It's not true that a woman's

sexual response depends on

the stimulation of a penis

Most women do not find penile penetration alone

enough to achieve full sexual satisfaction

- no matter what the position -

mainly because the clitoris is not fully erect

   more »

Keywords: stimulation, sex, clitoris, orgasm, penis, pleasure

How narratives work culturally is crucial

to understanding that culture

The manipulation of those narratives can dictate the course of history.

The values individuals subscribe to can often be traced to narratives that have cultural currency.

Narratives that render the economic data comprehensible at an emotional level are increasingly significant.

The business press mainly exists to fashion those narratives, and many of them take that responsibility to heart and continually cheer-lead for the economy, trying to implant confidence-building stories about the current situation in the general public.   more »

The writers' strike is really about whether collective bargaining can withstand the creation of new media on which entertainment can be seen -- or, more accurately, whether it can withstand the studios' efforts to block writers from bargaining collectively when their work is shown on or through new media.

"New media" is a catchall term for the Internet, digital broadcast channels and wireless systems such as cellphones. Not all made-for-big-screen content plays well on small screens, of course: "Lawrence of Arabia," I fear, would lose something if viewed on my cell, even if my mother didn't call during the attack on Aqaba.

But already television programming is recycled through the Internet to be viewed on computers.

On many networks' Web sites, recent episodes of current series are there for the watching.

Within a couple of years, the technogeeks tell us, instead of having a cable box on our televisions, our TVs will be hooked up directly to the Internet, which will deliver all the new shows to our HDTVs.   more »

New Rule: The president can’t pardon just one or two turkeys this Thanksgiving. He’s got to let them all go.

It’s probably too much to expect from the man who wanted “no child left behind,” then vetoed health care for kids. But think of the upside. Freeing the turkeys might help the president’s credibility when he says things like, “We don’t torture.”

Take a look at this video, shot just last month at a typical American turkey slaughterhouse, and this one, shot undercover last year at a Butterball slaughterhouse by investigators from PETA, and you’ll see that my use of the word is no exaggeration.

Butterball employees, taking a page out of the Abu Ghraib handbook, laughed while they kicked, punched, stomped, and even sexually assaulted turkeys.   more »

If one thing compels itself with brutal clarity, it is that we are not entitled to consider genocide as something pathologically external or alien: it is absolutely part of the rule of capitalism and its system of competing nation-states.

The word should haunt the discourse of liberal imperialists, who happily use it to describe the actions of official enemies, yet miss it when it is right in front of them.

When those responsible for the American war in Iraq face a public reckoning for their colossal crimes, the weekend of September 15-16, 2007 will be an important piece of evidence against them.

On Friday, September 14 there were brief press reports of a scientific survey by the British polling organization ORB, which resulted in an estimate of 1.2 million violent deaths in Iraq since the US invasion.   more »