Sex Chemistry Lasts Two Years
From BBC Health News (you can read the entire article by clicking on the blue type) It makes me smile to note that both of the studies mentioned are conducted by the Italians. 🙂
Sex chemistry ‘lasts two years’
Certain hormones are active during the ‘acute love’ phase
Couples should not worry when the first flush of passion dims – scientists have identified the hormone changes which cause the switch from lust to cuddles.
A team from the University of Pisa in Italy found the bodily chemistry which makes people sexually attractive to new partners lasts, at most, two years.
When couples move into a “stable relationship” phase, other hormones take over, Chemistry World reports.
But one psychologist warned the hormone shift is wrongly seen as negative.
Dr Petra Boynton, of the British Psychological Society, said there was a danger people might feel they should take hormone supplements to make them feel the initial rush of lust once more.
‘Not ever-lasting’
The Italian researchers tested the levels of the hormones called neutrophins in the blood of volunteers who were rated on a passionate love scale.
Levels of these chemical messengers were much higher in those who were in the early stages of romance.
Testosterone was also found to increase in love-struck women, but to reduce in men when they are in love.
But in people who had been with their partners for between one and two years these so-called “love molecules” had gone, even though the relationship had survived.
The scientists found that the lust molecule was replaced by the so-called “cuddle hormone” – oxytocin – in couples who had been together for several years.
Oxytocin, is a chemical that induces labour and milk-production in new and pregnant mothers.
Donatella Marazziti, who led the research team, said: “If lovers swear their feelings to be ever-lasting, the hormones tell a different story.”
Similar research conducted by Enzo Emanuele at the University of Pavia found that levels of a chemical messenger called nerve growth factor (NGF) increased with romantic intensity.
After one to two years, NGF levels had reduced to normal.
So Oxycontin, when it kicks in, is more like the commitment glue, and the earlier chemicals are more like lust?
One Week, Four Cuts
Doesn’t anyone else find it very strange that in one week, the internet connection cables would be cut in four different places? The Egyptians have announced that no, it was not fishing boats or any other boats anchoring that cut the cable there by accident, the area is a “no-go” zone, is under sattelite observation, and no ships were in the area.
I just think that four in one week goes beyond co-incidence.
Not Spam
My apologies this morning to UmmAdam, GreY, Mirror Polisher and Touche, all of whom left comments which I found in the spam section.
I DE-SPAMMED them, deleted all the ones that wanted to sell me Viagra and lengthen my penis and help me get a credit card, and then when I went to the Dashboard – the de-spammed comments weren’t there! I have looked everywhere.
I don’t know what is happening, why WordPress is not allowing commenters who have been active before, have never had a problem. Aaaarrrgh!
Rich WordPress Upgrade
Today WordPress announced a huge increase in free upload space: Free Space to Three Gigabytes.
“Today, one of those developments comes to fruition — everyone’s free upload space has been increased 60x from 50mb to 3,000mb. To get half that much space (1GB) at our nearest competitor, Typepad, you’d pay at least $300 a year. We’re doing the same thing for free.”
They also announced, important to people like me who like to illustrate heavily with photos, that if you bought a 1GB upgrade, it is now a 5GB upgrade, at no extra charge.
moar funny pictures
I upgraded when I got up to 75% capacity, but never even reached 1% or capacity yet. I feel like the (space) richest woman in the world today!
270,000 KD for What?
I found this in today’s Kuwait Times. I think maybe I am out of touch . . . I haven’t heard of anyone sending or receiving a telegram for a long time. I don’t believe my husband’s office even uses a telex anymore? Am I missing something?
Kuwait Times: 20 January 2008
Telegram, Telex services
Kuwait: The Ministry of Communication is planning to create a new telegram and telex service system. The system will cost KD 270,000 and will be using modern equipment and up to date methods. A contract for creating the system was first given to a Bahraini company, but then the ministry decided to create the system themselves. The ministry will start working on creating the system two weeks from now.
Anyone? Anyone?
Inheritance of Loss
Most of the time, if I don’t like a book, I won’t even bother telling you about it. This book, The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai, is an exception for one reason – it IS worth reading.
Inheiritance of Loss showed up on the book club reading list for the year, and I ordered it. I read the cover when the book came, and it didn’t sound that good to me, so I read other books instead. The next time it came to mind was when a friend, reading the book, said she was having trouble with it, and asked me if I had started it. This friend is a READER, and a thinker. It caught my attention that she would have problems reading a book, so I decided to give it a try.
This is a very uncomfortable book. The characters live in the shadow of the Himalayan mountains. The most sympathetic character is a young orphaned girl, sent to live with her grandfather. With each chapter, we learn more about all the characters, how they came to be here, what they think, what their lives have looked like.
The author of this book has a very sour look on life. She has snotty things to say about every character. You can almost feel her peering around the corner, eyes slit with evil intent. She is that vicious neighbor who comes by and never says anything nice about anybody, and when you see her talking with your neighbor, you get the uneasy feeling she could be saying something mean about you, and she probably is.
The book covers a wide range of topics – Indian politics, Ghurka revolts, English colonization, Indian emigration to the US and UK, everyday vanities and pride in petty things, how people destroy their own lives, how people can be cruel to one another, oh it’s a great read (yes, that is sarcasm).
At the same time, this vicious unwelcome neighbor has a sharp eye for detail. You may not like what she is telling you, but you keep listening, because you can learn important tidbits of information from her. In my case, I learned a lot about how life is lived in a small mountain village in India, the struggles of illegals in America and how class lines are drawn, ever so finely, when people live together. I learned a lot about the legacy of colonialism, and the creep of globalization. This unwelcome neighbor has a sharp tongue, always complaining, and yet . . . some of her complaints have merit.
I don’t believe there was a single redeeming episode in the book. There was not a paragraph to feel good about. I am glad to be finished with the book – but, yes, I finished it, I didn’t just set it aside in disgust, or give it away without finishing.
Here is the reason I am telling you about this book – as uncomfortable as this book is to read, I have the feeling, upon finishing, that ideas and images from this book will stick with me for a long time. I have the feeling that it contributes to my greater understanding of how things work, how people think differently from other people, and on what levels we are very much the same.
Here is an excerpt from the book, at a time during which the Judge is a young Indian, studying in England:
The new boarding house boasted several rooms for rent, and here, among the other lodgers, he was to find his only friend in England: Bose.
They had similar inadequate clothes, similar forlornly empty rooms, similar poor native’s trunks. A look of recognition had passed between them at first sight, but also the assurance that they wouldn’t reveal one another’s secrets, not even to each other.
. . . Together they punted clumsily down the glaceed river to Grantchester and had tea among the jam sozzled wasps just as you were supposed to, enjoying themselves (but not really) as the heavy wasps fell from flight into their laps with a low battery buzz.
They had better luck in London, where they watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, avoided the other Indian students at Veeraswamy’s, ate shepherd’s pie instead, and agreed on the train home that Trafalgar Square was not quite up to British standards of hygiene – all those defecating pigeons, one of which had done a masala-colored doodle on Bose. It was Bose who showed Jemubhai what records to buy for his new gramophone: Caruso and Gigli. He also corrected his pronunciation: Jheelee, not Giggly. . . .
This it was that the judge eventually took revenge on his early confusions, his embarrassments gloved in something called “keeping up standards,” his accent behind a mask of a quiet. He found he began to be mistaken for something he wasn’t – a man of dignity. This accidental poise became more important than any other thing. He envied the English. He loathed Indians. He worked at being English with the passion of hatred and for what he would become, he would be despised by absolutely everyone, English and Indians both.
I consider this a review, and not particularly a recommendation. I read the book, I finished the book and I learned from the book. I didn’t like the book. I recommend it only as a challenge, for people who like to read and stretch their minds in new directions.
Naughty or Nice?
Blogger N. at One or the Other asks readers and visitors to vote on whether they are naughty or Nice? Blogger Fourme, rightly comments that we don’t have any definition of naughty or nice by which to define ourselves and that she will refrain from voting.
Most of the voters are naughty, by the way.
It gave me a big grin.
Isn’t “naughty” or “nice” greatly in the mind of the beholder?
Once, when I was the young wife of a young army officer, I got up my courage and wrote a letter to the editor. It turned out to be a controversial letter; I got one very sarcastic response from the authority I questioned, and then, a week later, all hell broke loose as readers from all over Europe bombed the one who replied. I felt scared, but a little proud to have raised the issue.
I was working in the library. THE COLONEL’S WIFE (that is how we thought of her) walked in and said to me “we don’t get our names in newspapers. It isn’t done.” And then she walked out.
Then I really felt scared. And I really felt naughty. And at the same time, I wouldn’t change a thing.
Sometimes, don’t you have to say something? When you see something that is not right? And is that really naughty?
But / And
Several years ago I was working for a charismatic leader. He was amazing, he built something out of nothing, and changed countless lives. I felt very privileged to be a part of his team.
I managed a particular program for him, and I raised money for college scholarships so that poor kids, who were smart but had very small chance of going on to university without outside help, would have the promise of a full-tuition paid scholarship if they kept their grades up, stayed drug free, attended cultural events for which we provided free tickets, donated by our very generous sponsors (museums! baseball games! fishing trips! opera! symphony! our sponsors were SO generous!)
From this leader I learned many things, and one sticks with me in my daily life – using “and” instead of “but.”
Here is what he explained to me – when you reply with “but”, you are negating what the previous speaker – or even you, yourself – said. When you use “and” instead of “but”, you open up the possibility of two different things co-existing.
I challenge you to try it.
It will change your life.
Eliminate “but” from your vocabulary. Replace it with “and.” It opens an amazing new world.
Here is an example:
“She wants to go to the mall, but I want to go to the movies.” (Implies that these things are mutually exclusive)
“She wants to go to the mall, and I want to go to the movies.” (Implies we can do both!)
“And” gives room for negotiation, for finding a bigger frame that includes all the wants and needs, with a little co-operation.
I challenge YOU to give it a try. Give it a try for just one day – see how it works. Come back here and tell us how it worked for you.
End of Year Musings
Hello, friends, I am back. We had the most amazing and wonderful adventure, and we are refreshed and happy to be back sleeping in our own bed again.
So of course, one of the first things I do when I get back is go through all my e-mail and then take a quick look at the blog. Even in my absence, the stats stayed high – until Christmas Day, when they dropped to about half. . . and there they stay. (Big grin) If this hadn’t happened last year, too, I would be shocked, but remember last year when I published all those great Thanksgiving and Christmas recipes? Those are what has pumped up the statistics. Most days in November and December, the Christmas Punch – Rum, and Rumless and the Christmas Divinity Candy have pumped those stats up above the thousand visitors / day mark several times.
Last year, it took me until September to match my December statistics. I wonder if I will ever match this December’s?
Like many bloggers, I write this blog for the sheer joy of writing. I don’t want to be a person who watches my stats, and at the same time, it interests me what interests YOU, the reader. What interests me also is that many times the most visited entries keep getting visits months later, even over a year later, and from time to time these earlier entries get a comment. I have seen the same thing on Jewaira’s blog, and although we are very different bloggers, she is still my primary blog-role-model. She is a blogger who, through sheer imagination and good writing has kept a loyal and enthusiastic readership. . . I want to be Jewaira when I grow up, bloggily speaking.
Don’t we all do a little personal inventory as the old year ends and the new year is about to begin? I’m not big on resolutions, but I am big on behavioral changes, and this week is a good week to muse, to ruminate, to think about what I want the future year to look like.
Is there some area YOU would like to explore in the new year? Some aspect of your character you would like to develop? Some talent you would like to give an opportunity to grow?
Pathetic and Divorce
When I saw this cartoon in the New Yorker, I laughed out loud. I have a friend whose husband is leaving her. No, that is not a laughing matter. He wants to be young again, he seeks (to no avail) younger girlfriends, and she has discovered he has a page on MySpace where he tries to make himself younger and cooler than he really is.
He is about to be wifeless, desperate to regain his lost youth, and pathetically eager to attract young women who really prefer hot young men. The “EEEEEEWWWWWWWWW Factor” is just too horrendous to contemplate.
He also has two teen aged sons. I can’t imagine how they must feel when they see Dad is leaving Mom, and has his own MySpace page.
Ya gotta love the The New Yorker.
Recent Comments
ExpatAlien on What Country am I Living … intlxpatr on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Michelle on Yellowstone: Old Faithful to C… Cathy on No Grown-Ups in Charge intlxpatr on Waiting for Snow Wikipedia Donate Button
Amazina
Early Voting in Florida
Here There and Everywhere 