It's all about sex...

... yes, we already knew that. Men are intelligent to impress women, and women are intelligent to find the best men. That's why you're sitting on your desk, chewing a pen, trying to quantize gravity.

Here's what Psychology tells us today (Source: Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa):

"Women often say no to men. Men have had to conquer foreign lands, win battles and wars, compose symphonies, author books, write sonnets, paint cathedral ceilings, make scientific discoveries, play in rock bands, and write new computer software in order to impress women so that they will agree to have sex with them. Men have built (and destroyed) civilization in order to impress women, so that they might say yes."

Well, and once you've destroyed a civilization and sufficiently impressed every women that was 'fit' enough to survive, keep in mind that by your human nature you are actually polygamous because it's an evolutionary advantage:

"Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the "winners" and the "losers" in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males."

And I'm sure 6 feet 4 also come in handy for changing light-bulbs. On the other hand, there are certain natural selection mechanism in societies which tolerate polygamy. As you'll also learn from the above article, suicide terrorists are dominantly Muslim because a) polygamy increases competition among men and b) because they are promised 72 virgins in heaven. (If only things were that simple. I still think airline passengers should stroke pigs before boarding, definitly preferable to throwing away my Coke each time I go through security.)

Also, sorry to report, but having children is statistically seen a bad idea for men when it comes to the peak of the crime-and-creativity curve:

"These calculations have been performed by natural and sexual selection, so to speak, which then equips male brains with a psychological mechanism to incline them to be increasingly competitive immediately after puberty and make them less competitive right after the birth of their first child. Men simply do not feel like acting violently, stealing, or conducting additional scientific experiments, or they just want to settle down after the birth of their child but they do not know exactly why."

I especially like the part with 'they don't know why'. And finally, a Harvard professor solved the puzzle why men prefer D-cups:

"Until very recently, it was a mystery to evolutionary psychology why men prefer women with large breasts, since the size of a woman's breasts has no relationship to her ability to lactate. But Harvard anthropologist Frank Marlowe contends that larger, and hence heavier, breasts sag more conspicuously with age than do smaller breasts. Thus they make it easier for men to judge a woman's age (and her reproductive value) by sight—suggesting why men find women with large breasts more attractive."

Well, I think there's truth in it, as my age seems to be incredibly hard to judge. Related, you'll be interested to hear that a recent study shows Women Don't Talk More Than Guys:

"The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day. The score: Women, 16,215. Men, 15,669.The difference: 546 words: "Not statistically significant," say the researchers."

Have a nice weekend. Have fun. Reproduce. Go, discover a new country or write a sonnet.