ENTERTAINMENT
April 29, 2013 | By Alan Eyerly
Teen Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner) marry Tyrion "the Imp" Lannister (Peter Dinklage), a man twice her age and half her size? Incestuous Queen Cersei (Lena Headey) marry Sir Loras Tyrell (Finn Jones)? A handsome young man, surely, but one who finds knights more attractive than ladies. Who's behind this seemingly bizarre matchmaking? As we learn in Episode 25 of HBO's "Game of Thrones," it's Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance), a pragmatic tyrant motivated by power and wealth, not romantic niceties.
BUSINESS
December 13, 2012 | By Andrea Chang, Los Angeles Times
Neil Clark Warren thinks he's the best match for EHarmony Inc. In a move that caused his friends to call him crazy, the 78-year-old EHarmony founder came out of retirement in July to become chief executive, looking to resuscitate one of the most recognized online dating services that was struggling amid increased competition. "We'd gotten a bit lost," Warren said recently at the company's Santa Monica headquarters, decorated with hundreds of photos of couples who met on the website.
OPINION
November 13, 2012 | Patt Morrison
Alvin Roth earned his 2012 Nobel Prize in economics for market design and matching theory - creating ways to pair "buyers" and "sellers" happily and fairly when price isn't a primary consideration. For instance? Kidney exchanges, in which cost can't legally play a role but donors and recipients with just the right assets and needs still must find each other. Roth's algorithms can be used to make good matches in even the thorniest situations: bringing the lovelorn together with potential mates, and bringing together the right charter and public schools with the right students.
ENTERTAINMENT
October 26, 2012 | By L.J. Williamson
Even objectivists yearn for romance. Adherents of Ayn Rand's philosophy may strive to live with an emphasis on the power of reason and objective reality, but that didn't stop Stephanie Betit and Jamie Hancock from falling so crazy in love that they'd constantly email during work, talk on the phone until 4 a.m. and drive for nine hours to see each other. Frustrated with her love life, Vermonter Betit, a 32-year-old special-education coordinator, wondered aloud to a girlfriend, "How the heck do you meet people nowadays who are intelligent, don't do drugs, don't drink and are serious about life?"
WORLD
September 25, 2012 | By Ramin Mostaghim and Emily Alpert, Los Angeles Times
TEHRAN - Iranian ministers have fretted for years about a "marriage crisis" in the country. The average age when people wed has climbed since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, causing concern among officials, as well as family elders, that Iranians may stray from a traditional pious path by staying single too long. Now a government minister says the country needs to legalize matchmaking websites to nudge Iranians to get hitched at younger ages. Mohammad Abbasi, the country's sports and youth minister, recently said he hoped to come up with rules for what may amount to a sort of Match.com or eHarmony suited for the Islamic Republic.
ENTERTAINMENT
June 29, 2012 | By Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times Film Critic
"The Matchmaker" is a surprise. It sounds like a throwback to an earlier, more traditional style of Israeli filmmaking but it instead provides a view of that country that's as satisfyingly eccentric and unexpected as anything we've seen. Written and directed by the veteran Avi Nesher, nominated for seven Israeli academy awards and winner of the lead actor and actress prize, "The Matchmaker" is set largely in 1968 and presents itself as the familiar coming-of-age story of a 16-year-old boy. But, as it turns out, the boy's story is only a part of a larger, more compelling dramatic mosaic and what he learns about the vagaries and perplexities of the human heart is only interesting because of the complex, unusual adults he learns it from.