The BBC explores whether love can be put in a bottle:

So, if love really is just a complex chemical reaction, could that most powerful of human emotions be manipulated?

“Oxytocin increases eye gaze, increases our ability to recognise emotions in others,” Professor Young said.

“It may actually enhance our ability to form relationships, and so it is a very real possibility that something like oxytocin could be used in conjunction with marital therapies to bring back that spark.”

Mmmm, oysters as therapy. I know I should probably think about this in terms of the cosmetics and therapy industries but it also reminds me of Kelly’s Heroes when the tanks are led into combat by the hippie Sargent Oddball. He plays music and fires red paint to subdue the Nazis without hurting anyone. Imagine if he could have fired love paint, or sprayed it from airplanes.

Due to the deaths of American citizens in Mumbai, the US FBI has been authorized to partner with Indian authorities to investigate. Evidence is mounting that the attackers were not only from Pakistan but the operation was orchestrated from there as well:

Controllers in Pakistan watched live television and warned the gunmen of the arrival of Indian commandos, the report said, citing evidence amassed by the FBI and handed over to the Pakistani government.

The FBI had decoded Skype calls over the internet that were made between the gunmen in two five-star hotels and a Jewish centre in Mumbai with their LeT controllers in Pakistan, identified as Shah, Abu Hamza and Abu Qafa, it said.

Interesting to read they have cracked the skype calls although it was already known that US agents have greater access to GPS (e.g. Garmin) keys for decrypting the satellite communication. Although the attackers operated with very non-technical methods as well, this news will surely add to the controversy about news reporting, mobile technology tracking and monitoring.

It seems that Thailand’s cyber law struggles with tech terms:

According to Dol Bunnag, Civil Court judge of the Presidential of the Supreme Court, the law comprised many technical terms, for example “sniffing”. How to define them in Thai and check whether they portrayed their original English meaning was the difficult part. The law has been defined, he said, through the definition of terms used within its wording, for example “key locker” or “service providers”.

Article 20 refers to “blocking Web sites” which in Thai means to stop a site’s content distribution, but the implications of this term were broader than just simply blocking access to a site, the judge said.

Here’s my stupid question: Does “sniffing” really have to be translated? Why not just use the original? Is it that bad to adopt the word into law and then describe in the local language to clarify intent? When I order sushi, for example, English fails to capture the varieties of tuna so I almost always end up using the Japanese terms to be more clear (e.g. Akami, Toro — Chutoro, Otoro — Ha-Gatsuo).