Love at first sight

Now this is what I call love at first sight. Not naughty love, not romantic love, just the huge joy of finding a kindred spirit - even if not of a kindred species. And yet, when I watch this I can't help thinking that there must be some special affinity between primates and dogs. It made my day.

Source: National Geographic

UK's singles almost as many as the population of Australia

Another Saturday night home alone? Another non-starter? Yet another commitment-phobic, emotionally challenged Prince (or Princess, let's be fair) Uncharming? Chances are that if you're alone you're also lonely; that you feel somehow singled out from among your happily mated friends; that just about everyone else has been blessed with love while you are to bear the Curse of Eternal Singledom. However, no matter how lonely you may feel, you're certainly not alone.

'There are 21.5m single people over the age of 16 in Britain,' reports the Guardian. That's almost equal to the entire population of Australia. And the figures are for the UK alone. So, statistically speaking, he or she just has to be somewhere out there.

Image source: Comically Vintage

Another thing: 'online dating is now worth more than one billion dollars a year, rivalling pornography as king of the net. Love is big business.' Isn't that funny. Love & sex competing as the most lucrative sources of e-income. Except that whereas the former is likely to include the latter in the package, it doesn't really work the other way around... (full article in the Guardian)

Wired wedding

That the figure officiating at the wedding had flashing eyes, plastic pigtails, and a wreath of flowers is, admittedly, rather unusual, even for Tokyo. But what made the particular wedding official stand out was the tinny voice and the wires: groom Tomohiro Shibata, 42, a professor of robotics at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, and bride Satoko Inoue, 36, an employee with the robot manufacturing company Kokoro were married at a rooftop restaurant in Tokyo - by a robot. Apparently, this is the first wedding ceremony ever to be conducted by a robot.

The officiating robot is a product of Kokoro company, whose corporate goal is to "touch the hearts of the people."

Story from BBC and Boston.com, image from Boston.com

'The girl with a jinx on her heart'? Get even: put a spell on him

You're the 'girl with the jinx on her heart'?

Image source: Comically Vintage

Get even: put a spell on him.

Proof that married people are twisted

Image source: Awkward Family Photos

Mother's Day special: "I'd seen those laxative tantrums before"

Vintage ad, found on Strollerderby

Read the rest...

The potion that makes 'men just as empathetic as women'.

Not my words, mind. "'Cuddle hormone' makes men more empathetic" reports the BBC. According to a team of German and UK researchers, a nasal spray containing the hormone oxytocin can make men more 'in tune with other people's feelings'. Inhaling the spray 'made men just as empathetic as women'.

The team are optimistic that the 'cuddle-hormone' therapy could prove beneficial for men with behavioural problems, but I suspect that the market for this empathy potion will prove much larger than suggested. Plenty of frustrated women out there...

 

Maternal instinct

Unbeknown to historians, Mrs William Tell practiced with Walter's younger sisters.

Clip from a 1950s newsreel, showing a knife-throwing mother. Spotted on Boing Boing

WLTM of the day

'Pleading, needy, yet resolutely square M (38) 

WLTM any female who isn’t my mother.'

Box no. 6783.

  Image source