Rotundus.com

In Delhi, Women Marry Up and Men are Left Behind

From the country with the world's third highest ratio of boys to girls: "There’s an unexpected problem in Delhi’s high-end marriage market, according to Gopal Suri, who has been a marriage broker for two decades. There are too few 'quality' men, he said in a recent interview, as a growing pool of young women with unprecedented levels of education are seeking and making matches with educated men from higher socioeconomic groups."

13 Brilliant Science Museum Billboards

From Vancouver. See also the commercials here.

Researchers Build a Projectile Vomiting Robot

"Until today, the grossest robot we'd ever had the pleasure of meeting was Ecobot, which poops. This robot is much, much grosser. Its name is Vomiting Larry, and it's designed to do one thing: puke just like a human... to research the spread of noroviruses, which cause humans to projectile vomit"

Can Forgiveness Play a Role in Criminal Justice?

The NYT tackles restorative justice - here focusing on an American murder case.

Apparently it wasn't always bland. From the NYT:

... Wilde Zwijnen reminds the Dutch of the utilitarian ethos that has dominated its cuisine for decades. It wasn’t always so, writes Karin Engelbrecht, a restaurant critic for Time Out Amsterdam. The Dutch, she explains, cooked with élan until the start of the 19th century, and you can tell from still-life paintings of the era, which showed off tables piled high with delectables. A peek at cookbooks dating back a few hundred years reveals dishes like mussels with saffron and ginger, and roast goose with turmeric root. Meals were lavish, multicourse affairs that started with leafy greens and ended with pastries and hippocras, a wine sweetened with cinnamon and served warm.

Then, as the Dutch started to lose their colonies — mostly to the British — and population growth started to strain resources, the country’s golden age ended and a new frugality took hold. But what really set Holland’s kitchens on a path toward stodgy was the popularity, starting in the late 19th century, of huishoudschool. A type of domestic-science school, it taught girls to ditch the herbs and spices and produce meals that favored nutrition and cheapness over flavor and pizazz.

Study: The New Less-Social Psychology of China's Generation Without Siblings

"Compared to children born right before the one-child policy was implemented, children born under its jurisdiction scored lower on a whole spectrum of measures: They grew up to be less trusting, more risk-averse, less competitive, more pessimistic, less conscientious, and it appeared, more neurotic."

Robots Replace Gardeners as Sales Surge for Auto-Mowers

I imagine a machine with blades rather than just suction (like a roomba) might make people a bit more nervous. Still it seems that in Germany robo-mowers now account for 6% of the market with double-digit growth patterns. Looks also like a different approach to lawn-mowing: "Unlike traditional mowers, they don’t collect the cut grass, as the clippings are so small they break down fast and act as fertilizer; instead the rechargable mowers are used frequently, often daily." Perhaps the following explains why I haven't seem much of this here: "North American grass, especially in the southern U.S., is generally tougher than European varieties"

Man hires hitman to kill his son's in-game character to stop addiction

"What do you do if your kids are addicted to video games? Hire a hit man to kill them off - virtually, of course. That's what one father has done in China."

Asian teenagers flock to get “fashion” braces

"Braces, long the symbol of nerds, geeks, mouth-breathers and others who dwell at the bottom of the high school food chain, have suddenly become très chic. Well, at least in certain parts of Thailand, Indonesia and Malayasia. Many teens in Southeast Asia have been shelling out more than $100 for so-called black market braces, mouth gear that doesn’t serve any function other than fashion — and status."

It, of course, is oppressive:

An Italian woman who signed up to a bizarre contract promising total sexual and mental submission to her husband is now suing him for divorce and mistreatment after seven years of "slavery".

Seems sensible so far. Of course, in the current legal environment NOT doing this is also a problem:

In the case, filed in the High Court this year, the wife refers to the book in her grounds for divorce, which blames the breakdown of the marriage on the husband's lack of sexual adventure.