Where the Girls are, where the Boys are

If you're anything like me...well, you're an international refugee cowering in a secret location facing the death sentence in each of the three massive totalitarian states that have divided the world between themselves. Sorry about that (but if you do happen to be such a person, call me, and we'll do lunch. Sounds like we have a lot in common).

Ahem. Let me start over. If you're anything like me...well, you're probably sitting around working on a sequel to your incredibly long and boring tome The Theory and Practice of Oligarchial Collectivism. But if you didn't have such an enormous and soul-crushingly boring project to undertake, you might wonder how best to go about getting dates. So, if that sounds like something you might be interested in, let us take a glimmer into your disgustingly totalitarian-free alternate universe (seriously, China counts as "totalitarian" where you come from?) and into the subject of global sex ratios.

Simply put, where would a guy find a surplus of women?

From the CIA World Factbook 2009 edition (it's the CIA, so take the factoids as you will)male-female ratios ages 15-65:

North Marianas Islands 0.67
Armenia 0.88
El Salvador 0.91
Estonia 0.91
Lebanon 0.92
Russia 0.92
Ukraine 0.92
Georgia 0.93
Belarus 0.94
Mexico 0.94
Moldova 0.94
Columbia 0.95
Kazakhstan 0.95
Latvia 0.95
Lithuania 0.96

So, there you have it. Unless these countries have a complete over-abundance of elderly women causing their data to be skewed, you should be able to find yourself. Of course, if you happen to a wizened old fart yourself, you should still be able to get dates, perhaps even in places like Armenia and the Northern Marianas Islands, since those chicks are likely to be pretty desperate. Seriously, what happened to the men in the North Marianas?

Now, ladies, let's look at your opt...ick. Okay, you know the saying, "the odds are good but the goods are odd?" Well, I'm afraid in this case the goods aren't even that good. While the men might have to wander through run-down, mob-controlled, second-world countries, these are the places where your sex is favored:

United Arab Emirates 2.74
Qatar 2.46
Kuwait 1.78
The Maldives 1.62
Oman 1.38
Bahrain 1.32
Palau 1.26
Saudi Arabia 1.29
Greenland 1.16
Faroe Islands 1.15
Jordan 1.15
Bhutan 1.13

To each her own, but I'd say the most appetizing prospect would be Palau...it's tropical, at least, even if the whole country is smaller than New York City. Oh, and you should probably like sharks, since Palau's territory contains a massive "shark sanctuary" (plus it has former Guantanomo Bay prisoners running around on its reefy atolls and atolly reefs). Next up would be either Greenland and/or the Faroe Islands, which are certainly home to lots of manly men--at least those who haven't lost their testicles to frostbite.

Bhutan, an isolated Buddhist kingdom high in the Himalayas, might sound like a dreamy place to find Mr. Right, but it's very, very difficult to get into even on a holiday.

As for the rest...eww. Even if you have dreams of sunglasses-wearing Arabs in sports cars flashing petro-dollars, the unfortunate excess men in the Gulf countries aren't those guys. By and large, they are East Indians, Africans, Palestinians, and Pakistanis who are doing the most menial labor those sandy lands have to offer.

Sorry about that. It's almost as if populaton dynamics themselves have a built-in double standard.

But it could always be worse. You could be living in an undisclosed location writing an 85-page chapter on "The Microeconomics of Fabian Pseudosocialism."