Freeday 19 February 1999

Pic of the day: Another dizzy green shirt which I bought on sale a year or two ago and never opened until now. I think it's sort of nice, but I'm pretty much alone in that opinion...

Peeve of the day: The urban legend "sex is good for your health" has made it to the front of one of Norways larger tabloids. Meaning that the gullibles that constitute a majority of even our population will presumably be worrying sick if they don't have someone to copulate with tonight and twice a week until their attention span is exceeded. (Which would normally not be long, but we're talking about sex here, so it could take weeks.) Worrying is not good for your health, and anyway they could just walk up a reasonably long flight of stairs and get a similar cardiovascular effect.

For tabloids to throw this urban legend on their front page is only natural. Their intended audience, after all, is almost by definition incapable of looking through even a simple hoax, or those papers would have been out of business long ago. More worrying is the fact that even physicians are buying into it. I've had a couple of those during the last few years admonish me to take up a regular sex life to improve my health. (Since I don't smoke, I can't well quit smoking.) You'd think they learned critical analysis of statistics at universities, but perhaps not. (Then again, I've not had any medical students urging me to take up regular sex, so things may be improving.)

Look, people.
a) Statistics show that people who have frequent and regular sexual intercourse, are more healthy than those who don't.
b) Statistics show that healthy people have more frequent and regular sexual intercourse than those who are less healthy.
Despite different layout, these two statements are saying the same thing. They represent what we call a statistical correlation, meaning that two variables rise and fall together. (Actually, that's a positive correlation as opposed to a negative, but this isn't a school, it's an online diary gone astray.) A correlation in itself says nothing about what is cause and what is effect.
Now, when do you feel more horny: When you're healthy, fresh and rested; or when your head aches, you're vomiting every other hour and your surgery scars itch like mad?

I'm sort of sensitive about this because for a pretty large minority of us, sex isn't just like aerobics, it's emotionally charged. I'm not saying it isn't great fun, too. But we don't want to sleep around with people we don't really like just because it's supposedly good for our health. (And we wouldn't want people we like to sleep around with people we don't like, either...)

Body and soul are so intertwined that one or the other could be an illusion, and we would never know which one.

Warning: skimpy bikini outfits in Rosa's Wardrobe.

Visit the Diary Farm for the diaries I've put out to pasture until they buy the farm:
January 1999
December 1998
November 1998