almost a diary

Ok, let’s face it. Mating, human mating in particular, is a complex communication process involving all sorts of biological and cultural codes that no one will ever really understand – except with hindsight, when we call it evolution, because that sounds much nicer than ignorance. Hence the proliferation of experts and (particularly paid for) advice on the matter – when no one actually knows anything, then everyone can contribute without ever really being wrong about what codes to use when.

Case in point, tonight I saw a poster ad for a singles’ party at the local university this Friday. Now I suppose some people may live under the impression that studying as a whole isn’t much more than a singles’ party, but apparently, that’s no longer the case – evolution, remember? But it wasn’t the party itself that I found interesting – apparently, the organisers are going to hand out differently coloured ribbons indicating a particular person’s willingness to flirt. While I understand that coloured ribbons or other signs have long played a certain role in identifying potential partners in particular, often sexual, subcultures, where colours are usually codes for the person’s specific preferences, I am a tad bit confused about colours indicating willingness to flirt at a singles’ party for students?

Seriously, how many different kinds of flirting are there that can be usefully differentiated? Well,  I guess I have to go and see evolution with my own eyes to find out…

Spiegel Online (German) apparently followed up on the “ugly duckling” Mont Isa, Queensland, story I recently wrote about and comes up with some interesting figures regarding the Australian gender balance. When I was told by an Australian friend late last year that “there are hardly any good men in Sydney these days” I did not think she was talking statistics. But it turns out she was. Apparently, the borough of Annandale is the best place for men to meet women in Sydney, as there are 1.48 of them for each male inhabitant. Unfortunately, they did not add age brackets to the raw numbers, which would have added some more interesting information. The problem is only slightly less pronounced in most other parts of Sydney and other coastal areas in Australia.

In general, the article explains, there are more women living in the coastal cities, and more men in the Outback – like in Mount Isa, or in Glenden, where there are apparently 23 men for every woman. It’s a geographic imbalance exacerbated by the economic boom in raw materials (which is driving men to mostly male mining cities in the Outback) that is adding to Australia’s apparent overall lack of about 100,000 men, most of whom are apparently working abroad nowadays.

Given such an imbalance  – 100.000 is significant for a population of only 21m – one has to wonder what keeps driving Australian men abroad and Australian women from rural areas to the Australian coast.

Interessante Artikelsammlung der ZEIT über die zunehmend öffentlich geführte Debatte über die “neue Männlichkeit”. Via genderblog.

The NYT’s Maureen Dowd comes up with a rather counter-intuitive explanation for Obama’s recent success in the Democratic primaries: voters aren’t tired of feminity or scared of estrogene in their commander in chief, they seem to want more. But they just don’t believe they can’t get enough of it from Hillary…

I guess it was simply a matter of time until this was going to happen… I wonder if there will be a “democratisation” in beauty ideals through the social web. This website doesn’t give me that impression, but they do have a “self portrait” category, and the mere existence of the service demonstrates, I believe, that beauty does not only exist on the pages of a Condé Nast Publication.

flickrbabes.com – mostly dressed photos of beautiful women found on flickr.com