Better condoms and bacon condoms

Photo credit:  http://coedmagazine.com/2013/03/29/bacon-flavored-condoms-are-the-next-great-bacon-invention

The makers of vegetarian products that taste like bacon now sell bacon condoms (slogan: "make your meat look like meat").  Probably an April Fools joke, but perhaps this is what Bill Gates had in mind as the next-generation condom that would be more widely acceptable.  Could bacon condoms prevent HIV transmission in Africa? 

Tables are better than plots (April Fools) and other reading

• A several participant discussion of plots vs. tables begins with a 5 page piece by Andrew Gelman about why tables are better than plots, concluding with "I recommend using Excel, which has some really nice defaults as well as options such as those 3-D colored bar charts." April Fools! The remaining pieces knock down the straw man.
  
• At Society for Research on Child Development this March, I asked NICHD head Alan Guttmacher for the current scope of the "child health and development" that his institute covers since some say that adolescence extends until 25 because the brain is not fully developed until then. He said that age 25 is a fine age to use as the end of child development. The National Campaign has issued areport on young adulthood describing this changing stage of life.
  
• AP grading and what it's like to grade AP exams. I was surprised that 85-90% of these history exams were written by 9th and 10th graders.
  
• Humor in romantic relationships: women have more romantic interest in online dating profiles that are funny (in their opinion) than not funny. No difference for men's assessment of women. Practical implications aside (Do any men like me for my sense of humor?), this study is a great example of how gender could be used as a counterfactual, even though they didn't use it here. Now that people are frequently represented not just by resumes (as in studies of racial discrimination in choosing interview candidates) but by electronic profiles on facebook or dating sites, we can alter gender or other immutable characteristics on the electronic profiles and infer causal effects.
  
• Seating location and voting behavior on FDA advisory committees: those who speak later may have less influence on the vote, perhaps attributable to seating location.
  

Sexually transmitted infection postdoc

As my time on the CDC's STD postdoctoral fellowship draws to a close, Cake Wrecks featured an appropriate cake (above).

Statisticians protest at G-20 conference for safer data mining

Dating miners protest alongside United Steelworkers at the G-20 conference. My favorites: "Repeal Power Laws," "Our Sets. Our Axiom of Choice."

They even got John Oliver from the Daily Show to join in. I can't read the sign he is holding.

"True Lunch Waits"

Study: Abstinence-Only Lunch Programs Ineffective At Combating Teen Obesity, a brilliant story in the Onion. The entire thing is fabulous but I love this part:

"I'm never ever going to eat, because eating is wrong, and I'm worth more than a chicken sandwich with asparagus and rice pilaf," Woodbridge seventh-grader Tracey Holmes said. "I heard Jennifer Hines eats all the time, like 50 times a day. I heard she eats all her ice cream upside-down, though, so she doesn't get fat. That's how it works."

"It's really hard, though," Holmes added. "I get so hungry sometimes. Especially after hours and hours of unprotected sex."

Thanks to Arthur for forwarding it.

Motivational poster: abstinence programs

via

Abstinence satire

1. My study inspired this funny satire of abstinence education: "Abstinence Education Not Working; Conservatives Shifting Focus to High School Marriages"

BROOKLYN, New York, 2009-01-05 — Following a recent study showing that vows of celibacy had no effect on pre-marital sex, conservative groups are now shifting to a program they are calling 'Get Married Early and Have Lots of Sex.'

...

In its official response to the proposed changes, the ACLU complained that the program would strengthen the institution of marriage, reduce the number of abortions, and impair Americans' ability to have sex with underage teenagers.

2. Alert reader Jonathan Liu (I've always wanted to use that phrase) sent this ad for Passionex: "self control in a bottle". Slogans: "Because now is not the time"; "Just because it fits doesn't mean it goes there."

"Passionix™ is the innovative new solution to the passions that can override the judgment of our youth and lead them into temptation."

It's part of an intricate web of a ministry spoof called Citizens of Virtue. Which looks half real.

Condoms during oral sex: the hidden danger

Women inhales condom during fellatio

Indian J Chest Dis Allied Sci. 2004 Jan-Mar;46(1):55-8.
Accidental condom inhalation.
Arya CL, Gupta R, Arora VK.

Jaswant Rai Speciality Hospital, Meerut, India.

A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. Inspite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio.

It's an old paper, but perhaps not well-publicized enough.

I can't really picture how this would happen.

A new online sex ed campaign

The Portland Oregon Planned Parenthood created a new campaign for teens which manages to be both informative and dripping with irony. Or perhaps I am overinterpeting the irony.

It amplifies the weird stilted moments of any sex ed video where a creepily earnest adult pops up, uses overly slangy and very dated slang, and creates what any normal teen would find an uncomfortable moment. In the usual sex ed videos in my experience, the teens seem unfazed and take in the information. In this one, they just look uncomfortable, and in some cases walk away. These are more over the top than the usual ones, but also might feel more genuine because of that especially because the kids are responding as real kids would if a sex ed video inserted itself into their lives. An example of an overly stilted moment: in the abstinence episode, a girl (who in a past episode was afraid she had an STD) tells her friends that she can't go to a party because she plans to spend the night masturbating.

Virginity pledges in the Onion

Today's Onion includes the following wedding announcement:

WEDDINGS: Trinity Communion Church congratulates youth group members Jason Torrence and Julie Barber, both 16, for wisely choosing to marry rather than break their abstinence pledges.