22 June roundup

• Forget abstinence only:more sex is safer sex.
• Speaking of sex, Pisani's book The Wisdom of Whores has a lesson for social science: "I had the impression from the qualitative research...that waria were turning dozens of tricks a week, but [a quantitative] study showed they averaged only three. And since that figure came from 250 waria selected at random as the manual requires, it was certainly more accurate than the qualitative research..." The problem? Systematically bad sampling: "a waria who is hanging around on a street corner to be interviewed by a research team is a waria who is not with a client. 'You are talking to all the dogs, obviously.'"
  
• Blowing out the birthday candles just got awesomer. [via]
• Philosophy majors are on the rise. Pay, not so much. Why, then? Well, “That whole deep existential torment.... It’s good for getting girlfriends.”