Sperm Wars

I'm fascinated by the book Sperm Wars, which I have not bought yet. It's an evo-psych account of all the details of human sexuality that nobody even bothers to question.

One hypothesis the book promotes, one that sort of stuns me, is that masturbation is a technique for increasing the chance of insemination specifically in cases of infidelity. And that the taboo about masturbation is really about the suppression of the threat masturbation (by others) creates to a man's own genetic legacy. And further, that hypocrisy about masturbation (condemning it while also doing it oneslef) is widespread because this is from the very beginning a calculated act designed to improve one's own evolutionary fitness.

All evo-psych theories must inspire skepticism because the field is so prone to projection of one's own prejudices. But dang. Even having this idea as a potentially testable theory has my mind reeling.

He also posits an explanation for homosexuality from the evo-psych perspective. Of course, what hardly anyone realizes about this is that there isn't a lack of good explanations for the heritability of queerness, the problem is that there are so many that they can't be differentiated through examination of (scarce) evidence.

It would be very interesting indeed if all the weird details of human sexuality were eventually explained this way. There is nothing implausible about any of these theories, what we know for sure about pretty much every other plant and animal species on the planet is that there is no limit to the baroque, obscure, and counterintuitive ways life propagates itself. Homosexuality is really very boring and ordinary compared to the diversity of far-fetched reproductive strategies we see in other species. We just don't know which of these strategies are operating in ourselves.

Napoleon Dynamite

I chose this movie for an odd reason: because I read somewhere that it has proven very difficult, using collaborative filtering algorithms, to predict whether a given viewer will like it or not based on their opinion of other films. In other words, viewer reaction is unusually unpredictable. Since I'm a Bayesian classification wonk, of course I had to see it.

I think that many readers here should see the film regardless of its merits. It's sort of enigmatic, but my take on it is that it is a fairly serious look at what it is like to be socially maladjusted in America. I think it is of particular interest to those who subscribe to the autism spectrum concept and its implications.

The film starts off seeming flippant and cruel, until a particular moment when the viewer - myself, at least - discovered how much of that cruelty was actually in my own mind, rather than in the film itself. Kind of disturbing. I guess it's the point where you realize the character is a real person, not a cartoon - despite the cartoonlike rendering of the film itself. This moment might not be the same for everyone.

And though some of the things in the film seem contrived and wildly implausible, they are also exactly like things I have seen happen in real life. So I can't call any of it implausible, actually, it only seems that way because it is so rarely represented. I particularly liked the crazy, colorful dom/sub relationship that seemed to make them both so happy. I was just reading in one of Fritscher's books about how gay men remake each other through domination... and found some of these scenes reminiscent of that. I cannot believe it is meant as a joke when it is acted with such emotional realism.

I thought it could have been much better and much stronger by being longer and more serious. It's teen-flick packaging is an interesting choice that makes me wonder if I'm reading too much into a shallow and superficial film, which is a strange sensation.

The Wikipedia article has some interesting comments as well.

Lust in my eyes

Caught by bikerbaer: