Meeting Places and Romance

"The luminance contrast between the eyes and the surrounding skin and the lips and the surrounding skin has been termed ‘facial contrast. Female faces have greater facial contrast than male faces, and facial contrast plays an important role in sex classification and the perception of masculinity and femininity and also attractiveness. Inspection of averaged faces of older and younger adults led us to hypothesize that facial contrast decreases with age and is related to perceived facial age." more »

Val Castronovo writes: "I was walking along the road with two of my friends. The sun set — the sky became a bloody red. And I felt a touch of melancholy — I stood still, dead tired — over the blue-black fjord and city hung blood and tongues of fire. My friends walked on — I stayed behind — trembling with fright. I felt the great scream in nature. E.M." more »

D’Vera Cohn writes: Love only goes so far. Most Americans cast cold water on a central premise of many a song or poem, that each person in the universe has only one true love. About seven-in-ten (69%) people do not agree with that notion; only 28% do. Among those who do agree, men (31%) are slightly more likely to do so than women (26%). Young and old, married and unmarried are equally skeptical. more »

The Setup: An American man meets an alleged American woman through an online dating service. After a successful online courtship, the two agree to meet. However, before they do, she must travel overseas to attend to some important personal business. While out of the US, she befalls an unexpected tragedy. She is now feeling lonely and vulnerable, and is counting on him to help her through this difficult time .... Several US citizens report losing thousands of dollars through such scams. more »