I don't buy the "signals a good time to breed" nonsense, a well fed nursing mother right now says nothing about food conditions 9 months down the road, and in any case this is a matter of degree, not on/off, so women would have plenty of opportunities to get pregnant anyway.

It is always easy to concoct a story to "explain" anything in evolutionary terms; oddly enough though, the explanation is always about advantage, not problems. But evolution is not teleological: for example, our backs and internal organs have problems because of our evolved upright stance, where evolution stopped at 'good enough' rather than 'perfection.' We don't have five fingers rather than 4 or 6 because 5 is an evolutionarily optimal number, we have five because we inherited five, and five are 'good enough.' Could this hormone thing be an inadvertent effect of something else that is 'good enough?'

Similarly with the matching up of menstrual cycles: it is probable that primitive women had fewer and much more irregular cycles than is the case today, so extrapolating this into some kind of breeding advantage is problematic. Indeed, having too many infants around at once in a small hunting gathering band might actually be disadvantageous for all.

What is established is that we are strongly influenced by the hormones we give off, and perhaps this is inadvertent and unpredictable, and neither adaptive nor disadvantageous, a "spandrel" in Gould's theory.

But it is interesting. It brings up a ton of questions (as far as I can see, the original study is not available on-line):

Was the experiment tried with men? With lesbians? With gay men? Were the results cross-matched with those who had been breast-fed and those who had been bottle-fed?

Why did the control group's fantasizing actually decrease, to a greater degree than the test group's went up? (Were the control group sniffing at all, and if so, the sweat of who?) If the decrease was within the normal range of variation, does the increase in libido establish anything at all? (How big was the sample anyway?)

And indeed, was the increase in erotic fantasizing matched with an increase in actual erotic activity? Howabout the control group's sexual activity rates? (One would guess that additional activity might actually lower one's fantasy life & libido.)

Interesting stuff, but I'm not at all sure what has been established.

"Most parents don't want and won't tolerate male employees in child care settings (day care or preschool) and many employers have covert, unwritten policies not to hire males in those settings, even if they are qualified applicants (or, if they do hire them, to place them under so many restrictions that they're made to feel like de facto sex offenders.)"

As a child care centre operator, let me assure you that this is not true. There are a few men in the field, very few, and centres poach them from each other all the time. They tend to get paid a premium in fact, because there are so few of them (partly because the pay sucks so much in the first place). Partly to give the kids exposure to men, but it is interesting how the older kids react very differently to a male caregiver. Although the men are if anything inclined to be more gentle, the kids still settle down and are less inclined to act out with a man around.

And parents tend to be very supportive of it indeed. And males do not work under more restrictions than females; in this day and age, no worker is ever alone with a child, no matter their gender. As for gay, well of the two I've got right now, while I haven't asked of course, but one might be I think, and I doubt the other. Though you never know.

Cool it dude & dudette! Lefty, you are quite right that AKA has been accusing you of things you never said and has been arguing dirty. On the other hand, you are getting way way too excited about what is a smallish issue.

Personally, while I understand your point of view, I don't agree, in that I don't think that modesty is necessarily a sexual hang-up. Besides which, not all patients are enlightened secure adults. When I was 15 I would have died rather than have a female doctor look at my danglies, I imagine for a teenage girl it would be even worse.

Personally, these days I tend to prefer female doctors, some hangover from childhood I guess when one usually received care and soothing from a female. So its a hangup too, but if it makes me more relaxed in a stressful situation, why not?

Osama, smarten up. Maternal mortality has almost certainly dropped significantly in Afghanistan since NATO went in. We can't know for sure because such information was not collected under the Taliban. But unlike Iraq, things in Afghanistan are actually getting better. The northern half of the country is at peace and on the way to reconstruction, with schools and hospitals and so on being built. In the south there is still conflict, but even there there has been some improvement in conditions.

It ain't all rosy yet, but its a hell of a lot better. Afghanistan is not Iraq, it is a NATO not a purely US/UK project. I am afraid too many Canadians, distressed by our casualties there, are getting the two confused. I'm sure that many Americans are too; I hope when the inevitable pull-out from Iraq happens, Afghanistan is not deserted at the same time.

They even made a movie about one: North Country. It perhaps explains why there aren't more women underground.

Back when I was in university in the 80s, I worked summers in a copper mine. And even way back then, there were women underground. Not many miners, technically speaking, that job requires a lot of upper body strength. But a few muckers, a significant number of electricians & other technicians, and probably a majority of the hoist operators (a demanding and high-skill job).