Hi everyone!
I'm back from visiting my boyfriend for the long weekend, and I think
I'll sit down and answer all of my accumulated Arachne email now.
It's a great thing to do while waiting for my Matlab program to finish
running and tell me what silly programming error I've made this time...

> >True, there doesn't seem to be, although I always thought that was just
> >because I've never dealt with sex in Polish.
> 
> Possibly a vicious circle: there's no "ordinary" language to talk about 
> it, because nobody talks about it?

I was assuming Polish people having sex with other Polish people (which
I never ended up doing) do talk about it, although I might be wrong <g>. 

> >(of course the idea of using condoms wasn't even mentioned, since the
> >Caltholic Church doesn't allow them, for no reason that I ever managed
> >to understand).
> 
> The first and foremost reason for having sex is procreation, not 
> pleasure; pleasure is icing on the cake, and not strictly necessary. By 
> using a condom, you turn that principle upside down. 

But then why is "contraception" by charting your cycle and only having
sex during non-fertile days acceptable?  

> Then, too, the 
> Catholic Church is ruled by men, and it's men who object the most to 
> using condoms, so, who knows what the real reason is :)

I think the assumption is that the men who rule the Catholic Church
don't have sex, with or without condoms... <g>

> >I don't know anything about Ann Landers either.
> 
> Too late now; she'd dead and burried. But she used to have a syndicated 
> advice column, which used to be published in half the newspapers in the 
> US. The other half of the newspapers published the advice column 
> wrtitten by her twin sister (Amy van Buren? The Washington Post had Ann 
> Landers, so her name is more familiar to me). I used to love Ann 
> Landers when I first came here; her replies to all sorts of questions 
> (some totally bizarre) was so no-nonsense and straightforward... 
> Reading the column gave me many a chuckle (as well as some insight into 
> what "American society at large" was like).

Sounds interesting...  I need insight into American society.  Especially
since Caltech has very little in common with the rest of it, it seems. 

> >In the US I get in lots of conversations I'm completely lost in...  
> >Tamara, does this ever go away?
> 
> No, not really. 

Ouch.  

> Plus, my asking a question about things 
> which are "natural" to every born-and-bread American but "obscure and 
> esoteric" to me, is likely to make someone's day, providing the 
> explanation, so, why not? 

Yep, that works well.

Weronika
(In Caltech, Pasadena, USA, once again unbearably hot from my Polish
point of view)

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