The condom exhibition is organized in partnership with the makers of Trojan Brand Condoms one of the leading brands in the US.

Opening on February 4, 2010, this exhibition takes a fun, functional, and fundamental look at the history and progression of the condom from a single object to its role a multidisciplinary artifact:

Influencing everything from science to art to politics and religion, the condom, which has remained at the epicenter of debate since its inception, rose from its humble beginnings to become a barometer of morality and a savior in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The exhibition also includes the marriage of function and fashion with the inclusion of Adriana Bertini’s couture condom cocktail dress, made from 1200 hand dyed condoms and fashioned after the Valentino dresses of the 1960s, trendy and contemporary condoms from renowned designers such as Marc Jacobs, as well as “condiments,” functional salt and pepper shakers designed and molded after condoms.

Fortunately, the Museum lets us show some of their exhibition highlights already here and now:

Adriana Bertini’s Couture Condom Cocktail Dress
Made and images by Adriana Bertini.

Blossom by Randy Polumbo

Franco B’s resin condom sculpture
Photographed b Igor Khodzinskiy.

Cruel Condom
Belonging to the Museum of Sex collection. Design by Scott Paul.

So if you’re in New York from February 4, 2010, you’ll know what to do!

Sincere thanks to Jessica.

The iconic NYC Condom is going to change – again. Although this time it’s not going to be another major overhaul: The NYC Health Department wants to keep their rubbers interesting and asks New Yorks residents to design their own wrappers.

This is planned to be a limited edition that will replace parts of last years redesign made by Yves Béhar and his team. Their award winning design sure was one reason why the NYC Condom was picked up about 41 million times this year (from 2,200 venues ranging from hospitals and social service agencies to bars, clubs and coffee houses).

The new design will be unveiled in the fall of 2010. Read on to see how you could be the next NYC Condom designer.

Here’s what they say over at the NYC Condom homepage:

Whether you’re a famous artist or just a doodler, this is your chance to promote safer sex in New York City. We’re looking for designs that reflect the city’s diverse, distinctive culture while conveying the message that safer sex is better sex.

Any New York City resident, 17 or older, can submit one entry. The artwork must be original, must not be raunchy, and can’t include copyrighted or trademarked images (no Empire State Building motifs). With those exceptions, anything goes. But think fast – entries are due by midnight on January 22, 2010.

For your convenience I’m going to paste a few rules taken from their readme below:

What Should Your Artwork Be About?

We’re looking for designs that reflect New York City’s distinctive culture and style while also promoting safer sex. We welcome innovation but won’t accept explicit themes or images. All artwork must be original and must not include any copyrighted or trademarked images, such as the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.

What Size Should Your Artwork Be?

The winning image will have to fit on a surface just 2.3 inches (59 mm) square – too small an area for elaborate design schemes. Electronic entries should have a resolution of at least 300 dpi and an original size of at least 11.5 inches square. Hard copy entries should also be at least 11.5 inches square.

Should Your Artwork Include the NYC Condom Logo?

No, the Health Department may add the logo to the winning design at its discretion.

How Many Works of Art Can You Submit?

We can accept only one entry per person (and per email address).

Entries must be submitted after 12:01 a.m. on December 14, 2009 and before 11:59 p.m. on January 22, 2010. Please read the instructions carefully in order to make your participation perfect.

I just got an email from the maker of these clever viral condoms and so I’ve got some breaking news for you:

Cometh the Tiger Condom:

The Wrapper says Protect Your Wood and Approved for Swingers.

To see for yourself there’s now a dedicated page set up for the Tiger Condoms and while your at it, don’t forget to read the disclaimer:

Tiger condoms will not protect you from car accidents or Swedish super models. Any impression that Tiger Woods has endorsed or used this product with any of his transgressions is purely your own. This product has not been endorsed by Tiger Woods. Tiger Condoms are a creation of Practice Safe Policy. A portion of each sale will be donated to golf charities in the USA.

As you can learn on other sites 50 cent may have had similar plans. During an appearance on The George Lopez Show on TBS (December 14), the rapper revealed he is considering a line of condoms and may even add a “tiger” stripe to the packaging. His earlier plans of his own condom brand have been cancelled somewhere along the way.

Ever seen a green condom? Introducing: Luemmeltueten – the first completely climate neutral condoms. The German condom brand plans to achieve a net zero carbon footprint by compensating the CO₂ released in the condoms’ production process.

Here’s why and how: Luemmeltueten produces not only five million rubbers per year, but unfortunately also 400 tons of CO₂. Approximately half of these emissions are offset by reforesting 2200 m² in a German forest near the condom factory. In South India, where the rubber is harvested in a FairDeal Trading fashion, the plantation workers are given solar-powered cookers. Each cooker will compensate 500kg in 5 years. Furthermore, to exemplify the climate friendly philosophy, the Lebenslust company uses only green electricity, bicycle couriers (where possible) and energy-saving lamps.

If every single one of the 8 to 10 billion condoms released around the world each year were produced under such ecologically worthwhile circumstances, approximately 800 000 tons of CO₂ could be compensated.

More details about the method and the product itself may be found on their site (in German).

Many African organizations who are struggling to provide education about condom use as the tidal wave of HIV/AIDS on that continent just gets bigger, watched the American presidential race with great interest, all believing that Obama could be a real god-send in helping overturn some of the Bush policies on STD and birth control prevention.

Some of those policies have been cited for hindering STD prevention efforts, especially when it comes to condom education, which has led America’s national health watchdog, the Centers for Disease Control, to pull some of its condom information from its Web site. The director of the International Planned Parenthood Federation says “The U.S. administration has certainly succeeded in demonizing condoms rather than showing that they can be part of prevention of both unplanned pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections.”

Under Bush, restrictions were placed on both national and international AIDS funding; any national or international agency funded or in need of funding from the US were sanctioned if they dared whisper the word abortion.

Abstinence-only education, which has not worked and has hampered family planning and STD prevention efforts, was the only education the current president would hear of. Not so Obama’s. Or as his aid put it: “We have been going in the wrong direction, and we need to turn it around and be promoting prevention and family planning services and strengthening public health.”

Although he has not come right out and stated exactly what he will do differently, to include about condom education, it is clear that Obama’s policies, as his representatives put it, will “reflect what works.” But with all the excitement about the coming changes, those same African agency leaders are not completely convinced that changes in policy will overcome all the problems they face in trying to educate their nations’ populations, especially given all the financial disasters awaiting America’s new president.

During history’s headiest, and certainly most expensive, political campaign, Republican candidate John McCain was asked “Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?” McCain‘s answer to the reporter who asked the question? After a long pause, all he could come up with was “You’ve stumped me.”

This led the most important pro-birth control organization in the US to hand out specially made condoms to political delegates, with a label that read “Protect yourself from John McCain”.

We will never know if perhaps those Humble Little Condoms did help get Barrack Obama elected, but the fact that he is being touted as  America’s “First African American” president does beg the question, “Is he in tune to his own community when it comes to condom use?” or more accurately, lack of condom use?
If not, he needs to be.

American blacks have the highest rate of STDs, to include HIV/AIDS, of any group in the US or any other Western nation for that matter, and the numbers just keep getting worse.   Just days before the election, the Center for Disease Control announced that 48% of black girls between the ages of 14-19 have an STD; black women suffer the highest rate of syphilis, gonorrhea, and HIV of any group; about 70% of all American women who suffer from HIV/AIDS are black; AIDS is amongst the top three leading causes of death for black women.

Black men suffer even higher numbers: AIDS has doubled in that population in the 2000s; 2/3 of the black men who die while in prison suffered from HIV; from just 2006 to 2007, STD rates went up over 12% in black men. In other words, African Americans make up 12% of the US population, but they represent 50% of all AIDS cases in the US.

But what is a new president to do? Perhaps he should ask Pastor W. James Favorite, a courageous preacher whose church was built right after the American Civil War by freed slaves for freed slaves, a fact he believes makes it a very special place for his particular ministry.  Those slaves believed they could, with God’s help, bring themselves out of slavery, and into the mainstream, enjoying the same rights and priveleges as whites. That, sadly, has not always been the case.

Favorite serves one of the many many poor black communities in the American South – he is in Tampa, Florida, where 1 in every 85 residents is HIV positive – and besides trying to get his own flock to understand the need to practice safe sex, he preaches to his own, going place-to-place to try to get his fellow pastors to take their heads out of the sexual sand.  At one such meeting, he realized just how hard that was going to be, given he could not even get most of them to say the word ‘condom.’

As Favorite addressed a group of black pastors from around his state, he went where angels fear to tread, telling them that they had all taken the naive view that:

“It’s not here, not in our churches.”  But, “Then we found members of our congregations dying.  We didn’t even want to shake their hands.“

So what did Favorite propose?

“How do we bring into our teaching the use of condoms?  We believe abstinence is the answer, but there are those who will not listen.  We have to tell them that the least they can do is use a condom.”

The response from these erstwhile gentlemen?

Silence was the stern reply.

But why, when they know that in their pews every Sunday sit parishioners, young and old, suffering from HIV/AIDs, are these men so reluctant to follow Favorite’s example of speaking plainly to his flock, quite literally to save their lives?  Because they believe that the Bible says it all.  Don’t do it unless you are married!

But Favorite is doing his best to teach his fellow preachers that the message is not getting through and that they are not serving their God as he would intend until they did everything they could to help make African Americans healthy again.

Hopefully Barack Obama will show the same courage when it comes to sex education, not just for blacks, but for all Americans, instead of following in other American presidents’ painful footsteps: when AIDS reached America’s shores, Ronald Reagan did everything he could to prevent the message of prevention from reaching Americans.  Both Presidents Bush have pathetic records in that regard.

But, given the sad state of black health in that country, along with the connections the new president holds with the center of the AIDS epidemic – Africa – we can only suppose that Obama is a big fan of condoms and his policies will reflect that “fact.”

Let’s have a closer look at what the designer himself has to say about his gadget (which was inspired by the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy):

You guys must have heard about panic buttons, right? You´re supposed to hit them when you just don´t know what to do! In this particular case, I designed a Don´t Panic button, for those moments you need someone to tell you to relax and do the right thing. This condom dispenser is ideal to put beside the bed, in the bathroom or even inside the car. Just remember to do the right thing! Don´t panic! Go get yourself a condom and be happy!

The dispenser certainly isn’t the most discreet object you will own, but that’s exactly why it might work, right?

Via Designspotter.com.

But the possibilities for condom use seem to be endless. Condoms can be used for the production of action movies too (and apparently they are used often and widely).

So what exactly are they used for in action movies? The condoms are filled with artificial blood and have tiny crackers attached to them through invisible wires for those scenes in which the actors get shot or hurt and the blood’s supposed to shed.

The crackers react to the remote control button that are operated by the action director’s assistants that follow the take from the periphery and cause the condom to tear and spill the blood.

Mohan Baggad, who began his career as Devgan’s assistant and later became an independent action director, said: “Though the technology now used in Bollywood is far improved from what it was a decade ago, make-shift devices innovated by action directors still come in handy while shooting fights and other thriller scenes. [...] The use of condoms in such scenes is a tested practice. Here again, only an expert cinematographer and editor can make such scenes look real on the screen.”

What I thought was rather interesting noting is that “most Bollywood action coordinators prefer imported condoms because they do not get accidentally ruptured when the individual being shot at has to jump, tumble or roll down as the situation demands.”

I have also recently discovered an interesting (or disgusting I haven’t made up my mind yet) condom that does a similar thing – it simulates virginity. Enough said, who’s interested click on the picture.

Via [HindustanTimes/Burman]

You will find that in most instances players bring a box of condoms to a match and share them among teammates for the same purpose.

The reason for this is simple. Many of the Cape Town township players couldn’t afford better quality football socks that would stay up during the matches. Often condoms can be obtained free which is an added bonus.

Via iol/Mnyakama

I’m just picking up a discussion from “thedebateclub” because I think it is an interesting approach. The basic idea goes like this:

Who doesn’t enjoy an ice cold bottle of Coca-Cola? Not many. Especially, the people of Africa, where 44 million bottles are sold, every single day. 44m x 365 days a year = roughly 16 billion bottles of the brown, fizzy stuff.

So how about attaching a condom to Coke cans? It’s not unlike the recent Finnish Longdrink with a condom. I’d just like to add some thoughts to the conversation here, please feel free to join in.

• This should be integrated into a campaign to actually teach people the use of condoms
• Governments and other organisations should join in to make this successful
• Heat and cold can damage condoms which makes this a difficult task in Africa with drinks
• The trust in Coke is where I see the main chances of this project

Picture credits Meanest Indian

Well why not I think it’s worth a try!

Two condoms of the 19th century have been found at the library of Salamanca Universtity, Spain. The condoms made of pig intestines were hiding out in a medicine schoolbook of the 16th century and found only because of the recent reorganisation of the historic part of the library, Spanish newspaper EL PAÍS reports. The condoms, both in perfect condition, can be seen in a university showcase (at least one of them).

Via [EL PAÍS/EFE]