{"id":2784,"date":"2009-02-14T13:50:32","date_gmt":"2009-02-14T18:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=2784"},"modified":"2009-02-14T13:50:32","modified_gmt":"2009-02-14T18:50:32","slug":"valentines-day-testing-the-saliva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/valentines-day-testing-the-saliva\/","title":{"rendered":"Valentine&#039;s Day: testing the saliva"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are a number of different ways to look at Valentine&#8217;s Day. <a href=\"http:\/\/timesonline.typepad.com\/timesarchive\/2009\/02\/a-valentine-poe.html\" target=\"_blank\">This one<\/a>, for example:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/timesonline.typepad.com\/timesarchive\/images\/2009\/02\/12\/cupid_485687a.jpg\" alt=\"Add an Image\" width=\"192\" height=\"92\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Look out and see the pretty birds<br \/>\nHow each doth chuse his mate,<br \/>\nTo kiss and coo, and Jove pursue,<br \/>\nTheir kind to propagate<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And for the Dawkins dogmatists, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/scienceandtechnology\/science\/sciencenews\/4611149\/AAAS-First-kiss-is-screening-process-for-potential-mates.html\" target=\"_blank\">this one<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>She said men like &#8220;sloppier kisses&#8221; because they are testing the saliva to see how fertile a woman is.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The hypothesis is they&#8217;re trying to get small traces of oestrogen to see where the woman is in her menstrual cycle to indicate the state of her fertility,&#8221; she said.<\/p>\n<p>She said women used smell as they are kissing to deduce some things about the man&#8217;s immune system.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This gives us a perfect illustration of the contrast between meaning and mechanism.<\/p>\n<p>The latter is undoubtedly an accurate description of how Dawkins and his wife met &#8211; a combination of sniffing and saliva analysis &#8211; but for normal people, believing that love is little more than an attraction to a superior immune system would be the recipe for a one way trip to the funny farm.<\/p>\n<p>Personally, I avoid Valentine&#8217;s day altogether.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a number of different ways to look at Valentine&#8217;s Day. This one, for example: Look out and see the pretty birds How each doth chuse his mate, To kiss and coo, and Jove pursue, Their kind to propagate &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/valentines-day-testing-the-saliva\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":2,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[2136],"class_list":["post-2784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolution","tag-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}