Friday, November 11, 2011

Ooooo! It's 11:11!

In the metaphysical world apparently seeing 11:11 means something. If you google it you'll actually find that it means all sorts of different things depending on their belief system but in general it's supposed to mean that you are on the right mystical track. But if you think about it logically can you blame people for seeing it all the time? They really have no choice.

It begins with the desire to be special. How cool is it when the odometer in your car reads all ones? When it's 11:11 or 1:11 you appreciate the cool factor of all 1s and you think, "wow that only happens twice a day." Then you hear about people repeatedly noticing 11:11. They say they see it several times every week. They can't explain it. They say that when they look at the clock and see 11:11 they don't know why they looked at the clock at that time. They just had this urge to find out what time it was (even while they ignore the fact that wanting to look at a clock is by definition a spontaneous impulse.) Then they discuss in wonder about the meaning behind it all and conclude that their constant reminder about the time makes them special. You want to be a part of this special crowd too, and before you can say synchronicity you find yourself checking the time at 11:11 all the time.

How to explain it??? Is your vibration somehow synchronized with some cosmic mystical source guiding your light as it penetrates the essence of your chakra? Hardly. It's actually quite simple to explain. It's your subconscious mind. It happens to be a superior time keeper. Its responsible for a lot of biological functions that are dependent upon excellent timing so it stands to reason that it knows when 11:11 is. When it becomes aware of your desire to know that it's 11:11, if you happen to be near one of the clocks it knows about and you are in a ready state, say driving, or in an elevator, or walking down the street, it will simply alert your conscious mind to wonder about the time. Then you get this inescapable urge to check your watch.

Bam! You are a member of the 11:11 club. Aren't you special? No. Not really.

Now, some proponents of the 11:11 theory will say something like, "I notice 11111 or 3.14 all the time and you can't predict that." It's true that you can't predict when you will notice pi or the number 42 or 11111. But you do know that statistically speaking, you have as much a chance of running into 11111 as you do any other number between 0 and 99999. But you pay attention to the times you see the numbers that are special to you; or more accurately, your subconscious mind does. It is after all a lot more alert to the world than you are. It processes information far faster than your conscious mind does. So when you are driving on the road and you see a license plate made up of some random digits, your subconscious mind ignores it. But when it runs across some digits that it understands have meaning to you, it alerts your conscious mind to take a look.

BAM! Proof that you are special and in synchronous relationship with the universe.

Or is it? Uh... no.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Actual Contraceptive Use and the Pregnancies that Result

Take a good look at this chart. It illustrates exactly how NOT effective birth control is and how our almost religious belief in contraceptive affects pregnancy rates.

(For a copy of the excel spreadsheet, send me an email.)

If you don't believe the numbers, take a gander at this website:
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_contr_use.html

What does the chart mean? What can we conclude?

43,000,000 women are said to be engaging in regular sex. 38,000,000 are said to be using some form of contraceptive. Of those 38,000,000 women who do use contraception, they collectively engage in so much sex that almost 2 and a half million of them will become pregnant within a year.

That is 6.55% or 1 out of every 15 women.

Think it's that bad because I lumped all of the contraceptives together? Want to consider a single contraceptive? Okay, how about the number one contraceptive. 1 in 11.49 women will get pregnant each year. Yikes. That's even worse than the general contraceptives. That means that the pill actually brings the average down!

Okay. How about the condom? 1 in 5.75 women will get pregnant. Twice as bad as the pill.

Ah, but what if we combined them. What if she is on the pill and he still wears a condom. SURELY that will virtually eliminate the possibility of pregnancy. Hardly. Out of every 66 women who regularly engage in sexual activity (probably less than the population you'll find in every night club on a Friday night), one will get pregnant within a year.

Also, take a look at the difference in effectiveness between condoms and withdrawal. Wow. I would wager a guess that you consider withdrawal to be the epitome of unsafe sex. And when you think of safe sex, you think of a condom. But they aren't that much different. Condoms are only 1% more effective.

Well, obviously this chart illustrates the necessity of education, right? Well, you might think so because if 43,000,000 women are engaging in sex and only 38,000,000 them are using contraceptives, that leaves 5,000,000 women who don't use contraceptives*.  And because of this, 4 and a quarter million of them will become pregnant. This is more than twice the number of pregnancies by the 38 million women who have sex with contraceptives. But if these women did all use a contraceptive in the same percentages, almost 300 thousand of them would still get pregnant. That's not an insignificant number.

And it doesn't negate the fact that there are still almost 2 and a half million women each year getting pregnant from so-called protected sex.  It is a strawman argument to bring up the 4 and a quarter million women who get pregnant from unprotected sex because the important point is that contraceptives are causing more pregnancies because they cause us to have more sex than we would have without them.

One more thing about education. 89.4% of the population of sexually active women are using contraceptives! I don't think education is going to increase that number by very much. Clearly, sex ed has done its job. People are convinced that contraceptives work.

They are in fact BRAINWASHED into thinking that contraceptives work. Oh, we all know that contraceptives aren't 100% effective, but that doesn't stop people from acting as if the contraceptives are.

So what's the conclusion?

SAFE SEX IS A MYTH! If anything the belief in safe sex CAUSES us to act recklessly and to have sex much more than the contraceptives are designed to handle. The result is MORE pregnancies than before the pill changed our attitudes about sex.


*Because withdrawal is considered to be a means of contraceptive, this means that "no method" is the male ejaculating inside the female every single time he has sex with her throughout the year. I don't think 11.6% of all men ejaculate inside the woman every single time.

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Pre-marital sex leads to specialization and that leads to incompatibility

The most common excuse people give for pre-marital sex is "we should find out if we are sexually compatible." Two problems with this.

#1 It's widely accepted that the longer you are married, the better sex becomes. The first time you have sex with someone is usually not the best.
#2 If you don't have any experience, then you haven't developed any tastes.

If you both wait until you are married, you are both virgins when you are married. You have NO experience so you aren't likely to have developed certain tastes about sex. You might be intrigued with different positions, role-play, oral sex, anal sex, toys, handcuffs, candles, feathers, ice, bondage, and maybe even kinkier things. But you don't know what you like and don't like yet. You will discover your tastes TOGETHER. You aren't likely to love kink if you haven't ever experienced it. And if you try it with your spouse and he or she doesn't like it, then you aren't likely to get kinky enough for it to become important to you. You won't even know how important it could be to you.

The lovely thing about discovering sex together is it truly enhances the bond. The sexual bond isn't just about pleasure, hormones, and vulnerability. It's also about discovery. And I think the importance of this discovery is undervalued today.

The problem with incompatibility isn't that people have too little sexual experience before they marry. The problem is that they have too much. Each person who has experience with sex before marriage has become a specialist. Then the task of choosing a mate includes finding another specialist who fits you. But if you don't specialize before you marry, then you and your mate will specialize together, and you will have harmony in the bedroom.

Most of the people saying "you need to find out if you are compatible" are coming at the question with their own experience in mind. They are assuming that one of the individuals will have had experience. But that's not always the case. And if it is, then you should be open if the person you want to marry is a virgin and recognize that some of your specialization might have to change. But it doesn't have to be bad or even boring. Rediscover your love of sex with your new spouse, especially if they are a virgin. And if both of you have experience, then forget it. Try to find common ground. Marriage is all about compromise. If you can't compromise in bed, then it's probably going to manifest elsewhere first.

One final thought. If you are one of the people who says "you need to test drive the car before you buy it," fine. Are you willing to wait until you are ready to "buy" the car before you test drive it? Are you willing to wait to get engaged to this person before you have sex? No? Then this argument is nothing but a red herring. You are having pre-marital sex because you are immoral and can't control your urges. Stop trying to act responsible because you aren't.