I said "evidence" not scientifically rigorous studies. You're going to blame me for citing a study by a guy (Kanazawa) who was banned from peer reviewed journals for 12 months?

There are a bunch of evolutionary biological theories, but there is evidence that tall people have a better than average chance of having boys, and individuals with high global attractiveness scores are more likely than average to have girls. The thought is that beauty is more useful for female reproductive success…

Douthat's thing is nuts. A more plausible theory is that beautiful people are more likely to have daughters. They are also more likely to make more money than less successful people of similar educational background, so it could just be that when you control for income in a study like this, the average dumber wealthy…

A lot of comments here are along the lines of "be confident." One concrete way to boost your confidence is to exercise: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/…. There's also a good TED talk about faking body language until you start to internalize the feelings: http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cudd….

My book will be about how when I reach the thousandth sock, I will murder my kids (who are the sock dumper offenders). My wife and I are only occasional sock dumpers, and we both pick up as frequently as we dump. Also, my daughter's socks are f-ing nasty. I don't know why they are hard. I swear. I wash them, but after…

I don't think assclown has anything to do with being gay... More related to asshole. Clowning asshole. Assclown. He's hitting the archaic sensibility of sexism with "prehistoric," the fact that it's trifling and dickish with "pathetic" and "assclown," the fact that it comes from a place of social isolation with…

My experience is that straight men are much less likely to do exercise classes of any kind. I go to a fitness studio that is all classes, and I'm frequently outnumbered 14 to 1 by women. It's too bad because for a subset of people like me, the set time/ instructor figuring out what you're going to do and being in…

Yeah. It was a stress response. She's a rabbi and was coming back from a board meeting she had to go to instead of our kids' open house. We'd just finished the first round of High Holidays, and it was like, "I can't do another thing, so if you aren't able to take care of all of the home stuff, I will fall apart." The…

So I feel like this is a "somewhat" appropriate place to tell this story. The gym I go to is a little more intense than my wife is comfortable with. I was telling my wife that another gym member (her kids go to school with our kids) slipped a disk in her neck in a class where we were both running with car tires on our…

Anecdata here, but there are two gyms in my town. One focuses on weight loss. They run weight loss challenges, etc. The other is a boxing-fit specialty place where I haven't ever heard negative body talk or even anything about looks. The boxing place is much more popular. Feeling like shit about your body kills the…

Favorite comment! I love me a good MIL joke.

At synagogue event a few weeks ago a friend was asking if there was a name for the lines on the v-shape, and I didn't know what they were called. She said, "The only other people I would discuss this will are gay men, and they call them 'cum gutters.'"

RISUG seems really great. Cheap, effective, and reversible. I would very much be down for it as my two kids are all I want for now, but I'm not so sure about it that I want the surgery.

I'm with you on the nausea. I really don't know how one would actually respond to these schmucks. Are there really people so lacking in empathy that they would try to make someone feel bad in order to get that person to have sex with them? Thinking about that interaction is really making me want to cry right now.

I am a dutch oven owner, and I will certainly try the bread and the butter cream-meringue... I'll need a non-birthday occasion as my kids are sticklers for tradition.

I'm not sure "she was smokin' hot and totally willing, but I just didn't feel an emotional connection" is really valid. A lot of guys wouldn't bother to find out "totally willing" until they feel an emotional connection, but there may be a lot of guys who have beautiful women throw themselves at them without some…

I just wanted to suggest on that list that instead of the Kitchenaid, you go for the Assistent. It is way more expensive, but if you're going in for the bread making, the top mount mixers crap out on you. Also, buttercream frosting for my kids' birthday cakes is WAY smoother with my Assistent than it was with the…

It's called parthenogenesis. It's not been documented in humans to date, but it is common among various lizards and sharks.

Eh. A person with reasonable social graces knows to say, "You chose well!" I just googled the author, and in the full page of images of her online, she looks AMAZING in every single one. She's a beautiful person who dresses beautifully.

It is phrased in a patronizing way rather than a "you're a bad parent way." Actually, many of the compliments are also patronizing. "See, you're out with your kids, and neither of them are dead yet! Good job, dad!"