Jockstrip: The World As We Know It

SURPRISE: MEN, WOMEN DIFFER IN ONLINE SEX HABITS

Men tend to surf sex-related Web sites for recreation, while women look for relationships, information and support.

That's according to a survey conducted by Al Cooper, director of the San Jose Marital and Sexuality Center in Santa Clara, Calif. He questioned 7,037 visitors to MSNBC's Web site about their sex habits online.

"It's just like offline," Cooper told USA Today. "Men pursue sex for a lot of different reasons, like recreation and relieving stress. Women are more focused on intimacy."

One key finding was that 60 percent of men say their primary reason for exploring sex-related sites is "distraction," compared with 37 percent of women. Also, the survey found that men are more likely to use sex-related Web sites to masturbate. About one in three men who engage in online sexual activity said they masturbate often or "all the time" while visiting the sites. Only about 10 percent of women answered the same way.

(Thanks to UPI's Joe Warminsky in Washington)

THINGS WE DON'T UNDERSTAND

The Pentagon's propaganda office is going out of business.

Well, okay, it was actually known as the "Office of Strategic Influence." On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced it was closing down after being so damaged by news reports that it couldn't function.

The office was conceived by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith in November as a place to counter Taliban propaganda. But as the office took shape, controversial possible missions leaked to the press, including a proposal that the office secretly plant false news stories in the foreign media -- provoking an outcry on opinion pages and in editorial cartoons.

Rumsfeld said the functions of the office -- deception of enemy forces and monitoring and countering propaganda, among them -- would be fulfilled by other offices already in existence.

NEWS OF OTHER LIFE FORMS

A cow on the lam from a Cincinnati area slaughterhouse has been corralled.

The free-range bovine -- dubbed Moosama bin Laden by a local radio personality -- was tranquilized late Monday after 12 days on the loose. She had escaped from Ken Meyer Meats in Camp Washington, Ohio, by jumping a six-foot fence and then hid out in Mount Storm Park.

"They certainly had a hard time finding it," Cincinnati Mayor Charlie Luken told ABC's "Good Morning America." "It eluded helicopters and police. Actually, we brought in a male cow -- I guess you call that a bull. ... Finally it just came out of the woods and into the stall they had set up for it.

"It's resting in an undisclosed location with the vice president," he quipped.

Actually, the cow has been taken to a farm in Miamitown. Luken wants to present the key to the city to the critter that inspired a spate of jokes, such as: "How many city folks does it take to pen a cow? All of 'em, it seemed."

TODAY'S SIGN THE WORLD IS ENDING

Texas Democrat gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez probably wishes he had taken one last look at a written appeal to Texas teachers asking for their support in the upcoming primary.

Saturday's edition of the Dallas Morning News reported the Texas Democrat's letter contained "enough errors to fill an English teacher's list of do's and don'ts -- a run-on sentence, a subject-verb agreement problem and a dangling modifier" along with several misspellings and punctuation errors.

Even more ironic is that the letter arrived during the high-stress period in which public school teachers and principals were busy preparing their students for the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, popularly known as the TAAS tests.

TAAS measures the statewide curriculum in reading and mathematics in grades 3 through 8 and the exit level; in writing at grades 4, 8, and the exit level; and in science and social studies at grade 8. Spanish-version TAAS tests are administered at grades 3 through 6. Satisfactory performance on the TAAS exit level tests is prerequisite to a high school diploma.

(From UPI's Capital Comment)

AND FINALLY, TODAY'S UPLIFTING STORY

Johnny Cash celebrated his 70th birthday Tuesday and the Man in Black says he isn't bowing out just yet.

Despite a string of recent ailments (he's been diagnosed with diabetic neuropathy), a near-death bout with pneumonia and more than half-a-dozen trips to the hospital since 1998, E! Online quotes the music legend saying he's feeling better, he's finishing work on another new album and he may even perform again.

"I've felt really good these last few months, better than I've felt in the last three years," he said, adding that he may want to perform again "on some limited basis" after he recently sang "The Ballad of Annie Palmer" at a banquet in Jamaica for the Horatio Alger Awards Committee.

"I think -- I hope and pray -- that all the pneumonia is behind me," Cash said. "It almost devastated me. Now I'm mending and gaining strength every day and feeling good."