Wikileaks lessons

Here is what I have learned from the Julian Assange saga:

Never date a woman who works as a university "gender equity officer".
Always use a condom in Sweden.
If the CIA is out to get you, avoid any women who might have CIA connections.
If you date two women at the same time, make sure that they never talk to each other.

When to ask for a date

Ever try to figure out why a women rejected your advances? Forget it. You will never learn the reasons, and if you did, they would make no sense to you. But here is some news you can use:

Women off the pill accepted offers twice as often as women on the pill (5.8% as opposed to 12%), perhaps a reflection of the likelihood that women on the pill are more likely to have men in their lives than women not taking birth control.

A more interesting trend emerged when Guéguen analysed the data according to a women's fertility. Among women off the pill, those in their fertile phase accepted 21.7% of advances, while women in the midst of their periods gave out their numbers to just 7.8 % of men, a significant statistical difference that did not exist for women on the pill.

So if you get rejected, figure that she may be on her period, and try again two weeks later.

Training for competition

I went on a running date with a dame who sometimes competes in marathons and other races. I told her that I was thinking of signing up for an upcoming local triathlon, butn I checked out the competition, and I have much greater chances of finishing in the top 20 in an upcoming hot dog eating contest. I said that I have a natural talent for gluttony, and and I can out-eat everyone I know.

I had eaten the biggest burrito I had ever seen. It slowed down my running, but it was good training for the eating contest. It would be hard to train for both the eating contest and the triathlon, and I was thinking that my talents were better directed at the eating contest.

She was not impressed.

Oriental women prefer white men

Here is some dating research:

We found no evidence of the stereotype of a white male preference for East Asian women. However, we also found that East Asian women did not discriminate against white men (only against black and Hispanic men). As a result, the white man-Asian woman pairing was the most common form of interracial dating—but because of the women's neutrality, not the men's pronounced preference.

This is consistent with my experience. Women are much choosier than men, and it is the oriental women who have a preference for white men.

Scientists study dating preferences

This research got a lot of publicity:

Men's choices did not reflect their stated preferences, the researchers concluded. Instead, men appeared to base their decisions mostly on the women's physical attractiveness.

The men also appeared to be much less choosy. Men tended to select nearly every woman above a certain minimum attractiveness threshold, Todd said.

Women's actual choices, like men's, did not reflect their stated preferences, but they made more discriminating choices, the researchers found.

The scientists said women were aware of the importance of their own attractiveness to men, and adjusted their expectations to select the more desirable guys.

All of this should have been too obvious to be news. The stated preferences of women may have little to do with their actual preferences, and women are harder to predict. My theory is that men divide women into two groups -- those who are sufficiently attractive to stimulate sexual arousal, and those who are not. Men only want to date women in the first group. Beyond that, men are subject to the much greater choosiness of women.

Thirsty females

Research news:

Martin Edvardsson at Uppsala University, Sweden, tested the idea that females tap into this by keeping them on dry beans with or without access to water. Females living on beans alone accepted more matings, presumably to secure the water in the seminal fluid (Animal Behaviour, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2006.07.018).

Edvardsson says that the energy used to produce the ejaculate, which makes up a whopping 10 per cent of a male's weight, is well spent. Once impregnated, females lose interest in sex - probably to avoid further injury from the male's spiny penis. They are more likely to mate again if they are thirsty.

He is talking about bean weevil beetles. No word on applicability to other species.

Difficulties for rich handsome men

New research:

A rich, good-looking man seeking a wife might do well to play down his wealth. That's the implication of a study by John Lycett and colleagues suggesting that some women are wary of men who are both attractive and wealthy. ...

The female students were asked to rate the men for their attractiveness as long-term partners. Overall, the better looking men were rated as more attractive, as were those men with higher status.

Crucially, however, there was an interaction between facial attractiveness and status, such that good-looking men with high status were actually rated as less attractive than good-looking men of medium status. The researchers said this reflected the female strategy of avoiding men who are more likely to be unfaithful in the future.

So that's why I haven't been able to get a date! Women perceive me as so rich and so handsome that I could never stay faithful. I would be overwhelmed by all the other women trying to seduce me.