It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

Earlier in the year I came across an io9 article around 15 science fiction and fantasy novels that were rejected by publishers. The implication, of course, is what fools those publishers were - look at how many sales these books got and how how popular they remain today. Some of the books included The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Carrie by Stephen King, and Ha rry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J,K. Rowling. It’s a fun tale to tell ourselves. Look at all studios that could have made billions if they hadn’t passed on an aspiring writer with a little movie called Star Wars. But we’re just being tainted by Survivorship bias

But as you reduce the speed that the drive shaft is rotating, you lower the frequency of the sound it’s making. There comes a lower limit where the engine is making what Gordon calls “groan-y and moan-y” noises which people find unpleasant. The car sounds broken. So cars had to keep the engine’s RPM above a certain level, hurting their fuel efficiency, or risk alienating customers.

GM’s solution was to implement active noise cancellation, the same technique used in some headphones to quiet ambient noise. Microphones in the body listen to the ambient sounds the car and engine are making, and the car plays the opposite of that over the vehicle’s speakers. The sound waves from the engine are cancelled out by the sound from the entertainment system, netting a quieter ride that can be more fuel efficient without being so bothersome.

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.”

[caption id=“attachment_7245” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V - against Dave - Meeting the Egyptians[/caption]

A bearded leader of some so-called civilization met with our Beneficent Empress, Wu Zetian. At the time we did not know where his cities lay.

[caption id=“attachment_7243” align=“aligncenter” width=“604”] Civilization V - against Dave - Fighting Barbarians at the Gates - 2620 BC[/caption]

It’s once again time for my latest Photojojo post. For those of you who haven’t been following my blog for a long time, Photojojo is a digital time capsule service. Every two weeks they send me an email that has my most interesting photos posted to flickr from one year ago.

In this installment: the first time we ever took Scarlett to the beach. Heh, I’d completely forgotten about that car-walker.

When I became sexually active (which I’ll loosely define as when I started trying to kiss and touch girls), here’s what I’d been told:

• School: there are tons of diseases you can get so don’t have sex
• Parents: If you have sex, make sure you use a condom to protect from aforementioned diseases as well as unwanted pregnancy. Because if you get the girl pregnant you’re dropping out of school to take care of that baby
• Church: The only proper sex is between husband and wife. Also, masturbation is a sin.

Of those, the only practical advice came from my parents. (The school helped, but I’ll elaborate on where they could have done more momentarily) In the end, I did not have intercourse until I married my wife so I guess all the authority figures in my life “won”. To be clear, my position is that the optimal sex is that between a married couple (whether you be straight or gay) or at least a deeply committed couple. Why? Because whether or not you have a religion that tells you to wait or even have a religion at all, I think sex is a special act between two people. I think sex requires trust because you’re making yourself ultimately vulnerable - you have no clothes to hide behind. Your body and your performance will be judged. And I think that the best sex is sex in which each partner is focused on the needs of the other, not their own. This is more likely to happen in a relationship than a casual hookup. And perhaps the biologists will just tell me that it’s oxytocin or some equivalent brain/body chemical, but post-sex I usually feel extremely close to my wife as though something has occurred on the metaphysical level.

[caption id=“attachment_7194” align=“alignleft” width=“455”] MRI of Clitoris converted to 3D model[/caption] First of all, it’s a complete accident of timing that this post appears next to tomorrow’s post. I wrote tomorrow’s post about a month before I wrote this one.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about one of the most interesting things I recently learned about the fairer sex and, well, sex. What you see in the image on this post is a 3D rendering of an MRI of the clitoris. The first most interesting thing about this image is that the clitoris wasn’t fully mapped until 2005! (WHAT?!?) Between the insane numbers of sexual dissatisfaction reported by women, the constant bafflement among men about how to best make sure their partners can also climax, and the awesome fact that is is the ONLY organ in the human body that exists purely for pleasure I am baffled that no one studied it this thoroughly until 2005. You’d think that, at the very least, there would be a potential goldmine for companies to help alleviate all that sexual dissatisfaction. The second most interesting thing about this image is the shape. Those of us men who’s actually taken the time to learn about women so that sex can be about both of us, not just the man, know about the nub we can see on the pelvic area. But pretty much no one knew about the wishbone shape of the internal aspects of the clitoral tissue. It’s almost like discovering that the clitoris is an iceberg and we can only see the 10% that floats above the surface of the water.

I’ve blogged in a similar vein before, but it’s really neat to come across AV Club’s Memory Wipe. Someone (or a group of writers) who seems to be about the same age as me, give or take a few years, is taking a look back at the pop culture of our youth to see if it holds up as an adult. Check it out - you’ll get lost in the writing and nostalgia.

Near the end of August Scarlett started waking up saying “Mommy” or “Daddy” instead of crying (although sometimes in addition to some light crying). Pretty neat and I think it signifies a further understanding that we’re around when she wakes up - she just needs to summon us. I better enjoy it - in about 6 months she’ll be able to come to our room when she is in her toddler bed.