• In sci-fi news, scientists are working on a prosthetic testicle that creates and ejects human sperm for men missing one or both testicles who want to procreate.
• Yale Sex Week, once banned, is in full swing right now.
• Ron Paul says abortion is okay only when it’s an “honest rape,” you know, as opposed to all the false claims of fake rape-ish rape all us dishonest women are prone to make.
• Both hilarious and frightening: Louissianna Congressman falls for Onion headline “Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billion Abortionplex.”

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• Cynthia Nixon clarifies her controversial quote, explaining that she is gay “by choice” only because she is bisexual by nature.
• Heart patients get the go-ahead for sex… so long as it’s with their spouse.
• Study shows love makes people act out (no shit), judging other people of their own sex — even innocent bystanders — more harshly.
• 1 in 14 people has oral HPV, with rates higher in men than in women.
• New research shows that women are better parkers, though men do it faster. And no, that’s not a euphemism.
• Daniel Radcliffe can’t stop talking about sex (or showing his dong on camera).

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High heels are an essential part of our fashion-glam culture. Finding a pair of flats at last night’s Sag Awards was like trying to find a vegan quinoa recipe in a Paula Deen cookbook. More common was the doughnut burger of the shoe world: the 29-inch stiletto like Emma Stone wore. What women will suffer for fashion! Personally, the two of us fall into the more utilitarian camp: while Em has been known to rock a sparkly pump at a party, you’ll find her more often than not in the day-to-day dressing up a flow-y, flowery dress with a pair of Converse. And Lo? Nothing comes between her and her Danskos. It may not be pretty, but nothing’s more ugly than her mood after 20 minutes in a pair of uncomfortable pumps (are they even called that anymore?). Which is why we always feel high and mighty in our low flats when a new study about the horrors of high heels comes out:  For a study published in the Jan. 12 issue of the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia compared the strides of 9 women who wore two inch heels for at least 40 hours a week for a minimum of two years with strides of 10 young women who wore heels less than 10 hours per week, by outfitting them with electrodes and motion-capture reflective markers to study their leg muscles. Here’s what they found happened to high heel wearers:

• They walk with shorter, more forceful strides
• They constantly have their feet flexed and their toes pointed
• The above causes their calf muscles to shorten
• And shorter muscles means much greater mechanical strain on their calf muscles
• The strain means walking less efficiently which can lead to muscle fatigue
• The greater muscle strain as well as the introduction of the occasional flat may mean greater risk of injury

Which is why it’s so nice that there are a few fashion-glam events like the Sundance Film Festival, where comfortable, cozy flats reign supreme. Here’s to more of them!

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• High school team can’t call themselves the Cougars because of its association with sexually-active, single, middle-aged women.
• Speaking of cougars and high school: Sex and the City pre-quel pilot on the CW is a go.
• Speaking of SATC, Cynthia Nixon calls being gay a choice for her, people freak.
• Facial symmetry may play a role in “gaydar” (wonder how symmetrical Cynthia Nixon’s facial features are…?).
• Speaking of sexual orientation: what it’s like to be asexual.
• Too bad more clueless teenagers aren’t asexual: 1 out of 3 pregnant teens did not realize they could actually get preggers.

http://www.sundancechannel.com/sunfiltered/2012/01/naked-news-cougars/

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released data yesterday showing that the US still has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the developed world. And the new global abortion study from the U.S.-based Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization (that’s published in the Jan. 19 issue of The Lancet) found that abortion rates are highest where the procedure is illegal, such as in Latin America and Africa, and that 95 to 97 percent of abortions in those regions were unsafe. According to the LA Times, “Experts couldn’t say whether more liberal laws led to fewer procedures, but said good access to birth control in those countries resulted in fewer unwanted pregnancies.”

In the face of numbers like these, in this day and age, it is absolutely insane that every single Republican presidential candidate is ready and willing to lead the fight against keeping abortions safe and birth control accessible.

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• The Girl Scouts are standing by their transgender-inclusive policy despite a threatened boycott of Girl Scout cookies. Which sounds as good an excuse as any we’ve heard to over-indulge in Thin Mints this winter.
• Woman with two vaginas says the condition is not, actually, that rare — and also that it makes a great ice-breaker at parties.
• A Texas pastor and his wife mimic John and Yoko’s bed-in — on the roof of their church, no less — to get the congregation talking about sex.
• A sperm donor who fathered 14 kids reveals he’s a 36-year-old virgin.

Did you know that only about a third of employers in the U.S. observe Martin Luther King Day as a holiday? So we’re doing our bit by honoring this federal holiday. (Okay, so that’s not exactly a “bit.” Get inspired to do something actually meaningful here.) We’ll be back with our regularly scheduled program tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.!

With Santorum’s recent surge in the polls, it’s important to take time out to remind ourselves what a crazy sex-police zealot he is:

• On Funny or Die, Dan Savage comedically threatens to change the definition of the name “Rick” if Santorum doesn’t agree to stop attacking gay people during his campaign.
• Rick “Family Values” Santorum allegedly tipped off friend and fellow Republican Senator John Ensign that his adulterous (i.e sinful, anti-family) affair was about to be leaked to the media back in 2009. Good thing God forgives hypocrisy.
• The Globe and Mail sums up his “holy war against sexual freedom,” including his denunciation of birth control(!).
• Abortion should be illegal, except in the case of Rick Santorum’s wife – hers was okey dokey.

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photo via flickr

• A sci-fi themed brothel will open in Nevada soon. Apparently somebody there got the crazy idea that sci-fi nerds need a little help getting laid.
• Russell Brand might get $20 million in divorce from Katy Perry, thanks to California law. D’oh! California Gurl should have got herself a pre-nup.
• Trudie Styler says that Sting’s tantric sex claim was just a drunken boast. Also, she says the joke’s wearing a bit thin after 21 years. We beg to differ.
• Martin Freeman says he wants Peter Jackson to write a sex scene into THE HOBBIT for him.

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As you may have noticed (we’re not exactly subtle on this point), we don’t buy the idea that men are from Mars, women are from Venus, and shuttles between the two are infrequent at best. We tend to think that women and men are a lot more alike than rumor (or headline) has it — especially when it comes to sex and love. But this is not to say that men and women are alike in all matters of love and lust. We’ll even go so far as to admit that some of the cliches about the gulf between men and women turn out to be true.

For example, we have long preached that women need to be incredibly blunt when it comes to asking men for what they want — or telling them what they don’t want. When rebuffing a guy’s advances, a vague and round-about rejection might seem kind, but ultimate it probably just ends up giving him hope. In our opinion, dudes are just programmed to find the tiniest bit of hope in anything a woman says or does.

And now here’s a survey to prove our long-time, amateur-psych theory: Psychologists at the University of Texas and Williams College recently studied undergrad speed-daters and discovered a number of interesting things:

• Men who considered themselves attractive overestimated a woman’s desire for them.
• The more attracted the man was to the woman, the more likely he was to overestimate her interest in him.
• Women consistently underestimated men’s sexual interest in them.

Looking for a new year’s resolution? Here are four, inspired by this study:

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