Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

Researchers believe they have identified a fundamental cause of aging, according to a study published in the journal Cell. The mechanism was previously found in fungus and has now been discovered in mice. It's likely that the same process applies to humans, said the authors of the research, from Harvard.

The study found that DNA damage, which accrues as we age, decreases a cell's ability to regulate which genes are turned on and off in particular settings. Though DNA damage speeds up aging, the actual cause is not the DNA damage but the lack of gene regulation. However, this lack of gene regulation, called epigenetics, may be reversible.

-- SHARI ROAN

I think there's a good article in this profile of Tina Fey by Maureen Dowd, but it's nowhere to be found on the page. Instead, I would rather read Fey's reaction to this mental patient with a notepad bursting into her house, demanding a cocktail (there are references to the alcohol they're drinking throughout) and asking questions almost entirely confined to her looks, her weight, her mostly unnoticeable scar, her love life, who she flirts with, and whether she was cool in high school. The questions reveal a series of insecurities so transparently that it reads like a psychiatric evaluation.

-- DDAY

If you're like me, you grew up worrying about people starving in other countries. Your mom would tell you things like, "Eat your food. There are kids going hungry tonight." But hunger, as a global threat, is now dwarfed by overweight. According to [Barry] Popkin, the population of obese and overweight people worldwide -- 1.6 billion -- is now twice as large as the population of malnourished people.

-- WILLIAM SALETAN

How do you tell someone they smell? That they're boring or they shit you to tears and you don't want to be their 'friend'?

"Just tell them," a lot of people would say but it's often not that easy, especially in the workplace or if it's a member of your family.

Civilisation has a lot to answer for in this regard and one of the more rankling aspects of polite society is we have to put up with other people's aberrant behaviour, weird habits and body odours rather than just run them through with a sword.

There are laws to instruct the mass of us about fast we can drive or how much tax we should pay but there's none to say how often the guy next to you on the bus should shower or how many stupid stories a receptionist can tell at work drinks. So what to do?

-- SAM de BRITO

If I had a dime for every exposed breast I have seen recently, I'd have about a buck-fifty. And I don’t hang out at those nude beaches that have become so popular. What I am talking about here is public breast feeding. One of the women in my quilting group has three daughters. I can’t remember a time in recent memory when one of them wasn’t pregnant. The last time we were at her house, her youngest daughter was there with her three boys. So in the middle of quilting I look over and she’s sitting there fully exposed feeding the baby. In my day, you left the room and came back about 20 minutes later -- often times wearing your blouse inside out by mistake. But times have changed so I just looked away. But then her four year old came into the room and said, "ChiChi Momma. ChiChi" And I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it with my own eyes, but the four year old reached up and grabbed his momma’s "ChiChi" and had himself a little milk with his cookies. Well you could have knocked me over with a feather.

-- HELEN PHILPOT

The French say they need the largest condoms in Europe while Greeks get by on smaller ones, according to a Europe-wide study by a German consultancy that provides advice on condoms.

The study by the Singen-based Institute of Condom Consultancy was done by asking 10,500 men in 25 countries to measure their penis and enter the number into a database.

The results show Frenchmen on average claim to need 15.48-cm (6.09-inch) long condoms, about 3 cm longer than Greeks, whose condom-size requirement was the most modest.

-- REUTERS