A roundup of recent bad news in the sex department:

• "Unveiled women = unwrapped candy bar?"

• First Strawberry Shortcake, now Dora the Explorer: she's getting a makeover. Is nothing sacred?

• In a fascinating article on the reasons why the Olympic Village is such a hot bed of...well, is just a hot bed, the author notes that, heterosexually speaking, male medal winners get more attention and action than female medal winners, whose athletic success is considered unfeminine and sexually ambiguous. Lame.

• According to Planned Parenthood's last email blast, the Bush administration proposed a rule last Thursday that will allow anti-choice activists "to receive federal funds for so-called 'crisis pregnancy centers' -- anti-choice facilities whose purpose is to deceive and dissuade women from accessing birth control and abortion information and services." Contribute to PP's campaign to fight back by clicking on "urgent breaking news"!

• It's like a fortune cookie fortune: Financial worry will negatively affect growth...in bed.

• We're just pissed at ourselves for reading this post in its entirety: a debate on whether or not there will be a Heidi-Spencer sex tape.

A roundup of recent good news in the sex department:

• Biden as Barack's VP choice bodes fairly well for the future of sexual and reproductive rights.

• A new book's princess is living happily ever after without a prince (though she is totally in love with God, which could be considered the biggest prince of all).

• Here's a surprise: A new study has found that moms' views about premarital sex don't affect their decisions on whether their pre-teen or teenage daughters should get the vaccine against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer (i.e. "mothers who wanted their daughters to remain virgins until marriage were just as likely to have them get the vaccine as those who didn't expect their daughters to wait until marriage to have sex.")

• Breaking out the cuffs and paddle every now and then might make you happier than more vanilla types.
  

• Hallmark cares enough to send the very best message about equal rights by offering same-sex marriage cards!

• Speaking of gay marriage, Ellen and Portia tie the knot -- yay for them!

• Maybe one of them will try lesbian insemination -- now fully lawful in Cali.

• And let's end with more good gay news: An Oregonian Native American tribe is about to allow same-sex marriages.

Greg Johnson--the man who decided to run across America naked, except for some dorky white running socks and shoes--is no Michael Phelps in the body department. In fact, one might even go so far as to call him "doughy." And we hate to be body hair Nazis, but if ever a man could use a back wax, well...okay, okay, so we've been spending too much time ogling the Olympic swimmers' hairless physiques lately.

That all said, we kind of have a crush on Mr. Johnson after watching (pixelated) footage of his cross-country streak. Even if he is a stand-up comedian doing this to promote his career, he just kind of has that Matt Harding appeal. And so while some people might say that it's an unjust world in which oglers of women get T&A (especially the A) beach volleyball photography and oglers of men get jogging Greg Johnson, we're kind of happy with our lot. (Okay, Greg Johnson and Michael Phelps...but come on, if you've seen footage of Phelps with dry hair and smiling, then you know he's just a big ol' lovable nerd who spends a lot of time working out.) So here's to Mr. Johnson and his pixelated johnson. And now a question for you, just 'cause we're curious...

Photo of Keira, BF, and "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" via Splash

BET's Lifestyle blog has a post about a woman in suburban Maryland who put the breaks on a date when the guy moved the plans out of her neighborhood. She texted him to announce that "driving to D.C. was not part of my planned carbon footprint." So we thought we'd come up with our top ten favorite ways to dump someone using a green excuse...

1) It's not you, it's my carbon footprint: You live on the other side of town and the Earth just can't afford for us to be together. (Okay I lied: It's the $4/gallon gasoline.)

2) As a vegan, I can't go down on someone who eats meat, and oral sex is very important to me.

3) I need more time to take care of my plants.

Photo via Splash

"I'm fairly sure if they took porn off the Internet there would only be one website left and it would be called Bring Back the Porn." So said Scrubs' Dr. Cox (John C. McGinley), possibly one of the most brilliant characters in the history of television. But we're guessing he wasn't talking about porn for the ladies. And really, ladies, when will we start demanding a porn of our own? We just heard that Playgirl magazine is about to close for good, and we doubt hoards of women will take to the streets demanding its return. Imagine if Playboy were to shutter? There'd be a national freakin' day of mourning. We have to admit, we won't miss Playgirl--did it mean to turn us on? We never quite figured that out--but we will miss the idea of Playgirl. ...

We're usually all for anything that encourages safer sex. And in theory, the STFree Safe Sex License (recently reported on by New York's Daily News) is a great idea: Test people--especially those in high risk communities--for STDs (mainly HIV), give them a card with their picture and an ID number. They can then give that card to potential sex partners, who can call to confirm the results. The idea is to encourage honest discussion about sexual history with partners, as well as regular testing.

But here's why we're not 100 percent gung-ho:

Photo via Splash

You know that feeling when you're calling up some guy to cancel a date and you're thinking that you might be willing to sacrifice your first-born if only you could guarantee you'd get his voice-mail? Or perhaps you've been on a date or two with someone who's so nice but not the one and you just kind of want to let things peter out via a few missed calls rather than actually have to dump them. Or you've had a one-night stand with a good friend and you feel like you owe them a call rather than an email but you don't actually want to navigate the awkwardness of a live conversation. Or you promised a hook-up you'd call but you didn't mean to say it but you know it's lame to just disappear into thin air. Well, imagine if you could skip straight to voicemail and make it look like a missed call, so you're off the hook, as it were. A new technology called Slydial allows you to do just this--and all you have to do is listen to a few ads. Genius.

We've been known in the past to be fairly skeptical of sex surveys (too often they just seem like an excuse for nerdy grad students to interview strippers "for research purposes"). But we have to say, we love the Durex Global Sex Surveys--who knew that annual surveys conducted by a condom company would turn out to be more substantial than a lot of the so-called academic field work? Seriously, they poll thousands of people hailing from everywhere from Nigeria to New Zealand, and their results invariably help to keep sex in perspective. Take the latest findings, for example, which show that while 63 percent of men climax every time they have sex (that's it?!), only 32 percent of women do. And while most of the men polled preferred to orgasm with company, the majority of the women polled said they could achieve an orgasm more easily on their own. So there you have it: you're not alone. Except when you really want to be and it's just you and your right hand, of course...

Photo via Splash

No shit, Sherlock, you're probably thinking. But that's because you're wicked smaht and would never attempt to pick up a hottie by asking them how they like their eggs in the morning. And yet, scientists in white lab coats (okay, anthropologists) spent two years studying the role of humor in seduction to come up with a theory that the rest of us figured out during our first Hugh Grant movie: women like it when men make fun of themselves. Men like it too, according to the survey, but women like it more.

The report is called "Dissing Oneself: The Sexual Attractiveness of Self-Dep-Humour" (jee-zuz, they make seduction sound about as exciting a stereo instruction manual). But before you go "dissing" yourself on the pickup scene, the report includes a dire warning that actually made us kinda sad: these methods should not be wielded by someone who is already unpopular. Apparently this could make "low-status individuals" appear "more pathetic" than they were before. In other words, just because it's cute when Hugh Grant does it, doesn't mean we can all pull it off.