NERDETTES COME OF AGE

In a Newsweek article this week, Bennett and Yabroff write about how beautiful and intelligent women are starting to come on strong, unashamed of their beauty as well as their intelligence. You'll recall that maybe a year ago, I posted two pictures (at different times) of beautiful scientists. Here's another picture of one of those two women, Lisa Randall, from a recent Discovery Magazine called, Top 75 Questions Of Science. Anyhow, you should read about this coming trend yourself (See the link above!). Lisa speaks in Discovery about the possibilities that space can have more than three dimensions. She's studying or has studied branes—yes, that's branes, not brains. What I like about Lisa is her eyes. Look at those clear, intelligent eyes, not all clouded up with unskeptical and romantic nonsense.

A little known—or well known, depending on how well-read you are—fact about intelligent women, you guys, if you're lucky enough to have one of them by your side (or you by her side), is that they are less likely to have hangups about sex and likely to be more experimental. Now, look, I didn't say "all" of them were, but studies show that the more education one has, the less-likely to be hung up about all sorts of things in whatever culture one finds himself living in. This, of course, is why I don't envy any Islamic or Mormon male with all his religiously suppressed wives. Just give me one woman with the imagination to play any number of rolls in the sack, and I'll give you all the sluggish, unimaginative women you can ever want for your wives.

Anyhow, you go, you nerdy girls. Nerd it up all you like. I'm with you, and I'm 70 years old, myself, and a victim of the oppressed and silent 50s generation. Took me a long time to become a man of the 21st century, and I'm still struggling with the little boy mentality of those times, looking for his mommy. Just ask my wife. The only growth is that I usually catch myself at it now instead of living it full out. And I certainly don't seek a little girl wife either who needs a macho man. Yet, to be fair and honest, I suppose I ought not make fun of any combination that works. Just as I would ask a macho man to understand me, I suppose, in all fairness, I should also understand his needs. Perhaps that sort of fairness is the best tack to sail one's ship along, after all in these contentious times.

MORE SCIENCE

The following is excerpted from a Discovery Magazine issue called Top 75 Questions of Science (Spring 2008). I wanted to add a corrective to our human animal assumption that we are the favored species on this blue ball called Earth. I bought the magazine in an airport during I and my wife's recent trip back to Ohio.

Q HOW SIMILAR ARE WE TO CHIMPANZEES?

A Jane Goodall, primatologist, Jane Goodall Institute:

Chimpanzees kiss, embrace, hold hands, pat one another on the back, swagger, shake their fists. and throw rocks in the same context that we do these things. There are strong bonds of affection and support between family members. They help each other. And they have violent and brutal aggression, even a kind of primitive war. In all these ways, they're very like us.

Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans have been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment.

Thank you, Jane, but I think you're prejudiced.