Woman (not allowed to show her hair) and poster of approved men's hairstyles in Iran. Image CNN

Short on the sides and back and uses gel, this hair is approved in Iran.

Long in the back-this haircut is not OK in Iran. This image is a reminder that a gentle mullet, with length and flow can be a thing of beauty.

Short on the sides and back and uses gel, this hair is approved in Iran.

Long in the back-this haircut is not OK in Iran.

Short on the sides and back and uses gel, this hair is approved in Iran.

Iran promotes ‘Islamic’ haircuts
Iran has laid down the law: mullets won’t make the cut.
July 8, 2010  |  By Saeed Ahmed and Mitra Mobasherat  |  CNN

* Don’t: mullet

* Do: short on the front and sides

* Do: gel-slathered, combed-back

The Islamic regime, which strictly enforces head coverings for women, issued grooming guidelines for the guys this week.

Among the do’s that are now don’ts? The ’80’s Prince-style pompadour preferred by many young Iranian men, the Steven Seagal-style ponytail and the “business in the front, party in the back” sentiment of the mullet — also popular among the Persian populace.

The approved styles have a distinctly 1950s look to them: short on the front and sides for the most part. But the gel-slathered, combed-back 1980s look also received the government’s blessing.

The “Islamic” haircuts were unveiled at the Hijab and Chastity Festival, a fashion event designed to show how the country’s youth can be stylish yet not run afoul of the fashion police.

“Hair styles have been designed based on the shape of the neck, beard, the size of the chin and provincial cultures,” said Jaleh Khodayar, the secretary of the festival. Her comments were reported by the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

“In designing these hair styles, we have not tried to go backward. On the contrary, we have tried to make our designs a mixture of our traditions and Iranian culture, as well as the latest fashions and by doing so confront the cultural assault by the West (on our country).”

Majid, a 32-year-old Tehran resident who did not want to give out his last name, shrugged his head in amusement.

“I don’t think these young men will stop wearing these hairstyles, even though in my opinion they are actually pretty strange,” he said.

He prefers his own hair on the short side.

To the outside world, the crackdown on cuts may represent further restrictions by an already restrictive regime.

But in one way, they are a loosening of guidelines: None of the photographs of acceptable grooming styles feature models with full-grown beards — a look, a la President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that Iran had encouraged for years.

Two photos of actress Nicole Kidman taken at very different times in her career. Please note, Botox® does not affect the size of one's teeth, nose or hair.

Botox Limits Ability to Feel Emotions
By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Senior Writer  |  www.livescience.com  |  22 June

A well-known side effect of Botox is the inability to fully express emotions. Now research reveals another side effect: the inability to fully feel emotions.

Botox, a popular cosmetic injection used to fight facial wrinkles, is made of an extremely toxic protein called Botulinum toxin. Botox works by temporarily paralyzing muscles that cause wrinkles.

That means no unsightly wrinkles, but also no moving those muscles at all — which could have more significant consequences than simply looking frozen, the researchers found.

Scientists think that facial expressions themselves may influence emotional experiences, so a person with a limited ability to make facial expressions may also have a limited ability to feel emotions.

“With Botox, a person can respond otherwise normally to an emotional event, [such as] a sad movie scene, but will have less movement in the facial muscles that have been injected, and therefore less feedback to the brain about such facial expressivity,” said researcher Joshua Davis, a psychologist at Barnard College in New York. “It thus allows for a test of whether facial expressions and the sensory feedback from them to the brain can influence our emotions.”

Davis and his Barnard colleague Ann Senghas led a team of researchers who showed people emotionally charged videos both before and after they were injected with either Botox, or Restylane — a substance injected into lips or facial wrinkles that fills out sagging skin. Restylane was used as a control because it simply adds filler but doesn’t limit the movement of muscles.

Compared with the control group, the Botox participants “exhibited an overall significant decrease in the strength of emotional experience,” the researchers wrote in a paper published in the June issue of the journal Emotion. In particular, the Botox group responded less strongly to mildly positive clips after they had the injections than before the Botox.

The findings tie into an idea suggested more than a century ago that feedback from facial expressions to the brain can influence the experience of emotions, the researchers said. The simple act of smiling, for example, can help make you feel happy, while frowning can bring down your mood.

“In a bigger picture sense, the work fits with common beliefs, such as ‘fake it till you make it,’” Davis said.

One could argue the girl would be alive is no one offered her the drug, if she was educated about the drug she took or if she was in a caring compassionate environment that noticed the early signs of her distress. One could also argue she took the drug willingly and may have even sought it out. She could have gotten the drug elsewhere and that the event organizers can’t be responsible for the action of each of it’s patrons.

The organizers should be held responsible for not being able to adequately handle their crowd, which as the videos show wasn’t handled well.

I want to know how a 15 year old got $177 for a ticket without an adult knowing? I advise parents worried their children will do designer drugs to keep the kids cash poor and thus dependent on cheap domestic beer and fortified wine for a buzz.

DJs are superstars at mega raves that draw tens of thousands.

California girls letting it all hang out at the recent Electric Daisy mega rave. The pacifier hanging from her belly piercing is a nice touch.

Cubitron is an example of the modern electronic art showcased at Mega raves.

Video of fence jumpers-gets good at approx 1 minute.

Video of fence jumpers from other angle

It even made the 10 o’clock news

Teenager’s death puts focus on LA’s rave parties
JOHN ROGERS  |  Jul 2, 2010  |  AP

LOS ANGELES (AP) – More than 180,000 people packed into the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum over two days for a rave party that featured spectacular light shows, pulsating techno music on stages the size of small buildings – and a lot of bad drug trips.

The suspected overdose death of a 15-year girl and the scores of injuries in the mayhem that resulted when people tried to force their way closer to the event’s five stages have cast a critical spotlight on what has become a trend, particularly in Southern California, of mega-raves.

Some critics have come forward to complain that raves are nothing more than open-air drug bazaars where tragedy is waiting to happen. Those who follow raves say officials should concentrate on learning from what happened last weekend in Los Angeles and strive to make them safer.

The body that operates the publicly owned Coliseum will meet July 16 to determine whether it should extend a temporary ban it placed on such events after what happened at the Electric Daisy Carnival.

The event attracted a crowd the size of a medium-sized city and is arguably the biggest event of its kind. But raves overall do seem to be growing in size and scale – a recipe for trouble.

Some 45,000 people attended a New Year’s Eve event at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena where one person died and numerous drug overdoses were reported. In suburban Inglewood, last year’s annual Hard Summer music-dance party drew more than 18,000 people, including several hundred gatecrashers who prompted police to shut the event down when a riot ensued.

Part of the reason for the bigger crowds is that rave music has attracted a wider audience as more mainstream performers, like Akon and the Black Eyed Peas, have begun to work with prominent dance music DJs like David Guetta, said Joshua Glazer, editor-in-chief of URB Magazine, which follows the emergent music scene.

It hasn’t hurt, either, he said, that the light shows at the larger venues have become nothing short of “mind-boggling.”

“They’ve gone beyond, not just musically, but visually anything that has been done before,” he said of shows like last weekend’s gigantic Electric Daisy Carnival. “There was a stage there six to eight stories tall that was just a giant LED screen like nothing I’d ever seen before.”

That seems to have contributed to the show’s troubles.

As dusk fell and stages began to explode in spectacular bursts of light, thousands attempted to move from the Coliseum’s bleacher seats to the already crowded field for a closer look. Among them was Ben Waldow, a 17-year-old artist from Beverly Hills.

“When I saw people pushing people around to get to the bottom stage area, and actually crawling over people, I got my girlfriend and my friend out of there as soon as I could,” he said.

They escaped unhurt but more than 100 people were taken to hospitals for everything from drug overdoses to being battered and trampled by the crowd. Among them was 15-year-old Sasha Rodriguez, who was attending her first rave when she collapsed.

A friend who tried to shield her said others stepped on them before Rodriguez was taken to a hospital, where she was treated for drug intoxication. She died Tuesday.

Many ravers take Ecstasy or smoke marijuana to heighten the experience. Waldow said he spoke to one person at the event who had taken ketamine, an anesthetic used by veterinarians and pediatricians that produces a euphoric high but can be fatal when mixed with alcohol or other drugs. Waldow says he does not do drugs.

John Lieberman, director of operations at the Visions Adolescent Treatment Center in Malibu, says it’s been clearly established that raves, aside from providing music, function as drug-dealing centers and adolescents should simply be banned from them.

The Electric Daisy Carnival had an age requirement of 16 or older, but witnesses have said they never saw anyone checking IDs. The event’s promoter has promised an investigation.

Other people expressed concerns that some raves have simply gotten too big to control.

“When I started going they were nothing like a hundred thousand people. It was maybe a couple thousand at the most,” said Ellen Komp, a former member of a task force that worked with the San Francisco Department of Public Health in establishing safety standards for raves in the city in the early 2000s.

“I don’t know how you could possibly deal with something that big,” she said of a two-day crowd of 180,000.

Glazer thinks such large events can be pulled off safely with the proper planning. He also gave credit to the Electric Daisy Carnival’s promoters for trying, noting they had separated the field area with a pair of 8 foot fences to keep too many people from jamming the field.

As numerous videos posted on Youtube show, ravers simply climbed over them.

“Certainly in retrospect, a lot of things could have been done differently,” he said.

After the trouble, Glazer published on his website a list of six suggestions for the future.

Among them were providing information on the dangers of patronizing drug vendors; banning anyone under 18 from attending; securing the venue better; and hiring better security guards, not like the one someone from his magazine said they saw get in a fight with a patron.

It won’t be long until the next big Los Angeles rave has a chance to put those recommendations into action.

The Hard Summer show that police broke up last year is coming to a state park on the edge of downtown Los Angeles on July 17 and about 27,000 people are expected to attend.

The show will not be covered by the moratorium to be discussed by the Coliseum authority July 16.

World’s Oldest Leather Shoe Found—Stunningly Preserved
“Astonishingly modern” shoe preserved by sheep dung and dryness.
Kate Ravilious for National Geographic News  |  June 9, 2010

A Manolo Blahnik it isn’t.

Still, the world’s oldest known leather shoe, revealed Wednesday, struck one of the world’s best known shoe designers as shockingly au courant. “It is astonishing,” Blahnik said via email, “how much this shoe resembles a modern shoe!”

Stuffed with grass, perhaps as an insulator or an early shoe tree, the 5,500-year-old moccasin-like shoe was found exceptionally well preserved—thanks to a surfeit of sheep dung—during a recent dig in an Armenian cave.

About as big as a current women’s size seven (U.S.), the shoe was likely tailor-made for the right foot of its owner, who could have been a man or a woman—not enough is known about Armenian feet of the era to say for sure.

Made from a single piece of cowhide—a technique that draws premium prices for modern shoes under the designation “whole cut”—the shoe is laced along seams at the front and back, with a leather cord.

“The hide had been cut into two layers and tanned, which was probably quite a new technology,” explained Ron Pinhasi, co-director of the dig, from University College Cork in Ireland.

Yvette Worrall, a shoemaker for the Conker handmade-shoe company in the U.K., added, “I’d imagine the leather was wetted first and then cut and fitted around the foot, using the foot as a last [mold] to stitch it up there and then.”

The end result looks surprisingly familiar for something so ancient—and not just to Blahnik.

“It immediately struck me as very similar to a traditional form of Balkan footwear known as the opanke, which is still worn as a part of regional dress at festivals today,” said Elizabeth Semmelhack, a curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada.

“I thought, Wow, not so much has changed.”

Oldest Leather Shoe Shows Stunning Preservation

Radiocarbon dated to about 3500 B.C., during Armenia’s Copper Age, the prehistoric shoe is compressed in the heel and toe area, likely due to miles upon miles of walking. But the shoe is by no means worn out.

Shoes of this age are incredibly rare, because leather and plant materials normally degrade very quickly.

But in this case the contents of a pit in the cave, dubbed Areni-1, had been sealed in by several layers of sheep dung, which accumulated in the cave after its Copper Age human inhabitants had gone.

“The cave environment kept it cool and dry, while the dung cemented the finds in,” said Pinhasi, lead author of the new study, published by the journal PLoS ONE Wednesday.

Why Was Oldest Leather Shoe Made?

Protecting the foot was probably one of the main reasons people started wearing shoes, and certainly this seems the case for the world’s oldest leather shoe.

Around the Armenian cave, “the terrain is very rugged, and there are many sharp stones and prickly bushes,” said University of California archaeologist and study co-author Gregory Areshian, who was partly funded by the National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News.)

Furthermore, shoes like this would have enabled people to cope with extremes of temperature in the region—up to 113°F (45°C) in summer and below freezing in winter—and to travel farther.

“These people were walking long distances. We have found obsidian in the cave, which came from at least 75 miles [120 kilometers] away,” he said.

Blahnik, the shoe designer, speculates that even this simple design was worn for style as well as substance.

“The shoe’s function was obviously to protect the foot, but I am in no doubt that a certain appearance of a shoe meant belonging to a particular tribe,” said Blahnik, who knows a thing or two about expressing identity through attire. “I am sure it was part of the outfit which a specific tribe wore to distinguish their identity from another.”

Not the World’s Oldest Shoe

Previously, the oldest known closed-toe shoes were those belonging to Ötzi, the “Iceman” found in the Austrian Alps in 1991, who died around 5,300 years ago. (See “Iceman Wore Cattle, Sheep Hides; May Have Been a Herder.”)

Sandals meanwhile, have an even longer history, with the oldest specimens, dated to more than 7,000 years ago, discovered in the Arnold Research Cave in central Missouri.

The wearing of shoes, though, is almost certainly older than the oldest known shoes. For example, a weakening of small toe bones found in 40,000-year-old human fossils has been cited as evidence of the advent of shoes.

Compared to Ötzi’s shoes, the world’s oldest leather shoe is strictly bare-bones, according to Jacqui Wood, an independent archaeologist based in the U.K., who studied Ötzi’s shoes and who said the new study’s science is sound.

“The Iceman’s shoe was in another league altogether,” Wood said. “Each base was made from brown bearskin; the side panels were deerskin; and inside was a bark-string net, which pulled tight around the foot.

“By contrast, the Armenian shoe is the most basic of shoes and was probably made worldwide once people decided not to walk about in bare feet.” (See pictures of the Iceman.)

It’s true that similar shoes have been found at other sites and from other times, but study co-authors Pinhasi and Areshian think it’s plausible that the style originated in Armenia.

“Many other inventions, such as wheel-thrown pottery, cuneiform writing, and wool production evolved in the ancient Near East,” Pinhasi said. “And so Armenia may give us the earliest clues to a ‘prototype’ shoe, which later spread to Europe.

Rebecca Shawcross, a shoe historian at the Northampton Museums & Art Gallery in the U.K., said, “You can certainly make a case for this shoe [design] being a forerunner to the North American moccasin, which has gone on to be a popular shoe style, whose influences can be seen in shoes of today—deck shoes; soft, slipper-style shoes for men; and so on.”

Beyond the World’s Oldest Leather Shoe

With the moccasin mystery largely solved, the study team has plenty more puzzles to solve in Areni-1.

Along with the shoe, the ancient sheep dung had sealed in the horns of a wild goat, bones of red deer, and an upside-down broken pot.

“It is a strange assortment of items,” Pinhasi said, “and I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some symbolic meaning”—a meaning that could be revealed as summer, and a new dig season, dawns at Areni-1.

***

The discovery of the world’s oldest known leather shoe was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Chitjian Foundation (Los Angeles), and Joe Gfoeller of the Gfoeller Foundation, the Steinmetz Family Foundation, the Boochever Foundation, and the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.

He seems like such a nice guy, too. Get well soon Joe!

Volunteer in charity groin wax nearly loses a testicle
By Daily Mail Reporter  |  16th June 2010

A man who took part in a charity groin wax was rushed to hospital after it nearly ripped off his testicle.

Builder Joe Cooper, 24, agreed to a ‘back, sack and crack’ to raise money for his local hospital.

But he ended up needing medical treatment himself when a wax strip tore off his flesh and missed his right testicle by half an inch.

The freak accident happened after Joe volunteered to take part in the charity fundraiser at the Trees Pub in Birstall, Leicester, on June 5.

Doctors managed to ‘glue’ Joe’s skin back on to his thigh using antibiotic cream.

The bachelor said he is still in pain and has been taking a strong course of antibiotics to prevent any infections.

He said: ‘There were a few of us doing it and two blokes wimped out but I said I’d have it done.

‘I lay down and closed my eyes and the next thing I know I’m in horrendous pain and bleeding.

‘I ended up at the walk-in centre at the hospital – you can imagine how much everyone was laughing at me.

‘They said if any more skin had come off it (the testicle) would have come out.

‘I’ve got cream and I’ve been told to use hot, salty water but that stings too much.’

Pub-goers donated cash for a chance to rip a strip of wax off 10 men’s privates. The pub hoped the stunt would help raise £3,000 for the Leicester Royal Infirmary.

But the other men backed out and only Joe volunteered for the challenge.

His friends watched in horror when a friend yanked a 20cm (8in) long strip of wax off his inner thigh – taking the skin with it.

An onlooker said: ‘It was horrible. He was screaming and there was blood everywhere.

‘It’s a lesson that waxing your bodies should definitely be left to the women.’

Joe, from Leicester, added: ‘I’m healing quite well, which is a relief.

‘I still feel a bit ropey but I’m okay. They’re still hurting but it’s just one of those things. I was the unfortunate one.

‘But I wouldn’t do it again, I wouldn’t put any man through that pain.’

Pub manager Josh Adcock said: ‘Joe’s a bit of a clown, he likes to do things like that.

‘People were bidding quite a lot to have a rip. I was laughing but I did feel quite sorry for him, especially as we had a disco later on and he couldn’t walk.’

Click an image to view it larger.

Yanks clarify Lady Gaga’s access
By Andrew Marchand | ESPNNewYork.com | June 21, 2010

NEW YORK — Lady Gaga is still welcome at Yankee Stadium, but just not in the clubhouse. Especially not after a loss.

“She’s not banned,” New York Yankees GM Brian Cashman said on Sunday afternoon. “Celebrities aren’t banned. If Michael Jordan showed up here he would have access [to the clubhouse], but not after a loss.”

Following the Yankees’ loss to the New York Mets on Friday night, Lady Gaga talked her way past security and into the Yankees’ clubhouse. She reportedly met with some players, including Robinson Cano. The media, which is supposed to be allowed into the clubhouse 10 minutes after the final pitch, was held out.

“That was the wrong time and the wrong place,” Cashman said. “It’s been taken care of.”

The New York Post reported on Sunday that Yankees co-chairman Hal Steinbrenner was furious at the display Lady Gaga put on in the clubhouse — dressed in a half-buttoned Yankees jersey and a bikini bottom, she swilled whiskey and fondled her chest, the Post said, citing sources — and that Steinbrenner had permanently banned Gaga from the team’s clubhouse. Cashman downplayed that, but added that the Yankees have other places in the Stadium where players can interact with celebrities.

“There is just a time and place,” said Cashman. “It is not her fault.”

Cashman said that no one was fired over the security breach. When George Steinbrenner was in charge, employees would have likely been let go over such an incident.

Yankees manager Joe Girardi says he doesn’t think celebrities cause a distraction for his team.

“Our guys know that when it’s time to play, it’s time to play, and they’re used to it,” Girardi said.

There were reports that Alex Rodriguez met with Gaga on Friday, but Cano says he was the only player to see her.

“She can sing, I’ll tell you that,” Cano said.

Gaga has been making her presence felt in New York baseball. The singer, who says she is a Yankees fan, attended a Mets-Padres game on June 10 at Citi Field and decided to give the finger to Mets fans. This provided not only a treat for photographers but also a marketing opportunity for the Mets; they’ve designated this coming Wednesday’s game vs. the Tigers as “Go Gaga for Wright” night, to campaign for third baseman David Wright’s election to the National League All-Star team. The first 20,000 fans through the gates will receive a blue foam hand with the index finger extended — “the best finger,” according to a TV commercial for the promotion — and the words “Make Wright #1″ printed on it.

Andrew Marchand covers baseball for ESPNNewYork.com. You can follow him on Twitter.

Takes a lot of scratch to poison oneself with gold though.  BUT if one is the cougar mistress of a lavish living King, I guess cash is not an issue.

Drop dead gorgeous: A portrait of Diane de Poitiers in her youth (above) by an unknown artist and the last portrait (below) showing how closely the skull from the dig fitted her image. Experts believe she died from gold poisoning .

Dying to look good: French king’s mistress killed by drinking gold elixir of youth
By Claire Bates  |  22nd December 2009  |  www.dailymail.co.uk

Miracle beauty products may be a staple on women’s dressing tables today, but they’re not a recent invention.

The mistress of the 16th-century French king, Henry II, drank gold in an effort to preserve her youth, according to a study published in the British medical journal.

Unfortunately the remedy eventually killed her.

Above: The lock of Diane's hair preserved at Anet Castle Below: Close up analysis revealed de Poitiers had gold in her thinning hair

When French experts dug up the remains of Diane de Poitiers last year, they found high levels of gold in her hair.

Since she was not a queen and did not wear a crown, scientists said it was hard to see how jewellery could have contaminated her hair and body.

Experts now say she probably consumed drinkable gold, believed at the time to preserve youth and treat a host of other ailments.

The French court believed gold harnessed the power of the Sun, which would be transferred to the drinker. Alchemists often acted as apothecaries and prescribed solutions made up of gold chloride and diethyl ether. These were popular at the French Court.

It is very likely Diane de Poitiers was killed by her desire to look young. Unusually she was 20 years older than her royal lover.

Diana de Poitiers was well-known for her athletic prowess and represented as Diana the Huntress (below) Her remains will be returned to her original tomb in Castle Anet.

Contemporary reports mention the famed beauty had an unusually white face without the need for makeup and that she looked as fresh as a 30-year-old when she was over twice that age.

French forensic experts who analysed her bones found traces of mercury, which was used in the preparation of gold remedies. The noble was famed for her athleticism but her remains also revealed she suffered from thinning hair and fragile bones, which are common symptoms of chronic gold intoxication.

The body of the French king’s favourite was only discovered in 2008. After the king’s death Diane de Poitiers had been banished from court by his widow Catherine de’Medici to the chateau in Anet given to her by the king.

She died there, aged 66, in 1566 and was buried in a grand tomb in a specially built funeral chapel. However her grave was desecrated during the French Revolution and her body flung into a common grave outside the chateau’s walls.

Scientists Joel Poupon and Philippe Charlier, who usually works in hospital morgues in Paris, worked together to identify de Poitiers in the recently opened Normandy grave.

The bones belonged to someone of her age and athletic physique. Crucially one of the legs revealed a healed fracture – de Poitiers was reported to have broken her leg in a riding accident.

Now French revolutionaries and modern scientists are finished with de Poitiers, her remains will soon be returned to their original resting place in the chateau tomb.