Honeymoon in a Bottle

Remember how we said we wanted to bottle that honeymoon feeling and sell it? Someone beat you to it. From Reuters: Could we reduce love to a pill? Maybe, says expert:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Could a pill or a squirt up your nose save your marriage? Maybe, according to a researcher who is studying the chemical basis of that most elusive of emotions -- love.

Larry Young says his ultimate quest is not a high-tech love potion but to shed light on serious conditions like autism, which affects the ability to form social attachments, by studying brain chemicals involved in emotional attachment.

"Biologists may soon be able to reduce certain mental states associated with love to a biochemical chain of events," Young, of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, wrote in the journal Nature.

"It's a chemical reaction. At least in voles we know that if you take a female and place her with a male and infuse her brain with oxytocin, she will quickly bond with that male," he said in a telephone interview.

Taking away her natural levels of oxytocin -- a hormone involved in labor, nursing and social bonding -- means she will reject a male as a mate no matter how many times she physically copulates with him.

"Experiments have shown that a nasal squirt of oxytocin enhances trust and tunes people into others' emotions," Young wrote in the Nature article.

"Internet entrepreneurs are already marketing products such as Enhanced Liquid Trust, a cologne-like mixture of oxytocin and pheromones designed to boost the dating and relationship area of your life," he wrote.

Wow. That's a dangerous ability if it were to fall in the wrong hands. I bet sales of oxytocin colognes are skyrocketing right now.

Foetus aborted by razor

How could a religion like Islam be associated with such actions? From BBC: Afghan foetus 'aborted by razor':

The family of a 14-year-old Afghan rape victim face prosecution after her foetus was removed without anaesthetic.

The mother and brother of the girl are accused of cutting her open with a razor blade to perform an abortion.

When the girl was five months pregnant it is alleged her mother and brother took her to a stables and cut her open with a razor blade.

They removed the foetus, which they buried, before stitching up her wound, Governor Sarabi said.

The father eventually took the girl to get medical treatment.

"The girl stayed at home for three or four days in her condition until her father took her to hospital," Dr Nader said.

"He said a dog had bitten her so that people in the area wouldn't know what had really happened."

The victims of rape and their families in Afghanistan are often afraid to admit what has happened to them because of the stigma and shame attached to the issue.

Sometimes the victims are murdered by their own families.

We may be evolved from animals, but at least animals only kill when they have to.

Men

Men are the spawn of satan sent to make the lives of women throughout history a living hell of emotions. I contend that without men, women would have realised world peace, solved world hunger, and achieved a passion for fashion that has been previously unknown.