Lesson in Biochemistry

Two new additions to the periodic table of elements.

Element Name: WOMAN
Symbol: WO
Atomic Weight: (don't even go there!)

Physical properties: Generally round in form. Boils at nothing and may freeze any time. Melts whenever treated properly. Very bitter if not used well.

Chemical properties: Very active. Highly unstable. Possesses strong affinity to gold, silver, platinum, and precious stones. Violent when left alone. Able to absorb great amounts of exotic food. Turns slightly green when placed next to a better specimen.

Usage: Highly ornamental. An extremely good catalyst for dispersion of wealth. Probably the most powerful income reducing agent known.

Caution: Highly explosive in inexperienced hands.

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Element Name: MAN
Symbol: XY
Atomic Weight: (180 +/- 50)

Physical properties: Solid at room temperature, but gets bent out of shape easily. Fairly dense and sometimes flaky. Difficult to find a pure sample. Due to rust, aging samples are unable to conduct electricity as easily as young samples.

Chemical properties: Attempts to bond with WO any chance it can get. Also tends to form strong bonds with itself. Becomes explosive when mixed with Kd (Element: Child) for prolonged period of time. Neutralize by saturating with alcohol.

Usage: None known. Possibly good methane source. Good samples are able to produce large quantities on command.

Caution: In the absence of WO, this element rapidly decomposes and begins to smell.

Is Love a
Chemical Reaction?

I can remember with great clarity the first time I noticed a girl. I was fourteen years old and her name was Karen Hutchens. The puppy love of a raw adolescent boy is a powerful force, and gave me no peace that year. I used to bicycle past her house, over a mile from mine, simply on the off chance she would see me. But she never did. I didn't exist for her, all that long year. And I couldn't do anything about it. I was a helpless prisoner of the awkwardness of youth. What I desperately needed, what I couldn't figure out, was a way to get her attention.

The following year, in my ninth grade biology book, I stumbled across what seemed like the answer to my problem. Biology is like that, full of unexpected surprises. I was reading about moths. Imagine for a moment you were a moth, eager for a sexual escapade -- how do you get the attention of a partner? The nearest moth is likely thousands of meters away, so yelling isn't going to get it done. Nor can they see you -- moths fly at night, and do not glow in the dark like fireflies. As I began to fully appreciate the moth's quandary, I couldn't help feel a kinship. I knew, that year my childhood ended, just how the moth felt.

But moths make little moths all the time, so clearly they have solved the problem of getting each other's attention. How do they do it? It turns out the female moth secretes a chemical, called a pheromone, that is a powerful sex attractant (in moths its the female that makes the first move). This stuff is incredibly powerful. A male responds to concentrations as low as one molecule per 100,000,000,000,000,000 molecules of air. When a lusty female releases a tiny dab of the stuff into the air, about one hundredth of a microgram, it is carried away by the wind and will get the attention of a male 4000 meters downwind. That's two and a half MILES! Any male moth that gets a whiff flies upwind towards higher concentrations of the pheromone, ever closer to the female, until the lovers meet. Boy, was this ever what I was looking for!

That was 43 years ago, and I've never gotten over my interest in pheromones.

However, humans are not moths, and for me age not chemistry solved the riddle of how to attract the attention of females. But over the years I have wondered: Do humans have sex pheromones? There is an abundance of anecdote, but no clear experimental evidence, that human body odors affect sexual behavior. Musk-smelling compounds are particularly notorious. The musky synthetic perfume exaltolide15-pentadecanolide, for example, is perceived clearly only by sexually mature women, and their sensitivity is heightened at ovulation. Could there have been an ancestral musk-like male sex pheromone that stimulated sexually receptive women?

Something is definitely going on. There is clear evidence that sweat and vaginal secretions affect other people's sexual physiology, if not their behavior, even when the odors cannot be consciously smelled. Three cases in point: 1. The so-called dormitory effect. There is a strong tendency for the menstrual cycles of female roommates to synchronize. Apparently a woman's sweat influences the timing of other women's cycles. 2. Men's beards grow significantly faster in the presence of women than in all-male settings. 3. The presence of men seems to influence the timing of female ovulation.

The possibility of attracting members of the opposite sex with body odor (or the lack of it) is of course hardly a novel idea. The whole deodorant and perfume industry depends on this hope. Perfume as well as candy and flowers will continue to grace many a man's attempt to attract his chosen female's interest.

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Take this Scientific
Quiz to Determine your...

"Guyness Quotient"

1. Alien beings from a highly advanced society visit the Earth, and you are the first human they encounter. As a token of intergalactic friendship, they present you with a small but incredibly sophisticated device that is capable of curing all disease, providing an infinite supply of clean energy, wiping out hunger and poverty, and permanently eliminating oppression and violence all over the entire Earth. You decide to:

a. Present it to the President of the United States.

b. Present it to the Secretary General of the United Nations.

c. Take it apart.

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2. As you grow older, what lost quality of your youthful life to you miss the most?

a. Innocence.

b. Idealism.

c. Cherry bombs.

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3. When is it okay to kiss another male?

a. When you wish to display simple and pure affection without regard for narrow conventions.

b. When he is the Pope. (Not on the lips.)

c. When he is your brother and you are Al Pacino and this is the only really sportsmanlike way to let him know that, for business reasons, you have to have him killed.

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4. What about hugging another male?

a. If he's your father and at least one of you has a fatal disease.

b. If you're performing the Heimlich maneuver. (And even in this case, you should repeatedly shout: "I am just dislodging food trapped in this male's trachea!")

c. If you're a professional baseball player and a teammate hits a home run to win the World Series, you may hug him provided that (1) He is legally within the base-path, (2) Both of you are wearing protective gear, and (3) You also pound him fraternally with your fist hard enough to cause fractures.

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5. In your opinion, the ideal pet is:

a. A cat.

b. A dog.

c. A dog that eats cats.

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6. You have been seeing a woman for several years. She's attractive and intelligent and you always enjoy being with her. One leisurely Sunday afternoon the two of you are taking it easy -- you're watching a football game; she's reading the papers -- when she suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, tells you she thinks she really loves you, but she can no longer bear the uncertainty of not knowing where the relationship is going. She says she's not asking whether you want to get married; only whether you believe that you have some kind of future together. What do you say?

a. That you sincerely believe the two of you do have a future, but you don't want to rush it.

b. That although you also have strong feelings for her, you cannot honestly say that you'll be ready anytime soon to make a lasting commitment, and you don't want to hurt her by holding out false hopes.

c. That you cannot believe the Broncos called a draw play on third and seventeen.

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7. Okay, so you have decided that you truly love a woman and you want to spend the rest of your life with her -- sharing the joys and the sorrows, the triumphs and the tragedies, and all the adventures and opportunities that the world has to offer, come what may. How do you tell her?

a. You take her to a nice restaurant and tell her after dinner.

b. You take her for a walk on a moonlit beach, and you say her name, and when she turns to you, with the sea breeze blowing her hair and the stars in her eyes, you tell her.

c. Tell her what?

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8. One weekday morning your wife wakes up feeling ill and asks you to get your three children ready for school. Your first question to her is:

a. "Do they need to eat or anything?"

b. "They're in school already?"

c. "There are THREE of them?"

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9. When is it okay to throw away a set of veteran underwear?

a. When it has turned the color of a dead whale and developed new holes so large that you're not sure which ones were originally intended for your legs.

b. When it is down to eight loosely connected underwear molecules and has to be handled with tweezers.

c. It is never okay to throw away veteran underwear. A real guy checks the garbage regularly, in case somebody -- and we are not naming names, but this would be his wife -- is quietly trying to discard his underwear.

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10. What, in your opinion, is the most reasonable explanation for the fact that Moses led the Israelites all over the place for forty years before they finally got to the Promised Land?

a. He wanted them to really appreciate the Promised Land when they finally got there.

b. He was being tested.

c. He refused to ask directions.

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11. What is the human race's single greatest achievement?

a. Democracy.

b. Religion.

c. Remote control.

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How to score:

Give yourself one point for every time you picked answer "c." A real guy would score at least 10 on this test. In fact, a real guy would score at least 15, because he would have given himself a handicap.

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