19 January 2017
The Conversation: What’s the point of sex? It’s good for your physical, social and mental health
Were sex only important for procreation, it would more than do its job from an evolutionary perspective. However, evidence suggests that at a physical and social level, sex is about much more than making babies.
Most nonhuman animals have no interest in sex outside of a reproductive context. But women have sex throughout their menstrual cycle despite being fertile for only a few days each month, and go on having sex long after menopause renders them infertile. And of course, couples who are of the same sex, using contraception or infertile are no less keen for congress than any pregnancy-focused counterparts.
Ultimately, no one knows for sure what the point of all this sex is, but its other biological effects may provide clues. [...]
In humans, those couples who have sex less frequently are at greater risk of relationship dissolution than are friskier couples.
But oxytocin is not just good for pair bonding. It is released from the brain into the blood stream in many social situations, including breastfeeding, singing and most activities that involve being “together” pleasurably. It appears oxytocin plays a role in a lot of group oriented and socially harmonious activities, and is implicated in altruism.
Atlas Obscura: It's Not Hiking: The Patient Practice of Long Distance Walking
Walking became an American fad in 1963, thanks to President John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy often talked about the importance of physical fitness, pointing out that during Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency marine officers were required to be able to walk 50 miles in 20 hours. Then-attorney general Robert F. Kennedy decided to back his brother up and in February 1963 he walked a 50 mile route that ended in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. A walking craze overtook the nation. According to an April 1963 New York Times article, teenagers, marines, Boy Scouts, government workers and “Sunday drivers” took to roads and walkways in droves, while department stores scrambled to meet the demand for pedometers. Interest in the 50-mile Kennedy March, as it came to be known, ignited globally, and today you can still attend an annual version in Sittard in the Netherlands. But the craze is mostly forgotten in the U.S. today. [...]
While long distance walking is a novelty for many Americans, it has long been popular in Europe—miles of established paths criss-cross the continent, and in England they are often clearly marked and cared for. If a path unravels across a farm, the farmer is the caretaker of that expanse. Many enthusiasts belong to the Long Distance Walkers Association, based out of England. Founded in 1972, the LDWA is a clearinghouse for information, organizes long distance walks, publishes a journal called “Strider”, and holds an annual meeting. It has around 8,000 members. The LDWA site cautions that “what constitutes an LDP [long distance path] is a matter of opinion and views vary widely” but most of the routes they catalog are 20 miles or longer. [...]
But long distance walking isn’t quite the same as hiking. For one thing, many long distance walkers simply go for one long walk that lasts a day—20 or more miles is common. Walks organized by the LDWA average around 26 miles. Once a year they host a 100-mile walk split up over two days. And long distance walkers aren’t necessarily campers. Even when they do go on adventurous multi-day excursions, they’re just as likely to post up at a bed and breakfast where they can take a shower and have a beer. There are even businesses that will carry your gear for you. And long distance walking doesn’t have to be rural; some tramp through urban centers or parks. Long distance walkers go solo, but they also go in groups. There are no “hard and fast” rules, says Elrick
CityLab: A Comprehensive Map of American Lynchings
Lynchings formed the bloody backdrop of Southern life for a century after the Civil War. Between the 1860s and 1960s, thousands of black Americans were killed in public acts of racial terror. Millions more fled to cities in the North and West in an effort to escape this environment. Many soon discovered that, in many ways, the rest of American society was no less racist.
How many lynchings occurred during the Jim Crow era? Where? These are difficult questions to pinpoint. A November 2015 report by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative found that nearly 4,000 black people were killed in lynchings in a dozen Southern states between 1877 and 1950—a higher number than any previous estimates. But lynchings were not strictly limited to the South. And, although black Americans were victimized in far greater numbers than any group, other minorities were also targets.
A new map project called Monroe Work Today—named after the pioneering black sociologist who gathered much of the data—aims to be the most comprehensive catalogue of proven lynchings that took place in the United States from 1835 to 1964. Not only does it reach back further in time than most studies or maps, it also spans all regions of the U.S. The mapmakers at Auut Studio developed the map as an interactive high-school lesson plan, spending four years synthesizing modern academic research with historical lynching records. Their interactive project lists 4,000 victims of lynchings nationwide, as well as nearly 600 additional victims of “racialized mob violence.”
Quartz: The industrialized world is turning against circumcision. It’s time for the US to consider doing the same
Because male circumcision is so common in the states, few Americans realize how rare it is most everywhere else. The practice has fallen by the wayside in Australia, Canada, Britain and New Zealand, and fewer than one-fifth of all male Europeans are circumcised. In December, the Danish Medical Association recommended ending the practice for boys, arguing that because it permanently alters the body it should be “an informed, personal choice” that young men make for themselves.
In Germany, a district judge ruled in 2012 that ritual circumcision of juveniles is a crime that violates “the fundamental right of the child to bodily integrity.” South Korea is the only Asian country to embrace the procedure, as a kind of physiological souvenir of America’s occupation following World War II. But there, too, circumcision rates are declining fast, as the adolescent boys who would otherwise go under the knife (as per local custom) gain access to research about its purported benefits online. [...]
And while it is true that three randomized trials in Africa found that circumcision more than halved the risk of men getting HIV, it is harder to justify a prophylactic procedure in a place with considerably less HIV risk. In South Africa, for example, almost a quarter of the adult population is already infected, whereas in America, a little over one third of 1% (.37%) have HIV. In addition, the trials found that circumcision helped men who have sex with infected women. In America, however, HIV is transmitted primarily via nonsterile syringes or sex between men, and there is no evidence that a foreskin affects either mode.
Quartz: Researchers have mapped the US by people’s fear of romantic intimacy
Does it ever seem like everyone around you is freaking out about their love life in exactly the same way?
According to research from the University of Michigan, that’s because geography has a role in our approach to romance. Researchers analyzed data from Americans in all 50 states, looking for two specific relationship traits: Attachment anxiety, or clinginess, whereby people are preoccupied by the idea that they might lose their relationship. And avoidance anxiety, which manifests as a fear of intimacy and the tendency to clam up.
They found notable geographic differences across the country. Some states, like New York and West Virginia, were home to a disproportionately large number of people who suffered from the urge to cling on, which can include constantly checking in on a partner, needing to know their movements, and craving reassurance. Others, like Nevada and Kentucky, had more avoidant people, who shun intimacy and try desperately to hide their feelings. [...]
There are some big caveats to the way this research was conducted. The overall sample size was 127,070 adults, which is large. But the group was self-selected, because they all chose to fill out a survey on a particular website hosted by Penn State University and dedicated to the study of “positive psychology,” meaning—as the researchers note—that it was a non-representative sample. More women than men filled out the survey, making up 73.5% of the total respondents. And when the data are broken down, some states have very small sample sizes, meaning we can’t give too much credence to the fact that North Dakota came top in both categories: Only 187 people answered the survey there.
Vox: China’s war on coal continues — the country just canceled 104 new coal plants
Because China is such a behemoth, its energy decisions absolutely dwarf anything any other country is doing right now. Case in point: Over the weekend, the Chinese government ordered 13 provinces to cancel 104 coal-fired projects in development, amounting to a whopping 120 gigawatts of capacity in all.
To put that in perspective, the United States has about 305 gigawatts of coal capacity total. The projects that China just halted are equal in size to one-third of the US coal fleet. It’s potentially a very, very big deal for efforts to fight climate change.
This also shouldn’t come as a huge surprise. In recent years, China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, has been making major efforts to restrain its coal use and shift to cleaner sources of energy. When Donald Trump and other conservatives in the United States complain that China isn’t doing anything about climate change, they simply haven’t been paying attention. [...]
On top of that, as China’s leaders start to take global warming seriously, the country has been making massive investments in clean energy. As part of the Paris climate deal, China has pledged to get 20 percent of its energy from low-carbon sources by 2030. The government is planning to install an addition 130 gigawatts of wind and solar by 2020 — equivalent to all the renewable power in France today. (China’s also make big bets on nuclear power.) Some analysts suspect this growth in clean energy could be sufficient to satisfy much of the future growth in household electricity demand.
Deutsche Welle: High-ranking Catholic priests push for an end to celibacy
A group of 11 retired high-ranking Catholic priests is causing a stir across Germany with their request to abolish celibacy. The men are part of a group of clerics who were anointed in 1967 in Cologne - a city considered both a Catholic stronghold and one of Germany's most progressive and gay-friendly cities.
Among the men is Franz Decker, a retired priest who for over a decade led the Catholic Relief Service in Cologne. "We believe that requiring that every man who becomes a priest to remain celibate is not acceptable. We think, every Catholic should be allowed to choose if they would rather be celibate or not, regardless of whether they want to work as priests or not - just like in the evangelical Church or the Orthodox church, really, every church but the Catholic Church," Decker told DW. [...]
The demand to abolish the century-old tradition is part of an open letter published at the wake of the golden anniversary of Decker and his colleagues as catholic priests. In the letter, they list a number of suggestions on how the Catholic Church could modernize itself to combat the fact that "questions of God are no longer relevant to many people in this country," including other demands seen as progressive bordering on radical by many within the church, such as lifting the ban of women as priests. [...]
Celibacy - the requirement that a priest refrain from marriage and any type of sexual relationship - has long been controversial in the Catholic church. The ban on marriage for men of God was introduced in the middle ages, arguably in part for practical reasons to assure that priests would bequeath their belongings to the church, rather than a male heir. There are no passages in the bible that explicitly require celibacy from priests, though there are both passages that encourage celibacy above all else and passages that promote marriage as the ideal lifestyle. In their letter, the 11 priests quote a passage from the bible that says "a bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife."
The Guardian: May can think big all she likes. Britain’s about to find out just how small it is
Maybe the European Union is God’s way of teaching the British about Belgium. Specifically, it is a mechanism that forces UK politicians to confront the idea that Belgium matters. And not just Belgium but countries like it – the small countries. [...]
We are not alone in suffering from post-imperial angst, but we have tied ourselves in uniquely existential knots where relations with our European neighbours are concerned. Theresa May understands the deep cultural and psychological attraction of Brexit as a great unpicking – a disentanglement from continental ties, the benefits of which feel obscure to much of the public. [...]
But Trump struggles with the concept of mutual arrangements that guarantee stability without yielding a fist-pumping victory or cash payout to one party. He craves the firm smack of a deal. He appears to find the idea of big countries lending power to smaller ones for the sake of anything so sissy as “shared values” contemptible. He sees Nato as a European tax on the US military. [...]
The US is about to acquire a president who is relaxed about the dissolution of essential pillars of European security, when not actively undermining them. And this is the president whose offer of a trade deal is meant to give Britain confidence that Brexit will work. Given Trump’s known views on trade and the aggressive protectionists whose company he keeps, it is safe to presume that the non-negotiable terms of that deal will be total vassalage to US corporate interests. It will require a surrender of economic sovereignty every bit as great as that involved in EU membership, with none of the accompanying diplomatic clout.
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