The odds.

It's almost Valentine's Day. The press won't let you ignore it. (And let's not even talk about all those ads, especially for things heart-shaped and diamond-encrusted.) The press loves to torment us with pieces about how damned near impossible it is to find a special someone. This one, in the NYT, leapt out at me because of the way it presents information to help women feel good about themselves, which is always an important journalistic goal:

THE phrase "All the good ones are taken" is usually ascribed to lovelorn women. But if you're in your 20's, single, straight and looking for love, the statistical odds of finding a full-time partner are better if you're a woman....

Overall, there are 120 men in their 20's who have never been married, widowed or divorced for every 100 women in the same category.

This is silly. Women often marry men who are older then they are. A 20 or 21 year old man isn't hurting because a lot of 28 and 29 year old women have married guys who are 30 and over. Tell me how many 18 and 19 year old girls there are before I marvel at these woman-favoring odds! It's not as though we're penned up in our decades, prisoners of base ten.