German contact ad - "looking for a nice or a mean woman..."
battleofthesexes, sex

Singles, Codes, and Evolution.

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…

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internet, quicklink, web 2.0

The digital divides.

The internet is certainly bringing people closer together. But it’s really more – some people than all people. Digital Inspiration has a couple of interesting visualisations of the current (well, recent) global digital divide. It’s also quite interesting to see which parts of the world are using which social networking service (add. diagram by LeMonde)

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Political Theory

Politicaltheory daily.

By the way, the wonderful policitaltheory.daily “weblog” is now really published in blog format (and has a new home). I liked the old one (google cached version, might expire at some point, link hat tip orgtheory.net) better, but at least there’s a RSS feed now. The previous lack thereof and the consequential lack of the site in my feed reader was the most important reason I did not read politicaltheorydaily as often as I should have.

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