The women of The Social Network, sleeping less, and faking it

The results of a massive new survey of more than five thousand Americans revealed that 85 percent of men say their last sexual partner had an orgasm, while only 64 percent of women reported having one. To what do we owe this statistical inconsistency? Common sense compels us to chalk it up to that magical phenomenon known as faking it. 

The new film chronicling the birth of Facebook opened with a bang last weekend, bringing in an impressive $23 million at the box office. The Social Network has drawn critical acclaim for its dramatic depiction of Mark Zuckerburg's ruthless rise as an Internet mogul, but it has also garnered a fair amount of criticism for its flat and stereotypical depiction of women. Rebecca Davis O'Brien of The Daily Beast describes the females in the film as "less prizes than they are props, buxom extras literally bussed in to fill the roles of doting groupies, vengeful sluts, or dumpy, feminist killjoys." So, is it an excellent film? To be sure. Is its characterization of women questionable? We think so. 

Common sense (not to mention our doctors and mothers) tells us that we need eight hours of sleep a night to function properly. Not so, say the results of a new long-term study conducted by the UC San Diego School of Medicine. Researchers there discovered that women who sleep between 5 and 6.5 hours a night – and not the magic eight – actually live the longest.

Brazil's next president will be decided by a runoff vote, but if things hold, it looks like it's going to be a woman. Centre-left candidate Dilma Rousseff led yesterday's national vote with 46.8 percent of the vote, but still came in shy of the 50 percent needed to win the presidency, so a runoff vote on October 31 will decide the election. Rousseff would have likely won had a third party candidate – another woman – not split the vote. 

The 2010 Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded yesterday to biologist Robert Edwards for his groundbreaking work on in-vitro fertilization. Edwards developed the "test tube baby" technique back in the 1970s, a procedure that has allowed countless infertile couples to conceive.