• Researchers have found a mummified dog at the feet of a human mummy. The puppy-mummy, named "Hapi-Puppy," is an estimated 2,300 years old. • LiveScience has an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of going on the pill. Pros include lower risk of cancer, babies; cons include potential blood-clots and strokes. • A 30-year-old British man went to the hospital complaining of pain and a strange growth from near his bellybutton. Turns out, the pain was caused by a 4cm parasitic twin that had been stuck inside him for the past three decades. • Two women from Ohio have been arrested following an argument over a photograph of President Obama. • This Saturday, a filly, Rachel Alexandra will run in the Preakness. • A new study has found that women are more likely to be victims of identity fraud than men. Researchers say this may be due to differences in purchasing patterns. • Serena Williams was forced to withdraw from the Madrid Open on Monday after she was injured in a first round match. • Upon meeting women's basketball player Lisa Leslie, Barack Obama reportedly said: "You know I love tall women, right?" before offering to play her one-on-one. • Click here to watch a fascinating video on conservation efforts to preserve Brazilian wild cats. • In attempts to raise awareness about sex trafficking, a guerrilla group squeezed a live contortionist into a transparent suitcase and placed her on a baggage claim belt. • After losing $13.7 mil in the first quarter of 2009, Playboy is considering "radical changes." And in other Playboy news, Partridge Family mom Shirley Jones, 75, is considering posing nude for the mag. She would be the oldest woman to ever do so. •

The study, which was published in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, followed 1,045 healthy Chinese men between the ages of 20 and 45, according to EurekAlert. Every man had fathered a child in the two years before the study and their female partners did not have fertility problems.

For thirty months, the men were injected with 500mg of testosterone undecanoate in tea seed oil once a month. The treatment was 99 percent effective at preventing pregnancy, and after the study ended all but two of the men had their fertility levels return to normal.

"For couples who can not, or prefer not to use only female-oriented contraception, options have been limited to vasectomy, condom and withdrawal," said Dr. Yi-Qun Gu, MD, of the National Research Institute for Family Planning in Beijing, China. "Our study shows a male hormonal contraceptive regimen may be a potential, novel and workable alternative."Gu said more testing was needed to determine the long-term effects of the injections on men's hearts and prostate glands, reports The Telegraph.

Scientists have been trying to develop a male Pill for almost two decades, but progress has been slow. Last month, in a study published in American Journal of Human Genetics, researchers said they had identified a gene called CATSPER1 that allows sperm cells to dig into the egg to fertilize it, according to iT Wire. Scientists theorized that a drug that targeted healthy versions of the gene could lead to an effective male Pill. However, large pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to perform large trials and many people believe that women wouldn't trust men to take the pill.

Injectable Testosterone May Provide Effective Male Contraception [EurekAlert]
Hopes For A 'Male Pill' Could Be Resurrected [The Telegraph]
Male Birth Control Pill Closer With CATSPER1 [iTWire]

Earlier: Would You Trust A Guy Who Said, "It's OK, I'm On The Pill?"
Why Is There No Sperm-Killing Birth Control Pill?

But she was allowed to listen to Loretta, even though "she got married when I think she was maybe thirteen or fourteen and she was pregnant at thirteen. So a lot of her songs in her book had to do with how she was stuck with all these kids when she was only a few years older than I was. It has this feminist quality where this woman who's sick of taking care of all of these kids, her husband running around on her and now it's her turn." Vowell's fave Lynn song is "The Pill," and she continues:

My family was very religious. I wasn't allowed to listen to Kiss because they were supposedly satanic. And then years later I would listen to a song like "Beth" by Kiss and it's just this little bubble gum love song. And I wasn't allowed to listen to that but I was allowed to listen to this Loretta Lynn song about, you know, getting hot pants and taking oral contraceptives.

Some people may find Vowell unconscionably annoying (from the Times's hilarious review of her most recent book: "[Vowell is] double-annoying, because she styles herself as annoying — provocative-annoying — and if you become annoyed by her you seem to be conceding the point. She’s gotten to you.") So while our enjoyment of her comedy stylings may, in fact, be NPR-related Stockholm Syndrome, we're still amused by her description of "Santa Claus Is Back In Town" as "a fairly smutty song, to celebrate the birth of Jesus."

Sarah Vowell [KCRW]
Mayflower Power [NYT]

Paddington Bear celebrates his 50th birthday! • Schoolgirls in CA are participating in a week-long program intended to promote construction for girls. • The Pill is called ineffective and outdated because it is "very difficult" for women to remember to take a pill daily. So basically it is ineffective because we're stupid? • Italian gays plan a mass exchange of vows during their Gay Pride days to publicize the need for gay-marriage laws in Italy. • The National Commission of Women in India is criticizing soap operas for portraying women in a negative light and should be treated as "victims"? Wha?

I got my first Pill at 17 — my doctor took one look at me about to head off to college, and told me I was going on The Pill. She extolled its skin-clearing, cramp-reducing, cycle-regulating virtues (and the fact that she wouldn't see me back pregnant at Thanksgiving), wrote a prescription for Tri-norinyl and sent me on my way. I was back at Thanksgiving, anyway — my boobs went from their long-accustomed B-cup to a C-cup between August and Columbus Day, my cramps weren't gone, and my skin hadn't cleared up. We went with Demulen, but my tits never did regain their original size/shape.

Cramps drove me back for a new Pill just before my senior year started — I don't even remember which one — but it made me constantly 4 days late and still didn't kill the damn cramps. The doctor, probably tired of my whining, switched me to Levlen just after graduation. In July, I had my first ever panic attack — an unintended side effect of the high dose pill. Oops! It was onto Ortho tri-cyclen, that great unifier of women, just before I moved to D.C. in August. During my boyfriend's first visit down here, he remarked that I tasted a little off, and I welcomed my first simultaneous yeast and bacterial infections later that September! Luckily, I'd swiped a bunch of sample packs of Mircette from the doctor's office I'd worked at all summer (23 days of hormones instead of 21!), and my doctor eventually concurred with my choice. A year and a change of insurance plans later, it was onto Low-ogestrel, which, after another change in insurance, became Loestrin-FE. At this point, in addition to the cramps, and the bad skin, and the complete inability to predict with pinpoint accuracy when Aunt Flo would arrive, my doctors all agreed that it was exacerbating my migraines (like a screaming brat wouldn't!) and I was switched to Microgestin.

Desperate to keep having child- (and thus relatively consequence-) free sex and to stop having blinding, nauseating migraines twice a week, I took to the web. Diaphragms and cervical caps required training and weren't nearly effective enough to keep me from freaking out if I was 2 days late, people who practice the rhythm method are called "parents," and sponges weren't yet back on the market. IUDs, however, were as effective as any Pill (99%), even if they did have that silly little potential for infertility/ectopic pregnancy. I was in. My insurance was not.

When I finally had my $300 put aside to buy the device, my gyno made me sign a waiver that I wouldn't sue her for installing it if I ever couldn't get pregnant (which, by the way, is why they're "recommended" for women who already have rugrats — so you can't sue them for causing infertility if you were already infertile and just didn't yet know), and it was off to the stirrups.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here — having it installed was not pleasant. Your doctor puts it in when you're on the rag because your cervix is already dilated, which is messy, and s/he "clamps" your cervix to hold it still, which I think was actually more uncomfortable than a colposcopy. Since I got one of the non-hormone varieties (the ones that release hormones last up to 5 years), I don't have to have it taken out for 10 years — and I really don't plan to have that clamp thing inside me again until completely necessary. I was supposed to be able to go back to work afterwards (and maybe I could have, if my doctor had been of the variety that uses local anesthesia), but I went home to a hot pack, some Advil and a bottle of wine.

For the next year, it was back to the debilitating cramps of my childhood, but, hey, my headaches were gone, and my mediocre skin was of my own doing. But my period was no more or less timely, except when put into an environment with a bunch of new women. And, then, suddenly, the cramps just tapered off, too. I get them occasionally (like, if I'm a couple days late), but they're deal-able. On the other hand, no more headaches, no more unexplained weight gains, no more panic attacks, no more morning nausea, no more trying to remember to take it, and to take it at the same time of day, no more carrying it if I think I won't be sleeping at home (i.e., hooray for unplanned promiscuity!), no more remembering to get the 'scrip filled, no more worrying if the doctor puts me on antibiotics, or if I vomit shortly after taking it, and no more morning-after pills. If I want to check to make sure I'm still not going to get pregnant, I get the guy I'm seeing to finger me, check for the twine coming out of my cervix and get (at least) one free orgasm while he's in there! I definitely never got that from the Pill.