Chocoholics find a venue and a menu

Posted by MikeyMike at 04:45 PM on October 1, 2006 in Geographica.

I think that I am going to retire right next door! ^^





By Belinda Goldsmith Fri Sep 29, 4:10 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Slices of chocolate pizza. Syringes that squirt liquid chocolate into your mouth. Warm double chocolate fondue.

The name Max Brenner is actually a composite of two Israelis, Max Fichtman and Oded Brenner, who launched the business 10 years ago in Israel as a chocolate shop.

But when Fichtman left after a few years, Brenner came up with the idea of a chocolate bar -- a restaurant serving chocolate with a gift shop -- and opened his first store in Sydney in 2000, adopting the Willy Wonka-like persona of "Max Brenner."

In 2001 Israel's second largest food and beverage company Strauss-Elite bought into the company, partnering with Brenner and opening a string of more restaurants to spread the chocolate gospel.

But in these days of health conscious eating are people still lured by chocolate?

"People love chocolate. It makes them smile. I believe the happiness it causes does magic things for your health," said Brenner, 36, a slim man, who eats chocolate daily but admits he goes to the gym every day too.

"If you do it in moderation it is good for you." Name: Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man Location: 841 Broadway @ 16th Street Prices: Main courses about $10, drinks about $4, Kids menu.

Chocolate bars are seen at a factory in an undated publicity photo. Slices of chocolate pizza. Syringes that squirt liquid chocolate into your mouth. Warm double chocolate fondue. Israeli restauranteur Max Brenner's new chocolate bar off New York's Union Square, Chocolate By The Bald Man, caters for chocoholics of all ages -- and is pretty much a disaster for anyone trying to watch their weight. (Vismedia/Reuters)

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Finger length linked to female sporting potential

Posted by MikeyMike at 05:10 PM on October 1, 2006 in Rants, Geographica.

New meaning to the term "giving the finger"! ^^ Seriously, I never realized that about woman's fingers... (goes to look)


Thu Sep 28, 7:51 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - The length of a girl's ring finger could be an indicator of her future sporting potential, researchers at King's College London said on Thursday.

In the largest study of its kind, hand measurements of 607 female twins aged 25-79 from the UK were compared with the women's lifetime sporting achievements.

The findings, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, found that women with ring fingers longer than their index fingers had performed better at running and associated running sports such as soccer and tennis.

In women the ring finger is commonly shorter or the same length as the index finger, while in men the ring finger is generally longer.

The report said detection of sporting potential by examining the ratio between the index and ring fingers "could help identify talented individuals at a pre-competitive stage."

The reasons for the findings were unclear, said one of the report's authors, Professor Tim Spector from the Twins Research Unit at King's College, who said he was originally skeptical about the link to sporting ability.

"Previous studies have suggested the change in finger length was due to changes in testosterone levels in the womb," he said.

But he said the unit had found in a separate study of twins that finger length was largely inherited, possibly explaining why sporting parents often have sporting children.

"We found that finger length was 70 percent heritable with little influence of the womb environment," he said.

"This suggests that genes are the main factor and that finger length is a marker of your genes."

He said no specific candidate genes had been identified for the link and that multiple genes were probably responsible.

Previous studies looking at the link between finger length and sporting ability have mainly focused on men.

A study published in 2001 of 304 English professional soccer players found they had a significantly larger ring-to-index-finger ratio than a control group of 533 other men.

Other studies in men have shown the ratio of the ring finger to the index finger can be associated with varied traits such as sexuality, musical ability and vulnerability to certain diseases.

2 Yeah Baby!s

7th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival

Posted by MikeyMike at 11:40 AM on October 7, 2006 in Geographica, Arts, Performers.

Yes, it's that time of year again! This time, I am taking time off from work and have purchased a all festival pass, so that I can go to as many films as I want - and no waiting in line! The deadline is tomorrow for getting one of these passes, if you are interested...

MY BOSS MY TEACHER

Let me know if you are going this year!

Currently reading: SDAFF Schedule

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Coming up at SDAFF...

Posted by MikeyMike at 04:08 PM on October 7, 2006 in Geographica, Arts, Kawaii.

ALWAYS - SUNSET ON THIRD STREET
Japan | Japanese | 132 min. | 35mm | Color | 2005

DIRECTOR: Takashi Yamazaki
WRITER: Ryouhei Saigan
CAST: Hidetaka Yoshioka, Shin'ichi Tsutsumi, Maki Horikita

West Coast Premiere
In late 1950's Japan, anything was possible. The country was moving out of the past and into the future. The war was over and the rubble was cleared. Soldiers came home and families were reunited. The rebuilding began, nowhere more spectacularly than in Tokyo where construction of the magnificent Tokyo Tower was underway and houses across the city were acquiring their first washing machines, refrigerators and the most holy of holies--televisions. It was also a time when bad decision-making was rampant: Taking a job in the city that you're not quite sure of; agreeing to adopt a bar tender's kid while you're drunk; inviting someone you've never met to live in your house. It's this intersection between economic progress and emotional misstep where ALWAYS – SUNSET ON THIRD STREET makes its home.

Visually lavish, and the winner of 13 of Japan's 14 Academy Awards (including "Best Picture," "Best Director," "Best Screenplay," and "Best Actor"), this film was shot on Toho's soundstages and it uses digital wizardry to resurrect 1950's Tokyo. Everything is meticulously recreated from the spidery superstructure of the Tokyo Tower rising up against the sky to the covers of the pulp sci-fi magazines sold by Mr. Chagawa, who wants to write the Great Japanese Novel. His dreams are no more deluded than those of Mutsuko, a schoolgirl from the countryside who thinks she's taken a job with a thriving car manufacturer only to discover that she's working in a one-garage mechanic's shop. And then there's Hiromi who opens a bar down the street and is saddled with the abandoned child of the nightspot's previous owner.

But pluck and luck abound in this gorgeous period piece that feels like a Frank Capra movie if he'd been a little more cynical and a lot more Japanese. Based on a popular manga, ALWAYS – SUNSET ON THIRD STREET is a movie that guarantees you'll cry at the end, but you won't feel cheap about it. This movie is so assured, and so beautifully crafted that you can give in to it on the first date and still respect yourself in the morning.

- From NY Asian Film Festival

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The new iPod Phone ;)

Posted by MikeyMike at 04:08 PM on October 8, 2006 in Tech, iPod, Kawaii.

Get it??

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Google makes video play with YouTube buy

Posted by MikeyMike at 06:36 PM on October 9, 2006.

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Google makes video play with YouTube buy

Posted by MikeyMike at 06:42 PM on October 9, 2006 in Tech.

Should be interesting to see how this pans out. I hope they don't put on too many restrictions!



update Google has agreed to purchase online video phenomenon YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock, the companies announced Monday.

The deal, which had been rumored for days, will dramatically improve Google's video-sharing service with one of the Internet's hottest properties in YouTube, which allows Net users to upload video clips and share them with the world, for better or worse.

YouTube will operate independently, and the companies will work together on building new features for independent users as well as for aspiring directors, they said in a press release. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2006.

"This is one of many investments that Google will be making to put video at the heart of a user's online experience," said Google CEO Eric Schmidt on a conference call after the deal was announced. "When we looked at the marketplace and saw what was going on, we saw a clear winner in the social networking side of video, and that's what drove us to start the conversations with YouTube."

Around 100 million videos are available on YouTube on a given day, with 65,000 new videos added every day, according to the company's Web site. It cited numbers from Nielsen Net Ratings, claiming 20 million unique visitors a month.

All of that content requires search technology to make it easier to find exactly what users are looking for, and improving YouTube's search capabilities with Google's technology will be one of the first priorities of the merged organization. But Google also sees advertising possibilities in those numbers, said Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder and president of technology. "Video is a great medium for advertising," he said.

More Here

Currently watching: YouTube

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YouTube community worried by Google deal

Posted by MikeyMike at 03:39 PM on October 11, 2006 in Tech, Congrats!.

I only used it to look at Asian videos, but I guess it means a lot more to many people... I should put my Panda video on there...



By JAKE COYLE, AP Entertainment Writer 57 minutes ago

NEW YORK - After landing a $1.65 billion deal to sell their video sharing Web site to Google Inc., the co-founders of YouTube did the obvious: They posted a goofy, unrehearsed video, thanking the YouTube community for its support.

But the cameraman poses a question to Chad Hurley, 29, and Steve Chen, 27, that goes unanswered: "What does (the deal) mean for the user community?"

That's what thousands of YouTubers are wondering. Will YouTube 2.0 still have room for the bedroom video makers that created the site's billion-dollar identity? Or will the little guy be crowded out by advertising and corporate involvement?

"We could have never built this without the community. That is what we're fiercely protecting," Julie Supan, the senior director of marketing at YouTube, said Wednesday.

The YouTube community is also very protective � including Richard Stern, better known as LazyDork, a rapping, dancing, opinion-spewing defender of the site's grass-roots nature.

"The Wild West feel of YouTube is already slipping away, and within a few weeks it likely will be gone altogether," says Stern.

YouTube isn't as lawless as the old West, but it has served as the gateway to a new online frontier. Since its start in February 2005, YouTube has become the pre-eminent site for Internet video, drawing a worldwide audience of 72.1 million in August.

Though enormously expansive, YouTube nevertheless has a distinct community of users who communicate by video and posted comments. This motley crew is made up of bloggers, vloggers and other users, many of whom bristled when stars like
Paris Hilton and Diddy attempted to promote albums with YouTube video channels. More Here

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But didn't they used to call this torture?

Posted by MikeyMike at 04:12 PM on October 11, 2006 in Rants, Geographica.

Damn! 0-O



Wed Oct 11, 7:49 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has warned image-conscious citizens against using the rack to lengthen their legs after several such operations went badly wrong, Xinhua news agency said.

Ten people were reported to have been disfigured after they underwent stretching surgery last year, it added.

The operation, which involves breaking the patient's legs and then stretching them on a rack, has become popular among young professionals "desperate to climb up the ladder in the country's height-conscious society," Xinhua said, without trying to pull anyone's leg.

"Leg-lengthening surgery is a clinical orthopaedic treatment, not cosmetic surgery," ministry spokesman Mao Qunan was quoted as saying.

"Leg-lengthening surgery must only be carried out for strict medical reasons and performed in authorized hospitals."

State media have said profit-obsessed small clinics sold the operation hardest to increasingly wealthy Chinese in the cities, who have taken to cosmetic surgery such as breast enlargements with enthusiasm.

Height is usually listed as a requirement for jobs or certain schools in China. Many employers require women to be over 1.65 meters (5 ft 5 in) and men over 1.70 meters.

It is also an important factor in courting, when many Chinese women expect their partners to be over 1.70 meters and men also care about their potential wives' height to avoid short offspring.

As a result, calcium supplements and other "height-enhancing" medicines are always among the best sellers at Chinese pharmacies.

"It is very risky for healthy people who only complain about being short," Mao was quoted by Health News as saying of the operation.

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Five things I learned from watching

Posted by MikeyMike at 09:38 PM on October 11, 2006 in Arts, Performers, Wild.

lol!




Five things I learned from watching Metropolis
August 28th, 2004

1. Biplanes will soon glide gracefully between our great art deco skyscrapers
2. In the very near future, rich white men will wear really gay pants
3. When women become evil robots, they like to act kind of slutty and dance
4. Workers of the year 2026 are in constant danger of being crushed under a pile of allegory
5. What German actors lack in subtlety, they more than make up for in enthusiasm and interesting haircuts

More about Metropolis Here

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San Diego by Moonlight

Posted by MikeyMike at 05:36 PM on October 22, 2006 in Arts, Photography.

Wonderful pic, huh? I tried to find where I got this originally, but couldn't find it anywhere. Great picture though!

6 Yeah Baby!s

iPod Turns Five... So What's Next?

Posted by MikeyMike at 03:59 PM on October 23, 2006 in Tech, iPod, Congrats!, Arts, Kawaii.

Love you, lil' Pod - and so does Princess Emma!



Thu Oct 19, 2006 3:32AM EDT


Five years, five major "generations"... it's time to pay our respects to what is, if not the most innovative, the most influential piece of consumer electronics in recent memory: The Apple iPod.

Contrary to common misconception, the iPod was not the first MP3 player - not by a longshot. The original MP3 player dates back to the Eiger Labs MP3Man, released in 1998, a full three years before the iPod came around. While you've probably never heard of Eiger Labs, you may remember the Diamond Rio, the first MP3 player to really catch on. (It was so popular it also has the distinction of being the first electronics company sued by the RIAA over the legality of digital music, a suit which the RIAA eventually lost.)

But Eiger and Diamond came and went, paving the way for the Apple iPod, introduced with a 5GB hard drive on October 23, 2001, with the promise of putting "1,000 songs in your pocket."

1,000 songs almost seems quaint now. Today's iPods bear only a passing resemblance to the original, both in the controls and under the hood: The state of the art 5G iPod holds 80GB of data, or about 16,000 songs. The click-wheel has been honed and refined year after year to the point where it's hard to believe the 1G, 2G, and 3G (pictured) iPods actually had buttons. Today's iPods play video in full color and are smaller and slimmer than ever.

So what's the next act for iPod? Apple famously plays its cards close to the vest, which causes rampant speculation from far too many gossip and rumor sites. But two major innovations are widely expected as "just a matter of time" for the company. TrustedReviews has them both mocked up: A touchscreen iPod with a screen that spans the entire width of the device and has no physical controls at all, and the long-fabled iPhone mashup of cell phone handset and MP3 player. While I agree that the iPhone is probably very likely in the near future (though not likely to look much like the mockup on TrustedReviews), I'm skeptical that a touchscreen iPod would work very well, if for no other reason than you'd get fingerprints all over your gorgeous screen any time you wanted to play your videos. Touchscreen certainly looks elegant on the surface, but I for one would prefer actual, physical buttons (on the sides?) and keep my screen pristine.

What do you want your next iPod to do? Happy birthday, little guy.

Currently listening to: iPod
Currently reading: iPod
Currently watching: iPod

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Let Guests comment again

Posted by MikeyMike at 04:27 PM on October 23, 2006 in Rants.

I turned Guest commenting back on. Hope I dont get too much spam this time. I still have a 8 day limit on commenting, so dont wait!

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Vegemite crackdown fears roil expats

Posted by MikeyMike at 09:05 PM on October 24, 2006 in Rants, Geographica.

Cricky! There goes my Vegemite sandwich!!




By Michelle Nichols Tue Oct 24, 8:45 AM ET

NEW YORK, Oct 23 (Reuters Life!) - Reports that U.S. customs agents are searching people from Australia and New Zealand for Vegemite, a popular yeast extract spread, has created consternation among antipodean expatriates living in America.

The Australian Embassy in Washington said on Monday it was looking into Australian media reports that customs officials were checking people for the salty brown spread.

The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration has long prohibited imports of Vegemite because it contains folate, a B vitamin approved as an additive for just a few foods, including breakfast cereals.

But until recently there was no difficulty bringing in a few jars for personal use. Nearly 100,000 Australians and New Zealanders live in the United States.

Like a similar British favorite called Marmite, it is usually spread on toast with butter or cheese.

"Vegemite made me the man I am today," said Brad Blanks, a reporter with a New York breakfast radio show. "In Australia the slogan is that Vegemite puts a rose in every cheek; but today America has slapped the cheek of every Australian."

Weekend reports from Australian and New Zealand media said some people had been searched or asked by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents if they were carrying Vegemite.

Agency officials were not immediately available for comment.

"From our perspective there is no food safety issue with Vegemite and we had been advised recently by US authorities that Vegemite was not of concern to them," an Australian embassy spokeswoman told Reuters.

Vegemite is made in Australia by U.S.-based Kraft Foods Inc.

7 Yeah Baby!s

The History of Halloween

Posted by MikeyMike at 06:29 PM on October 29, 2006 in Congrats!, Arts.

Happy Halloween!

History Channel once again has great Halloween information and lore!



Ancient Origins

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.


Happy birthday stalkingself (you lil' minx! ), Hershey, our songbird, Cazina, the "French Connection" and wild_18_me!

Currently listening to: Monster Mash/Happy Birthday Song
Currently watching: History of Halloween

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Dance

Posted by MikeyMike at 08:11 PM on October 29, 2006 in Geographica, Arts, Performers, Photography.

Love this picture!! Not best quality resolution, but beautifully done! By Timothy A. Clary of a dancer from Dance China NY...

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