Eideard

Authorities in the country have virtually canceled Valentine’s Day by nixing planned concerts and other events, according to the Associated Press, citing a report by Russian news agency RIA-Novosti.

Instead, Uzbeki lovers will have to content themselves with a government-organized reading of poems by medieval Mughal emperor Babur, who wrote about monuments, flora and fauna, wine parties and battle strategy…

Uzbekistan’s unofficial ban on romantic celebrations isn’t new. Last year, news agency Turkiston described Valentine’s Day as the work of “forces with evil goals bent on putting an end to national values.”

Other Muslim countries feel equally as frigid toward the amorous holiday, which is a nominally Christian one.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have both banned celebration of the day, Voice of America reports. Iranian officials last year said they would take action against amorous citizens who ignored the ban. Saudi Arabia prohibits the gifting of red on V-day — including chocolates, bears, or roses, according to the Saudi Gazette.

In India, right-wing group Sri Rama Sena warned in 2010 that it would take action against educational institutions, restaurants and theaters if they encouraged Valentine’s day celebrations. Some adherents of the group even burned Valentine’s Day cards…

Malaysia joined in the spoil-sporting last year when it announced it would crack down on “immoral acts” during the holiday as part of a wider campaign for its citizens’ lifestyles to be “sin-free.”

The head of the Malaysian Islamic Development Department told state media: “In reality, as well as historically, the celebration of Valentine’s Day is synonymous with vice activities.”

Is there no end to bureaucrats on this planet with no heart for love?

Thanks, Ursarodinia

On a sunny day on the outskirts of Shanghai on Sunday, 20,000 hopeful, curious and in some cases desperate Chinese gathered for the world’s largest dating event.

But it would be misjudging the mood to say love was in the air. Instead, in a business convention centre, a stream of pragmatic men and women briskly exchanged vital statistics and contact details…

Like New York or London, Shanghai has become a city of career-obsessed workaholics, the organisers said, leaving many people with little time to find their perfect match. So 40 of the city’s dating agencies decided to hold Shanghai’s first “Marriage and Love Expo”, to a dramatic response.

Just over 10,000 tickets for the event were officially sold, but Shu Xin, one of the organisers, claimed that 20,000 people had visited yesterday and 18,500 on Saturday…

At least a third of the attendees were parents, either chaperoning their children, acting as go-betweens for the more bashful, or brokering deals with other parents for arranged romances…

The attendees, meanwhile, had some very rigid ideas about what they were looking for. Men said they wanted a “kind-hearted” wife, not too beautiful and flighty, but modest and homely. The “minimum requirement” for the women meanwhile was straight-forward: a man with his own house, and preferably also a car…

The government has tinkered with the law to try to dissuade women from marrying for money, rather than love, but there was little sign yesterday that the message had sunk in.

For many couples, the money for the house and car comes from the parents, giving those wandering yesterday’s fair plenty of influence when it comes to picking their in-laws.

Pretty scary. The parents for sure. Marriage culture in China is still obviously having a rough time breaking away from the past.

We went through the same thing in the West – several centuries ago. I don’t envy the current generation in China the struggle on this question.

Some of her friends

A Zimbabwean man has told a court that he hired a prostitute who during the night transformed into a donkey, and that he is now “seriously in love” with the animal, according to state media.

Moyo has been charged with bestiality. The court has ordered him to undergo a mental examination, The Herald said.

“I think I am also a donkey. I do not know what happened when I left the bar, but I am seriously in love with (the) donkey,” Sunday Moyo told the court…

Moyo, 28, was arrested in the town of Zvishavane, about 185 miles south of the capital Harare on Sunday…

Moyo has been charged with bestiality and remanded in custody. The court has ordered him to undergo a mental examination…

Uh, OK. Anyone have a better excuse?

 
Thanks, Cinaedh

An editorial in the current issue of China Daily

Everyone agrees that people should visit their aged parents regularly if they are living separately. But whether this requirement should be written into law is a controversial matter.

The proposed amendment to the law on elderly people has a clause that says independent children should visit their aged parents regularly and should not ignore their need for love and affection.

If the amendment is adopted, parents will be able to sue their children in court for not visiting them for a long time. The number of elderly couples not living with their children is rising, and the amendment could provide them with a legal weapon to defend their rights of being looked after – at least emotionally – by their children.

Some people call the amendment ridiculous and meaningless, because a legal code should not be aimed at mending broken relations between children and parents. They contend that most children try their best to take some time out of their busy schedule to visit their parents and most parents excuse their children for not being able to keep them company for long or regularly.

Hence, they say that even if the amendment is adopted very few parents will take their children to court for not visiting them for a long time or not fulfilling their emotional needs.

But such a legal provision will serve as a reminder to young couples that they have the obligation to meet the emotional needs of their aged parents irrespective of how busy they may be. Parents could even remind their sons and daughters of their legal obligation. Contrary to some people’s fear that such a law will have serious consequences, it will only help consolidate the bond between most parents and children.

My parents would have voted for a law like this. Especially with all the years I spent wandering the globe, missing holidays with the family.

A new meta-analysis study conducted by Syracuse University Professor Stephanie Ortigue is getting attention around the world. The groundbreaking study, “The Neuroimaging of Love,” reveals falling in love can elicit not only the same euphoric feeling as using cocaine, but also affects intellectual areas of the brain. Researchers also found falling in love only takes about a fifth of a second…

Results from Ortigue’s team revealed when a person falls in love, 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image.

The findings beg the question, “Does the heart fall in love, or the brain?”

“That’s a tricky question always,” says Ortigue. “I would say the brain, but the heart is also related because the complex concept of love is formed by both bottom-up and top-down processes from the brain to the heart and vice versa. For instance, activation in some parts of the brain can generate stimulations to the heart, butterflies in the stomach. Some symptoms we sometimes feel as a manifestation of the heart may sometimes be coming from the brain.”

Other researchers also found blood levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF, also increased. Those levels were significantly higher in couples who had just fallen in love. This molecule involved plays an important role in the social chemistry of humans, or the phenomenon ‘love at first sight.’ “These results confirm love has a scientific basis,” says Ortigue…

RTFA. Fascinating research. Why try to keep romanticism divorced from science?

In fact, the sense of adventure, quest for knowledge, newer and greater understanding of life and living seems to me to be one of the romantic undertakings there could be. Dullards are the ones afraid of real science.

The world’s oldest twins, a pair of French sisters who turned 98 on Thursday, put their longevity down to joie de vivre, or quite simply enjoying life.

Raymonde and Lucienne Wattelade, who are officially recognised as the world’s oldest twins by the Guiness World Records, said the other secret to long life was regular sport.

Both were in the French gymnastics team in the 1930s and continue to dance waltzes as the local casino in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, south-western France.

The pair, in perfect health, have lived together in a family home for the past five years and are partial to tarot card reading and their favourite tipples: pastis for Raymonde and whisky for Lucienne…

“We live in the present, it’s pointless thinking about the past or the future – we’re still 20 (in our heads),” said Lucienne, who is ten minutes younger than her sister.

Above all, laughter was the key to a good life, she added. “If you don’t laugh, you don’t live.”

My kind of existentialism. Save morosité for the types who wish their non-conformity didn’t keep them from being insiders.

Stand up straight and laugh at the idiots in charge of the asylum.

Adults who have Internet access at home are much more likely to be in romantic relationships than adults without Internet access, according to research to be presented at the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association.

“Although prior research on the social impacts of Internet use has been rather ambiguous about the social cost of time spent online, our research suggests that Internet access has an important role to play in helping Americans find mates,” said Michael J. Rosenfeld…lead author of the study, “Meeting Online: The Rise of the Internet as a Social Intermediary.”

According to the study, 82.2 percent of participants who had Internet access at home also had a spouse or romantic partner, compared to a 62.8-percent partnership rate for adults who did not have Internet access…

In addition to finding that people are more likely to be in romantic relationships if they have Internet access in their homes, Rosenfeld and study co-author Reuben J. Thomas…found that the Internet is the one social arena that is unambiguously gaining importance over time as a place where couples meet…

The study also found that the Internet is especially important for finding potential partners in groups where the supply is small or difficult to identify such as in the gay, lesbian, and middle-aged heterosexual communities.

Now, who didn’t know this?

We are sitting in Badam Bagh, or Almond Garden, Afghanistan’s only prison for women in the capital Kabul.

The prison is a window on a world where, outside these walls, women are constantly judged against a standard that makes many of their stories difficult to fathom.

Sixteen-year-old Sabera, with a pretty yellow head scarf, frets that she is missing school.

“I was about to get engaged, and the boy came to ask me himself, before sending his parents. A lady in our neighbourhood saw us, and called the police,” she explains.

She was sentenced to three years but, in an act of mercy, it was shortened to 18 months.

Fellow inmate Aziza was accused of running away from her husband. She says she was acquitted two months ago, but still languishes in prison.

A senior official in Afghanistan’s Ministry for Women’s Affairs told a recent UN workshop that about half of Afghanistan’s 476 women prisoners were detained for “moral crimes”. That includes everything from running away from home, refusing to marry, marrying without their family’s wishes, and “attempted adultery”.

“In many cases women run away because they can’t bear the domestic violence and then they are picked up and taken into custody for a long time,” explains Nader Nadery, a commissioner at Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission…

About 40 young children also share their mother’s fate, living in Badam Bagh…

Prison authorities say children are taken away to a boarding school after the age of five.

Regular readers know I generally support other nations’ independence from the rule of Western ideology and so-called morality. We usually can figure out how to be as corrupt and inhuman as anyone else on the planet – given the opportunity.

Treating women as chattel is over, folks. Lose the stupid hangups!