You're having a fat day

What you want: To hide bulges, keep yourself semicovered ‑- and ideally keep his hands far from your tummy and other no-go zones.

Intimate instructions: There are alternatives to keeping your T-shirt on and settling for (yawn) missionary. Rear-entry positions are the most flattering. Kneel facing away from him, lean down to rest your weight on your forearms (read: tummy hidden) and push your bottom tantalizingly high in the air in his direction. Not only does it give him a visual treat, the angle and position makes your waist look tiny and your thighs slim and taut ‑- without you having to launch into that whiny "Don't look at me!" girly stuff. Put his hands on your hips to hold you steady while he thrusts, and you've also solved the wandering hands problem.

Sneaky tricks: If he wants the lights on, place glass-encased candles on the floor or simply plunk the bedside light down there. Lighting from below is far more flattering. Or play a game using a flashlight. Make the room as black as possible so there's complete darkness, then use the flashlight to highlight favorite parts of each other's body. It's complimentary, plus, because only one section at a time is being lit, it's less intrusive. Another good fat-day trick: Blindfold him and let it all hang out.

A new angle: If you do opt for missionary, make a pudgy upper midriff look sexier by stretching your arms up over your head and grabbing onto the bedposts or by placing them flat on the wall behind the bed. Better still, get him to pin you there. It's supersexy for him ‑- he's in control and you're completely submissive. Plus, it works a treat to make tummies look flat and breasts appear perky!

Boys will be Boys...or Not

Most people don't know it, but there are more than two sexes, and way more than two genders. One scientist, Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, says that there are five commonly occurring genetic sexes (meaning that they are indicated by DNA) that can happen naturally due to biology. There are also many people who do not feel like our culture's options for gender, male and female, fit who they feel themselves to be. In short, while most people are raised either as a boy or as a girl, there are plenty of people for whom "boy" or "girl" is not the most accurate description, in some cases for their biology, in other cases for what they feel themselves to be inside.

The primary author of this article is Malcolm Gin, a 31-year old intergendered person - a person whose genetic sex is neither male nor female. Malcolm is a successful professional in the computer industry who lives in Boston with a couple of cats and a long-time girlfriend (Scarleteen's Co-Editor) who helped to edit this article. In this article, Malcolm explains a great deal about sex, gender, gender identity, and what you can do if you find out (or worry) that you might not be "normal" in terms of your own gender identity. Read on, and find out what it's like to be a "boy" who isn't actually a boy, and what life is like for people with non-standard gender identity. (Here's a hint - it's not as weird as you think!)

How to Count the Carbs in Yogurt

It seems as though it should be simple: read the label and there’s the carb count. Or even, knowing that yogurt is just milk with bacteria added, figuring that plain yogurt should have the same amount of carbohydrate as the milk is was made from. This makes perfect sense, but it turns out to be wrong.

Yogurt is one of the more confusing foods when it comes to carbs. Here is part of an email I received recently: ”I was trying to watch my carbs and also going with some other report that yogurt could help you lost weight - specifically belly fat. So here I was eating my ½ cup of plain non fat yogurt morning and evening...come to find out there is 19 carbs per serving! I was sabotaging myself! So where does yogurt fit in? and where does 19 grams of carbs come from in plain tart yogurt?!"

Nutritional Epidemiology

Caffeine has been suggested as a possible risk factor for breast cancer, potentially through its effect of facilitating the development of benign breast disease. However, coffee and tea also contain polyphenols, which exhibit anticarcinogenic properties. A hospital-based, case-control study was conducted to evaluate the role of coffee, decaffeinated coffee, and black tea in breast cancer etiology.

Study participants included 1932 cases with primary, incident breast cancer and 1895 hospital controls with nonneoplastic conditions. All participants completed a comprehensive epidemiological questionnaire. Among premenopausal women, consumption of regular coffee was associated with linear declines in breast cancer risk (P for trend = 0.03); consumers of 4 cups/d experienced a 40% risk reduction (odds ratio = 0.62, 95% CI 0.39–0.98).

No clear associations between intake of black tea or decaffeinated coffee and breast cancer risk were noted among premenopausal women, although black tea was associated with a protective effect unique to a subsample of cases with lobular histology.

Among postmenopausal women, breast cancer risk was not associated with consumption of coffee, tea, or decaffeinated coffee. Results among postmenopausal women did not differ by histologic subtype. Our findings support a protective effect of coffee intake on premenopausal, but not postmenopausal breast cancer risk. Further studies are warranted to confirm these findings.

Atiz BookDrive Book Scanner

So you have this burning desire to commit every one of your hundreds of books into electronic form? Instead of wasting the better part of your life scanning the books one page at a time, or practically destroying them in order to accomplish the task faster, turn your sights to the Atiz BookDrive Book Scanner.

The $35K scanner will automatically turn the pages of the inserted book and scan in whatever you request of it. Need to quickly plagerize a few pages for that school project you have coming up? Pop in the desired book, tell it how many pages you want scanned and away it goes.

Obviously the intended market for this scanner isn’t your average home user. Government institutions, libraries and schools are the intended recipients, and the BookDrive should help save countless hours of tedious work.

Other book scanners exist on the market, but one of the main selling points of the BookDrive is that it’s portable. Rather than drag a huge pile of heavy books to a stationary book scanner, tote the scanner to the books.

The OHSO self-dispensing toothbrush

So you'd like to simplify your once before "sex night" a day toothbrushing ritual, but haven't bought into the whole blue light teeth cleansing idea huh? Well get your pre-order on 'cause OHSO, from swingin' Austin, Tejas, is about to ship their new self-dispensing travel toothbrush called the, er, OHSO.

The handle stores the grill wax which unloads via a gentle twist of the "knob."Sure there are other toothpaste dispensing toothbrushes out there, but none with such robo-phallic style or option of using our personal fave Princess Pink Bubble Gum toothpaste.

Hell, the OHSO comes with a universal adapter 'cause even the dental community can't agree on standards

BMW unveils the turbosteamer concept

December 14, 2005 A large percentage of the energy released when petroleum is burned disappears out the exhaust system as heat. This has always been the case but the amount of energy released looks set to be cut by more than 80% thanks to a new system devised by BMW. BMW’s announcement of the new technology is somewhat of a technological bombshell as it adds yet another form of hybrid automobile – a turbosteamer.

The concept uses energy from the exhaust gasses of the traditional Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to power a steam engine which also contributes power to the automobile – an overall 15 per cent improvement for the combined drive system.

Even bigger news is that the drive has been designed so that it can be installed in existing model series – meaning that every model in the BMW range could become 15% more efficient overnight if the company chose to make the reduced consumption accessible to as many people as possible.

ADHD Drug Dangers

Some of the most popular prescription drugs used to treat millions of Americans with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder may be more dangerous than previously thought In fact, the FDA is considering new warning labels for the medications.

According to a troubling new Food and Drug Administration study, 25 people including19 children have died after taking the medications. Another 54 people have suffered serious heart problems, including heart attacks and stroke. The FA says it has tallied another 26 deaths between 1969 and 2003 in ADHD patients involving death by suicide, intentional overdose, drowning, heat stroke and from underlying disease.

The drugs getting a closer look include amphetamines, such as Ritalin, Adderall and Concerta. Sales of drugs to treat the disorder have jumped in recent years, with the biggest growth in use among adults. Spending on ADHD drugs has tripled in just four years, from $759-million in 2000 to $3.1 billion in 2004.

The regulatory agency has asked its Drug Safety and Risk Management advisory council to discuss the feasilbility of different ways of studying whether the deaths are linked to the drugs, as well as specific ways to conduct such studies. The few studies looked at longer-term use of ADHD drugs provide little information on those risks, according o the FDA.

Death and injury reports in Canada led to a six-month ban on the sale of the drug Adderall XR last year. That ban was later lifted, because there wasn't enough evidence of increased harm from the Adderall XR compared to other drugs.

Dr. Larry Diller is a behavioral pediatrician and author of the book, "Should I Medicate My Child?" He says, "Four million children take this medicine. That's approximately one in ten 11-year-old boys take this medicine. And the other thing that would be very worrisome is many of these children are barely affected at all. They either have mild cases of ADHD, or you'd look at them and they look normal." That said, however, Diller also says the FDA review has found that the risk of problems is just one for every 1 million ADHD prescriptions filled. Also in some cases, the children who died were later found to have undiagnosed heart conditions.

Motorola Unveils Latest RAZR Slim Phone Z

Motorola, the world’s second-largest cell phone vendor, Wednesday took the wraps off a slim slider phone, which it claims is the ultimate evolution of its hot seller RAZR.

The 14.8-millimeter-thick model, codenamed Z to show its concept _ the final version of the ultra-thin phone series, was designed and developed in Korea.

As a result, the sleek model was first disclosed in Korea unlike its high-profile predecessor RAZR, a clamshell-type phone that hit the local shops last year only after a big success in the global arena.

``This is the thinnest among many slider phones available here but it by no means lacks applications compared to other handsets,’’ Gill Hyun-chang, chief executive at Motorola Korea, said.

Indeed, the model is outfitted with a 2.2-inch screen, a mega-pixel digital camera and an MP3 player on top of highly customized user interfaces provided on a metal keypad.

Motorola plans to market the Z through SK Telecom, the country’s primary mobile carrier, this month with a price tag between 500,000 won and 600,000 won.

Despite the upbeat expectation of Motorola, some raise suspicions whether or not it will repeat the notable success of RAZR, for which demands once outstripped its supplies.

The first and foremost hitch they present is that the Z cannot savor the status of the pioneer because slim sliders are currently flooding the market.

By contrast, the 14.5-millimeter-thick RAZR was the first wafer-thin handset in the market when it debuted last June and its popularity prompted other domestic producers to roll out copycat products.

On a more negative note for the new item, observers point out the prospects of the Z is uncertain since it is somewhat bigger than competitors.

``My first impression was that the Z is fit for foreigners’ big hands, not for Korea’s smaller ones. Its size is almost similar to that of the RAZR. But, the latter is okay here since it is a clamshell-type phone but a slider is different,’’ a Seoul analyst said.

``It remains to be seen whether tech-savvy Koreans will snap up the new phone as they did for the RAZR,’’ he added.

Sony Ericsson Intros BlackBerry Killer

CIO Today reports about Sony Ericsson's newly introduced 3G phone, the M600, which "is targeting both the business market and Research In Motion's BlackBerry" with its advanced messaging capabilities.

The M600 runs the Symbian 9.1 operating system and supports an array of push e-mail applications, such as Ericsson Mobile Office, iAnywhere OneBridge, Intellisync, Microsoft Exchange, and RIM's BlackBerry Connect, provides remote synchronization, enables users to surf the Web while making voice calls simultaneously. The M600 also is a dual-mode UMTS/GPRS converged voice-data handheld with 80 MB of internal storage.

According to IDC analyst Dave Linsalata, the M600 takes Sony Ericsson "communicator devices to the next level, targeting mobile professionals with links to a broad array of e-mail providers." He said, "The key for the company is developing devices that users need, with features for business users and consumers, as opposed to the BlackBerry, which is focused tightly on information and e-mail.

"However Linsalata noted that by "adding more bells and whistles, such as streaming multimedia content, to a converged voice-data handheld might not appeal to some enterprise users who want a mobile device that excels at a single task, like the BlackBerry does."

Document Management Software

Need a way to manage your documents? Want to control how documents are stored in your systems? If you need to take control then a document management software solution may be for your.

With document management software you can control the way documents should be created, named, filed, and organized. You can setup a structure that institutes standardization across your company.

Document management software can help reduce unnecessary document storage, which can help reduce your total cost of ownership. Document management software could be the solution for you.

What is Document Management Software?

Document management software is utilized to organize, distribute, standardize and control the process of how documents are managed in a business environment. Document management software comes with features that can help you achieve many of your document management needs. With document management software in place it will allow you to manage a document life cycle from start to end.

Document Management Software Benefits

Depending on your business needs and the document management software, you can hope to gain several benefits from utilizing document management software in your environment. Some of the benefits may include are:

• Track versions that are stored in the document management system
• Controls document check in and check out process
• Provides a form of labeling to make it easy to reference documents
• Search capabilities for documents
• Provides a form of a standard scheme for documents across the company
• Can aid in reducing your total cost of ownership

These are just several benefits that you may achieve by implementing document management software for your business. Since there are several document management software packages available, it is always a good ideal to make sure you've determined your document management requirements and implement a trial version before you choose your document management software solution.

Euro-zone inflation jumps in January

Inflation in the 12 nations using the euro accelerated to 2.4 percent in January from 2.2 percent the previous month, according to a first estimate from the EU statistical agency Eurostat.
This is the first rise since inflation spiked at 2.6 percent in September jumping up from 2.2 percent in August as pressure on oil supplies squeezed prices.

Eurostat did not explain the reasons for the increase but will publish more detailed information on prices on Feb. 28.

The European Central Bank's guideline is less than but close to 2 percent.Worries about price stability caused the ECB to raise its key interest rate for the euro zone to 2.25 percent from 2 percent in December, the first increase in five years.

The ECB is anxious to dampen inflationary pressure and is expected to raise rates again this year. However, EU finance ministers have said they do not see the fallout effects of higher oil prices such as demands for wage increases that would justify a series of rate increases.

Underlying inflation in December excluding energy and tobacco was running at a calmer 1.4 percent.

U.S. Workers Start Year with Measured Confidence

NEW YORK -- A recent economic index remained on par with December's 103.4 reading as U.S. worker confidence slipped just .8 points to 102.6 in January. The most notable change contributing to this slight decline was the flagging optimism about hiring amongst managers.

However, overall hiring expectations and job satisfaction held steady in January with only negligible shifts in employees' perceptions of their finances and job security. Buoyed by December's strong index, the latest reading is higher than most recorded in 2005, although well below the 107.0 reading in January 2005.

The survey also found that Hispanic workers were less optimistic than the overall workforce, as were people who work in the legal profession. The indexes for these sectors, segmented for the first time in this month's survey, stood at 98.1 and 100.4, respectively.

Managers were less confident about their firms' hiring plans in January than the previous month. Only 29 percent anticipated more hiring in the coming months, compared to 33 percent in December. They were also slightly less optimistic than workers overall, 30 percent of whom anticipated a boost in headcount (unchanged from December).

"Whereas we typically see a new year's increase, our polling indicates that workers are approaching this year with a 'wait-and-see' attitude," said Steve Wolfe, executive vice president, Hudson, North America, the company managing the index. "This is not a great cause for concern, though, as worker sentiment remains essentially unchanged from December, which showed increased optimism overall."

Canon's new 4.3 Megapixel DC40 DVD camcorder provides widescreen and photos

Canon announces the DC40 DVD camcorder to help you in making recording precious memories simple, fun and convenient. With its super slim design and 10x optical zoom lens, this compact DVD camcorder includes a 4.3 megapixel CCD image sensor that produces outstanding widescreen video and doubles as a digital camera for excellent photos, which friends and family can cherish for years to come. The DC40 will be available at the end of March 2006 for $899...

PRESS SUMMARY

Whether capturing memorable honeymoon moments or baby's first small, staggering steps, Canon's new DC40 DVD camcorder helps make recording precious memories simple, fun and convenient. With its super slim design and 10x optical zoom lens, this compact DVD camcorder includes a 4.3 megapixel CCD image sensor that produces outstanding widescreen video and doubles as a digital camera for excellent photos, which friends and family can cherish for years to come.

"For people who capture images of family functions for posterity, or who wish to record vivid vacation images that they can playback on their widescreen TVs, Canon's feature-filled DC40 camcorder rises to the occasion—as Canon's camcorders are The Official Camcorder of Life," said Yukiaki Hashimoto, senior vice president and general manager of the consumer imaging group at Canon U.S.A., Inc. "The DC40 DVD model is small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, easy to use and delivers high quality performance to customers that also value convenience." view pic

B&W MT-30 Theater Speaker System

About Home Theater Systems Many modern households have large size color televisions and premium cable channels. It is no wonder that the next realm of exploration in entertainment is the true home theater system. Home theater systems are a customizable series of components that you install in your home for better sound and picture quality. For people who are not very technical, consider hiring a professional home theater and sound consultant to get your system on line.
If you wish to recreate the experience of watching a movie in the theater - at home, then there are some basic components you can start with for your home theater system. And of course, most of these parts are sound based.
A standard theater system will have a great surround sound system, where different parts of a sound track are heard from different speakers in the room. You can start by purchasing speakers for both the front and rear of the room in which you are planning your home theater system.
The other piece you may wish to get right away is a viewing screen. Projections screens are the ultimate in recreating a movie-going experience. You won't regret a sharp picture that allows you to see everything that is going on in the film. view pic B&W MT-30. view pic B&W MT-30