalahoma said we had the right to reproductive rights when it banned punitive steralization. In Meyer v. Nebraska the Supreme Court established a series of rights, including the right to academic freedom, students’ right to acquire knowledge, and parents’ right to control children’s education. In that case, the majority oppinion stated:

Liberty denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint but (individual right) to engage in any of the common occupations of life, to acquire useful knowledge, to marry, establish a home and bring up children, to worship God

.***

The Supreme Court looks to a number of things to determine if an individual has certain rights. Routinely, they will look at the preceeding eight amendments and see if this “new” right fits in the spirt of the Bill of Rights. The moral norms of society are frequently referenced, as are common law cases. Finally, they make a determination if the right being argued fits the definition of “liberty”.

In the next part, I will talk about the right to privacy, and the history of how we gained that right.****

*And also the 10th Amendment, but I’m not going into that here.
**Can I just squee out for a second and say how awesome I find the US governing document? This is a really impressive document, and one of the few things that inspires a sense of patrotism in me.
***If you look real close, you might notice that the phrase “to marry” and “bring up children” are in there, among other things.
****I am NOT a lawyer. Please do not use anything I say here as binding.

From some dude named Garth George in New Zealand:

…men and women are different physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It astounds me that in this age in which knowledge of the makeup of the human being is greater than at any time in history, we will not concede that men and women are genetically programmed for differing roles.*

(via)

Now, this sounds kinda familiar. What was that advice column thing I was cheerfully mocking the other day…oh yeah!

…women should never, ever pursue a man. Instead [wait] for the man to initiate and plan dates…If the woman is always the one calling, she will never know if he is really interested in her or if it’s just convenient for him. She may find herself questioning the relationship every step of the way. Men simply aren’t programmed to think like that and therefore are better suited to the chase…

New rule: Nobody is allowed to use the phrase “genetic programming” or any related phrases harking back to that concept and be taken remotely seriously unless he or she can, right now (no Googling!) define for me what a gene is, and no bullshit copouts like “the basic building blocks of life!” either–if your definition can be stretched to include any other scientific and/or philosophical or theological concepts besides genes, it ain’t one. You are also required to know the definition of any and all words used in the definition, and you are not allowed to use any part or variation of the word “gene” to define a gene.

Go!

::crickets chirping::

*He has somehow managed to link this to abortion; I read his article three times and still couldn’t figure out how he got from point A to point M or N. I wish better luck to anybody else that makes the attempt.

What ties these two posts together for me, and is a continuation of a slowly evolving set of thoughts in my head on the general subject, is the underlying query in both: What makes sex so attractive, desirable, pursuable to the point of single-minded obsession at times? Specifically, what makes sex involving people other than oneself like that? As I was saying to the husband just the other night, clearly it isn’t all about the orgasm, or we’d all stick to masturbating. Frankly, nobody is ever going to be as good as you are at getting you off; you have all the right moves every single time and no conflicting interests that might otherwise bar total fulfillment. One easy answer, though still a bit of a mystery in of itself, is that it’s more attractive with other people in the exact same way that it feels better when somebody else rubs your aching feet than when you rub them yourself, even though you know better than they do exactly what part of your feet ache the most, exactly how much pressure you want applied, etc. But of course there’s a lot more to it than that.

Hugo has this to say on the subject:

I remember helping to lead a panel discussion (back in 1988 or so) on the question “Why Have Sex?” It was a strange title, and it drew a good-sized audience. The premise of the talk was that too many discussions about sex talked about why folks shouldn’t have it (at least until marriage), or about how to have it properly — but no one was talking about the perfectly reasonable question of why one ought to do it in the first place. The easy answer, of course, was “it feels good.” But that raises the question — what feels good? Is it arousal? Is it anticipation? Is it emotional closeness? Is it orgasmic release? What one person likes best about sex isn’t always what the person they’re being sexual with likes best.

At the time we had this panel, I was at the stage where the honest answer to why I liked sex best was that it made me feel validated as desirable…The honest-to-God truth was that at nineteen or twenty, still struggling to overcome a tremendous sense that I was fat and unattractive, the best thing about sex was not the physical pleasure or the emotional intimacy but the sheer wonder in discovering that I could be wanted. And of course, the more people I could “get” to “want me”, the better I felt.

I can understand his personal feelings via second-hand experience; I’ve intimately known someone for whom that entire attitude about sex was a phase he underwent as well. However, that was never what sex was about for me. The public admiration of men, sure, especially as we go farther and farther back in time–but to actually have sex with all those people? Bleh. Nobody was actually touchin’ me for any reason other than that I was out of my mind with sheer physical lust.

Amanda’s post featured, among others, the following calendar shot that is, I suppose, one of the artistic-nude-glamour-photos-pushing-the-boundaries-of-photography-yawn-gag:

The only reason I can imagine that anyone would find this erotic is that there are naked tits in it. However, obviously there are many better pictures of naked tits out there, so that’s clearly not the a-r-t-i-s-t’-s main foci in terms of the beauty and sexuality he is daringly probing the boundaries of with this photo. Let’s see: People, overwhelmingly male with aggressive facial expressions, grabbing and stretching a naked woman with a terrified facial expression out in midair–gee, I wonder what has to do with sex that one would be reminded of there? Wow, what an innovator–nobody else has ever tried to eroticize gang-rape before! Yes, what an unheard-of concept!

One reason that it has suddenly become much more important to me to analyze the underpinnings of two- (or more, if we want to get really risque here) person sexual pleasure and motivators is that my older son is sixteen years old. He’s a serious and introverted type and has not yet begun to date, but I’m fairly sure that sometime in the next few years, he will–and the day he turns eighteen, he’ll be a legal adult, and there will abruptly be a lot less of both authority over and responsibility for him on my end. Let us say that I am feeling the pressure of receding time in which to set him up for happy and successful adulthood.

He and I have some time eked out together in the next several months–a few mom-son dinners out, a few discussion sessions here and there planned for a non-busy Friday night, etc.–and they will be my last big chance to help him get his head screwed on straight for adulthood. Yes, and if only I was 100% sure that mine was screwed on straight at age thirty-five! Am I REALLY the best person to be handing out advice..? But I’m really the only person there is. I would absolutely love it if his father would step up to the plate–and his father does, indeed, step up to the plate, on many many topics–but, his father is also completely unable to discuss sex with his sons. Oh, he’s willing to discuss the bare basics of anatomy and the differences therein between the biological genders male and female, which is good. However, as far as providing some guidelines as to when should I and why should I and so forth…his idea of this is to snap out, “Well, you should probably wait til you’re married, but if you can’t, use a condom.” (This is especially un-useful to a teenager who has consistently stated, without drama, that he has no interest in getting married for a long, long time, if ever–I doubt he has a similar interest in remaining celibate!)

So, I’m stuck with it. I’m pretty sure neither my son nor I are thrilled that I am his opposite-sex parent in this specific case, but it is what it is. I can’t imagine that anything I would say to him will end up being worse than if I say nothing at all, so I at least have that going for me. So you all may have to suffer through my future cogitations on this sticky subject. Any advice anyone may have is, of course, always welcome. Stay tuned!

“Huh, huh-uh, huh…she said STICKY.”