From The Telegraph-
In an attempt to rid the country of “decadent Western cuts”, Iran’s culture ministry has produced a catalogue of haircuts that meet government approval.
The list of banned styles includes ponytails, mullets and elaborate spikes. However,quiffs appear to be acceptable, as are fashioning one’s hair in the style of Simon Cowell or cultivating a 1980s-style floppy fringe.
Most of the models are clean-shaven although one picture features a man with a goatee beard, previously frowned upon by Iran’s conservative clerics. Using hair gel is also within the law, albeit in modest quantities.
The “journal of Iranian hairstyles approved by the ministry of [culture and Islamic] guidance” was previewed at a government-approved hairdressing show in Tehran.
The pictures were reminiscent of those gracing barber shop windows across Britain.
“The proposed styles are inspired by Iranians’ complexion, culture and religion, and Islamic law,” said Jaleh Khodayar, who is in charge of a Modesty and Veil Festival later this month at which the guide will be promoted.
“We are happy that the Islamic republic of Iran’s government has backed us in designing these hairstyles.”
Several barber shops have reportedly been shut down and penalised in recent years for offering Western-style haircuts.
“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it. The internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.” —
-The artist formerly Known as PRINCE.
From Wall St Journal-
By analyzing the DNA of the world’s oldest people, Boston University scientists said Thursday they have discovered a genetic signature of longevity. They expect soon to offer a test that could let people learn whether they have the constitution to live to a very old age.
The researchers, who studied more than 1,000 people over the age of 100, identified a set of 150 unique genetic markers that, taken together, are linked to extreme longevity. They acknowledged they didn’t know all the genes involved, nor their exact function in extending old age.
“This is an extremely complex trait that involves many processes,” said lead researcher Paola Sebastiani, a biostatistician at BU’s School of Public Health. Even so, “we can compute your specific predisposition to exceptional longevity.”
The researchers said they had no plans to patent the technique nor profit from it. Instead, they expect to make a free test kit available on the Internet later this month to foster longevity research.
The test might reveal more than some people would like to know, the BU scientists warned. Genetic testing often reveals tantalizing but incomplete information, and it’s sometimes difficult to know how to respond. People with genes for extreme longevity could face a series of difficult decisions about their careers, retirement savings, insurance coverage, medical treatments and marriages in old age.
“I don’t think people are ready for this from a social point of view,” said BU geriatrician Thomas Perls, the other lead researcher. “But I don’t think that will stop companies from trying to market this.”
[video]
Borat would be proud!The world’s largest tent opens in the Central Asian Utopia of Kazakhstan.
From The BBC-
Designed by the British architects Foster & Partners, the Khan Shatyr Entertainment Centre in the capital Astana is 150m (490ft) high.
It opens on the day the city celebrates 13 years as the capital and President Nursultan Nazarbayev his 70th birthday.
The centre has a huge indoor leisure park, designed to be protected from the region’s harsh climate.
Standing on a 20m concrete base, Khan Shatyr is the city’s highest structure and the world’s tallest tent.
Inside, visitors will find shops, restaurants and cinemas - even an artificial beach and a running track.
[video]
From USA Today-
Nutritionists have long warned of the perils of hot dogs: fat, sodium and preservatives to name a few.
Now, the American Academy of Pediatrics wants foods like hot dogs to come with a warning label — not because of their nutritional risks but because they pose a choking hazard to babies and children.
Better yet, the academy would like to see foods such as hot dogs “redesigned” so their size, shape and texture make them less likely to lodge in a youngster’s throat. More than 10,000 children under 14 go to the emergency room each year after choking on food, and up to 77 die, says the new policy statement, published online today in Pediatrics. About 17% of food-related asphyxiations are caused by hot dogs.
“If you were to take the best engineers in the world and try to design the perfect plug for a child’s airway, it would be a hot dog,” says statement author Gary Smith, director of the Center for Injury Research and Policy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. “I’m a pediatric emergency doctor, and to try to get them out once they’re wedged in, it’s almost impossible.”
The Consumer Product Safety Commission requires labels on toys with small parts alerting people not to give them to kids under 3. Yet there are no required warnings on food, though more than half of non-fatal choking episodes involve food, Smith says.
From NYT-
WHEN Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she could claim perhaps 2,000 living descendants.
Mrs. Schwartz was a member of the Satmar Hasidic sect, whose couples have nine children on average and whose ranks of descendants can multiply exponentially. But even among Satmars, the size of Mrs. Schwartz’s family is astonishing. A round-faced woman with a high-voltage smile, she may have generated one of the largest clans of any survivor of the Holocaust — a thumb in the eye of the Nazis.
Her descendants range in age from a 75-year-old daughter named Shaindel to a great-great-granddaughter born Feb. 10 named Yitta in honor of Mrs. Schwartz and a great-great-grandson born Feb. 15 who will be named at a bris on Monday. Their numbers include rabbis, teachers, merchants, plumbers and truck drivers. But these many apples have not fallen far from the tree: With a few exceptions, like one grandson who lives in England, they mostly live in local Satmar communities, like Williamsburg in Brooklyn and Kiryas Joel, near Monroe, N.Y., where Mrs. Schwartz lived for the last 30 years of her life.
Mrs. Schwartz had a zest for life and a devotion to Hasidic rituals, faithfully attending the circumcisions, first haircuts, bar mitzvahs, engagements and weddings of her descendants. With 2,000 people in the family, such events occupied much of the year.
[video]
[video]
From People-
When Jay Leno goes back to the Tonight Show, he may need to find a new musical sidekick: Bandleader Kevin Eubanks is said to be leaving Leno’s side after 18 years.
NBC so far has not officially confirmed the latest shock wave to hit Leno’s show, first reported by L.A. radio K-EARTH 101 and also being reported by the New York Times.
Eubanks, a jazz guitarist who joined The Tonight Show in 1992 and became bandleader two years later, simply “wanted a change” and a chance for new opportunities, according to Extra.
It wasn’t clear when he intended to leave. According to Extra, it would be at some point after Leno takes The Tonight Show back from Conan O’Brien on March 1.
RUMORS ON WHO MAY REPLACE EUBANKS-
Darius Rucker of Hootie and the Blowfish
From The Washington Post-
Maribel Perez breathes in short puffs, panting almost, through a hole cut into her trachea and covered demurely with a patch of gauze. Clear tubes connected to a noisy machine in the living room of her small Alexandria apartment pump pure oxygen into her nostrils.
Crossing the room can leave the 36-year-old woman breathless. Crying sometimes feels like drowning.
Twice in the past two years, she has been told to prepare to die. Twice, she has been rejected for a lung transplant because her case was deemed too difficult. Twice, she has nearly been sent home to Peru because doctors told her there was nothing more they could do here, and if there were, her insurance wouldn’t pay. She refused to believe them.
Then, doctors, social workers, friends, family, priests, politicians and strangers coalesced as a veritable army of guardian angels around her. They pushed for treatment and insurance. They found loopholes, hospital beds and ventilators. They prayed. They set up a “Save Maribel” Web site and Facebook page. They called news conferences in which Perez tearfully pleaded for her life. They raised $60,000 to save her.
So it was nothing less than shattering when, miraculously, a few weeks ago, one of the world’s largest lung-transplant programs, at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, agreed to take her, and Perez said no.
Her reason had nothing to do with breath. It was because of blood.
Perez had become a Jehovah’s Witness. The religion teaches that blood is sacred, the seat of one’s soul, and that in the Bible, God specifically prohibits the consumption of blood, whether by mouth or through veins in a transfusion. Many Jehovah’s Witnesses carry cards explaining that in an emergency they are not to receive blood and that no medical practitioner will be held liable if they die as a result.
[video]
[video]
[video]