Weird Science retracts its penis to keep everyone guessing

Chris Cotterman

Ever wonder about the consequences of your penis not being retractable? Wonder no more. Fortunately, a team of Australian researchers are willing to lay it out for us: "Before clothing, the nonretractable human penis would have been conspicuous to potential mates." Since clothing is a relatively recent development, there's a chance that its conspicuousness made a mark on human evolution, either in terms of male anatomy or in terms of female tastes. The authors grabbed a database from a study of the Italian male population and used it to make computer-generated male bodies. They showed them to a mixture of university students, campus staff, and random volunteers they recruited.

And, at least on some level, the results indicate that women do like a larger penis. But the effect tails off quickly once the penis passes a given length, with the critical measurement being influenced by body height (the taller the person, the bigger the penis had to be). Complicating matters, women liked tall men, as well—it had just as strong an effect as penis size. So, that helped drag the preferred penis size to even greater lengths than it would have been otherwise.

If you're emotionally attached to a Web service, using pot may be one of the least of your problems. A survey was used to check which of four factors was associated with college students growing emotionally attached to using Facebook. It came up with a simple answer: all of them. Loneliness, anxiousness, alcohol, and marijuana use were all associated with getting attached to using the service, while loneliness and anxiousness were associated with establishing a lot of connections on it. Elsewhere in the same journal, we have a demonstration that Facebook users are narcissistic. But they're also more extroverted and less lonely than non-users.