Sex Patterns

From HandsInView:

And who here has a delicate sensibility? Okay, I'll insist. -- BetsyHanesPerry

Very well, I'm a little cautious because I think these matters aren't often discussed here. Suffice to say that those of tender years or folk who care not for these things should not read below this line.

Okay, the practice I was referring to has stood me in good stead for perhaps a decade. Probably not for everyone, but the other chaps I know who've tried it have also found it excellent. Try http://www.sexuality.org/l/sex/mantak.html. Their summary of the technique is really incomplete, and I haven't found any good freeware description online, but the MantakChia? book referred to is very good.

-- AnonymousCoward

The Multi-Orgasmic Man : Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know by Mantak Chia, Douglas Abrams Arava, Todd Buck (Illustrator)

Harper San Francisco; ISBN 0062513362

I have been exploring Sky Dancing Tantra (http://www.ecstaticliving.com) with my wife and would recommend it to anyone looking for good SexPatterns. More detail is available in Margot Anand's book The Art of Sexual Ecstasy.

I notice that Wiki tends to glitch when some of its parts are touched too often. Is this one of the SexAntiPatterns for SystemsAsLivingThings?

Some may think that a discussion of sex is out of place here, but biologists actually have a hard time describing the need for sex. It is not needed for reproduction, as the cloning of many species shows. Some species reproduce both sexually and asexually. Biologically, sex has more to do with sharing differences to enhance evolution, so that a species can learn SurvivalLessonPatterns? as a whole. All the energy that goes into secondary sexual characteristics is devoted to what would seem to be an IntangibleAdvantage?. GeneticProgrammingTheory? tries to describe the advantage as an ExponentialIncrease? is searching the solution space.

So is that what both Patterns and Wiki are all about?

-- CharlesPowell?

Actually, biologists have a pretty easy time describing the need for sex. It involves the generation of genetic diversity (which confers an evolutionary advantage) and through recombination a way to remove deleterious mutations. In fact there is no known multicellular organism that does not reproduce sexually at least some of the time. Rotifers were the last holdout of which I was aware, but even they have recently been demonstrated to have a sexual reproductive phase. Many (most?) of the unicellular organisms also exchange genetic material with each other to some degree (not quite sex, but the same kind of idea). Organisms that reproduce completely asexually run into a progressive loss of genetic fitness. This phenomenon whereby lack of sex leads to a loss of fitness is called MüllersRachet. -- AndyPierce

I think I may have MüllersRachet. Is there a cure?

-- AnonymousCoward

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biologists have a pretty easy time describing the need for sex ???

If by 'describing' you mean *explaining*, I have to disagree. Explaining sex is not straight forward at all. Genetic recombination does not require sexual differentiation, just an exchange of gametes.

At first blush, sexual reproduction seems incrediby wasteful because it eliminates the potential reproductive contribution of (typically) half of the population. Matt Ridley's book 'The Red Queen' addresses this mystery by showing that diploidy (having two sets of chromosomes in somatic cell lines) allows individuals to carry maladaptive alleles across generations, which can be advantageous for a genetic line when shifting environmental factors are taken into account. The classic human example of this is sickle cell anaemia, the gene for which causes disease in homozygous recessive individuals, but confers resistance to malaria in the rest of the population. Sex linkage enhances this effect by enabling one sex to carry potentially fatal alleles (eg haemophilia) with a minimal chance of being affected by them.

Despite the Red Queen theory, it remains unclear why diploidy should favour sexual dimorphism, but decoupling the fitness of the two sets of chromosomes *enables* it, and perhaps this is enough. Male and female lines are effectively in competition, which drives the divergence of form and reproductive strategy; for example, the egg carrying female is a K strategist, while the sperm distributing male is an R strategist.

-- JonoPoff

Not entirely sure I understand the groove here, but complex organisms, humans in particular, do a lot of things that offer no EvolutionaryAdvantage?. Consider IdleChatter?, pleasantries, Art, homosexuality, kissing: imagining a situation in which any of these might have offered an EvolutionaryAdvantage? requires a bit of a stretch (though that doesn't mean ItNeverHappened?). Seems to me that GeneticProgrammingTheory? is assuming an EvolutionaryGoal?, much as CreationTheory? does: as though there is an end point toward which we are all striving. Of course, there isn't. All of this around us is a BeautifulAccident?, much like the best Zen painting.

-- Ted Fleming

Seems to me ... fair point.

Of course, there isn't ... (a goal or purpose) I'm tempted to argue. But this is probably not the right forum.

IdleChatter? actually has significant grooming and community-binding value. Won't touch the other ones.

Isn't IdleChatter? something that terrorists do?

Homosexuality might be an EvolutionaryAdvantage? for population control. Especially crowded urban environments. Consider that SanFrancisco now (Aug 2001) has a greater number of Dogs than Children.Hey, maybe human homosexuality is an EvolutionaryAdvantage? for dogs!!!

There is a theory that the gene(s) which cause an increased predisposition to homosexuality in men cause increased fertility in women, so there is a balance between positive and negative effects. But, hey, GenesSchmenes?. -- TomAnderson

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Consider IdleChatter??, pleasantries, Art, homosexuality, kissing: imagining a situation in which any of these might have offered an EvolutionaryAdvantage?? requires a bit of a stretch ???

I'm sorry, I have to consign this foolish statement to oblivion. You don't need to swallow the entire literature of evolutionary psychology to realise the extent to which human culture and behaviour has developed in response to selective pressures.

Idle chatter, or gossip, is the human expression of the intense focus that all social primates show in following the dynamics of their milieu. Mathematical game theory and the toy problem of the prisoner's dilemma has revealed the importance of trust in social contracts, and being able to make accurate assessments of the motives of other participants in social interactions clearly has a fundamental impact on fitness.

Pleasantries and other forms of mutual grooming are part of the extensive repertoire of display behaviours that mediate dominance hierarchies, courtship, nurturing, territorial disputes and many other arenas of the human behavioural ecology. Obviously it is not a long stretch to imagine selective pressures applying to these.

Art is implicated in the origin of perhaps the most significant single human adaptation: consciousness. One book that explores with academic rigour the possible mechanisms for this process is David Lewis-Williams' The Mind in the Cave. Other animals are conscious, but human consciousness has taken a qualitative leap, allowing abstract thought, language, planning and all the other capabilities that have given rise to human culture. The very word 'culture' emphasizes the crucial role that art has played in the journey from 'naked ape' to 'superspecies' (apologies to Suzuki).

Homosexuality is popularly imagined to be a reproductive dead end. The same could be said about ritual suicide, military valour and religious celibacy. The fact is, of course, the fitness value of these behaviours must be seen in the context not of an individual struggle for survival, but in the benefits they offer a group, be it family, tribe or city state. Suicide, celibacy, homosexuality and even pedophilia have been honoured by different cultures at different times. Clearly their expression has represented a nett benefit to individuals in those societies. The idea that homosexuality cannot be adaptive, and references to the 'mystery' of its persistence in nonhuman animals, usually reflect an inadequate understanding of zoology combined with a reactionary political subtext.

Kissing has been shown to provide a range of important signals in courtship and nurturing. Semiochemical data conveying histocompatibility, immunity and hormonal status as well as physiological indicators of pathogen load, diet and emotional state are all transferred during kissing and are vital for survival and successful reproduction.

I don't want to seem combative, and I take the point that naive evolutionary hypotheses sometimes err to the teleological ('just so stories' and 'primatological origin myths') but 'complex' or otherwise, human beings are mammals. Few things we do are not in some way a consequence of that. It's not necessary to presuppose an 'evolutionary goal' to imagine how the consequences of a trait might impact on its retention. The 'use' of a tooth is not a final cause.

...much like the 'use' of a zen painting, i suppose.

-- JonoPoff

Too serious, all. This page is supposed to be fun, and for that it needs to have some real SexPatterns on it. By the way, "SexPatterns" has the glyph "xP" buried in it, ever notice that? Whoopie, that makes it extreme! Now then, here are some extreme SexPatterns that can be found (sort of) right here among these pages. We're all good humored adults, right?

I'm sure there are other interesting examples of extreme double-entendre around here. Can you find them?

PairProgramming, perhaps?

:Tried that, with an ExGirlfriend?. A disaster codingWise. Didn't do much good for our SexLife? either. In order to work well, you probably both have to be in EgolessProgramming mode.

Context:

You're a man who is feeling randy, and you want to have sex with your partner. But he or she isn't interested and would rather talk about something you find boring. Like finances, future plans, or other nonsense.

Problem:

You need to get off, and downloading porn from newsgroups and taking matters into your own hands doesn't interest you.

Forces:

You're a man, suffering from having testosterone in your body. It clouds your mind.

Therefore:

Discuss software patterns with your partner. They don't care at all, and after a few minutes will beg you to shut up. Feign hurt at your partner not showing an active interest in your work. Your partner will feel sorry that you're such a geek, which gives you sympathy points. Cash in the points with a suggestion of hot, lusty sex. If they don't seem interested, start talking about patterns again.

But:

This pattern doesn't work when your partner is also a software developer, as they might actually be interested in what you're talking about.

You mean you have never translated work passion into physical passion?

That sounds fun, but the biggest problem I see is that Hewlett-Packard's standard warranty doesn't cover damages caused by humping their logic analyzers.

-- JohnPassaniti

Hey, the sticker says No user-servicing parts inside, right?

I was trying to explain to my musician (ex-)girlfriend how important the MentalStateCalledFlow was. "Never interrupt me!" I adamantly instructed, "especially at night when I'm focused." She suggested that, if late one night I was ignoring her in favour of my con, she'd come down and interrupt me. I told her I wouldn't notice. She said, "Oh, you'd notice." Reconsidering, I said, "Of course. You'd be in the way of the monitor." -- SunirShah

"Sunir, was that the moment when she called the setBoyfriendToDope() method?" ~ SeanOleary, laffing.

No "Visitor" patterns for me here. Might catch a virus.

Some objects reproduce asexually via cloning. And then, of course, there are the singletons, that refuse to reproduce at all but are (like all globals) rather permiscuous in their interactions.

SeriouslyThough?, I have a SexPattern? I discovered recently while talking to a friend. We call it IntercourseWithTheCompiler?, or WhosFuckinWho?? I think this is rather intuitive.

It all started like this. As a teenage programmer, we used to call it FightingWithTheCompiler?: He/She shouts at you, you give an angry look, you both have a MeaninglessDiscussion?, code runs. Now, as I was growing up, becoming a bit of a LanguageLawyer, I started ego-tripping on the concept of "yeah, I'm showing him what is it!". Now comes my friend, and tells me "but you just did *everything* he asked you to do!". We realized we had opposite views on this. Now of course it doesn't have to be a compiler; we experienced the same attitude polarization when trying to fix nonWorkingCD-Drives.

We remained with this question, of WhosFuckingWho? for some time, asking some other programmers, most of whom seems quite indifferent to our weird fetish.

Until - one day - I noticed - when my friend was 'fighting' with the compiler - that I actually tend to agree with the compiler! reading his code - I was also missing ; and some casts (pretty sick innit?). And somehow it made me realize! No matter WhosFuckingWho? - I happen to be _enjoying_it_!

'Problem' solved! no longer WhosFuckingWho? - but IntercourseWithTheCompiler?. Of course it's not _always_ that nice, but if you're both in the right mood, you can just go on for hours!

Some of the kinksters like the BondageAndDisciplineLanguage mindset. Dominant classes send messages to submissive classes, who in turn obey or switch and sent it on.

Classes themselves are often encapsulated of course, with BlackBoxTesting preferred. Of course some are public among friends.

Ultimately any class can be dominant or submissive depending on how it is receiving messages, the important thing is that the messages can be trusted, particularly ones that push boundary values.

Damn I hate the new conservatism. I don't mean about sex. You go be as conservative about that as you like. I mean about Privacy. You want that, you're worse than perverse. --AnonymousCoward.

NovemberZeroSeven

CategoryBiology, CategoryJoke

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