Got Crocs? Be Careful on the Escalator

WASHINGTON (AP) — At rail stations and shopping malls around the world, reports are popping up of people, particularly young children, getting their toes caught in escalators. The one common theme seems to be the clunky soft-soled clogs known by the name of the most popular brand, Crocs. [read more]

Most women own 19 pairs of shoes -- some secretly

Belinda Goldsmith

NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - American women have come out of the closet with a secret -- most own about 19 pairs of shoes and some have hidden purchases from their partners. [Read more at Reuters]

Putting a finger on symmetry

DENNIS O'BRIEN
The Baltimore Sun

What does your body say about you?

A lot, it turns out.

For example, extend your hand and compare the length of your ring and index fingers. For most women they're about the same length, and for most men, the ring finger is a bit longer.

The longer your ring finger is compared with your index finger, the more likely you are to be aggressive, athletic and prone to depression, researchers say.

Now measure the smallest finger on each hand. If they match up, you may be close to symmetrical, which is good news if you're looking for a mate. If you're not symmetrical, you, may have trouble getting a date.

OK, this isn't an exact science. But some researchers believe that body symmetry and the relative lengths of our ring and index fingers are influenced by our exposure to testosterone in the womb.

That exposure, they say, also influences a variety of personal traits. So for the past decade scientists have been measuring and comparing hands, feet, ears, limbs, joints and other body parts to see whether they provide clues to personality and behavior.

"They're an amazing kind of subtle, yet salient, cue in our development," said Randy J. Nelson, a psychology professor at Ohio State University.

Over the years, the field has generated more than 170 scientific papers identifying links, in one form or another, to athletic ability, aggressive behavior and proclivities for early heart attacks, depression and even sexual preference.

"Those with symmetrical attributes are more likely to be athletic, have lower metabolic rates, be more competitive and have higher IQs," said Gordon Gallup, a psychology professor and researcher at the State University of New York, Albany.

Some critics dismiss the field as something close to junk science. "I've always distrusted all of this, from the beginning," said Richard Palmer, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Alberta. "I don't think it's a reliable indicator of anything."

Research findings

Research into finger length was initiated in the late 1990s by John T. Manning, a British researcher who was intrigued by the finding that finger length ratios are one of the few differences between the sexes that develop in the womb and are unaffected by puberty. Finger length ratios remain constant throughout our lives.

"Lots of things show our sex differences, but most of them become larger or more obvious with the onset of puberty," said Manning, a researcher at the University of Central Lancashire in England. "This is one thing that doesn't."

There is no way to know the exact percentage of men or women with equally sized ring and index fingers, Manning said.

But in a 1999 report on a survey of 102 men and women, he found men with longer ring fingers scored highest in tests used to detect symptoms of depression. There was no such pattern for women.

In another survey of male heart attack victims, he found those with longer ring fingers had their heart attacks later in life.

"There are pluses and minuses to these things," he said.

But among the most consistent results are studies that link finger length to athletic abilities, Manning said. A recent report by researchers at King's College in London, which linked running ability to longer ring finger ratios in women, was one of seven studies in recent years to make such a connection, he said.

In that study, researchers found that of 607 female twins ages 25 to 79, those with ring fingers longer than their index fingers were more likely to participate in sports and compete at higher levels - particularly in sports such as soccer that involve running. Previous studies have shown the same pattern in male athletes.

At Ohio State, researchers found a link between finger length and aggression by monitoring how hard 100 male and female college students slammed down the phone when they received rude comments during what they thought was a telephone charity solicitation.

The students were more likely to slam down the phone if they had either long ring fingers or some asymmetry in their finger lengths, palm sizes, wrist diameters, elbow widths, ankle circumferences, or ear and foot sizes, the researchers said.

"It's amazing how angry people got. In interviews it came out pretty clearly," said Nelson, a co-author of the 2004 study.

Sexual indicators

Researchers in San Francisco measured the fingers of more than 700 men and women, then asked them about their sexual preferences. They found that lesbians were more likely to have ring fingers that were longer than their index fingers. There was no similar pattern among gay men, said Marc Breedlove, the Michigan State University psychologist who conducted the survey.

"I have to say, I think it is strange," said Breedlove, who published the study in the journal Nature in 2000, while he was a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley.

Breedlove, who studies the influences of sex hormones on rats, mice and hamsters, cautioned people against drawing conclusions from their own hand measurements, or those of friends. The studies are based on averages and have little meaning for any individual, he said.

"You can't tell anything definitively by the length of one person's finger," Breedlove said. "If your index finger is longer than your ring finger, don't panic."

Manning acknowledged that some results are more reliable than others. "There's no question, there's still a lot of work to be done in the field," he said.

Researchers say that body symmetry has implications throughout the animal kingdom. Birds, rodents and other animals show a preference for symmetrical mates.

"If you can band the legs of birds with different colored bands, they will always choose the ones banded symmetrically," said Robert Trivers, a researcher at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., who has been studying symmetry and behavioral traits in 288 Jamaican children since 1996.

Success and symmetry

Humans appear to function the same way with faces that are symmetrical. The same is true in men's preference for women, Trivers said.

For body symmetry, researchers use calipers that measure limbs and joints in millimeters.

"We generally look at a number of characteristics: The length of the ears, the size of the hand, the circumference of the elbows, knees and wrists, the digit lengths," Trivers said.

But individuals can tell whether they're generally symmetrical by comparing the lengths of the little finger of each hand, Gallup said.

Most people have imperfections that throw them off their symmetry a bit - and that can actually make them more attractive in an offbeat way, experts say.

Superstar Brad Pitt comes close to being perfectly symmetrical, experts say. But actor Owen Wilson is an example of a man with an asymmetrical face that seems to work well.

"Very few people are perfectly symmetrical. It's usually the people who are really attractive," Nelson said.

A Ladies’ Man Everyone Fights Over

By LOLA OGUNNAIKE

LOS ANGELES -- This time six years ago, Flavor Flav, the flamboyant clock-wearing member of the groundbreaking rap group Public Enemy, was living in a low-rent apartment near Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. He was scalping baseball tickets for extra cash, battling a long addiction to drugs and racking up arrests for driving without a license.

These days life is looking a lot brighter.

His reality series, “Flavor of Love,” a ghetto-fabulous spoof of the dating series “The Bachelor,” has been a colossal hit for VH1. The show’s first-season finale in March drew nearly six million viewers, making it the highest-rated show in the cable channel’s history. More than three million people tuned in to watch the second-season premiere early August.

No one seems to be enjoying the success more than Flav, as he is known to one and all.

“I’m the king of VH1,” he crowed over a surf-and-turf dinner at a soul food restaurant in downtown Los Angeles. “Your man Flavor Flav is doing his thiiiiing.”

That thing has made the show as polarizing as it is popular. On blogs and at the office, on message boards and in op-ed columns, viewers are both riveted and repelled by “Flavor of Love.”

Fans of the show call it a harmless guilty pleasure, and its star a lovable and unlikely Romeo. Critics have accused the show of trafficking in racial stereotypes and have called Flav everything from a sellout to a modern-day Stepin Fetchit.

“Anytime we mention ‘Flavor of Love’ on our show, the phone lines start blowing up,” said Donnell Rawlings, a New York morning radio personality on the popular hip-hop radio station Power 105.1. “Good or bad, our listeners love talking about Flav. They can’t get enough of it. You’ve got beauties and you’ve got the beast, and it’s become one of those shows you must watch every week.”

On “Flavor of Love,” 20 contestants vie for the rap star’s affection while living with him in a mansion in Encino. Instead of roses, they are given oversize clocks when they’re invited to stay at the end of each show, and the winner is awarded a personalized gold dental grille, a jeweled ornament for the teeth.

The women, who tend to look like castoffs from a bad rap video, dress provocatively (the shorter the skirt, the lower the neckline, the better their chances), engage in raunchy make-out sessions with Flav and, when given the opportunity, profess their undying devotion.

“You could be across the room and I can feel you,” Krazy, the rare white face on the show, said in a recent episode. (Flav, whose real name is William Drayton, has trouble remembering the contestants’ real names, so he gives them nicknames like Deelishis, Toastee and Bootz.) “My heart is so big and I’m such a compassionate person and I see the same thing in you.” Krazy then broke into song. “I will be with you forever,” she crooned — off key.

Occasionally, the women even trade blows. This season’s premiere began with two women brawling over a bed and ended with one contestant defecating on the floor as she raced to the bathroom after a meal that didn’t agree with her. To Michael Hirschorn, the executive vice president for original programming at VH1, the reasons millions of viewers tune in every Sunday night are clear. “The accidental appeal of the show was the play between ‘Are these women for real or not? Are these women there for him or are they there because any fame is completely intoxicating?’ ” he said. “Instead of covering that part of the show up, we decided to make it integral.”

Asked whether the show was exploiting racial stereotypes, Mr. Hirschorn, who is white, said he didn’t think so. “I would also say I’m not in the position to make that judgment.” But, he pointed out, “the show is disproportionately popular among black viewers, and the comedy is very inclusive.”

Not all are amused, however. Nicole Young, a fashion designer in Manhattan who is black, said the defecation scene in this season’s premiere turned her off the show for good. Late last week, during a heated dinner argument with friends about the series, she pronounced it “absolutely hideous,” and proceeded to denounce Flav and his paramours. “In a day and age when it’s still really hard for people of color to find reasonable representations on television,” she said, “that show is a huge smack in the face and a step backwards.”

In an interview on a sports blog, thebiglead.com, Jason Whitlock, a sports columnist for The Kansas City Star, said, “It’s about time we as black people quit letting Flavor Flav and the rest of these clowns bojangle for dollars.”

In an editorial last month, DeWayne Wickham of USA Today wrote: “On one level, his buffoonery is laughable. But more often than not, it makes my skin crawl to know that as Lincoln Perry (who played Stepin Fetchit) and Johnny Lee (who was TV’s Algonquin J. Calhoun) did, Drayton has to assume such a shallow black role to find stardom in Hollywood.”

Nelson George, the cultural critic and author of “Hip Hop America,” said one reason the show has struck such a nerve has less to do with stereotypes and more to do with the fact that Flavor Flav is not exactly a sex symbol. “If he didn’t have gold fronts and didn’t wear a clock and if looked like Jamie Foxx, there wouldn’t be as much controversy,” he contended. He added that black viewers can be overly sensitive about how blacks are portrayed on television: “Black people tend to think that every image that is projected in the media is somehow a judgment on their reality. And that’s just not the case.”

“It is what it is,” he said. “Just another reality freak show.”

Flav, 47, did not seem ruffled by criticism. “Right now anybody that has negative things to say to Flavor Flav, it’s O.K.,” he said, “because that’s not going to stop me from being Flav. I get power from the negative.”

Although not conventionally attractive (he bears more than a passing resemblance to a California Raisin character), off camera, Flav appears to be a warmhearted man, one who is possessed with a manic energy that makes him mesmerizing to watch. Dressed for dinner in baggy jeans, a red rayon shirt, matching patent leather sneakers and a baseball cap, he was all jittery movements and smiles, doling out hugs, handshakes and autographs to anyone who approached.

“A lot of people favor Flavor because I have good karma,” he said. A giant cream-colored clock hung around his neck (he has close to 100 of his signature accessories), and his nom de rap was engraved on a gold dental grill, which he removed as if it were a retainer when it was time to eat. He also carried an assortment of more than 50 keys. “These are the keys to my future,” he said, cackling loudly.

His over-the-top shtick is not new. As the resident court jester in Public Enemy, Flavor Flav, with his trademark phrase, “Yeeeaahhh Boooooyyy,” provided levity to counterbalance the group’s strident, often political messages. “He was the bit of comic relief in a group that at its best could be inspirational and at its worst be didactic,” said Danyel Smith, the editor in chief of Vibe magazine.

Flavor Flav joined Public Enemy while in college and became its mascot. The group quickly became known for hits like “Fight the Power,” used on the soundtrack of Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing,” and for politically conscious albums like “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” and “Fear of a Black Planet.”

At the group’s height of fame, Flav began using drugs. He spent the 1990’s in and out of rehab, and in 2002 he spent a few months on Rikers Island for failing to pay traffic fines.

Upon release, eager for a new beginning, he moved to Los Angeles. Mark Cronin and Cris Abrego, creators of the VH1 series “The Surreal Life,” which brought together has-beens from various fields, were casting their third season. Flav met with the producers and made an instant impression. “He was ricocheting off the walls, saying his name 700 times,” Mr. Cronin said. “We knew he’d be perfect for television.”

The first day of filming, Flav showed up in Viking horns. His tempestuous relationship with a castmate, Brigitte Nielsen, an ex of Sylvester Stallone, made him and the series stand out.

Their bizarre affair led to a spinoff reality series, “Strange Love.” But alas, it was not meant to be: The couple parted ways, leading to Chapter 3 in Flav’s reality-series career, “Flavor of Love.” Although the star found love again last season with Nicole Alexander, a former basketball player he nicknamed Hoopz, the brief union ended after the cameras stopped recording. “All of a sudden, Hoopz got too busy,” he said, “and I couldn’t get in touch with her.”

Flav now claims there is no need for a third installment of his reality series because he has found love on the show with one of the contestants, but obviously cannot reveal who it is.

Mr. Cronin said he and his partner are working on a spinoff of “Flavor of Love,” which will feature 20 men vying for the affections of one woman. This doesn’t mean VH1 viewers have seen the last of Flav. Ideas for a nighttime talk show, an animated series and another reality show, where he acts as a Cyrano de Bergerac dispensing dating advice, are being batted around. He also plans to release a self-titled independent album on Halloween.

As for those who insist that he has traded a piece of his soul for fame, “Sometimes a lot of people misunderstand me,” Flav said, his wide grin disappearing. “But that’s okay, because I know one day they will understand me. Either they will like me or they will K.I.M., keep it moving.”

Man drives into Kmart, then tries on some women's shoes

A car comes crashing into a Hampton, Va. Kmart, and the driver was just getting started.

WAVY-TV

HAMPTON, Va. -- Early Saturday morning a loud crash shattered the silence and the front window at a Hampton Kmart. The damage was extensive.

The 20-year-old driver is facing several charges, including driving under the influence of drugs. But it doesn't end there.

Police say Bryant Weiford drove through the front window, then got out of his car to try on clothes, perhaps taking shopping to a whole new level.

"The guy just drove through the front of the store with a car!" said store employee Jeff Ray.

Workers took stock of the mess early Saturday hour after a Kmart store off West Mercury Blvd. had closed. Police say a 1986 Pontiac driven by him crashed into the Kmart.

"I heard a loud crash. I thought it was a shelf falling, but then I heard car music and I knew somebody was in here" employee Vernita McClaurin told us.

Rey says he confronted Weiford.

"When I came over to ask him the first time, he kept walking to the shoe department and he changed his shoes and I said, what are you doing? He said, 'I'm just having fun', and I said, 'Well, I'm calling the police'"

"He went on to the women s shoe department and started trying on some women's shoes" Rey chuckled as he told the story.

"Then he went to the sporting goods department, looking for a gun" said McClaurin. "The police said he said he was going on a shooting rampage. Good thing they got him".

Weiford is being held in the Hampton city jail.

A spokesperson for Kmart declined to comment.

Calif. woman sues JCPenney after getting smacked by a dummy

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A woman is suing the J.C. Penney Co. after an alleged run-in with a store mannequin that she says left her with a cracked tooth, a bloodied head and recurring shoulder pain.

Diana Newton, 51, of Westminster, Calif., sued the Plano, Texas-based retailer last month in Orange County Superior Court. She contended she was cracked in the head by a legless female dummy at its Westminster Mall store.

Newton said the incident happened nearly a year ago in the women's department, as she was shopping for a blouse. The only one in her size was on the mannequin. As a salesclerk was removing the garment, the dummy's arm flew off and struck Newton's head, according to her lawsuit.

"I felt a burning sensation," she recalled.

Paramedics treated her bleeding scalp at the scene. Newton drove herself home, then had someone take her to a hospital for further treatment.

The blow also cracked a molar, which led to a root canal, she said.

The suit seeks unspecified damages.

A spokeswoman for J.C. Penney said the company doesn't comment on pending litigation.