Women divorces husband, gets money, then many years later is allowed to go back in and extract more money from ex-husband

Christian Schneider at Overlawyered reports a truly mind-boggling result from an English court.  A man’s wife left him 30 years ago and they were divorced in 1981.  He paid her a settlement then but she later lost the money.  She sues her ex-husband to get more money and wins:

British businessman Dennis North’s wife Jean left him 30 years ago after she began seeing another man. Their split became official in 1981, when they signed an agreement that granted Jean their house and income from rents on their various properties.

North went on to be a wildly successful businessman, while his ex-wife never worked. However, a judge has just ordered North to pay Jean a large lump-sum payment because she has “fallen on hard times” due to a number of money-losing investments:

Mr North, 70, has been ordered by a court to hand her another £202,000 (that’s $400,000 US dollars and about 257,000 Euros).

The order follows a series of big-money divorce cases which have swung the law against husbands and resulted in huge payments to ex-wives even after short childless marriages. The North case now threatens to make husbands pay large sums even decades after a split.

http://overlawyered.com/2007/06/large-payment-awarded-after-30-years-of-divorce/

It appears that English courts are now even more hostile to men than even US courts (to be fair, courts in the US vary from state to state; some are harsher toward men than others).

Not the way to keep your wife from getting half of your lottery winnings

Walter Olson at Overlawyered discusses a husband’s ineffective method of keeping his wife from finding out he won a share of a big lottery payoff:

Airline mechanic Arnim Ramdass, 52, allegedly “disconnected the phone line at home and forbade his stay-at-home wife, Donna Campbell, 48, to watch television, Campbell claims in a lawsuit. Eventually, however, she learned the truth: Ramdass, along with 16 other mechanics at Miami International Airport, had won a $19 million lottery jackpot.” (Martha Neil, “Wife Sues Husband for Share of Secret $600K Lottery Win”, ABA Journal, May 13).

Hat tip: http://overlawyered.com/tag/family-law/

The wife sued the husband for divorce soon after she discovered all this.

Complaint about the women’s restroom

Why is this guy famous?Because she is not a guy but a woman and she was asked to leave the women’s restroom in a restaurant.  Another female patron of the restaurant complained to the restaurant management that a guy was in the women’s restroom, and the bouncer, understandably believing to be a woman, asked her to leave.

Hat tip: http://nicedeb.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/i-would-have-made-the-same-mistake/

News story: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/06/30/2007-06-30_lesbian_riled_by_boot_from_ladies_room-2.html

 It was an unfortunate, but understandable, mistake.  It should all have been settled with an apology and a free meal on the restaurant.  But several high profile lawyers volunteered to represent the woman at no cost to her.  They filed suit.  The restaurant had to pay lawyers to defend it and eventually settled the case by paying the woman $35,000 and her attorneys $15,000.

http://overlawyered.com/tag/sued-if-you-do/

 

The old red pepper up the anus trick

I was scanning an interesting piece by an anthropologist on cockfighting in Bali and the following jumped out at me.  Wow, that’s gotta hurt:

Red pepper is stuffed down their beaks and up

their anuses to give them spirit.

http://www.si.umich.edu/~rfrost/courses/MatCult/content/Geertz.pdf

 

 

Really, Truly, Totally Single

I like to claim that I’ve been single for like five years now, but that is not entirely true. In fact, since my last exclusive relationship ended 60 months ago, I’ve basically almost always had someone I could either call or hang out with, and most likely have sex with as well.

That is certainly not the case right now. The last of my female friends to which I had kept up some form of communication had tired of waiting for me and got herself a boyfriend. It sucks and it doesn’t. Part of me is pissed and jealous and, I’ll admit it, hurt. But another more logical part of me remembers that, hey, I wasn’t all that into her in the first place.

I’m beginning to wonder if I could ever be into anyone anymore. Or if I ever could in the first place. I don’t remember being head-over-heels since high school, and I imagine that really doesn’t count. So does this mean I lack the capability of falling in love? Will I never ever feel “gaga” over a chick?

I tell you, I was feeling a little gaga a few weeks ago when I saw a stunning girl in the bookstore. Dark blonde, nice tan, and a tight body…all a man could want. Problem: she couldn’t have been more than 19 or 20 years old. I hate that. I hate it because I could never have it. Really. I mean, I’m a good-looking guy with a lot to offer, but I am past 35 now. Even if all the planets aligned and she was attracted to older guys and we somehow decided to give a relationship a try…then what? What would we talk about? Britney Spears?

You are probably reading this and saying, “People don’t talk about Britney anymore, you dumb ass. They talk about blah blah blah…” And that is just my point. I have no idea what young people talk about anymore. Talking to a 21-year old girl for any length of time would cause me to put my head in an oven.

So, that leaves me looking for a girl in her late twenties or early thirties that is still attractive, still in good physical shape, still is fun-loving, is not jaded by a bad marriage or bad relationship, of reasonable intelligence, and has good morals and a great sense of humor.

Wish me luck on that.

Allergic to semen!

That Saddity Chick relates an interesting story on her blog:

I’ll let you all in on a little secret.  A few years ago I was seeing this man.  For almost a year I put off having sex with him.  I couldn’t explain why but my body was just like “nu-uh don’t do it girl”.  He was attractive, fun, attentive, just an all around great guy.  Finally after not listening to my gut feeling I slept with him.  The next morning my vajayjay was on fire!  I thought he had given me an STD.  Turns out I was allergic to his semen! 

http://thatsadditychic.wordpress.com/

I had no idea that a guy’s semen could generate an allergic reaction.  But her post caused me to wonder about something else: is it common for a woman to be dating a guy for almost a year without having sex with him?

I’m shocked that this painting sold for $33.6 Million

I am astounded that this painting sold for 33.6 Million dollars.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, Christie’s Images Ltd., 2008

Hat tip: Annika at http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/23/what-does-336-million-mean-in-the-art-world/#more-2644

Speed Dating Reveals What Guys and Girls Want

I wrote a day or so ago that the best way to determine what guys or girls like in a date is not to ask them, but to look at what decisions they make.  Economists and psychologists call this revealed preference rather than stated preference. 

We recently looked at online daters’ revealed preferences as set out in a study done on Match.com users.   We now have another piece of research that reveals daters’ preferences.  Two psychologists in the Psychology Department of the University of Pennsylvania conducted an interesting piece of research on preferences of speed daters.

For those of you  not familiar with speed dating, it’s an activity in which equal numbers of men and women are recruited.  They dress up, smile, and sit down for three-minute sessions with every member of the opposite sex in attendance.  At the end of these three-minute sessions each participant gives each person he or she has met a thumbs up or thumbs down, on a dating sheet.  These sheets are compiled by the organizers of the event and if two people gave each other a thumbs up, email addresses are sent to each and they can meet.

Here is a link to the writeup for this study: http://www.psych.upenn.edu/PLEEP/pdfs/2005%20Kurzban%20&%20Weeden%20EHB.pdf

I wish I could mention some surprising findings of this study.  But I cannot.  Almost nothing of significance it reveals is unknown to the careful observer of dating behavior.

Women liked men who were tall, good-looking, fairly young, and fairly big (not necessarily fat, but with a BMI of around 25).  The overwhelming thing men were drawn to was slender women. p. 234. After that, their next strongest preferences were for attractive faces and younger women.   This should come as no surprise to observers of dating.

Another obvious finding was that the most attractive people got the most thumbs up from other speed-daters but said yes to them more often. For men, being good-looking, a bit large, and making good money caused them to be more selective. p. 236.  For women, being slender allowed them to be more selective. p. 236.   Women tended to say no more often when they were thin and the male daters were older. p. 237.  Again, nothing you couldn’t figure out on your own.

All of these findings support the market value theory of mating: people like pretty much the same qualities in a date, but they realize they can only get someone with these qualities if they themselves are high in qualities wanted by the opposite sex.  This phenomenon is expressed memorably by the scientist Stephen Pinker, “Somewhere in this world of five billion (now six billion) people there lives the best-looking, richest, smartest, funniest, kindest person who would settle for you.”

One of the findings that might surprise some of you is that women are, in general, much more selective than men.  Women gave fewer thumbs ups to men than men gave to women. 

Another is that the different sexes are willing to adjust their expectations down based on different things.  Women will lower their selectivity if they are fat, but not if they are older.  And men will lower their expectations if they have unattractive faces, but not if they are older or shorter. p. 241. 

Another settling feature is that divorced men will settle for chubby women more often than nondivorced men.

Why are there so many Vietnamese manicurists in the US?

Tips about women

Tad Safran’s interesting discussion in The London Times of what he learned about women from interacting with his two-year-old niece (I removed some of the less interesting things):

As a single man in my mid-thirties, I’ve spent 20 years trying to understand women, with mixed results. It wasn’t until six months ago, however, that I was given a clear insight into how the female mind works.

…

1 Ignore them

1If I come into a room and bounce up to Lou-Lou like a clown, trying to amuse and entertain, she blanks me completely. It’s as if I don’t exist. If I walk straight past her, however, I guarantee she will call out my name and want to play with me.

2 Bribe them

Gifts work. Preferably something noisy or sparkly. With Lou-Lou, that means stuffed animals that sing or sequined hair grips. With grown women, I suppose that equates to, say, cars and jewellery.

3 Compliment them

I’ve mistakenly always held that compliments are like diamonds: valuable only for their scarcity. Flood the market and they lose all value. Not so. Lou-Lou poos in her nappy, everyone cheers – as if she just came up with a workable solution to world hunger – and she beams like a lighthouse. The same works with grown women, although, of course, only the general principle applies rather than the specific example given here. (I learnt this one the hard way.)

4 Listen to them

I’ve spent my life trying to preempt what women want. I needn’t have bothered. If I just pay attention, Lou-Lou will tell me exactly what she wants: eat, dance, doll, jump, run, sing, play, read. Then all I have to do is organise it. How much simpler my life would have been if I had listened and acted accordingly.

5 Apologise

It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It doesn’t matter if you don’t even know what you’ve done. I might have slighted Lou-Lou by putting the wrong doll in the pram. What seems to you or me like a minor infraction is, to her, on a par with genocide. The best policy is to throw yourself on her mercy and beg forgiveness. But you must sound sincere. You don’t have to be sincere, just sound sincere. This is so elementary, yet how many men ignore this advice?

… 

7 Don’t tell them what to do

The best way to guarantee that she doesn’t do what I want is by telling her to do it. The clever thing is to make it seem like her idea – and make it seem fun. One of my proudest moments was convincing Lou-Lou that watching the rugby World Cup final would be more fun than playing in the sandpit.

…

9 Don’t argue

There’s simply no point. You will never win, and if you do win, it will be a hollow victory because of the mood she’ll be in for a long time afterwards. Quite frankly, who needs the aggro? This leads to my final and most important point:

10 Don’t make them cry

There is nothing more distressing than watching Lou-Lou’s enormous, innocent brown eyes overflow with tears, while her mouth becomes a gaping, drooling, mournful air-raid siren that pierces through to the core of my heart. I’m utterly defenceless when she cries. And there’s no known antidote. Food? Monkey impressions? A pony? Stabbing myself in the eye with a chopstick? I will agree to anything to stop her crying

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article3736523.ece

Anyone who has been in a relationship for more than a few weeks will realize the truth of a lot of this.  It reminds me of advice a long-time married guy gave to a guy on the eve of his wedding: learn how to apologize; you’ll be doing it for the rest of your life.

Note: to any female readers who are incensed by this post and want to post an angry reply, you’ll get more people reading your angry reply if you click on the link to the Times article above and post your reply there.