''I knew she was oversize, but now she appeared a fair match for Falstaff.''

So wrote Abraham Lincoln, making fun of his fat girlfriend! (And Richard Brookhiser doesn't think much of the new Lincoln-was-gay book.)

"None of us floozies was that nuts!"

Researching the update to the previous post, I wanted to track down the expression "bee-stung lips," which I knew went back to the 1920s. All signs pointed to the actress Mae Murray, "The Girl With the Bee-Stung Lips." The quote above is from her, commenting on the movie "Sunset Boulevard." What a great quote! I love the way it admits they were floozies and they were nuts! Born in 1885, she goes back to the really early days of film and, it seems, is quite forgotten, though bee-stung lips are still perceived as beautiful. I note that her lower lip exceeds her upper lip in size. Or does it? Here's a fabulous movie magazine illustration of her. Here's another. Beautiful!

Lips.

Who decided -- in this age of scientific lip plumping -- that the female should ideally have the top lip much larger than the bottom lip and the male should have the bottom lip much larger than than the top? If you don't believe me that a decision has been reached, examine this poster:

It was not always so. Greta Garbo, long the standard of perfect beauty, had a notably larger lower lip. Ingrid Bergman, the actress with the most beautiful lips, had a much larger lower lip. And look at Sophia Loren's lips. (I mean it. Look at her lips.) Look at Catherine Deneuve, famously the most beautiful woman in the world in the 1960s, at the time of "Belle de Jour." Have I proved my point?

You might say, all of those beautiful women had a larger lower lip because nearly everyone does, and that the new look exists now simply because it has become possible through technology, but I would say that the great beauties of the past had unusually large lower lips in proportion to their upper lips. Why am I obsessing about lips? Because that "Closer" poster has been bugging me! Presumably, they want it to drive you a bit nuts. We see only one eye of each of the four actors, and those eyes are almost -- but not quite -- lined up. The image is supposed to be disconcerting, to go along with the movie's tag line, "If you believe in love at first sight, you never stop looking." But it's the eyes that you should feel compelled to "never stop looking" at, and it should be because you are contemplating the characters. I find myself staring at the lips and thinking about collagen injections.

UPDATE: An emailer writes:

I think the full upper lip trend springs from Angelina Jolie. While it certainly works for her, I can't think of many others for whom it does. Generally the person appears as if they took a "poke" in the mouth -- very sexy!

Well, here is a topic that has spawned many a feminist essay! Who was the first to write that beauty standards imposed on women create the look an assault victim, thus demonstrating the immense problem we have with eroticizing violence? I can't think how many times I've read that blue eyeshadow resembles bruising. And that high heels excite men because they disable the woman from running away. And those oversized lips are the boxer's "fat lip."

The classic way to refer to puffy women's lips, is "bee-stung," which sounds more painful than collagen injections. I think the original beautiful puffy lips woman is Brigitte Bardot. (What a perfect early sixties look! Do you know how hard it is to tease -- torment! -- your hair to get it that big?)

Here are the annals of collagen abuse, for your amusement and to serve as a warning.

Anti-terrorism lawn-mower drag racing.

No, that's not just a string of absurdly unrelated words. Texas officials used federal antiterrorism grant money "to transport lawn mowers to 'lawn-mower drag races.'"

Noted.

Sometimes, blogging, I run across news stories where the only thing I can think of to say is "That's terrible," which doesn't seem worth making people read, but where complete silence seems as though you're letting them get away with it. So, let me just say this is terrible.

The search for a smart mate, continued.

Here's an email prompted by yesterday's post "The pros and cons of marrying someone smarter than you":

I'm extremely skeptical of the entire notion of choosing mates based on their intelligence. In my experience, intelligence is surprisingly hard to judge, especially as part of an initial impression. Anytime someone claims to choose a mate because he/she is smarter, or less smart, than he/she is, my overriding impression is that the person making the claim doesn't have the faintest idea what he or she is talking about.

Good point. Some people you think are pretty smart are just good at displaying one thing they are good at, such as verbal wit. They may be quite foolish in many aspects of life, including their ability to deal with other people, which is the one thing you're going to care most about in a relationship. Some people you might think are smart just crave admiration or worry about their inferiority, so they put a lot of effort into trying to seem smart. Some of the smartest people feel quite secure about it and don't feel motivated to show it off. They believe they get along better with others by keeping it to themselves.

Imagine meeting two men at a party. One makes a point of talking really fast, using big words, and dropping names of academic writers in a field he's studied and knows you haven't. The other man speaks at a normal rate, using ordinary words, and asks you if you saw a recent, popular movie. Is Man 2 smarter than Man 1? Well, we at least know he has more emotional intelligence. But if you had your heart set on finding an intelligent mate, you might go for Man 1. And good luck being happy with him. Substitute woman for man if that's what you are in pursuit of, but I can't help thinking women would be more likely to make this particular mistake. Note that if Man 1 is also the sort who wants someone less intelligent, we can predict an especially grim relationship.

That said, one very common way to find your intellectual equal is to meet your mate in college. You're surrounded by a large group of people who are roughly your intellectual equals. Now, you can choose based on compatibility and physical attraction. If you miss the big opportunity in college, or, wisely, you decide not to pair up so early, you can always go back to school -- for example, law school, though then you've got to want to marry a lawyer.

You could check your prospective mate's paper credentials: SAT score, IQ. Of course, some people are good at standardized tests and some aren't, and marriage is not a standardized test.

I still think the best advice is to seek equality in a marriage. I think we are good at recognizing when people are on our level and make mistakes when we want either an idol or someone we can dominate. Equality is a good principle all around.

By the way, my own parents knew the results of their IQ tests. (They met in the Army in WWII, and I think the Army tested them.) My father's IQ score came out one point higher than my mother's, and they had a very long happy relationship. They had to think, based on the tests, which I think they believed in, that they were equal, but perhaps it helped his ego to know he had that one point edge on paper. They used to joke about it. You do the taxes, you've got that extra IQ point.

Two things and a thing about two.

A day or two ago, two different emails advised me that something that I wrote reminded them of "The Substance of Style," the Virginia Postrel book that just came out in paperback, so I decided I ought to buy the book. As longtime readers know, I can't stand to buy just one thing. If I have one thing to buy, I become a prowling beast of a consumer, in search of a second thing to buy. The nearest book that appealed to me, in the Sociology section at Borders, was Neil Postman's "Amusing Ourselves to Death," which either is or is not related to the themes in "The Substance of Style," though I'm sure if my life depended on it I could come up with a theory about why they are about the same thing. Postman's book dates back to 1985 and so, as it predicts the future, I presume it completely fails to account for our absorption into cyberspace, but I'm interested in Chapter 10 – "Teaching as an Amusing Activity" – and as I said, I needed a second book in order to be able to buy the first book.

And speaking of two, this is my second post of the day offering up raw material for anyone who would like to work on the theory Althouse is a bit insane about numbers.

The pros and cons of marrying someone smarter than you.

Yesterday's post "A high IQ is a hindrance for women" brought this email:

OK, data: I'm a man and I want to marry a smart woman. I would find most attractive a woman who was smarter than me, if she found me attractive. Validation for my ego! Plus, smart people are (ceteris paribus) usually more fun to be around than less-smart people, and a smarter woman ought to be more valuable as a marriage partner for numerous practical reasons. I'll bet lots of men, particularly smart men, feel the same way as I do. Look at the male-blogger fascination with Condoleezza Rice (not to mention various smart female bloggers), for example. OTOH, I might worry that a woman who was much smarter than me would eventually lose interest in me. But if men can be satisfied to be married to women who are less smart than they are, perhaps the converse is also possible. There is hope!

Unfortunately I am still unmarried. Perhaps this means that the smart women I find attractive are so smart that they don't find me attractive? Probably I shouldn't overthink this issue.

Well, that other post was a lot of speculation about why men and women might have different preferences about wanting a partner who was more/less/equally intelligent. But let's look at why everyone doesn't prefer a partner who is smarter than they are, or at least why the preference isn't as widespread as the preference for someone who is more attractive than oneself.

Here are some advantages I can think of in having mate that is smarter than you. He/she can can be trusted to handle various difficult family tasks -- such as finances, taxes, figuring out technical manuals -- that you would find exasperating. He/she might be good at solving problems and helping you or the kids get out of the various jams you might be dumb enough to get yourselves into. He/she would not need as much help him/herself. He/she might have lots of interesting things to say and be smart enough to notice when he/she is boring the pants off of you.

Against this we must weigh the disadvantages. He/she might use that superior intelligence to figure out ways to avoid difficult tasks or to convince you that you really are much better at them. He/she might find your mundane problems too boring to engage with. As for dealing with the kids, he/she might find the routines of childrearing too tedious. A mate who doesn't need your help may prove aloof and solitary. And when it comes to conversation, he/she might be so fascinated with the workings of his/her own mind that he/she pontificates and holds the floor too long and really doesn't care about your feeble contributions.

For every possible advantage to having someone smarter, there's a corresponding disadvantage. I think we need to know whether this smart person is kind and considerate or pretty much of a jerk before we know how this intelligence is going to play out. From what I've seen, a very smart person is at least as likely as an average person to be pretty much of a jerk. One thing about beauty: what you see is what you get. If you're fascinated by brilliance, it make take a while to notice the problems. Remember this wily character is going to be good at hiding the problems, great at explaining them away if you point them out, and a genius at demonstrating why it is in fact your fault!

I'm not really writing an advice column here. Note how I didn't actually help the emailer!

Numerology.

Nice Philadelphia photos over at Satan's Laundromat. I especially like the first one. I'm fond of numerals, just as design, and I make a point of photographing "4" when I get the chance. I've also always had a place in my heart for that cool old Charles Demuth painting "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold." You can buy a watch based on that painting, which is particularly nice if you love 5 o'clock. Me, I happen to be an immense fan of 4 o'clock. A.M. or P.M. -- I love 4 o'clock! And, yes, I know there are flowers called 4 o'clocks and that it's tea time (or just a good time for a late lunch) and that there's a movie called "The Devil at 4 O'Clock." Ah! When the Evil One crops up twice in one short post, it's time to stop!

UPDATE: Speaking of 4 o'clock, may I point out a little currently dismantled rock band I care a lot about -- Four O'Clock Tragedy.

"I didn't know that if you wanted a show cancelled, all you had to do was say it out loud."

So said Jon Stewart, on last night's "Daily Show," about the cancellation of CNN's "Crossfire."

Snakes/Chutes.

I'm procrastinating, even though it isn't 7 a.m. yet. I've read the NYT, done the Friday crossword puzzle, and I open the blinds and it's still dark out. I'd like to go in to the office and read some admissions files today, but it's six degrees and, as I've said, still dark. So I'm reading some blogs and not really feeling that inspired to blog. I thought Andrew Sullivan had a lot of good posts up from today and yesterday, but nothing I wanted to opine on, so I clicked away from there and onto an Economist article that looked interesting ("Meritocracy in America"), and finally I got distracted by the sort of thing that makes me want to blog, actually, probably, my favorite thing to blog about: a language puzzle with a pop culture dimension.

A subheading in the article is "All snakes, no ladders." What does that refer to? I wondered. I knew the British called runs in nylon stockings "ladders," but then what were the "snakes"? Or is it something like the old board game "Chutes and Ladders"? Googling, I discovered that, in fact, "Snakes and Ladders" really was the original board game that the American "Chutes and Ladders" was based on. It's an apt metaphor, being a game in which one tries to advance along a path of squares, but the roll of the dice might land you on the first step of a ladder (which lets you immediately climb far ahead on the path) or the top of a chute (in which case you slide back to a much earlier point on the path).

Here's a brief, illustrated history of the game "Snakes and Ladders." It goes back to the second century B.C., to India:

Some say the game was developed by religious teachers who used the game to teach children the difference between "good and evil". In any event, the British "discovered" the game during the "Empire" days and introduced it into England in the 1890s, and eventually it was marketed as a children's game.... [T]he American version is known as "Chutes and Ladders" and first appeared in the US in 1943.

Interesting that the Americans replaced the snakes with chutes! If the snakes were intended to convey a moral message, what does the substitution of chutes for snakes say about America and how we teach our children morality? Obviously, the snake is still a symbol in American-style morality teaching. Who escapes the story of Adam and Eve? Did the Chutes and Ladders people decide that children should only be told that there are pitfalls out there and not warned that there were evildoers who might tempt them? Or was it merely that a chute (a slide) made a more sensible counterpart to a ladder, something the children could easily visualize sliding down? Most likely, the American game designers just thought snakes were too scary for the little kids who would play this very easy game. It's frustrating enough to encounter a big setback, so why torment the kids with snakes. Make it like playground equipment.

One reason I think this last explanation is most reasonable is that Candyland (from 1949) is clearly based on Chutes and Ladders. Apparently, even those slides are a bit too frightening for youngsters, and having Candy-based pitfalls and shortcuts seemed much more appropriate. It was packaged as "A sweet little game for sweet little folks" -- if you can believe the marketing. But maybe you shouldn't believe the marketing. Maybe Candyland was part of the nefarious corporate plot to addict Americans to mass-produced foodstuffs.

UPDATE: I note that for the French-speaking, "Chute" would imply the snake-infested, morality story of Adam and Eve. But the French version of the game marketed in Canada keeps the snakes: "Serpents et Echelles." I also note that "Snakes and Ladders" has Biblical imagery not only in the snake, but in the ladder. Hmmm... I wonder if Prince was inspired by the Bible or if he played Chutes and Ladders when he was a kid. I'm guessing both.

"A high IQ is a hindrance for women."

Here's a report on a study that supposedly shows that "a high IQ is a hindrance for women wanting to get married":

The study found the likelihood of marriage increased by 35 percent for boys for each 16-point increase in IQ.

But for girls, there is a 40-percent drop for each 16-point rise, according to the survey by the universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Edinburgh and Glasgow.

The study is based on the IQs of 900 men and women between their 10th and 40th birthdays.

The professors theorize that high IQ types work hard at demanding careers and this causes the women to find the men around them "not interesting enough," while the men are going to want "an old-fashioned wife [who] looks after the home, a copy of his mum in a way."

This assumes that the old fashioned, mum-style woman won't have a high IQ, and that smart men prefer to be looked after while smart women want an intellectually stimulating partner. But I'm not going to quibble with those assumptions. I'm going to quibble with the larger assumption that the desire to marry is the same for men and women and at all levels of intelligence. The preference for marriage results from many factors. It may well be that some or all of these things are true: 1. women have less to gain from marriage once they are able to provide for themselves economically, 2. women with a higher IQ are more likely to be able to support themselves well, 3. more intelligent persons are better able to form preferences by analyzing real world factors and less likely to adopt established conventions, and 4. not marrying is the more rational choice for an intelligent woman. If some or all of these things are at least partially true, a high IQ in women might be a hindrance for the institution of marriage, but not for the woman herself.

I realize I may be misinterpreting the British use of the word "hindrance," and maybe the headline doesn't mean, as I interpreted it, that if you're a woman and you want to get married, a high IQ is going to make it more difficult for you to achieve your goal. Maybe it only means, if you are a woman, the higher your IQ is, the less likely you are to get married. If the study only means to say that, then I don't mean to criticize anyone for bad logic, only to say that we still don't know whether a high IQ makes a woman less able to attract men when she wants to do so or whether a high IQ makes a woman see marriage as a less desirable way of life. A safe guess is that it's some combination of the two.

But let me add an incendiary postscript. To generalize roughly: women want their partners to be at least as smart as they are, but men prefer to have something of an edge on the woman. A very smart man -- someone whose name you would recognize -- once told me that in looking for a wife, he made a list of qualifications, one of which was that she be "almost as smart" as he is. Now, maybe he only meant that he knew he was so incredibly smart that the most he could hope for was someone "almost as smart," but I think he meant that he wanted smart, but he didn't want to be outmatched. He wanted to feel dominant. If this pattern of preference is followed by most people, the men at the bottom and the women at the top will have the hardest time finding partners. Too bad! One more reason to favor the equality of the sexes: more people will find mates. If the theorizing in the previous paragraphs is true, however, maybe the smartest women will embrace the unmarried state happily. In that case, the ones who are hurt the most are the least intelligent men, whose true equals have been snatched away by dominance-seeking men who have outwitted them.

"I cannot live between the sky and the earth."

Under Iranian law, you can't be a homosexual, but sex change surgery is accepted. The BBC reports on the situation here.

Excusing "Alexander," now in the UK.

Oliver Stone is still shirking responsibility for the abysmal badness of his movie "Alexander." He thinks perhaps he'll have a fresh start in the UK by emphasizing the old Americans-are-Puritans angle:

At the UK premiere of his epic film of Alexander, Oliver Stone last night blamed "raging fundamentalism in morality" for the film's US box office failure.

"Sexuality is a large issue in America right now, but it isn't so much in other countries," the Oscar-winning director explained yesterday. "There's a raging fundamentalism in morality in the United States. From day one audiences didn't show up. They didn't even read the reviews in the [American] south because the media was using the words: 'Alex is Gay'."

I wonder what Stone will use as an excuse when the movie flops outside of the U.S., but for now, he's got to grasp at the straws that are within range. You're so much better than those Americans, now, aren't you?

The movie's star Colin Farrell has a more downbeat explanation:

"The film is a draining experience to watch. It's loaded with mythology, icons, symbolism and destiny. My friends have watched the film and said: 'Jesus Christ it's not exactly Gladiator.'"

Come on, Colin. You could easily have punched that up into a challenge for the European moviegoers: The Americans, being simple-minded folk, were not up to the difficult comprehension of mythology, icons, symbolism and destiny. Surely, Europeans will get the allusions and revel in the complexity. But, no. He admits his friends have already razzed him about what a bad movie he made. Still, I think Farrell is probably wise to distance himself from Stone and reclaim his once-cool image.

"Small wounds have been left so long they end up being big wounds."

From the NYT, terrible stories of the medical needs of the tsunami survivors:

"To some extent a process of natural selection has occurred," Dr. Shumack said. "People with no treatment at all are already dead."...

The seawater that swamped the city consisted of a foul mixture of sanitation waste, garbage and debris. Many of those who did not drown were cut by flying bits of trees, wood and metal. Even for the injured who managed to scrounge a few dabs of antiseptic and a bandage at chaotic camps, wounds have become seriously infected, in many cases septic.

"A couple of drops of this putrid water gives these people rip-roaring pneumonia and lacerations that get horrendously infected," Dr. Shumack said. "The septicemia is incredible. The surgical cases have become more complicated because the infections are becoming more spectacular."...

At this point, for many, the only hope is amputation, and the doctors are struggling and running out of amputation saws.

Fear of regime change?

There's this report about why Burma has been so secretive about the effects of the tsunami:

Superstition, distrust and a secretive military regime are making it difficult to assess the death toll and damage from the Dec. 26 tsunami in Myanmar, a country ruled by dictators since 1962.

"There's an age-old superstition that if there's a big natural disaster, there's going to be a new king or a regime change," says Stephen Dun of Seattle. "That's one of the reasons they're keeping a big blanket on this whole situation."

Dun serves on the board of the US Campaign for Burma, a human-rights and pro-democracy group, and is an elected representative of the Karen National Union. The Karen tribe, the largest and most powerful of Myanmar's ethnic minorities, has been fighting the government for decades...

David Steinberg, an expert on Myanmar at Georgetown University, says the generals who have ruled since 1962 have always been economical with bad news. "Disasters, naturally or otherwise induced, tend to undercut the perceived legitimacy of the state, so they report them only reluctantly or in a tardy manner," he said.

The government is claiming that only 59 people have died from the tsunami.

UPDATE: Note that the U.N. is backing up the government's report of only light damages.