Sexual Behavior

The other day, I got into an argument somewhere else in the blogosphere. Not a discussion, which is all right. But an argument, where people start taking offense. Which is not all right. Life’s too short. Especially when the argument is over butts.

Now I’ve got nothing against butts. I have one myself. It’s too old and fat. I wish it were younger and trimmer. But it continues to serve its principal functions, one of which is not, and never has been, to be a babe magnet. I wish it were otherwise. Maybe in my next life.

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I have decided that the person who set the date for Valentine’s Day in the middle of February might have been a Californian. Sure as hell wasn’t anybody from Maine.

I decided this while I was lying on the couch by the front window of the house I’m living in in Berkeley, cursing rogue pieces of selfish DNA (aka viruses, aka the third miserable cold I’ve had since I’ve been here, dammit) and squabbling with the geriatric cats for the available spots of sun. I’m looking out the window at the sweet gum trees, trying to work out how many more months it will be before these suckers finally stop dropping their leaves and I can put the rake away at least momentarily, and I notice that the trees are full of birds. Screaming, caroling, warbling, chasing, strutting, and generally creating one hallelujah chorus of a ruckus. Geez, thought I, these birds are acting like they think it’s spring, or something. I mean, this is February. Haven’t they ever heard of Punxsutawney Phil?

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I observe that there are a few William Proxmire fans populating this party. Since I am a working scientist, perhaps I might be permitted a few words in defense of my profession.

I'll get to Proxmire in a paragraph or three. But firstly, about those rats. If you missed the original post, it was a chuckle about a study, reported in some media outlet, I guess, about how female rats got hornier when given caffeine - and how is it that we can spend money on this stuff. Now, if you're interested, you can, for free, look up almost any scientific paper published in the last twenty years or so (when these things began to be put online) through Google Scholar or PubMed, a search engine provided by the National Library of Medicine.

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