A MeFi commenter describes sex talk:

Q: You like sex? You are a person who likes the sex acts that we are currently engaged in?

A: Yes! I am! I like sex!

Q: You like sex! In fact, you are a person who likes sex as much as a prostitute likes sex!

A: YES I LIKE SEXY SEX AS IF IT WERE MY PROFESSION!! TELL ME MORE ABOUT IT

Q: YOU ENJOY THIS ACT YOU SEXY SEX PERSON etc.

(Via this awesome thread. See also: “I am never really going to close the dork tag.”)

MPR’s Midmorning show today was about politicians flip-flopping. A tired subject, and nothing non-trite can be said about it. Still, I had to let this out:

What the news media often neglect in their coverage of the candidates is attention to their underlying governing philosophies. I think these provide a much more accurate guide to their behavior in office than their tendency to make shifts on small-bore, particular issues.

For all the media hullabaloo around “flip-flopping” in the Bush/Kerry election, we would have had a much keener idea of President Bush’s flavor of governance had the media focused our attention on the core philosophies animating his team of advisers. Bush’s reliance on and deference to those advisers, their belief in the unitary executive, their dogged insistence on loyalty

One of the reasons I love Ask MetaFilter is that I often come across questions that I’m very curious about, but would never have thought to articulate. This question is one of those:

When I think of / remember something embarrassing from my life, I compulsively make some kind of noise. It seems to happen unconsciously, before my censor can catch it and stop myself (it even happens when I am in a quiet or inappropriate place). It’s not especially loud, in fact it’s often under my breath. The sound is usually just a quiet grunt, or a word/syllable or two. … It usually only happens when I’m remembering something palpably embarrassing or humiliating from my life — not for mild everyday kind of stuff. … So what is this, do I have some kind of low-grade tourette’s syndrome? Is there a name for this phenomenon? Does it happen to others or is it unique to me?

This happens to me sporadically, and from the dozens of responses on Ask MeFi, it’s not uncommon.

Kottke’s plug for the Independent Documentary Association’s list of the 25 best documentaries reminds me to recommend one that was underhyped last year — The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. I like Keith Phipps’ perceptive review best; he calls it “a film about what it takes to make it in America.” It’s hilarious, a bit sad, and enormously revealing.

Via Reddit:

Some anglerfishes of the superfamily Ceratiidae employ an unusual mating method. Because individuals are presumably locally rare and encounters doubly so, finding a mate is problematic. When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were females. These individuals were a few inches in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these “parasites” were the remains of male ceratioids.

At birth, male ceratioids are already equipped with extremely well developed olfactory organs that detect scents in the water. When it is mature, the male’s digestive system degenerates, making him incapable of feeding independently, which necessitates his quickly finding a female anglerfish to prevent his death. The sensitive olfactory organs help the male to detect the pheromones that signal the proximity of a female anglerfish. When he finds a female, he bites into her skin, and releases an enzyme that digests the skin of his mouth and her body, fusing the pair down to the blood-vessel level. The male then atrophies into nothing more than a pair of gonads, which release sperm in response to hormones in the female’s bloodstream indicating egg release. This extreme sexual dimorphism ensures that, when the female is ready to spawn, she has a mate immediately available.

I’m not sure why this Texas Monthly story is so unsettling. The story itself is simple — four high-school football stars, out goofing off one Friday night, capture and brutally slaughter two deer.

The characters are (for the most part) sympathetic, and aside from a possibly-superfluous Lord of the Flies reference, the author doesn’t really stoke the drama at all. It might be the notion that four decent kids can do some completely inexplicable, violent thing, just out-of-the-blue. Or it might be the sensation of looking in on a place usually so far removed from the gaze of the world.

If you’re like most people, you purchase Benadryl. A slightly smaller and savvier subset of you will always reach for the drugstore’s “generic” counterpart, e.g. Waldryl. Stop this madness, all of you.

As you might know, Benadryl (available at Walgreens.com for $5.29 for a box of 24 capsules) and Wal-dryl ($3.99 / 24 capsules) are otherwise known as “25 mg. of diphenhydramine HCI.” Compare. Yes, that is 400 tablets containing 25 mg. of diphenhydramine HCI, for about $10 when you factor in shipping. Once more with feeling:

Benadryl – 22¢ / pill

Wal-dryl – 16¢ / pill

True generic – 2.5¢ / pill

As a fan of Unisom (34¢ / pill) and Claritin (66¢), the truly generic equivalents (Unisom: 3¢ Claritin: 6¢) have been a revelation.

Before you buy any mildly expensive drug over-the-counter, plug its name into Amazon and see what pops up. Many of you may already know all about this, but surely I’ve delighted someone.

For some of you, this week’s Shouts & Murmurs is the typical bland gimmick repeated ad nauseam. If you’re like me, however, it will crack you up.

Robin previously called out Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight for excellent coverage of this campaign season. Now I’ve gotta lend a hand to the gang at Obsidian Wings, especially Hilary Bok, a.k.a. Hilzoy. It first came to my attention when one of the A-Listers plugged this post about Barack Obama’s legislative record. I subscribed, and ever since I’ve been impressed by the quality of thought, research and analysis there.

Yesterday, for example, Obama and McCain both gave major foreign policy speeches. This generated very typical news coverage and hyper-typical punditry. But it also fortunately generated a typical post from Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings, in which you get the sense that not only did she reserve comment until reading/hearing the speeches in question, but that she understood the deeper mental framework at play behind each speech. She’s solidly liberal, but seems to make few assumptions about her audience.