Glass

In an age of long commutes, late sports practices, endless workdays and 24/7 television programming, the image of Mom hanging up her dish towel at 7 p.m. and declaring "the kitchen is closed" seems a quaint relic of an earlier era. It also harks back to a thinner America. And that may be no coincidence. A new study, conducted on mice, hints at an unexpected contributor to the nation's epidemic of obesity - and, if later human studies bear it out, a possible way to have our cake and eat it too, with less risk of weight gain and the diseases that come with it. Just eat your cake - or better yet, an apple - earlier.

Pocket doors slide away to connect the indoors and outdoors at this sleek contemporary. Designed for entertaining, the modern house features a massive concrete fireplace, a glass-walled loft and walls of glass looking out onto the swimming pool and deck. Location: 1060 Woodland Drive, Beverly Hills 90210 Asking price: $6.995 million Year built: 2009 House size: Four bedrooms, 41/2 bathrooms, 5,868 square feet Lot size: 20,420 square feet Features: Porcelain tile floors, walnut floors, bar, breakfast bar, office, recessed lighting, media room, service entrance, alarm system About the area: In the first quarter, 60 single-family homes sold in the 90210 ZIP Code at a median price of $2.85 million, according to DataQuick.

It was evidently good enough for Gilligan and Robinson Crusoe. But is coconut water a healthy choice for people who aren't stranded on a deserted island? A longstanding treat in tropical regions across the globe, coconut water hit U.S. supermarkets a few years back and is now being marketed with a vengeance. Sometimes billed as nature's sports drink, the slightly sour beverage has also acquired a reputation for being able to improve circulation, slow aging, fight viruses, boost immunity, and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Among all the special places inside his sprawling 10,700-square-foot mountaintop home, Daniel Coletti savors the vibe inside the living room most. It's a luxury dreamscape distinguished by mammoth walls of glass and Idaho-hewn stone. At night, he gazes out past the blue waters of an indoor-outdoor infinity pool and onto a vast citywide vista capped by the shimmering lights of the Strip. "It's like looking at a fire," his wife, Natalie, said. "You can't turn your eyes from it. " The property has another unique feature: Offered at $13.9 million, it's the most expensive residential listing in Las Vegas.

Los Angeles will gay anybody up. In the two months since I moved here, I've bought a yellow convertible Mini Cooper, a pair of Guess jeans and started using one of those fitness balls as my desk chair. This is a town so gay that Republicans don't even run for mayor. So when ABC Entertainment President Steve McPherson told Time magazine, in a story about the preponderance of gay TV show creators, that "if being gay makes you that talented, I'm going gay," I had to give it some serious thought.

I loved the restaurant's name, a compact curve of a word. Its sign, five big letters rimmed in neon, hovered above the roof. I almost never saw the sign with its neon lit; my parents took me there for early summer dinners, and even by the time we left--father cleaning his teeth with a toothpick, mother carrying steak bones in a doggie-bag--the sky was still bright. Heat rippled off the cars parked along Hollywood Boulevard, the asphalt gummy from hours of sun.

Drinkers the world over have been thrilled by the notion that resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine, might be some kind of anti-aging powerhouse. The supposed wonder substance can make perilously chubby lab rats live as long as their slim counterparts, protect them from cancers and reduce their risk of dying from a high-calorie diet. It can lengthen the life of certain fish while warding off brain decay and improving the creatures' swimming chops. Which may sound very alluring for those of us who'd like to think that sipping Pinot Noir while relaxing on a couch counts as doing something healthful.

It started with the voice. The first time you heard it -- too nasal, muffled, verging on meek -- you knew Ira Glass was not reading from the standard radio script. Over the last 15 years, his "This American Life" has become a public radio institution, as Glass has continued to defy convention. He took his quirky feature program and aimed it at hard news. He beguiled enough solitary radio listeners that they came together last year, en masse, to watch his live show in movie theaters.

BottleHood co-founder Steve Cherry describes the company he started with Leslie Tiano as "tree-hugger meets high-tech entrepreneur." The San Diego start-up employs local labor to turn blue, green, brown and clear glass bottles into tumblers, vases and other items. About 80% of all wine bottles end up in landfills, Cherry says, because they don't have a California redemption value (CRV). "When you realize that glass takes 4,000 years to decompose, burying it is not a sustainable solution," he says.

We met at the Santa Monica outpost of the Bodega wine bar. Though it was fairly dark inside, I recognized his face at the bar. I waved and walked toward him. As he stood up, his body did not match his face, or any of his online pictures. He was not the same guy surfing in the wetsuit, or wearing the tux, or looking all skinny with his bushy brown hair. He must have gained 50 pounds, maybe more. Beneath his beige button-down shirt I could see man boobs. "Shall we get a table?" he asked.

A 1928 Tudor once owned by Broadway star Mary Martin is on the market in Bel-Air at $10.5 million. Nicknamed the Peter Pan House for the role that the former resident is often associated, the two-story plus basement house sits on about an acre with a guesthouse and swimming pool. Features include leaded-glass windows, half-timbered details and a gabled roof. There is a library/study, a breakfast room, seven bedrooms and five bathrooms. Martin, who died in 1990 at 76, also was known for stage roles in "South Pacific" and "The Sound of Music.

We met at the Santa Monica outpost of the Bodega wine bar. Though it was fairly dark inside, I recognized his face at the bar. I waved and walked toward him. As he stood up, his body did not match his face, or any of his online pictures. He was not the same guy surfing in the wetsuit, or wearing the tux, or looking all skinny with his bushy brown hair. He must have gained 50 pounds, maybe more. Beneath his beige button-down shirt I could see man boobs. "Shall we get a table?" he asked.

WASHINGTON — There were no silver spoons, but lots of school loans. Grandmother worked her way up the ranks at the bank. Later, it took two incomes to pay the condo mortgage and the bills. If all this doesn't sound familiar, it soon will. As he heads into a faceoff with Republican Mitt Romney, President Obama's speeches are revisiting parts of the life story that helped propel his rise. There are nods to his humble beginnings, his hardworking grandmother and the stresses of debt — in short, stories that best connect with the middle-class voters his reelection may depend on. "Michelle and I, we've been in your shoes," the president told students Tuesday at the University of North Carolina as he called on Congress to extend a break in school loan interest rates.

Nicholas King was an actor and an assistant to renowned Hollywood photographer Bob Willoughby in the late 1950s when a close friend of Willoughby stopped by his home with intriguing news. The friend, film editor William Cartwright, had visited the famed Watts Towers for the first time and was surprised by what he saw. The unique work of folk art, created over 33 years by Italian immigrant Simon Rodia, had been abandoned since he moved away in 1954. His former house had burned down, the gates to the walled property were open and unguarded, and the grounds were littered with refuse left by unwanted visitors.

If Apple does use metallic glass in its next iPhone, you might not have to keep hiding the device from your toddler and clumsy cousin and actually hand it over to them with some confidence.  That's because it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Liquidmetal, or metallic glass, looks like glass but is far from fragile. It can resist bending, scratching, denting and shattering, according to the scientists responsible. We spoke with William Johnson and Marios Demetriou, the lead researchers on this material at Caltech, as Liquidmetal gets renewed attention following a report in Korean IT News that Apple is experimenting with it for upcoming devices.

MUSIC When the Village Voice's year-end music poll was topped by the Bay Area-based Tune-Yards (a.k.a. Merrill Garbus), the cries of "Who?" in some circles were deafening. Deserving of an audience beyond true believers and rock critics, the big-voiced Garbus mixes up Afro-pop and folk with an experimenter's ear for chance creation while looping herself on a sampler. Also headlining this stopover between Coachella sets is St. Vincent, whose knotty songs take on more blood and grit live courtesy of the guitar pyrotechnics of mastermind Annie Clark.

If Apple does use metallic glass in its next iPhone, you might not have to keep hiding the device from your toddler and clumsy cousin and actually hand it over to them with some confidence.  That's because it takes a licking and keeps on ticking. Liquidmetal, or metallic glass, looks like glass but is far from fragile. It can resist bending, scratching, denting and shattering, according to the scientists responsible. We spoke with William Johnson and Marios Demetriou, the lead researchers on this material at Caltech, as Liquidmetal gets renewed attention following a report in Korean IT News that Apple is experimenting with it for upcoming devices.

A celebration following the Boston Bruins' 1-0 overtime win over the Washington Capitals on Thursday evening took a turn for the rowdy. As Bruins fans celebrated their team's dramatic win, they pushed out a pane of glass that encircles the ice and it fell on David Krejci's head. Each pane reportedly weighs about 125 pounds. Krejci remained on his hands and knees for a few moments before standing up. He did not participate in Friday's practice.  "I got a little sore neck but other than that I am good and I'll play tomorrow," Krejci told reporters on Friday.

A celebration following the Boston Bruins' 1-0 overtime win over the Washington Capitals on Thursday evening took a turn for the rowdy. As Bruins fans celebrated their team's dramatic win, they pushed out a pane of glass that encircles the ice and it fell on David Krejci's head. Each pane reportedly weighs about 125 pounds. Krejci remained on his hands and knees for a few moments before standing up. He did not participate in Friday's practice.  "I got a little sore neck but other than that I am good and I'll play tomorrow," Krejci told reporters on Friday.

Google's Project Glass made its public debut on the face of Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Thursday night, prompting new excitement about the project, fresh predictions of future marvels -- or horrors -- and inspiration, most likely, for new parodies of the funky, futuristic headset. In photos, Brin appears comfortable in the augmented-reality specs as he stands alongside tech guru Robert Scoble at a charity event in San Francisco. Interestingly, the event at which the futuristic eyewear made its first appearance was Dining in the Dark for the Foundation Fighting Blindness.