Here’s the secret of getting the best babysitters.

Now, in the land of freedom that’s not usually what we think of as a problem. We simply take some random passing teenage girl and plonk them down, paying a little over minimum wage for her to run up the telephone bill while the ankle biters sleep upstairs.

However, there are those times when leaving the little darlin’s during daylight hours is desired. This requires rather more than the ability to pop gum. So, what’s the solution, where to get the best babysitters?

Well, it’s the ‘rents. Yup, the grandparents.

The grandparent who plays babysitter is not only the cheapest and most easily exploited form of childcare but also the safest, research suggests.

This really shouldn’t come as all that much of a surprise, despite this thought:

An American study has confounded fears that grandparents are likely to be out of touch with the best modern childcare techniques by showing that they cut the risk of a child getting injured by up to half.

Modern childcare techniques? Pah, I spit upon your modern childcare techniques!

Firstly there’s the most obvious point possible. By actually having grandchildren, by the very fact that they are in fact grandparents, they have shown that they are in fact capable of raising a baby to adulthood. You know, sort of proof perfect that they are capable of handling a child sort of thing?

But there’s another deeper reason here too. If we take a (very reductionist, I agree) Darwinian view of life, the aim of it all is to in fact have grandchildren. Grandchildren who themselves go on to have their own children and so on. That’s it, the perpetuation of ones’ genes.

So, if you’ve already made that 30 year investment, from the time you yourself first selected a mate, through having children, raising them and nagging them to get married, you’re going to be pretty careful with the produce of that investment, aren’t you?

Honestly, this result is blindingly obvious, or at least should be to anyone who thinks about the situation for more than 10 seconds.

Of course grandparents make the best babysitters. They’ve not only, by definition, got the experience necessary, they’ve also got the best incentives, for they are nurturing the product of their own decades long investment plan.

A lady in red is more attractive to men than a lady dressed in any other color. Or so yet another of these surveys reported in a newspaper insists. I’m afraid I don’t buy the explanation though, this lady in red thing being genetic, or associated with monkeys and baboons.

The study said that men appear to be driven by primal instincts that associates the colour with sex.

Women sporting shades of scarlet or crimson are more likely to be asked out on a date, according to the research from the University of Rochester in the US.

That monkey explanation for the lady in red being salivated over is here:

Prof Elliot said: “Although this ‘red alert’ may be a product of human society associating red with love for eons, it also may arise from more primitive biological roots.”

Noting how certain male primates were attracted to females when they displayed red, he added: “It could be this very deep biologically based automatic tendency to respond to red as an attraction cue given our evolutionary heritage.”

The basic attraction for red I’ve no problem with, but that evolutionary explanation looks very odd to me indeed. While certain primate females do indeed display red patches when they are fertile, most do not. And we’re very different indeed than monkeys and apes in our sex habits: for example, we have menstruation rather than its opposite, oestrus.

I’d say that this is purely societal. We’ve had such a long association in our culture (and it’s very much worth noting that the association of red with sex isn’t common to all cultures) with sex and red that those wearing it will almost inevitably be seen as being more sexual. And given the depth of this cultural association (from phrases like the scarlett woman, the scalrett letter, the lady in red of the song and so on) there will also be that association amongst women who decide to put on red cloting. Which if course will simply reinforce the assumptions of the men that observe the behaviour of those that wear red.

No, nothing to do with monkeys, entirely a cultural phenomenon.

“Gentlemen prefer blondes” was the title to a best selling book of a few decades ago (the follow up wwas “blondes prefer gentlemen” which I thought was a nice twist) and now we seem to be seeing a confirmation of this.

Gentlemen do indeed prefer blondes when it’s a girlfriend or mistress they’re looking for, but they seem to prefer brunettes when it’s a wife they’re after.

A new survey has found that men think blondes are better as girlfriends, but brunettes are the best for settling down with.

Almost one in five say blondes are sexier than other girls, with just under half saying they had more outgoing personalities.

When it comes to marriage, however, more than half said they would rather wed a dark-haired woman because they were more dependable and sensible.

OK, so the survey was carried out by a hairdresser but that doesn’t mean that the results are entirely ridiculous. Well, OK, the results are ridiculous, but more interesting is trying to come up with some explanation.

Could it be something genetic? In either men or women?

I don’t really think so, there’s not a lot of connection between natural hair color and personality, nor dependability. The survey also found that men think dark haired women are better cooks, which is simply bizarre.

No, I think this differentiation is in fact entirely societal. And it’s not to do with natural hair colour, either.

It’s the fact that a large number of women who are blonde are in fact bottle blondes. And a very small number of dark haired women are in fact bottle brunettes.

Now it is true that dark haired women do dye their hair, but that’s much more about maintenance of a color than creation of one. The vast majority of hair dying to change the natural colour (OK, so I’m guessing a bit but I’d stand by it) is to blonde, not from blonde.

So, what men are saying is that for a girlfriend, for the rumpy pumpy say, they’re attracted to women who glamourise themselves, who go to the trouble of dying their hair. Yet when it comes to settling down they seem to prefer someone who hasn’t gone to such lengths…perhaps they used the time saved to improve their cooking?

Well, at least, that’s my explanation.

An interesting little survey on what it is that makes men and women happy. Although, umm, I have a feeling that I’m interpreting the results a little differently than the writer is. That, I think, comes from the difference in the various dialects of the English language. I’m fluent in English English and have a pretty good grasp of American English (good enough that I can and do write for American newspapers) but Australian English has rather passed me by.

I’m told that there are more euphemisms for “vomit” in Australian than in any other language but I have a feeling that this is an invention of Barry Humphries, the man who is Dame Edna Everage. Still, here’s the results:

Both men and women — or 63 percent of overall respondents — picked relaxation as the activity that made them happiest, but that is where the similarity between the sexes ends.

Well, yes, that seems obvious enough. There’s a few things we have to do in order to stay alive (eat, sleep, wash, use the toilet etc) and while these can indeed be enjoyable (as anyone who has been holding it in on a long car journey can attest) they’re not really the things that we would choose to do all the time. Then there’s work, which for most of us is in fact what we do so that we can do the other things in life. And then there’s recreation, relaxation or leisure, all very much the same thing. The spice of life if you wish. The reason we do it all.

More men than women, 48 percent versus 40 percent, found happiness being intimate with another person while 38 percent of men, and only 28 percent of women, said drinking with friends brought them joy.

I have to admit that the idea that only 38% of Australian men enjoy being in the pub really rather surprises me. I would have thought it would be much higher than that.

But where this linguistic problem comes in is that phrase “being intimate with”. In Englich English (and I think also in American) that means having sex with. That only 48% of Australian men find happiness that way rather surprises me…I’ve met (and not been intimate with) a number of Australian women which is the reason for my surprise at such a low number. On the other hand, having met a number of Australian men (and also not been intimate with them) that that many Australian women enjoy intimacy with them similarly surprises.

Or maybe I’m mistranslating the phrase.

But this bit makes perfect sense:

For men, bliss is often just a mouse-click away while quality time with family is guaranteed to put a smile on women’s faces, according to an Australian study of what makes people happy.

Given that fewer than 50% of Australian men find happiness by being intimate with Australian women then yes, I suppose the exiestence of porn on the internet does indeed engender a certain bliss.

Or have I mistranslated that as well?

This TV show, Mad Men, seems to be engendering some sort of madness.

This fall’s retro “Mad Men” television moment has brought the cardigan back into fashion for men and women on the Michael Kors runway, at J. Crew and everywhere in between. Cardigans are standing in for jackets and have the design credibility to prove it, with gold buttons, chain details across the pockets and ruffled plackets.

No, no and thrice no.

Cardigans on anyone other than retired males are an abomination before the Gods of Fashion. We must stop this madness before it goes too far. Please write to your TV station demanding that the show be taken off the air.

Otherwise, who knows what might happen? Could poodle skirts for women be far behind? The twinset?

No, Mad Men has to go!

So, on how to make someone like you.

Telling a prospective partner “I really like you” is likely to encourage the chosen target to reciprocate the feelings.

Research revealed that if a person shows someone their feelings, through eye contact, smiling - or simply telling them - they are more likely to return the sentiment.

A truly amazing finding, don’t you think? After all, it’s been so known to be successful, that scowling in the corner technique, that one where we scream to be left alone?

Although one tip from one rich in maturity: check for the spinach between the teeth before the smile thing.

Women are more optimistic than men and enjoy life more as they age, suggests a new research that questioned nearly 9,800 people over the age of 50.

OK.

Almost all of this year’s Emmy-nominated actresses are 40-plus, with many in their 50s and some in their 60s.

Well, that explains that then, eh?

Hm, what’s that? There aren’t in fact 9,800 female nominees for the Emmies?

Sigh, back to the drawing board.

There’s an excellent journal out there which collects the reults of improbable research. This particular story doesn’t belong there at all: it belongs in one about believable research. Another way of putting this might be that the result is blindingly obvious to anyone who knows anything at all about sex.

So, using various cleverly constructed experiements the researchers tried to work out whether being flirted with by those apparently available made men and women react differently. The answer was yes.

Men who were flirted with seemed to have less connection with their own pre-existing relationship. They were less likely to forgive a transgression by their partner for example.

However, women, when flirted with, were more likely to forgive their man such mistakes: evidence that they became more committed to their relationship the more temptation was put in their path.

We can all make up a number of possible explanations for this behavior. The traditional evolutionary one, that men are more likely to be interested in spreading it around than women are. Or perhaps a slightly subtler version of the same thing: that men are indeed more likely to wander and the refusal to forgive trifling mistakes was a method of building up the excuse bank, the justifications for why he might be right to stray.

However, my own theory is a great deal less complex and accords much better with my own experience of the world. Men are easily pleased creatures so the risks of switching from one woman to another, from one sequential monogamous relationship to another are fairly low. Finding a decent man is however a rather more difficult prospect….this might be because of the quality of men in general or it might be because women are a little pickier, this makes no difference to the logic here….thus women once they’ve got someone Mr. Half-Right are reluctant to give him up for what they know the average quality of the others in the available pool is.

If you like, for men there are indeed many more fish in the sea while for women there’s only a few with the requisite piscine qualities and an awful lot of pond life floating around them.

This might not be the most amazing discovery ever you know: men and women have (in general) different attitudes to one night stands.

Many women are left unhappy in the aftermath of casual sexual encounters, a survey has revealed.

Just under half of women who answered the internet poll, published in the journal “Human Nature”, said they felt it had been a bad idea.

Four out of five men, in contrast, said they were happy with a brief fling.

That’s not a finding that would shock the proverbial maiden aunt, I’m sure. That men and women will have different attitudes to casuaal sex is pretty much insisted upon by the main evolutionary theories: that given the investment that women have to make into childbearing as opposed to the minimal involvement that a man can have, we’d expect women to a great deal more picky about their partners and how well they know them before getting down to the old rumpy pumpy.

One report on this rather missed the distinction:

Eighty per cent of men enjoy casual sex because it satisfies their prehistoric instinct to breed.

Erm, no. Men and women feel exactly the same instinct to breed: that’s something that’s inherent in being human for we are all, after all, descended from those who did breed. The point is that the method of having the next generation makes much greater demands upon women that it does upon men (in the purely physical sense that is: child support laws have rather changed the equation in the modern world). There are also many fewer chances for women to breed than men: in theory a man can have hundreds of children while the upper bound for a woman is somewhere between ten and twenty (with exceptions, of course).

So we expect women to be much more choosy about who they have children with: and while we’ve now got decent contraception, there’s still a great deal of hard wiring from those hundreds of thousands of years when we didn’t.

The academic leading the research said it showed that there was no evolutionary advantage for women in one night stands.

That’s the correct interpretation: there is an advantage for men and not one for women. Thus the different feelings aabout such sexual encounters.

I have to admit to a certain confusion at the information here. You understand of course, that I’m English, and so view American society through a slightly distorted lens. I’ll tell you of my confusion later: the first part of this information set causes me no confusion at all.

Someone went out and surveyed the state of virginity or sexual experience amongst the undergraduates at Wellesley College (which I am pretty sure is still an all female college). They were able to find not one single virgin (although I do have to admit, that state or not of the hymen was self-reported rather than physically checked) in the Studio Art program. While 83% of the women in the mathematics program were indeed still virgins.

There are some departments which seem to deviate a little from what we might expect but the general pattern could have been culled from an examination of our EQSQ personality tests. Moving along the continuum, from those subjects which we would expect to be colonised by the empathic types, along to the hard sciences which we would expect to be full of the systemizers, we pretty much see that the virginity rate rises the more likely the students are to be systemizers.

Not too hard to understand: those at the systemizing end do indeed have greater problems with human relationships than those at the empathic end.

So I’m not confused by that part. But I am as I said above by another.

Now my exposure to American teenagehood is of course minimal, really only from the movies and TV (I have lived in the US, but at an age when if I were thought to be taking an interest in the sex lives of teenagers I would be at best run out of town on a rail) so it is of course a very partial view.

But certainly the impression I get is that all of that virginity thing is taken care of by the time people go to college, isn’t it? In fact, I’m under the definite impression that driving home from the Prom date is written into everyone’s personal organiser.

Isn’t it?