This Taser XREP can deliver a wireless electric shock from over 100 feet away, and from the looks of it, you don't want to be on its receiving end. Its Neuro-Muscular Incapacitation (NMI) is the same disabling effect delivered by wired Taser weapons. Loaded into an ordinary 12-gauge shotgun, it's designed into a 14-gram package small enough to fit into a gun barrel, yet it can travel at 300 feet per second.
As the self-contained XREP wireless Taser round exits the shotgun barrel, three fins pop out to stabilize it as it flies through the air. Its four electrodes on the front each have a barb that can penetrate clothing and embed itself into the body of its victim. It will continue shocking its victim for 20 seconds, giving the officers enough time to apprehend the suspect. Field testing for this scary weapon begins this fall, but it probably won't go into widespread use until a year later. We'll behave ourselves, officer, but please, just point that thing somewhere else.
Cleaning the house is one of those things that isn't near the top of anyone's "fun stuff" list. It's a chore, plain and simple, and not too many people look forward to doing it. That's probably why your place is so dirty: you hate to clean.
Well, why not make cleaning a more entertaining experience? Maybe then you wouldn't be ashamed to invite guests over. This Nike concept aims to do just that, turning sweeping up in to a hockey-like game. The broom turns into a hockey stick, and a stationary vacuum is the goal that sucks up all your dirt. I can see this being a real blast if you have dust bunnies the size of hockey pucks kicking around, but for regular dirt I worry that the diversion wouldn't last all that long. But hey, any improvement in the world of sweeping is OK with me.
Some people need their speakers to be gigantic, room-filling monsters to let everyone know just how into music and home theatre they are. Other, more reasonable people, want their speakers to be diminutive yet powerful, hiding themselves while packing a punch. For this second group of people, Sony has created its new Bravia Theatre DAC-IS10.
Featuring speakers about the size of golf balls, these things are about as small as they come. That's not to say the sound they put out is small too, as they pump out sound worthy of a package many times their size. In addition, you get a less-tiny subwoofer and a gloss-black control center that can play DVDs, CDs, and MP3s. If you have a Bravia TV you'll also be able to connect easily using Theatre Sync technology. Score one for the modest team. Look for the system to hit store shelves in September.
There's nothing worse than getting caught in a downpour. You leave the house in the morning and everything is sunshine and flowers, only to leave your office to discover yourself in a watery hell. It's called planning ahead, dude. You should try it. If you had the Thunderbolt Pro, you'd be warned in plenty of time to get an umbrella and get yourself prepped for the onslaught. It detects storm activity up to 75 miles away and lets you know when to expect nasty weather. I mean, sure, you could watch the news or check the weather online, but neither of those options give you an excuse to waste $430 on a fancy new gadget, do they?
Here's the Datamask H.U.D., a personal dive computer that takes the self-contained part of SCUBA diving to the next level by placing all the information about your dive right there in front of you in a head-up display. Originally developed for the military and now available for use by the rest of us, this is one sophisticated mask.
Its Digital Optic system displays your current depth, elapsed dive time, the amount of pressure in that air cylinder on your back, and time remaining. It keeps all that information easily visible even in the murkiest conditions, and helpfully remembers the info from your past 24 dives, too. If you're serious about your diving gear, it might be worth its $1495.95 purchase price.
Once in a while I just want to drive my gigantic, gas-guzzling SUV into a lake. Not to sink it, no sir. No, to drive right across the open water, tearin' up waves and ruining the day of as many fish as possible. It's how I roll.
That's why I hope to someday purchase a Humdinga by Gibbs Technology. A sweet piece of earth-destroying machinery, it turns from Hummer-esque SUV that goes from 0 to sixty in 9.2 seconds on land into a speedy water vehicle that can travel at up to 40 MPH. It's sure to make you the biggest badass at the lake this summer, intimidating both fellow humans and animal life equally. Badass.
It's a design idea that may be a bit too clever for its own good: The Magic Bulb is a alarm clock shaped like a light bulb, made by Korean company 10 x 10. Great idea, right? 'Cause, like, light bulbs are the same as ideas. Brilliant. To someone. Maybe. In any case, the clock does more than just emulate the look of a bulb — it also copies its light-bestowing abilities, too. Only in this case, the bulb emits the soft glow of an LED instead of an intense incandescent . Once turned on, it'll cycle through several colors, providing some cool mood lighting for your nocturnal activities.Need some of this color-changing LED alarm action? Be ready with $12 (plus shipping), four AA batteries, and some patience. It's coming from Korea for crying out loud.
Oven doors… who needs 'em? Not you, bub. Not that the Gaggenau BL 253 Lift Oven is here, at least. It's an oven that lowers your food down from underneath, making reaching into a 400-degree oven a thing of the past.
Furthermore, since heat rises, you won't need to preheat the oven again when you go to put another item inside, as very little heat will escape when you open it up. You'll need to mount this above your counter, obviously, so it'll probably be pretty tough to install in an existing kitchen, but if you're building a new kitchen from scratch and have $3,300 to blow on a really fancy oven, you can't go wrong.
Here's a hands-free video camera concept by industrial designer Johan Frossen that's worn around the neck or head, and its video is transmitted via Wi-Fi to a cellphone capable of editing its footage. Using a fisheye lens, the camera can transmit images of everything within the wearer's field of view. Then in the editing software on the receiving cellphone, that fisheye lens's distortions can be reversed, with the chosen areas of the pictures framed up for the finished video. Sounds like a great idea for documentarians, who depend on their cameras' unobtrusiveness to capture an accurate view of reality. Unlike today's camcorders, which must still must be pointed, framed and focused even though they're small, this one could shoot continually with little visible effort. To be sure, this technology doesn't exist yet, with great strides needed in HD video data storage, battery capacity, and picture stabilization techniques to make it work. But this concept could someday bring documentarians one step closer to becoming that coveted fly on the wall.
The Mules is a newly designed autonomous helicopter-type ambulance designed to rescue wounded soldiers that are in harms way. Swooping in to areas too dangerous for human medics, it can fit a supine soldier and then tote them away at speeds of up to 100MPH. Looking like some sort of tricked-out window fan, the Mules uses dual lift fans to get it off the ground quickly. The entire concept comes from failed experiments on making a "flying jeep" back in the 1950s. Now that technology has advanced a bit, the idea can actually, excuse the pun, take off. They're hoping to keep it reasonably priced by military standards, building it for around $1.5 million. Look for it to hit the skies by 2009.
Regular spacesuits don't give astronauts much range of motion, what with the huge bulk that their gas-pressurized nature require. People who travel through the cosmos in scifi shows and movies always have much cooler suits, ones that allow for all sorts of moving around. Well, it looks like that concept is moving away from the fiction side of things and right to the plain old science side.A team at MIT has developed some totally awesome-looking, skintight spacesuits that remove all that bulk that astronauts need to deal with today. By getting rid of the gas-pressurized nature of the suits, they've created a sleek design that'll not only allow for a greater range of motion but also keep space travelers fit by providing resistance to motion. The suit uses mechanical counter-pressure rather than gas pressure, exerting force on the astronauts body to protect them from the vacuum of space. They hope to have it ready to roll in about 10 years, just in time for a manned mission to Mars. Totally awesome.
How'd you like to own your own island? It'd be pretty sweet, right? And sure, while owning a beautiful tropical island would be nice and all, think about the logistics. You'd be pretty far from civilization, and you'd need to build your own infrastructure. You should just get an island that's a little more practical.
That's just what No Man's Land Fort is. It's a man-made island off the coast of Portsmouth, England that was built between 1861 and 1880. Initially built to house soldiers, it currently holds a luxury hotel with a pool, a couple of helipads, generators, and a fresh water supply. Sure, it might not be as picturesque as a tropical island, but it's a lot more practical. So what are you waiting for? Get $8 million together and get to buying!
You can never have too many screens, that's what I say, which is why I like this kind of crazy dual-LCD setup. It looks like some kind of fancy laptop, but it's just two screens and a laptop built together — you'll still need a computer to hook up to it.
The two 19-inch LCD screens fold together to save space, but when opened move to a vertical configuration, which is a unique twist on the standard horizontal dual-screen setup. Unfortunately, the specs on the two screens aren't anything to write home about: 1280 x 1024 of maximum resolution and a 700:1 contrast ratio. And the keyboard, while it's nice that it's backlit, has a trackball on it for some reason. A trackball? Really?
There are few things worse than losing a hand, especially a dominant hand. Fortunately for those stuck in such a lousy situation, technological advances in prosthetics have made leaps and bounds in recent years, culminating in devices like this bionic hand.
Sensing muscle messages via myoelectric signals, the hand functions just like the real thing. It can grip, has the sensitivity to pick up small or delicate objects, and is strong enough for heavy lifting. Invented by David Gow and made by Touch Bionics, the hand is sure to make a huge difference in the lives of many people. They hope to have it available in two to five years.
It seems that Sony has completely given up on trying to compete with the iPod with its Walkman or any other portable music player. How else can you explain the company selling iPod docks? If you can't beat them, join them, I suppose.
So Sony has two new products designed to get up close and personal with the iPod: the ZZ-S2iP BoomBox and the ICF-C1iP Clock Radio. The boombox has a built-in CD player and looks like a slightly updated version of the boombox I had in my bedroom in middle school, while the alarm clock looks more like your traditional Bose-esque iPod docks. How do they sound? Beats me, but for $100 you can try either of them out and find out for yourself.
If you don't mind walking around looking like a cross between a pirate, a cyborg soldier and a member of the Borg hive, this DataGlass HMD head-mounted video display might be for you. Hook it up to your portable PC or video output via USB, and suddenly there appears to be a 14-inch monitor hovering two feet in front of you. Japanese manufacturer Shimadzu is aiming this wearable display at industrial users, who often need to access tiny wearable PCs in a variety of weather conditions. That's why the company hardened this unit, making it both dustproof and waterproof.
Let's hope this tech trickles down to the consumer marketplace. Our resistance to this cool idea seemed futile until we found out about the price, $1636. If the next generation of these displays is more economical and iPhone-friendly, then we will be assimilated.
The TiVo Series 3 is a pretty hot piece of equipment, probably the finest DVR out there and one that any HDTV-owning TV lover would appreciate. The problem? It's really freaking expensive. That's why the rumors of a cheaper TiVo Series 3 Lite are so enticing.
What would such a device consist of? Well, it would be pretty similar to its big brother, although it'd have a 160GB drive instead of a 250GB drive, it would lose the OLED front display and THX certification, and it would just have a standard TiVo remote. Trimming the fat thusly should drop the price down to a more-reasonable $300. Still not what anyone could consider cheap, but I guess it's better than nothing. How's about a $150 model, TiVo? Or is that asking too much?
Florescent lights aren't exactly a stylish way to light your home, but that could change with the introduction of SystemX Interlocking Florescent Lights. A series of interlocking light fixtures that can be arranged in a number of ways, SystemX allows you to create a unique lighting setup that can cover your entire ceiling, giving a room a completely different feel.
Whether or not these things are cool or ugly is something that's a matter of personal taste, but if you want your apartment to look like a set from a futuristic scifi movie, these look like they'd fit the bill quite nicely. You can get as creative as you want with the X shaped lights, as many different connectors are available. Let your imagination run wild!
We just can't seem to get enough objects that are floating in midair, such as that floating clock and picture frame we've shown you here before. Now here's one that tops both of those, a stylized black Planet Earth, hanging out there in space just like it does in the actual cosmos.
The others seemed like toys with their magnets situated on the top and bottom, but this one floats freely with no visible means of support. Its swanky looking chrome-plated base is an invisible Atlas, holding up the 4-inch planet hovering a few inches above.
You can start the globe rotating, and it has such a small amount of resistance, the little planetoid will continue to rotate for a long time, but perhaps a little less than an eternity. Cover its base with a piece of paper, and your office mates will think you're conjuring up some serious magic. Its $137 price is a small tariff for such a miraculous occurrence.
Sick of wasting time switching your hand between your keyboard and your mouse ? Well, you've got a couple of feet that aren't being used, don't you? You might as well enlist them in your fight for efficiency.This foot mouse allows you to free your right hand up from mousing around by controlling the cursor via your right foot. Your left foot then controls the buttons, letting you use your computer with all four limbs simultaneously. Sure, it'll take getting used to, but think about the advantages you'll have in gaming when you've got both hands free to use the keyboard.
This animated explanation of global warming from An Inconvenient Truth claims all of our problems can be solved by dumping large ice cubes in the ocean. It's not the only way ice can help save the planet — several large New York City-based companies are actually using large ice cubes to air condition their skyscrapers. It's not as crazy an idea as it sounds: At night, when the energy grid is less strained, dozens of tanks freeze hundreds of gallons of water in a building's basement. Then, during the day, the melting ice creates cool air that's distributed throughout the building in much the same way central air conditioning is. These "ice cooling" systems use less energy overall than traditional air conditioning, especially during the usual energy-use peak hours, saving money and putting less strain on the grid.There are downsides, though: The systems' prohibitive prohibitive price tag and need for huge amounts of space for water storage means it couldn't be used in smaller buildings or residential homes. But if you want to experience ice cooling now, the Polar Pitcher can help.
Nanoparticles are tiny — the head of a pin contains about a million of 'em. Folks in the Chemistry Department of the University of California found that a solution of plastic-coated iron-oxide nanoparticles, when exposed to light from a photonic crystal, will self-assemble into three-dimensionally ordered crystals. That enables them to change the wavelength of light reflection, producing colors that vary according to the strength of the magnetic field.
The discovery was made by Yadong Yin, assistant professor of chemistry; Jianping Ge, postdoctoral researcher; and Yongxing Hu, first-year graduate student. UC-Riverside has filed a patent application.
Through the ages, Man has searched for a crystal ball that can tell the future, and now super salesmen/researchers at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) are telling the Pentagon they're working on a remarkable suite of software that can do just that. "Deep Green" uses a variety of approaches to first gather information about what's currently happening on a battlefield, and then extrapolates the likelihood of outcomes if various actions are taken. In a scenario that sounds like science fiction, here's how the software is supposed to work: After listening to a military planner's opinions about the current situation, and mixing that with some of his drawings, the "sketch to plan" part of the software gathers all the information about what the commanding officer would like to do. Then the "sketch to decide" module displays storyboards showing what will probably happen if each plan is carried out. The quick punch part of the software is "Blitzkrieg," which rapidly deduces what might be the best course of action, and then there's "Crystal Ball," which computes likely outcomes from thousands of possibilities, presenting the best ones to the field generals.
Are iPhones already too ubiquitous for you? Do you not feel special and unique anymore? Well, that's a shame. It's the whole reason you dropped $600 on a phone, after all. But don't worry: there are ways to make your iPhone stand out from the crowd again.
You can just swap out the casing for a totally different color, differentiating yourself from the masses quickly and easily. You can get them in any number of colors, and you can either buy the casings and do it yourself or order a custom iPhone right come Colorware, the manufacturer. Like the iPhone, it doesn't come cheap: $150 for the casings, and $650 or $750 for a tricked out iPhone. But hey, clearly price isn't a worry to you. You bought an iPhone, after all.
Is it me, or are we really obsessed with far out timepieces? Clockmakers smart enough to use Nixie tubes from the 50s and 60s, seem to be a big hit lately. We've already seen those that sit on your desk, and those that hang on walls , but how about one you wear on your wrist?Cathode Corner has an interesting wristwatch that uses only two Nixie tubes to tell the time. Two small tubes are encased in a water-resistant rugged housing, and instead of using an electrical outlet to power the timepiece, the user simply flicks her wrist and the tubes light up showing first the hour, then minutes, and finally seconds before shutting off, thus saving battery life. If you are trying to prove to your friends you are the coolest dork on the planet, the $395 Cathode Corner Nixie Watch will do the trick.
Among technophiles, there are those who prefer simplicity and functionality, and those who look for attention-grabbing conversation pieces. This conceptual media player from designer Can-Hong Huang looks to be directed squarely at the latter. The latest gadget to take inspiration from the flashlight , Huang's design combines a Maglite-like player with a Frisbee-shaped base featuring built-in speakers and two wireless earbuds that look suspiciously like hash pipes. In place of buttons and scroll wheels, there are knobs on the barrel of the player that are rotated like the zoom and focus controls on a camera lens.The cool factor kicks into high gear with the player's ability to project photos and video, not to mention the interface itself, onto a blank wall or projection screen. That'll get some oohs and ahs, for sure. Whether the sound quality can match the novel design remains to be seen, but hey, oohs and ahs are enough, right?
If you view videogames as not a way to have fun, but a challenge, something that you need to figure out how to do perfectly and then retire from, then I can see why you might like the Guitar Heronoid. But if you see videogames not as some elaborate math problem but as a way to have fun, well, you might just think it's a pretty stupid idea. The Guitar Heronoid is a machine that looks like a robot that is able to play Guitar Hero perfectly. It's got a "brain" that reads signals from the Playstation 2, and hands that play the guitar controller perfectly in time with the game. Wow, how… fun? To be fair, this is a crazy DIY project, so I guess if you get off on building things and being way too geeky for your own good this could be more fun than actually playing the game like a normal person.
Who says you need a bunch of speakers for a surround sound system to function? Sure, logic tells us that in order for you to be surrounded by sound you also need to be surrounded by speakers, but Sony doesn't let itself be controlled by silly things like logic. They're f'in' Sony.
See? This Sony DAX-X10 Virtual Surround Sound setup only has 2 speakers and a subwoofer, yet it claims to be surround sound. It does this by some form of magical spatial sound dispersion, hence the "virtual" in the name. Does such fanceries and denial of the rules of physics work? You've got me, but if you've got $1,000 to spend you can find out for yourself.
Are you exhausted by the barrage of iPhone stories out there? Even complaining about them has become cliché. There just aren't many other new gadgets to write about in July (like TV pilots, most gadgets launch in the fall). It's a relief that at least some websites have begun to write about something else (hence the headline "Harry Potter is the new iPhone"), but we've rounded up the best of recent iPhone coverage after the jump so that you can skim while recovering from your all-night HP reading marathon.
These are positive hacks, but it's not all good news. "Intended to be a convenience, the unique dialing feature included in the iPhone version of the Safari browser might soon become a nightmare," writes Robert Vamosi of CNet. That's because SPI labs researcher Billy Hoffman has found that the dialing feature allows hackers to "redirect free calls to fee-based phone numbers, track phone calls, manipulate the confirmation screen to place a call even if a user doesn't accept, place a phone in an infinite loop where the only escape is to turn off the phone or prevent the phone from dialing."
As camcorders have evolved into the high-def arena, it's become pretty clear that most of the media they record to was never designed to hold so much data. After all, HD tapes and flash memory fill up too quick, recording HD material on DVD leads to troublesome compatibility issues, and hard drives have that inconvenient habit of crashing every now and then. Good news, then, that camcorders have finally gone Blu-ray, with Hitachi planning on releasing a cam that can record crispy HD footage to high-capacity Blu-ray discs this fall.
There's no price info yet, but the new cam will capture video at full high-def resolution — 1,920 x 1,080 pixels — and burn it to small 3-inch Blu-ray discs (as opposed to the regular 5½-inch size). Each of the tiny discs will hold 7 GB of data, which should give about 1.4 hours of footage. We like.
Logitech's Revolution VX mouse, which debuted last year, did a decent job of keeping true to its name by bringing some new abilities to the point-and-click table. One of them — hyperfast scrolling, which lets you blaze through a long document with a quick spin of the scroll wheel — stood out from the rest, and it features prominently on the VX Nano, a new cordless version of the VX for laptops.
Also featured on the VX Nano are five (!) programmable buttons, all customizable to do whatever you like — say, save a document or switch toggle through weapons in that new shooter. A pair of AAA batteries should keep you clicking up to six months, according to Logitech. Our favorite feature is the insanely small USB dongle (using 2.4-GHz wireless tech), even though it has a high you'll-probably-lose-this factor.
Coming in August, the VX Nano is priced at $80. Or is it $70? That's what the press release says, but the product page says $80. Ten buck is ten bucks, yo.
We've seen strange lights before, but this one takes the cake. Designed by Rafael Morgan, The Drop Lights may look like something from a post-apocalyptic future, but are really designed to remind people of water conservation. Unfortunately, these lights don't actually drip (which would be freaky cool), but you can dim them by turning the faucet handle. These would look fantastic lined up in a kitchen or bath — if they were real. The Brazilian designer is looking for someone to make this concept a reality. When these go into production, sign me up for a dozen!
Coroflot, via Shiny Shiny
Take the jump for another illuminating view of these lights.
Need a 100-page report fired off in 5 minutes? A laser printer can do it easily. Want a few 8x10s for your friends? That inkjet is up to the task. Got a hankerin' for a 12-foot scroll? The Roller Printer has your back.
Roller printer? Yep, designer Jin Woo Han has conceived a printer that will print on extremely long lengths of paper, letting you create all the "Mission Accomplished" banners you want right in the privacy of your own home. It has a built-in cutter, so even if you're printing conventional sizes most of the time, being able to switch to A4 paper on a whim will come in handy.
Of course, something this unusual would have to be a concept, so you won't be able to buy it at CompUSA anytime soon (where would you get the rolls anyway?). Still, it seems unfair that the desktop scroll publishers out there need to run for the Scotch tape; we wouldn't mind seeing this printer roll into reality. More pictures after the jump.
Burj Dubai, a tower under construction in the skyscraper-crazy United Arab Emirates, has now eclipsed the former world's tallest building in height and number of storeys. For those of you keeping track, the world's tallest completed building is still the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, at 1,666 feet. Nobody knows exactly how tall the Burj Dubai will be when it's completed, but for now it's 1,680 feet, with 141 structurally-sound stories, another world record.
Currently the world's tallest tower and freestanding structure is the Canadian National Tower in Toronto, whose spire reaches 1,815 feet. The Burj's developers promise that when their skyscraper is completed, it will eclipse all current tall-building records, including the reach of its spire. The building's final planned height is still secret (so that other developers don't design buildings just a few yards taller while the Burj is under construction), but developers promise a minimum of 2,275 feet. All we can really say in this situation is, cough, Icarus.
The days of a GPS system's monotonous robotic voice giving you directions may be numbered, because these vibrating rings can now quietly indicate which way to go. Designer Gail Knight of the Royal College of Art in the UK designed the system consisting of two tiny vibrating receivers, one worn on each hand, communicating with a control unit that's either hung around the neck or clipped onto clothing.
The user enters an address into the control unit, and then the system can show when and which way to turn by vibrating a ring worn on either the right or left hand. Different vibrations show when to go forward or backward, and when both rings vibrate, that tells the user of a wrong turn. This device could be especially useful for hotel concierges to lend to guests who don't speak the local language, the rings wordlessly directing them to exactly the right location.
On Friday, went down to No.5 and met a few friends of Amanda who are teachers from a school. Had a good time there. Corence and Jacqueline also came. Went down there with Lynn. Came home about 3 in the morning.
At Vivo, we went to get our application for the Islander pass. Each costing us about S$19.50, we took the monorail into Sentosa and spend our time at Cafe Del Mar. There we sat and had some drinks indoor before going to the poolside to sit and enjoy the scenery. We laughed and joked and took some pictures together. We also made some new friends there. It started to rain and we proceeded back to the monorail station where we waited for a cab, there were so many Merc Cabs and they did not want to pickup any passengers..they were trying to give a lousy price of sending passengers out of sentosa. They should be some authority to clamp the vehicles of these taxi drivers who were just hawking away prices. So frustrating. We also got to know a couple at the taxi stand who stay close to where we were staying, so we decided to share a cab back home with them. Everyone thought we were a couple...haha...we are just close friends.
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Love is a constellation of emotions and experiences related to a sense of strong affection or profound oneness.[1] The meaning of love varies relative to context. Romantic love is seen as an ineffable feeling of intense attraction shared in passionate or intimate attraction and intimate interpersonal and sexual relationships.[2] Though often linked to personal relations, love is often given a wider connection, a love of humanity, of nature, with life itself, or a oneness with the universe, a universal love or karma. Love can also be construed as Platonic love,[3] religious love,[4] familial love, and, more casually, great affection for anything considered strongly pleasurable, desirable, or preferred, to include activities and foods.[5][2] This diverse range of meanings in the singular word love is often contrasted with the plurality of Greek words for love, reflecting the concept's depth, versatility, and complexity.
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The definition of love is the subject of considerable debate, enduring speculation and thoughtful introspection. The difficulty of finding a universal definition for love is typically tackled by classifying it into types, such as passionate love, romantic love, and committed love. These types of love can often be generalized into a level of sexual attraction. In common use, love has two primary meanings, the first being an indication of adoration for another person or thing, and the second being a state of relational status. Love is an act of identifying with a person or thing, capable of even including oneself (cf. narcissism). Dictionaries tend to define love as deep affection or fondness.[1] In colloquial use, according to polled opinion, the most favored definitions of love involve altruism, selflessness, friendship, union, family, and bonding or connecting with another.[6]
Thomas Jay Oord has defined love in various scholarly publications as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be sufficient for research in ethics, religion, and science.
The different aspects of love can be roughly illustrated by comparing their corollaries and opposites. As a general expression of positive sentiment (a stronger form of like), love is commonly contrasted with hate (or neutral apathy); as a less sexual and more mutual and "pure" form of romantic attachment, love is commonly contrasted with lust; and as an interpersonal relationship with romantic overtones, love is commonly contrasted with friendship, although other connotations of love may be applied to close friendships as well.
The very existence of love is sometimes subject to debate. Some categorically reject the notion as false or meaningless.[citation needed] Others call it a recently-invented abstraction, sometimes dating the "invention" to courtly Europe during or after the Middle Ages.[citation needed] Others maintain that love really exists, and is not an abstraction, but is undefinable, being essentially spiritual or metaphysical in nature.[citation needed] Some psychologists maintain that love is the action of lending one's "boundary" or "self-esteem" to another.[citation needed] Others attempt to define love by applying the definition to everyday life.[citation needed]
Cultural differences make any universal definition of love difficult to establish. Expressions of love may include the love for a soul or mind, the love of laws and organizations, love for a body, love for nature, love of food, love of money, love for learning, love of power, love of fame, love for the respect of others, etc. Different people place varying degrees of importance on the kinds of love they receive. Love is essentially an abstract concept,[citation needed] easier to experience than to explain. Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché, and there are a number of common proverbs regarding love, from Virgil's "Love conquers all" to The Beatles' "All you need is love".
 | The neutrality or factuality of this article or section may be compromised by weasel words. You can help Wikipedia by improving these statements. |
Throughout history, philosophy and religion have done the most speculation on the phenomenon of love. In the last century, the science of psychology has written a great deal on the subject. In recent years, the sciences of evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, neuroscience, and biology have added to the understanding of the nature and function of love.
Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive,[citation needed] much like hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, a leading expert in the topic of love, divides the experience of love into three partly-overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust exposes people to others, romantic attraction encourages people to focus their energy on mating, and attachment involves tolerating the spouse long enough to rear a child into infancy.
Lust is the initial passionate sexual desire that promotes mating, and involves the increased release of chemicals such as testosterone and estrogen. These effects rarely last more than a few weeks or months. Attraction is the more individualized and romantic desire for a specific candidate for mating, which develops out of lust as commitment to an individual mate forms. Recent studies in neuroscience have indicated that as people fall in love, the brain consistently releases a certain set of chemicals, including pheromones, dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, which act similar to amphetamines, stimulating the brain's pleasure center and leading to side-effects such as an increased heart rate, loss of appetite and sleep, and an intense feeling of excitement. Research has indicated that this stage generally lasts from one and a half to three years.[7]
Since the lust and attraction stages are both considered temporary, a third stage is needed to account for long-term relationships. Attachment is the bonding which promotes relationships that last for many years, and even decades. Attachment is generally based on commitments such as marriage and children, or on mutual friendship based on things like shared interests. It has been linked to higher levels of the chemicals oxytocin and vasopressin than short-term relationships have.[7]
In 2005, Italian scientists at Pavia University found that a protein molecule known as the nerve growth factor (NGF) has high levels when people first fall in love, but these levels return to as they were after one year. Specifically, four neurotrophin levels, i.e. NGF, BDNF, NT-3, and NT-4, of 58 subjects who had recently fallen in love were compared with levels in a control group who were either single or already engaged in a long-term relationship. The results showed that NGF levels were significantly higher in the subjects in love than as compared to either of the control groups.[8]
Psychology depicts love as a cognitive and social phenomenon. Psychologist Robert Sternberg formulated a triangular theory of love and argued that love has three different components: Intimacy, Commitment, and Passion. Intimacy is a form by which two people can share secrets and various details of their personal lives. Intimacy is usually shown in friendships and romantic love affairs. Commitment, on the other hand, is the expectation that the relationship is going to last forever. The last and most common form of love is sexual attraction and passion. Passionate love is shown in infatuation as well as romantic love. This led researchers such as Yela[citation needed] to further refine the model by separating Passion into two independents components: Erotic Passion and Romantic Passion.
Following developments in electrical theories, such as Coulomb's law, which showed that positive and negative charges attract, analogs in human life were developed, such as "opposites attract". Over the last century, research on the nature of human mating, such as in evolutionary psychology, agree that pairs unite or attract to each other owing to a combination of opposites attract, e.g. people with dissimilar immune systems tend to attract, and likes attract, such as similarities of personality, character, views, etc.[9] In recent years, various human bonding theories have been developed described in terms of attachments, ties, bonds, and or affinities.
Some Western authorities disaggregate into two main components, the altruistic and the narcissistic. This view is represented in the works of Scott Peck, whose works in the field of applied psychology explored the definitions of love and evil. Peck maintains that love is a combination of the"'concern for the spiritual growth of another", and simple narcissism.[10] In combination, love is an activity, not simply a feeling.
People, throughout history, have often considered phenomena such as "love at first sight" or "instant friendships" to be the result of an uncontrollable force of attraction or affinity.[11] One of the first to theorize in this direction was the Greek philosopher Empedocles, who in the 4th century BC argued for the existence of two forces, love (philia) and strife (neikos), which were used to account for the causes of motion in the universe. These two forces were said to intermingle with the classical elements, i.e., earth, water, air, and fire, in such a manner that love served as the binding power linking the various parts of existence harmoniously together.
Later, Plato interpreted Empedocles' two agents as attraction and repulsion, stating that their operation is conceived in an alternate sequence.[12] From these arguments, Plato originated the concept of "likes attract", e.g., earth is attracted to earth, water to water, and fire to fire. In modern terms this is often phrased in terms of "birds of a feather flock together".
Bertrand Russell describes love as a condition of "absolute value", as opposed to relative value. Thomas Jay Oord defines love as acting intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote overall well-being. Oord means for his definition to be adequate for religion, philosophy, and the sciences. Robert A. Heinlein, one of the most prolific science fiction writers of the 20th century, defined love in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land as the point of emotional connection which leads to the happiness of another being essential to one's own well being. This definition ignores the ideas of religion and science and instead focuses on the meaning of love as it relates to the individual.
Also, an ancient proverb states that love is a high form of tolerance. This view is one that many philosophers and scholars have researched, and is widely accepted.
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Love in early religions was a mixture of ecstatic devotion and ritualized obligation to idealized natural forces (pagan polytheism).[citation needed] Later religions shifted emphasis towards single abstractly-oriented objects like God, law, church and state (formalized monotheism). A third view, pantheism, recognizes a state or truth distinct from (and often antagonistic to) the idea that there is a difference between the worshiping subject and the worshiped object. Love is reality, of which we, moving through time, imperfectly interpret ourselves as an isolated part.[citation needed]
The Bible speaks of love as a set of attitudes and actions that are far broader than the concept of love as an emotional attachment. Love is seen as a set of behaviors that humankind is encouraged to act out. One is encouraged not just to love one's partner, or even one's friends but also to love one's enemies. The Bible describes this type of active love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:
| “ | Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. | ” |
Romantic love is also present in the Bible, particularly the Song of Songs. Traditionally, this book has been interpreted allegorically as a picture of God's love for Israel and the Church. When taken naturally, we see a picture of ideal human marriage:[13]
| “ | Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealously unyielding as the grave. It burns like a blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned. | ” |
The passage dodi li v'ani lo, i.e. "my beloved is mine and I am my beloved", from Song of Songs 2:16, is an example of a biblical quote commonly engraved on wedding bands.
The Bible states love is a characteristic of God. I John 4:8 states "God is Love". In essence, God is the epitomy of love - in action and relation. It is God that first loved mankind and desired a relationship. (John 3:16-17) Love is the underlying drive in most people.[citation needed] The search for love seems endless within the human race, throughout the ages.[citation needed] The Bible defines God as being the completeness of love. Love, as being defined by Him, is demonstrated in his character and personality. Another way of defining this type of love is "godly love", a love shown through the example of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. However, this "sacrificial" love can also be expressed by humans, although imperfectly. For example, the love of a mother for her child. Many mothers would sacrifice anything for their children. It is this type of love that the Bible teaches us to follow and to share with one another. Love, in the end, is truly a sacrifice, ultimately expressed in the crucifixion of Jesus as described in the New Testament. C.S. Lewis discusses Christian ideas about love in his book The Four Loves
Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, defines Love as one of 7 synonyms for God. This indicates that Deity is more than a being that has benevolent concerns for mankind, but rather that God is Love itself. Love is also synonymous with Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, and Truth and indicate the depth and wholeness of Love.[citation needed]
In Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke, there are six words for Unconditional Love (Kenoota, Khooba, Makikh, Abilii, Rukha and Dadcean Libhoun) which are untranslatable and are all translated as the one word “Love” in the English Bible. They are explained here
The Bhagavad Gita, a Hindu scripture, helps devotees to see that love conquers all. It says, "Sattva—pure, luminous, and free from sorrow—binds us to happiness and wisdom" (Number 6). Sattva, translated as purity, helps one to see that love evolves from selflessness.
Although there exist numerous cross-cultural unified similarities as to the nature and definition of love, as in there being a thread of commitment, tenderness, and passion common to all human existence, there are differences.
