Maybe it was all the snow, but whatever the reason, yesterday produced an unusually bounteous crop of sex news.
In an article in The New York Times on the connection between food and sexual arousal, reporter Sarah Kershaw discussed a study conducted by the Smell and Taste Research Foundation in Chicago. “In one small experiment on sexual response to food scents,” she writes, “vaginal and penile blood flow was measured in 31 men and women who wore masks emitting various food aromas. This was the study that found men susceptible to the scent of doughnuts mingled with licorice. For women, first place for most arousing was a tie between baby powder and the combination of Good & Plenty candy with cucumber. Coming in second was a combination of Good & Plenty and banana nut bread.”
Meanwhile, over in Slate, Hanna Rosin was wondering whether Tiger Woods was, clinically speaking, really a sex addict. “One of Woods’ Las Vegas ladies described him as a sex addict who relentlessly pursued women. But that doesn’t mean he was one. Woods’ current mistress count—18 over six years of marriage—does not by itself meet the clinical definition, without knowing how many encounters he had with those women or what else he was up to. The first question [sex addiction expert Marty] Kafka would ask Woods, he says, is: How often did he have an orgasm? By the accepted definition, seven times a week consistently for six months would signal a problem.” Consistency, in this case, is apparently not a virtue.
And in Foreign Policy, David Kenner informs us that Saudi Arabia has refused Pakistan’s proposed ambassador. “Despite having served for years as a distinguished Pakistani diplomat, Akbar Zeb reportedly cannot receive accreditation as Pakistan’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia. The reason, apparently, has nothing to do with his credentials, and everything to do with his name — which, in Arabic, translates to `biggest dick’.” You would have thought that this would 
have come up before.
On the website Women Talk Sports, an unsigned blog protests the cover of the current Sports Illustrated, which is all about the Winter Olympics, for showing the beautiful and gifted skier Lindsay Vonn in “a sexualized pose.” Seems hard to argue that this is more of a sexualized pose than a skiing pose; a better case could perhaps be made for this photo from SI’s new swimsuit issue.
Finally, Huffington Post founding editor Roy Sekoff appeared with novelist Jackie Collins on The Joy Behar Show, and I guess as a result of his personal investigation into the John Edwards sex tape, was able to confirm that former senator, who in his disgrace can apparently be left with no shred of dignity intact, is physically well-endowed. Old media has had its low moments, but it’s hard to think of an editor of what aspired to be an influential publication going on TV and delving into that particular topic.