Although nothing about the truck — which is used to advertise for a strip club — is illegal, some commissioners fear that it could cause accidents. • In 2005, Melanie Dawn Williams went into premature labor and ran a red light on the way to the hospital. Two police officers chased after her, followed her into the hospital, and tackled her in the emergency room. The over-zealous cops then dragged her outside, where they proceeded to handcuff her. Eventually a nurse found her, and brought her back in for medical care. Williams now says she may sue for unlawful arrest. •  A British woman has received a £75 fine for littering after she was caught throwing bread to ducks. "I do not intend to pay the fine," she said. "I'm going to fight this to the end." •  A 56-year-old Oregon man has been charged with making threatening calls to a local Planned Parenthood. Gregory Paul Freeman reportedly threatened to blow up the clinic. They also received a voice message that said: "Uh, please go ahead and dial the, uh, United States of America, because I'm going to burn your abortion clinic down because you are a baby killer and you hate babies." •  In the past year the pay gap between men and women in Britain has fallen - but only by 1%. There still remains a 16.4% gap in the U.K. If improvement continues at this rate, it will be 17 years before women receive equal pay. •  The Maryland university system has opted not to police porn on college campuses. They voted unanimously to reject the policy, on the grounds that it would hinder free speech and suck up too much funding. • Former CIA agent Valerie Plame lost her appeal to declassify part of her memoir Fair Game. Plame and her publisher sued the CIA in 2007 to block the agency from blacking out the dates she worked there, but the appeals court ruled that, "Because Ms. Wilson is obligated by a secrecy agreement with the CIA not to disclose information, the district court correctly ruled." • Weston General Hospital in England has banned pregnant women with a BMI of more than 34 from giving birth at the hospital, forcing them to travel 20 miles to the nearest maternity ward. The hospital claims it's not equipped to handle complicated births. "Our foremost concern is for the safety of mothers who deliver here and their babies," said a spokesman. "Mothers with a high BMI are at increased risk in labour of bleeding, needing an instrumental delivery or complications, such as the baby's shoulder becoming trapped behind the pubic bone." • French art expert Pascal Cotte analyzed the Mona Lisa with a special camera and found she used to have eyebrows and a wider smile. He says da Vinci painted some details on top of a glaze that was meant to make the portrait look 3-D. "That could explain why the eyebrows have disappeared – they have faded because of chemical reactions or they have been cleaned off," said Cotte. • University of Haifa researcher found that the hormone oxytocin, which affects trust, empathy and generosity, also affects opposite behaviors, like jealousy and gloating. "Subsequent to these findings, we assume that the hormone is an overall trigger for social sentiments: when the person's association is positive, oxytocin bolsters pro-social behaviors; when the association is negative, the hormone increases negative sentiments," said lead researcher Simone Shamay-Tsoory. • A British woman saw a suspicious message pop up on her husband's computer so she pretended to be a 14-year-old schoolgirl and contacted him on the internet from another computer in their house. He asked her to meet for sex and "used a webcam to film himself carrying out acts of indecency," which she could see on her screen in the other room. He was found guilty of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child and making and possessing illegal images, and his wife left him. •

Elizabeth Bernstein opened for peace with the charming tale of two men having a heart to heart — about motorcycle oil. She writes,

It's no big secret that men don't share their emotions easily. Numerous research studies-and millions of baffled women-can attest to that.

But is it really so harmful if men want to keep their feelings hidden? And don't women share too much, yammering on about their husbands to friends, co-workers and sometimes even strangers?

The answer to both questions is an emphatic yes.

O rly? Bernstein follows this assertion up with anecdotes about men whose relationships failed because they couldn't bring themselves to ask for advice, and a woman who complained about her husband to "her mom, friends, co-workers, housekeeper, husband's best friend and two radio stations." The couple reconciled, but, unsurprisingly, he now feels uncomfortable around her family. Bernstein rounds out her discussion with a mention of the amateur gender theorist's hormone of choice, oxytocin. Apparently it helps women bond with each other, but testosterone limits its effects on men. Or something like that.

But is having the whole town up in your business really the biggest problem with oversharing? A study last year suggested a more pernicious effect — "co-rumination," or discussing the same problems over and over, can increase depression and anxiety in girls. Boys have fewer of these types of conversations, and seem to suffer fewer ill effects when they do.

Many of us have likely been in a situation where talking about a problem too much just made it seem bigger, with two brains obsessing on it instead of one. And while we don't buy that only men are capable of a get-in-get-out approach to emotional conversation ("What they had accomplished in 20 minutes took us two hours," says the girlfriend of one of the motorcycle oil dudes about their parallel tete-a-tetes), it is sometimes helpful to have someone who tells you to quit your bitching and move on. This is a good argument for having friends with different communication styles, which may mean friends of the opposite gender. While the men-talk-about-machines-and-women-talk-about-feelings dichotomy is an artificial one, it's still true that men and women are socialized differently, and taking your troubles across gender boundaries can give you a fresh perspective. It can also teach you that — oxytocin and motor oil aside — men and women actually suffer from many of the same problems.

How Much Sharing Is Too Much? [Wall Street Journal]

Earlier: Positive Teen Talk Can Sometimes Turn Into A "Mutual Complaint Society"

I've tried lots of weird looking sex toys in my day, but the clit pump - which is an electronic sucking device that cups over the clitoris to engorge it with blood - looks kind of scary. It's supposed to be used daily as an "exercise" rather than right before sex to get in the mood, but the underlying sentiment is that it was a tool for masturbation.

The nasal spray seems a lot more interesting and possibly really helpful, particularly for peri-menopausal women suffering from lower libidos. It's a fast acting drug that shoots the hormone Oxytocin- which facilitates breast feeding and bonding with babies, and studies also show it is linked with social recognition, bonding, anxiety, trust, and arousal - right into the brain.

According to Dr. Young, love between sexual partners may have evolved from mother-child bonding, which is one reason some types of foreplay mimic nursing. Sex and breast touching may stimulate a "cocktail of ancient neuropeptides," such as oxytocin, causing us to bond with the people we bone.

Young speculates that we could one day synthesize this cocktail and slip it into people's, um, cocktails, effectively roofying them with love. Although love-drugging someone else would obviously be immoral, he says, "if you’re in a marriage and want to maintain that relationship, you might take a little booster shot yourself every now and then." But Tierney thinks he has a better idea — a love vaccine, "what humans have sought ever since Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to the mast while sailing past the Sirens."

On his blog, Tierney quotes anthropologist Helen Fisher on the love-vaccine capabilities of antidepressants: "Take enough Prozac beforehand, and your emotions will be so blunted that you won’t even get into bed with anyone." But is love, as Tierney claims, the "dangerous disease" that caused "Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas wedding or any of Larry King’s seven marriages"? Or would these people have benefited more from a dumbass vaccine?

Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket To Bliss [NY Times]
A Love Vaccine? [NY Times]

The one great difference between them seemed to be in their experience of abstinence. Fredell was unaware of that gap. Whenever sexual urges struck, she told me, she was able to manage them by going on a long run and assumed that everyone should be able to do the same. "The biological drive can be overcome," she said. "It's not like it reaches a peak, and you have to go out and have sex."

"And you don't go down the street thinking you'd like to have sex with him, him, him and him?" I asked.

"No!" she said, abruptly. "Is that what men do?"

It seemed a good time to talk with her about what else Keliher had told me. He described the act he has never experienced as something "breathtakingly powerful" that "lights all of your body on fire." He spoke of his lust as "this untamed beast."

Fredell was incredulous: "Leo said that?"

He told me that he struggles constantly against "physical lustful temptation" — that he can be aroused just by a woman's touch, by even a look at a woman or at a photo or sometimes by "thoughts that just come out of the blue — basically pornography in my head." They come to him when he's merely walking around campus, or even when he's alone in the library — "like a fly buzzing around."

To the matter of masturbation, he said, "This was really tough for me . . . because when you have a habit that's so deeply ingrained, it's hard to stop."

Fredell, when asked about masturbation, just said, "Oh, God, no!"

Keliher quoted to me what an abstinence speaker said — that the real meaning of masculinity is "being able to deny yourself for the sake of the woman." "To have that kind of self-control is really what it means to be a man," Keliher had told me. When he finds himself aroused these days, he endures it and waits for it to pass. In this way, he said he has "matured out of that more infantile need for a woman into a recognition of self-sufficiency." But some women, Keliher granted, continue to give him trouble.
One of these is a freshman — "a very gentle, caring soul," he said, who "works with little kids and stuff." Keliher can't help thinking about her glossy hair and beautiful skin.

Another appears to be Janie Fredell. Keliher smiled and said he was "a little bit" attracted to her — "in very superficial ways," he added. "It's something we laugh about — if we dated."

But Fredell did not laugh. "No!" she erupted, and with increasing volume, "No! No! No! I can't emphasize enough that there is nothing between me and Leo! It's just that we're not compatible in that regard."

Or actually, that is a lie, taking yourself too seriously is up there with "presumptuousness" when it comes to achieving things I guess, so what do I know; I'm still with Lena, for whatever it's worth.

Students Of Virginity [NY Times]