[Rhodes22-list] Help Me I'm Bored and Other News

Thu May 19 16:08:30 EDT 2005

After two weeks of Mr. Mom I can now quote any line
and sing any song from Barney or Bob-the-Builder
tapes, can recite most children's books less than 16
pages by heart, and have read every major newspaper
during nap time five times.  How mothers do this
full-time is way beyond me.  Anyway, here's the
results of news searches beyond the headlines.  Brad

Joke-telling genitals don't get free-speech protection

BY DAWSON BELL 
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER 

May 12, 2005

A penis that tells jokes on late night public access
television may be expressive of something. But it is
not the kind of free expression protected by the First
Amendment, the Michigan Court of Appeals has decided,
confirming the indecent exposure conviction of the
show's producer and host.

Timothy Huffman, 47, who lives north of Grand Rapids,
was convicted in Kent County after the penis episode
aired twice in spring 2000 on the Grand Rapids public
access cable channel GRTV.

In affirming the conviction in an opinion released
Wednesday, the appeals court said any "incidental
restriction" on the First Amendment is "no greater
than is essential to the furtherance of the
governmental interest in promoting public morality by
prohibiting public nudity."

Huffman, whose defense was assisted by the American
Civil Liberties Union, claimed the three-minute
segment, "Dick Smart," was an expression of free
speech and not obscene.

Reached at his home Wednesday, Huffman said he is the
victim of "a relentless prosecutor."

"I'm truly trying to stand up for the constitution.
It's a matter of principle," he said.

Huffman, an unemployed musician-cook who is the father
of five children, said he'd been targeted for
prosecution because he has a criminal record and
lacked the resources to defend himself.

"We asked them in court, 'Why don't you prosecute
'Schindler's List'? It has nudity,' " Huffman said.
"And they said to me, 'You're no Steven Spielberg.' 

"I'm the low-life scapegoat that they can say, 'Look.
This is what happens when you put this stuff on Grand
Rapids TV.' "

Kent County Assistant Prosecutor Tim McMorrow said
Huffman is not being singled out, nor was he charged
for expressing himself.

"This is really not a First Amendment case," he said.
"The First Amendment protects his right to an opinion,
not the right to appear naked on TV."

Huffman was sentenced and served one day in jail, one
year of probation and was ordered to pay $1,035 in
fines and court costs.

He said he continues to produce the TV show "Tim's
Area of Control" on GRTV and a two-hour program that
airs in the wee hours of Saturday morning. Huffman
said he mostly sticks to adult humor and music.

The offensive-talking penis did a form of Rodney
Dangerfield-esque comedy. ("Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in
the Army, ya know. I didn't do much, ya know what I
mean? I just hung around.")

Huffman said he and the station's then-supervisors
believed the program was well within the bounds of
free speech protection.

He said he also hoped it would bring in a wider
audience: "You need to have something that gets people
to stop changing channels," he said. "I thought it
would be good exposure... pardon the pun."

Huffman said he would seek an appeal to the Michigan
Supreme Court.

In the meantime, he said he also will be going to jail
on another conviction, also for indecent exposure,
that stemmed from a dispute with a neighbor. Huffman
said he believed the latest charge was unjust. But,
unlike the talking penis, it's not a free-speech case.

Contact DAWSON BELL at 313-222-6604 or
dbell at freepress.com.

------------------------
  Well Endowed Fish Get the Girls
By Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 11 May 2005
09:08 am ET

You might think it's grand to be a well endowed fish.
After all, some female fish prefer mates with larger
sex organs, a new study finds. 

But the guys' prowess has a price. 

The studs with larger gonopodia, which is what
scientists call male fish sex organs, can't swim as
fast as their less impressive counterparts, so they're
more likely to get eaten by predators.

Bigger is better

The study was done on mosquitofish, which are like
guppies. They're only about an inch long. That's body
length. For the appendage, we're talking millimeters.
Nonetheless, biologist Brian Langerhans of Washington
University in St. Louis managed to put a tape on 350
male mosquitofish. Langerhans took pictures of the
gonopodia to measure their outlines. 

"The organ is quite obvious, even on such small fish,"
he told LiveScience.

Data in hand, Langerhans exposed about 50 females, one
at a time, to video images of a male of average
proportions at one end of an aquarium and an outsized
male at the other end.

"They chose the larger one over and over," Langerhans
said. "All females had the same preference."

Mosquitofish bear their young live, bypassing the
whole egg-in-the-gravel hassle. Among such livebearing
fish species, gonopodia range from less than 20
percent of a fish's body length to more than 70
percent. Don't ponder that too long, but trust that it
fits into an evolutionary puzzle that spawned this
study.

But first, what exactly is a gonopodium?

"In the sense that gonopodia are sperm-transfer
organs, they are analogous to a mammal penis,"
Langerhans explained. "They evolved independently, but
they serve the same copulatory function. The
gonopodium must be inserted into the female gonopore,
and then eject the sperm into the female body, in
order to achieve insemination."

Size disadvantage

The study involved mosquitofish from two places, one
where there were predators and one without. 

"A male with a larger gonopodium has a higher chance
of mating, but in a predator environment he has a
higher probability of dying," Langerhans said. 

So, for the sake of argument, let's say there are no
predators around. What does evolution do?

"We found that in predator-free environments gonopodia
size was larger, as there is minimal cost for large
genitalia in that environment," Langerhans said. For
the record, the sex organs of the predator-free
guppies were 15 percent longer, on average.

The results are detailed this week in the online issue
of the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences.

Why size matters

There's a larger point to this research. Male
genitalia, scientists tell us, come in many shapes and
sizes, with more variety than most body parts. These
differences are sometimes the best way to distinguish
one species from another.

For years, experts have figured that this remarkable
diversity in genitalia had to do with sperm
competition or some other after-the-act effect. The
new study shows that female fish, like women, make
some decisions beforehand -- conscious or not -- about
the physical dimensions of the fathers of their
children.

"Overwhelmingly that choice is made with size being
the prize," Langerhans and his colleague report on the
little guppies.

So perhaps, the logic goes, differences in male
genital shape between populations lead to
"reproductive incompatibility," which means two groups
would split and become separate species. Langerhans is
now looking into this possibility in other creatures.

He also plans to investigate whether a preference for
large gonopodia caused male swordtail fish to develop
their long, showy tails, which serve about as much
everyday purpose as large biceps on an insurance
salesman.

"Male ornamentation of the tail fin may have evolved
largely due to the pre-existing preference for an
elongate structure of a similar shape -- the
gonopodium," Langerhans said.

------------------And just when you thought it was
safe to go back in the water---------------

NORWEGIAN MAN ACCUSES DOLPHIN OF ATTEMPTED RAPE
Date: 17-Aug-99 10:28 pm 
Newspaper: Regular International

Comments
Oslo, Aug 17 Reuters - A Norwegian man is accusing a
dolphin of attempted rape. 

Norway's top-selling daily Verdens Gang on Tuesday
quoted the 28-year-old as saying that the dolphin
apparently mistook him for a female after swimming
alongside him in the sea off Farsund, south Norway,
earlier this month. 

The dolphin's penis got caught between the man's
swimming costume and his legs before the man, who
declined to give his name, managed to clamber back on
board his boat. 

``The dolphin shoved me forward two or three metres
before I got loose,'' he said. ``At first I thought it
was a fin...but dolphins don't have fins on their
underbellies.'' 

A friend of the man, a diving instructor who saw the
attack, told Verdens Gang that the dolphin ``tried it
on with me too, but I was wearing protection -- a
wetsuit''. 

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