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Women warriors tend to have it pretty rough when it comes to armor selection. If one is looking for a metal protective suit that offers more in the way of protection than the dubious security, and comfort, of the chain mail bikini, then options are limited and the available breastplates tend to be...well, pretty literal. And they may be even less safe than they seem. Tor.com blogger Emily Asher-Perrin offered a great critique of why "boob plate armor" would be an unwise order from your local blacksmith, and the matter deserves a moment of your time.

New Hampshire State Representative Peter Hansen feels strongly about a law in his state allowing homeowners to use deadly force remaining unchanged. He feels so passionately about not changing the law, in fact, that in an email rebuttal to a colleague's speech on the matter encouraging retreat, he made a statement that's been getting some attention, saying "What could possibly be missing from those factual tales of successful retreat in VT, Germany, and the bowels of Amsterdam? Why children and vagina’s of course." I don't know what about this story is more offensive --  referring to women as "vagina's," or putting an apostrophe in the wrong place while you're doing it.

Most men -- and most women, for that matter -- have, at one point or another, had to come to terms with the fact that men just don't understand women that well. It's not that we don't try -- oh, lord, how we do try! -- but that we're not really wired that well for it. That common feeling has been backed up by scientific evidence in the last few years, with a recent study suggesting that the problem may lie in the fact that men are largely inept at reading emotional cues in women's eyes. The study also suggests that men are much better at reading emotion in the eyes of other men, demonstrating scientifically for the first time that men really do know that feel, bro.

Doting Dad Mike Mika couldn't bear to see his daughter's disappointment at not being able to play as a princess in Donkey Kong the way she had in Super Mario Brothers 2. Rather than explain to her why Mario was always the hero and Pauline always needed saving, though, Mika changed the game, putting together a patch that turns let his daughter get her game on as video gaming's original damsel in distress. Check out the video, which really should earn Mika a "#1 Dad" mug for ensuring his daughter knows that girls can save the day just as well as boys, below.

Today is International Women's Day, which has been around for over a hundred years! But you know what's been around a lot longer than that? Women! And heroes are women. Here in our little corner of the Internet, we at Geekosystem constantly think about things that other geeks, dorks, and nerds the world over think about every day, like science, technology, books, movies, and games. And you know what those things have in them? Women!

Sex sells, and apparently, Japan is buying. The latest advertising trend in the nation is turning women's legs into billboards, thereby finally correcting a frankly criminal waste of high value advertising space that has gone on too long. Now, if we could just start the new trend of branded masks that ensure we don't have to look at one another, but at products we might want to buy, we'd really be on our way to a brave new world.

In keeping with trends set by pretty much every video game and adolescent male fantasy in the history of forever, female avatars in the digital realm are more likely to be scantily clad than their male counterparts. That's according to a study of digital fashion in online play space Second Life by researchers at Laval University, who we'd like to thank for reminding us that Second Life is still, apparently, a thing.

 

Cheating men may have reason to feel nervous that their significant others know what they're getting into on the side, while women engaging in flings could have an easier time hiding their indiscretions from their mate. That's according to a recent study from the University of Western Australia. Published this week in the journal Biology Letters, the study found that women were reasonably accurate at determining how faithful a man had been in his life just by looking at his face. Men in the same study, meanwhile, showed no such skill, thereby living up to the stereotype that we're never paying attention to anything. Way to go, dudes.

Saudi Arabia isn't exactly known for its kind treatment of women. That's just a fact. What's being described as a new system to electronically monitor women in the country, which has a notoriously strict interpretation of Islamic law, is making the rounds across the Internet. So, are women really being electronically tracked in Saudi Arabia? The answer is yes, but it's not something that's new.

Beginning in the 1960s, the introduction of hormonal birth control pills introduced modern family planning to the world, preventing unwanted pregnancies and generally making the world a better place for everyone concerned. It turns out the pill may do even more than that, though. A new study shows that taking hormonal birth control before menopause may improve women's cognitive function later in life, leaving them sharper and more mentally "with it" than peers who weren't on the pill.

Women who have settled down with a long-term partner who is stable, dependable, and less than entirely sexy are legion, a fact for which less than entirely sexy men are thankful every day. Trust us, we know. New research from a team at UCLA shows that the operative word in that sentence might be "settled," suggesting that women still hold their partner's lack of a full head of hair and a six pack -- PBR doesn't count, dudes -- against them. When they're at their most fertile, women in relationships with average looking fellas demonstrated signs of being less happy with their partners, and more prone to find faults or criticize them, than women whose partners have it going on in the looks department.

A study conducted on young adults has concluded that men and women actually do see things differently. This supports the idea that we evolved to support certain hunter-gatherer roles. Men were able to better track fast-moving objects while women distinguished shades of color far more capably. This should provide a decent excuse for husbands when their wives ask for their opinion on a bunch of paint swatches.

In an interview with New Scientist, Stephen Hawking was asked what he thought about most during the day. In a classic, age-old form, he replied, "Women. They are a complete mystery to me." Possibly even more amusing, he wasn't making the fairly standard joke -- he was serious. A man who literally wrote the book on something as complex as Time doesn't understand women.

To read the copy on the hard drive snooping website Find His Porn (emphasis theirs), you would think that the history of human relationships can be boiled down to a single conflict: On the one side, there are men who secretly spend all their time and money on porn, and women who must use any means at their disposal to ferret out these disgusting acts. If you're not offended by this, you probably should be. 

Rutgers University professor Barry Komisaruk has secured his place in history as being the first to capture imagery of what goes on in a woman's brain before, after, and during an orgasm. Using an fMRI machine, Komisaruk took a series of images of the brain during an orgasm and compiled them into a short animated movie. Using this, he's hoping to get a better idea of how an orgasm works and what parts of the brain are involved. So hot.