Smut: Barnet Lee "Barney" Rosset, Jr. (May 28, 1922 – February 21, 2012)

IFQ Magazine recently caught up with legendary book publisher Barney Rosset to discuss his storied career and ventures into film and political opinions ; the occasion was marked by the DVD release of Obscene, a documentary on Rosset by filmmakers Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O’Connor, made available courtesy of Virgil Films and Entertainment alongside Arthouse Films. With both Grove Press and his literary magazine The Evergreen Review, Rosset introduced American society to a who’s who of iconic writers including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter, Jean Genet, David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, among many, many more. His progressive politics and belief in freedom of speech led him to champion such banned books as Tropic of Cancer, Lady Chatterly’s Lover, and Naked Lunch, all of which were subjected to obscenity trials that Rosset subsequently won, thus opening up free speech to a then-unparalleled degree. Below are some brief words from our conversation.
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Smooth Pricks and Sharper Brains

It has long been believed that humans evolved smooth penises as a result of adopting a more monogamous reproductive strategy than their early human ancestors. Those ancestors may have used penile spines to remove the sperm of competitors when they mated with females. However, exactly how this change came about is not known.
The researchers did not set out to study penile spines. Rather, they were looking for chunks of DNA that had been lost from the human genome but not the chimp genome, so they could then try to pinpoint what those chunks did.
Sex would be a very different proposition for humans if — like some animals including chimpanzees, macaques and mice — men had penises studded with small, hard spines.
Now researchers at Stanford University in California have found a molecular mechanism for how the human penis could have evolved to be so distinctly spine-free. They have pinpointed it as the loss of a particular chunk of non-coding DNA that influences the expression of the androgen receptor gene involved in hormone signalling.
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Ghost made in Japan ?

Remember the passionate pottery wheel scene between Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze in the 1990 film Ghost. Now, 20 years later, Korean heartthrob Song Seung-heon and Japanese sweetheart Nanako Matsushima have reenacted the "Unchained Melody" moment.

"The remake reenacts some of the most touching scenes in the original, including the pottery-making scene. I hope viewers can feel a pang of nostalgia, thinking 'oh there was that kind of scene', while watching the movie", Song told reporters in Seoul, Tuesday, following a press preview.
The Korea-Japan-United States joint production",Ghost : In Your Arms Again", is about an undying love affair between a Korean pottery artist (Song) and Japanese businesswoman (Matsushima) ― even death does not come between the inseparable couple.
But a twist in the new film, directed by Tarô Ohtani, is that the heroine, rather than the hero, reappears before her lover as a ghost after an untimely death.
Link

If you sit by the river long enough...

This list of 100 novels was drawn up by the editorial board of Modern Library. Where possible, book titles have been linked to either the original New York Times review or a later article about the book.

1. "Ulysses," James Joyce

2. "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man," James Joyce

4. "Lolita," Vladimir Nabokov

5. "Brave New World," Aldous Huxley

6. "The Sound and the Fury," William Faulkner

7. "Catch-22," Joseph Heller

8. "Darkness at Noon," Arthur Koestler

9. "Sons and Lovers," D. H. Lawrence

10. "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck

11. "Under the Volcano," Malcolm Lowry

12. "The Way of All Flesh," Samuel Butler

13. "1984," George Orwell

14. "I, Claudius," Robert Graves

15. "To the Lighthouse," Virginia Woolf

16. "An American Tragedy," Theodore Dreiser

17. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter," Carson McCullers

18. "Slaughterhouse Five," Kurt Vonnegut

19. "Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

20. "Native Son," Richard Wright

21. "Henderson the Rain King," Saul Bellow

22. "Appointment in Samarra," John O' Hara

23. "U.S.A." (trilogy), John Dos Passos

24. "Winesburg, Ohio," Sherwood Anderson

25. "A Passage to India," E. M. Forster

26. "The Wings of the Dove," Henry James

27. "The Ambassadors," Henry James

28. "Tender Is the Night," F. Scott Fitzgerald

29. "The Studs Lonigan Trilogy," James T. Farrell

30. "The Good Soldier," Ford Madox Ford

31. "Animal Farm," George Orwell

32. "The Golden Bowl," Henry James

33. "Sister Carrie," Theodore Dreiser

34. "A Handful of Dust," Evelyn Waugh

35. "As I Lay Dying," William Faulkner

36. "All the King's Men," Robert Penn Warren

37. "The Bridge of San Luis Rey," Thornton Wilder

38. "Howards End," E. M. Forster

39. "Go Tell It on the Mountain," James Baldwin

40. "The Heart of the Matter," Graham Greene

41. "Lord of the Flies," William Golding

42. "Deliverance," James Dickey

43. "A Dance to the Music of Time" (series), Anthony Powell

44. "Point Counter Point," Aldous Huxley

45. "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemingway

46. "The Secret Agent," Joseph Conrad

47. "Nostromo," Joseph Conrad

48. "The Rainbow," D. H. Lawrence

49. "Women in Love," D. H. Lawrence

50. "Tropic of Cancer," Henry Miller

51. "The Naked and the Dead," Norman Mailer

52. "Portnoy's Complaint," Philip Roth

53. "Pale Fire," Vladimir Nabokov

54. "Light in August," William Faulkner

55. "On the Road," Jack Kerouac

56. "The Maltese Falcon," Dashiell Hammett

57. "Parade's End," Ford Madox Ford

58. "The Age of Innocence," Edith Wharton

59. "Zuleika Dobson," Max Beerbohm

60. "The Moviegoer," Walker Percy

61. "Death Comes to the Archbishop," Willa Cather

62. "From Here to Eternity," James Jones

63. "The Wapshot Chronicles," John Cheever

64. "The Catcher in the Rye," J. D. Salinger

65. "A Clockwork Orange," Anthony Burgess

66. "Of Human Bondage," W. Somerset Maugham

67. "Heart of Darkness," Joseph Conrad

68. "Main Street," Sinclair Lewis

69. "The House of Mirth," Edith Wharton

70. "The Alexandria Quartet," Lawrence Durrell

71. "A High Wind in Jamaica," Richard Hughes

72. "A House for Ms. Biswas," V. S. Naipaul

73. "The Day of the Locust," Nathaniel West

74. "A Farewell to Arms," Ernest Hemingway

75. "Scoop," Evelyn Waugh

76. "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," Muriel Spark

77. "Finnegans Wake," James Joyce

78. "Kim," Rudyard Kipling

79. "A Room With a View," E. M. Forster

80. "Brideshead Revisited," Evelyn Waugh

81. "The Adventures of Augie March," Saul Bellow

82. "Angle of Repose," Wallace Stegner

83. "A Bend in the River," V. S. Naipaul

84. "The Death of the Heart," Elizabeth Bowen

85. "Lord Jim," Joseph Conrad

86. "Ragtime," E. L. Doctorow

87. "The Old Wives' Tale," Arnold Bennett

88. "The Call of the Wild," Jack London

89. "Loving," Henry Green

90. "Midnight's Children," Salman Rushdie

91. "Tobacco Road," Erskine Caldwell

92. "Ironweed," William Kennedy

93. "The Magus," John Fowles

94. "Wide Sargasso Sea," Jean Rhys

95. "Under the Net," Iris Murdoch

96. "Sophie's Choice," William Styron

97. "The Sheltering Sky," Paul Bowles

98. "The Postman Always Rings Twice," James M. Cain

99. "The Ginger Man," J. P. Donleavy

100. "The Magnificent Ambersons," Booth Tarkington

LINK

Leslie Nielsen, Ghost Potter, Dies at 84

In a 1988 interview with The New York Times, Leslie Nielsen discussed his career-rejuvenating transition to comedy, a development that he had recently described as “too good to be true.”
“It’s been dawning on me slowly that for the past 35 years I have been cast against type,” he said, “and I’m finally getting to do what I really wanted to do.”

Ass to waist ratio...no boobs

Traditional studies of attractiveness have been bound to the Darwinian idea of natural selection, which argues that an individual will always choose the best possible mate that circumstances will allow. Such studies have focused on torso, waist, bust and hip measurements.
In this study the team measured the attractiveness of scans of 96 bodies of Chinese women who were either students or volunteers, aged between 20-49 years of age.
The study also revealed that BMI (Body mass index) and HWR (Hip to waist ratio) were both strong predictors of attractiveness. Scans of taller women who had longer arms were also rated highly, however leg size did not contribute significantly to the ratings.




"Our results showed consistent attractiveness ratings by men and women and by Hong Kong Chinese and Australian raters, suggesting considerable cross cultural consistency," concluded Brooks. "In part this may be due to shared media experiences. Nonetheless when models are stripped of their most obvious racial and cultural features, the features that make bodies attractive tend to be shared by men and women across cultural divides."
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Females who can mask their trails

The scientists have now been able to show that evolution has favoured those females who can conceal their gender identity. Females who can mask their trails copulate significantly less often than other females and thus have a greater chance of surviving.


"It is beneficial for males to mate as often as possible, since this is the only way in which they can influence the number of offspring they father. But it is costly for the females to mate often, and this is important for them in surviving during the period they are carrying offspring."
The females of most species of snail excrete a substance in their mucous trails that enables males to find them more easily, since they can distinguish between trails from females and those from other males. The males follow the mucous trails laid down by females in order to find a partner for mating. However, the females of one of the species studied (Littorina saxatilis) have stopped labelling their mucous trails.
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Sexy Ovulating Women

"We found that, when ovulating, women chose sexier fashion products when thinking about other attractive, local but not distant women," says Durante. "If you are in New York, a woman who lives in LA isn't going to be seen as competition."
Although the end result is to attract the best romantic partner available, Durante's research found that ovulating women's choice of dress is motivated by the other women in their environment. "In order to entice a desirable mate, a woman needs to assess the attractiveness of other women in her local environment to determine how eye-catching she needs to be to snare a good man," Durante says.


In the study, researchers had ovulating women view a series of photographs of attractive local women and then asked them to choose clothing and accessory items to purchase. The majority of participants chose sexier products than those who had been shown photographs of unattractive local women or women who lived over 1000 miles away. This change in consumer choice is not a conscious decision and non-ovulating women are not subject to the effect.
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A Penis Duel (not in Ein Hod)

Created anonymously by a group of professional animators in about 1929, the silent short Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure is a gleeful exploration of the penetrative arts. The four-and-a-half-minute short follows the travails of the uncomfortably well-endowed title character as he wanders a barren landscape in search of satisfaction.


Along the way, he encounters a self-pleasuring maiden, various sexually aroused animals, a surprised husband, and a donkey-humping farmer, whom Harton challenges to a duel. A penis duel.(read more...)

Stinky women and Horny men

Women who want to attract a man's attention shouldn't wear perfume, new research suggests.
Florida State University psychological scientists Saul L. Miller and Jon K. Maner found that male testosterone levels are influenced by natural odors emitted by females, particularly during ovulation, which is when women are most fertile.
In the study, women wore T-shirts for three nights during various phases of their menstrual cycles. Male study participants smelled either the T-shirts worn by the women, or T-shirts that hadn't been worn by anyone. To check testosterone levels, the researchers collected saliva samples before and after the men smelled the T-shirts.
Miller and Maner found that men who smelled T-shirts worn by women during ovulation had higher levels of testosterone than those who smelled shirts worn by non-ovulating women or men who smelled the unworn shirts. When asked to rate the odors of the shirts, men said those worn by ovulating women were the most pleasant.


The researchers said their findings, released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the journal Psychological Science, are the first to suggest that men's testosterone levels may be affected by natural odors that indicate a woman is fertile.
This biological response may trigger mating-related behaviors by males, the study authors concluded.
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Henry Miller Asleep & Awake in his Bathroom with Gurdjieff

“Today, I think it’s the ugliest, filthiest, shittiest city in the world. When I was a kid, there was hardly anything that we have today - no telephones, no automobiles...no nothing, really. It was rather quaint. There was color even, in the buildings. But as time went on, why, it got more horrible to me. When I think of the Brooklyn bridge, which was the only bridge then in existence...how many times I walked over that bridge on an empty stomach, back and forth, looking for a handout, never getting anything...selling newspapers at Times Square, begging on Broadway, coming home with a dime maybe. It’s no wonder that I had these goddamned recurring nightmares all my life. I don’t know how I ever survived, or why I’m still sane.”

Filmed when the author was 81, HENRY MILLER ASLEEP & AWAKE is a voyage of ideas about life, writing, sex, spirituality, nightmares, and New York that captures the warmth, vigor and high animal spirits of a singular American artist. The man is Henry Miller and the room is his bathroom. It's a miraculous shrine covered with photos and drawings collected by the author over the course of his long and fruitful life. Graciously, in his raspy, sonorous voice, he points out the highlights of his improvised gallery, speaking of philosophers, writers, painters, mad kings, women, and friends.

Tom Schiller grew up in LA and met Henry Miller when he was 18 assisting another filmmaker shooting at the author's home. Schiller's other works include documentaries on Willem de Kooning, Buckminster Fuller and Anais Nin, before joining Saturday Night Live as an original writer. There, he won three Emmy's and created the short film segments "Schiller's Reel" and "Schillervision" and worked with John Belushi, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner among others. Schiller later wrote and directed an MGM/UA feature film entitled "Nothing Lasts Forever" and has been directing television commercials for over a decade.

Pink Flamingos : פינק פלמינגוז

"How can anyone sit through the entire length of a film, especially a European film, without smoking??" Thus, John Waters, self-righteously breaking that invisible fourth wall, shoots his opening volley in a full frontal royal 'up yours' to the establishment and anyone else who cares to be watching. In Pink Flamingos he uses and abuses just about every taboo known to bourgeoise society in an, at times, puke-inducing tirade. Hermaphrodites, cross dressers, a man with a two-foot sausage penis extension, incest and white slavery - it's all here, so roll up, and come and get it.
Perhaps the most apt log line for this film would be "The battle for the title of 'Filthiest Person in the World' is on; dog shit eater Divine against the self-proclaimed 'filthiest couple in the world', the Marbles (had they lost them?), masters of going from one fuck to $5,000 in nine months (go figure)." As Divine declares, "Filth is my politics; filth is my life!"
More a series of vignettes than anything else, any attempt to encapsulate some sort of storyline is, in my opinion, rather pointless; anyone coming out of the movie will not be thinking about the great sense of closure they feel after it ends, but more about where the nearest vomit pit is. For the faint of stomach this is not, and beyond a middle finger to the "more crime-conscious areas of the city," there seems to be little point to this film. But don't take that as a negative - I laughed my head off.
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ווטרס ביים מאמצע שנות הששים שישה סרטים שונים, אולם ההצלחה המיוחלת הגיעה רק עם פינק פלמינגוז (1972), סרט מזעזע בכוונת מכוון, העוסק במשפחה שופעת גילוי עריות המתגאה בתואר "האנשים המטונפים ביותר בעולם". המשפחה המורכבת מאם המכורה לביצים, פושע הנוער קרקרס ומציצן בשם קוטון. משפחה, החיה בקרוואן שבחזיתו זוג פלמינגואים וורודים, ומתעמתת עם זוג מריר המנסה לגזול מהם את כתר "האנשים המטונפים ביותר בעולם". הסרט, שצולם בסופי שבוע ובתקציב של $10,000, הוא בעל סגנון מחתרתי במובהק, סצינות קשות במכוון לצפיה, והרבה הומור שחור וטעם רע. הסצנה הקלאסית והידועה לשמצה ביותר מהסרט היא הסצנה האחרונה שבה השחקן הטרנסוויסטי האגדי דיוויין, המפורסם שבשחקניו הקבועים של ווטרס, אוכל גללי כלב טריים. ווטרס עצמו כינה את הסרט תרגיל בטעם רע. בשני סרטיו הבאים המשיך ווטרס ביצירת קולנוע פרובוקטיבית 

ומחתרתית וחתם בכך את מה שמכונה טרילוגית הטראש.

Eco : Ugly

In “History of Beauty,” Umberto Eco explored the ways in which notions of attractiveness shift from culture to culture and era to era. With ON UGLINESS, a collection of images and written excerpts from ancient times to the present, he asks: Is repulsiveness, too, in the eye of the beholder? And what do we learn about that beholder when we delve into his aversions? Selecting stark visual images of gore, deformity, moral turpitude and malice, and quotations from sources ranging from Plato to radical feminists, Eco unfurls a taxonomy of ugliness. As gross-out contests go, it’s both absorbing and highbrow.

INTRODUCTION
In every century, philosophers and artists have supplied definitions of beauty, and thanks to their works it is possible to reconstruct a history of aesthetic ideas over time. But this did not happen with ugliness. Most of the time it was defined as the opposite of beauty but almost no one ever devoted a treatise of any length to ugliness, which was relegated to passing mentions in marginal works. Hence, while a history of beauty can draw on a wide range of theoretical sources (from which we can deduce the tastes of a given epoch), for the most part a history of ugliness must seek out its own documents in the visual or verbal portrayals of things or people that are in some way seen as "ugly." Nonetheless, a history of ugliness shares some common characteristics with a history of beauty. First, we can only assume that the tastes of ordinary people corresponded in some way with the tastes of the artists of their day. If a visitor from space went into a gallery of contemporary art, and if he saw women's faces painted by Picasso and heard onlookers describing them as "beautiful," he might get the mistaken idea that in everyday life the men of our time find female creatures with faces like those painted by Picasso beautiful and desirable. But our visitor from space might modify his opinion on watching a fashion show or the Miss Universe contest, in which he would witness the celebration of other models of so-called called primitive peoples we have artistic finds but we have no theoretical texts to tell us if these were intended to cause aesthetic delight, holy fear, or hilarity. To a westerner an African ritual mask might seem hair-raising -- while for a native it might represent a benevolent divinity. Conversely, believers in some non-European religion might be disgusted by the image of Christ scourged, bleeding, and humiliated, while this apparent corporeal ugliness might arouse sympathy and emotion in a Christian. In the case of other cultures, with a wealth of poetic and philosophical texts (such as Indian, Chinese, or Japanese culture), we see images and forms but, on translating their works of literature and philosophy, it is almost always difficult to establish to what extent certain concepts can be identified with our own, although tradition has induced us to translate them into western terms such as "beautiful" or "ugly." Even if the translations were reliable, it would not be enough to know that in a certain culture something that possesses, for example, proportion and harmony, was seen as beautiful. Proportion and harmony. What do we mean by these terms? Even in the course of western history their meaning has changed. It is only by comparing theoretical statements with a picture or an architectonic structure from the period that we notice that what was considered proportionate in one century was no longer seen as such in another; on the subject of proportion, for example, a medieval philosopher would think of the dimensions and the form of a Gothic cathedral, while a Renaissance theoretician would think of a sixteenth-century temple, whose parts were governed by the golden section -- and Renaissance man saw the proportions of cathedrals as barbarous, as the term "Gothic" amply suggests. Concepts of beauty and ugliness are relative to various historical periods or various cultures and, to quote Xenophanes of Colophon (according to Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 110), "But had the oxen or the lions hands, or could with hands depict a work like men, were beasts to draw the semblance of the gods, the horses would them like to horses sketch, to oxen, oxen, and their bodies make of such a shape as to themselves belongs."

The Saragossa Manuscript ( Полный пиздец )

"Head movies" — those mind-bending epics like 2001 or El Topo that are supposedly best viewed under the influence — frequently require drugs just to get through them. In the case of The Saragossa Manuscript (1965), the equation is reversed; anyone going into this three-hour mind-fuck straight may well come out feeling stoned. Those who like a challenge and can handle a dizzyingly dense structure that’s more puzzle than plot will be well rewarded. A great score by Krzystof Penderecki and gorgeous cinematography (black-and-white Cinemascope) keep the ear and eye riveted even while the brain is in meltdown.
Directed by the well-regarded Wojciech Has, the film is an adaptation of at least part of a legendary, massive novel by Count Jan Potocki (1761-1815). Potocki’s resume would take almost as long to read as the film takes to watch. Sources say he was a noted travel writer, "novice king of Malta" (whatever that is), Egyptologist, occultist, historian, balloonist, linguist, melancholic, and eventual suicide at age 54. The Manuscript Found in Saragossa (1813) was his crowning work, favorably compared by aficionados to The Decameron and The Arabian Nights for its rich folkloric elements, supernatural motifs, bawdy humor, and surreal touches. It also contains heavy doses of Jewish mysticism and scientific theory of the day (including discussions of mathematics and philosophy). Like its predecessors it has a very modern, labyrinthine, story-within-a-story structure, but it’s even more multilayered, so much so that a slide rule and a scratch pad are advisable for keeping track of who’s who and what’s what. If the movie is any indication, there are as many as five levels of drilldown in some sequences, with one person telling a story about another person, who then tells another story about someone else, who then — you get the idea.
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Part one


The painter and portraitist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), whose folkloric depictions of the horrors of witchcraft, warfare and a host of non-supernatural but thoroughly evil human tendencies were an inspiration to the Impressionists, hailed from the countryside around Saragossa, capital city of the former Kingdom of Aragon in northeast Spain. Although Goya has never been cited as a direct influence on Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (A Manuscript Found in Saragossa), the novel by Jan Potocki (1761-1815) is Goyaesque in the extreme. Goya knew Potocki and was commissioned twice to paint the Polish aristocrat and career soldier’s portrait.

Part two


(  Sorry,no english dub for few minutes)
Perhaps during those long and tedious sittings, the local artist and the world traveler swapped tales of the grotesque and arabesque, with the result leading to what is now commonly referred to as The Saragossa Manuscript.
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Будучи офицером французской армии, я принимал участие в осаде Сарагосы.
Через несколько дней после завоевания этого города, оказавшись в одном из
отдаленных его кварталов, я обратил внимание на домик довольно изящной
архитектуры, который - это было сразу видно - французские солдаты еще не
успели разграбить.
Подстрекаемый любопытством, я подошел к двери и постучал. Она оказалась
незапертой, - я слегка толкнул ее и вошел внутрь. На мой зов никто не
откликнулся; поиски не дали результата: в доме не было ни души. Казалось,
что из дома вынесли все ценное; на столах и в шкафах остались одни
ненужные безделицы. Только в углу на полу я увидел несколько исписанных
тетрадей. Перелистал их. Рукопись была испанская; хоть я очень слабо знал
этот язык, но все же понял, что нашел что-то интересное: рукопись
содержала повествование о каббалистах, разбойниках и оборотнях. Чтение
необычайных историй казалось мне прекрасным средством рассеяния среди
походных трудов. Решив, что рукопись навсегда утратила законного
владельца, я без колебаний взял ее себе.

Ян Потоцкий
Рукопись, найденная в Сарагосе

אלפונס, קצין בלגי בצבא הספרדי, נקלע לפונדק בעיצומה של המלחמה ומכאן ואילך שוקע לתוך שלל של הרפתקאות פנטסמגוריות המוליכות אותנו עימו בשובל של קסם. הוא מתאהב בשתי נסיכות מגרות, פוגש בקבליסט ובמתמטיקאי המנסים להשתלט על נפשו - הראשון בשם האמונה והשני בשם ההיגיון - ועובר עוד כהנה וכהנה עלילות קסומות ופיקארסקיות. וויצ'ך האס מתרגם לשפת הקולנוע את הרומן שכתב יאן פוטוצקי ב־1814. האקסטרוואגנצה הזו היתה להצלחה גדולה בארה"ב של אמצע שנות ה־60‘ בזכות המסרים החתרניים, חוסר הכניעה למגבלות ההיגיון, ההומור השחור והאבסורדי; משהו שמזכיר ברוחו שילוב בין ‘אלף לילה ולילה‘ לבין ‘עליסה בארץ הפלאות‘ (היו גם מי שבחרו לאפיינו כשילוב של מונטי פייטון ו‘בארי לינדון‘). את הפסקול המוסיקלי תרם כז‘ישטוף פנדרצקי. בעיות של זכויות ועריכה מחודשת העלימו את ‘כתב היד מסרגוסה‘ מעין הציבור למשך שנים ארוכות עד שג‘רי גרסיה, איש ה‘גרייטפול דד‘ - זמן לא רב בטרם מותו - החליט לתרום מממונו כדי לשחזר את העותק ולהפיץ את הסרט מחדש בגירסתו המקורית. למותר לציין שבשנות האלפיים הצליח ‘כתב היד מסרגוסה‘ למצוא דור חדש של אוהדים.

Carefree Jordanian Gerbils

The series of studies, which have been carried out in cooperation with Jordanian researchers, has examined a variety of reptile, mammal, beetle, spider and ant lion species on either side of the border in the Arava region. The Israeli team includes Dr. Shanas and research students Idan Shapira and Shacham Mitler, who set out to reveal whether the border -- unknown to the species -- could affect differences between them and their numbers on either side of the frontier, even though they share identical climate conditions.
According to the researchers, the differences between Israel and Jordan are primarily in the higher level of agriculture and the higher number of agricultural farms in Israel as opposed to Jordan's agriculture that is primarily based on nomadic shepherding and traditional farming. The agricultural fields on the Israeli side of the border not only create a gulf between habitats and thereby cause an increase in the number of species in the region, but they also hail one of the most problematic of intruders in the world: the red fox. On the Jordanian side, the red fox is far less common, so that Jordanian gerbils can allow themselves to be more carefree. The higher reproduction rate of ant lions on Israel's side is also related to the presence of another animal: the Dorcas gazelle. This gazelle serves as an "environmental engineer" of a sort, as it breaks the earth's dry surface and enables ant lions to dig their funnels. The Dorcas gazelle is a protected animal in Israel, while hunting it in Jordan is permitted and compromises the presence of the Jordanian ant lions' soil engineers.(read more...)

Your own farts don’t stink

In the early 1970s, Marvin Zuckerman and Gershon Weltman, childhood friends from the co-ops of the Bronx, came across a rare Yiddish manuscript. Though they had never thought of putting out a book together, they quickly recognized that there was something in this document that made them want to take up the task of translating and publishing the work — dirty words.
The result, “Yiddish Sayings Mama Never Taught You,” was released in 1975 and went through five printings before the press stopped. Now, due to both personal requests and the fact that bootleg copies have been circulating on the Internet, the two men have decided to give the book one more run.
The nearly 230 sayings in the book, which appear in translation and transliteration as well as in the original Hebrew, open up a window into the indecent side of the shtetl, one that has rarely seen light.
Among the pretty dirty, sometimes offensive and mostly clever offerings are:

Az men shloft mit’n vayb, shtelt men der velt dem tokhes aroys.
When you sleep with your wife, you show your behind to the world.

Der pelts unter dem vaybershn boykh iz dos tayerste futerl.
The pelt under a woman’s belly is the world’s most expensive furpiece.

Itlikhes tepl gefint zikh zayn shtertsl, itlikhes petsl gefint zikh zayn lekhl.
Every pot finds its own lid, every pole finds it own hole.

An eygener forts shtinkt nit azoy vi a fremder.
Your own farts don’t stink like someone else’s.

The source of the material was a transcript by a folklorist named Ignaz Bernstein, a wealthy Ukrainian who collected nearly 5,000 Jewish proverbs at the turn of the century. He published all these in a two-volume collection — with the exception of 227 sayings that he published separately, for reasons unknown, under the title “Erotica and Rustica.” Unlike his main work, the proste, or vulgar stuff, had a very small run and remained little known until Zuckerman and Weltman got their hands on it.
Zuckerman managed to get an early blurb for the book from Isaac Bashevis Singer. The two were presenting at a literary retreat near Ojai, Calif., and they spent some time together. Zuckerman passed Singer the book, then in manuscript form, on a Saturday night and asked the author to look it over. Singer came down to breakfast the next morning, with handwritten notes on the manuscript’s cover. He later joined Weltman and Zuckerman for lunch at the latter’s house in Los Angeles.
“I believe people are much more tolerant, in part because — sadly — virtually all of the old-guard haute Yiddish group is now gone,” Weltman said. “The academics and their students should be interested because this is original source material; the raffish element remains interested because many of the sayings are as rank and funny now as they were originally.”

The Taste of Virgin

Wild Trinity is an acappella renaissance style singing group. Here they are singing one ofleast traditional songs, Do Virgins Taste Better. Do Virgins Taste Better tells the story about a dragon terrorizing a town. In the end, the townspeople come up with a brilliant plan to defeat the dragon! This song is a parody of a Scottish bagpipe song, the Irish Washer Woman. So tell us the truth, Do Virgins Taste Better? From left to right the performers are Faeyette (Kim), Zanzabar (Jim), and Myrna (Cricket).

DO VIRGINS TASTE BETTER?
(Also known as - An Old Cliché Revisited)
-R. Farran
(Tune: "The Irish Washerwoman")

A dragon has come to our village today.
We've asked him to leave, but he won't go away.
Now he's talked to our king and they worked out a deal.
No homes will he burn and no crops will he steal.
Now there is but one catch, we dislike it a bunch.
Twice a year he invites him a virgin to lunch.
Well, we've no other choice, so the deal we'll respect.
But we can't help but wonder and pause to reflect.
CHORUS:
 Do virgins taste better than those who are not?
Are they salty, or sweeter, more juicy or what?
Do you savor them slowly? Gulp them down on the spot?
Do virgins taste better than those who are not?

Now we'd like to be shed of you, and many have tried.
But no one can get thru your thick scaly hide.
We hope that some day, some brave knight will come by.
'Cause we can't wait around 'til you're too fat to fly.
Now you have such good taste in your women for sure,
They always are pretty, they always are pure.
But your notion of dining, it makes us all flinch,
For your favorite entree is barbecued wench.
Now we've found a solution, it works out so neat,
If you insist on nothing but virgins to eat.
No more will our number ever grow small,
We'll simply make sure there's no virgins at all!



DRAGON'S RETORT
(C) 1985 by Claire Stephens
(Tune: "Irish Washerwoman")

Well, now I am a dragon please listen to me
For I'm misunderstood to a dreadful degree
This ecology needs me, and I know my place,
But I'm fighting extinction with all of my race
But I came to this village to better my health
Which is shockingly poor despite all my wealth
But I get no assistance and no sympathy,
Just impertinent questioning shouted at me

CHORUS:
Yes, virgins taste better than those who are not
But my favorite snack food with peril is fraught
For my teeth will decay and my trim go to pot
Yes, virgins taste better than those who are not

Now we worms are deep thinkers, at science we shine
And our world's complicated with every new line
We must quit all the things that we've done since the flood
Like lying on gold couches that poison our blood
Well I'm really quite good almost all of the year
Vegetarian ways are now mine out of fear
But a birthday needs sweets I'm sure you'll agree
And barbecued wench tastes like candy to me
As it happens our interests are almost the same
For I'm really quite skillful at managing game
If I messed with your men would your excess decline?
Of course not, the rest would just make better time
But the number of babies a woman can bear
Has a limit and that's why my pruning's done there
Yet an orphan's a sad sight, and so when I munch
I'm careful to take out only virgins for lunch.

The Penis Has The Shape of a Boomerang

Objective: To find out whether taking images of the male and female genitals during coitus is feasible and to find out whether former and current ideas about the anatomy during sexual intercourse and during female sexual arousal are based on assumptions or on facts. (read more ...)

Einstein's rub-on cream gives Yeshiva Rats boners

An innovative drug-delivery system -- nanoparticles encapsulating nitric oxide or prescription drugs -- shows promise for topical treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED), according to a new study by scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.
Five of the seven rats treated with the NO-containing nanoparticles, and all 11 rats treated with nanoparticles encapsulating NO plus sialorphin or tadalafil showed significantly improved erectile function. None of the seven rats in a control group, which received empty nanoparticles, showed any improvement. "Most of the animals, nearly 90 percent, showed a response to treatment with the nanoparticles," says co-author Joel M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., professor of physiology & biophysics and of medicine. Dr. Friedman developed the nanoparticles with his son Adam Friedman, M.D., chief resident in the division of dermatology of the department of medicine at Montefiore Medical Center, The University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for Einstein.(read more...)

Big Vagina and Hannah Wilke

"You can say a Gothic church is a phallic symbol, but if I say the nave of the church is really a big vagina, people are offended." Hannah Wilke, 1985
Born Arlene Hannah Butter in New York City, Hannah Wilke was a controversial figure of Feminist Art in the 1970s. She began her career sculpting with some success, creating vulval forms out of latex and ceramic, but she is best known for her performance-based work wherein she uses her own image and obvious beauty to set up the ideal of the pinup. In her best known work, S.O.S - Starification Object Series, 1974, Wilke is seen topless in a variety of archetypal feminine guises: the housewife, the fashion model, etc., but she has covered her body with vaginal objects made of chewing gum. Wilke's critics at the time charged her with narcissism and argued that she was complicit in such objectification as much as she was challenging it. Her work was rethought when Wilke showed "Intra Venus" some twenty years later, a project documenting, often with the same sense of humor as S.O.S., her battle with cancer. The criticism never seemed to hurt her career; her work is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Jewish Museum in New York, and the Brooklyn Museum.
Gestures is a series of performance-based works in which Wilke faces the camera in extreme close-up and performs repetitive or durational physical actions. At times she kneads and pulls her skin as if it were sculptural material. Often her gestures - rubbing her hands over her face, smiling so hard that she appears to be grimacing, sticking out her tongue - take on a loaded significance when seen in the context of gender performance

Hannah Wilke was an artist who worked until her death. Rather than end her photographic practice when she became ill, Wilke recorded her illness for all to see. These self-portraits(taken for Wilke by Donald Goddard) are part of her Intra-Venus Series and were taken in or near her hospital bed in 1992. The bed, whether in sickness or in health, is a key site of our identity - it is where we are born, sleep, make love, seek refuge and finally die. Wilke herself died of cancer in 1993, but not before leaving us with an incredible collection of photographs charting the progression of her illness and the progressive decay of her body. All the images show pain but some, like the one on the right, perhaps reveal an acceptance and a sense of peace. She must have been a very strong individual.