BBC NEWS | UK | Scotland | Edinburgh, East and Fife | Rom-coms 'spoil your love life'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/7784366.stm

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"Marriage counsellors often see couples who believe that sex should always be perfect, and if someone is meant to be with you then they will know what you want without you needing to communicate it." Argh.

R

Watching romantic comedies can spoil your love life, a study by a university in Edinburgh has claimed.

"Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love." Aha! I knew there were plenty of good reasons NOT to watch this type of movies :-) They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner.

Romantic comedies are bad for relationships. I knew it. Also -- a David Lynch movie is used as a control for a romantic comedy? Hee!

Totally supporting my hypotheses that Twilight is bad for people. :)

A very engaging look at the current practices of male/female relationships. "Today, though, there is no standard scenario for meeting and mating, or even relating. For one thing, men face a situation—and I’m not exaggerating here—new to human history. Never before have men wooed women who are, at least theoretically, their equals—socially, professionally, and sexually." I think the most interesting point is this idea about female expectations: "[Women] want to compete equally, and have the privileges of their mother’s generation. They want the executive position, AND the ability to stay home with children and come back into the workplace at or beyond the position at which they left. They want the bad boy and the metrosexual." This last sentence is the major sticking point in my mind, though I've wondered since reading it if I'm just attracted to it because it justifies/reinforces my, shall we say, lack of aggression in dating.

"Earlier this year, I published an article in City Journal called “Child-Man in the Promised Land.” The piece elicited a roaring flood of mailed and blogged responses, mostly from young men who didn’t much care for its title (a reference to Claude Brown’s 1965 novel Manchild in the Promised Land) or its thesis: that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes."

Success in a relationship involves five daily habits that'll keey you and your mate satisfied. Rekindle love with dating tips from the experts and couples who have salvaged relationships on the rocks.

statistically significant other

stat humor. gotta love it.

Hilarious

info relationship on facebook

Size of friend networks maintained on Facebook

Yet another datapoint proving the Dunbar number?

Annotated link http://www.diigo.com/bookmark/http%3A%2F%2Foverstated.net%2F2009%2F03%2F09%2Fmaintained-relationships-on-facebook

Why Facebook will go Fully Asymmetric

haha/do we really need a 'significant other' to be a worthy person?

Why The Smartest People Have The Toughest Time Dating

Easy Solutions #1 So, you're in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn't have sex with you anyway. What you will need: 1 x knife, 1 x ring, access to a sunbed, the ability to grow a beard.

So, you're in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn't have sex with you anyway.

Step Nine: Upon hearing the year say the words 'It worked.' Pretend to lose consciousness again for a few seconds, implying that whatever it is that has worked took a great effort.

So, you're in love with one of your friends, but she has a boyfriend and probably wouldn't have sex with you anyway. (

I really like you. I do. You're so nice, and sweet, and you listen to all my problems and respond with the appropriate compliments. But, well, I...

opposite of FML

Notice how bad ass Wolverine is.

Guy dates a girl who claims to be a geek too, he catches her because she claimed to prove P=NP. Reminds me of the lies I faced when I dated ER, but this one is worse.

The sad story of a guy taken for a ride.

love this...amazing story about love and strength

"Let’s say you have what you believe to be a healthy marriage. You’re still friends and lovers after spending more than half of your lives together. […] Sure, you have your marital issues, but on the whole you feel so self-satisfied about how things have worked out that you would never, in your wildest nightmares, think you would hear these words from your husband one fine summer day: 'I don’t love you anymore. I’m not sure I ever did. I’m moving out. The kids will understand. They’ll want me to be happy.' But wait. This isn’t the divorce story you think it is. Neither is it a begging-him-to-stay story. It’s a story about hearing your husband say 'I don’t love you anymore' and deciding not to believe him. And what can happen as a result."

Although it's annoying when people tell you how you should act online, this article does have some good points. Esp. liked the "Facebook needs to have an eyeball roll function"

WSJ article.

I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything. He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life. He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let's look at a few examples.”

I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything. He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life. .He said, “People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories. Let's look at a few examples.”

OkCupid study using the messages sent by its users.

Online Dating Advice: Exactly What To Say In A First Message

Mmmmm stats applied to online dating - fascinating looking at what words work best. I wonder if similar principles apply to blog posts.

We analyzed over 500,000 first contacts on our dating site, OkCupid. Our program looked at keywords and phrases, how they affected reply rates, and what trends were statistically significant. The result: a set of rules for what you should and shouldn’t say when introducing yourself online. This is the second post of our statistical investigation into the optimal online dating message

Plus Maths Magazine: Feature Article

The Carol syndrome

A mathematical explanation of how pretty girls scare boys away.

Mooie vrouwen worden zelden aangesproken. Wiskundige onderbouwing waarom

Since he’s a Pisces and I’m a Virgo, Chris and I of course think the Zodiac is total bullshit, and it was very gratifying to have the data bear this out. Here are the grouped match percentages for a random pool of 500,000 users. Astrological sign has no effect whatsoever on how compatible two people are.

data mining of how people describe themselves on a dating sight

Attach

Most bedroom problems boil down to this: Men are microwaves and women are slow cookers. With men, all you have to do is push a few buttons and we're hotter than a habanero. But with women, it's an all-day process. You have to buy the ingredients, mix them together, and then put everything in the pot and let it simmer . . . and simmer . . . and simmer. That's why we're offering a microwave mentality for the Crock-Pot reality: quick, easy things you can do to make her heating speeds better match yours. Our suggestions take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes. The payoff? They'll quickly adjust her thermostat to high heat.

The average number is about 150, says leading anthropologist Robin Dunbar.

You can have friends because of what you do together or enjoy something together like football or shopping, but they're not as profound friends as those who you love for themselves because of something in their character.

Having more friends leads to earning more.

They usually consist of an inner circle of five "core" people and an additional layer of 10, he says. That makes 15 people - some will probably be family members - who are your central group and then outside that, there's another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. And that's one person's social world.

Attention Facebook users with 500+ friends: You are lying.

What's the ideal number of friends?

The more friends you have, the more you earn, says a study. But modern life can allow little time to maintain meaningful relationships, so what's the optimum number of friends?

Interesting!

Excellent data, frank discussion of men's bias towards younger women (with graphs and pictures of cute non-young women!)

ause it has been a successful way to introduce previous posts, I wanted to put real faces on this demographic before I delve into a bunch of numbers. Pictured below are some single users in their mid-thirties or early forties, taken from the first couple pages of my own local match search. Nothing I'll talk about today pertains necessarily to any one of them, but I wanted to put forward some people to go with th

Data from OKCupid on sex match preferences and changes based on age as well as attitudes of men and women basically proving that men should date women older than they are despite the fact that typically they date younger women.

nd I followed not fa

A collection of photos of people who left. Wonderful, astonishing, inspiring.

odlična prezentacija, solidne fotografije. Biografije malo nerviraju (ovo bi mnogo bolje bilo kao anonimni projekat...)

We hear a lot about “biblical marriage” these days. Some of us might not be clear on what that means. The website Religious Tolerance has provided a helpful article on the types of marriage found in the pages of the bible.

1. Polygynous Marriage 2. Levirate Marriage When a woman was widowed without a son, it became the responsibility of the brother-in-law or a close male relative to take her in and impregnate her. If the resulting child was a son, he would be considered the heir of her late husband. See Ruth, and the story of Onan (Gen. 38:6-10). 3. A man, a woman and her property — a female slave 4. A man, one or more wives, and some concubines The definition of a concubine varies from culture to culture, but they tended to be live-in mistresses. 5. A male soldier and a female prisoner of war Women could be taken as booty 6. A male rapist and his victim Deuteronomy 22:28-29 describes how an unmarried woman who had been raped must marry her attacker. 7. A male and female slave A female slave could be married to a male slave without consent, 8. Monogamous, heterosexual marriage

1) polygynous 2) levirate 3) wife's slave 4) concubines 5) soldier and kidnapped female prisoner 6) rapist-raped 7) two slaves (forced) 8) monogamous heterosexual

What are the wages of relationship inflation? Three cancers eating away at the vitality of today's web. First, attention isn't allocated efficiently; people discover less what they value than what everyone else likes, right this second. Second, people invest in low-quality content. Farmville ain't exactly Casablanca. Third, and most damaging, is the ongoing weakening of the Internet as a force for good. Not only is Farmville not Casablanca, it's not Kiva either. One of the seminal examples of the promise of social media, Kiva allocates micro-credit more meaningfully. By contrast, Farmville is largely socially useless. It doesn't make kids tangibly better off; it just makes advertisers better off.

The Social Media Bubble http://j.mp/apBH1F

Intentionally building communities (More hallway!) /Seth's Blog/ - If you think about the tribes you belong ... http://tinyurl.com/couqja [from http://twitter.com/jorgefsb/statuses/1482623217]

The challenge is to look at the rituals and events in your organization (freshman orientation or weekly status meetings or online forums) and figure out how amplify the real reason they exist even if it means abandoning some of the time-honored tasks you've embraced. Going around in a circle saying everyone's name doesn't build a tribe. But neither does sitting through a boring powerpoint. Working side by side doing something that matters under adverse conditions... that's what we need.

Working side by side doing something that matters under adverse conditions... that's what we need.

Making a connection when you first start dating is generally easy compared to maintaining the connection in the long term. Here, the country's top love experts offer up their best advice -- for free!

really helpful and inspirational

Be generous and list many, even if they sound silly. Example, “I love that you always know how to make your salads so colorful and appetizing.”, “I love that you have the discipline to go to the gym regularly, and you really take care of your body.”, “I love that you are so neat, and can keep your desk so organized.”

Virginity rates among students by major

I have no idea the source or validity of this, but I somehow found it randomly amusing, so I feel like keeping track of it.

Jennifer Aniston has reportedly ended her relationship with musician boyfriend John Mayer because he is obsessed with Twitter, it has been alleged.

What're the odds that this story was planted by Twitter itself? Is it a coin-flip? Is it a two-headed coin flip? http://is.gd/ozqS [from http://twitter.com/pktam/statuses/1380457308]

What makes men cheat? A marriage counselor surveyed 200 husbands to find out the real reasons behind infidelity. Find out the signs that your partner may be having an affair, and how to prevent a man from cheating in the first place.

RLL CHEATING This is a list of reasons why men cheat from the point of view of men, which I thought might be helpful for Erin. Some of the reasons could help her create questions for her survey.

differential equations

RT - "Romeo and Juliet behave like simple harmonic oscillators" - unfortunately phase shifted!! - http://alturl.com/otbb [from http://twitter.com/vivek_kumar/statuses/2647778575]

by steven strogatz.

RT @iwestminster “Love me, love me not” reduces love to a mathematical equation http://tr.im/mNUs (I was never good at #math:) #homeschool [from http://twitter.com/CircleReader/statuses/1961151636]

Blog column by Steven Strogatz.

Love of Romeo and Juliet, ODE style... by Steven Strogatz

I feel kind of like having some sort of stroke upon reading these, but man, they are *perfect*. ... except I'm still honestly not sure they're real? THEY'RE JUST TOO PERFECT.

I want to meet a serious woman who both challenges me intellectually and inspires me to noble things by her beauty.

Mocking TheAtlasphere.com

The comments are quite excellent too, especially pauls101 comparing Marx's and Rand's flaws of abstraction.

Two weeks ago, Ayn Rand aficionado Alan Greenspan admitted to a House subcommittee that his libertarian economic worldview had been shaken by events on Wall Street; last week, Governor Paterson approvingly cited Rand’s advocacy of stout individualism, which he says citizens of New York State will need during the budget crisis. Meanwhile, on TheAtlasphere.com, a dating site, Rand fans are just looking for love; below, excerpts from user profiles. Lewis, London, U.K. I love intelligent, sassy girls, particularly those working in consulting or investment banking (but other fields are great too). Really, nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children. I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.

http://bit.ly/2eqM0j 50 reasons to date a geek (via @crashbox) love it *grin* all true..

Kinda serious. Mirror: http://www.webcitation.org/5kqLU9KeA

=)

50 Reasons to Date a Geek

wow.

Pssst.... it is "sentence"

I am so glad to exist in a time where someone thought that the world needed a Twitter Sex Guide. And then wrote it. ...

Some links NSFW

sacar ideas para articulos

This is also a corollary to keeping them too busy to think. Of course you can't turn off anyone's thought processes completely—but you can keep them too tired to do any original thinking. The decision center in the brain tires out just like a muscle, and when it's exhausted, people start making certain predictable types of logic mistakes. Found a system based on those mistakes, and you're golden.

Sick Systems

sick systems, sick workplaces

Rule 4: Reward intermittently. Intermittent gratification is the most addictive kind there is. If you know the lever will always produce a pellet, you'll push it only as often as you need a pellet. If you know it never produces a pellet, you'll stop pushing. But if the lever sometimes produces a pellet and sometimes doesn't, you'll keep pushing forever, even if you have more than enough pellets (because what if there's a dry run and you have no pellets at all?). It's the motivation behind gambling, collectible cards, most video games, the Internet itself, and relationships with crazy people. How do you do all this? It's incredibly easy: Keep the crises rolling. Incompetence is a great way to do this: If the office system routinely works badly or the controlling partner routinely makes major mistakes, you're guaranteed ongoing crises.

Creating sick systems to ensnare unwitting lovers and/or employees.

Dating

lies and stats from OK Cupid http://bit.ly/aY1kX1 :)

OK Cupid crunches the numbers on the biggest lies in online dating: http://bit.ly/9zheTf

// Cool data

"People do everything they can in their OkCupid profiles to make themselves seem awesome, and surely many of our users genuinely are. But it's very hard for the casual browser to tell truth from fiction. With our behind-the-scenes perspective, we're able to shed some light on some typical claims and the likely realities behind them."

Another amazing data analysis post from OkCupid

I'm married, but I love love love when OKCupid goes all data on us.

Interesting analysis of information gathered from OK Cupid (dating site) vs. norm.

Block your ex

跟ex斷絕來往，還要一次過block好所有有關他／她的一切...

Nick Yee, (year?)

Almost 3 decades ago, in 1978, Elaine Hatfield wrote a seminal book on the topic of love - teasing apart passionate and companionate love. She defined passionate love as "a state of intense longing for union with another" and companionate love as "the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined". Around the same time, Dorothy Tennov was trying to answer the same question in her book "Love and Limerence" and, similar to Hatfield, quickly differentiated between the “love” that is sincere concern and caring as opposed to the “love” that is fiery, euphoric and ephemeral. ... Tennov coined the term “limerence” for the latter so as to be able to discuss it as a concept separate from “love”. She noted that “love” is an emotion that is acted on, while “limerence” is more of a transformed state that people go into (the difference in the proverbial “I love you, but I’m not in love with you”).

Love in Four Acts: What is Romantic Love? - http://j.mp/98a0ua