"Why is Sex Fun"

What have you been reading lately?!?! Have you heard of Jarred Diamond? If not, have you heard of the books "Guns, Germs and Steel," or " Collapse"? I have one of those husbands that has actually made up a reading list for me in the past which has opened my eyes to things like "The Aeneid," "All the Kings Men," "The River Why" "Mere Christianity" and most recently, "Why is Sex Fun?" After he found me reading some dumb totally predictable novel that I picked up in my 15 seconds out the door of the library, he said he had better.

So he comes home with "Why is Sex Fun." As a remarkable writer and truly brilliant Anthropological Biologist, Jarred Diamond attempts to answer questions like:

• Why are humans the only mammals to have a hidden ovulatory cycle?
• WTH is with the whole post copulatory desertion with other animals and some men's neccesity to do the same? 
• What's the added benefit for those men to stick around for the long run of child rearing?
• Why do women go through menopause when very few other animals do so?
• How did woman and men become attracted to certain aspects of our physique? 

One of my favorite chapters is titled "Making more by making less:The evolution of female menopause"

He speaks about oral tradition in some of our native cultures around the world. And how even though women past their prime in child bearing are no longer contributing to the passing on of genes through childbirth, they offer wisdom and guidance that contributes to our survival. His examples detailed the elderly who knew the plants that one could eat during an extreme famine despite their lack of taste. And then goes on to say that in our 1st world societies today, we rarely need such with the help of the internet.

I have spent the last 5 days cutting and prepping and putting up applesauce. A truly exhausting endeavor to say the least. One of my good friends and mentors, Nellie, came by to help me for a few hours. And just talking and watching her cut apples taught me more than I could have ever learned by an internet search. Sure I could have gotten the recipes, the canning times and temps, the jar sterilization techniques from a webpage somewhere in the web cloud, however, nowhere online could have or would have demonstrated the best way to cut those apples, a technique I learned by simply watching and which in the end saved me hours of time. Observation made me twice as fast! There's something to that.

After reading the book and more specifically, the last chapter, "Truth in Advertising: The evolution of body signals," I also began to reflect some about what sorts of things I found attractive in a male. And interestingly enough, some of them were quite simple. The ability to provide for the family, not so much monetarily as much as ability to survive in the wild. Would he know what to do in an emergency? Would he be cool and collected under pressure? Would he have good marksmanship with any number of tools and weapons? Reasonable and thoughtful and intelligent in a liberal arts sort of way. Ability to solve problems with his body and intellect. A man that has both strength and endurance and a nurturing mentality to provide for and protect the next generation. An ability to keep home the safest and most relaxing place to retreat to.

So I worked with some computer people and some math people and some Excel pros along with some sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, doctors and such to create an algorithm and computer program that you could basically input your preferences and it would spit out a good match for you. Here was the result:

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Ha! I guess I didn't do so bad! READ IT. It's fascinating! Buy it here.