Sex, Bombs & Burgers

The talk will focus on the main theme of the book, which is how the military, porn and food industries have been the biggest drivers of technology over the past century. The links between these three are not immediately clear, but they are all rooted in humanity's basest instincts. In essence, my book is about how the worst parts of human vice have resulted in some truly incredible achievements

It's no secret that porn is a major force on the internet - an estimated 25 per cent of all search requests are for adult content, while about one third of all websites are pornography-related. About 28,000 people are watching porn of some kind online , spending about $89 doing so, every second.
Porn, despite being commonly thought of as a negative by-product of one of our basest instincts (the need to have sex), has been a big force for innovation over the past century.

Cultural Sex Fact of the Day

Kissing as part of sexual foreplay is common in the West but virtually unknown in other parts of the world (Ford & Beach, 1965). There are some cultures where penetration was the key element to intercourse, and neither foreplay nor afterplay was recorded. Ford and Beach pointed out that physical pain and biting are sometimes permitted as part of sexual foreplay and, therefore, such behaviors are likely to be readily incorporated into the sexual repertoire

-Cultures of foreplay

Is Marriage good for you?

Contemporary studies, for instance, have shown that married people are less likely to get pneumonia, have surgery, develop cancer or have heart attacks. A group of Swedish researchers has found that being married or cohabiting at midlife is associated with a lower risk for dementia. A study of two dozen causes of death in the Netherlands found that in virtually every category, ranging from violent deaths like homicide and car accidents to certain forms of cancer, the unmarried were at far higher risk than the married. For many years, studies like these have influenced both politics and policy, fueling national marriage-promotion efforts, like the Healthy Marriage Initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. From 2006 to 2010, the program received $150 million annually to spend on projects like “divorce reduction” efforts and often cited the health benefits of marrying and staying married.

-Is Marriage Good for Your Health?

Artist of the Day- Matthew Willey, 'Not a day without a line'

Mr. Willey, who grew up in Virginia and Massachusetts and received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Tufts University, has done all sorts of painting: a rendering of the Last Supper for a juice stand, in which a smoothie occupies Jesus’s position and fruit stands in for the disciples; koi ponds on cement floors; and fallen flowers so lifelike that people stoop to pick them up.

“With murals, people think of the post office, they think of Diego Rivera and civil war and epics,” he says. “I paint on walls intimately within your home, whatever those needs are.”...

A few years ago, after he and a friend started a company called TellmeOmuse, which sells products related to Greek myths and epics, he finally did, painting the winged horses on his walls.

They are the horses of Helios, the Greek sun god, Mr. Willey explains. In Greek mythology, Helios leaves his palace in the east in the morning and charges into the sky, descending to his palace in the west at night.

“The part I love is that he gets up and does it again tomorrow,” Mr. Willey says. “That is what a painter’s life is like, it’s how arduous. There is a quote by van Gogh, ‘Not a day without a line.’ You don’t always know what is going to happen, but if you don’t get up and climb the horses out of the palace, how are you going to ever know?”

-In the East Village, a Muralist’s Tiny Sanctuary

Photo Blog of the Day- Island Hopper's Diary

via Island Hopper's Diary