A new startup in Seattle will fund your wedding. Up to $10,000. Even the nacho cheese fondue fountain. The catch: If your union crumbles, at six months or 25 years, you must pay them back – with interest. Swanluv will review your relationship and set an interest rate based on your compatibility. Co-founder Scott Avy […]

Attention dog-loving singles! A new study has confirmed what so many dog park visits and “yappy hours” and gimmicky Instagram accounts have already made so obvious: Your furry friend can help get you … happy. But there is, of course, a caveat: Using Fido as date-bait is far more effective if you happen to be […]

Do you remember the last text, email or voicemail you got from someone who’s no longer in your life? Maybe it’s from an ex, a former friend or a loved one who’s died. You might revisit those words more often than you should, wishing things had ended differently, or that you had more time together […]

A few years ago I stopped by my neighbor Mike’s yard to photograph his rhubarb – alas, well past its prime – but my eye was caught by something far more lovely. It was an old apple tree with widespread branches, propped up with cedar posts, secured with leather straps. On its own, an apple […]

Ex-presidents,  NFL quarterbacks,college guys, all wear them In the never-ending quest for that perfect guy gift, a small company in Bethesda, Maryland, has cornered a niche market of male preppy chic: needlepoint belts. In fact, it’s fair to say that Smathers & Branson is the world’s pre-eminent men’s needlepoint accessories brand.If that’s your thing. It’s a […]

The big, red blowsy amaryllis has positioned itself as a holiday bloom, but I’m with Christian Curless, a horticulturist who raises and sells this Samson of flowering bulbs. Dutch-grown bulbs are hard-pressed to flower in time for the holidays because of the way their internal clock has been reworked; amaryllis hails from the Southern Hemisphere. […]

The New England Centenarian Study began studying very old people and their offspring in 1995, setting out to determine – among other things – which characteristics people 100 and older seem to share. They differ in education, socioeconomic status, religion, ethnicity and dietary habits, but they have many things in common: – Few centenarians are […]

When word spread last year that numerous researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden had long been sneaking Bob Dylan lyrics into their work, sometimes unbeknownst to one another, a librarian at the university got to wondering. “I thought, ‘These Swedish guys, they can’t be unique,’” recalled the librarian, Carl Gornitzki, himself a Swedish guy. […]