It's Just a Little Kiss

If you and I were anthropologists from another galaxy, I'm sure we'd want to know more about kissing. What is this behaviour, and why do these humanoid life forms engage in it?

Kissing is perennially popular, for a start, which is a hint as to how enjoyable it is. That act of putting my lips to her lips is irresistible. Smell and taste a female once, you're hooked. Y'all are so soft and creamy, like a delicious cake, only an alive cake that kisses back. Hmmmm, perhaps not the best simile.

My first real make-out session was with Anna R. (Surname withheld so as not to embarrass her in her current marriage and high-profile public figurehood.) I can still taste her saliva and lip-gloss mix, not only because it's a life-changing act, but but because in the dark of a movie cinema, one's senses of smell and taste work overtime. Oh yes, the cinema was then the best place for teen snog-sessions, much like the drive-in movies were for the prior generation. I think Anna was further along the snog/sex continuum than I was, looking for more than just an hour of high-energy mouth-love. But I was happy and grateful and really only qualified for a snogfest. Anything more would have been an act too far.

Which brings me to the whole question of tongue interaction. As interstellar anthropologists, I'm certain we'd wonder precisely what pleasure results from such a thing. In the cool clear light of day, the idea of tongues engaging in the way we do when we kiss is at the very least a mystery. No doubt the internet has plenty of theories, but it seems to me it's all about connection. In some fundamental way, because we eat, speak and taste the world through our mouths, sharing that space with another person is as close a connection we can have without actual intercourse. 

It's telling that prostitutes reputedly consider kissing a John's mouth to be much more intimate than taking his cock into her mouth.  

My only point of concern about making out is that we so often think it's only a lead-up to more sexual activity. The joy of kissing as a destination of itself is worth consideration.



This link to a terrific BBC World Service Radio show about kissing, courtesy La Tigresse.

Bottoms Up, Crazy Snogging Fools.

Knowledge - The Greatest Gift

If Womens' Studies courses were really concerned with disseminating information about women, they'd be chock-full of blokes. Let's face it, guys are enthusiastic - if somewhat clueless - lifelong devotees of female form and function, and could truly benefit from professional instruction.

But a course dealing with the whys and wherefores of practical lady behaviour would be instantly shut down by the same women who run the aforementioned Womens' Studies faculty. Ironic, eh?

Take cunnilingus, for example. When a young man tastes his first pussy, it confirms everything he'd come to expect from his initial forays, namely, finger-fucking. Pussy tastes, feels and smells like nothing else in the universe, which can be a shock for the learner lover. What to do? How does this warm pleasure palace work, and how can I improve my performance so that she thinks more highly of me?

If nothing else, when we see our first female orgasm up close, we realize our life-long quest is to hone whatever input we have to the process. We like having you shake and moan, squirt and gush, scream and blush. It's addictive.

Sadly, sending the average male youth to be helpful with such a thing is equivalent to tuning a nuclear submarine with a crescent wrench. He might find and tighten the correct bolts, but it's all gonna be hit and miss.

The right tools for the job, the job of being with a woman on all levels, do exist. Most men eventually find that place of understanding, and, dare I say it, competence, both between the thighs and between the ears. The pity is that it mostly requires trial and error, which means her trial and patience with his error. Question and answer from a disinterested third party would make a huge difference.

Does anyone know of an actual Woman Instructor?




Bottoms Up, Educators.

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do.

People claim to have amicable break-ups, but I don't buy it.

From even the briefest...what shall we call them?...encounters, a rejection is a rejection. Only the most metaphysically organized and ego-free individual can take this:

Sorry, but I don't want to see you again. 

...and honestly reply...

Whatever you think is best. Thanks for the opportunity though! 

...and mean it.

Mild resentment is the least emotion a dumpee is likely to feel, homicidal mania the most. Hopefully we avoid the latter.

The wider question is just how we got to this point. Serial dating by definition leads to serial break-ups. Break-ups should be like the collapse of a small enterprise - they're good in that you know what doesn't work, so  you can improve next time. Each subsequent business will build upon the failures of the past, but relationships don't quite work that way because each time we're dealing with a new individual. We have to do the heavy-lifting from scratch.

What multiple dating should do is hone our choice of potential partner. Sadly, the forces that motivate us to seek 'the one' are more ingrained than lessons from the immediate past. We tend to be driven by instinct and childhood biases than the more recent fact of adult experience.

Hell. Not much positivity there.



Bottoms Up, Drifters.

#BostonStrong

At the report of acts of violence, I am immediately saddened.  As a runner, and a Boston Marathon volunteer, Monday's attack felt personal.

The first year I moved to Boston I couldn't wait to go watch my first Boston Marathon.  Marathon Monday lived up to the hype, inspiration abounds.  I've cheered every year since, but in a volunteer jacket.  The first year I was at the finish line.  Yup, right there.  The one you've seen in the videos.

This year I was working the 10k elite water stop, so I was in Framingham all morning and not at the finish line.  If it wasn't for a need to go into work Monday afternoon, I surely would've continued cheering...  from where?

I don't have many words, but as I stare at the footage of the bombings I can't help but see so many heroes.  The first responders, volunteers, and even runners who rushed to those in need after the attack, they are all incredible.  I think Marathon Monday just became even more inspirational.

My next run with be with a heavy heart, but will be for the victims and their families.  My thoughts go out to everyone affected.

Lawrence Livermore scientists discover new materials to capture methane

Methane capture in zeolite SBN. Blue represents adsorption
sites, which are optimal for methane (CH4) uptake. Each site
is connected to three other sites (yellow arrow) at optimal
interaction distance. Image credit: LLNL News Release

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and UC Berkeley and have discovered new materials to capture methane, the second highest concentration greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere.

Methane is a substantial driver of global climate change, contributing 30 percent of current net climate warming. Concern over methane is mounting, due to leaks associated with rapidly expanding unconventional oil and gas extraction, and the potential for large-scale release of methane from the Arctic as ice cover continues to melt and decayed material releases methane to the atmosphere. At the same time, methane is a growing source of energy, and aggressive methane mitigation is key to avoiding dangerous levels of global warming.

The research team, made up of Amitesh Maiti, Roger Aines and Josh Stolaroff of LLNL and Professor Berend Smit, researchers Jihan Kim and Li-Chiang Lin at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, performed systematic computer simulation studies on the effectiveness of methane capture using two different materials - liquid solvents and nanoporous zeolites (porous materials commonly used as commercial adsorbents).

While the liquid solvents were not effective for methane capture, a handful of zeolites had sufficient methane sorption to be technologically promising. The research appears in the April 16 edition of the journal, Nature Communications.

Unlike carbon dioxide, the largest emitted greenhouse gas, which can be captured both physically and chemically in a variety of solvents and porous solids, methane is completely non-polar and interacts very weakly with most materials.

"Methane capture poses a challenge that can only be addressed through extensive material screening and ingenious molecular-level designs," Maiti said.

Methane is far more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. Researchers have found that the release of as little as 1 percent of methane from the Arctic alone could have a warming effect approaching that being produced by all of the CO2 that has been pumped into the atmosphere by human activity since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Methane is emitted at a wide range of concentrations from a variety of sources, including natural gas systems, livestock, landfills, coal mining, manure management, wastewater treatment, rice cultivation and a few combustion processes.

The team's research focused on two different applications -- concentrating a medium-purity methane stream to a high-purity range (greater than 90 percent), as involved in purifying a low-quality natural gas; and concentrating a dilute stream (about 1 percent or lower) to the medium-purity range (greater than 5 percent), above methane's flammability limit in air.

Through an extensive study, the team found that none of the common solvents (including ionic liquids) appears to possess enough affinity toward methane to be of practical use. However, a systematic screening of around 100,000 zeolite structures uncovered a few nanoporous candidates that appear technologically promising.

Zeolites are unique structures that can be used for many different types of gas separations and storage applications because of their diverse topology from various networks of the framework atoms. In the team's simulations, one specific zeolite, dubbed SBN, captured enough medium source methane to turn it to high purity methane, which in turn could be used to generate efficient electricity.

"We used free-energy profiling and geometric analysis in these candidate zeolites to understand how the distribution and connectivity of pore structures and binding sites can lead to enhanced sorption of methane while being competitive with CO2 sorption at the same time," Maiti said.

Other zeolites, named ZON and FER, were able to concentrate dilute methane streams into moderate concentrations that could be used to treat coal-mine ventilation air.

The work at LLNL was funded by the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

References

- News Release
Lawrence Livermore scientists discover new materials to capture methane
https://www.llnl.gov/news/newsreleases/2013/Apr/NR-13-04-03.html

-  New materials for methane capture from dilute and medium-concentration sources
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v4/n4/abs/ncomms2697.html

Related

- Methane sequestration in hydrates
http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2012/06/methane-sequestration-in-hydrates.html

Another link between CO2 and mass extinctions of species

By Andrew Glikson, Australian National University

Andrew Glikson, earth and
paleo-climate scientist at
Australian National University

It’s long been known that massive increases in emission of CO2 from volcanoes, associated with the opening of the Atlantic Ocean in the end-Triassic Period, set off a shift in state of the climate which caused global mass extinction of species, eliminating about 34% of genera. The extinction created ecological niches which allowed the rise of dinosaurs during the Triassic, about 250-200 million years ago.

New research released in Science Express has refined the dating of this wave of volcanism. It shows marine and land species disappear from the fossil record within 20,000 to 30,000 years from the time evidence for the eruption of large magma flows appears, approximately 201 million years ago. These volcanic eruptions increased atmospheric CO2 and increased ocean acidity.

Mass extinctions caused by rapidly escalating levels of CO2 have occurred before. Global warming image from www.shutterstock.com

Mass extinctions due to rapidly escalating levels of CO2 are recorded since as long as 580 million years ago. As our anthropogenic global emissions of CO2 are rising, at a rate for which no precedence is known from the geological record with the exception of asteroid impacts, another wave of extinctions is unfolding.

Mass extinctions of species in the history of Earth include:

• the ~580 million years-old (Ma) Acraman impact (South Australia) and Acrytarch (ancient palynomorphs) extinction and radiation 
• Late Devonian (~374 Ma) volcanism, peak global temperatures and mass extinctions 
• the end-Devonian impact cluster associated with mass extinction, which among others destroyed the Kimberley Fitzroy reefs (~360 Ma) 
• the upper Permian (~267 Ma) extinction associated with a warming trend
• the Permian-Triassic boundary volcanic and asteroid impact events (~ 251 Ma) and peak warming 
• the End-Triassic (201 Ma) opening of the Atlantic Ocean, and massive volcanism 
• an End-Jurassic (~145 Ma) impact cluster and opening of the Indian Ocean 
• the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (K-T) (~65 Ma) impact cluster, Deccan volcanic activity and mass extinction 
• the pre-Eocene-Oligocene boundary (~34 Ma) impact cluster and a cooling trend, followed by opening of the Drake Passage between Antarctica and South America, formation of the Antarctic ice sheet and minor extinction at ~34 Ma. 

Throughout the Phanerozoic (from 542 million years ago), major mass extinctions of species closely coincided with abrupt rises of atmospheric carbon dioxide and ocean acidity. These increases took place at rates to which many species could not adapt. These events – triggered by asteroid impacts, massive volcanic activity, eruption of methane, ocean anoxia and extreme rates of glaciation (see Figures 1 and 2) – have direct implications for the effects of the current rise of CO2.

Figure 1 – Trends in atmospheric CO2 and related glacial and interglacial periods since the Cambrian (542 million years ago), showing peaks in CO2 levels (green diamonds) associated with asteroid impacts and/or massive volcanism. CO2 data from Royer 2004 and 2006.

Figure 2 – Relations between CO2 rise rates and mean global temperature rise rates during warming periods, including the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, early Oligocene, mid-Miocene, late Pliocene, Eemian (glacial termination), Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, Medieval Warming Period, 1750-2012 and 1975-2012 periods.

In February 2013, CO2 levels had risen to near 396.80ppm at Mauna Loa Atmospheric Observatory, compared to 393.54ppm in February 2012. This rise – 3.26ppm per year – is at the highest rate yet recorded. Further measurements show CO2 is at near 400ppm of the atmosphere over the Arctic. At this rate the upper stability threshold of the Antarctic ice sheet, defined at about 500–600ppm CO2 would be reached later this century (although hysteresis of the ice sheets may slow down melting).

Our global carbon reserves – including coal, oil, oil shale, tar sands, gas and coal-seam gas – contain considerably more than 10,000 billion tonnes of carbon (see Figure 5). This amount of carbon, if released into the atmosphere, is capable of raising atmospheric CO2 levels to higher than 1000ppm. Such a rise in atmospheric radiative forcing will be similar to that of the Paleocene-Eocene boundary thermal maximum (PETM), which happened about 55 million years-ago (see Figures 1, 2 and 4). But the rate of rise surpasses those of this thermal maximum by about ten times.

Figure 3 – Plot of percent mass extinction of genera versus peak atmospheric CO2 levels at several stages of Earth history.

Figure 4 – The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) represented by sediments in the Southern Ocean, central Pacific and South Atlantic oceans. The data indicate a) deposition of an organic matter-rich layer consequent on extinction of marine organisms; b) lowering of δ18O values representing an increase in temperature and c) a sharp decline in carbonate contents of sediments representing a decrease in pH and increase in acidity (Zachos et al 2008) 

The Paleocene-Eocene boundary thermal maximum event about 55 million years ago saw the release of approximately 2000 to 3000 billion tons of carbon to the atmosphere in the form of methane (CH4). It led to the extinction of about 35-50% of benthic foraminifera (see Figure 3 and 4), representing a major decline in the state of the marine ecosystem. The temperature rise and ocean acidity during this event are shown in Figures 4 and 6.

Based on the amount of carbon already emitted and which could continue to be released to the atmosphere (see Figure 5), current climate trends could be tracking toward conditions like those of the Paleocene-Eocene event. Many species may be unable to adapt to the extreme rate of current rise in greenhouse gases and temperatures. The rapid opening of the Arctic Sea ice, melting of Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets, and rising spate of floods, heat waves, fires and other extreme weather events may signify a shift in state of the climate, crossing tipping points.

Figure 5 – CO2 emissions from fossil fuels (2.12 GtC ~ 1 ppm CO2). Estimated reserves and potentially recoverable resources.By analogy to medical science analysing blood count as diagnosis for cancer, climate science uses the greenhouse gas levels of the atmosphere, pH levels of the ocean, variations in solar insolation, aerosol concentrations, clouding states at different levels of the atmosphere, state of the continental ice sheets and sea ice, position of high pressure ridges and climate zones and many other parameters to determine trends in the climate. The results of these tests, conducted by thousands of peer-reviewed scientists world-wide, have to date been ignored, at the greatest peril to humanity and nature.

Continuing emissions contravene international laws regarding crimes against humanity and related International and Australian covenants. In the absence of an effective global mitigation effort, governments world-wide are now presiding over the demise of future generations and of nature, tracking toward one of the greatest mass extinction events nature has seen. It is time we learned from the history of planet Earth.

Figure 6: The Paleocene-Eocene boundary thermal maximum. http://www.uta.edu/faculty/awinguth/petm_research/petm_home.html

This article was earlier published at The Conversation (on March 22, 2013).

Lessons From My Cat - Part 3

Critical to understanding the cat is the fact that they don't see the world so much as smell it. Yes, cats have beautiful eyes, but they see only in black-and-white, and their vision is tuned to detect movement. Consider the mouse, dinner in prospect for your average tabby - it's not important to see what colour the mouse is, only how fast it's moving and in what direction. The way they process the information the world provides them is finely aligned with their survival.

Women don't chase mice, as far as I know. Their eyesight is the same as ours, but what they "see" is different. In other words the way they process the same sensory input varies wildly from men. 

For instance, when I see an interesting woman walking down the street, I'll ponder...

~ what kind of bra she's wearing

~ what her pussy might look like

~ whether she'd laugh at my jokes

~ how she'd react to my touch

...until I see the next attractive woman, whereupon the process begins again.

Women, like cats, don't prioritize the same thing. When a woman spies a man she finds attractive, she won't walk past him with her tongue hanging out. Without missing a beat, she'll...

~ figure where he buys his clothes

~ guess what kind of car he drives

~ decide if he's in a relationship

~  if the answer to the above is 'yes', work out whether she's hotter than his girlfriend

~ estimate his income to within a few hundred dollars per year

...which is self-evidently a different assessment process.




Cats have a very clearly defined hierarchy of needs for which they are immensely well evolved. When all their needs are met, they're able to relax, for the most part, but the call of the wild is never too far away. Domesticity works, as long as it's on their terms.

That's what makes them eternally fascinating.


Bottoms Up, Mouse-Chasers.