5 Amazing restaurants and geek bars

1. Miracle of Science (Cambridge, Massachusetts)

Opened in 1991, Miracle of Science stands strong as the leader in geek-chic. Its menu is hand written onto the wall and it was one of the first restaurants to employ the open floor concept. This place is always packed with artists, musicians, geo physicists and computer gurus who know they don't have to go anywhere else looking for a good time.

2. Hajime Restaurant (Thailand)

The Hajime Restaurant in Bangkok is Thailand's first Japanese robot restaurant, where all the serving waiters are robots.

Customers order their food on a touchscreen display and their robotic waiter will whizz into action. The friendly robots will also dance to entertain as they work and go out to collect empty dishes at the customers' table. The owner of the Hajime Japanese restaurant, Lapassarad Thanaphant, said she spent 30 million baht ($927,600) on the restaurant including the purchase of four robots from Japan.

3. Barcade Bar (Brooklyn, NY)

In 2004, five friends came together and opened their own bar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Each had been working in either film/TV or graphic design in New York and four of them had attended Syracuse University together. They were enthusiastic about American craft beer and had grown up in the 1980's playing classic arcade games. Looking to start their own business, they decided to take a chance and combine the two passions. Barcade bar with a dual focus; an endless rotation of American craft beer and an equally eclectic lineup of classic arcade games.

4. World of Warcraft Restaurant (China)

A World of Warcraft themed restaurant in central Beijing, serving WoW inspired food under Azeroth-themed murals. The food remains a mystery - if any readers want to translate the menu please do - but there do seem to be PCs there so we suspect a slight LAN party ambience. Maybe not the ideal venue for that anniversary dinner you promised your significant other.

5. Mundo Tapas Bar (Sydney)

Mundo Tapas in North Sydney provides an iPad as the menu for customers to browse and order from. Diners can now see a picture of what each dish looks like and view tasting notes before making that all important decision of what to order. So come on in and spice up your senses and be part of the new way to dine

Creative necklaces art | Necklaces made from human hair

Kerry howley, a creative necklaces art student, from cambridge, england, is creating quite a buzz in the art world, with her collection of delicate necklaces made from human hair.

The idea of creating jewelry from human hair was inspired by people’s aversion to cut hair. Hair is usually regarded as a very important part of the human body and is worn with pride, but once its connection to the body has been severed, it’s viewed as slightly disgusting. Through her art, the young middlesex student “hoped to create a delicate balance between the viewer/wearer’s feelings of aversion and attraction.” She wanted to see if she could make cut hair attractive again.

The main material for howley’s masterpieces was provided by one of her mother’s friends, a japanese woman with hair down to her waist. She only cuts it once every five years, and when she had 30 cm cut off the bottom, she gave it all to kerry. The 23-year-old art student used broken saw blades to cut and weave the strands of hair into abstract shapes inspired by wallpaper patterns, and spent over 60 hours working on each of the five hair necklaces she has created so far.

kerry howley’s collection of unique human hair necklaces has already won an award, and will on display at the business design center, in london, from june 29 until july 2nd.

Huge shopping malls | Mega malls | Shopping center in the world

10: Siam Paragon (3.22 million sq ft)
Large shopping malls provide a one-stop shopping for anything imaginable. Our list of largest malls in the world is based on the amount of “Gross Leasable Area”.

This is the number of square feet the property has for revenue-generating activities like retail, dining and amusements. The building boom in Asia, where land is cheap and labor costs are low has produced the largest shopping malls. Only two shopping malls on this list are located outside Asia.

Siam Paragon in Bangkok is one of the largest shopping malls in Thailand. Only the nearby Central World is larger. It includes a wide range of specialty stores and restaurants as well as a multiplex movie theater, the Siam Ocean World aquarium, the Thai Art Gallery and an opera concert hall. It also has a large bowling alley and karaoke center.

9: Berjaya Times Square (3.44 million sq ft)
Located in Kuala Lumpur, Berjaya Times Square is a twin tower complex containing a shopping center and two five star hotels. With 7.5 million square feet (700,000 m²) of built up floor area it is currently the fifth largest building in the world.

It includes more than 1,000 retail shops, 65 food outlets and several entertainment attractions such as Asia’s largest indoor theme park, Cosmo’s World and Malaysia’s first-ever IMAX 2D & 3D theatre which is located on the 10th Floor.

8: Istanbul Cevahir (3.47 million sq ft)
Located on the European side of Istanbul, the Cevahir Shopping and Entertainment Center opened its doors in 2005. It is the largest shopping mall in Europe.

There are 343 shops, 34 fast food restaurants and 14 exclusive restaurants in the shopping centre. Other facilities include a large stage for events, 12 cinemas, a bowling hall, a small roller coaster and several other entertainment facilities.

7: SM Mega mall (3.6 million sq ft)
Opened in 1991, SM Mega mall in Metro Manila is one of the largest shopping malls in Philippines. The mall attracts a daily foot traffic of 800,000 people with a maximum capacity of 4 million people.

The mall has two main buildings. Building A features cinemas, a bowling alley, food courts and the Toy Kingdom. Building B features the retail shops. The bridge-way connecting the two main buildings of the mall contains several eateries.
SM Mega mall is currently under major renovation and expansion. When finished, it will be able to claim the ultimate title of largest shopping mall in the Philippines.

6: West Edmonton Mall (3.77 million sq ft)
The West Edmonton Mall in Alberta was the largest shopping mall from 1981 until 2004 and is currently the largest mall in the America.

Beside 800 stores and services the mall includes the largest indoor amusement park in the world, the largest indoor water park in the world and Ice Palace (a scaled down version of a NHL regulation sized ice rink, so not the largest in the world). Other attractions include an 18-hole miniature golf course, a movie theater and a bowling alley.

5: Dubai Mall (3.77 million sq ft)
The Dubai Mall is part of the Burj Khalifa complex, the tallest man-made structure ever built. At over 12 million square feet (equivalent in size to more than 50 soccer fields), the Dubai Mall is the largest shopping mall in the world based on total area but about the same size as the West Edmonton Mall if based on leasable space.

The mall contains more than 1,200 shops including the world’s largest candy store, an ice rink, a SEGA game center (featuring a 3D bowling game), a 5 star luxury hotel, 22 cinema screens plus 120 restaurants and cafes. The mall also contains one of the largest aquariums in the world.

4: SM Mall of Asia (4.2 million sq ft)
The SM Mall of Asia in Metro Manila, opened in 2006, consists of four buildings interconnected by walkways. It features a 20-seater tram which takes shoppers around the mall grounds.

One of the mall’s main attractions is an IMAX theater with one of the world’s biggest 3D screens. The mall also features an Olympic-sized ice skating rink. It can accommodate both recreational and competitive figure skating, as well as ice hockey.

3: Central World (4.62 million sq ft)
Opened in 1990, the eight-story Central World is the largest shopping mall in Thailand. It marketed itself as a middle class shopping center, opposed to the upper class-marketed Siam Paragon.

On 19th May of this year, Central World was one of the many properties set on fire by anti-government protesters. The fire raged for two days and the Zen department store collapsed in the fire.
After months of repair works, the shopping complex reopened on 28th September with 80% of its retail space open for business.

2: Golden Resources Mall (6.0 million sq ft)
At 1.5 times the size of the Mall of America, Golden Resources Mall was the world’s largest shopping mall from 2004 to 2005. Although the developer of the mall initially estimated that the mall would have 50,000 shoppers a day, as of 2004 the actual number was far smaller, as few as 20 in an hour.

One problem was that prices of most items sold were far beyond the purchasing ability of most ordinary Chinese. Another barrier was the inaccessibility of Golden Resources Shopping Mall to foreign consumers due to its location outside the heart of Beijing.

1: New South China Mall (6.46 million sq ft)
New South China Mall in Dongguan is the largest mall in the world based on gross leasable area. The mall features seven zones modeled on international cities including a replica of the Arc de Triomphe and a canal with gondolas.

It also has an indoor-outdoor roller coaster. What is doesn’t have is customers. Since its opening in 2005, the mall has suffered from a severe lack of occupants.
Much of the retail space has remained empty,

Beautiful santorini | Island of santorini greece | Luxury hotels

This is the beautiful santorini island luxury hotel, which is located in greece on the island of santorini. the hotel has more than twenty rooms. it is a little slice of heaven right here on earth and would make a wonderful place to stay while on vacation.

Ark hotel designed by Russian | World’s new most unique hotel

The Ark hotel project was designed by Russian firm Remi-studio with the assistance of the International Union of Architects’ program Architecture for Disasters Relief. The dome-shaped hotel is constructed with wooden arches, steel cables and a “self-cleaning” plastic layer instead of glass. The slinky-like Ark hotel can be adapted to suit both land and water. It is built to stay afloat in the event of floods or rising seas. The 14,000 square meter shell-like construction of arches and cables distributes the weight evenly, meaning it can withstand earthquakes. Daylight is filtered through to internal rooms due to the hotel’s see-through structure, reducing the need for lighting. 09 More images after the break...


Designed as: “an integrated energy system with an uninterpretable power supply using alternative energy sources”, the hotel uses solar panels and a rainwater collection system to provide inhabitants with power and water. It would be built around a central pillar connecting to roof-top wind generators and heat pumps, as well as to energy storage and thermal conversion units below.There will also be a “tornado” energy generating spiral at the top of the pillar.

Take iron and folic acid foods for smarter kids in pregnancy

A study by Parul Christian, Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, shows that mothers who are given iron and folic acid supplements during pregnancy have kids who are smarter, more organized and had better fine motor skills than children whose mothers did not get them. The study was conducted in rural Nepal which involved studying 676 school-age children whose mothers had been in a clinical trial in which some got iron and folic acid supplements and other nutrients while they were pregnant. About 80 % of those children were enrolled in school.

"Iron is essential for the development of the central nervous system," said Parul Christian, an expert in international health at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"We had the opportunity to follow the offspring of women who had participated in a randomized trial of iron and folic acid and other micronutrients to assess neurocognitive function and outcomes," Christian said in a telephone interview.

"What we showed is prenatal iron and folic acid supplementation had a significant impact on the offspring's intellectual level and motor ability and ability during school age, which was a very exciting finding," she said.

"It had an impact across a range of function, including intellectual function, executive function and fine motor function," factors that could affect a child's later academic success, Christian said.

Photo from archives | Greatest photographs of world war II

Censored for days, this picture was finally published in the Mail. Now, 70 years on, by Max Hastings reveals the dramatic story behind THE iconic image of the Blitz.

Today is the ­anniversary of one of the greatest photographs of World War II being taken — and of a defining ­moment in British history. On the night of December 29, 1940, ­Daily Mail chief photographer ­Herbert Mason was ­firewatching on the roof of the ­newspaper’s offices ­between Fleet Street and the Thames.

The Luftwaffe’s blitz on London was at its height: after a brief pause decreed by Hitler on Christmas Day, Goering’s bombers had resumed their almost nightly pounding of the capital. A brief attack on December 27 inflicted 600 casualties, more than 50 of them in a single public ­shelter in Southwark which received a direct hit.

Symbol in the smoke: Herbert Mason's iconic photograph of St Paul's dome emerging from the smoke of raging fires in surrounding streets was taken 70 years ago this week

When darkness fell on December 29, the Heinkel and Dornier planes came again to launch their 125th attack since the campaign began — which inflicted unparalleled devastation on the old City of ­London. Barely 30 minutes into the raid, ­Luftwaffe aircrew counted 54 major fires beneath them; in three hours of early evening bombing, 120 tons of explosive and 22,000 incendiaries fell, inflicting appalling damage.

Capturing history: Daily Mail chief photographer Herbert Mason took the photograph from the roof of the newspaper's office in Carmelite Street

Hundreds of buildings in the heart of the ­financial district were set ablaze; eight Christopher Wren churches were destroyed and the 15th-century Guildhall was set on fire. One bomb landed near the Monument, erected by Wren to commemorate the 1666 Great Fire of London.

A middle-aged spinster named Vere Hodgson, who worked in a charity shop in Notting Hill, kept a wonderful diary of the war years, ­especially of the Blitz. ‘Terrible fires in London,’ she wrote of that night. ‘We went up on the roof to look. At Shepherd’s Bush, flames were leaping, and towards the City they were gigantic. As I walked up the road I could see the smoke.

‘A great red glow filled the sky — I had no need of a torch — I could see every step I took and could have read a book if I had wished.

‘The police said it was Waterloo station, but a taxi man told my friend Miss Mowes that the City was on fire, and they were trying to save St Paul’s. These were her first words to me, and I shall never forget the horror of them.’

On the roof of the Mail’s office at Northcliffe House, Carmelite Street, Herbert Mason gazed on the inferno around the cathedral, less than half a mile from where he stood — and raised his camera.

‘I focused at intervals as the great dome loomed up through the smoke,’ he later said. ‘The glare of many fires and sweeping clouds of smoke kept hiding the shape. Then a wind sprang up. ­Suddenly, the shining cross, dome and towers stood out like a symbol in the inferno. The scene was unbelievable. In that moment or two, I released my shutter.’

Mason knew nothing of the extraordinary drama taking place in St Paul’s, even as he took the ­picture that became the transcendent image of the Blitz.

Devastation: This was the view from St Paul's on January 3, 1941, showing the destruction to the streets surrounding the Cathedral

Falling rubble had blocked emergency ­services from getting through the streets and an abnormally low tide in the Thames caused hydrants on which firemen’s pumps depended to run dry. When a fire broke out in the cathedral’s library aisle, there was no mains water to fight it — the blaze was eventually suppressed with ­stirrup pumps, buckets and sand.

The War's greatest picture: The Daily Mail of 31 December 1940 sums up Herbert Mason's picture in perfect style.

Then, soon after 6.30pm, an incendiary bomb — one of 29 to fall on and around St Paul’s that night — pierced the lead roof of the dome and lodged in its timbers. ­Molten lead began to drip into the nave below. The aged wood of the choir stalls and organ screen, carved by the great sculptor Grinling Gibbons, was at mortal risk, while smoke from the blazing buildings surrounding the cathedral enveloped it.

American reporter Ed Murrow ­pronounced the great building’s obituary in a live broadcast to the U.S.: ‘The church that means most to London is gone. St Paul’s ­Cathedral is burning to the ground as I talk to you now.’

His valediction was premature: as he spoke, two teams of specialist fire watchers recruited from the Royal Institute of British Architects — and hand-picked because they had heads for heights — were ­crawling along the wooden beams with hand pumps to reach the ­blazing section.

But suddenly the incendiary bomb, having burnt through the wood, fell far, far to the nave below, where it was easily put out. Though almost every building around St Paul’s ­perished, the cathedral survived.

More than 160 people died in that night’s raid, including 16 firemen, and 500 were injured.

Eight of the firemen perished in a single incident when a wall collapsed on them as they fought a blaze near Fleet Street and 250 of their ­comrades suffered injuries during the night.

The next morning, it was bitterly cold. There was a light scattering of snow as office worker Dorothy ­Barton emerged from London Bridge station on her commute.

She gazed in horror at the acres of smoking and still burning ruins —then her heart lifted as she looked up at St Paul’s, towering over the scene. ‘I felt a lump in my throat because, like so many people, I felt that while St Paul’s survived, so would we,’ she said.

London's burning: Ruins of a building in the shadow of St Paul's still smoulder a week after the Blitz on the city in December 1940

But mild, gentle Miss Vere ­Hodgson looked on the devastation and wrote bitterly: ‘I shall never bother with Germans or foreigners again. It makes you want to give other people a taste of what we have had.’

Herbert Mason’s photograph went unpublished for two days while censors considered whether it would serve Britain’s cause; others — for example, one of Bank underground.

Beautiful winter drawings arts (10 pics)

Romantic scene of some beautiful winter drawing arts