Is Barcelona being spoilt by tourists?

VIDEO: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fast_track/9533632.stm

Around 10 million tourists are expected to visit Barcelona in the year 2012. The city has experienced a rapid growth in the tourism sector over the past few decades.
But not everyone is happy with the influence that these visitors are having on the city.
Rajan Datar travelled to the Catalan city to find out if mass tourism is spoiling Barcelona's charm and authenticity.

Toronto's competitive vintage scene

VIDEO: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/fast_track/9646907.stm

Toronto is littered with vintage clothing shops, brimming with unique finds, some dating back to the late 1800s.
Fast Track's Theopi Skarlatos dusted off her purse to find out why the Canadian city is attracting shoppers from all across the world.

Fluffy American pancakes

These pancakes are light and fluffy and great for a weekend brunch. Try adding a large handful of fresh blueberries to the batter before cooking.

Ingredients

• 135g/4¾oz plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 130ml/4½fl oz milk
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
• 2 tbsp melted butter (allowed to cool slightly) or olive oil, plus extra for cooking

To serve

• Maple syrup
• Butter

Preparation method

1. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt and caster sugar into a large bowl. In a separate bowl or jug, lightly whisk together the milk and egg, then whisk in the melted butter.
2. Pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture and, using a fork, beat until you have a smooth batter. Any lumps will soon disappear with a little mixing. Let the batter stand for a few minutes.
3. Heat a non-stick frying pan over a medium heat and add a knob of butter. When it's melted, add a ladle of batter (or two if your frying pan is big enough to cook two pancakes at the same time). It will seem very thick but this is how it should be. Wait until the top of the pancake begins to bubble, then turn it over and cook until both sides are golden brown and the pancake has risen to about 1cm (½in) thick.
4. Repeat until all the batter is used up. You can keep the pancakes warm in a low oven, but they taste best fresh out the pan.
5. Serve with lashings of real maple syrup and extra butter if you like.

Magazine

Why the diner is the ultimate symbol of America

With its chrome counter and cherry pie, the diner is an icon of American culture. What's the global appeal of this humble eatery, asks the BBC's Stephen Smith.

Five typical diner dishes

• Pancakes with sausage
• Eggs over-easy with home fries and toast
• Cheeseburger deluxe
• Turkey club
• Meatloaf dinner
• "It's comfort food, made from recipes like Mom used to make," says diner owner Otto Meyer

Sitting in a diner, on the inside looking outside.

This is a quintessential American experience. Add a booth, a Formica counter and a cup of joe - as diner patrons call their coffee.
Themed restaurants and burger chains from Mumbai to Manchester aim to replicate this chrome-flashed experience, and diner fare such as home fries and fluffy pancakes are now global fast food staples.
So why are these kerbside kitchens a landmark of US culture?
The first such establishment opened in 1872 in Providence, Rhode Island - a "night lunch wagon" to serve those who worked and played long after the restaurants had shut at 20:00.
Its mix of open-all-hours eating and cheap, homemade food proved a hit, and the formula has been repeated ever since.
Today the diner occupies a place in the American heartland. The closest British approximation is not a retro-chic replica diner where hip patrons eat gourmet burgers, but the local pub.
Just as dignitaries visiting the UK and Ireland are taken for a pint and a photo call, no US election campaign is complete without a stop at a diner to emphasise the candidate's everyman or everywoman credentials.

Common touch: The diner is now a compulsory stop on the campaign trail

"The thing about this democratic counter is that anyone can go in and sit down. It can be a professor, it can be a worker," says Richard Gutman, author of American Diner Then and Now.

Suzanne Vega in the eaterie that inspired Tom's Diner

"A friend of mine in Pennsylvania ate in a diner and he's in the middle of two guys. One is the chief of police and the other is just some character. The policeman looks over and says, 'Didn't I arrest you last year?' and the guy says, 'Yes you did - pass the ketchup.'"
Gutman has reclaimed 80 abandoned luncheonettes, and his memorabilia now occupies 4,000 sq ft (372 sq m) of a catering college near his home in Rhode Island.
"I was first interested in diners because of their architecture and their vernacular nature," he says.

“

If you ever get up this way, that cherry pie is worth a stop”

End Quote FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks

"They were built by Italian tile-setters and marble-workers, by German sheet metal workers, and French-Canadian carpenters. It was a melting pot of these different cultures to produce a building that is uniquely American."

His favourite working cafeteria, the Modern Diner in Rhode Island, is the first such establishment to be preserved for posterity on the National Register of Historic Places.
Its graceful lines had been cribbed from the railroad dining car. In fact, the all-American origins of the diner go back even further than that, to the chuck wagon which fed cowboys on the range.
From films such as Pulp Fiction and When Harry Met Sally, to books by John Updike, Jack Kerouac and Vladimir Nabokov, and the paintings of Norman Rockwell and Edward Hopper, the diner plays an important part.
"In the movies the diner is a special kind of space, a mythic place, a zone of escape," says film critic John Patterson.

Together alone: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks

Barry Levinson's Oscar-nominated film Diner was based on his experiences of growing up in the 1950s. "Say you were on a date and happened to ride by the diner - you'd see whose cars were there and you'd drop off your date and head inside because it would be a much more interesting night," Levinson recalls.
In cult TV series Twin Peaks, FBI agent Dale Cooper takes time out from investigating the murder of Laura Palmer with cherry pie and "damn fine coffee" at the Double R Diner.
While the diner acts as neutral territory for Al Pacino's cop to confront Robert De Niro's robber in Heat, in LA Confidential and A History of Violence it is used as the setting for brutal murders.
This contrast between the "placid, calm" diner and murder and mayhem makes the violence that much more shocking, says Patterson.

A cup of joe

• US colloquialism for coffee
• Origin unknown, says the OED
• First recorded use in Jack Smiley's 1941 book Hash House Lingo on the slang of roadside diners
• Other diner lingo included "dog soup" for water and "sea dust" for salt

For singer Suzanne Vega, who had a worldwide hit with Tom's Diner, a different juxtaposition appeals.

"The attraction of the diner is that it's a sort of a midway point between the street and home," says Vega, who wrote the song in her local diner, Tom's Restaurant in Manhattan.
With lyrics such as "I'm feeling someone watching me, there's a woman on the outside looking inside" she paints a picture of New Yorkers separated by the thickness of a diner window.

The retro diner formula is slavishly copied in the UK

This recalls artist Edward Hopper's most famous work, Nighthawks - four people in a 24-hour restaurant, all alone together over their nightcaps.
Paradoxically, the diner is about loneliness and isolation as well as down-home hospitality.
Its enigmatic charm has helped it to resist fierce competition from fast food chains. But fans of the wayside canteen can't be complacent. They would do well to reflect on the poignant question that you hear asked over the counter of every diner: "Do you want that to go?"
Additional reporting by Megan Lane

video: 10 Questions for Sting

10 Questions for Sting

Singer, activist and former Police man Sting is 60. He talks about sex, death, and his father's timing

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/video/player/0,32068,1268563585001_2099222,00.html#ixzz1e5t6q3VC

Family

Why Are We Depriving Our Teens of Sleep?

Later start times would improve school performance, so why can't we make the switch?

By Erika Christakis and Nicholas A. Christakis | November 18, 2011 |

Getty Images

Daylight is at a premium these days, and if your family is anything like ours, your teenagers are having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. “Delayed sleep phase” is what affects them: the maddening shift in circadian rhythms that causes adolescents to fall asleep and awake at ever-later hours. Adolescents need an average of 9.25 hours of sleep per night to support their developing brains, which are exploding at a rate akin to infancy. But we treat access to sleep as if it were an illegal drug, commonly requiring teens to start school at 7:00 a.m. or earlier.
(MORE: What Makes a School Great?)
This puts students at a serious disadvantage. Numerous studies show that later start times are associated with lower rates of obesity, fewer car accidents and lower drop-out rates, as well as improved academic performance. In one study, shifting the start time from 7:20 to 8:40 a.m. significantly reduced depression as well. (Indeed, one has to wonder why we offer standardized tests like the SAT at 8:00 am; average scores would probably rise 15 points if we just switched to offering tests at noon.) A few districts have shifted start times successfully, so why hasn’t the practice been adopted more widely despite overwhelming scientific evidence?
There are all sort of logistical excuses: delaying start times means parents might not be able to get to work as early; bus schedules would have to be shifted; a later school day would interfere with sports games and practices; teenagers would get home from school later, which would reduce family time.
But our inability to change start times is also illustrative of a larger pattern of neglecting the wellbeing and potential of our young people. We know, for example, that playtime and music increase cognitive development; yet school systems nationwide have dramatically slashed budgets for those critical activities. We know that children are sickened by junk food; yet we peddle unhealthy snacks in school cafeterias — and Congress just voted down proposed changes to the school lunch program that would require including fruits and green vegetables. (Currently, pizza sauce and French fries are deemed equivalent to other vegetables.) We know that American teachers are poorly paid and supervised compared to teachers in many other countries (including rich and poor ones); yet teacher-blaming is a favorite pastime.
(MORE: Has Empathy Become the New Scapegoat?)
On the sleep issue, like so many things related to children, adults often assume that there are impossible tradeoffs: if we “coddle” students by giving them adequate sleep, they might lose their competitive edge. Perhaps this is why, when an online petition was recently launched on the White House website requesting federal action to delay start times for teenagers, it didn’t meet the threshold of 5,000 signatures to merit an official response.
Making the switch would require collective action: we’d all have to make the switch together. Until the late 1960’s, the people of Sweden all drove on the left side of the road, like they do in England today. Then, one day, overnight, all the road signs in Sweden were changed, and everyone — together — started driving on the right side of the road. There were very few accidents and many benefits. Any major change in the social status quo is hard, but it is not impossible, and it often needs to be dramatic.

Erika Christakis, M.P.H, M.Ed., is an early childhood educator and Harvard College administrator. Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. The views expressed are their own.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2011/11/18/why-are-we-depriving-our-teens-of-sleep/#ixzz1e5rvKqws

(VIDEO) The Once and Future Way to Run

The Once and Future Way to Run

By David Frank

Jorg Badura for The New York Times

The Lost Secret of Running: Christopher McDougall demonstrates a lost running technique from the 1800s called the 100-Up.

By CHRISTOPHER McDOUGALL

Published: November 2, 2011

WATCH THE VIDEO: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/magazine/running-christopher-mcdougall.html?ref=nutrition

When you’re stalking barefoot runners, camouflage helps. “Some of them get kind of prancy when they notice you filming,” Peter Larson says. “They put on this notion of what they think barefoot running should be. It looks weird.” Larson, an evolutionary biologist at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire who has been on the barefoot beat for two years now, is also a stickler about his timing. “You don’t want to catch them too early in a run, when they’re cold, or too late, when they’re tired.”

Multimedia

 

If everything comes together just right, you’ll be exactly where Larson was one Sunday morning in September: peeking out from behind a tree on Governors Island in New York Harbor, his digital video camera nearly invisible on an ankle-high tripod, as the Second Annual New York City Barefoot Run got under way about a quarter-mile up the road. Hundreds of runners — men and women, young and old, athletic and not so much so, natives from 11 different countries — came pattering down the asphalt straight toward his viewfinder.
About half of them were actually barefoot. The rest wore Vibram FiveFingers — a rubber foot glove with no heel cushion or arch support — or Spartacus-style sandals, or other superlight “minimalist” running shoes. Larson surreptitiously recorded them all, wondering how many (if any) had what he was looking for: the lost secret of perfect running.
It’s what Alberto Salazar, for a while the world’s dominant marathoner and now the coach of some of America’s top distance runners, describes in mythical-questing terms as the “one best way” — not the fastest, necessarily, but the best: an injury-proof, evolution-tested way to place one foot on the ground and pick it up before the other comes down. Left, right, repeat; that’s all running really is, a movement so natural that babies learn it the first time they rise to their feet. Yet sometime between childhood and adulthood — and between the dawn of our species and today — most of us lose the knack.
We were once the greatest endurance runners on earth. We didn’t have fangs, claws, strength or speed, but the springiness of our legs and our unrivaled ability to cool our bodies by sweating rather than panting enabled humans to chase prey until it dropped from heat exhaustion. Some speculate that collaboration on such hunts led to language, then shared technology. Running arguably made us the masters of the world.
So how did one of our greatest strengths become such a liability? “The data suggests up to 79 percent of all runners are injured every year,” says Stephen Messier, the director of the J. B. Snow Biomechanics Laboratory at Wake Forest University. “What’s more, those figures have been consistent since the 1970s.” Messier is currently 11 months into a study for the U.S. Army and estimates that 40 percent of his 200 subjects will be hurt within a year. “It’s become a serious public health crisis.”
Nothing seems able to check it: not cross-training, not stretching, not $400 custom-molded orthotics, not even softer surfaces. And those special running shoes everyone thinks he needs? In 40 years, no study has ever shown that they do anything to reduce injuries. On the contrary, the U.S. Army’s Public Health Command concluded in a report in 2010, drawing on three large-scale studies of thousands of military personnel, that using shoes tailored to individual foot shapes had “little influence on injuries.”
Two years ago, in my book, “Born to Run,” I suggested we don’t need smarter shoes; we need smarter feet. I’d gone into Mexico’s Copper Canyon to learn from the Tarahumara Indians, who tackle 100-mile races well into their geriatric years. I was a broken-down, middle-aged, ex-runner when I arrived. Nine months later, I was transformed. After getting rid of my cushioned shoes and adopting the Tarahumaras’ whisper-soft stride, I was able to join them for a 50-mile race through the canyons. I haven’t lost a day of running to injury since.
“Barefoot-style” shoes are now a $1.7 billion industry. But simply putting something different on your feet doesn’t make you a gliding Tarahumara. The “one best way” isn’t about footwear. It’s about form. Learn to run gently, and you can wear anything. Fail to do so, and no shoe — or lack of shoe — will make a difference.

ALL ABOUT MARILYN: The Prince, the Showgirl, and the Stray Strap

The Prince, the Showgirl, and the Stray Strap

Laurence Cendrowicz/Weinstein Company

Michelle Williams and Eddie Redmayne in “My Week With Marilyn.”

By PAT RYAN

Published: November 11, 2011

IT all turned on a pin.

Enlarge This Image

Bettman/Corbis

Marilyn Monroe holding the actual strap in 1956.

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Warner Brothers Pictures

The telltale strap in scenes from “The Prince and the Showgirl,” starring Monroe and Laurence Olivier.

The scene was a news conference on Feb. 9, 1956, and about 150 “photographers, newsmen and news-hens in Manhattan’s sedate Plaza Hotel were scrambling to worm nearer to their common goal,” in Time magazine’s words.
Then Marilyn Monroe’s dress strap broke.
One news-hen, Judith Crist, The New York Herald Tribune’s film critic, remembers it well. “I was directly behind her, pushed against her by the largely male crush of reporters,” she said via e-mail. “ ‘There’s a ladies’ room to the right,’ I said, ‘I have a safety pin.’ ”
The news conference confirmed that Monroe and Laurence Olivier would star in a film version of “The Sleeping Prince,” Terence Rattigan’s play, which Olivier and Vivien Leigh, his wife, had originated onstage in London. Olivier would be the director; the title would become “The Prince and the Showgirl” to spotlight the twin star power.
The story of that difficult production is the subject of a Simon Curtis film, “My Week With Marilyn,” due later this month with Michelle Williams and Kenneth Branagh as Monroe and Olivier. It’s based on the memoirs of the filmmaker Colin Clark, who at 23 was third assistant director. But while “The Prince and the Showgirl” might have been filmed in Britain and might be concerned with coronations, curtsies and even Westminster Abbey, the story really begins in New York, site of that all-American wardrobe malfunction.
The Plaza news conference was Monroe’s first major appearance since she left Hollywood to study theater in New York and find more challenging roles. By 1956 she was seriously immersed in Method acting with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio and making plans to wed the playwright Arthur Miller. She was also serious about business. She negotiated a new contract with 20th Century Fox and started Marilyn Monroe Productions to engage in all forms of theatrical enterprise. “The Prince and the Showgirl” was the first (and only) independent film for the new company, of which she was president, and the vice president was the photographer Milton H. Greene. Her Fox contract had given her the freedom to develop her own projects. For “The Prince and the Showgirl” she negotiated a deal with the Warner Brothers chief Jack Warner and Olivier. Greene became the executive producer, Olivier the director and producer, Warner Brothers put up the money and served as distributor. “Last week there was persuasive evidence that Marilyn Monroe is a shrewd businesswoman,” Time reported in January, “apparent when Marilyn Monroe Productions bought a property to serve as a starring vehicle for its president, M. Monroe.”
She had pursued the deal by sidetracking the playwright Rattigan on his way to meet the director William Wyler in Hollywood. In a New York airport lounge on his stopover from London, Rattigan received a message from Monroe inviting him to join her for a cocktail. They met in a downtown bar where he could barely hear her whispery conversation, but he got her message: If Wyler wasn’t interested in the rights to his play, she was. According to Rattigan’s biographer, Michael Darlow, “She was prepared to write out a contract on the bar table there and then.” In Hollywood, Wyler made no definite offer; on the way back through New York, Rattigan accepted Monroe’s bid.
That February, two days before the Plaza conference, Rattigan, Olivier and Cecil Tennant, Olivier’s agent, met in Monroe’s Sutton Place apartment to drink Greene’s generous cocktails. They waited hours (reports vary on the exact length) for Monroe to appear, but when she did, they were in her thrall.
She was adorable, witty and incredible fun, Olivier wrote in “Confessions of an Actor.” Clearly, “I was going to fall most shatteringly in love with Marilyn.” (Once filming got under way, his feelings about Monroe’s desirability atrophied.) As they were about to leave, Monroe said in her “small voice”: “Just a minute. Shouldn’t somebody say something about an agreement?” By George, Olivier noted, “the girl was right.” And they arranged for a purely business meeting the next morning, then lunch at the “21” Club.
Marilyn Monroe was soon a daily news story. Rumors of her engagement to Miller brought phalanxes of photographers to her apartment. Then Miller was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. On June 20 Monroe — keeping her mink coat closely held against her cheek so she wouldn’t be recognized — accompanied him to Penn Station, where he boarded the train to Washington. Once he was there, as Miller wrote in his autobiography, “Timebends,” his lawyer told him that the hearing could be canceled if Monroe agreed to be photographed shaking hands with the chairman of the committee. The offer was declined.
The next day Miller explained to the committee that he needed to go to England to see about a production of “A View From the Bridge” and “to join the woman who will be my wife.” As headlines summarized: “Playwright Talks of Reds, Marilyn.” In New York, Monroe issued a statement confirming their plans and hoping for a “quiet wedding.” Just two weeks after getting married, the couple flew to London, where production was to begin on “The Prince and the Showgirl.”
The story centers on Miss Elsie Marina, an American chorus girl (she says things like “your grand ducal”) who falls in love with an uptight Balkan prince. For the film the play was expanded slightly to include a reference to “Un-Carpathian Activities” and a scene in which the Prince Regent of Carpathia visits the cast of “The Coconut Girl” and meets Elsie,” whose gown strap breaks as she bows, whereupon a pin is called for. Whether Monroe’s strap-tease at the Plaza had been premeditated, “engineered in advance” (as Curtis Gathje writes in “At the Plaza”) or just an obliging snap, the eye-popping effect was duplicated in the film.
“The Prince and the Showgirl,” however, had an eye-closing effect when it was released in June 1957. Bosley Crowther wrote in The New York Times that the plot was thin, that “Sir Laurence is kept pretty much a stuffed-shirt” and that “Miss Monroe mainly has to giggle, wiggle, breathe deeply and flirt.”
After seeing the final cut Monroe sent Warner her analysis: “American audiences are not as moved by stained-glass windows as the British are, and we threaten them with boredom.” But her performance was hailed in Europe; she won awards in France and Italy.
And after her fictional meeting with a royal, Monroe met a real head of state: Queen Elizabeth II. Both were 30 at the time of their formal introduction in London that October.
The showgirl curtsied, and nothing but cameras snapped.

The Smokers’ Surcharge

The Smokers’ Surcharge

Mike Fuentes for The New York Times

Jerome Allen, who works at Wal-Mart, gave up smoking when he learned he paid $40 more a month for health insurance.

By REED ABELSON

Published: November 16, 2011

 

More and more employers are demanding that workers who smoke, are overweight or have high cholesterol shoulder a greater share of their health care costs, a shift toward penalizing employees with unhealthy lifestyles rather than rewarding good habits.

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Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

Some corporations are charging employees penalties for smoking, being overweight or falling short of other health goals.

Policies that impose financial penalties on employees have doubled in the last two years to 19 percent of 248 major American employers recently surveyed. Next year, Towers Watson, the benefits consultant that conducted the survey, said the practice — among employers with at least 1,000 workers — was expected to double again.

In addition, another survey released on Wednesday by Mercer, which advises companies, showed that about a third of employers with 500 or more workers were trying to coax them into wellness programs by offering financial incentives, like discounts on their insurance. So far, companies including Home Depot, PepsiCo, Safeway, Lowe’s and General Mills have defended decisions to seek higher premiums from some workers, like Wal-Mart’s recent addition of a $2,000-a-year surcharge for some smokers. Many point to the higher health care costs associated with smoking or obesity. Some even describe the charges and discounts as a “more stick, less carrot” approach to get workers to take more responsibility for their well-being. No matter the characterizations, it means that smokers and others pay more than co-workers who meet a company’s health goals.
But some benefits specialists and health experts say programs billed as incentives for wellness, by offering discounted health insurance, can become punitive for people who suffer from health problems that are not completely under their control. Nicotine addiction, for example, may impede smokers from quitting, and severe obesity may not be easily overcome.
Earlier this year, the American Cancer Society and the American Heart Association were among groups that warned federal officials about giving companies too much latitude. They argued in a letter sent in March that the leeway afforded employers could provide “a back door” to policies that discriminate against unhealthy workers.
Kristin M. Madison, a professor of law and health sciences at Northeastern University in Boston, said, “People are definitely worried that programs will be used to drive away employees or potential employees who are unhealthy.”
Current regulations allow companies to require workers who fail to meet specific standards to pay up to 20 percent of their insurance costs. The federal health care law raises that amount to 30 percent in 2014 and, potentially, to as much as half the cost of a policy.
When Wal-Mart Stores, the nation’s largest employer, recently sought the higher payments from some smokers, its decision was considered unusual, according to benefits experts. The amount, reaching $2,000 more than for nonsmokers, was much higher than surcharges of a few hundred dollars a year imposed by other employers on their smoking workers.
And the only way for Wal-Mart employees to avoid the surcharges was to attest that their doctor said it would be medically inadvisable or impossible to quit smoking. Other employers accept enrollment in tobacco cessation programs as an automatic waiver for surcharges.
“This is another example of where it’s not trying to create healthier options for people,” said Dan Schlademan, director of Making Change at Walmart, a union-backed campaign that is sharply critical of the company’s benefits. “It looks a lot more like cost-shifting.”
Wal-Mart declined to make an official available for an interview and provided limited answers to questions through an e-mail response. “The increase in premiums in tobacco users is directly related to the fact that tobacco users generally consume about 25 percent more health care services than nontobacco users,” said Greg Rossiter, a company spokesman.
Wal-Mart requires an employee to have stopped smoking to qualify for lower premiums. The company, which has more than one million employees, started offering an antismoking program this year, and says more than 13,000 workers have enrolled.
Some labor experts contend that employers can charge workers higher fees only if they are tied to a broader wellness program, although federal rules do not define wellness programs.
Employers cannot discriminate against smokers by asking them to pay more for their insurance unless the surcharge is part of a broader effort to help them quit, said Karen L. Handorf, a lawyer who specializes in employee benefits for Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll in Washington.
Many programs that ask employees to meet certain health targets offer rewards in the form of lower premiums. At Indiana University Health, a large health system, employees who do not smoke and achieve a certain body mass index, or B.M.I., can receive up to $720 a year off the cost of their insurance. “It’s all about the results,” said Sheriee Ladd, a senior vice president in human resources at the system.
Initially the system also rewarded employees who met cholesterol and blood glucose goals, but after workers complained that those hurdles seemed punitive, Indiana shifted its emphasis a bit.
Workers who do not meet the weight targets can be eligible for lower premiums if a doctor indicates they have a medical condition that makes the goal unreasonable, Ms. Ladd said. “There are not many of those who come forward, but it’s available,” she said, adding that workers must be nonsmoking to get the other discount. About 65 percent of roughly 16,000 workers receive a discount.

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November 18, 2011, 11:43 am

So You Think You Can Be a Morning Person?

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Emiliano Ponzi

This column appears in the Nov. 20 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
Like most creatures on earth, humans come equipped with a circadian clock, a roughly 24-hour internal timer that keeps our sleep patterns in sync with our planet. At least until genetics, age and our personal habits get in the way. Even though the average adult needs eight hours of sleep per night, there are “shortsleepers,” who need far less, and morning people, who, research shows, often come from families of other morning people. Then there’s the rest of us, who rely on alarm clocks.
For those who fantasize about greeting the dawn, there is hope. Sleep experts say that with a little discipline (well, actually, a lot of discipline), most people can reset their circadian clocks. But it’s not as simple as forcing yourself to go to bed earlier (you can’t make a wide-awake brain sleep). It requires inducing a sort of jet lag without leaving your time zone. And sticking it out until your body clock resets itself. And then not resetting it again.
To start, move up your wake-up time by 20 minutes a day. If you regularly rise at 8 a.m., but really want to get moving at 6 a.m., set the alarm for 7:40 on Monday. The next day, set it for 7:20 and so on. Then, after you wake up, don’t linger in bed. Hit yourself with light. In theory, you’ll gradually get sleepy about 20 minutes earlier each night, and you can facilitate the transition by avoiding extra light exposure from computers or televisions as you near bedtime. (The light from a computer screen or an iPad has roughly the same effect as the sun.) “Light has a very privileged relationship with our brain,” says Dr. Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen, chief of sleep medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. While most sensory information is “processed” by the thalamus before being sent on its way, Ellenbogen says, light goes directly to the circadian system.
But recalibrating your inner clock requires more commitment — in the form of unwatched reruns or lost time with a spouse — than many people care to give. For some, it’s almost impossible. Very early risers and longtime night owls have a hard time ever changing, says David F. Dinges, chief of sleep and chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Night-shift workers also struggle, he says, because they don’t get the environmental and social cues that help adjust the circadian clock. The most important of these cues, called zeitgebers (German for “time givers”) is sunlight. But a zeitgeber could also be a scrambled-egg breakfast or children coming home from school in the afternoon.
Besides computer screens, the biggest saboteur for an aspiring morning person is the weekend. Staying up later on Friday or sleeping in on Saturday sends the brain an entirely new set of scheduling priorities. By Monday, a 6 a.m. alarm will feel like 4 a.m. “If the old phase was entrained for a long time,” Dinges says, “the biology has a kind of memory of this.” In other words, he says, “it takes self-discipline.”
Are you a real morning person? This version of a test commonly used by sleep experts can determine whether you are a lark, a night owl or somewhere in between. Click the box in front of your answer and we’ll add up your score.

KATE MIDDLETON IS PREGNANT!

KATE MIDDLETON IS PREGNANT!

Posted on Wednesday, November 16th, 2011
By Frank Lake

LONDON – Just five days into her marriage with Prince William – Kate Middleton announced that she is pregnant! Kate Middleton is pregnant with Prince William’s first child.   The announcement was made by Kate with her friend Victoria Beckham standing at her side. Beckham reportedly encouraged Kate to have a baby as soon as possible because “it is   one of the best things in the world.” Royal insiders believed that Kate would get pregnant within the first year of her marriage to Prince William, but everyone was surprised at how fast it happened. “Prince William and Princess Kate spent over fifteen hours in the Royal Wedding Suite,” said Royal butler, Thomas Hillstrom.  “They spent quite a lot of time ‘enjoying’ each other’s company.”

Many in England are now speculating that Kate was pregnant at the time of the wedding, but Royal gynecologist, Dr. Fritz Barnwell, said “Kate was not pregnant last Friday, the Queen had us test her to ensure that she was without child.  But today, at Prince William’s request, we performed advanced pregnancy tests on Kate and we can confirm, decidedly, that she is five days pregnant.”

Queen Elizabeth is thrilled to learn that she will have her first great-grandchild.  Prince Charles, however, is not so happy.  “What’s the point of having a baby, when the world is about to burn up.  We must all stop using fossil fuels, we must kill all the cows, and we must plant as many trees as possible,” Prince Charles said before getting onto his private jet in Los Angeles with twenty-five members of his staff. Princess Kate said that she and Prince William will continue to enjoy each other’s “company” in the Royal Wedding Suite, even though she has already made Her Majesty happy with her pregnancy.  “Prince William is a Royal stud. That’s all I can say.” The happy couple has not been seen for the last ten hours – but there’s been a lot of moaning coming from the Royal Suite.

(video) Hugh Jackman Faces Tough Critic In Daughter Ava

Hugh Jackman Faces Tough Critic In Daughter Ava

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WATCH THE VIDEO: http://celebritybabies.people.com/2011/11/18/hugh-jackman-faces-tough-critic-in-daughter-ava/
From his show-stopping 2009 Oscar performance to his latest stint on Broadway, Hugh Jackman knows how to win over a crowd.
However, the actor may have finally found his toughest critic to date: daughter Ava Eliot, 6.
“About a week ago [my kids] came on a Sunday matinee. I said, ‘Guys, look, you can be honest with me. Do you like the show?’” the Hugh Jackman: Back on Broadway star, 43, said during a Friday appearance on Anderson.
“My [11-year-old] son Oscar says, ‘I really like it.’ I was touched. My daughter said, ‘I find it a little boring.’”

But when it comes time for Jackman to venture into the audience to serenade wife Deborra-Lee, Ava is the first one on her feet — to run!
“My daughter, oh, my God. I sing a song for my wife in the show and sometimes I go out to the crowd,” he explains. “My daughter literally hides under the seat in front. She dies.”
Admitting he is “more the strict one” in the family’s household, it is the Real Steel star who tends to lay down the law. His approach to parenting comes after much research, a stack of books — and a few lessons from the SuperNanny.
“I’m one of those parents, I read every book. My son came out and apparently he hadn’t read any of them, so we were really all at sea,” Jackman reveals. “Then we found that show and, I tell you, our daughter has a much easier ride.”

2011-11-18 08:22:59

How Demi Moore Is Coping Post-Split

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Celebrity News November 18, 2011 AT 8:27AM By UsWeekly Staff

Credit: Jason Merritt/Getty Images

Sometimes divorce can be a new beginning. Demi Moore is hoping that's the case. A source tells Us Weekly that two weeks before the 49-year-old actress announced she and Ashton Kutcher were ending their marriage, Moore was optimistic about moving forward. VIDEO: What went wrong in Demi and Ashton's marriage? "She said [she] was going to change for the better," the source tells Us. "And [she said] that it was time for her to focus on herself again and her girls." (The Margin Call actress and ex-hubby Bruce Willis have three daughters: Rumer, 23, Scout, 20, and Tallulah, 17.) PHOTOS: Demi's shrinking figure When asked about Kutcher, 33, Moore said, "He has his thing," but told the source she "wanted to focus on her." The actress announced Thursday "with great sadness and a heavy heart" that she and Kutcher were ending their six-year marriage. The Two and a Half Men star infamously had a one-night stand with San Diego party girl Sara Leal, 22, in the wee hours of Sept. 24 of this year -- his and Moore's wedding anniversary. VIDEO: Sara Leal talks about her one-night stand with Ashton "As a woman, a mother and a wife there are certain values and vows that I hold sacred, and it is in this spirit that I have chosen to move forward with my life," Moore said in a statement.

Robert Wagner "Responsible" for Natalie Wood's Drowning, Boat Captain Says

Celebrity News November 18, 2011 AT 8:44AM By Rebecca Macatee

 

Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The drama isn't over for Natalie Wood.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department is reopening the 1981 drowning case of the actress, who was 43 at the time of her death.
PHOTOS: Stars gone too soon
Wood was boating off of Santa Catalina Island with her husband, Robert Wagner, Christopher Walken and others. She went overboard and died, and the incident was initially ruled an accident.
A law enforcement source told the Los Angeles Times they received a letter from an unidentified "third party" who said the boat's captain, Dennis Davern, had "new recollections" about the case.
Davern co-authored Goodbye Natalie, Goodbye Splendour, where he goes into detail about the drowning incident. The captain told the Today Show on Friday that Wood's husband Wagner, now 81, was "responsible" for the actress' death.
"We didn't take any steps to see if we could locate [Natalie]," Davern added. "I did lie on a report several years ago."
Wagner's publicist issued a statement, as excerpted by the L.A. Times, saying his family supported the L.A. County Sherriff's department and "trust they will evaluate whether any new information relating to the death of Natalie Wood Wagner is valid, and that it comes from a credible source or sources other than those simply trying to profit from the 30-year anniversary of her tragic death."

Rihanna: "I Don't Get Any Booty Calls"

Celebrity News November 18, 2011 AT 12:37PM By Zach Johnson

Credit: Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.

She once claimed to be a Good Girl Gone Bad, but Rihanna's love life seems pretty tame these days.
"I'm not dating at all...I'm not necessarily happy being single. It's not really that cool," the 23-year-old pop star said on Ellen Friday. "It sucks, but it is what it is."
"My personal life is pretty much non-existent," she added, "which is not good, not for the long run. Not for me, not for [my vagina]. It's not fun."
"That's why I stay on Twitter a lot, so I can [talk] with my fans," she explained. "Because I don't get any booty calls."
Since she's been busy promoting her new album Talk That Talk, Rihanna hasn't had much time to date. "I don't want to make it seem like my work is my everything. I do put a lot into my job. Most of my time, if not all of it," she said. "But it definitely affects my personal life."
Perhaps Rihanna is simply waiting for the right man to take the lead.
"I like men who are more aggressive but mysterious," she said. "I like them to be sure of themselves and know that they're the man. I'm the lady and the only way for us to make this work is for us to play our roles. You know, I can't really be the man for you. I don't want to have to be. I'm the man at work all the time."

October 12...

... in Brazil, Dia da Padroeira
                      and in the US, COLUMBUS DAY




Columbus Day 2011 falls on the second Monday in October — as it does each year. This day is remembered in the U.S.A to pay tribute to the 1st journey to America in 1492 by Christopher Columbus

What do people do?

Officially, the people of the USA are invited to celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of their country
with church services and other activities. In some towns and cities, special church services, parades and large events are held. Most celebrations are concentrated around the Italian-American community. The celebrations in New York and San Francisco are particularly noteworthy. In Hawaii Columbus Day is also known as Landing Day or Discoverer's Day.
Not all parts of the United States celebrate Columbus Day. It is not a public holiday in California, Nevada and Hawaii. Moreover, Native Americans’ Day is celebrated in South Dakota, while Indigenous People’s Day is celebrated in Berkeley, California.

Public life

Columbus day is a public holiday in many parts of the United states, but is not observed or is not a holiday in some states. Government offices and schools are generally closed, but businesses may be open. The flag of the United States is displayed on Government buildings.