At one time I lived in a small complex of garden apartments where we all knew each other and were mostly friends. Late one night one woman smelled something which she thought was a fire, so she pulled the alarm and then went from door to door waking up the other people in the building and making sure they got out. The fire department arrived, checked, turned out someone had left something on the stove and it burned, although there was no actual fire. One woman was complaining about being awakened in the middle of the night; I couldn't resist making a comment about maybe the next time she'd prefer to be left to burn.

Wow. You guys must not have flown the same Southwest I do!

(of course I'm always able to get e-tickets so I guess that could make a difference.)

I like Southwest! The pilots and attendants seem to be having fun too and will joke over the announcement thingie. I don't mind the cattle call thing either. I just sit on the floor and read or play on the computer or ipod. It doesn't hurt that the trip to the Southwest airport is easy whereas the one to DFW is a nightmare.

pours Suzi a Fernet

Haven't flown Southwest. Despise United with all of my booze-soaked soul.

I have been Productive!Woman today and rassled with both my old medical insurance and my current motorcycle & truck insurance. Now I just need to call the student loan people, and my trifecta of Calls I Really Don't Want To Make will be completed. Oh, and I should pay my bills. Right. Being an adult is haaaaaaaaaard. But the internet makes life so much easier.

I just hate flying in general these days, and will always drive or take a train if that's an option.

Sex and math: [link]

okay, gawd knows that my math is suspect, but the answer seems clear to me how men can have more partners than women. Let's assume that there is a man who has slept with three different women, and those women have only slept with him (and probably assume they're his only partner, but I digress). So, he has 3 partners, and each of the women has 1 partner. Perfectly logical, I think.

Gah! Stopped reading after the first sentence.

It doesn't seem clear to me. Before me, my ex-fiance had slept with one girl. So, adding me, that's two for him. Adding him to my count, I'd had, oh let's just say easily more than 5.

eta: sorta x-posty as it took me too long to type all that....

From Ginger's link:

One survey, recently reported by the federal government, concluded that men had a median of seven female sex partners. Women had a median of four male sex partners. Another study, by British researchers, stated that men had 12.7 heterosexual partners in their lifetimes and women had 6.5.

But there is just one problem, mathematicians say. It is logically impossible for heterosexual men to have more partners on average than heterosexual women. Those survey results cannot be correct.

Argh! Idiots!

That would be true (the survey results could not be correct) if the averages being talked about were mean averages. But the survey could be true if we're talking about median averages. Which is what the first surveys said. (The NYT doesn't say what average the second one used.)

OK, say we have a population of three men and three women. Two of the women have each slept with one guy. The third woman slept with all three guys. The median number of partners for the women would be one.

For the guys, say two guys each slept with one of the "only had sex with one guy" women and also the "had sex with all three guys" woman. i.e. Those two guys each slept with two women. By elimination, the third guy could only have slept with the woman who slept with all three guys. But the median for the guys is two.

So, either the NYT article is factually incorrect about the studies or else I just demonstrated what Dr. Gale said is impossible.

Anyway, somebody fucked up.

okay, gawd knows that my math is suspect, but the answer seems clear to me how men can have more partners than women. Let's assume that there is a man who has slept with three different women, and those women have only slept with him (and probably assume they're his only partner, but I digress). So, he has 3 partners, and each of the women has 1 partner. Perfectly logical, I think.

But we would expect there would be two more guys who slept with no women . So if we're talking mean then it could work, but if it's median then yours is an example of Dr. Gale being wrong.