The science of cute [link]

Scientists who study the evolution of visual signaling have identified a wide and still expanding assortment of features and behaviors that make something look cute: bright forward-facing eyes set low on a big round face, a pair of big round ears, floppy limbs and a side-to-side, teeter-totter gait, among many others.

Cute cues are those that indicate extreme youth, vulnerability, harmlessness and need, scientists say, and attending to them closely makes good Darwinian sense. As a species whose youngest members are so pathetically helpless they can't lift their heads to suckle without adult supervision, human beings must be wired to respond quickly and gamely to any and all signs of infantile desire.

The human cuteness detector is set at such a low bar, researchers said, that it sweeps in and deems cute practically anything remotely resembling a human baby or a part thereof, and so ends up including the young of virtually every mammalian species, fuzzy-headed birds like Japanese cranes, woolly bear caterpillars, a bobbing balloon, a big round rock stacked on a smaller rock, a colon, a hyphen and a close parenthesis typed in succession.

The greater the number of cute cues that an animal or object happens to possess, or the more exaggerated the signals may be, the louder and more italicized are the squeals provoked.

eta: Oh my, we are such a silly species:

A recent study at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at the University of Michigan showed that high school students were far more likely to believe antismoking messages accompanied by cute cartoon characters like a penguin in a red jacket or a smirking polar bear than when the warnings were delivered unadorned.

This page might have the craziest e-cards I've ever seen. [link] Rejecting a marriage proposal, giving an ultimatum -- VIA E-CARD.

Bahahahah! that's fantastic Jesse! I hope it's a joke.

The Don't Care Bear break-up card is hilarious! Great find, Jesse.

This is the poem from the marriage proposal rejection:

I really want to give this

Relationship a go

Right now I'm not ready

So I'll have to say no

I'm not as happy with our fruitcake this year as I am most years. Mother and I should have had coffee before we were allowed in the kitchen. It tastes decent enough, but it doesn't have any structural integrity.

However, we managed marzipan for the first time in ever, so there's that at least.

(Fay, I had a wedding cake, but it's sadly not the norm here. Well, you have wedding cake, but that's not at all the same thing, though I had one of them, too, out of respect for all the weirdo fruitcake haters on the US side of the invited guests.)

Consuela, any chance you're around?

Fake Narnia News Dupes Sites

Several legitimate news sites picked up a hoax press release saying that representatives of the fictional land of Narnia had walked out of the recent World Trade Organization's talks in Hong Kong, Australia's The Age newspaper reported.

The news release from "the independent state of Narnia" was picked up by the financial news agency AFX and found its way onto top business news Web sites, including Forbes.com.

The news release said that Narnia had walked out of the World Trade Organization talks in Hong Kong because it was fed up with being bullied by the United States and Europe. Narnia, of course, is the fictional realm from C.S. Lewis' fantasy book series The Chronicles of Narnia, which was recently adapted into the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The news release quoted Narnia spokeswoman Susan Aslan; Aslan is the name of the Christ-like lion featured in the books.

The agencies who picked up the phony news have since removed the reports, The Age reported.

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Reminds me of '92, when Spy magazine asked a number of newly-elected congresspeople, "What's your position on the situation in Freedonia?" (Most gave answer along the lines of, "We're studying the situation carefully.)

The science of cute

It's the opposite of the Uncanny Valley.

I've had Anne's fruitcake and it is very delicious. Rumcake is my favorite though. Or bread pudding with whiskey sauce (or bourbon sauce or rum sauce). If we're sticking to the carbs soaked in alcohol food category.

The science of cute

It's the opposite of the Uncanny Valley.

I dunno - I think it's theoretically possible for some CGI creature to posess high levels of both cuteness and Uncanny Valley-ness. Who knows - perhaps such things are created from time to time, only to be immediatly lost again as their creator's brains explode, resulting in an electromagnetic pulse that erases the vile creature from its hard drive home.