November 2009

I have a friend who loves two things above all else in this world: Technology and debate. He and I have had several long discussions about the relative merits and flaws of sex with people vs. sex with various kinds of machines designed for masturbation purposes. He takes up the stance that not only is there nothing inherently creepy about carrying on a habit of sex with even the most elaborate toys, but that it's superior to classical skin-on-skin. Being the old-fashioned guy that I am, I'll do my best to defend sex with real people as the preferred choice. Like so many debates involving preference and subjective elements like emotions, I think that the answer is somewhere in the middle of the two extremes.

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Worm SexSex with a partner is better than sex alone. At least for worms and specifically in the context of Evolutionary Biology.  Going it alone (for lack of a better term) has failed to help worms in reproduction over the long term. 

Although worms have the ability to reproduce either “alone” or “with a partner”,  new research done at the University of Oregon suggests that the worm progeny from parents who self-fertilized themselves had shorter lifespans than the those  who were conceived by two parents.

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