the economist has in it this week an article on the 'mismeasure of woman.' after lawrence summers dared to suggest that there were not so many women professors in math and science because there were fewer intelligent ones.

what i learnt from it:

female is the default brain setting! testosterone makes the fetus male.

men masturbate much more than women and had more liberal attitudes towards sex in a casual relationship.

men and women, though, reported the same degree of sexual satisfaction (80, 50, 30 anyone? that's got to be conditioning!)

men are more likely to be geniuses and idiots. variance of intelligence is higher.

when participants thought they were being observed by the experimenter, men dropped more bombs to destroy a target in a video game. when the identities were unknown, women dropped more bombs.

they had a related article on "la diff�rence", on how women won the sex war:

let's count the stereotypes:

1. "take map-reading. the female tendency to call for five right turns while holding the map upside down"

2. "men, studies show, are exceedingly good at rotating 3d shapes in ther head. perhaps women once stared open mouth in wonder as their mates juggled pyramids of imaginary polyhedra."

3. "but now that the rich world has about as many tunnels and bridges as it needs, and the large bits of machinery which aren't made by computers and robots are made by the Chinese, their usefulness is limited."

I'm Chinese. does it mean i'm still useful?

4. "modern professional life is dominated by management, which sets high store by emotional intelligence, empathy and communication. wise chaps seeking professional advancement should therefore spend their free time with groups of women, boning up on how to undermine somebody's confidence while pretending to boost it, and how to turn an entire lunch table against an absent colleague without saying a mean word. such skills are likely to have a greater influence on their lifetime earnings than the abilty to spin an icosahedron."

!!!