Artists' Nectar

Absinthe, illegal in the US since 1912, is the notorious potion that provided inspiration and, occasionally, dissolution to scads of 19th and early 20th century artists and writers. The peculiar – sometimes hallucinogenic – effects commonly are ascribed to thujone, a substance claimed to be much like THC from the ingredient wormwood. According to the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, this is wrong. Surviving old bottles and newly concocted brews of absinthe were tested. Whatever the consequences to health of the various ingredients, the only one with any significant mind-altering characteristics is alcohol. There is a lot of that. Absinthe is 140 proof. Most modern hard liquors are 80 proof. It seems the old artistes were merely drunk. Their modern counterparts in the places where absinthe is illegal haven't been missing out. They just need to buy another round.

Something More for the Sales Pitch

Men, at least the majority without heartthrob good looks, no doubt were pleased by a Journal of Family Psychology article claiming that couples in which the wife is better looking than her husband are happier. Author McNulty suggests, "The husband who's less physically attractive than his wife is getting something more than maybe he can expect to get. He's getting something better than he's providing at that level. So he's going to work hard to maintain that relationship.” A man who believes, "I can do better," he concludes, conveys that opinion, intentionally or otherwise, and therefore is apt to make his spouse unhappy.

Of course, the average Joes have the challenge attracting those beauties in the first place. Easier said than done. I saw no photograph published of McNulty or his wife.

Bad News Good News

Bad news: You're uglier than you think. A recent study employed modern graphics techniques with photos of generically ugly faces and of handsome/beautiful faces. Each participant was photographed and his or her facial image was morphed slowly from the generically ugly image, to his/her own real image, and then to the very attractive face. Participants then were asked to pick out their actual images from the series. Uniformly, they chose images morphed some distance toward the attractive face as being the accurate ones. This may explain why people typically dislike most photos of themselves. We are sure we look better than that. No, we don't.

Good News: Despite these self-flattering delusions, we still underestimate how attractive we are to other people. Subjects generally scored themselves on a 1-10 scale significantly lower than others scored them. Yes, I'm afraid I said "generally" this time rather than "uniformly." A few of us think we’re pretty hot.

I’m not one of those few. Why else would I just have updated my Photoshop?

Rubens Blanched

Despite a theory that has gained currency in some circles, the ever-expanding waistlines of Americans are not the fault of Ronald McDonald. This is as silly as blaming La-Z-Boy for making sofas so soft and cushy that we sit on them too much. No one plants our butts in sofas but ourselves, and no one force-feeds us French fries either.

If we are looking for folks other than ourselves to blame, it makes more sense to point at our prehistoric ancestors for not being better hunter-gatherers. Until the past 100 years, calories have been in short supply for most of the people most of the time – there are still too many places where this is the case even today. Feast and famine were routine. In 27,000 BC it could be a very long stretch between bagging mammoths. The instinct to store up fat to carry us through hungry days was bred into us deeply. It remains bred into us, even though, for most First-Worlders, hungry days now are just an unpleasant choice.

We know that fat people are rare among modern hunter-gatherers – almost, if not quite, nonexistent. There is no reason to think it was different thousands of years ago. Yet, there are rather shocking statuettes from pre-agricultural times, such as the limestone Venus of Willendorf, which is about 26,000 years old.

This was not a one-off figurine. Others of similar proportions have turned up. It isn’t likely that this was a common look among real people, and perhaps that was the whole point. Archaeologists typically suggest “fertility symbols” when asked about the carvings. They probably are at least partly right in the interpretation, though the artists’ fantasies of being so well fed may have had more to do with the proportions than did caveman notions of female pulchritude. We’ll never really know.

Nowadays, “a lean and hungry look” is fashionable precisely because it is more difficult to achieve than the other kind. A “healthy appetite” is not a weakness but an inheritance. Scapegoating Ronald and his cohorts doesn’t help. Counting calories is a grim necessity, but, in truth, it beats the alternative.

Ursine Grunts

Except for a few years in my 40s, I've been a bachelor all my life, a fact probably deduced even by casual visitors to my house or office.

Rita Rudner: "Men don't live like human beings. They live like bears with furniture."

I'm not as bad as all that, but no one would mistake my home for Martha Stewart's.

I'm accustomed not only to rumpled attire and surroundings, but to privacy. My happiest romantic liaison was with a young lady who retained her own residence in Mineola. This is about 1.5 hours away, if traffic doesn't back up on the Cross Bronx Expressway. It was the right distance.

This is the new normal. Single households in the US are the majority of all ninety million households. Marriage – of any stripe – is now the “alternative” lifestyle. We’ll try to be tolerant.

Re-hab Nation and Carrie Nation

Substance abuse is nothing new. Despite what one might think from public handwringing by politicians and talk show guests, it isn’t even any more prevalent today than a century ago. Every attempt to eliminate the problem by attacking supplies has been as unsuccessful as was, in the end, Carrie Nation’s hatchet. There always are and will be people who can’t tolerate life without getting high. They will pay to accomplish it, and others will sell to them.

These days addiction is classified and treated as a disease, and this may be appropriate. However, there is a distinction between substance abuse and, say, heart disease or Parkinson’s. A sufferer of one of the latter cannot choose to stop the symptoms. Addicts can, and most eventually do.

In 1992 the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism conducted a study known as the National Longitudinal Alcohol Epidemiologic Survey. Of the more than 4,500 interviewees were or had been dependent on alcohol, 27 percent sought some sort of formal treatment, whether AA or rehab. At the end of the study, one-quarter of those who never had any treatment, were still alcohol abusers; one third of those who received treatment were still abusing alcohol. Those without treatment actually had better recovery rates. The point is not that treatment is harmful – those in treatment may be harder cases – but that it isn’t the necessary element in ending abuse. The necessary element is personal choice; when a person finally chooses to be sober the rehabs and support groups may well help. Without that choice they don’t.

It is not an agreeable conclusion that we can’t do much to cure someone else’s addiction. However, a lot of conclusions are disagreeable and no less correct for that. All we can do is offer help, and we often make matters worse for them and for us when we try too hard to force the issue.

AC/DC Marriage

Alongside ruder ones, there is a polite word for those who prefer their mates to be made of plastic and wires: technosexuals. (Calvin Klein already has trademarked “technosexual” for some unspecified future product.)

It’s not a new idea. Arguably, the Pygmalion and Galatea myth contains the seeds of it. The plot of Fritz Lang’s 1927 scifi movie classic Metropolis hinges on a sexy robot. My Living Doll was an early ‘60s sitcom. The cult 1987 film Cherry 2000 takes it further. Making Mr. Right, also from 1987, gender-reverses the same idea. Full size dolls costing thousands of dollars (see http://www.realdoll.com/) are a present-day marketing success. Efforts to make true robots both sexually attractive and lifelike continue. Kokoro manufactures and markets some of the most successful (and disturbing) animatronic “actroids.” (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3iYEc6Dht4)

According to Scientific American, artificial-intelligence researcher David Levy asked a crowd at the Museum of Sex in New York City “Why not marry a robot?” One of the visitors countered by asking if anyone who wanted to marry a robot was deluded. Levy’s response was, “If the alternative is that you are lonely and sad and miserable, is it not better to find a robot that claims to love you and acts like it loves you?”

I suppose I’ve heard less sound arguments for marriage. In both of the 1987 movies mentioned above, the protagonists have to decide between a biological partner and a mechanical one. The two films end opposite ways. In case you haven’t seen them, I’ll let you guess which is which.

There is little doubt that human/robot relationships (if that is the right word) will be part of the future. Whether it ever will cease to be awkward for a technosexual to announce his or her predilections to mom and dad is another question.