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Science is confirming what most women know: When given the choice for a mate, men go for good looks. And guys won't be surprised to learn that women are much choosier about partners than they are. "Just because people say they're looking for a particular set of characteristics in a mate, someone like themselves, doesn't mean that is what they'll end up choosing," Peter M. Todd, of the cognitive science program at Indiana University, Bloomington, said in a telephone interview. Researchers led by Todd report in Tuesday's edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that their study found...

Welcome to the Weekend Singles' Thread Welcome to the thread. We're glad to have you here. This weekend's topic is online dating sites. We've all seen the ads for e-Harmony on TV and for Match.com at various places around the internet. Yahoo has a personals section. AOL has a personals section. Craig's List has a personals section (if your immune system is strong enough). The local ISPs in most major cities often have personals ads somewhere on their websites. Many specialty websites have arisen for special interest personals. ConservativeMatch.com and RepublicanPeopleMeet come to mind. The question is "Are any of...

Sex, Romance Fades At JDate As World Of Jewish Fine Tunes Dating By Carole Rubinstein Israel News Agency Jerusalem ----August 17 ....... Talk about sex appeal, then talk about the World of Jewish. Talk about boredom and tired formulas, then talk JDate. There was a time when Jewish singles looking for a match through the Internet went straight to JDate, the largest Internet based Jewish dating service. The idea was simple, fill in a short questionnaire based on your dating preferences and the JDate search engine would return a listing of all those of the opposite sex that answer to...

WELLINGTON (AFP) - They say you are what you eat, and growing numbers of vegans are shunning sex with meat-eaters because they see them as "a graveyard for animals", a New Zealand researcher says. These vegans not only refuse to eat meat or animal products but refuse to have sexual contact with meat-eaters because their bodies are made up of dead animals, the researcher was reported saying in The Press newspaper on Tuesday. Annie Potts, co-director of the New Zealand Centre of Human and Animal Studies at New Zealand's Canterbury University, said she coined the term vegansexuals during her research....

Time was when a woman had to please a man. He was her meal ticket for life. She competed to catch him, dieting, simpering, smiling. The fear for the woman was of being left on the shelf, humiliated. No more. Now women want to be stick-like and beautiful to please themselves or impress other women - not men. Women like to have partners: they don't need to have partners. And so it is the man who has to make the effort to please. He, too, diets, uses cosmetics, has his hair styled - and, in increasing numbers, as he gets...

Green Dating – Are You An Ecosexual? Heather Buchanan Friday, July 13, 2007 The “green” buzzword has infiltrated our consciousness in terms of what we eat and how we recycle and when we drive to the store or walk. Now it’s even entered the equation of “Your carbon-footprint-free place or mine?” The question is: Are you an ecosexual? The concept of green dating used to be restricted to SWM seeks SWF to share life in yurt with long walks in protest rallies and vegan restaurants. But even if you don’t throw around words in personal ads like “family oriented pagan...

A lawsuit filed by a Northern California lesbian against dating service eHarmony represents the types of excesses of the gay movement which do so much damage to their efforts to achieve public acceptance. According to the Reuters article linked above, eHarmony "has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a 'men seeking men' or 'women seeking women' option."

The Hill set out to test Henry Kissinger’s maxim, "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac," by investigating whether "Democrats, newly empowered, now have an edge on Republicans when it comes to dating prowess" and concludes that "Romantic opportunities have increased for Democrats": As one Democratic campaign strategist remarked, "Taking back the majority certainly has its perks. With the shift in power has come a shift in social standing for once-shunned Democratic operatives. It seems everyone from lowly interns to nerdy policy wonks have a full dance card so long as they have a ‘D’ behind their name."The strategist added that...

One of the more delicate areas I dealt with while running a dating service for more than two decades was the issue of race, and more specifically racial stereotyping by prospective members. Stereotyping in itself is a volatile issue, and at some point during intake interviews, I often repeated the phrase “While there is some truth to all stereotypes, there are certainly many exceptions to every single one.” However, when one is dealing with a sample of more than 20,000 single, divorced, and widowed men and women, I feel confident and comfortable making certain statements in a column titled The...

How do these words/phrases grab you ? Any first hand experiences to share? Love (lust?) at first Sight.. Forgiveness.. Lets just be friends.. Soul mates.. Friday the Thirteenth Hi there Freeper Friends & TGIF! . Little hectic (understatement) on the home front.. I thought originally I would post tonight the thread I had for 4 weeks ago when my computer decided to go on vacation BUT it needed a lot of work & I had a full/crazy day & needed to go to funeral parlor this evening so just thought I would open up the conversation with some phrases...

ABSTRACT: In this meta-analysis of online dating and speed dating, we propose a corollary to the Flaw-O-Matic theory of romantic revulsion. Current research reveals that the Flaw-O-Matic, a mechanism in the brain that instantly finds fault with any potential mate, can be reoriented positively in certain conditions through a newly identified process, the Sally Field Effect. ...Just as Darwin could have predicted, the researchers have found that women are pickier than men. While men concentrate mainly on looks and will ask out a lot of women as long as they’re above a certain threshold of attractiveness, women focus on fewer...

Howdy, people! Snugs is busy taking care of her dad so I’m the host tonight. Please pray for snugs and her dad. Now, on to tonight’s topic: summer. What’s your favorite thing to do during the summer? Do you have anything you do every summer? What are your plans for this summer? Usually, I look forward to going to the beach. My grandmother lives two blocks from the beach in the Isle of Palms. However, this summer, I’m more excited about going to Vermont. Why? Because that is where my adorably newborn nephew lives. And hopefully, I get to spend...

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - Jason Pellegrino (an 8.2 on the attractiveness scale) says the problem with Internet dating services is not enough really hot-looking people. So he and a business partner have created HotEnough.org, a sort of online version of Studio 54, the exclusive '70s disco where gaining admission was a pitiless Darwinian exercise. HotEnough.org is for "fit, good-looking" people. Prospective members must submit pictures and must be rated an 8 or higher by people already in the club. Once they're in, they are permitted to e-mail other "hotties" for $9.95 a month. "It's definitely hard to get through that...

Find a partner or grab your favorite beverage & listen to some Irish tunes .A couple of wave files - full-length, lilting, Irish melodies - they are so beautiful! I hope you can open them, or "save target as" to your hard drive and listen to them later. "My Wild Irish Rose" ~ John Gary "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" ~ John Gary MIDIS "Irish Lullabye" "The Last Rose of Summer" "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" "I'll Take You Home Again, Kathleen" "Danny Boy" Why Saint Patrick's Day? Saint Patrick's Day has come to be associated with everything...

NEW WORDS FOR 2007 : Essential vocabulary additions for the workplace (and elsewh404 isere)!!! 1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible. 2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves. 3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard 4. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end. 5....

When John got divorced after 12 years of marriage, he took a deep breath and launched into the dating scene. "And wham, with my very first girlfriend, I caught herpes," he says. "You feel betrayed and all of a sudden separated from the rest of the world. I thought at the time that the girl who gave it to me and I were the only people in the world who had it." But John and his date are far from alone. And the growing number of people in similar situations has created a new industry: Internet dating sites just for...

Laughter is the BEST medicine! Humor.. takes many forms and varies with taste. Lets all share some of the things that to us might be funny.. whether they be written, grphics, links to urls (and our offerings of U-tube). Remembering PG13 or better is the guideline. Here are a few of mine to start us off Saddam's obit All the obits written about Saddam were incomplete. All left out a complete listing of all his surviving sons and daughters. A corrected paragraph follows. He was predeceased by two sons, Uday and Qusay, and is survived by 14 sons: Suflay,...

In a culture where young women take pride in having guilt-free sex with partners they barely know, Nolan and Aparicio are rarities. They have genuine boyfriends, not hook ups. "I don't know anyone else who's in a relationship, do you?" Nolan asks Aparicio. Nope, no one else. Hooking up has come to define sexual relationships for most of today's teens and young women. It can mean anything from kissing and touching to oral sex or intercourse. Vagueness is its hallmark. "A girl can say, 'I hooked up with so-and-so,' and no one knows what she did. It protects you and...

....Consider the element of choice. A generation ago, a single in search of romance might encounter a dozen or so potential partners. Today, he or she can choose from among thousands. But can all these choices add up to blissful companionship for everyone? A study of jam suggests an intriguing answer. Gourmet jam isn't much like a mate, but in a study by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper of Columbia University and Stanford University, respectively, customers presented with only a few flavors at a supermarket display were much more likely to buy some jam and also more likely to...

Valentine’s Day approaches, but it seems consumers are being standoffish about online dating. The number of U.S. Internet users visiting dating Web sites is falling, says a report set to be released Monday. Last year, only 10% of Internet users visited at least one online dating site, down from 16% in 2005 and 21% in 2002, says the report by Jupiter Research. The decline in unique visitors hasn’t yet resulted in a decline in subscribers, the study found, but the trend likely will at some point, analysts say. Other research firms track the same trend. Traffic to seven of the...

Friends who know me weren't surprised to learn that my Zionist boyfriend and I broke up last summer shortly after Israel began dropping bombs on Lebanese children. But the friends who really knew me were surprised to learn that I had even dated a Zionist to begin with. In my defense, I thought he was just Jewish when it all began - a progressive one who was white but had tendencies for black supremacy. Politically, we aligned well, so I figured that he'd automatically agree with my stance on Israel-Palestine. (If you don't already know: It's Israel's fault more than...

New project of the Israeli Mental Health Association provides a platform for mentally disabled people to socialize without the stigma Meital Yasur-Beit Or Published: 02.05.07, 18:25 The Israel Mental Health Association, Enosh , has recently launched the "Makshivim " (listening) website - a virtual club designed to fill the social void many mentally handicapped people experience. "We realized that come 8 p.m. many of our members have no one to talk to," says Sinai Mitkin a volunteer at Enosh's Netanya branch. "One woman, for example, did not come to the meetings because she is in a wheelchair. Through the site...

On Tuesday, former president Gerald R. Ford, Jr. died at the age of 93. He led a full life beginning on July 14, 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska. The future president was a star athlete and the captain of the Grand Rapids South High School football team. He was offered contracts with the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers but declined so that he could attend Yale Law School. Shortly after his graduation, an outside event changed his plans. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Gerald Ford enlisted in the Navy. Shortly after returning from the war, Ford decided to...

BANGKOK (AFP) - "I could not find anybody in the States. There was nothing in America for me. That's why I'm here," says the clean-cut 52-year-old bachelor, who bears a passing resemblance to Hollywood actor Michael Douglas. Sullivan, an emergency nurse from Florida, is one of a growing number of foreign men seeking young and beautiful Thai brides via the Internet. Speaking at the Bangkok office of Sweet Singles, a Thai bride-by-Internet company, Sullivan says he has decided to "go beyond boundaries" in his search for a wife after a futile quest in the United States. "American women in my...

Being semi-“out there” in the public eye via my Townhall.com column, ‘net presence, ministry, a little TV and my radio show, I get to hear from a lot of people. One thing I hear constantly from single girls is their dating and marital horror stories. I hear comments like, “Guys are jackasses, jerks, scum, sleaze bags, dufuses, low lifes, lazy, abusive, etc. . . .” I’ll grant that some of my male brethren can be brutish, but . . . uh . . . at the end of the day . . . unless you’re a pre-teen girl who’s part...

Recently, two friends of mine opened up to me about their virginity. "Roger," a writer, confessed that at 31 he's still waiting for the perfect girl to give it up to, while Lianne Stokes, a comedian, divulged that she only just popped her cherry at the ripe age of 30. Roger insisted on using a pseudonym, worried about the potential social damage revealing his virginal status might bring. "You'll never be considered normal; it's a label you don't want," he says. For these "hidden" virgins, who are fearful of being treated like freaks, watching sex from afar can be lonely...

Tomorrow Kate of Spice Island will be sharing her stories of the “Sixth Sense” More Linky Links Great Halloween Craft Prjoects Bobbing for apples Hangman Game Curly Bill’s Halloween Thread 2005 Curly Bill’s Halloween Thread 2006 THE HAUNTED PALACE BY E. A. POE, ESQ. In the greenest of our valleys By good angels tenanted, Once a fair and stately palace — Snow-white palace — reared its head. In the monarch thought's dominion — It stood there! Never Seraph spread his pinion Over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, On its roof did float and flow — This...

Amish Weddings Family is the core element in the Amish church, and choosing a mate is the most important decision in an Amishman's life. Boys and girls begin their search for a spouse when they turn sixteen. By the time a young woman turns twenty or a young man is in his early twenties, he or she is probably looking forward to the wedding day. But several definite steps must be taken by a couple before they may marry. Both must join the Amish church. They are baptized into the Amish faith and are responsible for following the Ordnung....

LETTERS DEAR ABBY ADMITTED SHE WAS AT A LOSS TO ANSWER Dear Abby, A couple of women moved in across the hall from me. One is a middle-aged gym teacher and the other is a social worker in her mid twenties. These two women go everywhere together and I've never seen a man go into or leave their apartment. Do you think they could be Lebanese? Dear Abby, What can I do about all the Sex, Nudity, Fowl Language and Violence on my VCR? Dear Abby, I have a man I can't trust. He cheats so much, I'm not...

Online dating is gaining momentum and is an easy, socially acceptable way to find partners for dates or relationships. To a social scientist, the wealth of data stored on online dating services has enormous potential in the study of interpersonal relationships. Instead of having to take surveys and interview people, scientists can now discover findings by looking at the statistics of what actually happened. Actions speak louder than words. Never before has something so human and primitive been reducible to such quantitative discrete values.This study of an online dating service measures the importance of a matching characteristic when choosing a...

The next wave in online dating has singles rating each other -- and one misstep can taint a reputation. When popularity trumps the search for a soulmate. It's no exaggeration to say that online dating has revolutionized the world of relationships since it took off a decade ago. Now, with growth slowing, sites are looking for new ways to stand out. One increasingly popular strategy: Letting users rate each other, either based on their profiles alone or on the experiences of a first date. Members of Engage.com3 can review people after one date for politeness and honesty. Consumating.com4 users give...

WelcometoCounseling Dear Abby/Dolly will be a 3-4 times a year part of our Weekend singles Thread. Questions will come from YOU. Answers will come from Me… and you on the thread. Please kick in with your thoughts, disagreements, and personal stories. We can learn from each other.. And now.. ON WITH THE SHOW! I am a divorced woman who basically is dateless. I rarely go many places & am considered by most attractive, moderate build, weight but still no dates. You are considerably older than me yet seem to be out all the time. Can you share your secret? The...

OH NO!!!!! It’s The "I HAVEN’T GOT THE THREAD DONE" Thread. Sigh, yes, dear Abby/Dolly will have to wait yet another week, as a combination of my procrastination, Murphy’s visit, and normal SNAFUs have contributed. And since I only have 3 questions there is STILL time for you to submit your to me via FReepMail. And I REALLY am not trying to hog all the threads. ( even though it SURE looks like it ) So for this weekend, in addition to the normal chit chat, let’s just call this a Favorite Thread. Post your favorites in life Graphics,...

Labor Day, a national legal holiday over 100 years old has Over the years evolved from a purely labor union celebration into a general "last fling of summer" festival. It grew out of a celebration and parade in honor of the working class by the Knights of Labor in New York. In 1884, the Knights held a large parade in New York City celebrating the working class. The parade was held on the first Monday in September. The Knights passed a resolution to hold all future parades on the same day, designated by them as Labor Day. The Socialist...

Back to SchoolWell, it's that time of year. We're finally throwing away Fourth of July leftovers in our refrigerators; the stores are starting to put out Christmas decorations; and school is starting. (Okay, the stores don't have Christmas decorations up yet, but complaining about how early holiday decorating starts is everyone's pet peeve.) For lack of a better seasonal topic, this week's singles' thread topic will be back-to-school. We want to talk about your school experiences in general and back-to-school experiences in particular. We'd like people to share any memories that they have of going back to school. Please feel...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ben had a rough Friday night picking up women on the Hotel Gansevoort's balcony after being coldly rejected by two attractive blonds. The 23-year-old documentary filmmaker, who asked his last name not be used for fear of ridicule, suffers from an acute case of "premature ejectulation" -- ejecting himself early from promising conversations with women for fear of rejection. Such was the diagnosis from the coaches of "Charm School Boot Camp," a three-day crash course on seducing women that Ben and five other men paid $1,600 apiece for in early August. "If I were to look...

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Three a.m., two luxury cars side by side on an empty street, slicing through the sticky seaside air at 100 miles per hour. The girl in the gold Lexus waved at Husam Thobaity. She was in the back seat, covered by a black veil that hid everything but her eyes. "She had the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen," Mr. Thobaity recalled. "So I gave her my number by Bluetooth." Mr. Thobaity, 23, pushed a button on his cell phone and activated Bluetooth, a short-range wireless function that is standard on most new cell phones....

Strange email gives Mika new opportunity to find her match. Shir signs her up to a dating site Mika had almost lost hope. She’s well groomed and she looks good, even though she’s carrying a few extra pounds. She’s got a warm personality, too, but none of this has helped her with the members of the opposite sex. Where hasn’t she looked? In the park, in old newspapers, even in garbage cans. Nada. Mika has not found “the one.” A strange email received by Mika’s owner, Shir, gave Mika a new opportunity to find her match. Shir did for Mika...

Police: UCF Student Set Dorm Fire To Meet Women   POSTED: 11:46 pm EDT July 19, 2006 UPDATED: 11:55 pm EDT July 19, 2006   A student at the University of Central Florida is accused of setting a fire on campus as a way to meet women, according to a Local 6 News report. Police said Matthew Damsky admitted to lighting a couch on fire at the Academic Village Dorms last week Damsky told officers he hoped he would be able to meet women as the building was being evacuated. He was arrested for arson and booked in to...

"Loosen up and you too could have ex-con experiences." Thanks, Beth, but I'll pass.

The glam shot on the homepage: a milky-white alien with an enormous head. The motto: Love Long and Prosper. The disclaimer: Xenophobia Strictly Prohibited. Welcome to Trek Passions ( trekpassions.com), an online dating site for the science- fiction set. More than a decade after the first Internet dating site was launched, the biggest players - Match.com, Yahoo! Personals, and eHarmony - now boast millions of users. But wading through such huge and heterogeneous singles pools can lead to dating fatigue. So some lovelorn are turning to sites that offer the comfort of a common interest. Niche services today cater to...

...Recently, a couple of our close male friends told us about their experiences with the other major category of online dating scam---the Russian would-be oh-so-loving and devoted girlfriend scam. This one is nearly ubiquitous across the net. Apparently, there's something in the water in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine that produces blond women of surpassing devotion, all of whom are eager to stand by their man... and pretty much any American man will do. Their real goals differ from woman to woman, but there are a few broad categories: --I want to escape my crappy former Soviet Republic, even if it...

I'm a well educated and pretty mush established in California. I would like to have my future partner to settle with me in California. I could not relocate any where. I love to live California. The person should be very truthful and hornus with me. No drinking Alcohol or Smoking. God fear personal. Respect to others. Simple mined personal. I'm looking for the Islamic religious partner only. If you are not, then don't borther me.

“Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they made a difference in the world. But, the Marines don't have that problem. Ronald Reagan, 1985 ~*~ Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other. Saturday Evening Post, 1965 ~*~ “Trust, but verify“ ~*~ Abortion is advocated only by persons who have themselves been born. ~*~ Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men...

Welcome to Counseling Dear Abby/Dolly will be a 3-4 times a year part of our Weekend singles Thread. Questions will come from YOU. Answers will come from Me… and you on the thread. Please kick in with your thoughts, disagreements, and personal stories. We can learn from each other.. And now.. ON WITH THE SHOW! Whew.. There are a boat load of questions & “situations” here which I will try to address. Good mental health involves being comfortable in one’s skin (even if it is less than perfect, ugly, repulsive, fat, skinny, deformed). Take a look at drop dead...

CHICAGO - Women looking for a long-term relationship like men who like children — and they can tell which guys might be interested in becoming fathers just by looking at their faces. Those are among the findings of a study of college students published Wednesday in a British scientific journal. "This study suggests that women are picking up on facial cues that are perhaps related to paternal qualities," said James Roney, a University of California at Santa Barbara psychologist and lead author of the study. "The more they perceived the men as liking kids, the more likely they could see...

Welcome Singles and Friends! You put away your snow shovels and ice scraper weeks ago. Your heating bills are finally on the way down. I guess it's safe to say that winter is definitely behind us, and soon spring will be just a memory as well, so it's not too early to start planning your summer. What are your plans for the Summer of '06? (C'mon--you can't spend all your time FReeping!) 1. Have you already booked your vacation? Where will you go? (the beach? a cruise? somewhere cool?) 2. What are your favorite summer activities? (Swimming? Cycling? Barbecues?)...

OK, GUYS, LET'S S ROLL!! I thought Maybe a good way to begin tonight's discussions would be for us to share about some of the best pranks and jokes that we either played on someone,(or someone played on us) when we were younger(or nowadays, for that matter) Also, we could share about some of the crazy things we used to do, when we were younger(or perhaps still do) that were seen as fun at the time, but look foolhardy to us today. I'll start things off, and share about one thing I did about 20 years or so ago,...

Google has a new service, Google Romance   http://www.google.com/romance/   Pin All Your Romantic Hopes on Google When you think about it, love is just another search problem. And we’ve thought about it. A lot. Google Romance™ is our solution. Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search™, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual DateTM, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think...

The miracle of Purim owes much to a superficial, womanizing male who set about dating as many women as possible to find the one that was the most beautiful. Ahasuerus is like so many shallow men today who reduce women to nothing but a slim figure and a pretty face. But in the end, the story of Esther makes it clear that the secretly Jewish queen was chosen not for her looks, but because she "found grace and favor" in the eyes of all who beheld her. There was a womanly dignity, a sublime feminine majesty, to Esther that the...