When you look at Angelina Jolie, you see legs. Women see shoes brands. You might, however, look directly at Brad Pitt’s shoes — or his three-piece from Tom Ford. (Or wonder which brand of razor he used to shave that beard.) Turns out men’s brains aren’t that different from women’s after all….

Dutch neuroscientists recently released a study that more or less confirmed the obvious: Not only do women love examining celebrity fashion, their brains actually light up when Julia Roberts is wearing a pair of Louboutins as opposed to, say, a single mother on a check-out line. Clothes officially don’t make the woman; the woman makes the clothes. But when The Style Blog asked the researchers on Monday whether men transfer the same kind of “positive emotions” toward famous people’s clothes, we got a surprising answer.

“There’s no reason to think it would be different for men, and it’s not gender-related in the sense that only male celebrities appeal to men or vice versa,” said lead scientist Mirre Stallen, a doctoral student at Erasmus University.

LeBron James playing in Nikes has the same effect on our side of the species, she insisted, as Sarah Jessica hawking a pair of heels — “but it would make no sense for her to sell cars” because of the mental connection. Same goes for Tiger Woods these days, since his “image is negative — so he wouldn’t be a good endorser for anything.”

But don’t feel too bad for yourself. Just because you’d never flip on Inside Edition doesn’t mean you can hold back memories that are “activated automatically.” Brad Pitt is, after all, a handsome man, and we don’t blame you for liking those shoes, either. “It’s unconscious, not a choice,” Stallen said. “We already knew that celebrity works in advertising — now we just know why. And it affects everyone the same way.”

it’s New Year, and by this morning, many of us will own the title of Duke of Hurl. But in an ever-changing world, vomit vernacular moves as fast as Jager back up your throat.

So as we ring in the New Year desperately hugging that porcelain throne, it’s good to be up-to-date on the lingo.

“Ralphing is a good one, and blowing chunks and tossing cookies are classics,” said Jennifer Leigh, bartender at Deep Ellum in Allston. “Boots N Rally (the act of drinking, throwing up and drinking some more) is by far my personal favorite.”

Leigh prefers the old-fashioned terminology for throwing up.

“I prefer the old classics,” she said. “The act of drinking hasn’t changed too much, and the act of puking and moving on hasn’t changed too much. But I do have an appreciation for cleverness.”

Here are some new – and old – terms we found for the time-honored tradition of throwing up on New Year’s Day.

RUSSIAN RECYCLING: Bingeing on vodka can force the drinker to start giving back awfully quick. In Soviet Russia, vodka drinks you.

THE JON TOSS-ELIN: Describes an attention-loving fool throwing up in public while dressed in Ed Hardy clothing.

PLAYING HACKGAMMON: Those aren’t checkers, they’re scallops and prawns from last night’s pre-drinking buffet.

PAINTING WITH POLLOCK: The act of running down the hallway and leaving a messy trail that vaguely resembles the art of Jackson Pollock.

CHUNDER THUNDER: Men at Work’s 1982 hit “Down Under” introduced us to the Australian slang term, but the drinker adds his own power after a night gulping Fosters.

BARKING AT THE ANTS: When the drinker has left the bar and ends up barfing in the street around Allston Village.

TECHNICOLOR YAWN: A colorful explosion of yesterday’s lunch also made famous by the Australians.

EMANCIPATED PROCLAMATION: There’s an uprising in the stomach, and the weary drinker must set it free.

The busiest day for mailing, traditionally, is the Monday before Christmas. The busiest shopping day, for the past couple of years, has been Christmas Eve. So it’s an understatement that this is a busy week.

It’s important to remember, however, that the lines at the post offices and the cash registers wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the family crowding into Bethlehem two millennia ago.

Recall the scene: Joseph, with the unfathomable humility of a man committed to a young bride pregnant with someone else’s child, takes his new family to his home community for census registration. Like last-minute shoppers having to scramble for ideas when the must-have toy of the season is sold out, Joseph and Mary discover that when you don’t make reservations, sometimes all the hotels are booked up.

Some versions of the Christmas story depict the innkeeper as heartless for kicking a very-pregnant woman out back to deliver her baby in a barn. But he’s best regarded as helpful, if not downright kindly.

It would have been enough, after all, to have just waved off Joseph and Mary with a “no vacancy” sign. Instead, the innkeeper took pity on them and made his manger available. Historically, mangers weren’t the dusty, open-air sheds depicted in modern nativity scenes; they usually were caves. Even so, neither is exactly the sort of maternity ward any of us would expect for the birth of our own child, much less the birth of the son of God.

Joseph made the best of it, and Mary delivered the baby without complications. The Bible doesn’t give any details – after all, Jesus’ arrival isn’t as important as what he did once he got here – but clearly the baby was healthy, and Mary was able to wrap him up snugly and keep him safe and warm.

He’s been returning the favor by doing the same for Christians ever since.

Religious or secular, or a little of both, the annual celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ provides an excuse for hustle and bustle and long lines, frayed tempers and overextended credit. But it also is a time for fellowship and family. After the last-minute rush is all over, just as it was on that night 2,000 years ago, it should be as it is depicted in the beloved song Silent Night: All is calm; all is bright.

After the seasonal storm, may all of us have a calm and Merry Christmas.

Man’s best friend could be one of the environment’s worst enemies, according to a new study which says the carbon pawprint of a pet dog is more than double that of a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle.

But the revelation in the book “Time to Eat the Dog: The Real Guide to Sustainable Living” by New Zealanders Robert and Brenda Vale has angered pet owners who feel they are being singled out as troublemakers.

The Vales, specialists in sustainable living at Victoria University of Wellington, analysed popular brands of pet food and calculated that a medium-sized dog eats around 164 kilos (360 pounds) of meat and 95 kilos of cereal a year.

Combine the land required to generate its food and a “medium” sized dog has an annual footprint of 0.84 hectares (2.07 acres) — around twice the 0.41 hectares required by a 4×4 driving 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) a year, including energy to build the car.

To confirm the results, the New Scientist magazine asked John Barrett at the Stockholm Environment Institute in York, Britain, to calculate eco-pawprints based on his own data. The results were essentially the same.

“Owning a dog really is quite an extravagance, mainly because of the carbon footprint of meat,” Barrett said.

Other animals aren’t much better for the environment, the Vales say.

Cats have an eco-footprint of about 0.15 hectares, slightly less than driving a Volkswagen Golf for a year, while two hamsters equates to a plasma television and even the humble goldfish burns energy equivalent to two mobile telephones.

But Reha Huttin, president of France’s 30 Million Friends animal rights foundation says the human impact of eliminating pets would be equally devastating.

“Pets are anti-depressants, they help us cope with stress, they are good for the elderly,” Huttin told AFP.

“Everyone should work out their own environmental impact. I should be allowed to say that I walk instead of using my car and that I don’t eat meat, so why shouldn’t I be allowed to have a little cat to alleviate my loneliness?”

Sylvie Comont, proud owner of seven cats and two dogs — the environmental equivalent of a small fleet of cars — says defiantly, “Our animals give us so much that I don’t feel like a polluter at all.

“I think the love we have for our animals and what they contribute to our lives outweighs the environmental considerations.

“I don’t want a life without animals,” she told AFP.

And pets’ environmental impact is not limited to their carbon footprint, as cats and dogs devastate wildlife, spread disease and pollute waterways, the Vales say.

With a total 7.7 million cats in Britain, more than 188 million wild animals are hunted, killed and eaten by feline predators per year, or an average 25 birds, mammals and frogs per cat, according to figures in the New Scientist.

Likewise, dogs decrease biodiversity in areas they are walked, while their faeces cause high bacterial levels in rivers and streams, making the water unsafe to drink, starving waterways of oxygen and killing aquatic life.

And cat poo can be even more toxic than doggy doo — owners who flush their litter down the toilet ultimately infect sea otters and other animals with toxoplasma gondii, which causes a killer brain disease.

But despite the apocalyptic visions of domesticated animals’ environmental impact, solutions exist, including reducing pets’ protein-rich meat intake.

“If pussy is scoffing ‘Fancy Feast’ — or some other food made from choice cuts of meat — then the relative impact is likely to be high,” said Robert Vale.

“If, on the other hand, the cat is fed on fish heads and other leftovers from the fishmonger, the impact will be lower.”

Other potential positive steps include avoiding walking your dog in wildlife-rich areas and keeping your cat indoors at night when it has a particular thirst for other, smaller animals’ blood.

As with buying a car, humans are also encouraged to take the environmental impact of their future possession/companion into account.

But the best way of compensating for that paw or clawprint is to make sure your animal is dual purpose, the Vales urge. Get a hen, which offsets its impact by laying edible eggs, or a rabbit, prepared to make the ultimate environmental sacrifice by ending up on the dinner table.

“Rabbits are good, provided you eat them,” said Robert Vale.