Shrinking Toilet Paper and other Stories

Outside the sun is shining but there is an icy Northerly gale-force wind.  I am trying to psych myself up to go for a walk on the beach.  In the meantime though I have been popping in and out of websites to see how the world is doing away from the headlines.
I am indebted to BBC's magazine website bbc.com and to MessyNessChic link here for some out of the way stuff.

First of all there was the article on shrinking toilet paper.  Have you noticed that a roll doesn't go as far as it used?  Apparently quite a few people have and they have been writing to various newspapers/websites about it.  For a full report on this see link below.  It will set your mind at rest - someone in your household is not doing something strange with toilet tissue after all.

Washington Post article on shrinking toilet paper

How many times does your baby smile?  Seem like a good enough subject for a study to be done on it?
Eurekalert website writes that a new study examining temperamental differences between U.S. and Dutch babies found infants born in the Netherlands are more likely to be happy and easier to soothe in the latter half of their first year. U.S. infants, on the other hand, were typically more active and vocal, said study co-author Maria Gartstein, a Washington State University associate professor of psychology.
I have to ask:  why compare Dutch babies with American ones?  What's the connection and why not a study of babies from all countries?   Why is it important?  Are we going to have a baby smile competition at some point in the future and what happens if baby has colic/is teething on that day, how on earth are we going to get him/her to smile on the crucial day?  As if parents don't have enough worries trying to keep up with the - er?? - Jones' ?? Netherlands????
You can read all about it here Link

Thought I'd end on a nice note.  If you're a cat lover you're going to go awwwww when you see these photos of a cat bistrot in Rome called Romeow.  Go on, indulge....
Cool cats in Rome