In the news

The ultimate wedding dress




and...

Lip-to-lip kissing replacing the air kiss

London Fashion Week and the GQ Men of the Year Awards - where winners received a wet one on the lips from hosts Lily Allen and Sir Elton John - were rife with the highly intimate kisses, London's The Daily Telegraph said.

"On the party scene, air kissing - that horrible 'mwah, mwah' used by the kind of people who know your job title and dress size but forget your name - is out," the paper said. "Instead, there's a far worse social plague doing the rounds: being kissed on the mouth."

Australian body language expert Allan Pease has been lip-kissed by a stranger twice in recent weeks.

"I don't know where it started but it's certainly catching on. It's big in Britain and it's filtering through here too," Pease said.

Pease, who wrote The Definitive Book Of Body Language with his wife Barbara, said: "We're definitely becoming more comfortable with our sexuality. While the origin of human mouth kissing was for force feeding your babies - whereby the mother would masticate her food and put it into her baby's mouth with her tongue - the primary purpose these days of kissing on the lips is to stimulate the genitals. Lip kissers might deny it, but it has to be sexual."

British behavioural expert Judi James disagrees. "It's not a sexual thing: there is increasing evidence of it between parents and sons and daughters, as well as heterosexual men," she said. "It's more about fast-tracking bonding and empathy."

Australian social etiquette coach June Dally-Watkins is horrified.

"No. No. No. I'm not for that," she said. "It's far too intimate. I think it's wrong. And I don't think it's healthy. My lips are special. Precious. Not even my children or grandchildren do I kiss on the lips. It should be reserved absolutely for that one special person."

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4716949a19716.html

OMG! That dress is beautiful! Whoever made it is a god haha.

there is increasing evidence of it between... ...as well as heterosexual men

DOUBLEYOUTEEEFF!?

Thats hardly heterosexual....

haha.

Dropped 'h' causes trouble for French minister

A dropped 'h' landed English-speaking French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner in trouble after he was mistakenly quoted as saying Israel could gobble up Iran if it wanted to.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4717847a4560.html

A new type of dry glue designed to mimic gecko feet is 10 times stickier than the gravity-defying lizards, and three times stickier than other gecko-inspired glues, US researchers said.


"It's the stickiest dry glue yet," said Liming Dai of the University of Dayton, who reported on the glue in the journal Science.

A 2.5-cm square of the adhesive can support the weight of a 100-kg man climbing up a vertical surface, but it can be easily lifted and reapplied, an ideal material for, say, a Spider-Man suit.

"That is not real. What we do is real," said Zhong Lin Wang of Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, referring to the comic book superhero's wall-climbing prowess.

Aside from helping people walk up walls, the glue could be used in electrical components without the need for soldering, Wang and Dai said in a telephone interview.

And because it is dry, it could be used at very low temperatures as in space, where more conventional glues lose their grip.

Like other gecko-inspired glues, the new glue uses a carpet of carbon nanotubes, thin filaments of carbon molecules. But attached to the ends of these filaments are curly strands of carbon that expand the surface area of the glue's gripping action.

This design matches the structure of real gecko feet, which have microscopic hairs that branch off in different directions.

"Our sticky glue has a force 10 times that of gecko feet and three times more than previous sticky glues trying to mimic the gecko feet," said Dai, who also worked with teams from the US Air Force Research Laboratory near Dayton and the University of Akron to develop the glue.

Dai said the design is meant to maximize the effect of atomic-scale attractive forces known as van der Waals forces. When the curly part of the tubes are pressed on to a surface, the tubes become aligned with the surface, forming a strong bond. But, when lifted at an angle, this bond is broken.

Wang uses the analogy of having a foot stuck in mud. If you pull straight up, the foot stays stuck, but if you slowly peel the foot away, the bond is broken.

Curly tubes... microscopic hairs... strong bond... pelvis...

Wait... they made space velcro?

Whale Protection Is Bolstered as Palin Objects

By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: October 17, 2008
The federal government on Friday placed beluga whales that live in Cook Inlet in Alaska on the endangered species list, rejecting efforts by Gov. Sarah Palin and others against increased protection.

The relatively small, whitish whales, sometimes visible from downtown Anchorage, declined by almost 50 percent in the late 1990s, and federal scientists say they have not rebounded despite a series of protections, including a halt to subsistence hunting by Alaska Natives. About 375 whales have been counted in Cook Inlet each of the last two years, according to scientists with the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“In spite of protections already in place, Cook Inlet beluga whales are not recovering,” James W. Balsiger, the acting assistant administrator for the fisheries agency, said in a written statement. The whales are in danger of extinction, Dr. Balsiger said.

The announcement, made on a predetermined schedule under the Endangered Species Act, drew further attention to Ms. Palin’s positions on environmental issues. The governor, the Republican nominee for vice president, has come under scrutiny for her ambiguous statements about climate change and her administration’s failed effort earlier this year to prevent another species, the polar bear, from being listed as threatened. The state is suing the federal government over the polar bear listing.

As with the polar bear, Ms. Palin’s administration opposed the beluga listing in part because of its potential to restrict coastal and offshore oil and gas development. The beluga listing could also affect other projects, including the expansion of the Port of Anchorage and a proposed bridge over Knik Arm that would connect Anchorage to the Matanuska-Susitna Valley and Ms. Palin’s hometown, Wasilla.

“I am especially concerned,” the governor said in a written statement in August 2007, when her administration submitted documents to fight the listing, “that an unnecessary federal listing and designation of critical habitat would do serious long-term damage to the vibrant economy of the Cook Inlet area.”

On Friday, Ms. Palin said the state had had “serious concerns about the low population of belugas in Cook Inlet for many years,” but she called the listing “premature.” Her administration challenged the federal government’s data, as it did with the polar bear decision.

The commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, Denby S. Lloyd, said state data showed “an increase of more than 30 percent in the population, from 278 to 375,” since 2004. (The National Marine Fisheries Service said estimates had been as low as 278 in 2005.)

Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat seeking to unseat Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican, also criticized the listing, citing its potential to impede the port expansion and result in “hugely expensive new requirements to Anchorage’s wastewater treatment.” Also opposed were Senator Lisa Murkowski and Representative Don Young, both Republicans.

The Cook Inlet belugas are among five beluga populations in United States waters, all in Alaska, according to the fisheries agency.

Since 2000, the whales have been listed as depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. The fisheries agency made its decision Friday in response to a 2006 petition from environmental groups. An environmental lawyer in Anchorage, Peter Van Tuyn, said he was pleased and somewhat surprised that the agency had agreed that the whales were endangered.

“I have never seen this agency take any more action than it was forced to,” Mr. Van Tuyn said, “so going through to endangered is great. I think the population is so darn small that they had no choice.”

The fisheries agency said the recovery of the whales was “potentially hindered” by several factors, including mass strandings, in which large groups of whales can be trapped on land during rapid tide changes that affect Cook Inlet; general development; oil and gas exploration; and pollution. The agency said it would “identify habitat essential to the conservation of Cook Inlet belugas in a separate rule-making within a year.”



Oil & gas > amazing creatures. At least they arnt going be hunting them for scientific research...yet

Yay America!