The Guardian has a very interesting article about whether the Pill changes a woman’s ability to sniff out genetically appropriate mates. Someone did an experiment where they had a group of women smell T-shirts that various men had worn and say which one they liked best. Most of them, like mice, preferred the mate with genes for immunity that differ from their own. But women on the contraceptive pill picked the exact opposite! Some researchers think that this could be very bad for the human race, evolutionarily-speaking. Others don’t even think that smell really makes that much of a difference. What do you think? Personally, I think body odor is very important in picking the people that you wanna, you know, get close to.

Another interesting survey. This one is the Bem Sex Role Inventory. My results? “Your Femininity Score is 4.15. Your Masculinity Score is 4.65. You are sex-typed as near masculine.” Huh. I’d probably agree with that assessment. Most girly-girls piss me off. (Link courtesy of Hit-or-Miss.)

Hooray! User Friendly finally mocks that “All Your Base” crap. I knew I wasn’t alone in my backlash. 🙂

According to the Environics 3SC Survey (which I found on /usr/bin/girl), I’m an Autonomous Post-materialist. I agree with the motivations (personal autonomy and self-fulfillment) and key values (freedom, spontaneity) it lists for me, but not the icons. Dennis Rodman? As if. I do quote Eric Cartman quite a lot, though.

“I’m, like, up myah, and you guys are, like, down… myah.”

Roger Ebert’s got a new Movie Answer Man column up. Topics covered include Hannibal, Gladiator, and various Academy Award nominees.

Matthew Perry’s in rehab again (scroll down). No mention of where or why. Poor Chandler.

The beef situation just keeps getting worse over here. Now there’s an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. It really is quite dramatic, with analysts showing maps predicting the spread of the disease and newscasts full of footage of burning animal carcasses. It’s like a bovine version of The Stand or something.

Matt linked to an interesting article about obituaries today. Coincidentally, my sister types up the obits for the News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She wrote a poem called “The Obituary Writer” about the thoughts she has when summarizing somebody’s life. It’s pretty good.

More R.E.M. news is revealed. (Links courtesy of Ghost in the Machine.)