Feature

If you are a woman, you might be given a chance to prove yourself in this community. Since there is no standard definition of what a “geek” is and it will vary from one judge to the next anyway, chances of failing are high. If you somehow manage to succeed, you’ll be tested again and again by anyone who encounters you until you manage to establish yourself like, say, Felicia Day. But even then, you’ll be questioned.

Zak’s original field, it turns out, is economics, a far cry from the hearts and teddy bears we imagine when we consider his nickname. But after performing experiments on generosity, Zak stumbled on the importance of trust in interactions, which led him, rather inevitably, to research about oxytocin. Oxytocin, you might remember, is a hormone that has been linked previously to bonding — between mothers and children primarily, but also between partners.

In an effort to make itself feel better because no one uses their Facebook e-mail addresses (what? Facebook has e-mail addresses?), the social network decided yesterday to change everyone’s profiles to list only their Facebook e-mail addresses, thereby screwing up all your settings.

But there is one question we just haven’t been able to answer to our satisfaction — at least not without exposing the hypocrisy of people who claim to be interested in preserving the beautiful tradition of freedom and autonomy that this country represents. The question was posed simply enough: “The conservative party’s devotion to preserving the life of the unborn is admirable, but their concern seems to only extend to the unborn. Why are people so devoted to life in the name of God treat the very children they have saved as unnecessary burdens on the state, to be excised like so many malignant tumors?”

Sandra Fluke, who finally got her opportunity to share the views of Georgetown Law’s Students for Reproductive Justice, told those in attendance about the plight faced by women who need birth control not only to prevent pregnancy, but also to treat illness such as polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis. On his show, Rush Limbaugh responded that the only reason students care about contraception is because they’re oversexed.

[SSEX BBOX] is a documentary web series about sex created in an effort to fight for more openness, more understanding, less shame, and less isolation in sexual matters. Taking viewers on a journey through Sao Paolo, San Francisco, Berlin and Barcelona, [SSEX BBOX] questions obsolete assumptions about sex and sexuality.

For one, the adult film industry would have to make every performer an employee to satisfy the California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal/OSHA, laws. This would be detrimental: California’s anti-discrimination laws prohibit requiring an HIV test as a condition of employment; therefore the adult film industry’s current testing process, in which every performer is tested for HIV monthly, would be illegal.

Sure, we care about your feedback, but we were never the sort of blog to give a hoot about “the numbers.” We’ve seen what gets numbers: animated gifs with cats. We’ve no interest in cats, and given the number of people who follow us on social media to keep up with what we’re posting, neither do you. We do, however, nevertheless have a dusty Google Analytics account, which we must confess became the source of great amusement over the weekend.

We have heard many rumors about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation since we started reporting on their war on pornography, chief among them that they opposed research into an HIV/AIDs vaccine. Not content to become part of the gossip mill, we decided to dive into the allegations. What we found was disheartening.

Carl Zimmer, a celebrated science writer, has published a piece about Neil deGrasse in the January issue of Playboy magazine. Almost immediately after the article started making the rounds on the internet, the question of whether “respectable authors” should publish in magazines like Playboy arose.