Camille Paglia takes a shot at explaining the female sexual apathy for which drug makers seek to provide a “female Viagra”. She makes a few good observations, including:

In the discreet white-collar realm, men and women are interchangeable, doing the same, mind-based work. Physicality is suppressed; voices are lowered and gestures curtailed in sanitized office space. Men must neuter themselves, while ambitious women postpone procreation. Androgyny is bewitching in art, but in real life it can lead to stagnation and boredom, which no pill can cure.

Let that sink in for a minute and then see what you think of this:

The sexes, which used to occupy intriguingly separate worlds, are suffering from over-familiarity, a curse of the mundane. There’s no mystery left.

Mystery… It almost seems like a nasty word in this day and age. Like mystery is a shameful failure instead of the main fixture of our human condition. Read more: Op-Ed Contributor – No Sex Please, We’re Middle Class – NYTimes.com.

Life’s a struggle. It’s the people who get us through.

@Bob Lefsetz

A Cree Indian prophecy, remembered by a man thinking about the effects of the BP oil spill:

Only after the last tree has been cut down… Only after the last river has been poisoned… Only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

@CNN iReport Blog

Jessica Bennett lists 10 facts (although I have a hard time regarding figures from an AskMen.com poll as facts) that should cause a person to think twice about marriage. A commenter responds:

Youth is a time of selfishness and immaturity, when the world revolves around you, and you think that’s the way it should be. But as you grow older, you realize that there is more to life than an endless party, more to life than even living for fun—that happiness too vigorously pursued doesn’t lead to happiness at all.

@Marriage Facts and Trivia: Men, Women and Surveys – Newsweek

Thomas Sowell talking about letting politicians decide you have enough money:

Once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented, you are putting your own rights in jeopardy — quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody’s rights. You are opening the floodgates to arbitrary power. And once you open the floodgates, you can’t tell the water where to go.

@Thomas Sowell

Jonah Lehrer, talking about how we think some new scientific tool or discovery will reveal the simple clock-like structure underlying a phenomenon but instead reveals the phenomenon to be even more complex and less clock-like than we originally thought:

This same story plays out over and over — only the nouns change.

@Jonah Lehrer | Breaking Things Down to Particles Blinds Scientists to Big Picture

If you happen to have a few hours to burn, The Case Against Credentialism from The Atlantic tracks the fascinating development of credentialism:

Three changes, which took place in the past hundred years, produced the system that is now producing M.B.A.s. They were the conversion of jobs into “professions,” the scientific measurement of intelligence, and the use of government power to “channel” people toward certain occupations.

The Zurich Axioms is a book written by Max Gunther. In the context of speculation, it maps out the risks of chaos and the risks of human behaviors and tendencies, and it provides a framework for managing these risks to capitalize on positive luck. Keep reading »

Three quotes on money that seem well aligned. Keep reading »

From the The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, Jonathan Haidt on the pleasure of success:

The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than the relief of taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool.

Professor Paul Cantor:

A static perfection is a bad ideal for humanity, and attempts to impose an artificial order on the world only succeed in creating greater disorder.

Read the rest of the interview @Mises Economics Blog.

The law of money & complexity: an artist needs 20 followers to survive, a writer 20,000, a newspaper 300,000; a tv station, a million. @alaindebotton

It is rare that I buy magazines. I might buy three a year (my subscription to Rolling Stone doesn’t count — it was a Christmas present). But this month’s Scientific American Mind is a special feature issue on Men and Women. I could not resist its pull. And after only a few pages I’m overflowing with questions. Keep reading »

Technology’s double punishment is to make us both age prematurely and live longer. @nntaleb