Should Tonsil Hockey Be More Taboo?

Do we really need to touch this much? asks Juliet Lapidos

(NEWSER) - We’re facing a hugging epidemic in America: not only do we hug our friends constantly, we’re also expected to hug our friends’ girlfriends’ coworkers, writes Juliet Lapidos in Slate . Sure, there are times when hugs are called for: when the hugger is your boyfriend, or your mother, or when you haven’t seen someone in a very long time. But “why is it that when I go over to your house for dinner, you wrap your arms around me, even though I saw you last Friday?” More»

He's probably gay, she probably hates you, and it could ruin your relationship

(NEWSER) - Back in the halcyon pre-Facebook days, Elizabeth Bernstein writes, you didn't just pick up the phone and ring up an old flame. “If you went looking for a former partner, you knew you were looking for trouble.” So why it should be any different on Facebook? A survey of botched reconnections suggests it shouldn’t. "We need new rules now.” More»

(NEWSER) - Online dating sites are so packed with possible matches that they cause “cognitive overload” in seekers, leading to unconsidered choices, the MIT Technology Review reports. The lovelorn may say they want a wider variety of candidates, but they spend less time evaluating them, new research shows. “More search options lead to less selective processing by reducing users' cognitive resources, distracting them with irrelevant information,” the researchers say. That hampers the “ability to screen out inferior options.” More»

Exhibit features everything from photos to prosthetics

(NEWSER) - Not sure what to do with all those old love letters from your ex? Burning them seems too risky; keeping them, too sentimental. Why not put them on permanent display? The Museum of Broken Relationships allows you to do just that, BlackBook reports. Started as an art project in Croatia, the exhibit’s popularity led its creators to bring it online and on the road. More»

Institution is obsolete—let's fix this 'bum deal'

(NEWSER) - Marriage is fraught with “emotional pain, humiliation, and logistical difficulty.” And for women—expected to work, parent, tend to the house, and on top of all that, keep the romance alive—it’s a “bum deal,” writes Sandra Tsing Loh, herself ending a 20-year union, in the Atlantic. In this era of “white-collar work and washing machines” and soaring life expectancies, “isn’t the idea of lifelong marriage obsolete?” More»