Hasta La Gadget!

This year’s most interesting Oscar acceptance speeches ended with references to issues like suicide, wage equality and equal rights for women, racism and whistleblowers. The awardees who took that route produced some great lines. In accepting the award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for example, The Imitation Game‘s Graham Moore urged emerging gay youth to “stay weird, stay different.” In accepting with Ellen Goosenberg the award for Best Documentary Short, Crisis Hotline‘s Dana Perry declared that “we should talk about suicide out loud.”

If you understand Spanish, you’ll have caught a member of the screenplay team for Birdman thanking all of Argentina. Someone on that same team thanked a dog too, which raised them in my estimation. What another speech lacked in eloquence, it made up for with humanity. In accepting the award for Best Supporting Actor, Whiplash‘s J.K. Simmons enjoined us to call our parents. We’re not to text or email them. We’re to use our phones. (Sprint helpfully offered to cut our Verizon bills in half during the show.) Simmons seemed to realize after all this that he hadn’t yet thanked his own parents. Rather than calling, he went ahead and did it right there on the stage in front of America. Do as I say, not as I do.

Another noteworthy speech came when Selma‘s John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn accepted the award for Best Original Song. Perhaps there wasn’t time for this, but Lynn (whose stage name is Common) made a beautiful analogy between the change our country needs and the Edmund Pettus Bridge where Martin Luther King Jr. marched. Contrast Lynn’s comments with another speech that broke acceptance speech grammar. In accepting the award for Best Live Action Short, The Phone Call‘s Matt Kirkby and James Lucas tossed in Britishisms like “crikey” and “buggers.” But they rambled, trying too hard to seem nonchalant, and their speech was dull. I think most were.

Why are so many acceptance speeches so dull? As a linguist, I suspect it’s the grammar — the rules dictating their composition. That awardees are supposed to get to the stage and speechify in under a minute means that this grammar doesn’t have many moving parts. The vocabulary isn’t much to speak of either.

Thank everyone you can think of. Never mind using notes you’ve prepared ahead of time or memorizing your list. (In the case of the acting professionals, this seems astoundingly short-sighted. But it’s part of their speech act.) Stumble about instead, charmingly if you can manage it. Start with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, hit a few colleagues and supporters related to the film itself, and then move to your own family. If you’re a fast talker, are willing to jettison some individual thanks or brave enough to quarrel with the orchestra, comment on a social issue (ideally related to the film in some way).

In addition to the brave ones in the 2015 cohort who referred to social issues, I’d like to mention Reese Witherspoon’s 2006 acceptance of the Best Actress award for her work in Walk the Line. The speech was long and breathy, and it followed the grammar. But at the end, Witherspoon used a June Carter quote to great effect. Apparently, Carter responded to questions about how she was doing with “I’m just trying to matter.” Witherspoon applied that line to herself and wrapped up very graciously. Rhetorically, this speech moved around, and that made it interesting.

But short might be safer. Among my own favorite examples of extreme brevity is Alfred Hitchcock’s 1968 acceptance of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. He leans in to the mic after a very slow approach to it and intones “Thank you.” Then, foiling both his escort and the orchestra, he leans in to the mic again, adding “Very much indeed.”

Alas, most awardees follow the grammar. Still, I’d rather watch the Oscars than the Super Bowl. For me, the latter is hours of boredom interspersed with a few commercial highlights. The Oscars, on the other hand, is hours of entertainment interspersed with a few dull acceptance speeches.

Melanie says she loves her partner of four years and that she’s physically attracted to him. She just hasn’t wanted to have sex with him for the past three years.

“It’s very frustrating being somebody who used to be so interested in sex and having such a voracious sex life only to not,” Melanie, a 27-year-old student in Canada, said. “It affects my self-esteem. It affects my day-to-day existence.”

Melanie spoke candidly to The Huffington Post about intimate details of her personal life on the condition that her real name not be used.

This loss of desire came after taking antidepressants to treat a misdiagnosis of anxiety disorder and depression. As the medication took effect, Melanie’s libido dropped and her sex life pretty much ceased to exist. She eventually weaned herself off the medication with the help of her doctor, but her sex drive never returned.

Luckily, Melanie’s partner has been willing to work through this issue with her. They practice sensate therapy exercises that allow them to touch each other without the expectation of sex, and through therapy, Melanie has been able to understand that her difficulty with intimacy doesn’t mean she’s not “good enough” for her relationship.

All of this is progress, but Melanie wants her sex drive back.

She isn’t alone. In a 2008 study, 26.7 percent of premenopausal women and 52.4 percent of menopausal women in the U.S. reported low sexual desire. And currently, there’s no FDA-approved drug to treat low libido in either men or women.

It’s important to point out that disorders associated with low sex drive aren’t doling out pathology to preference. Not wanting to have sex is only a problem if you want to want it.

A proposed drug claims to offer women a solution, but it comes with controversy.

In 2014, there was a lot of press about flibanserin, a drug that was created to treat low libido in women. It’s supposed to target the neurotransmitters involved with low sex drive, rather than altering hormones (like testosterone therapy) or blood flow (like “female Viagra“). It was submitted for FDA approval in 2013, but was turned down so that the pharmaceutical company could do additional research. Sprout Pharmaceuticals, the company behind flibanserin, announced last week that it had resubmitted the drug for FDA approval.

Medication can’t address situational causes for low libido, like a bad relationship or stress, but Sprout Chief Executive Officer Cindy Whitehead said it can help women whose low sex drives are related to their brain chemistry. She said she’s not trying to impose some idyllic barometer of sexual desire, but rather, she wants to help women return to their “normal” amount of sexual activity — if they want to, that is. She also noted that sex drive is something that generally fluctuates throughout a woman’s life.

“It’s a nightmare for women who are in a relationship, who aren’t the person they used to be and want that person back,” Irwin Goldstein, director of the Sexual Medicine Program at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego, told HuffPost. “The unmet medical need for this condition is great and the choices available to women are limited.”

Goldstein, one of the original researchers for Viagra, has worked with female sexual dysfunction for the past 17 years. After Viagra was approved in 1998, his office received a barrage of phone calls from women asking if he had a solution for them, too. Until 2009, when fMRI studies showed that there are actual biologic differences in the brains of women with and without low desire, Goldstein didn’t have many leads. He now advises over a dozen pharmaceutical companies, including Sprout, and treats women suffering from low desire in his practice daily.

But some people question why so many women feel their sex drive is inadequate in the first place. Media culture frequently hypes up sex and stigmatizes the lack of desire, and some argue that adding medication to the mix will only water down the complex issue.

“Medicalizing takes one little piece of the picture and says, ‘That’s what the picture is,'” Leonore Tiefer, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine and an activist who runs a campaign against medicalizing sexuality, said. “It’s a matter of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ and ‘function.’ It’s like saying, ‘Square dancing is what dancing is and all of these other things are not the heart of the matter.'”

There are experts who fall somewhere in the middle, too. Lori Brotto, an associate professor in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of British Columbia, told HuffPost that she thinks some women with low desire could benefit from medication or a combination of medication and talk therapy.

“I don’t think the science is there yet in terms of being able to say definitively that these neurotransmitters act in this way to cause this individual woman’s low desire,” Brotto said. “I think eventually we’ll get there, though.”

But the question remains: Do women even want their own ‘little pink pill’?

There’s not a clear-cut answer, but it seems that women overwhelmingly want choices. Whether or not flibanserin is the pill that will do the trick, many women would like to know that they have the option of medication available to them if there is science to support it.

In October, the FDA invited women suffering from sexual dysfunction to talk about their experiences during a two-day patient-focused workshop that will hopefully provide the federal agency with information on what role it should be playing. (Four of the eight women on the panel were patients being treated by Goldstein.) Listening to women just might help everyone involved wade through the political trenches of the issue.

On the HuffPost Women Facebook page, we asked our community members if they wanted a sexual dysfunction pill. Overall, the sentiment among the 503 commenters was: Why aren’t we doing more to find a safe medical treatment?

“I just find it ironic that men get a pill and women need therapy,” one woman wrote.

That said, many women have reservations about taking on the risks of medication, especially since low libido is often at least partially caused by situational factors.

Even if not every woman who struggles with libido is willing to take a pill, it’s hard to deny that the need for treatment is there. “I’d love [medication],” wrote one woman on Facebook. “I’ve lost a lot of that drive — I’m in my 30s mind you. It’s so frustrating and sad.”

For now, Melanie and women like her can rely on therapy to help them inch their way back to the sex lives they once had. It’s up to the FDA to decide if pills like flibanserin are the answer, but there’s clearly a need for more dialogue around the issue. Life without sexual desire is something many people just aren’t willing to accept.

“It’s not just prudishness,” Melanie said. “It’s a real problem. I’m just trying to get my life back.”

(Photo: Getty Images/Larry Washburn)

Opaque buying can cut your costs substantially. But the trade-off is that you have to pay the full nonrefundable price before you know which hotel you’re booking. You get no refund if you are dissatisfied with your room (unless you can prove it was materially misrepresented). Yes, there are other risks, too, but you can minimize those if you know how to play the game.

Although both Priceline and Hotwire are opaque, Priceline is the more opaque of the two. With Hotwire, you see the price, ratings, key amenities, and some indication of customer satisfaction from the get-go, but you don’t know which hotel you’re booking until after you buy. With Priceline, you “name your own price” by bidding on the basis of star ratings and general location. Beyond that, both systems work in about the same way: In a large city, you can narrow down your search to one or more specific areas. If you want a hotel room on the Las Vegas Strip, for example, you won’t find yourself on Fremont Street. Both sites promise a room that accommodates two adults. Both sites let you specify a star classification. Both deal with pre-tax prices, and both charge their own booking fees.

Within that framework, you can easily work out a plan for buying opaque. Here are nine simple steps to getting a great price when you bid on hotels.

Step 1: Consider the Risks

Buying a room through Hotwire or Priceline entails some real risks of disappointment. Both agencies promise only a room that can accommodate two travelers. That could mean a room with a double bed. Although that might not happen often, it’s something of a gamble when seeking a low-priced room outside the U.S. or Canada. And the location promise is just to a general area, not to a particularly upscale or quiet neighborhood.

If you really need some special feature, such as free Wi-Fi, a pool, air-conditioning (a problem in a few areas), or an elevator (if you have a back problem), and you don’t see it on Hotwire’s posting, you should probably confine your search to hotels in the upper star categories, where unpleasant surprises are less likely to occur than at the budget end of the scale. And if your requirements are deal breakers, such as wheelchair access, you probably shouldn’t use an opaque buying source at all.

Although hotels treat guests who have opaque reservations with their usual service standards (as far as we can tell), don’t expect miracles. You won’t get the largest room or a room with the best view. If you’re not happy with the bedding arrangement—say you got a single queen bed and would prefer twins—you can ask for a change but you can’t demand a change. Even when you book opaque, your treatment will likely improve if you show membership in the hotel chain’s loyalty program.

With Priceline, one of the biggest risks is bidding too high. Reports show that hotels sometimes accept really low prices.

Step 2: Consider Last-Minute Alternatives

Overall, as far as we can tell, Hotwire and Priceline consistently offer the lowest buy-in-advance hotel rates. But last-minute booking systems, usually available as smartphone apps rather than websites (including Hotwire’s and Priceline’s own apps), sometimes offer better deals than opaque systems. Unless you decide to travel just a day or two in advance, waiting for a good last-minute rate risks missing an even better opaque rate.

Step 3: Check the Going Rate for Your Hotel Type

Before you make a bid, check to see the going rates for the type of hotel in your preferred location. Hotwire and Priceline both arrange transparent bookings, too, so check for prices. But you should also check a few other online hotel search engines.

As another guide, log onto Hotwire’s TripStarter database, which shows a one- to two-year daily average of actual prices for 3-, 3.5-, and 4-star hotels booked through Hotwire’s transparent system in dozens of major U.S. and international cities. These data show surprising consistency year to year, reflecting seasonal pricing patterns at many destinations.

Step 4: Check Actual Bidding Results

Several online sources post opaque-buying results submitted by actual travelers: BetterBidding.com and HotelDealsRevealed.com cover both Hotwire and Priceline deals; The Bidding Traveler and BiddingforTravel.com cover only Priceline. These sites show the name of the hotel and dates of booking and, for Priceline, both “winning” and “losing” bids. Keep in mind that rates can change dramatically depending on the season and whether some big event is happening in your destination.

Step 5: Suss Out the Hotel

Sometimes, by comparing hotel locations, star ratings, and (on Hotwire) key amenities, you can identify a supposedly hidden hotel. But you probably won’t be successful most of the time.

Step 6: Select a Preferred Hotwire Option

Even if you intend to bid on Priceline, determine what you would do if you were to use only Hotwire. That price, for your preferred location and star level, is either what you’ll accept or a benchmark for a future bid on Priceline.

Step 7: Develop a Priceline Bid Strategy

Start bidding on the low side—maybe around half of the transparent rate you’ve seen posted for a comparable hotel. Or bid at 10 to 20 percent below your preferred Hotwire price, based on the urban legend that Priceline’s prices are up to 20 percent lower than Hotwire’s prices. Or base your bid on records of recent successful sales. Don’t be distracted by Priceline’s automated response that your bid is likely to fail.

If Priceline rejects your first bid, its system does not permit you to rebid immediately at a higher price level if you use your original bidding parameters (location and star rating). But you can submit instant rebids if you change any of the parameters, even slightly, and you can also rebid with the original parameters after waiting a few days.

Step 8: Consider Insurance

If you’re worried about losing your payment because of an unexpected need to change your trip later, you can partially offset the risk by buying cancellation insurance, which both Hotwire and Priceline offer. That insurance, however, is pretty restrictive about the “covered reasons” for canceling a trip and typically doesn’t cover work-related causes at all. But if you plan on buying insurance, factor the extra cost into your bidding/buying strategy.

Step 9: Make the Deal

Unless you decide to wait for a huge last-minute reduction, either buy the best Hotwire deal or bid an even lower price on Priceline; it’s your call. Once accepted, figure you got a good deal, and don’t have a nervous breakdown obsessing about whether you might have scored a slightly lower price some other way.

–By Ed Perkins

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Read the original story: How to Beat Hotel Bidding Sites in Nine Steps by Ed Perkins, who is a regular contributor to SmarterTravel.

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