NEW YORK (Reuters) - Some U.S. motorists sick of getting clobbered at the pump seem willing to do just about anything for free fuel, from giving up the right to name their children to stealing from day-care centers to donating blood.

In Orlando, Florida, David Partin pledged to name his son after local radio hosts to win a $100 (50 pound) gas card as part of a contest. Partin will collect the card in December, when his son is born, if he can produce a birth certificate proving the baby is named Dixon Willoughby Partin, after the hosts.

“(His wife said) this is his problem to explain when the child is older,” Greg Stevens, WHTQ-FM program director told Reuters.

At the Shady Lady Ranch brothel in Beatty, Nevada, clients who spend $300 or more this month will receive $50 gas vouchers as part of a promotion to beat the summer slump in business.

“It’s rocking along. We’re doing quite well. June and July historically are not big months,” said James Davis, who co-owns the ranch with his wife, Bobbi.

The first $1,000 in gas cards were given out within a week, he added.

In Mesquite, Texas, thieves drained $100 worth of gasoline from buses used by the Higher Ground Church day-care center and have hit four or five other church center fleets in the area.

“It was someone who was desperate,” said James Green, the church’s pastor. “All he had to do was come and ask us and we would have bought him a tank of gas.”

The American Red Cross, meanwhile, is running a summer raffle where blood donors are eligible to win a year’s supply of fuel.

At St. Ann’s Parish in West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, the Rev. Edward McDonagh has decided to institute a drawing for a $50 gasoline card at weekly mass.

The drawings are symbolic gestures and not intended to boost attendance, he said.

“When Jesus was at the wedding feast of Cana, the groom ran out of wine, he produced the wine for them,” he said. “In that spirit, we feel that this might be comparable.”

THURSDAY, July 3 (HealthDay News) — Frequent sexual intercourse may cut down on a man’s chances of developing erectile dysfunction, Finnish researchers report.

“This is the same as any other part of the body. It’s what we in vascular surgery refer to as the ‘use it or lose it’ concept,” said Dr. Hossein Sadeghi-Nejad, an associate professor of urology at UMDNJ New Jersey Medical School Hackensack University Medical Center. “Sexual activity will promote maintenance of normal erectile function down the line.”

The report was published in the July issue of The American Journal of Medicine.

In the study, led by Dr. Juha Koskimaki, from Tampere University Hospital’s Department of Urology, researchers collected data on 989 Finnish men aged 55 to 75 years old.

The researchers found that men who said they had sexual intercourse less than once a week had twice the risk of developing erectile dysfunction, compared with men reporting having sexual intercourse once a week.

Among men who had sexual intercourse less than once a week, there were 79 cases of erectile dysfunction per 1,000 men. That number dropped to 32 cases per 1,000 among men who said they had sexual intercourse once a week, and it dropped even further, to 16 per 1,000, among men who said they had sexual intercourse three or more times a week, the researchers reported.

The frequency of morning erections was not associated with the incidence of moderate erectile dysfunction, the researchers noted.

However, the development of complete erectile dysfunction could be predicted from the frequency of morning erections. Among men with less than one morning erection a week, the risk of developing erectile dysfunction was 2.5-fold greater than among men who had two to three morning erections per week.

“Regular intercourse has an important role in preserving erectile function among elderly men, whereas morning erection does not exert a similar effect,” Koskimaki said in a statement. “Continued sexual activity decreases the incidence of erectile dysfunction in direct proportion to coital frequency.”

Sadeghi-Nejad said there is a scientific basis for this finding, and it also has implications for rehabilitation of patients after prostate cancer treatment.

“What is very hot these days is what we can do to rehabilitate people who develop erection problems after prostate cancer surgery or radiation therapy,” Sadeghi-Nejad said. “Anything you can do to increase oxygenation in the penis will help get patients back to normal.”

If one can naturally engage in behaviors that increase blood flow to the penis, it will have a positive effect in preventing erectile dysfunction, Sadeghi-Nejad said.

Sadeghi-Nejad noted that the study only addressed intercourse, and not masturbation. “This is essentially the same concept,” Sadeghi-Nejad said. “Anything you can do to bring blood to the penis is beneficial,” he added.

More information
For more about sexual dysfunction, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

PARIS (AFP) - A speech-writer for France’s foreign minister has penned a literary, lustful and possibly lecherous “Guide to the Pretty Women of Paris” which blows a loud raspberry at political correctness.

“Just as every region has its gastronomy, every quartier has its feminine specialty,” writes Pierre-Louis Colin, a dapper 34-year-old who co-authored Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner’s most recent book.

“You do not find in Menilmontant the sublime legs you see at the Madeleine. But you do find perfectly shameless cleavages, radiant breasts often uncluttered by a bra,” he said in his own book, which was published last month.

Paris is the most visited capital in the world and people come here to see city’s magnificent women as much as they come to admire the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower, Colin told AFP.

He could find no guidebooks to the human wonders of Paris so he decided to produce his own. The result is the 190-page “Guide des jolies femmes de Paris,” which is more of a literary essay than a fact-packed guidebook.

Area by area, Colin notes the best observation posts — bars, supermarkets, parks, museums, metro trains — and the best times of day for the connoisseur to contemplate various Parisienne archetypes.

“Trendy youth,” characterized by the “generalization of the G-string and the near disappearance of the bra” is to be seen on rue Montorgueil, a pedestrian strip of cafes and upmarket food shops which the author hails as the “epicenter of the city’s erotic radiations.”

Luxury boutiques and elegant cafes terraces are the natural habitat of the leisured bourgeois, who is described as “the mother of all fantasies since the origins of literature”.

Women in the “saucy maturity” category, those aged between 40 and 60 whose appearance “bears witness to the meanders of an agitated or ambitious sex life which refuses to lay down its weapons,” are best observed in lingerie stores.

The author, a graduate of the elite Ecole Normale Superieure which has honed writers like Jean-Paul Sartre, sees his work as a “high mission” to counter the mood of a righteous America, but some extracts may raise eyebrows.

Colin regrets, for instance, it is no longer possible to loiter contemplatively outside high schools because “current legislation and a certain form of collective psychosis have created a climate of suspicion that makes every admirer of young girls a rapist of children”.

He also gives many tips such as where to position oneself so as to get an “unbeatable view” up women’s skirts as they climb a spiral staircase — singling out the Cafes Louis-Philippe in the fourth arrondissement, or district.

But it’s all in the best possible taste, insists Colin.

He rejected suggestions that an alternative title for his oeuvre might have been the “Voyeur’s Guide to the Pretty Women of Paris” — though concedes his girlfriend was at first perturbed by the idea of his book, but later came to like it.

The author points out that he has not included any suggestions on how to pick up women, nor provided the addresses of any of Paris’ numerous dens of iniquity.

“To contemplate is not to encounter,” he writes in his introduction. “Therein lies without doubt, the profound originality of the contemplator in these consumerist times: his aim is not possession.

“He is similar to those rare lovers of art who visit museums without feeling obliged to walk out loaded down with guidebooks or postcards,” wrote Colin.

During an interview in the Cafes de L’Esplanade — which the author said was of note more for its busty waitresses than for its sober clientele — Colin insisted his book was a celebration of women’s freedom.

“I oppose all those who want to restrict women — the priest, the man who pesters women, the censor,” he said.

He dismisses Anglo-Saxon political correctness and boldly states that the freedom to contemplate the beauty of women is a key part of French culture.

“In this troubled century, while from America come the echoes of another moral order, the responsibility of the contemplator is immense: in his respectful courtesy depends a part of the survival of our civilization of liberty, of gentleness, and of grace.

“May this guide contribute to the success of this high mission,” Colin wrote.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A Canadian man who claims he was discriminated against as a pagan who practices a form of sadomasochism will get to take his complaint to a human rights tribunal.

An appeals court rejected a bid by Vancouver police on Tuesday to block a hearing on whether Peter Hayes’ rights were violated when an officer refused to grant him the permit he needed to get a chauffeur’s job.

Hayes complained to British Columbia’s Human Rights Tribunal that he was discriminated against because he is a pagan who practices a “BDSM lifestyle” and deserves protection under the human rights code, based on sexual orientation.

BDSM refers to bondage, discipline and submission and sadism and masochism, according to the court documents.

Police went to the courts, arguing the tribunal and a lower court judge erred in agreeing to hear Hayes’ complaint because the laws designed to protect the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians did not extend to protecting types of sexual practices.

A B.C. Court of Appeal panel ruled unanimously that the police motion was premature since the tribunal’s hearing was to decide what, if any, sexual practices deserved legal protection, and even the tribunal’s chairwoman was unsure if the human rights code did that.

“How can the tribunal determine if BDSM falls within the meaning of ’sexual orientation’ if it does not have a full understanding of what BDSM means?” Justice Anne Rowles wrote for the three-judge panel.

PARIS (AFP) - Advice on how to score with the ladies would probably never include the strategy that works best for at least one species of male spider: playing dead.

Not all male nursery web spiders looking for a little arachnid sex adopt this technique, but those that do more than double their chances of hitting the jackpot, according to new study in Behavioral Ecology, reported Wednesday in the British magazine New Scientist.

In experiments designed by Trine Bilde of the University of Aaarhus in Denmark, researchers set up date-and-mate opportunities for Pisaura mirabilis, a species native to Europe.

All the males sought to attract partners by offering a gift of food, held in the mouth.

But the ones that lay flat and motionless — even if meant getting dragged about by a female that had latched onto the victuals — wound up in a much better position, as it were, to engage in sexual activity.

The hapless males that tried the direct approach wound up keeping the free meal but not getting what they were really after.

Males that played dead were also allowed to copulate longer than males that did not, ensuring more eggs could fertilized, the researchers reported.

Playing dead is a well-known defense mechanism in nature, but this is apparently the first time such behavior has been observed as a strategy for obtaining sexual favors.