Friday, February 10, 2006

Valentine's Day Romance Or Science?

I'm hopeless when it comes to romance. I don't know how to do it, worse, I don't know how to accept it (embarrassing in the process those who try their hands at romance with me).

A sunset is a pretty sight, but romantic? Give me a break. After two minutes of watching it I get bored out of my skull.
I prefer actions to words, and comfort and logic to gestures that don't even make sense to me.
I guess I'm a realist through and through.

For the coming Valentine's Day, I started collecting a few scientific
items that relate to some romantic ideas. Enjoy (or not):

Love is in the air:
Literally.
Perhaps discussing BO isn't the most romantic thing, but it is what attracts women to men. Honest.
Apparently some immune system odor-affecting gene attract women with a different immune system gene. Go check for yourselves if you don't believe me. The article is Opposites Attract, oh, and while you're there check out the Love photo gallery.

The cutest gesture in the world:
As if pregnancy isn't hard enough, many males decide to steal the
show with a "sympathetic pregnancy" of their own - oh, how cute...
Not at all, apparently. It seems that Male 'pregnancy' isn't all in the mind. A study performed on primates found that "Males gained on average an extra 10 per cent of their body weight during the pregnancy" and this is probably triggered by higher levels of
a hormone called prolactin (which may also affect how good the prospective daddy will be).

She blushed, He shaved:
Colour vision, unique to primates, has so far been believed to evolve to aide in spotting ripe fruit. Now, a new study claims that Colour vision evolved
to spot our blushes
, and that it is probably also related to our bare, fur-less face. "So that I can see you blush better, my love..."

Sitting under the night sky, gazing at the moon:
Can you imagine anything more romantic than looking at the man
on the moon
, the one face that accompanied us ever since we were little, walked with us, chaperoned us. Now the same face is illuminating the little grass patch you and your honey sit on. You know that face well.
You do know these are craters, right? Latest findings have finally come up with its origin - Man in the Moon's cataclysmic birth revealed
Their findings suggest that the impacts of ancient collisions on the far side of the Moon were so great they caused a corresponding bulge on the near side, and the Earth's gravitational pull further tugged at this bulge.

I hope all this didn't ruin anything for you. Maybe it added?

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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm with you, Melly. A romantic, I am not. My husband learned a long time ago not to buy me flowers. Great articles. :)

Melly said...

And then we wonder why men can't understand us... ;)
Thanks Deborah.

Jean said...

Three guys in my office are expecting and one just had a kid, so I'm sharing the male pregnancy info with them. (Yeah, I don't know what it is. As long as I don't catch it, that's fine with me.)

Anonymous said...

Jean, share away :)
Now, I'm not sure how catchy that pregnancy biz is ;)

rdl said...

Interesting! I always wondered why opposites attract.

Anonymous said...

Do you remember a few years back they were selling bottle Pheromones? These are the chemicals that are release from our bodies that attact otheres. Basically, you were supposed to splash yourself and in no time you would be irresistable!

They still sell this junk:

http://www.luvessentials.com/

Jonathan Dobson said...

I get NGM delivered monthly, right to the back of my toilet. The story about love also posits that events occurring in the brain when we are in love have similarities with mental illness. In Ter Est Ing.

Melly said...

Hey rdl, so now you know :)

Fred, these aren't exactly pheromones that they're talking about. Just how women immune system gene affects their attraction to certain mail BO, and the attraction tends to be to men with different genes from theirs.
(I remember the whole pheromone perfume thing. Just the thought was funny. Now you got these commercials on TV about the Axe effect - men's after shave - in their dreams)

Jonathan, lucky you. I resort to reading what I can find online unfortunately.
That so makes sense to me that people inlove are mental. They sure behave mental ;) Thanks for sharing :)