Sex, Lies, and the Internet

When the Wall Street Journal recently analyzed what people search for on the Internet, Link to article, it found that the most commonly used word is "free." The second-most common word is "new."

And what is it people are looking for? According to the Journal, number one is entertainment. Number two is shopping and number three is sex. About one in seven searches explicitly involves sex, and it is ranked 44th on the "greatest hits" word list. (This compares to ~2500th in common usage.)

In any event, sex apart from love isn't interesting to me; maybe it once was, when I was young, I suppose. But, in the midst of breaking up with J last spring, I asked her whether I should change my attitudes about sex and love, specifically whether I should learn how to disassociate the two, since it's my impression that casual dating has replaced a search for love among most single people one "meets" through the Internet.

I hope none of this sounds judgmental, because I'm not. I support people finding what they desire or think they desire by whatever means necessary, as long as nobody gets hurt. But for me as a single man, I'm not drawn to that avenue, at least not yet. Maybe it will come to that later on, when I've been alone too long.

For now, life keeps bringing me too many pleasant surprises, including chances to meet new people, learn new things, and have new experiences. I may have been a bit too active late at night recently, given how groggy I felt yesterday, but one good sleep fixed that, and tonight, after all, is another Friday night...

***

A new book by neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine called "The Female Brain" will be released soon. In it she argues that there's empirical evidence that women see the world differently than men, and that at least part of this difference involves brain chemistry.

A review of the book in Newsweek reports that "advances in neuroimaging and neuro-endocrinology [offer] exciting new insights into how women and men use their brains differently. For example, different levels of estrogen, cortisol and dopamine, she says, can cause a female to be more stressed by emotional conflict than her male counterpart. A few unpaid bills can set off a cascade of hormones in a woman that can catapult her into a fear of impending catastrophe, a reaction triggered in men only by physical danger. Women have 11 percent more neurons in the area of the brain devoted to emotions and memory. Because they have more "mirror neurons" they are also better at observing emotions in others, [Brizendine] says."

Historically, these kinds of differences have been used to put women down. I hope that is changing. These kinds of differences are, after all, what makes the world go 'round.

I can't believe I wrote that -- how corny! This may be my most embarassing post yet...

(Note: If you have trouble following links, please let me know.)