[CLIP]
> Then Kenneth Boyd responded:
>
> Gender asymmetry strikes!
>
> [ASSUMING vaguely conventional family and legal structures]
> It would take some effort [multi-generation natural selection or genetic
> engineering] to boost menopause to 70 years of age [I'm sticking with my
> 100 cutoff quote], thus enabling children to require support for women
> of that age.
>
> There is no such limitation for men in the first place.
> ********************************************************
>
> Monthly period isn't necessary to carry out baby-sitting.
But the absence removes the requirement for it, given 20 years or so.
> As for the gender asymmetry - Men indeed keep producing sperm until,
> well practically until death.
> And yet senescence, menopause and wrinkling make 70 year old men just
> about as attractive and as fertile as women of the same age.
> Ignoring exotic tabulator stories ("80 year old dope married Mis
> Arizona"), and assuming most people wouldn't like to die of old-age with
> their 3-year-old son around, I don't think that gender asymmetry would
> ever be significant.
The menopause analog for men has escaped a number of grade-school-level
medical references, such as the Mayo Clinic Book [1996 version, CD-ROM].
Do you have such an analog in mind?
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/ Towards the conversion of data into information....
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/ Kenneth Boyd
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