And if that title doesn’t bring ’em running from their RSS feeds, we’ve really lost our touch.

Researchers have named a newly-identified mouse pheromone in the urine of male mice “Darcin” after you-know-who. The pheromone, a protein in the urine, attracts female mice to a particular male mouse.

The mice were presented with two urine scent marks, one male and one female, and the amount of time they spent near each was recorded. In some tests the mice could physically contact the scent mark, in other tests they received only airborne scent.

Hurst said, “Contact with darcin consistently doubled the time spent near a male’s scent. Touching darcin with the nose also made females learn that particular male’s odour, subsequently tripling the time spent near to the airborne scent of that individual male but showing no attraction to other males.”

That should make for some interesting fanfics. Thanks to the Alert Janeites who sent in this item: Laurel Ann, Sandra, and Carolyn.

Le Revolucion, he continues: Alert Janeite Peg sent a link to a lovely if profane rant by one Garland Grey, who has a few things to say about Austen monster mashups. We noted a while back that many of the monster mashups seem to be written by men, but not all of them; not anymore.

If the volcanoes are keeping you home this summer, do a little virtual travel with A Visit to Miss Austen’s House.

But none of this paraphernalia made the kind of impression on me I expected . . . Had I not read enough of the Austen canon? Was this just not a period of English history that came high on my list? Was it the damping effect of the signs for tourist set up almost as soon as you cross into Hampshire, telling tourists they’re “Welcome to Jane Austen Country”? Was it that the museum-like fixtures made the place seem less of a house where real people lived?

We felt the same way…it hit us at Steventon Church, actually. It’s just so OLD.

Oh, and this:

I see it mooted on some other blogs that “Brontë is the new Austen”—though they don’t mention which Brontë and apparently mean all of them put together.

Everyone knows when we say that we’re being ironic and stuff, right? Right. (And yes, it’s all three put together, because we are mocking the press which not only compresses the three Brontë sisters into one–really the two Brontë sisters, because no one ever seems to remember poor Anne–but considers them interchangeable with Jane Austen.)