Very cool, if true

The one degree of separation charge was very surprising ... there appears to have been *one* girl-girl encounter and no boy-boy in the entire survey ... though there are dots very close to each other so I'm not sure whether there are "hidden" links.

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No, there's a single M-M (top right of the main connected component) in addition to the F-F.

It's *not* one degree of separation though, but a dominant connected component (the author of the piece doesn't know his graph terminology). The study is also flawed because it doesn't take into account the temporal aspect; it couldn't be used to model the transmission of STDs, for example.

The distribution of vertex degree looks pretty much as I'd expect - probably a power-law distribution.

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simont

The study is also flawed because it doesn't take into account the temporal aspect

Yes, I thought that. The trouble is, once you introduce the temporal aspect, you lose all the nice properties of symmetry and transitivity which make for easy-to-understand pretty diagrams...

(Also it's undoubtedly really difficult to collect data on. It must be bad enough getting people to reliably remember and/or admit whether they've had sex with any given other person; to get them to supply details of when and how often too would surely be veering into the realm of "good grief, how should I know, I don't keep detailed records".)

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Granted, but the presence of a partial order suggests that a graph representation is not well-suited to this type of data. I could probably do a reasonable job with a modified lattice diagram, but I'd need to give this a bit more thought first.

As for the difficultly of correctly eliciting temporal data, you don't need to know the dates when they had sex, just the order in which they had sex.

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simont

Hang on, what partial order? Partial orders are antisymmetric, and this isn't that either.

Yes, you only need the order, but my guess would be that when it comes to people with lots of drunken one-nighters they aren't going to be reliably able to recall even that.

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Hang on, what partial order? Partial orders are antisymmetric, and this isn't that either.

You're quite right - I was initially thinking only about one-off instant relationships (which would be anti-symmetric), and not interval relationships.

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simont

I'm not sure why I'm still bothering to be pedantic, but even that isn't true! Partly because in principle it's possible for A to be linked to B and B to A via completely different chains of other people, but more immediately because any two people who have actually shagged each other are obviously bidirectionally linked :-)

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Because you're a pedantic sod? ;)

I'm considering the temporal ordering between the shag events (be they instants or intervals), because that's what matters when you're trying to determine whether a directed path exists between two people.

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Well spotted! I find that's where I often miss in Bejewelled Blitz too, the top edge, will need to concentrate on that more :-)

One girl has six male partners (that I could spot)
At least two girls have five male partners, one has four male partners and the female (it *could* have been a threesome)

And I've spotted one guy who claims NINE female partners ... what do you reckon, football player? Or leading a cult? :-)

You're so right about the temporal aspect too. There's a whole lot of other information (one-off, condoms, etc.) that would be interesting to know but you'd end up with something like the 24 hours of flights across the globe chart if you're not careful!

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it *could* have been a threesome

In the absence of the temporal dimension, it's hard to say.

There's a whole lot of other information (one-off, condoms, etc.) that would be interesting to know

I'd treat one-offs as instants and repeated relationships as intervals for simplicity. The difficulty here is that you don't end up with a neat partial order (defined by a relationship like <), but a more complex set of relations between intervals like those defined in the Allen's interval algebra.

As for condom use, you could generalise this into a general representation of risky behaviour, which would exhibit transitivity (in the style of a path calculus).

Yes, I've spent far too long thinking about this.

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bracknellexile.livejournal.com

Glad to see that Christian site covers the BDSM side of things too: Submission

"It's not about being intelligent or not, gifted or not. It's about choosing to be submitted to authority."

"We are called to submit to ... Ministers and Spiritual Leaders (elders, group leaders, teachers, ...)" *

* That explains the scandal with the Catholic Church then!

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daisyflip.livejournal.com

Damn you posting that Christian sex website. I've just become addicted to the forum, where advice to a woman worried about holding off having a wee shag until the wedding night was: 'not to be alone together until your marriage.'

Ooh, this is ACE. I am totally fascinated.

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I have at least one pair of friends my age who waited for their wedding night (I suspect they may have done other things but not full intercourse until they were married)

Some people make a ceremony of the first cuckoo of spring, or the first drive in their new car ... people invest things with significance and importance ... and so I'm perfectly happy for someone to say "sex is important to me, and so I want the first time to be really special, with someone I love, who loves me, and is willing to wait until the magic words are said" ... I'm not that person ...

... and if you were dieting and trying to avoid eating a cream cake, then being left alone in a room with a cream cake would be a bad idea ... how much more so if the man/woman you love and yearn for is there ... "not to be alone together" sounds like excellent advice ... for them :-)

I'm more of the "Father, it's two months until the marriage ceremony ... what is your view on sex before marriage"
"Well, don't do it in the aisle, you'll block the bridesmaids ... oh, and don't use a condom!"

:-)

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daisyflip.livejournal.com

But do you not think it's kind of, let's say, unhealthy if they actually take that advice? Not spending time alone with a person you're about to spend the rest of your life with, just before you make that commitment? I just worry that making that big a deal out of it, they'll lie back on their wedding night and say: 'what? That was IT??'

I also don't really care either way whether someone wants to make a big hoo-hah about having a quickie, but I do find the mindset and the culture surrounding it (which is so alien to me that it might as well be from a Victorian book of etiquette) totally fascinating.

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It's what [Bad username or site: magician' / @ livejournal.com] said. If you want to avoid sex until you're married then you might need to avoid being alone together.

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No, I don't think it is unhealthy at all.

These are people who are making a commitment to be together for the rest of their lives (whether they succeed at that is another question) and while sex is fun and great, if it's the major bedrock of a relationship, then I think that relationship is ultimately doomed. When sex fades (as it does for many couples), then it's the strength of the relationship that keeps them together.

And sure it's nice that a couple who are so committed to celibacy still feel such a strong sexual desire for each other that they are worried about being left alone together. One thing can lead to another and you can only have one "first time" so if you're worried that passion might overwhelm your commitments, then taking appropriate action (whether it's a chaperone or saying "it's just two more months ... but if I stay here with you another minute I'll rip your clothes off and ravish you here ... so I'd best be going to that cold shower back in my hotel" sounds perfectly sensible to me ... within that particular commitment.

You see, to them it isn't a "quickie" ... it's the "one small step for man" moment ... once in a lifetime ... and yes, probably disappointing ... but I think they will be much more aware nowadays of what goes where etc. as the media is full of sex (particularly the internet).

When possible, I've always tried to make my first time with a potential long-term girlfriend as special as possible (candles, rose petals, fresh manacles (grin!)) because to me it is a special event, each "first time".

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Why do you think it will be dissapointing? I don't think Christians who wait expect some big orgasmic extravaganza. That's misunderstanding what they expect sex to be like.

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daisyflip.livejournal.com

Like I said - it's not my world. I don't pretend to remotely understand why someone holds beliefs - probably in the same way they find my lack of belief incredulous. I get that some people want to make the first time special, but as someone who got their virgnity out of the way fairly sharpish, I just can't help thinking that's a whole lot of build-up for...sex. It's just, at the end of the day, sex.

I'm fascinated. I'm not mocking (I know, I usually am, but I'm trying hard not to), because I can't mock what I really don't get. For me, it's like reading about that island where they think Prince Philip is God. I met him. He's not. Just to clarify.

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I think there is a mixture of reasons as to why Christians wait until their married before they have sex. I think the main reason is that it is unholy to have sex before you are married. Some Christians might think that sex will be better if they wait (or less bad or something) as well, but the core reason is because they want to live in a holy manner.

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Hi - [Bad username or site: andrewducker' / @ livejournal.com] got the link from me (married Christian friends suggested me and my fiance look at it).

The forums are a lot more explicit and open than is immediately obvious. Most of the forum sections are invisible until you've created an account (and then added yourself to the groups the forums belong to).

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