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Surprise your sweetie with an extra-charming Valentine’s Day - at home! Our PC® Dine-In Tonight™ soups, pastas, entrees and desserts are quick and easy, so you can spend less time prepping and more time with your dearest!We would love to hear from any men who followed this advice. Please give us details of how well it went over.
I haven't posted much lately on the quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm because while I continued to monitor the internets for new developments, everything I've found merely echoes what we already know:
But now the quest is over.
In today's Dinosaur Comics, T-Rex gives us a revolutionary new dating paradigm.
You'll have to click through and read all the way to the last frame. Make sure you also read the mouseover text.
I'd like to thank you all for your patience during the years it has taken us to come to this conclusion. Especially those of you who held off on dating until we had this answer.
No need for me to write anything this week. Ryan Dube at Makeuseof.com has written an excellent guide for men who want to use Facebook to find women.
3 Coolest Ways A Geek Can Get Girls To Notice Him On Facebook.
There's no indication on whether anyone at Makeuseof intends to write a companion piece for how girls can get geeks to notice them on Facebook, so I'll do it for them:
Fieldwork at the Elgin Street Diner, by Aggie, Woodsy, 4th Dwarf, and Coyote.
Minuses (Things to Avoid)
We who orbit Woodsy and Aggie know all too well that, despite deceptively delicate demeanours, either is at any moment fully capable of inducing heart attacks in the unsuspecting, for all sorts of risque reasons. But I have never before witnessed 'em scarfing heart attacks on plates...Here is the latest roundup of research towards the revolutionary new dating paradigm.
Rating attractiveness: Study finds consensus among men, not women
From a press release about an article in the June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
Men's judgments of women's attractiveness were based primarily around physical features and they rated highly those who looked thin and seductive. Most of the men in the study also rated photographs of women who looked confident as more attractive.
As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some women gave high attractiveness ratings to the men other women said were not attractive at all.
The age of the participants also played a role in attractiveness ratings. Older participants were more likely to find people attractive if they were smiling.
But an abstract for the same paper says:
Participants of both genders showed substantial consensus in judgments of whom they found attractive and unattractive, although men showed higher consensus than women.What does this mean for the RNDP: If you're a man and a male friend tells you should meet someone because they are hot, you should. If you are a woman and a female friend tells you to meet someone because they are hot, probably you should. But maybe not.
Talk to the Right Ear
In 3 different studies, researchers from the University "Gabriele d'Annunzio" in Chieti, Italy determined a marked preference to listen with the right ear by young people in noisy nightclubs. Perhaps their most significant finding:
...the researchers intentionally addressed 176 clubbers in either their right or their left ear when asking for a cigarette. They obtained significantly more cigarettes when they spoke to the clubbers' right ear compared with their left.
What does this mean for the RNDP:
Single women gaze longer
A study by Indiana University neuroscientist Heather Rupp found that a woman's partner status influenced her interest in the opposite sex.
...women both with and without sexual partners showed little difference in their subjective ratings of photos of men when considering such measures as masculinity and attractiveness. However, the women who did not have sexual partners spent more time evaluating photos of men, demonstrating a greater interest in the photos. No such difference was found between men who had sexual partners and those who did not.
What does this mean for the RNDP: Guys: the length of time a woman spends looking at you might tell you that she is available, but not necessarily available to you. She might only be taking the time to decide what she thinks about you. Gals: you're still stuck with no useful way to tell if that guy looking at you is married or not.
Daily sex helps to reduce sperm DNA damage and improve fertility
New research suggests that in couples trying to have babies, in order to improve sperm quality, men should not hold off until ovulation day, but should ejaculate at least daily for the prior week. Dr David Greening, an obstetrician and gynaecologist in Wollongong, Australia, says:
The optimal number of days of ejaculation might be more or less than seven days, but a week appears manageable and favourable. It seems safe to conclude that couples with relatively normal semen parameters should have sex daily for up to a week before the ovulation date. In the context of assisted reproduction, this simple treatment may assist in improving sperm quality and ultimately achieving a pregnancy.
What does this mean for the RNDP: Okay, this isn't about dating. But it does illustrate that the research community has scientists conducting research and reporting findings that may not please everyone, but will make the world a better place.
I was beginning to to think that the quest for a revolutionary new dating paradigm (RNDP) should be shelved because other pursuits, like wealth or fame, are more important. But three researchers from the University of Rochester have just confirmed that the pursuits of wealth and fame do not lead to happiness.
Edward Deci, professor of psychology and the Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences at the University says:
Even though our culture puts a strong emphasis on attaining wealth and fame, pursuing these goals does not contribute to having a satisfying life. The things that make your life happy are growing as an individual, having loving relationships, and contributing to your community. [Press Release 14-May-2009]
And so I am spurred to contribute to the community and help you folks find loving relationships. Because I got too worn out at the garage sale yesterday, I am going to give you more bulletins on recent research instead of doing the hard work of syncretising everything we've learned already in the quest for an RNDP.
Sick of the same old thing? U of Minnesota Researchers finds satiation solution
Joseph Redden, professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, recently conducted a study on satiation, the process of consuming products and experiences to the point where they are less enjoyable, as it applies to music.
In one of the three studies conducted for this research, Redden and his co-authors asked participants to listen to the chorus of a favorite song 20 times in a row. Then they were asked to rate the clip. Not surprisingly, after 20 repetitions their enjoyment of the song dropped a great deal. Three weeks later, the participants came back and half were asked to recall any television shows they'd seen since the study, while the other half listed all of the musicians they'd listened to since the first session. The group that listed the TV shows was still just as satiated – they didn't like the song. However, those recalling variety in the music category almost totally recovered. "The participants' comments were the most revealing," said Redden. "Those who recalled the TV shows were actually angry to have a song they like 'ruined,' but the ones who recalled musicians enjoyed taking a study with music, etc. If something seems like 'more of the same,' people are just less interested." [Press Release: 19-May-2009]Redden thinks this method can also work for things like beverages: "... next time you get sick of healthy smoothies and think about grabbing a burger instead, try to recall all of the other drinks you have had since your last smoothie. Our findings suggest this will make your smoothie taste just a little bit better."
If it works for songs and smoothies, maybe it'll also work for that person you've seen a bunch of times who is beginning to seem a little dull. Just think of all other people you've encountered since the last date or all the people you've been involved with before.
New contraceptive device is designed to prevent sexual transmission of HIV
Remember those free-wheeling days before AIDS?
Researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College have published results showing that a new contraceptive device may also effectively block the transmission of the HIV virus. [Press Release: 19-May-2009]
Dominance in domestic dogs – useful construct or bad habit?
Researchers at Bristol's Department of Clinical Veterinary Sciences say that using "dominance" to explain dog behaviour and to train dogs is misguided and potentially dangerous.
Dr Rachel Casey, Senior Lecturer in Companion Animal Behaviour and Welfare at Bristol University, says:
The blanket assumption that every dog is motivated by some innate desire to control people and other dogs is frankly ridiculous. It hugely underestimates the complex communicative and learning abilities of dogs. It also leads to the use of coercive training techniques, which compromise welfare, and actually cause problem behaviours. [Press Release: 21-May-2009]
I know some of you women out there are using dog training methods on your men. If you've been using "dominance" methods, you may want to rethink your strategy. Or not. After all, this research was on dogs. Not men.
Another study confirms that opposite histocompatibility attracts
Scientists at the Immunogenetics and Histocompatibility Laboratory at the University of Parana, Brazil studied major histocompatibility complex (MHC) data from 90 married couples, and compared them with 152 randomly-generated control couples and found that people with diverse MHCs were more likely to choose each other as mates than those whose MHCs were similar.
"Although it may be tempting to think that humans choose their partners because of their similarities", says Professor Bicalho, "our research has shown clearly that it is differences that make for successful reproduction, and that the subconscious drive to have healthy children is important when choosing a mate." [Press Release: 24-May-2009]
Warriors do not always get the girl
Can it be that nice guys may not finish last?
Aggressive, vengeful behavior of individuals in some South American groups has been considered the means for men to obtain more wives and more children, but an international team of anthropologists working in Ecuador among the Waorani show that sometimes the macho guy does not do better.
"In 1988, Napoleon Chagnon published evidence that among the famously warlike Yanomamo of Venezuela, men who had participated in a homicide had significantly more wives and children than their less warlike brethren," said Stephen Beckerman, associate professor of anthropology, Penn State. "Our research among the Waorani indicates that more aggressive warriors have lower indices of reproductive success than less warlike men."
...
The researchers found that more aggressive men do not acquire more wives than milder men. They do not have more children and their wives and children do not survive longer. In fact, warlike men have fewer children who survive to reproductive age. [Press Release: 11-May-2009]
Swiss researchers Beate Ditzen, Marcel Schaer, Barbara Gabriel, Guy Bodenmann, Ulrike Ehlert, and Markus Heinrichs report that a nasal spray of oxytocin helped couples discussing stressful topics have more positive communication. "Oxytocin increased positive communication behavior in relation to negative behavior and reduced salivary cortisol, i.e., their stress levels, compared to placebo." [EurekAlert]
The researchers say they're a long way from using oxytocin spray in a treatment context, so I doubt they've turned their mind to its use in the dating context. Still, if you've been dating a while and you hear the words "we need to talk" a quick sniff on an oxytoxin nozzle might be a great idea.
A survey of more than 10,000 individuals in 18 "human populations" has concluded that the stereotype of men being more promiscuous than women may be wrong. Dr Gillian Brown, of the University of St Andrews, said: "The study shows that women are just as likely to seek out just as many partners as men." [EurekAlert; Telegraph; PhysOrg]
This is interesting news for anyone involved in the dating game, but Dr Brown and her team are ready to take their research much further than these initial findings and apply evolutionary theory to understanding human mating strategies.
Recent advances in evolutionary theory suggest that factors such as sex-biased mortality, sex-ratio, population density and variation in mate quality, are likely to impact mating behaviour in humans...
Taking a new perspective on what evolutionary theory predicts about mating strategies will have important implications for how we think about male and female sex roles. We're entering an exciting new era in which evolutionary theory can help us to understand the diversity of human mating strategies.
It could be that further analysis of this data will let us build a data model where we plug in Ottawa's figures for sex-biased mortality, sex-ratio, population density and variation in mate quality and as output we'll get an optimal mating strategy - a critical component of a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm!
Q: What's the difference between the Never-Ending Story and my quest for a Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP)?
A: The Never-Ending Story actually ended.
New Research Results relevant to daters:
"Dating culture is dead - instead, young New Zealand women are regularly getting drunk and cruising around in packs looking for men to have sex with. " [4D: This must be true because it was on TV.]
Fidelity is all about chemistry? "Males in some species of pair-bonding mammals have their lifelong attachment triggered by vasopressin release, and studies of men in monogamous relationships find a correlation between low vasopressin levels and high levels of marital strife." [4D: Only on the radio. Best to take this with a grain of salt-peter.]
New Resources for Daters:
Cosmopolitan's Experts say you can learn 55 things about a man in 10 minutes. The only hitch is that it will be a very busy 10 minutes. To learn the 55 things, along with observing his speaking patterns and hair style, you'll have to:
Red Flag Deals provides a useful grid to help you choose a dating site.
A Dinosaur Shows the Way?
It might not be what I've been looking for, but T-Rex has an honest-to-goodness new dating paradigm that may well be revolutionary.
p.s. A big shout-out to JE. Thanks for the support!
The Globe and Mail says people's financial troubles make online dating more appealing. Interestingly, back before the financial troubles, online dating was more appealing because hardworking people didn't have time for real life dating. What does this mean? It means that every time a journalist puts a profile on a dating site we can expect to get a story about how these services are growing.
SomeCards.com has line of e-cards tailored to online dating and ready for you to send to people you can't be bothered to buy a postage stamp for.
Their findings must be legitimate because they were expecting to find the opposite result.
On the eve of St. Valentine's Day, I am pleased that our inimitable Audrey continues her endless honeymoon. Her Top Ten Romantic Things list now stands at thirty items, and counting. She floats on a pink chiffon cloud wherever she goes, stylishly pink-clad feet barely touching the ground. I rather picture her wearing heart-shaped pink sunglasses on her (yes...) romantic trip to Jamaica. It suits her.
If it weren't for the mountains of chocolate that would go begging, I'd wonder if the whole day was worth... huh. 
I'm just too tired for a proper post this week. I've got most of the cleaning up done from yesterday's shit shower but still some to go. Yes, if you've gone through something challenging, you call it a shitstorm, but if you've actually been sprayed by raw sewage, no need to exaggerate.
So here's a picture of Elgin Street. Police cars and ambulance down near whatever they're calling the Penguin Café these days, just after midnight on Saturday. Nothing to do with my troubles. Just a picture.
While I'm about as out of it as the little boy who went to the dentist and so can't help those of you looking for a revolutionary new dating paradigm, there are still plenty of others with creativity, energy and insights to help you along the way. Here is a roundup of this week's scholarship in the field:
* best way to get laid is put her on her stomach, take down that panty shield, and poke until she makes sounds
* Perhaps the best way to get laid is to lead a life worth living.
* Fastest way to get laid is to know what artist your gurl likes most and buy all their albums! You have no idea how many times I have to listen to Chris Brown or Justin Timberlake!
* The best way to get laid is to put on some slow jazz music.
* The best way to get laid is without having to use a pickup line; weed out the sober ones who still have their morals intact!
* I am thinking that the easist way to get laid is to hit the club
* It's a truism worthy of Yogi Berra to say that the best way to get laid is to lose your virginity.
* many neanderthals believe that the best way to get laid is to just get her drunk. Don’t get me wrong; that is a fantastic idea if you’ve been married or in a long-term relationship and she is just not in the mood very often
* an easy way to get laid is baking tasty shit for people who think that stuff is hard. ...
* And the best way to get laid is to pretend to be someone else who is cooler than yourself.
* the only way to get laid is… to be rich!
* I was obviously wrong, and the only way to get laid is by emotional manipulation. I have found, from personal experience, that virginity leads to feelings of shame, rage, frustration, inadequacy, isolation, alienation, ...
* a dude in his underwear sitting in his mom's and dad's basement decides the best way to get laid is to lie (this is actually true) so he puts up an improbable Craigslist post trolling for some 15 year old choke job chicken head
* Look at the 40 Year Old Virgin and similar movies, where the sexually-inexperienced male is advised by his “wiser”, more experienced friend(s) that the best way to get laid is to look for the drunkest girl at the party ...
* Seems to me that the way to get laid is to dress up in a hilarious Disney character costume. This also means that you will get to handle celebrity tits.
* Û² So a kid is ~Censored~ and the only way to get laid is to go to ²Û. Û² this ultra school of ~Censored~ kids and here the first thing that ²Û. Û² happens to him is getting rapped by the principal who is g3y and has ²Û ...
* Arabs want sex just as much as Westerners but they are taught that it is dirty and the only “respectable” way to get laid is to get married.
* This brought upon me an epiphany: The easiest way to get laid is to feed off a woman’s jealousy.
* The best way to get laid is to fake confidence and don't listen too much.
Pearl Jam fan, Raino, blogged a list of pick-up lines this week. The lines do not yet appear to have been field-tested, but they show promise. Here are several:
5) Is there a mirror in yer pants? cuz I can see myself in em.
6) If you was a tree & I was a Squirrel, I'd store my nuts in yer hole.
7) You might not be the best lookin girl here, but beauty's only a light switch away.
8) I know I'm not no Fred Flintstone, but I bet I can make yer bed-rock.
Like I said, they show promise. But, at more than 2 years old, they're not new, and no matter how effective, potentially offensive pickup lines are not revolutionary. So while they could be a component of the Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP), they're not going to be the foundation.
This may not be the case for the recommendations coming from two young university researchers, Magpie and Jake. While they probably consider themselves to be more scholars of hooking up than of dating, I believe they have stumbled on something significant. As Magpie reports, the secret is: Television.
In What to Take to University (to Get Laid at University), Jake tells students going off to live in a university residence, "All you need is downloaded TV, a heavy duvet and a mattress topper."
It is of course assumed that all university students have laptops that will play the downloaded TV shows. The mattress topper makes the standard dormitory bed soft and comfortable, the duvet makes for a cozy bed that a person wouldn't want to leave.
In What to Take to University (to Get Laid at University) II, Jake suggests an Ikea mood-setting lamp, but I suspect that's just icing on the cake.
I don't believe Magpie and Jake are even on the same continent, but Magpie is completely on board with the television paradigm. In How to Get Laid (an Introduction), she takes Jake's work further and advises on what to expect from a man based on the show he invites his prospects to see.
Battlestar Galactica Guy: If he likes BSG, he's a keeper. I can't imagine hooking up to BSG (okay, I've done it) because it's just so fuckingintenseandgoodzomfg!!!!! that I'd get distracted. But I supposed a guy who likes BSG is Godly, so do him, do him fast.Kudoes to both of these young scholars. They are out there researching these important topics and doing their own fieldwork. Magpie has even developed a set of instructions for women who would like to watch television shows with a man without sex taking place. ("1. Do NOT go under the blankets.")
Here is Jake's summary:
So to recap, have a comfy bed, and invite people over to watch TV/movies. At the very least how she behaves, whether she agrees to get under the covers/lie next to you etc, is a litmus test for what chances there are of anything else happening, and at the luckiest the spooning will lead to much more and you'll end up having to wash those sheets even sooner than you expected!
Game theorists at University College London, University of Warwick and the London School of Economics and Political Science have found an explanation for why dating can take so long. Their conclusion? "Courtship enables a male to signal his suitability to a female and enables the female to screen out the male if he is unsuitable as a mate."
These researchers raise an interesting question. Why do humans spend as long as they do choosing mates?
One partner - often the male - may pay the greater part of the financial cost, but to both sexes there is a significant cost of time which could be spent on other productive activities. Why don't people and other animals speed things up to reduce these costs?How did they answer this question? They built a mathematical model based on a number of assumptions that include:- Mathematician Robert Seymour
From a female's point of view, males are not all equal. A female would like to mate with a good male, but cannot tell a male's type from his appearance alone. The strategic problem the female faces is how to screen out bad males, and this is where long courtship comes into play. A male is assumed to always want to mate with a female, but a good male is more willing to pay the cost of a long courtship in order to claim the prize of mating. This leads to an outcome in which the female is not willing to mate immediately, but instead requires the male to wait for an indeterminate time before she agrees to mate with him. During this time, the male may give up on courting the female.- Dr Peter Sozou
This is one of those studies that makes me want to play with the software and modify the assumptions. For example, if "bad" men knew that giving up signaled they were bad, and "good" men knew they were hot properties and could get action elsewhere, and maybe also cared whether they were with a "good" or "bad" partner, could we still wind up with long courtships? Even though it meant that the women were likely to wind up with bad partners?
In other news, social neurobiologist Dr Larry Young at the Yerkes National Primate Center reports that there is still no workable love potion.
Dating scholars continue to expand our knowledge of the dynamics involved in two humans hooking up. This week, Jeffrey K. Snyder, Lee A. Kirkpatrick, and H. Clark Barrett learned that young women at two universities expressed preferences for men described as prestigious over men described as acting in a dominating way off a sports field.
Women prefer prestige over dominance in matesI expect Snyder, Kirkpatrick and Barrett have requested further funding to find out who the women actually go out with. Unless they plan to first investigate whether women express a preference for prestigious men over funny guys.Dominance preferred only among male-male competitions
Los Angeles, CA – December 17, 2008 – A new study in the journal Personal Relationships reveals that women prefer mates who are recognized by their peers for their skills, abilities, and achievements, while not preferring men who use coercive tactics to subordinate their rivals. Indeed, women found dominance strategies of the latter type to be attractive primarily when men used them in the context of male-male athletic competitions.
Jeffrey K. Snyder, Lee A. Kirkpatrick, and H. Clark Barrett conducted three studies with college women at two U.S. universities. Participants evaluated hypothetical potential mates described in written vignettes. The studies were designed to examine the respective effects of men's dominance and prestige on women's assessments of men.
Women are sensitive to the context in which men display domineering behaviors when they evaluate men as potential mates. For example, the traits and behaviors that women found attractive in athletic competitions were unattractive to women when men displayed the same traits and behaviors in interpersonal contexts. Notably, when considering prospective partners for long-term relationships, women's preferences for dominance decrease, and their preferences for prestige increase.
"These findings directly contradict the dating advice of some pop psychologists who advise men to be aggressive in their social interactions. Women most likely avoid dominant men as long-term romantic partners because a dominant man may also be domineering in the household." the authors conclude. [EurekAlert]
In my quest for the RNDP, I not only googled the search phrase "dating paradigm", I also googled "dating schema".
If you are unfamiliar with the academic term "schema", you are in luck because the first hit for "dating schema" is an article titled "Schema Theory (drawn from D’Andrade 1995)" that expains the term and includes an excerpt on dating to help explain it.
Dorothy Holland and Debra Skinner (1987) studied the US undergraduate dating schema. They describe the "taken-for-granted world of male/female relations" from the perspective of a female undergraduate as follows:
"… a male earns the admiration and affection of a female by treating her well. Intimacy is a result of this process. The female allows herself to become emotionally closer, perhaps as a friend, perhaps as a lover, perhaps as a fiancee, to those attractive males who make a sufficient effort to win her affection. Besides closeness and intimacy, the process of forming a relationship also has to do with prestige. When a male is attracted to a female and tries to earn her affection by good treatment, her attractiveness is validated and she gains prestige in her social group. For his part, the male gains prestige among his peers when he receives admiration and affection from and gains intimacy with females.
Normally, prestigious males are attracted to and establish close relations with prestigious females, and vice versa. Sometimes, however, a male can succeed in winning the affection of a female whose prestige is higher than his own. However, the more attractive she is, the more he must compensate for his lack of prestige by spectacular efforts to treat her well. Correspondingly, females sometimes do form close relationships with males who have higher prestige than they do. When the male is more attractive or has higher prestige than the female, she often must compensate by giving her affection to him without his doing anything to earn it." (1987:101-102)
Within this simplified and idealized world, one set of problematic males is termed jerks, nerds, turkeys, and asses. These are men who are undesirable and don’t know it. They are unattractive (physically or otherwise) and don’t or can’t make up for it with higher cost gifts and other exchange items. Furthermore, they are too dumb to "take a hint," and therefore have to be rejected in such direct ways that the women have to be repeatedly unpleasant, which is stressful for the women. To understand what one of these college women means when she calls a man a jerk we need to understand the (women’s) dating schema.
Let's take a poll: Who wants the Revolutionary New Dating Paradigm (RNDP) to be over? Everybody. Me too. There are many other things I would like to blog about. For example did you know that there are people out there who think "selfless" means something bad? Click on this google search link if you do not believe me.
But I cannot wrap up the RNDP quite yet because new developments and research keep coming out.
Detecting Infidelity: A study by Paul Andrews and colleagues at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond reported in New Scientist, concluded that men are better at detecting their partner's infidelities than women. In a study of 203 young heterosexual couples, while 29 per cent of men said they had cheated, compared with 18.5 per cent of women, 80 per cent of women's inferences about fidelity or infidelity were correct, while men were accurate 94 per cent of the time.
But then the authors mention these other points:
A series of studies by researchers at the University of Rochester has revealed that men are far more attracted to women in red clothing or surrounded by red accessories than females who sport other colours. What's more, men seem to be especially generous to the lady in red - and are more willing to open up their wallets to wine and dine her.
Looking to improve your romantic odds? Get your date a steaming cup of coffee.Maybe Nice Guys Don't Finish Last?
That's the implication of a new study by researchers who wanted to see if there was any connection between physical and emotional heat.
To their surprise, people who held a cup of hot coffee for 10 to 25 seconds warmed to a perfect stranger. Holding a cup of iced coffee had the opposite effect
Displays of altruism or selflessness towards others can be sexually attractive in a mate. This is one of the findings of a study carried out by biologists and a psychologist at The University of Nottingham.
Some of you singles who have been following the ongoing quest for an RNDP might be trying to decide whether to attend one of the upcoming Speed Dating soirees at the Mooney's Bay Bistro.
I don't want to tell you one way or the other, but I will share with you information I've received through the internet tubes that may help you make up your mind.
The Mooney's Bay Bistro is practically in Nepean. However, you can get there on the #87. I suspect eating is discouraged during the actual speed dating, but the Bistro has good reviews for their food, including compliments on the coffee. [Reviews 1, 2] However, these reviewers may be the type of people who line up for Tim Horton's most mornings. (In other words, conditioned to accept mediocrity.) If you do go early and order food, skip the Caesar salad. Not just because it got a bad review.
Histocompatibility and how they smell: Unless you're on the birth control pill, you need to smell your dates and they need to smell you. The Bistro won't be as overpowering as an Indian Restaurant, but you'll be sitting across a table from them and there will be plenty of Italian food aromas in the air. This means you're going to have find a reason to lean towards them so you can smell them and they can smell you. The obvious way to do this would be to whisper one of your questions or answers. "What are your hobbies?" might not be a good question to do this with. But "what do you think of speed dating?" might be a good one.
It's about the looks: 
You might feel you need to establish whether they are smart, funny, well-paid and share your views on a variety of critical issues. You might also be fooling yourself and you just need to look at them.
They Don't Need to Know About You: While more frequent exposure to a person may cause others to like that person more, knowing more about the person may reduce the affection. In your questioning, you could use this principle to compensate for your natural biases. If you find you like too many people, learn as much as you can about your dates. If you rarely like your dates, either do more of the talking, or get them to whisper to you about what they've learned about the others they've met that evening. This will reinforce for them the things they've learned that have turned them off, and then you can share the information with your subsequent dates, for example: "I understand #6 worked in a mortuary as a teenager".
You don't know what you want: It seems we humans are terrible at predicting what will make us happy. This means that your quest for a partner who is trained in massage therapy, wants a terrier, voraciously reads mystery novels, and wants to take tango lessons could be misguided. It also means that you are likely to be influenced by the mood you've brought to the speed dating. If you are tense, embarrassed and fearing rejection, you may be completely unable to predict finding happy times with any of your dates.
Maybe it really is about the sex: It seems sexual cues can influence a person’s relationship behaviors. It might be that in messing around with another person, you'll not only find out if you have a chance at a good sex life if you stay together, but you might improve the chance of a relationship happening because the sex might lead to love. It's probably difficult to mess around at the Mooney's Bay Bistro, but even subliminally bringing up sex could help you get somewhere.
In Conclusion: We're not saying speed dating is the answer. If you try it, or if you have tried it, we'd love to hear about it.
This week our search for an RNDP takes us to Asia.
In early June, Weird Asia News reported that a South Korean TV station had received about 2200 applications from young men wanting to be "pet boys" for women looking for company anytime they want.
The idea came from a Japanese anime program where a business woman with a history of bad relationships adopts a young street person to be her "pet".
Weird Asia News predicted the trend would spread throughout Asia in the near future.1
If the Korean women are following a Japanese cartoon and adopting pet boys, you might wonder what the Japanese women are doing.
According to TechCrunch, they are going to Webkare to meet a male cartoon character and win his heart in a series of online dates.
Apparently, five days after it was announced, 10,000 people had signed up to try it out.2
4D Analysis: If we ESIs want to be famous, we should come up with postings demonstrating that modern women are increasingly desperate to find men they can be with. So desperate they'll pay for them or use pretend online versions.
1 I hope I don't need to point out that:
2 I hope I don't need to point out that:
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