Feel the love

C'mon, baby. You know the New York Times doesn't love you like I do. She's such a tease, baby. Come on over here, I'll give you what you want.

The New York Times has reported that

After asking nearly 2,000 people why they’d had sex, the researchers have assembled and categorized a total of 237 reasons...

...why people have sex.

OK, now that you're done snickering and muttering "People get paid for this?" and so forth: Drs. Cindy Meston and David Buss have an article in this month's Archives of Sexual Behavior. The Times gleefully picks out some of the funnier--or perhaps more pathetic--ones, like "It seemed like good exercise" and "Someone dared me". But do they give you the complete list of all 237 reasons? No, of course not.

But I love you more. And I have access to Springer journals. And thus, until someone contacts me and tells me that posting data is a violation of copyright, I give you, in the presumably randomly assigned numerical order used in the study, the 237 Reasons People Have Sex. ( Cut for length. Did I mention it's 237 reasons? )

And now you know. (If you want more information--how men vs. women rated the various responses, say--you know where to find the article. Volume 36, Number 4, August 2007, pages 477-507. You can't miss it.)

And if you think that, you've got another...

Blessings upon Tish and Carolyn, who arrived on our doorstep last night bearing Indian food, so that Michelle and I need neither cook nor utterly despair. It was a nice break from the CD-packing tedium.

I alos provided a source of inadvertant amusement when I said, "And if you think that, you've got another think coming." They alternated staring at me and laughing, while I said, "What? Another think! Like, thought, only...it can't be another thing; that doesn't make sense! What does that even mean?" My wife, bless her soul, tried to explain to me that the other thing that's coming to you is a punch in the face.

Ladies and gentlemen, the alt.usage.english FAQ:

"If you think that, you have another think coming" means "You are mistaken and will soon have to alter your opinion". This is now
sometimes heard with "thing" in place of "think", but "think" is the older version. Eric Partridge, in A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, gives the phrase as "you have another guess coming", "US: since the 1920s, if not a decade or two earlier". Clearly "think" is closer to "guess" than "thing" is. The OED gives a citation with "think" from 1937, and no evidence for "thing". Merriam-Webster Editorial Department writes: "When an informal poll was conducted here at Merriam-Webster, about 60% of our editors favored 'thing' over 'think,' a result that runs counter to our written evidence."

.See also this page and this page.

Tish, Carolyn, and dearest Michelle: enjoy your other think.