Seriously, though, I have always envied the capacity of the male of the species to focus completely on one thing (often himself) without getting distracted.
Whether it’s invading Poland or devising a classification system for their collection of historical hardbacks, once they’ve got their teeth into something it can be very hard to prise them off.
Women, by contrast, have a different way of thinking. They can worry about the situation in Syria while being equally interested in a gorgeous pair of boots they saw the other day.
Like the White Queen in Alice In Wonderland, we can happily think six impossible things before breakfast, but ask us to check our bank statement and we go all hopeless. Or at least I do.
A new study at the University of Pennsylvania
has mapped the physical differences between female, lower, and male,
upper, brain function
Now, at last, we know why. A new study at the University of Pennsylvania has mapped the physical differences between female and male brain function.
The research — carried out on 949 individuals aged between eight and 22 — found that in men’s brains the neurological connections run from front to back. In women’s brains, by contrast, they work from side to side, linking the two hemispheres.
Essentially, lots of neat, sensible straight lines vs a great, mad scribble. Vertical vs lateral. The perfect visual representation of why I can never find my car keys and why my husband can’t understand that when I ask for his opinion, I’m not necessarily expecting an honest answer.
These differences have long been noted by students of human behaviour, but never before have they been illustrated so graphically.
They show how men and women use their brains differently — and provide irrefutable proof of why we excel in different fields.
An ability to link the left side of our brain with the right makes women better at intuitive tasks — what the scientists in the study call ‘thinking without thinking’ — while men excel in spatial tasks and motor skills, including (yes, all right) map-reading and parallel parking.
In the past, these differences have favoured the male of the species. Back in the days when tracking a single prey for hours was the only means of obtaining a full belly, terrier-like tenacity and superior physical strength gave men all the advantages. There’s not much use for empathy and intuition when you’re staring down a sabre-tooth tiger.
Only natural, then, that the qualities of the male brain should be valued above the less tangible ones of the female. Until now, that is.
For if you’re looking for a reason why women are catching up with men in terms of jobs, equality and earnings (and, in some cases, overtaking them), forget Virginia Woolf and Germaine Greer — just click on to the internet.
Traditionally prized male qualities mean nothing in the world of the internet. In fact, they are positive disadvantages. The worldwide web is a place in permanent flux with constantly shifting parameters.
To keep up, you need to have a mind like a pinball, spinning randomly, bouncing from target to target at great speed. A mind, in short, like a woman’s.
No single invention mirrors the workings of a woman’s head quite like the internet. Nowhere else combines cultural revolutions with grocery shopping, spurious gossip with serious political comment, cake recipes with political petitions.
It can be both brilliantly practical and utterly pointless, serious and fickle in equal measures.
It’s a truly terrifying thought. Now, did I mention those gorgeous boots I’ve seen . . .
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Not such well-bred hens
Posh model Poppy Delevingne’s hen night, as chronicled in great detail on the photo-sharing website Instagram, looked like a cross between a Tom Ford fashion shoot and a charity jumble sale, owing to the combination of super-models and naff Nineties-themed clothing.For all the fooling around on beds and stylised frolicking, it seemed pretty civilised. Perhaps the constant presence of the camera makes people think twice about acting like complete fools.
I’m relieved smartphones weren’t around for my hen do. There aren’t many pictures, but those that do exist are kept under careful lock and key at the back of the garage.
For all the fooling around, model Poppy Delevingne's hen night, seemed pretty civilised
Children in cars are, apparently, more distracting than mobile phones.
Actually, many things in a car are more distracting than a mobile phone, including husbands, dogs, the radio, bars of chocolate that are just very slightly out of reach in the glove compartment and adjusting the ventilation so the windscreen doesn’t steam up.
Most distracting of all, though, is struggling to plug in your hands-free when your phone rings so the police don’t pull you over and slap three points on your licence.
Last time I did that I almost crashed the car.
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It's porn, not fashion
Excuse my hairy feminist armpits, but why is it suddenly ‘in’ to like Playboy just because Kate Moss is all over it with her airbrushed behind in the air and a pair of bunny ears on her head?Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Sienna Miller, Daisy Lowe, Alexa Chung, Donatella Versace — all fashion A-listers — turned up to the Playboy Club in Mayfair to celebrate Moss’s cover and the mag’s 60th anniversary.
It’s a pornographic magazine, ladies. Emphatically not OK.
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I love quiffs united
Was there ever a sweeter sight than Brooklyn Beckham and Aaron Scholes — the 14-year-old sons of two Manchester United legends — proudly showing off their monster quiffs this week?There comes a point in every little boy’s life when he goes from being completely oblivious of the way he looks to being acutely conscious of it.
Girls get there much earlier, or course. I haven’t been allowed near my daughter’s hair with a pudding bowl and the kitchen scissors for a number of years now.
It helps that most boys get their style cues from sport, where being grubby, dishevelled and a little on the stinky side is no bad thing.
Girls, sadly, get theirs from other girls — who these days mostly seem to be half-naked Disney starlets.
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Newsnight, which is effecting some kind of very public and not entirely painless transformation, has recently become a reliable source of top late-night entertainment, albeit unintentionally.
After the whole ‘boring snoring’ Rachel Reeves debacle, on Monday the programme ended with the winner of the world memory championships, Sweden’s Jonas von Essen, failing to recite the end credits from memory. He even managed to forget who Paxman was.
Isn’t that a sackable offence at the BBC?
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Norland Nannies, the purveyors of childcare to the rich and well-connected, have updated their uniform. It’s gone from frump to frumpier. Clearly designed by a committee of wives, then.
Norland College students show off the new uniform
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It’s that time of year again when wholly non-ironic pictures of people’s offspring dressed as elves and other assorted festive imps pop through the letterbox purporting to be Christmas cards.
It’s the middle-class equivalent of the selfie, a lapse of taste that seems to afflict even the normally sane. Just why would I want to celebrate peace on earth and goodwill to all men by displaying pictures of strange children on my mantelpiece?
The best card received so far this year comes from the Soldiers’ Charity, via some friends in Hampshire. It’s a drawing from the Illustrated London News of January 9, 1915, of the unofficial yet widespread truce of Christmas 1914, when British and German soldiers ceased fire long enough to exchange greetings in the snow of no man’s land. Now that’s a picture that really means something.
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Sweet of Tom Daley to say he still fancies girls, but I think we all know they don’t stand much of a chance.
He will, however, make some lucky girl a fantastic GBF (gay best friend). Which, in many ways, is much more useful than having a proper boyfriend.
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He’s far too modest to mention it, but I happen to know that one of the books requested by No. 10 as a present for the Chinese premier was Mail writer Robert Hardman’s book Our Queen chronicling the Jubilee year. Probably being swept for bugs as we speak.
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