Teens in ABC Documentary: Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss

Teens in Documentary Say Oral Sex 'Not That Big of a Deal' and Get Paid for Sexual Favors

By CLAIRE SHIPMAN and COLE KAZDIN

May 28, 2009 —

They don't give their names, but viewers can see their faces plainly and what these teens are saying is shocking parents.

"I ended up having sex with more than one person that night and then in the morning I was trying to get morning-after pills," one of the girls said. "I was, like, 14 at the time."

It's just one of dozens of stories from teenage girls in a new documentary by Canadian filmmaker Sharlene Azam that aims to shed light on the secret, extremely sexual lives of today's teens.

Have a question about teens and oral sex? Click here and Claire Shipman may answer online. Also check out Claire Shipman's blog by clicking here.

After four years researching for the documentary, Azam told "Good Morning America" that oral sex is as common as kissing for teens and that casual prostitution -- being paid at parties to strip, give sexual favors or have sex -- is far more commonplace than once believed.

"If you talk to teens [about oral sex] they'll tell you it's not a big deal," Azam said. "In fact, they don't consider it sex. They don't consider a lot of things sex."

Evidence of this casual attitude may be seen in the fact that more than half of all teens 15 to 19 years old have engaged in oral sex, according to a comprehensive 2005 study by the Centers for Disease Control's National Center for Health Statistics.

'Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss'

In the documentary, "Oral Sex Is the New Goodnight Kiss," girls as young as 11 years old talk about having sex, going to sex parties and -- in some extreme situations -- crossing into prostitution by exchanging sexual favors for money, clothes or even homework and then still arriving home in time for dinner with the family.

"Five minutes and I got $100," one girl said. "If I'm going to sleep with them, anyway, because they're good-looking, might as well get paid for it, right?"

Another girl talked about being offered $20 to take off her shirt or $100 to do a striptease on a table at a party.

The girls are almost always from good homes, but their parents are completely unaware, Azam said.

"The prettiest girls from the most successful families [are the most at risk]. We're not talking about marginalized girls," she said. "[Parents] don't want to know because they really don't know what to do. I mean, you might be prepared to learn that, at age 12, your daughter has had sex, but what are you supposed to do when your daughter has traded her virginity for $1,000 or a new bag?"

Sex Favors Traded for Relationship Stability

For some of the girls, the sexual favors are not about clothes or money, but used to keep a relationship together in a chillingly objective way.

"I think there's very much trading for relationship favors, almost like 'you need to do this [to] stay in this relationship,'" one girl told "Good Morning America."

"There's a lot of social pressure," said another. "Especially because of our age, a lot of girls want to be in a relationship and they're willing to do anything."

The girls laughingly admitted they never talk to their parents about their sexual activity.

"I mean, we're not looking for our future husbands," one girl said. "We're just looking for, maybe like ... at our age, especially, I think all of us, both sexes, we have a lot of urges, I guess, that need to be taken care of. So if we resort to a casual thing, no strings attached, it's perfectly fine."

Azam said she thinks the "no strings attached" romances could be a defense mechanism against a greater disappointment.

"A lot of girls are disappointed in love," she said. "And I think they believe they can hook up the way guys do and not care.

"But unfortunately, they do care."

Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

Twenty Bizarre Star Wars Ads

Whenever an epic film franchise hits the screens, it’s almost a given that commercials on everything from socks to cheese slices will be all over the place. Star Wars was, of course, no exception. Now, despite the fact that nearly every toy ad from the films was nutty in its own right, these twenty commercials are about everything but the playthings. Take a look at the bizarre and laugh.

Click here for the vids

Ghostbusters Video Games: Then and Now [Slideshow]

gamedaily.com — With Atari's new Ghostbusters game due in stores on June 16, we took a look at how much the spirit-filled movie games have changed (for the better, we hope) in this week's Retro Rewind.

Click here for the slideshow: Ghostbusters Video Games:

Bird uses body as dam to stop drainpipe soaking chicks

A bird used her body as a dam to stop overflowing drainpipe water from soaking her chicks.

Last Updated: 12:41PM BST 28 May 2009

The female thrush's body is semi-submerged in the water of the gutter as she holds back the flow, protecting the nest and her chicks Photo: SOLENT

The Mistle Thrush had built her nest on top of a downpipe, blocking the water's passage and causing the gutter to flood.

But desperate to protect her young, she puffed herself up to twice her size and sat in the drainpipe to stop the tide of rain water swamping the nest.

She was so occupied with her task that her mate was left to feed her and their young.

The images were captured by amateur wildlife photographer Dennis Bright at a house in Fareham, Hampshire.

Mr Bright said he was astounded by the female bird's behaviour.

"The nest was tucked away from the weather in the shade of the roof but it was so close to the downpipe the gutter flooded when it rained.

"It was only a matter of seconds before the pipe flooded, and water cascaded over the sides."

Mr Bright said he was amazed by the bird's ingenuity.

"She had to come up with a solution so she puffed herself up so she was twice the size of her mate and used her body as a cork to stop the water - it was absolutely amazing.

"She was very dedicated, sitting there even when the rain was hammering down. Then every half an hour she would get out, dry herself off and come back.

"The male was doing most of the work - feeding her and the chicks when she was sitting in the pipe. I feel so lucky to have witnessed something so rare and unique."

Hester Phillips, from the RSPB, said she had never seen such a situation.

"We've heard of them nesting in some unusual sites before, namely on the top of traffic light, but we've certainly not come across anything like this before.

"Birds can be amazingly hardy creatures, their endurance is incredible - especially when protecting their young."

3 Easy Ways To Restart Your Computer Over The Internet

By Ryan Dube

I am very obsessed with technology, and I like to push the limits of whatever technology currently exists. Personally, I think it’s very cool that there are lots of remote access tools out there, like the 7 free ones listed in Aibek’s article on Screen-Sharing and Remote Access applications or the remote mobile VNC app I wrote about recently that lets you access your computer with your mobile phone.

However, there are circumstances when connecting to a PC isn’t easy or even possible, yet you still need the ability to reboot your web server or file-sharing server at home because an application is locked up or the server isn’t responding. These days, doing a remote computer restart is fast and easy - and it’s now even possible to do so from any web browser or by using the popular micro-blogging tool known as Twitter.

1. How To Perform a Basic Remote Computer Restart - Shutdown.exe

For those of you who don’t already know how to remotely reboot a computer, the simplest approach if you’re sitting on the same network as the target PC is to make use of the Windows shutdown.exe tool. The Microsoft support page makes the command a bit more complicated than it really needs to be, because there are a number of “switches” available so that you can tailor the shutdown command.

Essentially, from a command prompt or an application, you can issue the shutdown command using the syntax: shutdown -r -f -m \remotecomputerIP -t 00

• -m \remotecomputerIP - substitute remotecomputerIP with either the network name or IP address of the computer
• -r forces a restart
• -f forces all running applications to close
• -t 00 tells the command to restart without any time delay (zero seconds)

Depending on your reason for remotely restarting, you’ll want to use these commands carefully. For example, if you just want to set up an application that does a regular reboot every two or three days, you may want to consider allowing a user who’s currently on the computer to cancel the reboot, or at least allow them the option to save whatever they’re currently working on.

However, for the purpose of this article, all we really want to do is remotely force a reboot if you’re away from home and you’re in a situation where your web server isn’t responding. To do this, the command above will work. The one drawback with the “shutdown.exe” approach is that you need to be sure you are connected to your remote computer as a user that has administrator privileges. When you prefer to keep tight security on your PC or server, this isn’t always easy to accomplish.

2. Remotely Reboot Your Computer Through a Web Browser with Shutter

One of the easiest ways to get around this security quagmire is by installing a free application created by Denis Kozlov called Shutter. The cool thing about Shutter is that once you’ve got it set up on your target PC, you can perform various functions on your computer through any web browser on the Internet. First, install Shutter to your target PC or server and the initial screen that comes up will look like this.

First of all, don’t worry about the settings on this screen because these are for when you use the application locally. However, your interest is in using the application as a sort of “web server” that gives you access to your PC from any browser. To set it up, click on the Options button and choose the “Web Interface” tab.

On this screen, select “Enable,” choose a “Listen IP” from the list and enter whatever port you’d like to use. Most folks just use port 80 since it’s default, however if you want added security you can use some obscure port. Finally, choose your Username and Password (required), click save and the application is set up - it’s as easy as that! The only last step is to make sure that if you’re using a router, you open up a “hole” so that you can connect to your Shutter server through the router.

To do this, just go to your router administration control panel (usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1, depending on your router’s brand) and configure port forwarding as shown here.

Just make sure the IP and port you defined in Shutter is defined here and that it’s enabled. Once you save, setup is complete. Now you can go to any web browser and send not only a “restart” command to your computer, but also a whole list of other commands.

To access the Shutter service, you can just type in the IP on your local network. In my case, I’d open a browser and type “192.168.1.103:1087″ to access the web interface. From an external Internet location, like a library or from work, I simply type in my external IP assigned by the ISP followed by the port, such as “65.xxx.xxx.122:1087″ and the web interface will come up after you log in with the ID and password you defined.

Editor’s note: If you don’t know what your external IP is, just visit whatismyip.com

As you can see, the Shutter web interface lets you perform a whole list of tasks on your remote computer, including muting the volume, turning off the monitor or running a specific program. The great thing about this approach is that all of these commands are issued from the application running on your target computer, so you don’t need to perform any special security configurations to remotely trigger these commands.

3. Remotely Reboot Your Computer Through Twitter With TweetMyPC

Easily one of the coolest applications I’ve seen in a very long time, TweetMyPC is an application you can install on your target PC, just like Shutter. The difference is that in this case, the application “listens” intently to all of the “tweet” messages that you send out from your Twitter account. Whenever you issue a command such as Shutdown, Restart, or Logoff - the computer does exactly as it’s told.

Just install the application, go into settings and enter your Twitter credentials.

Click “Save and Close,” and you’re done! No complicated security configuration, no tweaking your router’s internet settings - just install the app, insert your Twitter credentials and you’re golden. Finally, go into your Twitter account and just issue your command.

The convenience of this restart technique are the awesome possibilities. Just imagine, now you can pull out your cellphone and text a Twitter “Restart” update to reboot your computer. Any place where you can access your Twitter account, you can issue one of these three commands to your remote computer. The good news is that the author of this application is in the process of developing a Mac version.

Do you know of any other cool ways to remotely reboot your PC? Share your own tips in the comments section below.

Verizon Wireless to carry Palm Pre, Storm 2 "in about six months"

by Darren Murph

Think you'll have to wait until June 6th for all the Pre surprises to emerge? Think again. A breaking Reuters report has just dropped one of the biggest cellular bombshells of the year: Verizon Wireless, America's largest mobile operator, will soon be carrying Palm's Pre. Oh, that's not enough? No worries -- it'll also be selling a "new version of the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm," which is obviously the Storm 2 that we've been toying around with. The report makes clear that both phones would be cleared for shipment in around six months, which certainly jibes with whispers we've heard about Sprint's mighty short exclusivity period. The news came from the company's Lowell McAdam, the top executive for the venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone. To quote: "Over the next six months or so you will see devices like Palm Pre and a second generation Storm." First Sprint, then AT&T, and now Verizon? T-Mobile, where you at?

Is Google Wave the future of email?

Is Google Wave the future of email?

Google has unveiled its vision of the future of email.

Google Wave is a hybrid of email and instant messaging which opens inboxes to the real-time sharing of text, video, maps and even social network feeds. The aim is to make online communication more dynamic, more collaborative and more useful.

Google offered the first glimpse of its latest offering during the company's annual conference for software developers. Other internet users will not be able to surf Google Wave until later in the year.

By the time Wave rolls out for everyone, Google hopes independent programmers will have found new ways to use the service.

The company is counting on developers to figure out how to weave Wave into the popular services like Twitter, social networks like Facebook and existing e-mail services, according to Lars Rasmussen, a Google engineering manager.

A "wave" is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly-formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Wave's users invite others to join their "wave" about a particular topic so they can all follow the thread of messages. Everyone on the list can see individual messages as they are typed, letter by letter, in real-time.

Users can drag and drop photos and maps onto the wave to make them immediately visible to others. They can also edit documents or blogs together, potentially appealing to workers who are collaborating on a project. The feature is aimed at consumers and businesses.

You can even collaborate over a real-time game of chess.

Mr Rasmussen and his brother, Jens, helped build Google's online mapping service. The Rasmussens switched from that in 2006 to concentrate on building a service that would enable email and instant messaging to embrace the web's increasingly social nature. They contend email has barely changed since its invention during the 1960s.

They started with three basic questions:

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication — email versus chat, or conversations versus documents?

Could a single communications model span all or most of the systems in use on the web today, in one smooth continuum? How simple could we make it?

What if we tried designing a communications system that took advantage of computers' current abilities, rather than imitating non-electronic forms?

"We started out by saying to ourselves, `What might e-mail look like if it had been invented today?'" said Lars Rasmussen, who worked on Wave in Australia with his brother and just three other Google coders.

I think Wave has some very interesting possibilities and the point about the lack of dynamism in email exchanges is well made. But I don't much like the cluttered look of the user interface presented so far. But I suspect that will get better once the designers and the developers get going.

There are more details and the demo at Google I/0 available here but beware - the video is 80 minutes long.

SWEET Gamer Graffiti from All Over [Pics & Article]

By Joe Eskenazi

I TOLD you he was real!

Anyone of a certain age riding an F-Line trolley or bus on Market toward Van Ness can be forgiven for wondering if they've hallucinated, projecting a vestige of their childhood onto a passing wall. Many riders probably conclude that's the case; blink and it's gone.

But those walking past Market and Brady know it's true: There's a professional-grade graffiti mural composed of Donkey Kong Jr., Q-Bert, and, a treat for the careful onlooker (again, of a certain age) Ghost Monsters from Pac Man.

The San Francisco 1980s nostalgia wall was tagged on the videogame-centric Web site Pixelated Geek in a feature highlighting worldwide videogame-related graffiti. We are self-admitted San Francisco chauvinists, but we couldn't help but chuckle at the following, spotted in Halifax, Canada:
Here are some more good ones:

The San Francisco treat...

Melbourne, Australia

Ann Arbor, Michigan

C'est Mario et Luigi en Montreal!

Sources:
Halifax photo | http://bbroskeworth.com/
Montreal photo | via http://kotaku.com/
Melbourne photo | via http://pixelatedgeek.com/
San Francisco photos | Salim
Michigan photo | www.mlive.com

Nightmare on Elm St. Promises 'Tasteful' Pool Party Toplessness

Written by Kyle Buchanan

In what ways (other than casting Jackie Earle Haley as Freddy Krueger) is the new Nightmare on Elm St. different than its predecessors? According to a new casting notice, it’s all in its tasteful, sensitive depiction of bare breasts:

We are searching for attractive women, 18 to 27, who are comfortable working topless in a tasteful pool party scene. This scene is a non-speaking “special extra” role and will be filmed with the utmost respect. The location of this scene is in the suburbs (exact location TBD). This scene is a three-night commitment, June 1st, 2nd , & 3rd (night can start as early as in the afternoon and will shoot until sunup the next day) You must be available all three nights to be considered.

If you are interested please e-mail us a recent color photo (in swimwear) along with your height/weight/age/address and phone number to: noe.extras@gmail.com

This scene is being cast very quickly! Once we receive your photos we will contact you to come and meet with us.

Note: For your privacy and confidentiality please do not send us any nude photos.

Joan Philo casting has cast tasteful nude and partial nude scenes in the past (Mad Dog and Glory, Prison Break pilot) successfully and in good taste. You will be treated very well on set.”

Indeed: Upon doffing their tops, a respectful Freddy Krueger will now note, “You have a very third-wave feminist take on nudity and reclaiming its power,” before handing them a pair of gardening shears and adding, “Moments ago, I’d planned to use these to facilitate your death. Now, they are an instrument of all that oppresses you that you alone can wield.”

· Chicago ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ Casting Call! [Bloody Disgusting]

Emergency Water Purifier for Flood Conditions

by Jerry James Stone

photo by MNgilen

Flood Waters

For this year’s Aspen Design Challenge — which had the theme Designing Water’s Future — Umea Institute of Design student Ceren Bagatar proposed the following concept: a Rescue Bottle.

The bottle is designed to address not only the scarcity of fresh water the world is facing, but mostly the contaminated and hazardous water conditions due to flooding, hurricanes and tsunamis. Those disasters expose and contaminate surface water, ground water and drinking water supplies with a variety of elements: toxins, chemicals, septic and animal carcasses.

The Rescue Bottle filters contaminated water through a reverse osmosis membrane using the driving force of highly concentrated dioralyte solution. The bottle has a 500 ml capacity and has an interchangable mouthpiece for multi-user usage. The dioralyte solution supports 15 batches of drinking water.

Awesome concept, Ceren!

Photo courtesy of Yanko Design

Photo courtesy of Yanko Design

Photo courtesy of Yanko Design

Source [Yanko Design]

Simona Halep Sets Date To Have Breast Reduction

Total Pro Sports - Many of us may have thought her previous threat to undergo breast reduction surgery would not fall through. Maybe she would realize how much those breasts meant to her fans. Perhaps she would understand that this can be the move that makes or breaks her promising career.Well the surgery has been booked, and let me be the first to shed a tear during this sad moment in the world of sports.

Reports indicate that the 34DD-sized Romanian tennis star, Simona Halep, has booked herself into a private hospital for surgery in the fall. When asked about the decision, Simona stated the following: "This fall I'll have a breast reduction operation. The breasts make me uncomfortable when I play. It's the weight that troubles me - my ability to react quickly." [TheSun]

While Simona believes that the reduction will give her less weight to carry around, making it easier for her to win some points, what she may also need to realize is that the loss of her large boob size will likely result in the loss of many fans. Anna Kournikova didn't need to be the best tennis player to make millions of dollars from it.

Looks seem to go a lot further in woman's tennis these days, but that road may soon close itself for Simona Halep. The exact date of the surgery is still unknown, but we here at TPS will continue to keep you posted on that as well as the chosen size and any other information we receive regarding our favorite tennis player, Simona Halep.

Simona Halep Is A Busty 17 Year Old Tennis Star

Simona Halep Hits The Ball

Simona Halep Smashes The Ball

Simona Halep Is 17 Year Old Tennis Star

Simona Halep Awkward

Simona Halep Playing

Video: I'm So Sorry Mr. Policeman For Saying You Were Getting Bl*wj*bs in the Bathroom

By Chad Garrison

Okay, so that headline ain't exactly a direct quote. But it's more or less what Cassandra (a.k.a. Cassidy) Harris is saying in a video apology to St. Louis police officer Michael Haman.

Haman sued Harris last year after she filed a false report claiming Haman was acting naughty while working as a security guard at Johnny Gitto's restaurant. Haman's lawsuit is thought to be the first time a city cop has sued someone for filing a false complaint against an officer.

The case settled last week with Harris making this video apology to Haman.



Lesson learned from all this? I dunno. Perhaps it's this: Don't make false allegations against a cop unless you want to see a groveling video of yourself on YouTube.

Six things science has revealed about the female orgasm

by Michael Marshall

This week we report on the continuing debate about female ejaculation: is it real, and if so why does it happen?
See Everything you always wanted to know about female ejaculation (but were afraid to ask)
Ejaculation is just one of the aspects of female sexuality that are being demystified by research. In particular, the female orgasm, the subject of so many myths and folk beliefs, is gradually being understood.
Following some intense field research, here are some of the key facts about the female orgasm, as revealed by modern science.

The G spot is real

The G spot is a small region in the vagina that, if stimulated, can produce wildly intense orgasms – or so the popular claim goes. However, for decades, strong evidence for the region's existence was harder to find than the spot itself.
However, in 2008, an Italian research team found anatomical differences between women who could have G-spot orgasms and women who couldn't; apparently solving the mystery. The researchers have since begun teaching women with G spots how to put them to use.
See Ultrasound nails location of the elusive G spot

The brain switches off

It's folk wisdom that people can't think straight when they have sex on their minds, but when women have an orgasm most of their brains switch off.
A brain scanning study showed that many areas of women's brains were deactivated during orgasm, including those involved in emotion. The effect was less striking in men, but that may be because male orgasms are so short they are hard to detect in a brain scan.
See Orgasms: A real turn-off for women

Many women can't have orgasms

According to a 1999 survey, around 43 per cent of women in the US have some sort of problem with their sex lives (Journal of the American Medical Association, vol 281, page 537).
Female sexual dysfunction (FSD) is so common that the very idea that it is a medical disorder has come under attack. If nearly half the female population has a problem, say critics, does that mean it is our society that is dysfunctional?
Even so, efforts to develop drugs to treat it are underway. The impotence drug Viagra has had mixed results in women, but there are many other avenues being explored.
See What women want

Genes affect orgasm frequency

According to the first genetic study of the female orgasm, up to 45 per cent of the variation in women's ability to have them could be down to genes.
Many women never have orgasms during intercourse, and some also cannot have them through masturbation. Some of this may be down to external factors like upbringing, but the study showed the genetic factor is significant.
See Genes blamed for fickle female orgasm

Technology can help

Perhaps the most extreme solution is the so-called "orgasmatron"; an implant inserted into the spinal cord, which stimulates the user when switched on via a remote control.
Despite an initial struggle to find subjects for clinical testing, the device is now in development.
See Push my button

Some mystery remains

The female orgasm is a puzzle for evolutionary biologists. It is unclear why women should have orgasms at all, and it is particularly baffling that so many women should be unable to have orgasms during penetrative sex, but able to have them by masturbation.
According to researcher Elisabeth Lloyd, that implies that female orgasms are an evolutionary accident. Like male nipples, they persist simply because there is no good reason to get rid of them.
See The case of the female orgasm

Sam Raimi drags his star through hell: We had puppets that projectile-vomited maggots into her mouth

I first met Sam Raimi on the set of the first "Spider-Man" film and my memory of him was as an exceedingly polite filmmaker who asked if I might consider not mentioning that he was smoking cigarettes because he was worried that he might be setting a bad example for youngsters. I didn't have any idea that day in downtown Los Angeles that Raimi's superhero franchise would make Hollywood history by ushering in this modern era of massive and faithful comic-book adaptations. He's at work now on the fourth film in the franchise but his attention at the moment is on his return to horror with "Drag Me to Hell." Gina McIntyre, our horror specialist here at Hero Complex, caught up with the filmmaker for this cover story in today's Los Angeles Times Calendar section. -- G.B.

Sam Raimi does not seem like a gleeful sadist. During a recent morning interview in the sparsely populated Culver City production offices of "Spider-Man 4," he's exceedingly polite and far more modest than the average A-list director whose blockbuster comic book movie franchise has grossed almost $2.5 billion around the world.

But lurking beneath that gentle, Midwestern exterior is a man who, in the interest of ratcheting up the tension in his new horror movie, "Drag Me to Hell," opening Friday, dreamed up a gantlet of physically punishing torments for his star, Alison Lohman.

"So much happens to her," Raimi says, recounting the various tortures he inflicted on the actress. "She has pumps placed inside her body to spew blood, inside her nostril, when she's got this big bloody nose scene. I have dummies that were made with extra wide jaw openings . . . to suckle her face with slime oozing out of it. And then I had to bury her in about 800 pounds of mud. And then we had puppets that were designed just to projectile-vomit maggots inside her mouth."

"Sometimes I would look at Sam and say, 'Are you serious?' " Lohman says later. "It was kind of unbelievable at times. It almost didn't feel like making a movie, but I was on 'Survivor.' He didn't ever let up on me."

Somehow, Raimi's dark side hasn't done any injury to his reputation as a gentleman filmmaker. The 49-year-old Michigan native has managed to become one of Hollywood's most successful directors, building a reputation over the last 10 years as a technical virtuoso who believes in emphasizing story over spectacle -- even when that spectacle involves a costumed superhero facing off against, say, a menacing villain possessed by a mind-altering bodysuit from outer space.

His ability to craft smart studio tentpoles like the three "Spider-Man" films and quiet dramas such as 1998's Oscar-nominated "A Simple Plan" has made him a favorite among critics, who, judging from early reviews, seem to be equally enthralled with his latest offering, which played at the Cannes Film Festival last week.

Given the events that set the story in motion, "Drag Me to Hell" couldn't be more topical: Bank officer Christine (Lohman) attempts to impress her bottom-line-minded boss by refusing an old gypsy woman's request for a third extension on her mortgage. The gypsy (Lorna Raver) takes her revenge in the form of a curse designed to put a serious damper on Christine's afterlife. The plot taps into real-world fears over the collapse of the world's financial markets, soaring unemployment and the burst of the housing bubble, but the timing is sheer accident. Raimi and his brother Ivan adapted "Drag Me to Hell" from an unpublished short story that they had written together years ago...

READ THE REST

-- Gina McIntyre

Google Holodeck: StreetView In 360 Degrees

by Danny Sullivan

Google StreetView images are pretty cool, in how you can virtually spin around and see what’s on a street in all directions. But far cooler is a Google StreetView “Holodeck” simulator that Google has at its Mountain View campus. Climb into this, and you get StreetView scenes animated, projected on screens all around you, as if you were inside the camera itself.

I first saw Holodeck back in October, and it’s been kept pretty quiet within the company since. But now Google has brought it out as part of its Google I/O conference today.

Think of it as CircleVision For Streetview, CircleVision being the popular Disneyland and Disneyworld rides where cameras were used to film in 360 degrees. Images were then projected on the walls all around the audience and could produce such a sense of montion that people used handrails to keep themselves stable at times.

The StreetView simulator is designed for an audience of one. It’s a small circular room with a chair in the middle, with images from the Mountain View area constantly being projected. Grab a seat, and you can watch yourself drive virtually through the area, in all directions.

It’s pretty cool. Google’s well known for the many toys and attractions it has at the Googleplex, ranging from the Google Whiteboard Master Plan to the dinosaurs on campus to a replica of SpaceShipOne. Interactively speaking, there’s a live display of search queries shown in various lobbies and a model of the world showing in light where searches are happening. But this is one of the coolest new attractions I’ve seen lately.

Here are some more pictures:

And the ceiling as a manhole cover:

'Slumdog' Director Buys New Homes For Kid Stars

Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle has answered an S.O.S. from two of the Oscar winning film’s young stars by buying them new homes RadarOnline.com has learned.

Both Rubina Ali, 9, and Azharuddin Ismali, 10, were reduced to tears after bulldozers flattened their shanty-like homes in Mumbai, India, to make way for a railway station.

British film-maker Boyle flew-out to India amid claims that that he had abandoned the young stars despite the fact that a trust had been set-up for them.

Boyle, 53, said: “I have seen their homes being knocked down and that upset me a great deal.

“They have never been far from my thoughts – it is only now that the trust has been able to put in place a workable plan.”

A flat has been purchased for Ismali who played young Salim, and a second home has been bought for Ali, who was Salim’s friend Latika in the movie.

Slumdog Millionaire - which cost only $14 million to make – has amassed $326 million in box office returns and scooped eight Oscars.

Despite these huge takings, both Ali and Ismali still lived in poverty with their families when they returned to India. She was paid $710 for taking part in the film while he received $2414 – both kids receive $40 per month for books and food as part of the Jai Ho trust agreement and producers also secured places for the pair at local schools.

Despite widespread criticism that the studio should have given a lot more, a spokesperson for Fox Searchlight said they were “proud” of the treatment given to the pair.

“For 30 days work they were paid three times the annual salary,” he said.

Boyle and fellow producer Christian Colson donated a further $745,000 to a charity that aims to improve the living conditions of the street children of Mumbai, while Slumdog star Anil Kapoor – who played the game show host – donated his entire salary from the movie to help Mumbai's impoverished youth. (Photo: Fame Pictures)

The contact lens that can help the blind see again

By Fiona Macrae

The groundbreaking operation brought significant improvements in vision within a matter of weeks.

The procedure uses a person's own cells to heal damage to the cornea - the transparent outermost layer of the eye.

It is carried out under local anaesthetic, with patients returning home within two hours of surgery, removing the need for expensive hospital stays.

The three patients treated so far had very poor vision caused by corneal disease - the fourth most common form of blindness, affecting around 10million worldwide.

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How it works: The treatment can restore eye sight using steam cells

It is caused by genetics, surgery, burns, infection or chemotherapy, and treatments usually include grafts and transplants and drugs such as steroids.

The team from the University of New South Wales in Sydney harnessed the power of stem cells - 'master cells' with the ability to turn into other cell types.

They removed small samples of stem cells from the eyes of two men and a woman with corneal disease and grew them on a contact lens.

The stem cell-coated contacted lenses were then put into the patients' eyes for around three weeks.

During that time, the stem cells moved off the lenses and began to heal the damaged corneas, the journal Transplantation reports.

Using a person's own cells removes any need for donors and means the transplant will not be rejected.

Researcher Dr Nick Di Girolamo said: 'The procedure is totally simple and cheap.

'Unlike other techniques, it requires no foreign human or animal products, only the patient’s own serum, and is completely non-invasive.

'There's no suturing, there is no major operation. You don’t need any fancy equipment.'

The contact lenses used in the operation are already widely used after eye surgery.

The researchers hope the technique can be adapted for other parts of the eye, such as the retina, and even elsewhere in the body.

Damage to retinal blood vessels is behind a range of conditions that can lead to loss of sight including many cases of age-related macular degeneration, or AMD, the most common cause of blindness in the elderly.

Dr Di Girolamo said: 'If we can do this procedure in the eye, I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in other major organs such as the skin, which behaves in a very similar way to the cornea.'

Dr Kuldip Sidhu, a stem cell expert at the same university, said the 'clever strategy' was a step towards using stem cells to treat debilitating human diseases.

Professor Loane Skene, of the University of Melbourne, said: 'Provided that patients are told that the new procedure is experimental and possible risks are not yet known, and they then consent to have it, this use of a patient's stem cells is no more ethically contentious than a skin transplant.'

In Britain, Sonal Rughani, of the RNIB, said: 'This small-scale study reveals promising outcomes with the use of contact lenses. We await further developments of this innovative nature.'

The work is one of several studies being carried out around the world which aim to use stem cells to cure blindness.

A new bicycle reinvents the wheel, with a pentagon and triangle

Guan’s bicycle isn’t the first to exploit these shapes — they have been used by urban planners as manholes

Marcus du Sautoy

It seems a bit crazy to reinvent the wheel, but that is precisely what the Chinese inventor Guan Baihua has done. Although his new set of wheels have a little twist to them. The 50-year-old military officer from Qingdao has devised a rather curious new bicycle. Instead of circular wheels the bike has a pentagonal wheel at the front and a triangular wheel at the back.

He believes that people will be drawn to the bike because it requires more work to cycle and therefore will provide more exercise for the cyclist than a conventional bike.

Those who have tried it have been surprised at how smooth the ride is.

The man Guan Baihua shows his self-made muti-angle-wheel bicycle on May 6, 2009 in Qingdao of Shandong Province, China. Guan Baihua spent 18 months to complete this strange bicycle.

That is because the edges of the pentagonal and triangular wheels are not perfectly straight. The sides of the shapes bulge outwards in such a way that the wheels share an important feature with the circle: the diameter across the shapes is the same which ever way that you measure it.

This is clear for the circle, which is defined as the shape with a fixed radius from the centre. But the wheels of Guan’s bike also have the property that if you take two parallel lines that touch either side of the shape then the distance between the lines is the same regardless of how you turn the shape between the two lines. The shape will never suddenly extend beyond the confines of these lines.

This means that as I cycle, although the wheel itself does not have a fixed centre of rotation, the saddle of the bike doesn’t bob up and down as you might expect but stays a fixed distance from the ground. To get the exact contours for the shapes, the curved edges are drawn so that they are part of a circle centred on the vertex opposite the edge. They are called Reuleaux polygons after the 19th-century German engineer Franz Reuleaux, who did pioneering work on machines that turn one type of motion into another.

Guan’s bicycle isn’t the first to exploit these shapes — they have found themselves being exploited by urban planners. They have been used as manholes in the street. The most common shape for a manhole is of course the circle. But why do they tend to be circular as opposed to square shaped?

The reason is that the square has the annoying property that the diameter from one corner to the other is bigger than the diameter halfway along an edge. This means that if you put the square manhole on its side, it is very easy to drop the square cover down the manhole.

With a circular hole this is impossible. There is no way a worker can accidentally drop the cover through a circular hole in the road. Some cities, bored with the circular manhole, have exploited the same shapes that are behind the wheels of the Chinese bike.

For example one can find on the streets of San Francisco triangular manholes with the property that the diameter is constant. Like the circular manholes, a worker need not worry about these triangular covers dropping through the manholes.

But as well as walking over these shapes in the road, most of us in the UK walk around every day with these shapes in our pockets. Both the British 50p piece and the 20p piece are coins with seven sides. But if you examine the coins carefully you’ll see that, as with wheels of the Chinese bicycle, the sides are not perfectly straight.

They are designed in such a way that they too have a constant width across the coin. This means that whatever way you drop a 50 pence piece into a slot machine, the mechanism can measure the diameter and recognise the validity of the coin.

Although the 20p and 50p pieces have been a great success it doesn’t look likely that Guan’s Flintstone-esque bike will be going into mass production in the near future.

But Guan is not put off by the lukewarm response to his first invention. It is rumoured that he is now working on ideas for a new social networking site. Twitter and Facebook had better watch out.

To see a picture of the bike: www.tinyurl.com/chinabike

For more on the shapes: www.tinyurl.com/concurves

Conundrum
If you make a drill piece in the shape of a Reuleaux triangle, what shape hole will it drill?

Answer
A Square. Well, almost. The corners of the square are slightly rounded.Bi

Happy Van Damme Friday!!! Sport that Mullet!!!

7-Year-Old Girl Drives Car To Get Help For Her Dad

New Mexico authorities say a 7-year-old girl drove her father's Jeep in an attempt to get help after he was ejected in a rollover crash east of Clovis.

Elizabeth Kazza got about three miles from the crash site when a motorist spotted her trying to drive the wrecked Jeep and stopped to help, the Albuquerque Journal reported Wednesday.

"It's remarkable anybody could drive after something like that," State Police Capt. Jimmy Glascock said.

Authorities say the girl's father, Guillermo Montes, 40, was speeding and lost control of his Jeep Cherokee going into a turn Saturday night.

Elizabeth and her 3-year-old brother were unrestrained in the Jeep at the time of the crash, Glascock said.

They told investigators Montes had driven to Clovis to buy beer and was drinking while heading back to his home in Bovina.

The children were treated for minor bumps and bruises. Montes was pronounced dead at the scene.

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