According to college women : Seventy Percent of men are not marriage material ? - "To be dating material, a man’s got to earn at least $2,025 per month. Sexual relationships, a man’s got to earn about $2,530 per month. Going steady would require about $3,225 per month of income Only men who make more than $4,000 per month will make the grade to qualify for marriage material... These series of scientific findings may also explain Singaporean men’s desire to have foreign spouses, especially those of Chinese or Vietnamese origin. On the day I collected my marriage certificate, my wife remarked that ROM was packed with couples with many wives to be of PRC origin. Perhaps it is easier to benchmark a Singaporean man’s income against a Vietnamese or Chinese scale with our high GDP per capita figures."

Straight Dope Staff Report: Who are the Gypsies? - "How did the Romani people come to be called Gypsies? Anthropology professor Anne Sutherland in Gypsies: The Hidden Americans (1975) says the word Gypsy derives from the time when the Romani entered Western Europe and "represented themselves as Egyptians," the name subsequently evolving into Gypsies. In The Gypsy-American: An Ethnogeographic Study (2002), cultural geographer David Nemeth of the University of Toledo adds some color to the story, which dates back to Romani prehistory, when the first traveling bands arrived in medieval European towns. Their "leaders professed to be Christian [royalty] of a kingdom in the East, which they called 'Little Egypt.' They claimed to have been driven from their Christian land by infidels, meaning the Islamic Turks." Professor Ian Hancock of the University of Texas says there are a few other explanations for the association between "Gypsy" and "Egyptian": One is that Europeans of the time called lots of foreign populations Egyptians; another is that the Romani people stayed in an area called Little Egypt when they first entered Europe."

18 year old offers her virginity for £10,000 - ""I get lots of guys wanting to help me out with my 'problem' - some replies are really creepy. But I got so frustrated with the empty offers that I turned them down."... Asked how she wanted to be paid, the greedy teen replied: "Cash would be perfect but what does £10,000 look like? I don't want to wander round with that much money in case I get robbed." But she got angry when our man asked if she was a prostitute and lying about losing her innocence."

Bad Singing Costs Man's Life - "Romy Baligula, a 29-year-old jobless man, was shot dead Tuesday night in a karaoke bar in San Mateo, Philippines... Frank Sinatra's Song "My Way", a frequent cause of fights and sometimes deaths when patrons sing out of tune, has been taken off at many karaoke bars in Manila."

strange maps - There's no description, so This Is True's: "This one's hard to describe, but it's what happens when you cross a fascination with maps with an overactive imagination. For instance, what if you took a map of the 50 U.S. states and instead of putting on the state names, rename each state with the country whose Gross Domestic Product most closely matches that state? California would be France; Colorado, Finland. Texas (sorry, eh?) would be Canada. Another one: a heat map of Europe in 2071 ...if global warming continues at the current rate. It's fun, interesting, maybe even educational."

The Straight Dope: Whatever happened to adoption of the metric system in the U.S.? - "Opponents of metrication have succeeded in painting it as a one-world plot, with the introduction of an alien system of weights and measures the obvious prelude to a takeover by the Bolsheviks. To this day you'll hear media commentators moaning that recalculating football fields and baseball diamonds in meters threatens the integrity of American sport. Converting to metric will cost money, the critics say, and unless you're involved in foreign trade it confers no benefit."

Man fails exams for 38th time, gets full marks for persistence - "The 73-year-old Indian farmer has been taking - and failing - his high school exams every year since 1969 and has just flunked again for the 38th time. He has vowed not to get married until he passes the exams, which are normally given to schoolchildren at the age of 15... "Once I pass I want to get married to a girl who's under 30," said Yadav."

Army food is 'cheaper than a dog's dinner' - "The Army spends more feeding its dogs than its soldiers, it has been claimed. Figures obtained by a Tory MP show that £1.51 a day goes on meals for troops, compared with £2.63 for military dogs. Even prisoners – who cost £1.87 a day to feed – fare better than servicemen. Schoolchildren get £1.55 for lunch alone."

All the right moves - "The PUA alphabet turns out to be a dizzying cacophony of mind games, all designed to make a woman feel intimately connected to him, painstakingly mapping her psyche for manipulation. And in this day and age it's easily done. Mass culture over the past decade tells us that where once the underlying female instinct in falling in love was the search for security, now we are enslaved to the idea of a soul mate - there is one true love for us out there, one unmatched connection. Luckily for the PUAs that connection is, with the correct training, easily faked. Hence a combination of creative thinking - the pre-prepared photos, the runes, the word association - and obsession with scientific statistics. Men who, in their failure to seduce, were never considered masculine, creep their way in. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and if you have the key, how far do you go with it?... 'Hello Emma!' He fixes me with an unwavering stare and Clintonian double-palmed handshake. There is no one else in the room but he and I. And then, just as quickly, he drops my hand as if it were a bag of cold chips on the high street, and turns his back on me to speak to another girl. I am unanchored. I am bewildered. But mainly I want Mystery to pay attention to me... Would women, I ask, be able to work the equivalent to The Game? 'But you already have it!' says Neil. 'It's the cover of every woman's magazine, of Cosmo and Glamour: "Six tips to get a man". "Six tips to keep him faithful." It's already part of your culture.'"
Emotionally manipulating women is a skill that brings many rewards.

Shanghai Cheerleader Seeks McDonald’s Dishwasher - "The Western world that I’ve seen in movies and TV is just like heaven, with clean streets, unique architecture, and a pure sky. Whether a busy metropolis or a quiet little town, it all appears so warm and fragrant and harmonious... Western men are all brought up in an independent environment. They have the ability to think independently, unlike Chinese men, who parrot the words of others. For example, my classmates: if the central government says Japan and China have good relations, then they would like Japan. When the central government stirs up nationalism, they scream for the overthrow of Japan. None of them has brains. They are just someone else’s monkey, but think themselves so grand. They are all just a bunch of pig heads."