Depends on what you mean by "free"

Maggie McNeill on celebrities, escorts, and why they don't just get it for "free" from their fans.

Ann Arbor city government and Bongs and Thongs

Details about current Ann Arbor city harassment of Bongs and Thongs before it even opens along with new-to-me history of a "red light district" in Ann Arbor, all from annarbor.com.

I have three main reactions to this. First, to my amateur legal eye, the city's ordinance seems impossibly vague. It is described in the article as:

The zoning ordinance does not allow the sale of “devices of simulated human genitals or devices designed for sexual stimulation” in the D1 District of downtown if these items account for more than 20 percent of a business’ sales, according to city documents.

The second bit about "devices designed for sexual stimulation" seems loose enough to apply to every one of the women's clothing boutiques on Main Street. I suspect the ordinance would have fallen quickly to a legal challenge by the owner of Bongs and Thongs, though he has simply given up and changed his business plan without a fight (and I can't honestly argue that his is not the strategy that maximizes expected profits as the city would likely have just replaced the vague ordinance with a more specific one).

Second, the article does not mention it but there is already a sex shop in Ann Arbor, right on South University in the midst of an undergraduate-oriented commercial district, and it seems to do a good business (though, despite its name, it does not actually sell safe sex, just safe sex accessories). In particular, it does not appear to cause people to avoid walking on the north side of South University nor does it seem to cause parents to worry about the well-being of their children attending the university. Could it be that the various prudes interviewed by annarbor.com are just projecting their own, rather than the community's, morality onto Bongs and Thongs?

Third, I was entertained by quotes like this one:

“No one liked it. No one,” Stamoulis said.

Ya know, if it was really true that "no one liked it" then the businesses in Ann Arbor's old red light "district" (which apparently consisted of one side of the street on one block!) all would have disappeared quite quickly due to lack of sales. Instead, they apparently persisted for many years until shut down by a prudish landlord. Someone liked them!

The fact of the matter is that this article, and the thoughts and municipal behaviors it describes, show that Ann Arbor, though a fantastic place to live, is much less hip and tolerant than it likes to think it is.

Interview with Maggie McNeill's husband ...

... on what it is like to marry an escort.

He seems to have his feet pretty firmly planted on the ground.

Stripper career paths

An interview with a stripper from Susannah Breslin at Forbes. Note the important social work component in the job description.

Broader lessons from DSK

Cathy Young of reason has some useful thoughts on the broader implications of the DSK scandal.

Your date with the tax man

On the tax consequences of being paid to go on a date.

Via: instapundit

Externalities in the dating market

xkcd sums them up.

Planned Parenthood sex ad

This ad is cute ... I am glad to know our students are having sex and are happy about it, but it seems designed more to make people who already support Planned Parenthood feel good about themselves than to change the minds of those who do not.

As I have noted on this blog before, my view is that as long as we have decided that anyone who can attract a sex partner can have a child, expenditures on Planned Parenthood to provide abortions for those who cannot otherwise afford them (and who thus are surely ill-suited to having a child, at least at present) seems like tax money well spent.

A more convincing ad would not (implicitly) focus on Planned Parenthood's service to non-poor undergraduates at Michigan and would also mention that one can give to the organization voluntarily, via donations, as well as involuntarily via the tax system. I would feel better about Planned Parenthood if I knew they were doing their best to build up an endowment so that their services would not depend on the whims of the legislature.

Hypocritical politicians, Indonesian edition.

Anti-porn politician photographed watching porn in parliament. There truly is no upper bound on the hubris of the political class.

Hat tip: Daniel Marcin

Reasons to get a payday loan

The enterprising folks at payday.pro suggest getting a payday loan for that upcoming bachelor party you've been invited to. After all:

Let’s be realistic here – it is NEVER a good thing to attend a bachelor party and not have any money to spend. Not only will you be singled out as the “cheap” guy amongst your friends, but the ladies at the bachelor party will not pay any attention to you. What fun is that?

This prompts, of course, some scolding from the nannies at the New York Times.

Hat tip: Ken Troske

Ratios matter in search markets

Dollars and Sex summarizes recent research on the effects of student body sex composition on college student social behavior.

Of course, this analysis assumes that students do not heavily weight the student body sex composition when deciding where to attend. That's likely not a bad approximation, but worth studying. More broadly, publicizing results like this might be the most effective policy tool for pushing the sex composition back toward equality.

Lascivious memories from U of Chicago

From the U of Chicago alumni magazine letters section:

Lascivious memories, please

Kristen Schilt, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, and I, a graduate student, are seeking alumni who attended or chose not to attend the Lascivious Costume Ball between 1969 and 1984 to participate in interviews about their experiences.

The interview will cover your experiences with the Lascivious Costume Ball, including your reasons for attending or not attending. Additionally, you will be asked to reflect on what the event meant to you, what the event was like, the role you feel it played (or didn’t) in the College community, and your opinions on public perceptions of the event. You must be an alumna/alumnus of the University of Chicago, and you must be familiar with the Lascivious Costume Ball as it was between 1969 and 1984 to participate in the study. For further information, please contact Celene Reynolds at celene.reynolds [at] gmail.com [...].

Celene Reynolds

Chicago

Some thoughts:

1. I'm still bummed that the LCB died the year before I arrived at Chicago.

2. This research sounds like fun. Might yield NIH funding too if the health aspects were appropriately highlighted in the proposal.

3. The late, great Mike Royko's column upon the cancelling of the LCB in 1984.

4. And even a picture, of sorts, with a poem.

Improving teaching ratings at Northwestern

An NU psychology professor tries something I had not thought of to create student interest. I bet attendance was way up for the next few classes.

More seriously, I am rather disappointed by the censorious tone of the Newsweek piece. Why not seriously engage with this? Both the display itself and the various reactions are social phenomena worthy of study as is human sexuality more broadly.

Hat tip: Ed Vytlacil on FB

Addendum: A quote from a student in the MSNBC coverage:

"It is probably something I will remember the rest of my life," Smith, a 21-year-old senior, told the Tribune. "I can't say that about my Econ 202 class and the material that I learned there."

Hat tip: Charlie Brown

Family values on Craigslist

Another family values Republican bites the dust, brought down by the devil.

The most interesting bit here may be his choice to pose on Craigslist as a lobbyist. I suppose that three factors enter into the choice of a profession for one's on-line alter ego. First, you want it to be distant enough from your actual profession so that you cannot be easily identified. Second, you want it to be something you know well enough to fake. Third, you want it to be something that, on its own, will not drive away potential playmates. It seems to me that for ex-Congressperson Lee, lobbyist fits the first two but not the third. But then, inside the beltway, things may be different.

And, you know, going on Craigslist as a Congressman is just plain dumb, even with a phony profession. Next time Satan inflames his loins, perhaps Congressman Lee will hire an escort or get some cigars for his intern.

Hat tip: Sue Dynarski on Facebook

Incest?

Lots of talk in the blogosphere about this Columbia professor. For example, U of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse has strong views on this one.

My thoughts are two, and different than the ones focused on elsewhere:

1. Whatever you think about whether this should be legal or not, this persecution seems to me a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. Essentially, taxpayers are subsidizing the political campaign of some local lawyer by paying for this high publicity, low usefulness persecution.

2. Why weren't both parties arrested? They are both adults.

Steve Chapman on homophobia

This is a fine and heartfelt piece. As best I can recall, I was always pretty tolerant, perhaps because I grew up feeling like an outsider myself for various reasons.

It would be nice if people could be tolerant of other views of how to live life, whether they concern sexuality or religion or just how to spend one's leisure time, without having to meet and be impressed by people who hold them in person, but at least that approach works sometimes.

My view is that people who spend their time worrying about the hobbies / lifestyle choices of others are wasting their time and, often, avoiding dealing with their own issues.

Via: the Agitator

Cheap Talk on self-abuse

Cheap Talk mounts an evolutionary defense of wanking. I had never thought of comparing it to tickling, which is the key point in the argument. Clever!

Seems appropriate to link to this as well.

Like Christian pop music, only better

There is a whole subculture of Christian this and Christian that, most of it consumed not by Christians in general but by particular subgroups within the broader Christian population who seek to isolate themselves, more or less, from the broader culture, as a means either of reducing temptation or simply of avoiding engagement. This site, on the other hand, illustrates an attempt to incorporate and Christianize one particular aspect of popular culture, namely hedonistic sexuality.

I suppose that Luther might like this; probably Paul and the Pope would not.

I find it fascinating to watch the interplay between religions, both secular and spiritual, and broader trends in popular culture. In many cases, like this one, religion ends up reacting to outside forces, rather than taking the lead in change. Similar interactions can be found in religious responses to environmentalism.

Marginally safe for work: naughty words but no pics.

Hat tip: my best friend.

Al Gore misbehaves

What to say about Al Gore's public relations disaster regarding multiple allegations of misbehavior with hotel masseuses?

I guess I find it a puzzle on several levels. In one sense, the trouble begins because massages with happy endings are illegal in the US, unlike many other countries, when done in exchange for money. This leads to a pooling equilibrium in which providers that want to offer this service attempt to look like massage providers who do not want to provide this service. The result is confusion for providers and customers.

But in another sense, that is not really the issue. Given the pooling equilibrium, with which Al is presumably familiar, he could react to the constraints he faces on his behavior by doing one of several things:

First, he could restrict his attempted purchases of this service to trips to places where they are legal. This requires some self-restraint, but you don't get to be a successful person without some ability to delay gratification.

Second, he could avoid the massage market and instead look in the upscale escort market, where it is clear what is being provided. Given that Al travels with a personal staff, surely one of them could arrange this sort of thing while keeping both Al and the police out of the details of the transaction. Money is presumably not an issue for Al, and as the police focus almost exclusively on street prostitution, the ex ante public relations risk was probably lower with high-end escorts than with massage providers of unknown type.

Third, presumably Al has lots of opportunities for unpaid fun with women who appreciate his Powerpoint slides or want to hold his Nobel Prize. There are of course potential costs as well as benefits here too. Sometimes those women do not want to go away (e.g. Monica) and sometimes they too run off to the National Enquirer, but at least legal trouble is avoided.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, he could have behaved like a gentleman given his choice to take draws from the pooled market of massage providers who do and do not want to offer extras. That is to say, having realized that he had drawn a provider of the massage-only type, he could have enjoyed a nice massage, or just sent her on her way with her fee, in a polite and mature fashion. I think Al's failure to pursue this path is the real puzzle.

Odd, odd, odd.

My Muhammed is different

A sad story of wobbly, romance-addled, middle-aged British women touring in the middle east.

Via: instapundit