I can't resist a good story....

Bou took a look at the number of condoms delivered to Antarctica and she did the math....

The just shipped 16500 condoms for the US Antartic base, for 125 scientists and staff. Its supposed to be a year’s supply.

If you assume everyone is acting responsibly and using birth control and that 120 of the 125 pair up, that’s 60 couples. That’s assuming there is a 50/50 split male to female ratio. And if you assume 10% of the women are on the pill… then you get 54 couples that need condoms.

Divided into 16500… that’s 305 per couple to last 365 days. I’m sorry, but I think that’s not enough. Everyone is different, but there are going to be twice a day couples and once a day couples, and then of course, crazy all the time couples.

Then again, eh, assume that of the 125, you truly only have 25 couples whiling away the hours getting to know each other in the Biblical sense and assuming 10% of the women on the pill… leaving 23 couples, that’s now 717 condoms per couple and that seems… more likely.

Heh.

Reminds me of my time at Caltech. Condoms were (and are) freely available on campus. You could get them from the Health Center, from a house Health Advocate, or often from a basket in any bathroom, men's, women's, or unisex.

When I lived in Avery House, our Health Ad used to put all of the condoms out in the bathrooms. She would split a box of 1000 condoms between 8 bathrooms. That's 125 condoms per bathroom, folks. For about 12 residents per bathroom. And they would be gone in 48 hours. Every week she would replace them, and every week, they would be gone.

Caltech, as you know, has a ratio of 3 guys for every girl enrolled. The ratio at Avery house was even higher, more like 6:1. And NONE of these dudes had a girlfriend. So we always wondered what they were doing with the condoms. Stocking up? Balloons? We never found out, but the condoms always disappeared. They didn't even show up on Ditch Day....