The American Spectator

The Great Books Series

A highly promising scientific study of the male armpit undoubtedly funded by the National Science Foundation is brought to hopeless foozle by Miss Naomi Wolf’s horny excogitations in Vagina: A New Biography. When will she get serious?

Chen and her team asked 20 heterosexual men to stop wearing deodorant and other scented grooming products for several days. The researchers then put pads under the men’s armpits, and wired the men to electrodes, as the men watched pornographic videos. The researchers analyzed the “aroused” male sweat and also analyzed pads collected from under the arms of the same men when they are not sexually aroused.

Then, 19 heterosexual women smelled the men’s “aroused” and “unaroused” sweat pads, while they themselves underwent brain scans. The women’s brains reacted very differently in response to the “aroused” male sweat.

The “sexual sweat” activated the women’s right orbitofrontal cortex and the right fusiform cortex, but the “unaroused” sweat did nothing for them.…

Chen concluded that her findings bolster the idea that humans do communicate via subconscious chemical signals. To me this finding also suggests that women’s bodies know categorically and uncompromisingly when a man is or is not sexually interested in them, even if everyone in the couple is saying the “right” things. This may have been what my friend, who has a strong sex drive, and whose partner did not “perfume her days,” may have been experiencing: his sexual interest in her was not strong enough for her.…She couldn’t smell enough of his arousal.…

[From: Vagina: A New Biography, by Naomi Wolf. Ecco, 381 pages, $27.99]

New York Times

Professor Maureen Dowd applies her cross-disciplinary learning to modern politics and come up with, alas, a completely incomprehensible judgment. Possibly she was squiffed:

[Paul Ryan puts] a fresh face on a Taliban creed—the evermore antediluvian, anti-immigrant, anti-gay conservative core. Amiable in khakis and polo shirts, Ryan is the perfect modern leader to rally medieval Republicans who believe that Adam and Eve cavorted with dinosaurs….But, for all the Republican cant about how they want to keep government out of the lives of others, the ultraconservatives are panting to meddle in the lives of others. Contrary to President Obama’s re-fresh-ing assertion Monday that a bunch of male politicians shouldn’t be making the health care decisions for women, this troglodyte tribe of men and Bachmann-esque women craves that responsibility.

(August 12, 2012)

The Progressive

Finally, after traversing page after page of the dreary Liberal-wing press for the enlightenment of our readers, the editor of this revered AmSpec department is given something to hoist a flute of champagne over and to let out a celebratory yell: