Men think about sex every 7.3 seconds, new measurements reveal

New research into the frequency with which sex crosses men's minds has revealed this week that scientists' previous estimate was somewhat inaccurate.

The fact that "men think about sex every seven seconds" has been so widely established and generally accepted by the scientific community for so long, that it has become a widespread truism whose empirical origins are often unknown by those repeating it as an interesting tidbit of trivia. But data gathered recently in experiments performed at Maudlin College, Oxbridge, have refined results that had been universally considered factually solid.

"This has profound implications in many fields of science," said Professor Fringlebert Zuppp, chief researcher on the project for the whole of its eight-month duration. "It may seem like a minor adjustment to a well understood natural law, but it goes to show that even the most solid, firm, pert scientific theory can be overturned or altered by the objective assessment of new tits."

"Evidence," Professor Zuppp added, looking slightly flustered. "I meant to say evidence. Not tits. Sorry. Mind wandering a little."

As these results are replicated and verified in other labs across the world, scientists are beginning to speculate on what other facts often taken for granted may turn out to be less certain than was once thought. Already a growing campaign exists for the "five-second law", regarding the time-frame in which it is considered safe to pick up food that has been dropped on the floor, to be replaced by the "four-point-three-seconds law" in the interests of public health.

Parents' fury at sex lessons

Parents of school-age children across the country are up in arms at government plans to bring the physical act of hot, sweaty love to classrooms in the new school year.

The matter of sex education has long been a contentious issue, with some countries adopting a policy of teaching "abstinence only". This approach has been widely criticised, largely due to the substantial and constantly increasing body of evidence that it utterly fails to achieve anything beneficial. Now, some school districts are courting controversy at the other extreme end of the scale, introducing regular study of hardcore pornography to the weekly timetable.

Many conservative commentators are up in arms about this development, claiming that it's just what they've been predicting for years. But teachers involved in the trial schemes where these lessons are being rolled out deny that what they're doing is detrimental to society, or an erosion of moral values. Patrichard Bilifuster, headteacher at Aaron Burr elementary school in Miami, Florida, insists that he's just trying to provide a balanced, well rounded education.

"Sex is an integral part of every human being's life," said Bilifuster recently, "and equipping children with some basic information about it will give them a much better chance of being able to approach it safely and maturely when it becomes a relevant part of their own lives. And a vital part of so equipping them is to provide vivid, graphic, and perhaps even emotionally scarring demonstrations of the many and varied forms in which this most intimate of acts can be enjoyed. This will obviously include group discussion, video presentations, and guest performers being regularly present in the classroom environment, to provide a more 'hands-on' experience."

"Oh, and we're merging sex education with our evil communist promotion of the gay agenda," he added, "which obviously requires explicit viewing and rigidly enforced tolerance of hot man-on-man action for all students above the fourth grade."

Critics of this new scheme have suggested that, rather than anything so extreme as supplying pornography in classrooms, liberal plans for sex education have always involved providing a forum for mature and informed discussion, both about the biology of sexual reproduction and the social aspects of romantic relationships, at a level of depth and openness appropriate to the ages of the particular students. Although this idea still has some support, it's currently losing ground to the "just let them watch some fucking and they'll figure it out" educational model.