sciam blogs tend to be a little less than awesome... one of the problems i have with this piece:
" If it were true, we would expect to see scrotal testicles becoming increasingly elaborate and dangly over the course of evolution, not to mention women should display a preference for males toting around the most ostentatious scrotal baggage. “With the possible exception of colored male scrota among a few species of primates,” write Gallup and his colleagues, 'there is little evidence that this has been the case.' "
Clearly this refers to us chaps having scrota that we could either puff up like a balloon or flatten out to wave around like a fan, or even change color (like so many of the mating displays of the wild). However, the author fails to recall the time of Shakespeare (and, in some cultures, still today), in which men would wear a codpiece to promote their wares:
(interestingly, Codpiece is from the middle english 'cod' which means, scrotum)
I bring this up not to be pedantic, but because it's important to say what we mean. In this instance, the author's language suggests he isn't aware of the codpiece and, well, for scientific american - this feels like poor journalism. Better to say what you actually meant, if writing for the sake of oratory confuses the intent.
" If it were true, we would expect to see scrotal testicles becoming increasingly elaborate and dangly over the course of evolution, not to mention women should display a preference for males toting around the most ostentatious scrotal baggage. “With the possible exception of colored male scrota among a few species of primates,” write Gallup and his colleagues, 'there is little evidence that this has been the case.' "
Clearly this refers to us chaps having scrota that we could either puff up like a balloon or flatten out to wave around like a fan, or even change color (like so many of the mating displays of the wild). However, the author fails to recall the time of Shakespeare (and, in some cultures, still today), in which men would wear a codpiece to promote their wares:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codpiece
(interestingly, Codpiece is from the middle english 'cod' which means, scrotum)
I bring this up not to be pedantic, but because it's important to say what we mean. In this instance, the author's language suggests he isn't aware of the codpiece and, well, for scientific american - this feels like poor journalism. Better to say what you actually meant, if writing for the sake of oratory confuses the intent.