How deep is your love?

Or why manly
voices get the girl – most of the time
WOMEN prefer men with deep voices because it signals dominance and good genes, a
study has shown.
Men with deeper voices attract women more than those with squeaky ones when they
are at their most fertile.

Deeper-voiced men are deemed better hunters who offer more protection.

Women are attracted to feminine-voiced men only during times of decreased fertility,
such as when they are breastfeeding – demonstrating they experience shifts in their
choices.
Men find high-pitched voices in women more alluring, as this suggests they are more
subordinate, feminine, healthier and younger, said the study.

Dr Coren Apicella, an anthropologist of Harvard University, and Dr David Feinberg, a

psychologist of McMaster University, Ontario, studied the Hadza tribe of Tanzania, one
of the last hunter-gatherer cultures.

They played them recordings of both raised and lowered versions of the same voice, and
asked subjects which they preferred. While women with masculine voices were
perceived to be better gatherers, the men opted for the feminine-voiced women as the
best mates.

Masculine-voiced men were deemed better hunters, and women who were not
breastfeeding preferred these men as mates. Nursing women preferred feminine-voiced
men.

The researchers said in the Royal Society journal, Proceedings of the Royal Society:
"Voice pitch may be an indicator of underlying mate quality. Vocal attractiveness is
correlated with body and facial attractiveness."
Lapland shut down after angry visitor
punches Santa in the face

Lapland New Forest at Matchams Leisure Park near Ringwood in Dorset has been the
focus a storm of controversy since opening on 28 November.

Trading standards has received more than 2,000 complaints about the attraction, which
charges between £25 and £30 per person to enter.

Many people have also contacted local papers and radio stations, claiming chaotic
queues of up to three hours in the wet and cold to see Santa.

There have been reports of violence flaring, with Santa being punched in the face and
elves also pushed by angry visitors.

Many visitors also complained that a "magical tunnel of light" turned out to be a line of
trees with some lights on them, while log cabins resembled B&Q sheds. Reindeer and
huskies were out of sight and an ice rink was not working. A Dorset Police spokesman
said officers were called to the attraction yesterday over fears there would be a breach
of the peace because some contractors had alleged they had not been paid.

Outside the gates, the entrance was with a "closed" sign in place.

Over the last few days, it appeared there had been very few visitors to the attraction.
Henry Mears, the event's advertising manager, from Brighton, has been unavailable for
comment since Monday, but at the weekend he blamed the complaints on a small
number of "troublemakers" and said the ice rink had been fixed.

He admitted family illness and unreliable staff had caused problems initially.

Families were not amused and called the site a scam, a joke and looking more like a car
boot sale than Lapland. Trading standards officers from Dorset County Council said
they had visited the site but did not have the power to shut it down.

Tickets cost £30 for individuals, £25 for each person in families of four or more, and
£10 for children under two.
Nuns in 'wild west brawl'
A PRIEST and two nuns have been questioned by Italian police after they beat up a
restaurant owner.
The 49-year-old victim suffered neck and stomach injuries in the attack, which also left
his restaurant "looking like a wild west saloon".

Tables and chairs were overturned and plates smashed during the fracas, which erupted
in a dispute over ownership of the venue.

The brawl happened at Rutino, near Salerno in the south of Italy, at a restaurant which
is leased by a local religious order to the victim, Antonio Esposito.

The building the restaurant is in is owned by the Disciples of St Teresa and Baby Jesus
– to which the priest and nuns belong.

Antonio Tata, the local police chief, said: "Passers-by had called us because the three
attackers were turning over tables and chairs and smashing plates as well as attacking
the owner – it was like a scene from a wild west saloon."

Yesterday, an angry Mr Esposito said: "I was hit with a chair by the priest and then
ended up on the floor. The next thing I knew, the two nuns were kicking me and hurling
unspeakable insults at me."

Hospital sources said he needed treatment for bruises to his neck and stomach and
added that the row was over the lease.

Gaetano Di Vietri, a lawyer for the order, said: "My clients deny the allegations. Let's
be realistic here, all three have a combined age of 160 so it's not very likely they are
going to attack a 49-year-old man.

"What is more important here is that the premises are being occupied illegally by the
restaurant, and the police and the owner know that."
Freeconomist's drive to live on no money
A "FREECONOMIST" began his quest to survive for a year without money yesterday –
relying on friends, the sun and a second-hand woolly jumper.
Mark Boyle, 29, an economics graduate, aims to defy the credit crunch for 12 months
living in a borrowed caravan powered by nature.

Boyle says he is sick of living in a "fundamentally flawed and ecologically destructive"

capitalist system and wants to prove there is another way to exist.

The social experiment is being launched beside a woodland stream in Timsbury, Bristol,
to coincide with national Buy Nothing Day.

Free food will be offered in Bristol, with chefs including the BBC's Roadkill chef
Fergus "the Forager" Drennan and Dave and Andy Hamilton, the authors of The Self
Sufficient-ish Bible on hand.

Freeconomists are a band of individuals who exchange skills with each other without
money changing hands.

On his blog Boyle, below, said: "I want to see what life is actually like living without
money in Western 'civilisation'. I need to know whether or not the life that I believe to
be most harmonious with nature and that has the least amount of blood and oil
embodied in it, is a life I would want for my children.

"I am just sick of having to have a bank account, even with an ethical bank, so that they
can then simultaneously issue some human with a credit note and Mother Earth with the
debit note."

He will use a wood-burning stove to cook and will wash in a solar shower which,
although cold in the winter "will be good for self discipline". His toilet will simply be a
hole dug outside the van.

For lighting he relies on solar power, along with a wind-up torch, and will get around on
his bicycle.

But he adds: "Most essential of all is the woolly jumper."

Earlier this year Boyle tried to get to India relying only on the kindness of strangers, but
his mission ended in Calais, when he stepped off the ferry and remembered he could