Short men 'more likely to be jealous'

This is not really news. You don't have to be Einstein to know that women prefer tall men and men prefer beautiful women. So plain women or short men are more likely to be rejected and therefore more jealous!

It does however highlight one thing that is often overlooked: That the preference for taller men tends to leave tall women rather high and dry. They find difficulty in getting men who are taller than them. So when they see a one of the rare really tall men with a short lady it does tend to get them irritated ("jealous"). They think that the short lady concerned is taking away one of their rare opportunities. How do I know that? I am tall enough to have had quite a few tall women in my life and they talk to me. And I listen!

Jealous lovers need look no further than their height if they want something to blame for their attacks of the green-eyed monster, new research shows. A study by Spanish and Dutch researchers has found that the shorter a man is the more likely he is to suffer bouts of jealousy. European men questioned by the scientists at the Universities of Groningen and Valencia said they felt most threatened by romantic rivals who were attractive, rich and strong, the New Scientist magazine reported.

Women, on the other hand, were most jealous of others' beauty and charm. They were also most prone to jealousy if they were either short or tall, with medium-height females feeling the most relaxed.

Sydney-based psychotherapist Steven Carroll said the findings, published in the US journal Evolution and Human Behaviour, made evolutionary sense. "From an Australian perspective this is quite right because studies have shown that taller men do best with the ladies," Mr Carroll said. "Young rural Australian men have been seen to worry less about the girls the taller they are and other research has shown that shorter men are more likely to provoke taller men into fights."

But Mr Carroll said when a women actually leaves her partner for another man, jealousy will appear irrespective of height. "The new man could be a midget on life support or Arnold Schwarzenegger and it really wouldn't make a difference to jealousy levels."

The European researchers say it makes sense women of average height are least jealous because, from an evolutionary perspective, they are the most fertile, in the best health, and most popular with men. Mr Carroll agreed but said height was a more complex issue among women, especially in Australia. "Yes, there's the evolutionary angle of average height but in Australia there is much more social pressure than evolutionary pressure to be supermodel tall and fit this legs-up-to-here ideal, and that plays a role too," he said.

The study surveyed 549 men and women in the Netherlands and Spain, with Mr Carroll saying it was "fascinating" the shorter and famously jealous Spaniards had collaborated with the cool and considerably taller Dutch for the research.

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Tell a big enough lie often enough ...

The article below is probably correct about the extent to which cholesterol can be lowered. That lower dietary cholesterol would save lives is the lie

Lowering the cholesterol of every Australian by 10 per cent would save 3000 lives a year, according to research which calls for a nationwide shift on diet and exercise. The study by Sydney researchers has found that a small, 10 per cent drop in "bad" LDL cholesterol could be achieved in just a few weeks, primarily by cutting back on saturated fats and exercising more. The shift would save 3000 people annually who would otherwise be dead from heart attack, cardiovascular disease or ischaemic stroke, the researchers at the George Institute for International Health found.

"These are quite significant findings," said Dr Rachel Huxley, the institute's director of nutrition and lifestyle. "We're not talking drugs; we're talking simple diet and exercise changes that an individual can make to lower their LDL in less than a month."

The key change would be lowering saturated fat intake, particularly full fat dairy products, convenience meals, takeaway foods, confectionary, cakes and biscuits - the biggest contributors to LDL in Australia. Statistics show about 12 per cent of energy consumed in an average Australian diet comes from saturated fats, 50 per cent above recommended levels. "If we could cut down on those food items we could make a substantial contribution to reducing the amount of saturate fats that we consume and the number of people that are dying," Dr Huxley said.

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Just some problems with the "Obesity" war:

1). It tries to impose behavior change on everybody -- when most of those targeted are not obese and hence have no reason to change their behaviour. It is a form of punishing the innocent and the guilty alike. (It is also typical of Leftist thinking: Scorning the individual and capable of dealing with large groups only).

2). The longevity research all leads to the conclusion that it is people of MIDDLING weight who live longest -- not slim people. So the "epidemic" of obesity is in fact largely an "epidemic" of living longer.

3). It is total calorie intake that makes you fat -- not where you get your calories. Policies that attack only the source of the calories (e.g. "junk food") without addressing total calorie intake are hence pissing into the wind. People involuntarily deprived of their preferred calorie intake from one source are highly likely to seek and find their calories elsewhere.

4). So-called junk food is perfectly nutritious. A big Mac meal comprises meat, bread, salad and potatoes -- which is a mainstream Western diet. If that is bad then we are all in big trouble.

5). Food warriors demonize salt and fat. But we need a daily salt intake to counter salt-loss through perspiration and the research shows that people on salt-restricted diets die SOONER. And Eskimos eat huge amounts of fat with no apparent ill-effects. And the average home-cooked roast dinner has LOTS of fat. Will we ban roast dinners?

6). The foods restricted are often no more calorific than those permitted -- such as milk and fruit-juice drinks.

7). Tendency to weight is mostly genetic and is therefore not readily susceptible to voluntary behaviour change.

8). And when are we going to ban cheese? Cheese is a concentrated calorie bomb and has lots of that wicked animal fat in it too. Wouldn't we all be better off without it? And what about butter and margarine? They are just about pure fat. Surely they should be treated as contraband in kids' lunchboxes! [/sarcasm].

9). And how odd it is that we never hear of the huge American study which showed that women who eat lots of veggies have an INCREASED risk of stomach cancer? So the official recommendation to eat five lots of veggies every day might just be creating lots of cancer for the future! It's as plausible (i.e. not very) as all the other dietary "wisdom" we read about fat etc.

10). And will "this generation of Western children be the first in history to lead shorter lives than their parents did"? This is another anti-fat scare that emanates from a much-cited editorial in a prominent medical journal that said so. Yet this editorial offered no statistical basis for its opinion -- an opinion that flies directly in the face of the available evidence.

Even statistical correlations far stronger than anything found in medical research may disappear if more data is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:

"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre's yield of cotton. He calculated the correlation coefficient between the two series at -0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic conditions and lynchings in Raper's data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his analysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic conditions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added."

So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. But in medical research, data selectivity and the "overlooking" of discordant research findings is epidemic.

"What we should be doing is monitoring children from birth so we can detect any deviations from the norm at an early stage and action can be taken". Who said that? Joe Stalin? Adolf Hitler? Orwell's "Big Brother"? The Spanish Inquisition? Generalissimo Francisco Franco Bahamonde? None of those. It was Dr Colin Waine, chairman of Britain's National Obesity Forum. What a fine fellow!

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