DOES JENNIFER LOPEZ MEAN NEVER HAVING TO BE LONELY AGAIN?

ALONE VS LONELINESS

Being lonely is different from being alone. The loneliest people may be standing in the busiest of crowds. The feeling, the experience, is all inside you. It's a little like standing on a deserted island beach, watching the ocean liners of the world drifting off into the distance.

Now you are with only yourself. A Robinson Caruso moment which can happen at very different times in your life. Obviously, when you have suddenly lost someone or something indispensable. Not so obviously, when you have just tasted a great success which suddenly sets you apart. Either way, loneliness calls for response.

Some rush to fill the void. Activity and participation; noise and revelry; agendas and more agendas. Al Jolson, Frank Sinatra, Hugh Hefner were infamous for this. Then there are those who seem to savor their loneliness. From hermits to hunters to Thoreau, nothing sounds better than their own breathing somewhere far from the nattering crowds.

One thing seems sure. With technologies like the phone, television and the Internet, it will be a lonely mission in this world to ever be alone again...

JENNIFER LOPEZ VS KATE MOSS

What does Jennifer Lopez and Kate Moss have in common....? Certainly not their figures! And so a stalwart -- if not a tad sexist -- team of Georgia researchers studied the brain reactions of men who were shown pictures of these two celebrated anatomies.

Their conclusion may have startled them, but not likely many others. The report in the "Atlanta-Journal Constitution" documents the way the reward-lobes in the male brain were highly stimulated by J. Lo's famous glass-hour figure. The conclusion drawn by the study's author, Steven Platek: "Curviness is worth its weight in reproductive gold, because men's evolutionary indicators prefer women who seem most fit to bear children."

In a scientific sidebar, the all-male research team added: "The Caucasian, Westernized female has somehow been duped into thinking men prefer the very skinny, waify Kate-Moss type girls."

Well now. I've never met a man this side of a Paris runway who needed a research project to confirm this. To be perfectly sexist about this whole silly affair, whenever I've see Jennifer Lopez strut the Hollywood red carpet, I always get this image of a remarkable metronome undulating its way straight to me.

It's the kind of image the researchers might want to consider for this next project. Then again, the guys just might want to move on to something of real value!