I've decided to archive my IT Week columns here. They aren't collected in one place on the excellent IT Week site, so I thought I'd pull them together, and store them here.

Why I decided to inflict this punishment on posterity is not an easy question. I think it is just that I keep saying; "I wrote about that!" and then finding I didn't index it here.

Appropriately, I'm starting off with a story about naked women online...

On mobile phones, naturally!

Guy, It's called the "Coolidge Effect", and it's part of why Psychology is regarded as a "soft" science. Unlike Hydrogen atoms, psychology test subjects get headaches, drunk, "wrong time of the month" and so on. They're unreliable, which is ALSO why if it takes 100 men 2 days to dig a hole, it doesn't (other than logically) follow that it'll take 2 men 100 days to dig the same hole. (in 100 days, the odds are good than at least one is going to go sick, get a better job, already have holiday booked...)

Calvin Coolidge, when President of the USA, was shown around a State Fair, and introduced to a prize-winning bull. (Three guesses what he'd won prizes for) Mrs Coolidge, the "first lady", made a remarkably louche comment about him "maybe learning a thing or two" from the bull, and he responded that - provided with a constant stream of attractive and eager new one-night stands he probably WOULD be more of a stud. A Psychologist (I forget who) remembered the exchange when they stumbled upon the fact that males perform better (in strictly "mechanical" terms) with new partners than with old ones. He called it "The Coolidge Effect." We blokes are just hard-wired that way. An interesting variation on the old "100 men digging a hole" arithmetic problem. One bloke and 100 women... ! bloke and the same woman 100 times. It's different.

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