Meme of the Year 940
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Culture: Page 264
Love Issues
Valentine’s Day. One of the many holidays that started as a mix of a pagan festival (Lupercalia, a fertility festival) blended with a day in honor of some dude (St. Valentine) who died in an unpleasant way for the Catholic Church. No one runs through the streets anymore gently slapping women with the blood-dripping hide of a sacrificed goatskin to ensure fertility, but some of us would probably rather get hit with a dead goat than be subjected to the Hallmark cards and pink candy hearts of our modern Valentine’s Day celebrations. Continue reading
It’s About Time – February 2013
Why do mosses and lichens fall out of the trees in winter? Close to the end of every year, clumps of moss and lichen appear around almost every oak and maple tree in town. These are the branch species, different from terrestrial mosses and lichens. It is most prominent in parks where the lawn hasn’t been mowed since late fall. For years I attributed the lichen rain to wind storms, but that never struck me as the whole story. A comment in the Mount Pisgah Arboretum newsletter by its caretaker made a light go on in my head. Continue reading
Date Club
The rules of online dating
If you’ve found yourself single in the past few years, chances are you’ve considered signing up for one of the many online dating websites. And there are plenty to choose from, be it Match.com, eHarmony, OkCupid or one of the million or so others. If you haven’t taken the plunge or are still skirting the “free glances” fringes, allow this e-dating vet to share a little learned wisdom and perhaps ease the nerves. Continue reading
Apes Gone Wild
The sweet sex lives of bonobos
Having “hot animal sex” isn’t always a good thing. Take cats, for example. Male cats have spikes on their penises that bury into the vaginal wall during sex. Cats in heat aren’t yowling because they’re having a great time — it’s because they’re being stabbed by a barbed penis. And in the insect world, after praying mantises have sex, the female skips right past the pillow talk and bites the male’s head off if she’s hungry or stressed. Continue reading
More Than the Movies
Anything can be a date
The tried-and-true dinner and a movie formula for dating has gotten scores of us laid, but there’s something to be said for avoiding a rut. So the next time you want to plan a date, try switching it up just a bit. Continue reading
Romance Schmomance
What’s a single guy to do?
Valentine’s Day is frustrating. We either spend all of our energy on our beloved partner because society tells us that this is the day to do so, or we wallow in the fact that we don’t have a special someone in our lives. So, don’t stress out and keep it simple, stupid. Continue reading
Healthy Sex Toys
Pleasure parties for the eco-inclined
“I show up and transform their living room into a sex toy store. Lots of samples, lots of testers,” Kim Marks says. Marks is the proprietor of Oregon’s As You Like It – The Pleasure Shop and she devotes many of her evenings to putting on PleasureWare Home Parties, showcasing the store’s many ecofriendly and ethical sex toys and products, from glass dildos to phthalate-free vibrators. Continue reading
Gay Friendly?
Sure, but Eugene’s queer dating scene has its limits
San Francisco has the Castro, Seattle has Capital Hill, Portland has the Burnside Triangle. In a smaller city with no gay district, center or bar, Eugene is a difficult place for men to date. And for a university town, where the UO was voted number one in Campus Pride’s Climate Index of gay-friendly colleges, it is puzzling that there are no designated queer spaces off campus. Many people will tell you, “Go to G.L.A.M. Continue reading
Are We Getting Warmer?
Planting for a disrupted climate
The numbers are in, says The New York Times: 2012 was the hottest year ever recorded in the contiguous U.S. 2012 also turned out to be the second-worst on record for climate extremes, amassing 11 weather disasters that exceeded $1 billion in costs, including tornadoes, freak storms, floods and catastrophic drought. Globally, the decade from 2000 to 2010 was the warmest on record. Nobody who is under 28 has lived through a month of global temperatures that fell below the 20th century average, because the last such month was February 1985. Welcome to a warmer world. Continue reading