Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
Iowa men should watch the 1983 movie "Scarface."
Over and over.
Not for the iconic moments provided by Al Pacino's Tony Montana with his ridiculous Cuban affectation and over-the-top lines like, "Say hello to my little friend." (In reference to his machine gun before he starts mowing down rivals in a drug war.)
As anti-hero cool as he might be Tony is not the guy Iowa men need to emulate.
That would be Pacino's right-hand man, Manny Ribera.
When it came to talking to women Ribera had no hesitation, no internal monologue. In some of the more entertaining scenes in "Scarface" we see the strutting Ribera brazenly hitting on women.
He's like a hamster going to the water bottle in the cage. It's just instinct.
If he is rejected by a woman, the supremely confident Manny has a ready excuse: she must be a lesbian.
To be fair, Manny is a bit clownish in such moments, so Iowa's men would do well to take a few notes on attitude, not steal the whole script.
The reason for the reference to Manny Ribera's approach to making love connections is the release of a troubling/fascinating study by OkCupid.com.
According to that (free) online dating service, Iowa's men are the fifth loneliest in the nation, and the seventh most shy (figures that are as compatible as the men are unlucky).
"Certainly it seems like the takeway is guys should reach out more," Sam Yagan, president and founder of OkCupid, told me in an interview. "It's incumbent on men to take the initiative."
OkCupid.com's state-by- state rankings were based on over 200 million responses to compatibility questions answered by more than 704,000 OkCupid.com users since the company's launch in 2004. All of the compatibility questions were suggested by users, with the state-by-state rankings pulled from groups of questions in each category, with a minimum of 100,000 responses required for a question to be included.
Here are some other things we learned:
Minnesota has it worse than Iowa. The state of three million lakes (or whatever it is they're bragging about up on I-35 North) ranks No. 1 for shyest men and No. 1 for loneliest women.
The least lonely men live in Rhode Island where you can meet everyone in the state during an evening's jog, and the state with the least lonely women would be Wyoming, which makes no sense at all, especially when you consider that's Dick Cheney territory.
Iowa's lowest ranking comes in a category where you aren't too upset about being No. 46. That's where OkCupid puts us with "kinkiest males."
I have no idea how OkCupid determined that, and I didn't ask Sam Yagan during a 15-minute interview I did with him on his company's study.
The only states that ranked lower than Iowa on the male kinky scale were Nebraska (they have no imagination), Maine (too busy eating lobsters and voting women into the U.S. Senate), Rhode Island (so small everyone knows your business), South Carolina (you can get shot for it), and Wyoming (see earlier Dick Cheney reference).
There are some interesting conclusions to draw from the OkCupid.com analysis.
If Iowa men are lonely, but they aren't as weird with women as guys in other states, then it would seem this is prime place to establish a strip club.
"I'm an entrepreneur at heart, and I had not seen the business angle," Yagan joked. "I like that."
OkCupid.com's study shows us other interesting data. Massachusetts men are the most independent as are women in that state. The least independent men are from Hawaii.
The least shy men are from California, which isn't fair to Iowa or Wyoming, because that's like comparing a buffet to a microwaved sandwich from a gas station.
Some of the loneliest men are in Kentucky, and the least shy women are from New York, which clearly means more city gals need to go to the Kentucky Derby.
The women in Arkansas are the 51st shyest, which provides something of an excuse for Bill Clinton.
At the end of the day, Manny Ribera and Bill Clinton aren't the men we should seek to model.
Men should just be themselves. But in the lonely states (like Iowa) we need the confidence to start basic, decent, well-intended conversations with women, says Yagan.
"I don't want to be in a position where every guy has to go out and be a pick-up artist," Yagan said.
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