Oz Dating

One thousand first dates seems like an awful lot to endure before finding someone you are truly compatible with. But it may well be that even that number is actually far too low!

A university student has used a well known mathematical formula called the Drake Equation to calculate his own chances of finding someone he is totall suited to. If his calculations are accurate and universally valid, then we all have to meet several hundred thousand people before we find a perfect match.

Here's a story about a young woman's quest to find Mr Right using various methods, including online dating. It turns out that it took her several years of continual effort before she found him, ironically living only minutes away from her.  

I suspect that she used a little bit of exaggeration and poetic licence in the retelling of her experiences. The fact that he was her one thousandth date seems contrived to me. However, it's still an amusing tale, and shows the extreme lengths that some people will go to to find love and romance.

A customizable sex robot has been unveiled in Las Vegas. While this synthetic female companion isn't that sophisticated, it certainly is a huge advance on the blow-up doll! And with digital technology now so advanced that it can make cinematic creations seem truly life-like - for instance in the mind blowing movie Avatar - it seems only a matter of time before these sex robots reach a level of realism close to that envisaged in science fiction films and novels.

The Aussie online dating industry continues to boom as it catches up with other countries such as Britain and the USA, where it is an even more established and accepted method of meeting people.

The ongoing growth here and continued widespread use elsewhere is interesting, because not long ago was a lot of talk about dating sites being made redundant by free social networking sites like Facebook. But I think the reason this ultimately hasn't happened is that people do like to keep their quest for love and sex separate from the rest of their lives and therefore prefer to join sites dedicated solely to that purpose. This is generally a good idea, since there have been so many cases of people suffering personally and career-wise from the unwise posting of photos and intimate information on social networking sites. After all, in trying to learn more about job applicants prospective employers are highly likely to search Facebook, but will tend to steer clear of dating sites. They know that a person's sex life is their own business, even if it is on the net and publicly available in a sense. (And people don't use their real names on these sites anyway, so there would be little point in searching them, even if the will existed!)

There is a well known Latin phrase, in vino veritas, which means "in wine there is truth". I don't think there's any doubt about its validity. That's why it's hardly surprising that people are much likely to call or text people they've broken up with when they've had a few too many. In fact, in a recent poll more than half of the Sydneysiders surveyed admitted to being guilty of this embarrassing behaviour.

Britain is experiencing a cold snap at the moment. One of the unexpected consequences of this is a steep increase in the numbers of people using online dating sites.

If this is the case, then it would follow that consistently higher temperatures would make such sites less profitable. I wonder if this possibility will be added to the already long list of negative consequences of global warming?