The mating game

Read between the lines

If you've never considered searching for a date in the lonely hearts columns, count yourself lucky. It's a jungle out there and that's scientific fact.

Are lonely hearts columns a window into our evolutionary past?

Enter the world of lonely hearts and you take a trip back through your evolutionary past, where the veneer of civilisation is stripped away and men and women are slaves to their most basic instincts.

The frank vocabulary of the ads illuminates the rules of human mating in the most unambiguous way. If you're a blonde, attractive, curvaceous female, that's exactly how you should describe yourself in your ad. The same applies if you're a handsome, athletic, millionaire male.

For this very reason, lonely hearts may give us a unique insight into the reasons for our sexual preferences - preferences that have been moulded by millions of years of natural selection.

Column inches

Professor Robin Dunbar of Liverpool University spent much of the latter half of the 1990s studying the hidden evolutionary signals contained in Lonely Hearts advertisements.

"We were studying 19th century folk [love] songs, but it wasn't working out as well as we had thought. Many folk songs are political when you scratch beneath the surface," explains Dunbar.

"When we changed our focus to Lonely Hearts, we found a close link with evolutionary preferences," he adds.

The language of love

Dunbar found that the vast majority of words used by people to describe themselves in ads could be lumped into five different categories.

He asked 200 university students to rate the appeal of ads containing different categories of words. When Dunbar analysed the results, he found that men and women attached very different levels of importance to the five categories:

Men's preferences	Women's preferences
1. Attractiveness	1. Commitment
1. Commitment	2. Social Skills
3. Social Skills	3. Resources
4. Resources	4. Attractiveness
4. Sexiness	5. Sexiness

Far from being conditioned to regard these things as important, Dunbar argued that men and women had evolved these preferences over millions of years of evolution. These were crucial qualities that enhanced the fitness of children, and, lest we forget, children are the key to the survival of our species.

What hidden messages do we send the opposite sex?

Pregnancy and breast-feeding place great stress on a mother, so females make the biggest investment in reproduction. This is why women are choosier about their partners than men, with 20-something women being the choosiest of all.

This big parental investment also explains why women seek males who are willing to stick around and provide for children.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

But evolutionary theory tells us that resources should be just as important to women, if not more so. Good fathers need to have the means to feed offspring as well as the willingness to stick around.

In our evolutionary past, before resources meant a Rolex watch and a sports car, a well-heeled man was one with high status in a hunting tribe. High status males were often good hunters and likely to provide a steady supply of food.

When the desire for reproduction is taken out of the equation, preferences change drastically. Dunbar has shown that lesbians were three times less likely to seek resources than heterosexual women.

But why should such an intangible quality like social skills score highly with heterosexual women? Dunbar puts this down to the Scheherazade effect, a phrase coined by cognitive psychologist Geoffrey Miller.

The Scheherazade effect refers to the possible tactics used by ancestral women to appeal to a man's conversational skills in order to keep them around.

Research conducted by Professor Doug Kenrick at the University of Arizona seems to support this sexual dynamic. Kenrick has found that both sexes regard social skills as important, particularly a sense of humour. But that a good sense of humour has a different meaning for women than it does for men.

"When women look for a sense of humour in a man, they're saying: 'show me what you've got'. But when a man looks for a sense of humour in a woman, they're saying 'she laughs at my jokes, she must think I'm a great guy'."

Playing the field

The very fact that men need an incentive to stick around leads us to the question of male priorities in the mating game. Men, like women, want to maximise their contribution to the gene pool by having as many offspring as possible.

But for males, time spent providing for a pregnant partner could be better spent fathering other children with other women. This may explain why men place such a high premium on attractiveness.

Attractiveness is a rough indicator of age, and in women, age is a good indicator of fertility. After her late 20s, a woman's fertility steadily declines, and so does her value on the dating market.

We all want to make babies. But when it comes to the politics of mating, men and women dance to a different tune.

Ageing beauties

Men, so the biological assumption goes, always prefer younger women, because they are likely to bear them more children.

But a recent study seems to contradict this theory. Dr George Fieldman, of the Buckinhamshire Chilterns University College showed images of women to about 200 men with an average age of 30.

A picture of a 36-year old woman, who a separate group of men had found attractive, was shown to the men along with eight other photos of women aged 20 to 45 who had been rated as less attractive.

Asked to choose one woman as a long-term partner, all three groups chose the beautiful woman regardless of what age they thought she was.

"They are saying: 'I'd rather risk a relationship with an older woman who is not going to give me as many children but is very beautiful, than a woman who is more fecund but whose children will be plainer," says Fieldman.

The theory is based on the notion that a beautiful woman is more likely to bear beautiful offspring and that those offspring will be more successful than plainer offspring.

"Female beauty has evolved through sexual selection. If you're beautiful then it's likely that you're also symmetrical," he adds.

Symmetry is a difficult characteristic for genes to code for, leading many scientists to conclude that it is an indicator of good genes.

Fieldman's research suggests that beauty is important to men on a deeper level than just a simple indicator of youth.

Led astray

However, Kenrick thinks that in this instance, men are being confused by the benefits of modern healthcare and beauty products.

"My suspicion is that we respond to visual cues of attractiveness, not what you see on someone's birth certifcate. Liz Hurley, for example, looks attractive because she's got all those cues [despite her age]," he explains.

"In evolutionary history, by the time a woman got to be 45, she'd have had five children and various parasites. She wouldn't have looked like one of those Hollywood actresses," Kenrick adds.

Studies have shown that men seem to prefer women with smooth skin and glossy hair, features which seem to be associated with higher levels of the female sex hormone oestrogen. In our evolutionary past, these would also have been strong indicators of youth.

Dirty old men

As male lonely hearts age, they seek women who are increasingly younger than they are. This reflects their increasing value on the dating market due to their increasing resources, or wealth.

But why males should value commitment so highly is less clear. Dunbar thinks he has the answer: "In males I think commitment is to linked to paternity certainty," he explains. If a male is to spread his genes, he needs to know that the children being born are his and not those of a rival.

The patterns of preferences amongst homosexual male advertisers are startlingly different. In one study, gay men offered resources and attractiveness half as often as heterosexual men did.

On average, female lonely hearts prefer a man five years older than them.

Like everyone else, lonely hearts raise or lower their standards according to their own circumstances. Young men have low expectations because they don't have much wealth to offer. Older women are similarly undemanding, because of their reduced attractiveness.

Liar, liar

But the lonely hearts columns seem to amplify one important tactic of the mating game: lying. One of the most common complaints made by people responding to advertisements is that the advertiser was nothing like their description in the ad.

So if you're thinking of flicking through the lonely hearts, take all those evolutionary traits on display with a pinch of salt, even if it means ignoring your most basic instincts.

Shark bite victim 'happy to be alive'

HONOLULU, Hawaii (AP) -- All the way back to shore after an 8-foot tiger shark chomped into his left leg, Harvey Miller thought he might die.

Harvey Miller, left, and Dr. Patrick Murray speak at a news conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Friday.

"I just remember saying, 'Oh God, not like this, no way,"' Miller said Friday, a day after the fish attacked him off Oahu's Bellows Beach.

The animal went after the 36-year-old attorney from Toledo, Ohio, in clear blue waters in an area not known for shark attacks. The last such incident in that area happened almost 50 years ago, the state's Shark Task Force said.

The father of four was snorkeling and looking for turtles about 150 yards from shore when he noticed that some fish near him looked spooked.

Then he saw a large shark's flat snout and felt the animal spin him around.

Speaking to reporters at The Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, where he was taken after the attack, Miller said he punched the shark twice right below its dorsal fin, scaring it away.

Then Miller started screaming and yelling for help and headed for shore. Watch Miller describe how he escaped from shark »

A day later, he was sitting in a hospital wheelchair, tired and nauseous from the pain medicine but grateful for his doctor's estimate that he should be walking in a few months and, if all goes well, playing basketball with his teenage son in six months to a year.

"I'm happy -- one, to be alive and two, that I don't anticipate ... losing the leg," he said.

Miller said a stranger helped save him by wading into the ocean to answer his cries for help.

"He's my hero. I would not have made it out of the water without his assistance. I owe my life to that man," Miller said.

Dr. Patrick Murray said the shark came down on Miller's leg and knee with "tremendous" force.

"It went right to the bone, into the bone, broke some of the bone, and into the knee joint and then removed a fairly large portion of his leg up by the knee," Murray said.

Miller has two wounds on the side and back of his left knee, one 3 to 4 inches long and the other about a foot long.

Murray spent two hours operating on Miller's leg on Thursday. He said the Ohio man would need additional surgery to repair nerve damage.

Randy Honebrink, Shark Task Force spokesman, said the shark was likely looking for food when it came upon Miller. Two partially eaten dead turtles later washed ashore in the same area, showing signs of shark bites, he said.

"The only way a shark can tell if something is a potential food source is by biting it," Honebrink said.

He said the attack was the first known shark incident in a coastal stretch from Makapuu to Kaneohe Bay since 1958.

"A Petai a day keeps the doctor away"

---

A tall species of the lowland forest in Malaysia, also known as Parkia Speciosa. The seeds encapsulated in the long pendulous pods of this species are a local delicacy, despite its strong and slightly bitter aftertaste. The seeds are eaten raw, grilled or blanched.

Petai makes the bodily secretion and breath smell bad. But Petai contains three natural sugars -sucrose, fructose and glucose - combined with fiber, petai gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy.

Little did you (and I) know ..... after reading THIS, you'll NEVER look at petai in the same way again!

Research has proved that just two servings of petai provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder petai is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes. But energy isn't the only way petai can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.

Depression:
According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND among people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating petai. This is because petai contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.

PMS(premenstrual syndrome):
Forget the pills - eat petai. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.

Anemia:
High in iron, petai can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.

Blood Pressure:
This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it the perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the petai industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.

Brain Power:
200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school were helped through their exams this year by eating petai at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert.

Constipation:
High in fiber, including petai in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.

Hangovers:
One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a petai milkshake, sweetened with honey. The petai calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.

Heartburn:
Petai has a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating petai for soothing relief.

Morning Sickness:
Snacking on petai between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.

Mosquito bites:
Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of the petai skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.

Nerves:
Petai is high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.

Overweight:
Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and crisps. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.

Ulcers:
Petai is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.

Temperature control:
Many other cultures see petai as a "cooling" fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In holland, for example, pregnant women eat petai to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.

Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD):
Petai can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer, tryptophan.

Smoking:
Petai can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.

Stress:
Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium petai snack.

Strokes:
According to research in 'The New England Journal of Medicine', eating petai as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%.

Warts:
Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of petai and place it on the wart. Carefully hold the petai in place with a plaster or surgical tape!
So, you see, petai really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrates, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around.

So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say,

Latest antichrist or just plain lunatic??

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- He calls himself "The Bishop." Exactly why is just one of the many mysteries surrounding the increasingly menacing figure.

The man -- and investigators believe they are dealing with a man -- is suspected of sending at least a half-dozen threatening letters to financial institutions over the past 18 months and mailing two dud pipe bombs that arrived a day apart in Kansas City and Chicago in January.

In his letters, The Bishop has demanded that financial companies move the prices of certain stocks to certain levels, often $6.66 -- an apparent reference to the Antichrist, said corporate counter terrorism expert Fred Burton.

Burton, whose security firm has been hired by financial companies to find The Bishop, said the pipe bombs were assembled with crucial components deliberately left out, in what was probably a warning. Next time, Burton said, the bombs could be real.

But catching The Bishop and figuring out exactly what his grudge is could require help from the public, Burton said, noting that it was Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's own brother who turned him in and ended the 17-year series of bombings that killed three people and injured 23. David Kaczynski got suspicious after reading the Unabomber's anti-technology manifesto, published in the newspapers.

The Bishop, like the Unabomber, is probably mentally ill, highly intelligent and a loner, said Burton, vice president of counter terrorism for Stratfor, an Austin, Texas, security and intelligence firm.

Postal inspectors are offering a reward of up to $100,000 for information. The investigation also includes the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and local law enforcement agencies.

Spokesmen for the FBI and the Postal Inspection Service would not comment in any detail on the investigation.

Burton said some of Stratfor's financial clients asked his firm to investigate in 2005 after The Bishop began sending threatening letters from various Midwestern states, including Wisconsin and Iowa.

Burton, who said he has many sources within law enforcement, wrote in a weekly terrorism report last month that the letters have become increasingly threatening.

Law enforcement officials have not released the letters to the news media, but Burton wrote that The Bishop began one letter mailed in June with the words "TIMES UP!" and threatened to mail up to three "packages" if a specific stock price did not "end green" on four specific days.

A recently released sketch by postal authorities depicts him as being in his 30s or early 40s. Burton has pegged him between 25 and 35 but is unable to say so far what his occupation might be, or whether he has a family.

Burton said The Bishop's belief that he can alter stock prices suggests he suffers delusions of grandeur.

"He's progressing," Burton said. "He's taking his thoughts, which in his mind are reality. He's telling you what he's going to do and then he does it. He's heading down a garden path of violence."

The pipe bombs, sent in white cardboard boxes, carried the same return address in Streamwood, Illinois, and were postmarked January 26 from Rolling Meadows, Illinois.

One arrived January 31 at American Century Investments' Kansas City mail center, a few blocks from the company's headquarters. A day later, a similar explosive was found at a business in a 65-story skyscraper in Chicago.

"It's almost impossible to be able to tell when he will mail his next devices," Burton said, "but he will."