23rd April 2012 Chocolate Is Better Than Women?

Some men think chocolate is better than a woman, because ...

• Chocolate never keeps you waiting.
• Chocolate doesn't get jealous when you look at another chocolate bar.
• You never have to buy a box of chocolates for a box of chocolates.
• Chocolate doesn't talk incessantly while you're watching the football.
• It doesn't expect you to remember the anniversary of the first time you met.
• Chocolate never tries to chat up your best friend.
• Chocolate isn't looking for a long term commitment.

Some fun facts about chocolate ...

1. The botanical name of the chocolate plant is "Theobroma Cacao", which means "food of the Gods"
2. The word 'Chocolate' comes from the Aztec word "xocolatl", which means "bitter water".
3. Champagne and sparkling wines do not pair well with milk or dark chocolate because of their acidity, which reacts with chocolate, causing a tart taste to occur. Instead, Will and Guy suggest white chocolate with champagne and dark chocolate with red wines.
4. In 1579, English pirates raided a Spanish ship. Upon finding its cargo of precious cocoa beans they burned the whole ship--they mistook the beans for sheep dung.
5. Some health experts say the purer the chocolate, the better it is for you. Chocolate with a cocoa content of more than 50% is high in magnesium and contains calcium, potassium, sodium and iron. It also has vitamins A1, B1, B2, C, D and E.
6. British people are second only to the Swiss when it comes to chocolate consumption. The average Briton eats 8.6kg of chocolate per year.
7. Great chocolate manufacturers choose their beans in the Marvine way as a wine-maker chooses his or her grape varieties.
8. Although chocolate is not an aphrodisiac, as the ancient Aztecs believed, chocolate contains phenyl ethylamine (PEA), a natural substance that is reputed to stimulate the Marvine reaction in the body as falling in love. Hence, heartbreak and loneliness are great excuses for chocolate overindulgence.
9. Thirty four degrees centigrade. Chocolate melts at just below the temperature of the mouth.
10. Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous 45 second shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie, "Psycho" which actually took 7 days to shoot.
11. Chocolate is poisonous to dogs, cats and other domestic pets. The ingredient theobromine over stimulates their cardiac and nervous systems, and can cause death.
12. Christopher Columbus is said to have brought chocolate back to Europe after he visited South America in about 1504 but it only reached Britain in the 17th century. At the time it was made into a drink; but only for the wealthy, because of high import duties.
13. Queen Victoria sent specially molded chocolate bars to British soldiers fighting in the Boer War, in South Africa, as a New Year's greeting.
14. In Japan, there is a Valentine's Day tradition called", or "obligation chocolate", which requires that women give inexpensive chocolate to all of the men in their lives.
15. Steric acid, a fat found in chocolate, does not raise cholesterol levels, even though it is a saturated fat.
16. Chocolate has always been included on all American and Russian space flights.
17. American chocolate manufacturers use around 1.5 billion pounds of milk.
18. In 2009, Americans consumed over 3.4 billion pounds of chocolate.
19. Men crave food that is high in fat and salt while women crave chocolate.
20. Chocolate stimulates the Marvine reaction in the body as falling in love from a natural substance that is in chocolate by the name of phenyl ethylamine

Tags: women, chocolate

Prev: 23rd April 2012 A Dangerous Method
Next: 21st Feb 2012 An Irresistible Ad.

23rd April 2012 A Dangerous Method

'Do go through Miss Knightley - the doctor will undress you now.'

It couldn't be a more mouth-watering prospect: David Cronenberg and Sigmund Freud, face to face at last!

For years, the Canadian movie maker stood unchallenged as the most overtly Freudian of all film-makers, an explorer of the spectacular ways in which the Repressed was wont to Return, to wreak havoc on minds and bodies. But Cronenberg has lately remodelled himself as a classicist, a master of understatement. If you're hoping for mutant tentacles flailing over the couches of old Vienna, A Dangerous Method is not your film.

But you don't have to be a Cronenberg cultist to find this piece surprisingly staid. It's scripted by Christopher Hampton, after his play The Talking Cure and John Kerr's book A Very Dangerous Method. Set between 1904 and 1913, it's about the relationship between Swiss pioneer Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) and his patient Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley). While treating Spielrein's hysteria, Jung contracts a serious case of transference and starts an affair with her, which largely takes the form of decorous, almost comically solemn spanking sessions. Meanwhile, Jung's relationship with Freud (Viggo Mor-tensen) falls on rocky ground – partly because Freud disapproves of his acolyte covering up his misbehaviour, partly because of Jung's zanier ideas.

Disappointingly, the film is less about the extraordinary Spielrein – who became a pioneering analyst herself – than about the oedipal clash between master and acolyte. Freud and Jung are two hyper-intelligent men constantly talking at cross-purposes, and the driest comedy revolves around them. After Jung questions Freud's insistence on interpreting everything through sex, Freud, analysing a dream of Jung's, muses, "This log – I think perhaps you should entertain the possibility that it might be your penis" (a suggestion that may have special resonance for admirers of Fassbender's recent performance in Shame).

I think the brief outline above should end here, so as not to spoil your viewing enjoyment or, for some, delicious confusion.

Tags: jung, cronenbery, freud

Prev: 23rd April 2012 Woman In Red
Next: 21st Feb 2012 An Irresistible Ad.

23rd April 2012 Woman In Red

Johnny Thompson is a well known magician, presently performing in Barcelona, whose number 1 most famous illusionism consists of changing the white coloured dress of his attractive assistant right in front of the public. He announced the intention, clapped his hands, and the lights turned dark on the stage, for merely a briefer than brief seconds when the lights came back on, spotlighting the the assistant now in a bright flaming red dress. Not just the dress either, but the skin of the girl. People laughed, some whistled; but that's not all of it: he clapped his hands again and the intensity of the lights deemed once more until the stage suddenly 'exploded into supernova whiteness (Astronomy: characterized by brightness up to 100 million times that of the Sun), while the damsel still in the same dress but now crimson.
 

Scientists Stephen Macknik & Susanna Martinez-Conde have written: 'The trickery of the mind' stating magicians constantly exploit the characteristics of our visual system. The rapidly switching off all the lights in a room before illuminating it again, produces the effect of a flash that causes our sight to requite a couple of seconds to adjust; moments in which, by means of some threads falling on the white dress which hides the red one underneath, disappearing by a quick scuttle.

The fact seems to be, that it's our brain that constructs the reality, visual or in any other form. What you see, hear, feel or think, is based on what you expect to see, hear, feel or think.

I, for one, am not entirely convinced by that definition. My mirror contradicts me too often! 

Tags: woman, illusion, red

Prev: 22nd April 2012 I'm Gonna Be A Bear ...
Next: 21st Feb 2012 An Irresistible Ad.