Well, this just might get some discussion going around here! I’d love to hear what you think about this recent article from the BBC:
According to a recent study of more than 2,000 female twins, those with greater emotional intelligence had larger numbers of orgasms.
Lead author Andrea Burri 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 sex or her feeling of control over the act.
Paula Hall, a sexual psychotherapist for Relate, said: “Emotional intelligence is most important in terms of overcoming problems.
“Most women, and men for that matter, will have this problem at some stage in their life. It’s often situational - you are tired or stressed or having relationship problems, for example.
“It’s not just about technique and the environment being right.
“If you are aware of your own emotions and can identify the issues and communicate them, you are more likely to be able to resolve the difficulty.”
(The complete study/findings appear here, via The Journal of Sexual Medicine. The study is also mentioned in a far less subtly titled article “Bad luck bimbos: Intelligent women have better sex, study reveals” from The Daily Mail)
I feel like, while “emotional intelligence” would definitely have a large effect on a woman’s sexual enjoyment, I think it affects all of us (regardless of gender) more than we realize. The last sentance really sums it up for me:
“If you are aware of your own emotions and can identify the issues and communicate them, you are more likely to be able to resolve the difficulty.”
brain candy
science.psych.
evolutionary.
cultural.language.
human interaction.
behavior.blah.blah.blah.
Is there a formula—some mix of love, work, and psychological adaptation—for a good life? For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been examining this question, following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. Here, for the first time, a journalist gains access to the archive of one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies in history. Its contents, as much literature as science, offer profound insight into the human condition—and into the brilliant, complex mind of the study’s longtime director, George Vaillant.For future reading… it’s kinda long and I should be working.
“…the simple act of talking triggers a flood of brain chemicals which give women a rush similar to that felt by heroin addicts when they get a high.”
“There are, however, advantages to being the strong, silent type. Dr Brizendine explains that testosterone also reduces the size of the section of the brain involved in hearing - allowing men to become “deaf” to the most logical of arguments put forward by their wives and girlfriends.”
Sadly, this is what it’s coming down to for me. I find working with an overwhelming majority of women is finally taking its toll. Sometimes by the end of the day, I feel ready to have myself committed; then just an hour of peace & quiet and I’m right as rain.
The Addictive Personality
A major misconception involving addiction is the idea that certain substances are, all by themselves, addicting. That a drug can captivate an unwary victim is an idea popularized in the 1936 film Reefer Madness. In that movie, it took just a few puffs of marijuana to turn a gentleman into a slobbering dope fiend; his health shattered; his life ruined. While such heavy-handed propaganda might be met with less credulity today, the fact remains that most Americans still believe the basic message - Just Say No or you’ll wind up hooked. What makes this truly odd is that, according to numerous national surveys, most Americans have tried marijuana and didn’t become dope fiends. Indeed, several years ago, a group of US congressmen attempted to come forward, admit their prior pot use and put an end to a draconian system that confiscates property and puts people in prison for years. But the electorate clearly wasn’t ready for any such reappraisal of the drug laws and the movement quickly died.
But how is it, you ask, that all those congressmen that were candid about their drug use didn’t get hooked Reefer Madness style? The reason is because addiction depends, first and foremost, upon having an addictive personality. Such people, estimated at perhaps 10%-15% of the population, simply don’t know when to stop. Do you enjoy a glass or two of wine with dinner? If so, why not have ten or twenty? Did you ever buy a lottery ticket on your birthday? If so, why not sell your house and buy 100,000? How about going to church on Sunday? Does it make you feel good? If so, why not go every day twice a day? The point here is simple: Too much of a good thing can be bad. And yet people with addictive personalities will get hooked on alcohol and gambling and religion. Believe it or not, being addicted is nothing more than an out-of-control habit. The difference between that 10%-15% and everyone else is the difference between using and abusing.
During the Vietnam War, drug use was endemic among troops serving in Southeast Asia. And yet, returning veterans suffered addiction rates that were no higher than those found in the general population. It would be difficult to think of a more perfectly designed experiment to show, once and for all, that dependence is mostly a matter of personality. And yet, when it comes to winning hearts and minds, the War in Vietnam was as nothing when compared to the War on Drugs. Although this second battle has completely failed in reducing illegal drug use, it has succeeded brilliantly in convincing Americans that they need to be saved from themselves. It’s a belief that was sold so well that hardly anyone noticed that Drug Czar Bill Bennett was an addictive personality hooked on both food and gambling.
Look At It This Way
The problem with the War on Drugs is that it creates far more harm than it eliminates. If drugs can’t be kept out of prisons, how can you possibly keep them out of a mostly free society? The “War” won’t go away because by now it’s become a major industry. It creates jobs on one side of the law and provides the opportunity for huge financial rewards on the other. But, like Prohibition before, making a law that can’t be enforced does little more than erode the public’s respect for the law. When alcohol was illegal, the upper classes had theirs imported while the common folk drank it from bathtubs. No one so inclined went without. And nothing has changed. Bush turned (supposedly) from drugs and alcohol to religion, thus substituting one addiction for another. Clinton told us, with a straight face, that he never inhaled. So here’s a simple question: Would either of these gentlemen be better off today if they had been sentenced to long prison terms? If so, why not provide them with a belated opportunity to serve time? If not, then why should the kid down the street be put away for doing the same thing?
Asking such simple questions should make it plain to anyone with any common sense that the truth regarding drugs and addiction is concealed behind so many layers of ignorance and emotion, deception and special interests that it will remain a major problem for a long time to come.
Dan Ariely: Why we think it’s OK to cheat and steal (sometimes)
The hygiene hypothesis suggests that organisms that enter the body along with “dirt” spur the development of a healthy immune system.
Finally getting around to reading this. Summary: as my Glaswegian grandmother would say, “Ye gotta eat a speck o’ dirt before ye die.”
If you can get through the first few paragraphs, there’s an explanation that will blow your holographic mind.
The Oldest English Words
The oldest English words have been discovered by researchers at, I kid you not, Reading University in the UK. What are the oldest words in the English language you ask? They believe them to be ”I,” “who,” and “we” which go back as far as 40,000 years.
I’m a big fan of words, putting them together to make strings of sentences dance before you. I edit my own speech mid sentence if I come up with a better formation, or complementation of words. But the people at Reading University, go beyond my mild fascination.
“We have lists of words that linguists have produced for us that tell us if two words in related languages actually derive from a common ancestral word… We have descriptions of the ways we think words change and their ability to change into other words, and those descriptions can be turned into a mathematical language.” - Professor Pagel
They can figure out which words won’t be around in the next thousand years, based on the number of other words we have to say the same thing. Spoiler alert “push,” “turn,” “wipe” and “stab” probably won’t be around next millennia.
So how did the wordsmiths over at Reading University figure out which words were the oldest? They based part of it on usage. These guys figured out that the most commonly used words were the ones that changed less frequently. Think about how often you say “I” or “we” on a daily basis. You could see then how unlikely it would be for something like that to change in our vocabulary.
[BBC]
