A personals ad from a recent New York Review of Books:

WOMAN, 79 (LOOKS 78), Upper West Side pseudo-intellectual, Europe 4 years, wants man's company occasionally for chamber concerts, lectures, meals. Platonic.

I'd love to meet this woman. I imagine her life as a Henry James novel written by Oscar Wilde.

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Advertising for love in Victorian times

Anyone who has an interest in Carl Jung will want to read this New York Times article on the upcoming publication of Jung's The Red Book. For most of the last century, the very existence of this work has been only a rumor.

Jung wrote this illustrated journal between the ages of 39 and 55 and kept it locked in a cupboard. The controversial nature of the subject matter prompted his descendants to keep it there after he died in 1961 at age 85. It was transferred to a safe deposit box in the underground vault of a Swiss bank in 1984 and remained there for another 23 years. Jung's relatives allowed almost no one to view the book. Jung himself commented: "To the superficial observer it will appear like madness."

Mascara, eye-liner, and shadow can make the eyes stand out and look much larger than they actually are. Lipstick can make the lips look rounder and puffier. Why do we find this attractive? Properly applied, eye make-up and lipstick will emphasize facial features that make an adult look more like a baby. And we are irresistibly attracted to the faces of babies.

What is it about the way babies look that makes them so cute?

In addition to those eyes that are extra large compared to the size of their heads, babies' foreheads are large for their faces, and their heads are large relative to their bodies. They have soft, round, non-angular features. Their cheeks are large and puffy, with no visible cheekbones. Their little hands and fingers, and the joints on their stubby arms and legs, are soft and dimpled.

If you want to increase the chances recovering a lost wallet, be sure to include baby photos.

Researchers set up an experiment in which 240 wallets were left on the streets of Edinburgh. Some of the wallets had photos, either a baby, a cute puppy, a family snapshot, or an elderly couple. One group of wallets contained a card indicating a recent charity donation. The last group was a control: No photos, no cards. None of the wallets contained money. All of the wallets contained a return address.

42% of the wallets were returned. Did the photos make a difference? Here are the results for the returned wallets:

• Photo of infant - 88% return rate
• Photo of puppy - 53% returned
• Family snapshot - 48%
• Elderly couple - 28%
• Charity card - 20%
• Control group - 15%

Never underestimate a cat. Researchers in Britain have analyzed a special "meow" many cats use when they want something right now: Food, toys, an open door. It's called a "solicitation purr" and combines a high-frequency cry within an otherwise pleasant purr. Insistent meowing might be ignored as annoying, but by embedding the high-frequency sound in a purr, cats can convey a subtle sense of urgency.

According to Dr. Karen McComb, the lead author of the study, "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom."

The experiment was difficult to design, since cats won't exhibit this behavior on demand. Cat owners learned to record the sounds their cats made when asking for food. Normal purring in a non-solicitation context was also recorded. Test subjects, who listened to the recordings, included individuals who had never owned cats. When asked to evaluate what they heard, the 'solicitation' purrs were consistently identified as more urgent and less pleasant.

Photo by Laurent Champoussin

Click photo for larger view.

I'm currently watching a series of lectures by Malcolm W. Watson on Theories of Human Development. Watson talks mostly about theories of childhood, such as Freud's outdated theory of the oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages. The discussion of Eric Erikson, however, follows stages of development through an entire life. (The lectures are available from The Teaching Company on DVD, CD, and by audio download.)