This really rather amused me:

About 19% of men admitted they were potential gold-diggers and would tie the knot with someone in order to benefit from their wealth and luxury lifestyle, compared with only 11% of women.

There’s so many little things to unravel: you mean that my plans for making a huge pot of money by the time I’m 60 won’t actually be worth it? That I won’t be able to get that youthful babe?

Well, yes, OK, we all know the differences, many of them delightful, between teenage boys and girsl: they’ve grown out of the stage of being either snails and puppy dog tails or sugar and all things nice and are growing into reasonable simulacrums of adults. But as always when sex (or if you prefer, gender) rears its ugly head we do need to realise that while there is equality, that’s not quite meaing the same. As PJ O’Rouke has pointed out there are times when it’s vital to note the differences between men and women, as, for example, when attempting to make babies. There are also times when the differences are not important, like when trading bonds.

I’m afraid that this is one of the things that makes me really rather angry about those who would reject science. Those, that is, who keep insisting that there’s some problem with the current system of vaccinations. No, mercury in vaccines does not cause autism, no, the MMR vaccine does not cause autism. But not vaccinating children can indeed kill them:

A child has died from suspected diphtheria – the first fatality from the rare infection in Britain for 14 years, health chiefs disclosed yesterday.

The Health Protection Agency said diphtheria, which attacks the breathing system, was the “most likely” explanation for the death in London. The child had not been vaccinated.

Interesting news from the Friendly Giant to the North (as PJ O’Rourke once called Canada) about the increases in earnings coming from having more education. OK, so the figures are in that strange currency, the Loonie (yes, really what they call the Canadian Dollar) and we already knew the basics of the story, that getting educated pays off. But it’s good to see the actual figures:

Young men with a bachelor’s degree, for example, had median earnings of $50,506 while those with graduate degrees had even higher median earnings at $54,686.

It isn’t, of course, just young men who benefit:

Here’s something you might think it was unlikely you would ever see:

‘Not tonight, Joséphine.’ Napoleon Bonaparte’s lacklustre response to the bedtime blandishments of his wife is being repeated every evening in bedrooms across the country. Men are simply going off sex, according to the UK’s largest firm of relationship counsellors.

Relate, which provides counselling, sex therapy and relationship education, said there had been a 40 per cent increase in male clients admitting that, despite being physically able to have sex, they can’t be bothered.