Zen Haiku: June 2003 Archives

Sexy Science Factoids

Sex ban for wannabe dads overturned. Turns out abstaining from sex actually hurts or has no affect on the chance of conception for couples having difficulties.

And, along the the same lines, different slants on the same thing. A Reuters headlines reads U.S. Birth Rate Drops Slightly: CDC whereas the MSNBC story reads "U.S. birth rate falls to record low". Yahoo picks up the more sober Reuters story, but I refuse to link to them because they always end up expiring their stories on me. [Update - 03/25/2004 - MSNBC expired their story on me. Link removed]

Another Reuters article with the headline "U.S. Birth Rate at Record Low" is most likely the source of the MSNBC story: "The birth rate was 13.9 per 1,000 people, down from 14.1 per 1,000 in 2001 and down 17 percent from a peak in 1990 of 16.7 per 1,000."

And last but certainly not least, a newly mapped enzyme called "arginase II" could yield new treatments for female sexual dysfunction since Viagra® has proved less effective for women than for men.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Monday, June 30, 2003 (Link)

(See entry on its own, including comments)

Y Chromosomes and other manly stuff

The Y chromosome is more robust than originally thought.

"'Each male newborn undergoes an estimated 600 changes in DNA base pairs in an effort to overwrite any mutations....It seems that the repetitive sequences swap between the two arms of the Y, leaving a son's Y chromosome different from his father's.'" (Quoted from the Reuters story)

With that in mind, I'm looking forward to bendy computers, and am surprised that it was only last week that Americans rented more DVDs than VHS tapes .

And last and certainly least, what could be more manly than learning Spanish swear words [Well, pinche pendejo, the diveintomark site seems to have deleted this page. Link removed 03/25/2004]? Having lived in Albuquerque, I knew most of them, but I'm always up for learning more.

Posted by Chad Lundgren on Sunday, June 22, 2003 (Link)

(See entry on its own, including comments)

Bath and Body Works

The Bath and Body Works site is worthless. I was trying to find out if they had a shea butter lotion as a gift for my girlfriend Karen to replace the stuff she's running out of.

On the home page, my navigation choices are "Home", "The Solution Center", whatever that means, "New This Season", which is obviously wrong, "FAQ", "Locator", and some sign-me-up-for-spam thing. All use tiny fonts done as graphics, so they can't be resized.

I want a "Products" link! How about a "Our Stuff" link if that's not hip enough?

It stays just as bad. They have three columns. The middle column has a big picture and a list of products under it. This layout implies you can look at individual products, but you can't. [Update 03/12/2004 - I foolishly did not get a screen shot, so now of course the link is broken, and has been removed.]

There's no site map, so I get the nagging feeling what I want is there, but I can't find it. My theory is that the package has changed but the scent is the same, but I can't know for sure.

Eventually, through the random thrashing method, I find a shea butter page, but it says nothing about what scent it has. If I hate the scent, I won't want to keep smelling it.

Finally, I gave up and went to the store. Sure enough, the same stuff is now in that blue bottle and it has the same scent.