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Money is sexy

August 30th 2010 08:28
donald trump bad hair money
Money compensates for bad hair too

There is an old joke that defines "charisma" as something that short, fat, balding rich men have. An Israeli academic has just proven it correct.


Dan Ariely, who is a Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University in the US, determined that short men looking for women through online dating sites are disadvantaged and the only thing that can compensate, in the eyes of women, for their shortness of stature is money.

Specifically, men need to earn about US$35,000 more a year for every inch they are under 5ft10in.

Prof Ariely reached the conclusion after polling 28,000 online daters.

His research also revealed that women think men are most desirable aged 27, men think women are most desirable at 21, women go more for looks while men go more for age and weight, and both lie a lot in creating their online profiles.

For women, the attractiveness of men rises the more education they have, but men don't return the compliment, generally giving a woman no extra credit for a degree beyond a bachelor's. Intimidated?

Professor Ariely's rather sad findings are published in his book "The Upside of Irrationality".


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Beauty and the fleeced

June 29th 2010 06:51
laura anness

Phyllis Diller once said, "When I go to the beauty parlor, I always use the emergency entrance. Sometimes I just go for an estimate." This sort of honest appraisal of oneself is something the winner of the 2010 Miss Cornwall beauty pageant has yet to learn.


The rules of the annual Miss Cornwall beauty pageant are simple: entrants must be aged 17 to 24 and must live or work in Cornwall, the picturesque county in England's south-west.

Laura Anness, this year's winner, is 27, and she lives and works in Devon.

Laura managed to win the title - at her fifth attempt - by claiming she was a Cornwall resident and that she was aged 22. Her deceit was discovered when one of the pageant administrators noticed, while cleaning old files out of her office, that Laura's age was given as 22 on the entry forms for each of the five years she had entered the contest.

Now Laura has been stripped of the title she tried so long to win. She has also lost the chance to compete for the title of Miss England and forfeits a 12-month modelling contract.

When Laura looks back on her beauty pageant career, she can take satisfaction at least from making the final of the 2009 Miss Universe competition. It is believed there were no questions over geographical qualification for that one.



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Come home safely, Jessica

April 15th 2010 08:10
jessica watson

The Great Southern Ocean can be a terrible place, and there is in it at this moment a small, pink boat which has been battered for three days by wind gusts of over 50 knots, six-metre swells and a cold, stinging rain.

On the boat is a 16-year-old girl. Her thoughts right now are on making the right decisions to survive, on repairing a mainsail ripped by the winds, and on when she might be able to catch up on some sleep, but there must be a growing number of moments when she allows herself to think about an extraordinary truth: I am nearly home.

Jessica Watson is within about three weeks of achieving what she set out to do: become the youngest person ever to sail alone and unassisted around the world. And as she sails closer to the finish line in Sydney Harbour, she will galvanize a nation.

When Kay Cottee became the first woman to sail solo around the world in 1988, we listened via the then technological marvel of a live radio cross as she and her 11-metre sloop made their way across the Great Southern Ocean. She became an Australian hero, and Watson will do the same.

Perhaps even more so, because Watson is less than half Cottee's age, because her boat is even smaller at 10.2 metres, and because it is pink. She has had to overcome other disadvantages: the handle of Cottee's kettle did not fall off like Watson's did, and while Cottee famously celebrated passing the Cape of Good Hope with a bottle of Australia's iconic Grange Hermitage, Watson is too young for such partying.

On the other hand, Cottee didn't have her parents and siblings fly over in a light plane to celebrate being back in Australian waters. That happened for Watson on April 11, and it was surely a moment of celebratory emotion to know that the nearest land, if she could see it, due north, was Western Australia's Cape Leeuwin.

Jessica Watson and her wonderful pink boat were back under the shadow of the land she calls home. Welcome home, Jess.
images: heraldsun.com.au, yachtpal.com

LINKS
The official news page
Jessica Watson's blog

jessica watson boat

jessica watson boat 2

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Ricky Martin is a tabloid gay

April 3rd 2010 05:17
ricky martin

VYOOS EDITORIAL
The main news stories around the world on Monday, March 29, were the terrorist attacks on the Moscow subway, a surprise visit by the US president to Afghanistan, and the announcement by Ricky Martin that he is gay


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Bride misses her own wedding

April 3rd 2010 02:47
lego wedding

A drink with a friend before your wedding is a tradition Siobahn Watson was determined to follow. Now she wishes she hadn't.

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Are women vain? The eyes have it

April 2nd 2010 01:32
womens glasses
For women confident enough to see it, glasses can be an elegant statement of self-assurance.

Scientists have produced evidence that just under 50 per cent of women are vain.

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VYOOS EDITORIAL
Sometimes, the best decisions in law are innovative moments of colour splashed on grey areas of inefficacy.

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Today's news: Fare's fair

January 14th 2010 02:52
new york cabs
There are an estimated 13,000 taxis in New York city
It's an ongoing saga: person leaves valuables in New York cab, cab driver finds person and returns valuables.

The latest involves a 72-year-old Italian tourist named Felicia Lettieri, a young taxi driver named Mukul Asadujjaman, and a large purse containing about US$21,000 in cash, jewellery worth several thousand dollars and some passports


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How cool is this?

December 22nd 2009 20:09
davidoff cool
Adam Ferrier has a bright future in his chosen field of consumer psychology, whatever that is.

Ferrier, whom we should call Dr Ferrier because he has just completed a PhD at the University of Western Sydney, chose as his thesis subject something far more cool than the usual. His study was: what makes people cool


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Opinions can not be trusted

August 14th 2009 04:28
surveys

Richard Smith, a British doctor and director of the Ovations program which fights chronic disease in the developing world, recently had breakfast in Bangladesh with an unnamed economics professor from Harvard University.

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Do single women prefer attached men?

August 13th 2009 00:51
single women

The question has been around ever since Eve stole Adam from his first wife, but has recently been given an entertaining new airing by writer Justin Prugh. He uses Eve as an example too, citing her biting of the forbidden apple as evidence that all women get excited by what they can't have.

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archbishop vincent nichols

Internet social networking sites which promote themselves as communities are in fact undermining community life. So are texting and emails.

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A sore bum and a big heart

July 24th 2009 00:42
jenie butler

Jenie Butler, a young clinical nurse specialist, expects a sore bum. That's what happens, she figures, if you decide to ride a bicycle across Australia's endless Nullarbor Plain.

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multitasking

Women can't focus on the task at hand, say men. Men can't multi-task, say women.

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