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| xiaojing
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05-27-2008 04:48 AM ET (US)
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Messages 17-16 deleted by topic administrator 07-21-2006 08:57 AM |
| kyle
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11-24-2003 12:31 AM ET (US)
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is it true?? i mean, is it really true??? if i have a handsome face, i have the best sperm too! but i think it is true because everytime i masturbate my sperms are soooo sticky and they are so many. And i can masturbate 4 times a day without getting tired. I need to get them out because i have a strange feeling.
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chico haas
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05-30-2003 05:28 PM ET (US)
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Science is not going to be able to quantify what makes people attractive to one another. They'll get bits of lab learning here and there (like this) but that's it. What if one these handsome faces in the test was attached to a 600 lb body. He still going to manufacture better sperm or get more action than, say, a guy who's slightly less symmetrical but really funny, has a great smile and plays guitar? Not likely. Maybe I'm missing the point. But I know one thing: women really, really dislike fast sperm.
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| Zwack
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05-30-2003 10:04 AM ET (US)
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So why no mention (in the summary) of the Attractive Voices/Attractive Women study?
I am wondering if they showed the photos of the women to the men in the same order as the voices, or if they said this women was voice No. 3...
Personally I think that the study may be flawed as I've met someone with an incredibly sexy voice who looked like a big butch biker, Of course I might just have met one of the extremes of the bell curve.
Z.
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cul heath
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05-30-2003 05:41 AM ET (US)
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Other studies have shown that across cultures physical "beauty" is mostly a matter of symmetry and conformance to simplicity. So it is not surprising to me then that the need for the genome to make the human brain perceive lack of derivative or unique physical traits as attractive. It is simply a way for the genome to manage the amount of mutation in the gene pool in order to achieve a sort of homeostasis.
The fact that people whose genes are such that they contain little in the way of extreme mutation and reflect that fact in their outward physical appearance as a "flag" which signals a high level of fertility to the brains of potential mates only makes sense. Of course, mutation can be an important survival mechanism as well, which is why mating with the ugly is such a great civic duty.
It simultaneously tempers the rebellious genes of the misshapen by mixing them with those of the original template type folk and has the added effect of adding a bit of environmental spice into the big bland plan of "survival by virtue of avoiding change".
Personally I have always been more attracted to people with quirky looks than to model or template looks. And I've found that as long as asparagus is kept off the menu, and the fascist het need for replication can be disregarded as the prime motive for sex, the odd looking people can copiously produce high quality semen.
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humblepie
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05-30-2003 05:38 AM ET (US)
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It could be a self-reinforcing pattern. If symmetrical people are told they're more attractive on a daily basis, maybe they develop certain characteristics as a result of their increased confidence - changes in hormone levels, voice huskiness, sperm athleticity, etc.
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aha
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05-30-2003 03:08 AM ET (US)
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...not in the long term.
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| ShinRyder
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05-30-2003 02:46 AM ET (US)
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What about plastic surgery? $10,000 can really screw-up nature's plan, yeah?
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aha
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05-30-2003 01:41 AM ET (US)
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One of my very favorite magazines, The Sciences, (unfortunately no longer published by the New York Academy of Sciences) had some fascinating articles and equally amazing art. (Extraordinary left/right brain food.) A few years back they published an article about a disease discovered in the 1950s, I think, involving enlarged thymus/thyroid? in children. The disease was treated by irradiating the thymus to shrink it. So all these kids eventually died of cancer from the radiation treatments. It turns out that medical students in the 50s studied cadavers of street people, vagrants, etc., since it wasnt fashionable to donate ones body to medical schools back then. So the students were studying the anatomy of alcoholics, drug addicts, etc., who had atrophied thymus glands. The children had perfectly normal anatomy, and the disease was the result of confusing correlation with causality. Ill update this post with a link if I can find the article.
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| spaceship operator
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05-29-2003 11:40 PM ET (US)
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Good work, aha.
Of course, the article never says that the researchers drew any conclusions at all regarding causality. In fact, it uses words like "correlates" and "corresponded" an awful lot. So it's a little hard to see what you think they got "backwards."
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James Young
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05-29-2003 10:58 PM ET (US)
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I'm insecure about my looks. Could I have my sperm tested to tell me whether I'm handsome or not?
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aha
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05-29-2003 09:53 PM ET (US)
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Its easy to confuse correlation with causality. Cause and effect are tricky.
Students who sit at the front of the class tend to be smarter than those who sit at the back. So will sitting at the front of the class increase your IQ, or do smart people simply find they can concentrate better there? I believe most animals have developed external bi-symmetry through natural selection. Its easier to spot a good mate, since disease, weakness, and injury will often appear as an asymmetry in the body. Our internal organs need not be symmetrical, because they are not part of the selection process. So I think the study has cause and effect backwards. The health produces the symmetry, not vice-versa. Healthy men with healthy sperm tend to be symmetrical. Diseased men with weak sperm may display asymmetry. Not so earthshaking.
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gilbert
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05-29-2003 09:31 PM ET (US)
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Of course, the rest of us ugly, asymmetrical people are funnier, which is what women really look for in a mate.
(right? A sense of humor? Please?)
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Eli the Bearded
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05-29-2003 09:07 PM ET (US)
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I think this is a specific example of a more general trait: symmetry is healthier; healthiness is asethetically pleasing.
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