Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"Taking risks must then make more sense for men. But why? Bluntly, because men are much less likely to reproduce at all. In fact, we have twice as many female ancestors as male ones." cf Sperm Wars, having daughters is a better strategy for the selfish gene than having sons.

"It is not just studying overseas. There generally seems to be a greater sense of adventure among young women." - isn't that a male trait?

"...when the racial or gender identities of teachers and learners or mentors and mentees match, results are often better." - my experience?

"Trump is viewed positively as a man's man" - popularist nationalism as a response to male failure rather than population aging?

"With the rise of female earning power, men need to clear a higher bar to be seen as husband material. Women are more likely to go it alone than partner with a man who is in weak economic position."

"The true cause of the male malaise, I beleive is not lack of labour force participation but cultural redundancy" - for all men, or just non-elite men?

"One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men." - maybe my discovery of the matriachy happened in Hungary, rather than I discovered a matriarchy in Hungary.

"...Willy Loman inArthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, who has to "suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two week vacation" and can only fulfil his role as breadwinner, in the end, by taking his own life.

"Girls and women have had to fight mysogyny without. Boys and men are now struggling for motivation within." - are these aspects of the same struggle, female victory implies male defeat?

"...the prefrontal cortex... matures about 2 years later in boys than in girls.

"In fact, American boys do just as well as Finnish boys do on the PISA reading test." - so why do Finnish girls do so much better than American girls?

"There was a choice of three: Spring, Memory and Experience. I took the last." - he did, as the title of his first volume of memoirs

"Wednesday was Maths and Latin O level. I sat these at school, no one invigilated, Mrs Tauber herself brought me a coffee and a mathematics primer in the morning and tea and a Latin dictionary in the afternoon." - I conveniently failed to remember this when shocked by the examination conditions in a local language school.

"When Norman gave voice to such idioms as 'settee', 'pardon' and at one point 'toilet', my father could be seen to wince..." - my mother, my first girlfriend, and my grandmother respectively, (three generations of anxious English speakers overly influenced by Nancy Mitford)

harmatia - a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a tragic hero or heroine.

"Her brown rose tasted of blood" - the mask slips irretreivably

talus - a slope formed especially by an accumulation of rock debris

leporine - of or resembling a hare or hares.

shirred bra - the meaning of shirred is to draw (a material, such as cloth) together in a shirring.

The phrase tête à claques translates loosely as "a face so dumb, you want to slap it"

lentigo - a small, clearly defined patch of skin that is darker than the surrounding skin as a result of an increased number of pigment cells

oolala - alive (Hawaian)?

olisbos - ancient Greek dildo

Acrosonic: This word was coined up by Nabokov and it meant a noise reaching to and past the sonic barrier.

ecru - the colour of raw linen, beige

soi disant - self styled

pavor nocturnus - night terror

"In two years or so she would cease to be a nymphet and would turn into a "young girl", and then, into a "college girl" - that horror of horrors" - cf Vanessa Wye.

"whose iliac crests had not flared" - the curved area at the top of the ilium bone, the largest of three bones that make up the pelvis. If you put your hand on your waist and press firmly, you can feel the prominent, bony surface of your iliac crest

"...there seemed nothing to prevent my muscular thumb from reaching the hot hollow of her groin - just as you might tickle and caress a giggling child..." - there has been no attempt to groom Lolita, but to simply exploit the sexual possibilities of her presence. For Humbert her innocence of his intentions is part of his thrill. Nabakov however wants to seduce the reader, and then remind them that this is a child.