At least I had a good excuse.

Readers may interpret that comment in any way they wish.

Very interesting. I need to digest this carefully. The implications are enormous.

If a very smart guy suddenly started having lots of s3x would (a) his testosterone levels start going up? (b) would he then gradually become stupid?

I just have to know.

Testosterone levels are not mutually exclusive with intellect. It just makes it a lot harder to study without a, uh, few breaks here and there, and paying attention in class is far more difficult when there's a hottie in a mini skirt who's crossing her legs in your direction.

The real reason that intelligent males are not getting early nooky is due to the Vast Football Conspiracy. What this society values most is military power. That aspect of it's culture is first inculcated into the young by the ubiquitous broadcast and required participation in violent crypto fascist ground aquisition games like football. Cadres of the most attractive girls are recruited to perform sexually provacative dances to urge the football players into greater feats of combat. Worst yet, the generally moronic beef monster football players become the ideal male model of virtually the entire female subset which could be called "reasonably attractive".

If we were really interested in making technological progress in areas like cheap space flight and life extension, then the entire culture needs to be turned around. The sexually provacative dancing girls should be rooting on the PhD candidates to cure cancer or create new nano machines. Then we'd see some real technological singularities.

K, the ahem provactive girls should be doing their own studies and working on their own discoveries (at least once they wise up, get cured of the drama bug, and get to work on their own studies). To assert anything else is to objectify women. And, frankly, men.

Look, these things aren't alternatives. It's perfectly possible to be intelligent and attractive, or athletic and brilliant. They aren't alternatives, and to acquiesce to a world where they are is giving up too easily, I think.

I think I'm a pretty decent surgeon, can frame an argument that even a ideological rival might find persuasive, am not entirely uncute, can change my oil and install my own software, have squashed a bug or too without saying "eek" and make ruggelah acceptable to practically everyone except my remarkable and demanding mother.

Specialization, someone very wise once said, is for insects.

I'll bet you're a riot at parties, Jane. :)

K said: That aspect of it's culture is first inculcated into the young by the ubiquitous broadcast and required participation in violent crypto fascist ground aquisition games like football.

Okay, I'm confused. You apparently don't like football very much, or was this portion of your post toung in cheek? My view is that Football us the ultimate TEAM sport. One individual fails at his assignment and the entire team fails. Granted, it is a ground aquisition game, but the details can be as dynamic and captivating as anything else.

"Someone very wise" = R.A.H.; apologies if everyone already knew this and I'm being nerdily obtuse.

Possible actual insight: I think I know where all the scholarly residents of monasteries in centuries past came from. Now we just have top-tier schools instead. I would bet a large sum that the vast majority of people I knew at Chicago in the late '70s were virgins.

Jay, all of my friends in the late 1970s were virgins too. Of course, I was born in 1972...

Whippersnapper