There's a lot of conflicting advice out there about dating, relationships and marriage. The latest book on this subject to cause a bit of a buzz is by American author Lori Gottlieb. She advises women that putting all their hopes into finding The One is a bad strategy. They should settle for someone merely adequate instead.

This seems like sensible advice. However, even if women take it, there's still not a big pool of men out there who are interested in marriage. Huge social changes over the last few decades have made the benefits that accrue to married men comparatively small. And there are all those horror stories about them being heavily ripped off in divorces. Men - wary of being hitched at the best of times - are even more so today. It's quite an unfortunate situation, really.

There's been a lot of buzz about cougars in America for a while. And Australia is now following suit. Some have written it off as a passing fad but it seems to be a genuine social phenomenon resulting from demographic changes.

As this article states, "figures show the trend has increased in Australia due to an oversupply of single women aged 40 to 54 compared with men in the same age bracket".

Interesting that these independent older women are still called "cougars" Down Under. The term sounds so American, and I'd imagine that some people are not happy with yet another example of US style "cultural imperialism". Maybe one day we'll use the name of a local marsupial instead!

Most online dating scammers just want to relieve their victims of their money. That's bad enough. But sometimes their deception goes way beyond that, and becomes something truly horrifying. Take this example, in which a Briton was tricked into traveling to Nigeria, and subsequently kidnapped and held for ransom.

The recent sex scandal involving Irish politician Iris Robinson and her much younger lover would have received publicity at any time. But I think it's getting a huge amount now because there's a current media obsession with older women and younger men.

In any case, there are a lot of older women who fantasize about doing what Mrs Robinson did. But they don't act on their desires - probably the wisest course of action in most cases.

Online dating scams are now extremely common. And you'd have to pretty naive to fall for one, since they are usually so obvious. I'd imagine that scammers tend to have a lot less success these days since people are much more aware of them than they used to be.

However, some scammers are much more thoughtful and dedicated. Take Justin Brown, a 24 year old in Texas, who set up an elaborate ruse in which he posed as a famous model online, and even impersonated her in telephone conversations! Using these techniques over a two year period he managed to trick numerous very rich and successful men into sending money and gifts to him.

Sounds like he had a real talent. Pity he used it in this way. He might have had a lucrative career as an actor or voice over artist!

Several months ago Jodi Gordon made headlines by allegedly going on a cocaine bender with a bikie named Mark Judge. He is now in the news again, being one of the nominees for Cleo's Bachelor of the Year title.

Not surprisingly, the selection has caused some controversy. But it certainly reveals how the media works. Once you've hit the headlines for any reason - but particularly if it's through intimate association with an existing celebrity - then you qualify as a celebrity yourself!

If Mark Judge doesn't already have an agent, he should get one

Here's another case of dating sites being used as a source of information about relationship behaviour: In a study about what men and women preferred in potential partners, Welsh researches discovered that age was a very important factor. Dating site data overwhelmingly revealed that men preferred women who were younger than them, while the inverse was true for women. This strongly contradicted the currently fashionable image of older women with toyboys, which occurs only rarely in real life.

There seem to be an awful lot of frustrated single women in the upmarket Sydney suburb of Mosman. There are many more women living there, and if those interviewed in this article are typical of the area they have a pretty low opinion of the local men. So if you are a single bloke in Sydney looking for a date, this area might be a good place to start!

Australian Rules football club St Kilda City had a local brothel called the California Club lined up as a sponsor. But club management has bowed to pressure and the deal is now off.

If the partnership had gone ahead the media would have had a field day. And since the Aussie Rules culture is often shown to be sexist and blokey (though not on the same scale as Rugby League) the decision is totally understandable.

That said, I do suspect that many fans wouldn't have been offended at all by the sponsorship deal. And there would have even been a few very liberal activist types who - believing that sex work is actually empowering to women - might have even seen it as a pro-feminist move!

Barely a week goes past without there being another celebrity sex tape scandal. This week, it's Lindsay Lohan, who's deeply concerned that some alleged footage of her nude with an anonymous man may soon hit the internet.

While this alleged footage me have been taken without her knowledge, celebrity sex tapes are often made by the celebrities themselves. It seems a remarkably stupid thing to do given the risks of them being made public. (That is, unless they make them in the secret hope that this does actually happen! Which I suspect is actually the case a lot of the time.)