Alcohol makes males more amorous and less sexually inhibited.

Alcohol makes men horny:

RESEARCHERS have confirmed what many of us already know - alcohol makes males more amorous and less sexually inhibited.

The research, led by Penn State University neuroscientist Dr Kyung-An Han and published in the journal PLoS ONE, looked at the effects of chronic alcohol exposure on fruit flies.

The fruit flies were given a daily dose of ethanol to closely mimic the drinking habits of alcoholics and chronic alcohol abusers.They found that male fruit flies, which typically court females, also actively courted males.

Dr Han and her students also used transgenic (genetically modified) flies whose levels of the neurotransmitter dopamine could be turned off by changing the temperature to 32 degrees Celsius.

"Without a temperature change, the transgenic males showed conspicuous intermale courtship under the influence of ethanol," Dr Han said.

"However, they exhibited negligible intermale courtship when we changed the temperature to block the transmission of dopamine neurons in the brain. This result suggests that dopamine is a key mediator of ethanol-induced intermale courtship."

The researchers also found that repeated exposure to ethanol causes male flies to engage in more intermale courtship, a phenomenon known as "behavioural sensitisation".

"If a behaviour like alcohol consumption becomes more pleasurable the more often you do it, you are more likely to keep doing it," Dr Han explained.

Middle-aged and old male flies were also found to have a higher propensity for uninhibited inter-male courtship compared to fully mature male flies.

"As flies get older, their cognitive capacities decline, making them more susceptible to the negative effect of ethanol on cognition," Dr Han said.

She said the research into the physiological effects of alcohol was important for further research into the physiological effects of alcohol addiction.

"We are now just beginning to discover the ... mechanisms underlying neural changes in the brain that result from the chronic use of alcohol," Dr Han said..

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What Is Alcohol?
Alcohol is a depressant drug. It slows the brain's activities and the activity of the spinal cord. Alcohol isn't always used in a bad way though. People have been known to use alcoholic beverages throughout history. It is used with meals, at social gatherings, in religious ceremonies, to celebrate, for medical purposes, and on ceremonial occasions.

Alcohol comes in different varieties. Beer and ale (4-7% alcohol), wine and champagne (9-14%), and hard liquor (40-50%) are the most common kinds of alcohol. Alcohol affects the brain so it has the potential to be abused.

Alcohol rapidly enters the bloodstream and circulates to various parts of the body in a few minutes. Therefore, to avoid intoxication, the average 150 pound person could consume one drink in one and a half hours with no accumulation of alcohol in the blood. Drinking faster than this would result in intoxication.

Driving is a big problem when alcohol is involved. Even small amounts of alcohol can reduce coordination, slow reflexes, and lead to overconfidence. Alcohol is a factor in half of all highway fatalities and one-third of all highway injuries. There are still many other consequences of drinking. Falls, sickness, fires, suicide, and lost productivity are other examples. Today in the U.S., there are one hundred million drinkers and ten million are chronic abusers of alcohol.

Why do people drink? People drink for positive and negative reasons. Some positive reasons are to compliment meals, at social outings, and to relax with friends and family. Most of the time this kind of drinking is NOT abused. Negative reasons for drinking are to escape from family problems, as a "cure" for fears, to block out painful feelings, and as a substitute for close relationships. Alcohol can leave a sense of guilt which may lead to more drinking. This kind of drinking is very often abused. People drink to take their problems away, but, drinking doesn't solve anything- it just makes matters worse. Alcohol can be harmless and enjoyable, if it is used responsibly.

Everyone who drinks or is thinking about drinking should know alcohol is a drug that is potentially addicting. Every drinker should ask himself if alcohol is doing more good than harm, or more harm than good. And if you choose not to drink, you have plenty of company.

Technorati : alcohol, amorous, inhibited., sexually

Fashion trend

If You Could Start & Stop a Trend

1. Hoop earings: MUST GO, they look really cheap and make you look like a pirate.

2. Peasant Tops: If you wear a bra, I suggest most not-likely to wear a peasant top.

3. Make-Up on young kids: My parents have a theory that wearing make-up all the time makes you look nice, but when you take off the make-up you look terrible and most fashionably don't look as good as the other kids/girls wearing make-up!!!!!

Trend to start:

1. Baseball T-shirts: are really cool and look good on everyone.

2. Denim Shoes: Look awesome stylish and cool with any out fit.

3. Denim Jackets: AS some people like I say there's nothing like a good 'ol denim jacket and it goes with anything.

Does any other ballet company in the world come even close to New York City Ballet for the sheer quantity of repertory it presents? The first four weeks of its winter season introduce eight full programs, three of them starting this coming week. Balletgoers in most other cities of the world, wildly grateful if their local companies can open more than four programs in a single month, have long been justly envious.

New York City Ballet Additional articles and information about the company. The season’s second program, a quadruple bill called “Dance for Joy,” which opened on Thursday, is also a reminder that City Ballet also leads the world in sheer quality of repertory, even on nights such as this, with nothing by its founding master, George Balanchine. All the ballets were originally made for City Ballet too. Two of them are by Jerome Robbins, whose ability to create hit ballets sometimes rivaled Balanchine’s during their long and fruitful coexistence as choreographers for this ballet company; one bonne bouche is by Peter Martins, its balletmaster in chief; another is by its resident choreographer, Christopher Wheeldon.

Robbins’s “Concert” has often struck me as the most sheerly funny of all ballets; his “Brandenburg” is a masterly demonstration of just how finely he could create musically revealing, friendly dances. Mr. Martins’s “Zakouski,” an extended pas de deux planned as a selection of Russian hors d’oeuvres, exhibits charm of a practiced kind. And Mr. Wheeldon’s new company, Morphoses, would have been off to an altogether stronger start last fall if it had included anything like “Carousel” in its opening programs. Though the title “Dance for Joy” strikes the mark only intermittently, Thursday was a happy, if lightweight, evening.

The music was an excellent anthology (plenty of weight here), admirably conducted by Maurice Kaplow: Bach (one complete concerto and three movements from others) in “Brandenburg”; Rodgers (arranged and orchestrated by William David Brohn) in “Carousel”; Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky (played by Arturo Delmoni, on violin, and Richard Moredock, on piano) in “Zakouski”; and Chopin excerpts (led from the piano by Nancy McDill) in “The Concert.” City Ballet orchestra players rose with distinction to the interweaving solo opportunities of Bach’s “Brandenburg” writing.

So did the dancers onstage, winningly led by Ashley Bouder with Gonzalo Garcia, and Maria Kowroski with Philip Neal. “Brandenburg” (1997), one of the last ballets Robbins ever choreographed, abounds in stylistic and musical felicities. You could send any aspiring choreographer to study his dance account, for four couples, of the Menuetto-Polacca from the first Brandenburg concerto. Its opening phrases show men and women alternating in a hopping phrase that highlights the minuet rhythm; all the couples are given separate chances to shine in the music’s brighter outbursts; and there are fine touches of both symmetry and differentiation throughout.

Robbins’s choreography supplies a consistently attractive, occasionally too artful view of not-quite-adult grace and freshness. His flair for naïveté, spontaneity, charm and comedy often brings these things to the surface in Bach’s musical writing, revealingly.

There are also passages of darker eloquence, as in the Andante pas de deux for Ms. Kowroski and Mr. Neal, where these dancers often do not touch, even when she is following his lead, and where the changing distance between them (sometimes they travel along quite separate paths) always seems true to the score. It seems unfair, since it’s good to see how gracefully Robbins was working in the final phase of his creative life, to observe that he couldn’t resist choreographing more “Brandenburg” material than he knew how to shape into a single satisfying structure. The ballet leaves no strong aftertaste.

The dance world in general, and City Ballet in particular, is approaching the 10th anniversary of Robbins’s death (July 29). In its spring season City Ballet will present no fewer than 30 of his works. “Dance for Joy” raises this question: How did the inspired cartoon comedian of “The Concert” (1956) develop into the refined classical stylist of “Brandenburg”? And was this, in Robbins’s case, diminution rather than growth? Certainly in early works like “The Concert,” Robbins was less like other choreographers than he later chose to become. This is a true classic, full of jokes that you find yourself quoting in everyday life (different people raising and lowering their umbrellas in simultaneous reaction to one another rather than to the weather; the body slump when you see someone else wearing precisely the same carefully selected attire).

“The Concert” has been fresher than on Thursday, though. Perhaps many in the audience did not often laugh out loud because they, like myself, knew when the jokes were coming. But it is also true that at several moments performers were elaborating on old comic business that would have worked better with less contrivance.

A different lack of freshness was the problem with Mr. Martins’s “Zakouski.” This 1992 pas de deux is principally a vehicle for Nikolaj Hübbe, whose farewell to this company (on Feb. 10) looms all too soon, after which he will depart to take up new duties as artistic director of the Royal Danish Ballet, his parent company.

New York City Ballet Additional articles and information about the company. “Zakouski” showcases many of the virtues for which Mr. Hübbe, a handsome dancer and an exemplary stylist, is rightly loved. His rich-toned elegance, virile allure and imaginative absorption are all in evidence here. This pas de deux, however, is a mere potpourri of familiar ballet effects. And Mr. Hübbe’s partner, Yvonne Borree, gives so sketchy, saccharine and wispy an account of its other role that you just can’t believe in it.

The “joy” of the program’s title was best felt in parts of its darkest ballet, Mr. Wheeldon’s “Carousel,” in particular in Tiler Peck’s performance as its heroine. Ms. Peck, returning to the stage after an injury, was a bright, hard technician who last spring revealed an unsuspected emotional intensity as Juliet in Mr. Martins’s “Romeo and Juliet.” In “Carousel,” building on that, she gives the program’s most affecting performance. Her partner, Damian Woetzel, already ideal as her rough-diamond partner, becomes doubly appealing, as seen through the burning intensity of Ms. Peck’s eyes. The fullness of her response to him becomes the subject of the ballet. Just a small, circling motion of her upper body as she faces him becomes a powerful psychological gesture, like a ripple spreading on a pool.

No single moment of Mr. Wheeldon’s “Carousel” is especially original, and parts of his ensemble choreography are too formulaic. (How many peeling diagonals can we take?) But here he creates a world, amid which the most pressingly real factor is Ms. Peck’s account of the heroine’s isolation and her ardent need for this male loner. I know no other Wheeldon work whose heroine has so vivid an inner life.

New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet (often referred to as just City Ballet or by its intials, NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1933 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein with musical director Leon Barzin. The company grew from an earlier troupe known as the Ballet Society.

Old MacDonald Had a Quail

SHORT of hayrides from the curb to the coat check, there’s not a whole lot in the way of farmhouse allusions that the new restaurant Irving Mill doesn’t try.

I spotted two metal watering cans before I reached the host station, one of them perched near an antique bin brimming with pomegranates. The restaurant’s floors, wainscoting and tables bring to mind barn wood.

“What did this used to be?” asked one of my companions, taking in the straw-colored space near Union Square that Irving Mill inhabits.

“A stable?” cracked another.

The quip shortchanges the polish of the place, which is gussied up with enormous floral arrangements — in muted colors, of course — and bracketed on opposite walls by semicircular booths. Servers wear crisp white shirts under their suspenders. They’re the kind of farmhands you find only below 23rd Street.

And Irving Mill, named for its proximity to Irving Place, is the kind of restaurant you find more and more of: an ode to the seasons and the simple life, built, paradoxically, around elaborate décor and dishes that take nature’s bounty and tweak it a bunch.

It’s also a self-conscious heir to Gramercy Tavern, which long ago helped to usher in the whole rustically urbane (or is it urbanely rustic?) genre. Irving Mill’s chef, John Schaefer, spent more than a decade cooking there, and Irving Mill’s layout — a casual front section with a prominent bar, a quieter back area with more elbowroom between tables — recalls Gramercy’s.

If only it performed at the same level. It’s a pleasant restaurant, make no mistake: comfortable and good-natured, with a selection of about 20 wines by the glass that represent real diversity and reflect real thought, not just the default presentation of a pinot grigio here, a pinot noir there. The equally thoughtful list of bottles has many tempting selections in the $40 to $70 range.

In fact prices in general aren’t as steep at Irving Mill as at many restaurants with lesser standards or ambitions. No dinner entree is over $28. A four-course tasting menu, including dessert, is $54.

And at Irving Mill’s finest moments, with its finest dishes, it’s decidedly more than pleasant. The grilled quail at the center of one appetizer quickly silenced a quail naysayer at my table, who foresaw a bony, puny bird. This one had plenty of juicy meat, placed over stone-ground grits flavored with Cheddar cheese and dusted with smoked paprika.

If you follow that dish with a main course of braised rabbit — served here with pork sausage, salty black olives, roasted shallots and a potato purée — you’re bound for a tremendously satisfying meal. With the rabbit, as with the quail, Mr. Schaefer takes a meat that other kitchens sometimes render stringy and gets tender results.

Stringy, however, aptly describes the short ribs I tried on a different night. They reminded me of pro forma pot roast, an association underscored by their unimaginative adornment with carrots and a horseradish cream.

Inconsistency dogs Irving Mill, and is perhaps best exemplified by the change in the cauliflower ravioli from one of my visits to the next. The first time out, the gently firm pasta was cooked just as it should have been, and the cauliflower had real presence. The second time, the pasta was limp and the cauliflower a washout, beyond the salvage efforts of the hazelnuts and the capers (too few and too retiring) in the mix.

The dinner menu is divided into about 10 appetizers, 8 entrees and 4 sides, including brussels sprouts, the rags-to-riches vegetable story of recent years. At Irving Mill they’re unusually tiny and unusually terrific.

Apart from the quail and the ravioli (on their good night), I couldn’t find an appetizer to get too excited about. I enjoyed chicken liver crostini, but it’s rare that I don’t. Octopus had vaulted past tender to mushy, and a soup made with roasted garlic, white beans, sheep’s milk ricotta and rosemary somehow managed to be boring, not to mention sludgy. This is a menu that reads more flavorful than it tastes.

How, for example, did the tangle of wild mushrooms, butternut squash and orecchiette that encircled lamb shoulder — which was braised, like the short ribs and rabbit — manage to make such a weak impression? At least the lamb itself was superb.

So were the sea scallops on a tasting menu, and the hen-of-the-woods mushrooms with them had exactly the nutty, earthy charge they were supposed to. It’s hard to get a handle on Irving Mill, because pitch-perfect dishes keep company with off-key ones.

Given the meaty predilections of New Yorkers today, it was surprising to find that half the entrees were fish. The standout was Arctic char, served with lentils and Savoy cabbage.

Among the desserts, by the pastry chef Colleen Grapes, there weren’t any big disappointments, but there was just one knockout: a rich, tangy Greek yogurt panna cotta with stewed apricots and — most enticing of all — a bevy of toasted pistachios.

More in keeping with the restaurant’s countrified soul were a pumpkin and apple strudel and a cranberry and apple crisp with a topping of almonds and oatmeal. The crisp is by far the better choice.

A plate of warm cookies comes just before, or with, the check, because that’s the kind of down-home hospitality Irving Mill means to project.

But projecting it in a 110-seat space as open and vast as this one — it really could be converted into a barn — has a somewhat awkward, counterfeit effect. Cultivated rusticity usually works better in a series of smaller rooms, or on a smaller scale.

Here it feels forced: “Green Acres” goes to the Greenmarket, with a lilt in its gait but some bramble on its path.

Golden Globes

Stars won't shine at Golden Globes: actors union
Hollywood actors will boycott this month's Golden Globe Awards in a show of support for striking writers, the actors union said Friday, dealing a blow to the glittering red carpet extravaganza.


Screen Actors Guild (SAG) President Alan Rosenberg said in a statement there was "unanimous agreement" among actors not to cross picket lines set up by writers locked in a bitter dispute with film and television producers.

Rosenberg said the boycott would cover all nominees up for acting awards in the January 13 event, regarded as the second most important awards show in Hollywood after the Oscars. It would also cover stars acting as presenters.

The decision means that nominated A-listers such as Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks and George Clooney are all likely to steer clear of the Globes, greatly diminishing one of the highlights of Hollywood's awards season.

"After considerable outreach to Golden Globe actor nominees and their representatives over the past several weeks, there appears to be unanimous agreement that these actors will not cross WGA picket lines to appear on the Golden Globe Awards as acceptors or presenters," Rosenberg said.

"We applaud our members for this remarkable show of solidarity for striking Writers Guild of America (WGA) writers."

Hollywood screenwriters have been on strike since November 5 after the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) failed to agree terms for a new contract that expired in October.

Negotiations have foundered over the writers' demands for an increased share of profits from Internet and new media sales.

The two-month strike has forced the suspension of numerous television series as well as the postponement of work on several Hollywood films.

Hollywood has been abuzz with speculation in recent weeks over how the strike may impact the myriad awards shows leading up to and including the Oscars on February 24.

The WGA confirmed on Wednesday that the writers union would erect picket lines around the Golden Globes venue at the Beverly Hilton hotel, appearing to rule out any agreement with the show's organisers, Dick Clark Productions, allowing for a temporary waiver.

"Dick Clark Productions is a struck company. As previously announced, the Writers Guild will be picketing the Golden Globe Awards," the WGA said.

The writers union had already announced last month that it would not allow guild members to take part at both the Golden Globes and the Oscars.

The prospect of stars having to cross picket lines before they venture onto the Globes red carpet had been unnerving celebrities caught in the crossfire of the acrimonious dispute.

David Cronenberg, the director of gangster drama "Eastern Promises," which has been nominated for best picture at the Golden Globes, said last month he would be uncomfortable breaking ranks with writers.

"It would be very hard for me to cross a WGA picket line," said Cronenberg, a longstanding member of the WGA. "Everybody will have the same problem," he told Daily Variety.

The Los Angeles Times' theenvelope.com has reported that Globes organisers may cancel the televised broadcast of the event if writers picketed in an effort to prevent a public relations disaster.

Golden Globes

The Golden Globe Awards are American awards for motion pictures and television programs, given out each year during a formal dinner. Run as a fundraiser since 1944 by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the awards are a major part of the film industry's "awards season" which culminates each year with the Oscars and Screen Actors Guild Awards. This is particularly true since 1996, when the HFPA signed a new television broadcast contract with NBC (prior to that, they were aired on TBS, but before the existence of TBS, one of the "big three" commercial networks, i.e. CBS, NBC, or ABC, always broadcast the show). The broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards generally ranks as the third most-watched awards show each year, behind only the Oscars and Grammys, and film studios actively solicit support from HFPA members and mention nominations and awards in their advertisements. The Golden Globes has grown to one of the highest honors for actors and actresses. The Golden Globe's similar British equivalent, considered equal in prestige, is the BAFTA.

The Golden Globes are awarded early in the year, based on votes from (as of 2005) 86 mostly part-time journalists living in Hollywood and affiliated with media outside of the United States.

Unlike the Academy Awards, for which the eligibility period begins January 1, the eligibility period for the Golden Globe Awards begins October 1.

Unlike the Oscars, the Grammys, and the Emmys, the Golden Globe Awards is one of two major Hollywood awards ceremonies (the other being the Screen Actors Guild Awards) that does not have a regular host; although, there is a presenter every year who introduces the ceremony at the beginning of the broadcast.

Most Dangerous Drivers in Europe's

It may be worth taking extra care next time you cross a road or get behind the wheel in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Despite the decreasing number of road deaths across the Continent, these countries' burgeoning economies have placed more cars on area roads--putting residents at increased risk of traffic-related deaths.

They top Forbes.com's first-ever ranking of Europe's Most Dangerous Drivers. We compiled our list by calculating the number of road deaths per million inhabitants in 28 European countries, using 2006 data from the European Commission and the International Road Traffic and Accident Database. It gathers data on traffic and road accidents from 28 of 30 member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a statistical clearinghouse. Turkey and Mexico are not included.

We used provisional 2006 results for 12 countries that have yet to submit final data: Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Greece, Cyprus, Iceland, Slovakia, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg, Finland and Malta.

Complete List: Europe's Most Dangerous Drivers
Greece took fourth place, with island neighbor Cyprus only a few places below at No. 8. But Central and Eastern Europe dominate the top 10, with Poland, Slovenia, Hungary and the Czech Republic all reporting over 100 road deaths per million inhabitants. There is, however, a big gap between these countries and Lithuania, which reported over 200 fatalities per million.

It's not surprising that the three Baltic states have the worst road safety records in Europe. Breakneck economic growth over the past five years has increased consumer spending and put more cars on the road, but without any major improvement to infrastructure or increased awareness of dangerous driving.

"There is a lot of drinking and driving," says Agnia Baranauskaite, a Lithuanian-born analyst for the research firm Eurasia Group, in London. "Because of persistent levels of corruption and bribe taking, most people feel that they can drive drunk, even if they get caught by a policeman."

European Commission data released earlier this year found that 23.5% of 2006 road deaths in Estonia were caused by those driving over the limit. For Latvia the figure was 21.7%; for Lithuania it was 14.8%. Baranauskaite says that although governments have been cracking down on drunken driving in capital cities, it is more difficult to enforce the law in smaller towns and rural areas. Depending on the severity of the offense, those driving under the influence there may lose their licenses and pay hefty fines.

The increase in the number of drunken drivers on the roads could also be a result of an overall traffic increase. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the area has been flooded with foreign investors drawn by an attractive tax environment, says Dr. Friedrich Heinemann, economist with the Center for European Economic Research, a nonprofit research institute based in Mannheim, Germany.

A planned intra-country rail network should ease the situation. The Rail Baltica project is intended to upgrade Soviet-era train links between Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland. However, it will not be completed until at least 2014.

In the meantime, the Baltic states could learn from their Western neighbors. These mature European economies with better experience in road safety, traffic coordination and road upkeep have been able to keep their number of fatalities relatively low. France, Germany, the U.K. and three Scandinavian countries are in the bottom 10 of the rankings, with fewer than 75 road deaths per million inhabitants.

This could have something to do with the European Union's goal of cutting annual Continent-wide road deaths by 50%, to 25,000 by 2010. It's supporting its members by circulating and funding road safety and accident data research, enacting motor vehicle legislation to regulate vehicle safety standards, and, most recently, discussing directives on infrastructure safety, says Fred Wegman, managing director of the Institute for Road Safety Research in the Netherlands.

The European Union also held its first "road safety day" this year, on April 27, to increase awareness of its goal. Although road fatalities are falling, with the E.U. estimating that 38,600 people were killed on its roads last year (compared with 50,437 in 2001), there is still some way to go before the 25,000 goal is reached.

Until then, brace yourself for a bumpy ride in Europe