Ian On The Red Dot

Was reading this list detailing what makes the perfect boyfriend. I was trying to check off the points that I thought I passed. I did terrible. Anyway, I remembered this exchange in the play ‘A Woman Of No Importance‘ by Oscar Wilde concerning the ideal man.

Mrs Allonby: The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.

Lady Hunstanton: But how could he do both, dear?

Mrs Allonby: He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don’t attract him.

Lady Stutfield: Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear about other women.

Mrs Allonby: If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven’t got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgiveable. But he should shower on us everything we don’t want.

Lady Caroline: As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments.

Mrs Allonby: He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment’s notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one’s husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman’s duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.

Lady Hunstanton: How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.

Lady Stutfield: Thank you, thank you. It has been quite, quite entrancing. I must try and remember it all. There are such a number of details that are so very, very important.

Lady Caroline: But you have not told us yet what the reward of the Ideal Man is to be.

Mrs Allonby: His reward? Oh, infinite expectation. That is quite enough for him.

I have been subscribing to the theory that you shouldn’t set the standards too high when dating. Be consistently average. Show all your powers when you get married. If however you show all your powers now, when you get married, she will confirm find you underwhelming.

I finally got down to doing something I should have done for sometime - I opened another bank account to save a portion of my salary each month. Each month, once I get my pay, a chunk of it is going straight to this new account. I have been living on a combined savings and spending account for too long. In fact, usually only one thing is happening - spending. While I have managed to save, the amount each month fluctuates with an inverse relation to the amount of beer I drink. The new account forces me to save a fixed amount each month, and no longer do I need to try to save more the next month to offset this month’s spending.

The impetus for this action was the first personal finance book I have ever read finished - The Barefoot Investor.

Just finished reading the book “Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets“. It is a great read and I’ll definitely have to read it again not just because there is so much material to digest but because the writing is deliciously beautiful and brimming with wit.

The book sheds light on the shenanigans that are currently happening in the world as well as some from the past. The one thing I learned from the book is to think for one’s self. Yet, the book cautions against logical thinking because there is a tendency for us to do it wrongly. We use our thinking to help validate what we want - our brain is the slave to our emotions and desires. Also, there is the danger of thinking we know a lot about a subject matter, if not everything which can lead to disaster.

A healthy dose of skepticism and humility is needed when the gears in our brain start turning.

Investing tips from the book:

1. Don’t Go Looking For Trouble.

You don’t always need to be either a seller or a buyer. Sometimes doing nothing can be good. Although holding cash is actually doing something.

2. Don’t Expect The Market To Give A Sucker An Even Break.

The little guys lose consistently. They pay too much to the financial industry in fees, commissions, and spreads. The market isn’t a level playing field.

3. Don’t Be A Patsy (i.e. a person who is gullible and easy to take advantage of).

Don’t try to figure out what the market is doing by deferring to experts. Always remember that you are guessing and because you are guessing, make sure the odds are in your favor. Don’t buy high expecting to sell it when it gets higher because the market has been going up. Remember to buy low.

4. Never Get Too Far From The Facts.

5. Never Buy Tuna Unless It’s On Sale.

6. Never Buy What Someone Else Really Wants To Sell.

7. Never Buy What Everyone Else Is Rushing To Buy.

8. Gold.

I’m not doing justice by just listing the points above but this is more for my own notes than anything else. I borrowed the book from Tampines Library so the book is in the system. Try to borrow it if you get the chance. I’m definitely going to buy this book to add to my collection once Borders has a discount.

The one fault I have against this book is that it has introduced the phrase ‘public spectacle’ into my vocabulary. I find myself using it quite often now in my conversations with people.

Public Spectacle = Lies -> Farce -> Disaster.

Some associated links:

This is the blog that is associated with the book - Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets. It hasn’t been updated since October 2007 so to read more from the authors, going to their blogs might be another recourse.

I managed to find the blog for only one of the authors Lila Rajiva - The Mind-Body Politic.

Couldn’t find the blog for Bill Bonner so I’m just going to link to the site for his daily newsletter - The Daily Reckoning.

In an earlier post, I blogged about why arguments with members of the opposite sex tend to last so long. From the same book, I learned from an interview with Victor Johnston how to tell if a girl will choose you as a mate just by looking at her fingers.

So, how to tell if a lady will mate with you? Simple - look at her ‘digit ratio’. The ‘digit ratio’ in women is one or greater than one. When it is one, the length of the index and ring fingers is equal. When it is greater than one, the index finger is longer.

Women change their preferences just prior to ovulation. In what direction does the change happens depends on the amount of testosterone present in the uterus when the girl was a fetus. The greater amount of testosterone present in the uterus will affect how ‘masculine’ a girl is. The more ‘masculine’ she is, the longer the ring finger. The girl with a lower digit ratio tends to be more masculine and will prefer men with prominent, square jaws because that is an indicator of masculinity in men. Such women will want such masculine men for both sporadic and longer-lasting encounters.

If the girl has a shorter ring finger (i.e. higher digit ratio), she will prefer friendlier, gentle men, more commonly known as the nice guys, when she is ovulating. Note, this only happens when she is ovulating or seeking a longer-lasting relationship - the key thing to note is when the chance of being impregnated by a man is high (like in a marriage), such women with higher digit ratio will choose the friendlier, gentle man - the normal guys get their chance. But if such a girl wants a fling, the macho man still gets first rights.

So, normal guys…either way, your girlfriend/wife is going to have sex or already had sex with that guy with the Superman jawline. But hey, you get to play husband as well as the father of her children. Of course, if she times it wrong or the body sends the wrong hormonal signals, they just might not be yours.

I’ve been reading this book titled ‘Mind, Life, and Universe - conversations with great scientist of our time‘. It contains interviews with a bunch of really smart people. The great thing about this book is that it makes science relevant to our lives and not exile it to some esoteric corner of our society. It is a great book and one that I highly recommend everyone to read if they have the time. Actually, you got to make the time to read it.

I found one particular interview with Robert Sapolsky highly interesting because it helped explain why arguments with members of the opposite sex can drag on for so long.

Our limbic system, which is responsible for our emotion and feelings, seems to work faster than the autonomic nervous system. When my girlfriend is angry with me, what happens is that within the limbic system, the part of the brain which deals with emotions decides for her that she is upset. It then tells the rest of the body she is upset - the autonomic nervous system is activated and her heart beats faster, she sweats more.

Now, here is where what William James discovered comes in. He suggests that the brain also takes its cue from the body when deciding what emotions to feel. The brain checks with the body and finds out the heart is racing - the brain infers that the individual is feeling a strong emotion.

So, this is how the loop happens. You make your girlfriend angry. Her brain tells her body to react to the anger. After you apologize, and she accepts it, her brain tells her she is no longer angry, but her body is still in the angry state. You leave the room to go take a piss. During this time, because the autonomic nervous system resets itself to normal state slower than the brain, the rest of the body as opposed to the brain is still angry. The brain checks with the body what is going on and finds out the body is still in angry state, so the brain thinks it must still be angry over something for the body to be angry and so the limbic system kicks in again and now she feels angry all over again.

Here is the thing. On average, the autonomic nervous system for women resets itself slower than that for men.

So now, the argument is finally settled. We know whose fault it is - women’s.