You know you're living in 2009 when...

1. You accidentally enter your password on the microwave.

2. You haven't played solitaire with real cards in years.

3. You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 3.

4. You e-mail the person who works at the desk next to you.

5. Your reason for not staying in touch with friends and family is that they don't have e-mail addresses.

6. You pull up in your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in the groceries.

7. Every commercial on television has a web site at the bottom of the screen.

8. Leaving the house without your cell phone, which you didn't have the first 20 or 30 (or 60) years of your life, is now a cause for panic and you turn around to go and get it.

10. You get up in the morning and go on line before getting your coffee.

11. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. : )

12. You're reading this and nodding and laughing.

13. Even worse, you know exactly to whom you are going to forward this message.

14. You are too busy to notice there was no #9 on this list.

15. You actually scrolled back up to check that there wasn't a #9 on this list.

Blondes don't have more fun, survey finds

They have a reputation for having the most fun, but blondes are more likely to have their romantic hopes crushed after a first date, a survey has found.
While a third of first dates in Britain end in "disaster", flaxen-haired hopefuls are a quarter more likely to have their dreams of true loved nipped in the bud than their brunette or red-headed counterparts.

Blondes are apparently the most likely of anyone to have attempted to seduce a first date with reminiscences about an ex, seen their judgement impaired by drinking too much, bed their date at the end of the night, and even forget the name of their would-be paramour.

A total of 1,300 people were surveyed by internet dating firm Parship.co.uk in an attempt to discover why so many first dates ended with both parties vowing never to cross paths again.

Of the 18 million first dates "enjoyed" by Britons every year, as many as 6 million never progress to a second date.

Penny Conway, from the online dating firm, said: "Although it's unlikely a person will behave differently simply because of their hair colour, they may act out of character if they are being treated badly, or according to a stereotype.

"In films blondes are often assumed as being clueless or as having more fun. How we are treated by other people can influence how we behave, so this may explain why blondes are more likely to behave badly compared to brunettes or red heads, or go home with their dates on the first night."

The company found that misguided ideas of alluring behaviour - including turning up late, running away from a partner, getting drunk, and telling their potential partner choice tales about their ex and previous sexual conquests - was responsible for dampening any first flames of passion.

And, according to the survey, most of the eight million people looking for love will never hear from their date again.

Nearly half (48 per cent) of women questioned admitted to turning up late to a first date, with 10 per cent of them keeping their man waiting for over half an hour.

Some 12 per cent of women said they had taken advantage of a date's momentary absence at the bar or loo to flee the scene, and 5 per cent of men and women confessed to arriving at a bar or restaurant, being horrified by what greeted them, and heading for the door.

A total of 28 per cent said they had tried to seduce their date with stories about their ex and previous sexual conquests, 14 per cent admitted getting too drunk to stay in control of themselves, and 6 per cent confessed that they had decided to bring along their mother or pet to meet their potential partner.

And 30 per cent of men and 20 per cent of women admitted to going home with their date, with one in four men (26 per cent) and one in five women (20 per cent) saying they had later bedded them.

SCIENCE FILE / Q&A - Earth's twin is out there -- somewhere - An astronomer sees signs of parallel planets within our grasp.

For the last 20 years, UC Berkeley astronomer Geoff Marcy has been the world's leading planet finder. Of the 260-odd planets that have been discovered in other solar systems, Marcy and his team have found 150. His most recent discovery, announced last week, is a fifth planet orbiting a star called 55 Cancri, about 41 light-years from Earth. Marcy, 53, sat down in his office to talk about the friendly and not-so-friendly competition to find the first Earth-like planet that could harbor life.

Describe your latest discovery.

This is one of the nearest stars to our sun. It has nearly the same mass as our sun, the same temperature as our sun and the same age. Frankly, what's delightful about it is that we now have five major planets orbiting it. The planets around 55 Cancri have a range of masses, from around 10 Earth masses at the smallest, to the largest, which is around four times as large as Jupiter. It's certainly the largest complement of planets ever found around another star.

Are any of these planets habitable?

This newest planet, No. 5, resides in the habitable zone, about 0.8 Earth-sun distances from its star. So this new planet we've found would be warmed up -- like a face to a campfire -- to lukewarm temperatures, making the water, if any, liquid. Having said that, we suspect that this new planet is made mostly of hydrogen and helium gas. Its mass is about 55 times the mass of Earth. So it probably isn't just a solid rock, like our Earth. Such a big planet with a rocky core and a fluffy gaseous envelope probably can't support life as we know it.

How many planets have you discovered?

My team has discovered 150. The Swiss team is a strong second. In fact, I just got an e-mail from the leader of the team congratulating me on the five planets around 55 Cancri.

So the competition is friendly?

It's a touchy friendship. We laugh about it. But in the true spirit of science we appreciate the competition because we know if we snooze, we will lose the next precious planets that are the next exciting batch to find.

What's the allure of an Earth-like planet?

To find the first Earth was a dream of Aristotle. Even in the religious realm, people have wondered, and still do, whether Earth was uniquely put here. Not to delve into touchy issues, but there's still a large -- how shall I put it -- spiritual question. Is the Earth the center of creation? And we're about to find out whether there are any other Earths out there. The Vatican will be interested. It's no joke. I've gotten two calls from them.

What are the prospects for finding planets farther out?

There are three very exciting missions NASA is planning right now that would advance the search.

The first one is called Kepler. It's a space-borne telescope that will be able to measure the tiniest dimming (caused by a planet crossing in front of the host star), to one part in 100,000, allowing us to detect Earth-like planets.

The goal is to image a huge chunk of the sky around the constellation Cygnus, monitoring 150,000 stars continuously for four years . . . It's scheduled to launch in 2009.

What about the other missions?

The next one NASA is pushing is the Space Interferometry Mission, which is being designed and built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. What SIM will do is find Earth-like planets in the habitable zone around the nearest stars. SIM is going to find the nearest Earth twin a few light-years away.

And the third mission?

The Terrestrial Planet Finder. I listed it third because it's further technologically down the line. We had hopes of launching in 2016, but I think that's not likely. . . . It would take the first pictures of Earth-like planets. Look at our own solar system. Which of the planets is blue? Earth. So if you found another star with a pale-blue dot tooling around that yellow star, that blue color and chemical analysis of the planet might give us a strong suggestion of life.

When do you think we'll see the first Earth-like planet?

I would say within three years we will have the first suggestion of rocky, lukewarm planets. We won't have the spectra. We won't know if there's oxygen. But we will know there's a rocky planet warmed up by its proximity to a campfire, if you will, where water could be liquid.

Say we find an Earth twin, what do we do then?

I know exactly what we do. UC Berkeley, in conjunction with the SETI [Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence] Institute, is building a new radio telescope north of Mt. Lassen in Hat Creek designed to search for radio and television signals from an advanced technological civilization. It's called the Allen Telescope Array.

If the array picks up radio waves, then what do we do?

There is a written protocol for this. Step A is to communicate broadly and uniformly to the world what you think you have found, so that everybody can follow up and double and triple and quadruple check your work. . . .

I would recommend that Step Two be a . . . conference, where all of the nations are represented and we talk about it. The immediate question is what message, if any, to send back.

Remember, any such dialogue will not be lively repartee, because a star 50 light-years away means it takes 50 years to get back to them and 50 years to get back to you, so the jokes will not have quite the timing that they have when Seinfeld is on stage.

You're not bronzed. That tan is fake!

Tiffany Finnegan loves what she refers to as her "healthy glow." The 30-year-old South Boston resident is smitten with self-tanning products and regularly applies the lotions and sprays to keep her skin looking beach-resort dark year-round.
Her mother, however, has a different take on her daughter's tan from a can.

"She makes me crazy whenever she comes home for a visit," says Joyce Finnegan, who lives outside Syracuse. "Between the sprays, lotions, and creams, my bathroom has an orange haze when she's done. The fake tan has become an obsession. She is a 'tanorexic,' but we love her, no matter what shade of orange she is."

That orange hue has become increasingly common as the number of sunless tanning products on the market has risen and as influential Hollywood stars go under the spray gun. Sales of self-tanners in the United States have skyrocketed in the past five years. In 2003, sales totaled $53 million. By 2008, sales surpassed $200 million, according to market research group Mintel International Group, Ltd. They anticipate those numbers will continue to rise in 2009.

But you don't need market research and sales figures to prove that the world is becoming a little more orange all the time. Stroll the South Shore Plaza on a Saturday night or walk down Commonwealth Avenue near the Boston University campus and you'll see ocherous faces peering out from behind flat-ironed hair.

Yes, sunless tanners, which darken the skin by staining the outer layer with dihydroxyacetone, a natural sugar derivative, are safer than lying in the sun or logging time in a tanning bed, says New York dermatologist Jeannette Graf. But there's an unwanted side effect for those who use too much self-tanner: They wind up as tangerine-colored as Donald Trump.

They may think they resemble a deeply bronzed Cindy Crawford on a Palm Springs golf getaway, but the truth is, these chronic tanaholics look artificial. President Obama ribbed House minority leader and preternaturally tanned John Boehner at the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner recently, joking that Boehner "is a person of color, just not a color that is found in nature."

Over-tanning, like obsessive teeth whitening and overzealous eyebrow plucking, is a year-round problem. But in late spring, as women - and plenty of men - prepare for bathing suit season, the number of imitation tans begins to climb as rapidly as the pollen count.

"There is a bit of overdoing it out there, and they end up looking orange," says Ulana Nosal, store manager at Fresh on Newbury Street. "The funny thing is, I don't think they realize they look orange. They think that they look good and that their color looks natural."

Jimmy Coco, a former Chippendales dancer who now runs a Los Angeles-based tanning business charging $350 per spray-tan session at a client's home, says he's been told by clients who have experienced bad spray tans that they'd rather look artificial than pasty white. In Hollywood, a good spray tan has become as important as the right purse, and tanners such as Coco can charge top dollar because they keep their clients looking sun-kissed rather than dyed.

"I guess orange is acceptable to people, and for the longest time that was the only option," he said. "In some light that color may look OK, but most of the time it looks really bad."

Coco, whose client list includes Eva Longoria, Heidi Klum, Victoria Beckham, and Katy Perry, says that the current obsession with the artificial tan emerged when Jennifer Lopez began sporting an unabashedly sprayed "bronze goddess" tan five years ago. Not happy to be left looking pale on the sidelines, other celebrities jumped on the bandwagon - with mixed results. Soon, Paris Hilton, Tara Reid, and Lindsay Lohan starting showing up in tabloids with varying degrees of spray-tan success, and every "Real Housewife" and passenger on the "Rock of Love" bus was going under the tanning gun. (Coco even spray tans the contestants on "The Biggest Loser.")

There are a few actresses who maintain alabaster tones - such as Anne Hathaway and Kate Winslet - but they are the exception. For years, milky skin was prized, until Coco Chanel made tanning vogue in the 1920s. Before she came back bronzed from the French Rivera, tans were seen as the mark of the working class. Only the wealthy could afford to wile away the days under parasols.

Later, concerns over skin cancer resulted in Coppertone developing the first sunless tanning product in 1960. It was a stink bomb in a bottle that sold poorly and did little to keep people from the beach. The romance of beach movies in the 1960s and a perpetual Beach Boys soundtrack kept baby boomers tanning in the 1970s and 1980s, Coco said.

Celebrity makeup artist Brett Freedman, whose clients include Reba McEntire, Kelly Clarkson, and Vanessa Hudgens, said sunless tanaholics just don't know when to stop spraying, smearing, and bronzing.

"There are people who think that they can never be too thin or too blond," said Freedman. "And then there are people who think that they can never be too tan. The problems you see with these tans now is that there are people who want as much color as possible, so they'll pick a product that has way too much pigment in it, and apply it as often as possible."

North Shore psychiatrist Lenore Cantor says she has not treated any individuals who use too much self-tanner, but said she has seen patients who spent too much time in the sun. The patients, who experience body dysmorphic disorder, are convinced that there is something physically wrong with their appearance. Cantor says some of these patients work on getting a deep tan because they think it will make them look better.

"There's a general perception that a tan means you're healthy," she says. "And for people who don't like their appearance, getting a tan is sometimes seen as a quick fix. Of course the irony is that spending too much time in the sun is anything but healthy."

While sunless tanning is safer for skin than lounging in the sun or baking in a tanning bed, dermatologist Jeanine Downie says that she does not recommend spray tans for people with asthma or respiratory infections, because they can trigger asthma attacks. For home tanning, she said she has seen some people put self-tanner too close to their eyes and wind up with conjunctivitis. She's also seen patients ruin some very nice towels.

"Publicly, people are being made fun of who have that unnaturally orange glow," Downie says. "That shade of orange is a pet peeve of mine."

Although she's heard from friends that she's too dark, too caramel, and, at times, too artificial, Cambridge nurse Janet Perkins says she is not planning to stop her self-tanning regiment any time soon.

"Listen," she said, "I've had plenty of people tell me that my tan is gorgeous. In the winter, they ask if I've been on a cruise or on vacation. My friends who make fun of me are just jealous they can't look this good."

Facebook Takes That $200 Million Investment From The Russians At A $10 Billion Valuation.

Facebook is taking that rumored $200 million investment from Digital Sky Technologies, a Russian investment group. DST will take a 1.96 percent stake in the company, giving Facebook a $10 billion valuation. Facebook ultimately did not have to give up a board seat to DST in return for the cash. But DST is getting preferred shares for it’s $200 million.

When Microsoft bought preferred shares, it valued Facebook at $15 billion. Since then the market has come way down and various valuations for Facebook have been thrown out between $4 billion to $6 billion. And recently, Facebook turned down an investment valuing the company at $8 billion, with the stipulation that the investor get a board seat. During a conference call today, CEO Mark Zuckerberg he confirmed that other investors had approached Facebook, saying: “It was really at our option to find someone we wanted to work with on our terms.” No doubt, part of the appeal of taking the Russian money was to set the company’s new valuation at something easier to stomach than what the common stock was going for in private sales.

But this investment may affect the valuation of the common stock as well. Additionally, DST has the option to buy another $100 million worth of common stock from existing employees and investors. Although, during the conference call, the suggestion was made (update: confirmed) that these are being treated as two different transactions with different valuations. Facebook announced a program last year to let employees sell some stock to private investors, but that program was put on hold. Facebook hopes to give some of its employees liquidity with this separate deal with DST, which it views as a long=term investor.

Despite recent public statements from COO Sheryl Sandberg saying that Facebook does not need the money, it can certainly use the cash to fund its growing operations, including bandwidth, storage, and engineering costs.

During a conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the investment will give Facebook “a good cash cushion” and give the company more flexibility “for strategic options” (which is code fro acquisitions), although he also says the company has “no plans currently.” It is not clear that $200 million is enough to buy the company it really wants to buy (Twitter!). Zuckerberg adds: “This investment is purely buffer for us. It is not something we needed to get to cash flow positive.” He expects Facebook to be cash flow positive in 2010, and says the company has been EBITDA positive for five consecutive quarters, going on six.

And what about an IPO? “It is not something we are thinking about right now, not something we are rushing towards,” claims Zuckerberg.

World's dumbest gangster

A would-be gangster shot himself in the crutch when his gun went off half cocked in his pocket.

Lukas Neuhardt, 27, had forgotten to put the safety catch on when he stuffed the gun into his trouser pocket to impress pals in Saarbruecken, Germany.

He told paramedics that a masked mugger had blasted him in the crutch in a bungled robbery.

But police found a hole in his statement when they saw that the gunshot had miraculously left his trousers intact.

"Instead there was a charred hole in his pocket so either it was the shot of the century or he did it himself," said a police source.

Now - after surgeons stitched his manhood back together - he's facing up to three years in jail for breaching Germany's tough new anti gun laws.

Scientists discover 'genes that slow ageing process'

Mutations have been found to extend the lifespan of animals in the lab such as worms, fruit flies and mice, and appear to play the same role in humans.

Professor Linda Partridge, director of the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College London, said such research could help treat or delay many diseases simultaneously with medication.

She believes these scientific advances are offering hope to improve health during ageing in humans and inspiring a new wave in ageing research.

So far, "pathways" in the human body along which nutrients pass have proved to have the most robust effect on healthy lifespan.

Prof Partridge, who will present a public lecture at the Royal Society in London on Tuesday, said tackling the very causes of ageing - rather than treating the symptoms "piecemeal" - offers the best prospects for dealing with the diseases.

She said: "Research on the diseases associated with ageing is generally done by separate communities of research workers who read different journals, attend different conferences and generally do not communicate with each other.

"But by tacking the causes of ageing itself we could treat, or at least delay, a broad spectrum of conditions simultaneously."

Prof Partridge said in mammals, insulin regulates blood sugar levels and metabolism in response to food intake, while the related insulin-like growth factor 1 (Igf1) regulates growth.

Mutations in genes that encode the protein components of the insulin and Igf1 signalling pathways have proved to extend lifespan in a nematode worm, the fruit fly and mice, and genetic variants for these genes in humans have proved to be associated with lifespan.

Dietary restriction, which is a simple environmental intervention, can also extend life in a range of animals.

Drugs which inhibit the nutrient pathways in humans could replicate the effects of dietary restriction and act not only to increase healthy lifespan but to target a broad range of ageing related diseases such as cardiovascular disease, cancers, diabetes and Alzheimer's.

Prof Partridge said this research means a new approach to the treatment of age-related conditions.

She added: "The major burden of ill health is in the older section of the population.

"The new discoveries about ageing have raised the prospect of increasing the number of years that people enjoy in good health, with broad-spectrum preventive medicines for the diseases of ageing."

Free boob jobs offered to nurses at Prague clinic

AN understaffed Prague clinic has signed up nurses by offering boob jobs, liposuction and tummy tucks as a bonus.
Nurses, doctors and secretaries who sign up with the small private clinic for three years can choose their free plastic surgery.

"It has been a success," Jiri Schweitzer, a manager at the Iscare clinic, said, adding the establishment was now fully staffed and had to reject dozens of beauty-hunting job applicants.

Petra Kalivodova, a 31-year-old nurse who has been working at the clinic for four years, has had a breast implants - the most popular choice among nurses - so she underwent liposuction for her signing on perk.

"I have mentioned this to colleagues and friends, and the interest in working here is huge," she said.

The clinic charges up to 75,000 koruna ($5060) for a breast implant, almost three times the average nurse's monthly wage, and up to €1880 ($3380) for liposuction.

Many Czech nurses have been tempted out of the country by higher wages offered in western European nations and the Czech health system now needs about 6000 nurses in addition to the 90,000 it already employs, according to official data.

Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals

The Dutch justice ministry has announced it will close eight prisons and cut 1,200 jobs in the prison system. A decline in crime has left many cells empty.

During the 1990s the Netherlands faced a shortage of prison cells, but a decline in crime has since led to overcapacity in the prison system. The country now has capacity for 14,000 prisoners but only 12,000 detainees.

Deputy justice minister Nebahat Albayrak announced on Tuesday that eight prisons will be closed, resulting in the loss of 1,200 jobs. Natural redundancy and other measures should prevent any forced lay-offs, the minister said.

The overcapacity is a result of the declining crime rate, which the ministry's research department expects to continue for some time.

Belgian prisoners

Some reprieve might come from a deal with Belgium, which is facing overpopulation in its prisons. The two countries are working out an agreement to house Belgian prisoners in Dutch prisons. Some five-hundred Belgian prisoners could be transferred to the Tilburg prison by 2010.

The Netherlands would get 30 million euros in the deal, and it will allow the closing of the prisons in Rotterdam and Veenhuizen to be postponed until 2012.

Burning Question: Why Isn't Wireless Net Access Available Everywhere?

You might remember a time when everyone—from telco giants to corner coffee shops—was furiously serving up Wi-Fi. McDonald's became an Internet café, and dozens of municipalities nationwide were racing to set up open hot spots. Your broadband connection was about to be as portable as your cell phone. That was like five years ago.

What happened next? Zilch. "There has been a complete lack of leadership from the regulatory agencies, service providers, and device makers," says Ashvin Vellody, senior vice president for enabling technologies at communications research firm Yankee Group. Fortunately, cellular providers are stepping up to fill the motivational vacuum. Omnipresent broadband access is almost here. Again. Really.

Even skeptics have to concede that the odds look pretty good this time. The technology won't be your familiar 802.11—it never had the bandwidth or range to be viable anyway. The airwaves will instead be paved with a new generation of wireless broadband. Some of these so-called 4G networks will use the 700-MHz spectrum that the government auctioned off last year, and they promise to blanket every medium to large city in Net-ready radio waves.

It's about time. Cell phone companies have been asleep at the wheel for years, loath to upgrade to expensive new networks when their old ones "work just fine." The iPhone slapped them awake. Before Apple's smooth-talker, portable broadband didn't look juicy enough to chase—cellular data usage was slim. But the typical iPhone owner uses five times more data than the average cell user. "It took Apple and its ecosystem of apps and interactivity to prove the pent-up demand for ubiquitous broadband," Vellody says.

And now, mobile devices like netbooks and Google phones have joined in to force the issue. Clearwire introduced a WiMax service in Baltimore and Portland, Oregon, with a commitment to add 80 more markets by the end of 2010. Verizon is testing a related technology, Long Term Evolution, and aims to roll out coverage by 2010; Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Nokia are all building compatible devices. Both WiMax and LTE will offer about the same DSL-ish speed (5-6 Mbps), but bitrates could grow to 15 Mbps by 2012.

Unfortunately, the current economic malaise is slowing some capital expansion plans. (How convenient.) "It won't be overnight, but you're eventually going to see mobile broadband replace your at-home connection," says Barry West, Clearwire's president and chief architect. A bright forecast—but believe it when you actually see the sun.

Woman Who is Allergic to Modern Technology

For most people talking on a mobile phone, cooking dinner in the microwave or driving in a car is simply part of modern living in 21st century Britain. But completing any such tasks is impossible for Debbie Bird - because she is allergic to Cell Phones and Microwaves.

The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or 'smog' created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them. As a consequence, Mrs Bird, a health spa manager, has transformed her home into an EMF-free zone to try and stay healthy. 'I can no longer do things that I used to take for granted,' Mrs Bird said. "My day-to-day life has been seriously affected by EMF"..

Real Archaeologist Digs Up Fact, Fiction of 'Angels & Demons'

Antimatter!
Early on in the movie a potentially catastrophic vial of antimatter is stolen from CERN setting the plot in motion. Antimatter sounds like a fantasy sci-fi movie product, but it has been created -- at the cost of about $1,772 trillion per ounce. Why? Because it takes enormous energy to create in particle accelerators like CERN. (Remember CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research. They've got the huge underground particle accelerator that was supposed to create a black hole and swallow the earth last fall, until an accident took everything offline. Cross your fingers for this fall, when they start the accelerator up again.)

The only reassuring news about antimatter besides its prohibitive cost? The fact that, at this point, there's no way to store it, much less broadcast it on the Internet.

After the jump, learn the truth about the Vatican's leadership and the badass-itude of the Swiss Guard.

The Vatican Leadership
Oh Vatican, oh Vatican, who's the most murderous of them all? Yep, probably because of the lousy press from the Catholic Church that followed "The Da Vinci Code," this film played nice with Catholicism's major domos. But in real life, popes and cardinals haven't been innocent when it comes to murder, bribery, rape, incest, etc. Around the time that so many of the fantastic churches in the film were built, for instance, there was Pope Alexander VI (d. 1503). Known as the "STD Pope," Alex allegedly committed his first murder at 12, slept with his daughter, and died drinking poison intended for a potential cardinal.

The Illuminati
OK, here's the problem with the secret society chronology in this movie: most of the groups we're familiar with today, like the Freemasons and the Illuminati, were founded during the Age of Enlightenment, which began in the 1700s. In fact, the Illuminati were founded in 1776 -- a good 100-150 years after the characters (Galileo, Bernini) mentioned in "Angels & Demons" existed. (By the way, the original Illuminati preferred to call themselves the "Perfectibilists," and "The Order of the Bees," neither of which is nearly as sexy or intimidating.)

Other, earlier "secret societies" known to pose a threat to the Church, like the Knights Templar, were ruthlessly stamped out by popes in the 1300s. So poor A&D author Dan Brown was essentially left with a secret society "dead zone" from 1400 to 1700 -- the time of Galileo.

The Swiss Guard
Let's talk about how badass the Swiss Guard is. Would you mess with a Chechen, a Colombian, or an Afghani? Multiply that by 10 and we have the Swiss. Crazy-ass, take-no-hostages mountain people -- these are the men who have ruthlessly guarded the Vatican for 500 years. And those nasty-looking halberds they carry? Renowned since the 16th century for efficiently piercing human skulls. They also carry assault rifles. So don't make fun of their striped pajamas and funny hats the next time you find yourself in Rome.

Symbology
... is a load of crap. I'd love to teach it at Harvard too, but what our esteemed professor Dr. Robert Langdon does is actually some weird combo of western art history and anthropology.

Why is it impossible to teach "symbology"? Because those two crossed keys that mean "Vatican" in the West may mean something entirely different in say, Vietnam. And the whole elements-of-the-earth spiel that works for Langdon in Rome may mean nothing in the Peruvian desert. To be a symbologist, he'd have to have in-depth knowledge of all of the world's cultures in order to properly interpret symbols, which is impossible unless you're Stephen Hawking. Our dear Harvard professor doesn't even know Italian, for Pete's sake.

Kristin Romey is an anthropologist, explorer, former executive editor of Archeology Magazine and, most prestigiously, Asylum's scientific adviser.

Intelligent women enjoy sex more than 'bimbos', research finds

A study of more than 2,000 female twins showed that those with greater emotional intelligence had larger numbers of orgasms.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to monitor and manage feelings and emotions in oneself and others.

The findings suggest that low EI is a risk factor for female orgasmic disorder, one of the most common sexual problems suffered by women.

Up to 30 per cent of women find it difficult or impossible to reach a climax during sexual intercourse.

Professor Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Department at King's College London and co-author of the study, said: "These findings show that emotional intelligence is an advantage in many aspects of your life including the bedroom. This study will help enormously in the development of behavioural and cognitive therapies to improve women's sexual lives."

A total of 2,035 female volunteers from the TwinsUK registry were recruited for the study, ranging in age from 18 to 83.

The registry consists of adult twins who have agreed to take part in studies to investigate the causes of common disorders. Using twins makes it possible to disentangle genetic and environmental risk factors.

All participants completed questionnaires giving details of their sexual behaviour and performance and also answered questions designed to test their emotional intelligence.

A significant association was found between EI and frequency of orgasm both during masturbation and sexual intercourse.

Women in the bottom 25 per cent of the emotional intelligence range had twice the normal risk of infrequent orgasm.

The results of the study appear today in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Lead author, psychologist Andrea Burri, also from King's College, said: "Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women's sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner."

She added that there was a possible connection with a woman's ability to fantasise during sexual intercourse.

"Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women's sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner," said Ms Burri.