The stylish eyewear of stars from Elton John to Audrey Hepburn has become iconic in its own right.

Inspired by those stylish glasses wearers, designer Frederico Mauro created a series of pictures of famous frames worn by actors, musicians, directors, and activists.

We turned a few of our favorites into a quiz (you can see the rest at Mauro's website).

How many frames do you recognize?

Let's start easy: Which young (fictional) wizard was famous for these glasses?

Why, it's Harry Potter (played by Daniel Radcliffe)!

Which legendary actress hid behind these frames in her famous movie as an "American geisha"?

Lululemon CEO Christine Day just announced that the brand plans to open standalone stores for men. 

The brand has offered men's clothing for several years, but faces a challenge in getting the male contingent in stores because the brand has generally been associated with women. 

"As it stands now, most men wouldn't shop at Lululemon," Brian Sozzi, chief equities strategist at Belus Capital, told us. "It will take careful planning to pull off a successful launch." 

We found 10 photos of men wearing Lululemon and looking really good. Maybe skeptical guys out there will be inspired.

This attractive man assists some yogis at a retreat.

This chiseled man holds a yoga pose like a pro.

This man has mastered the art of balance.

Colleges across the United States are being accused of botching investigations into sex crimes.

President Obama's alma mater, Occidental College, allegedly covered up rapes.

Otterbein University had students sign non-disclosure forms to keep them from publicizing alleged sex assaults.

And a former student sued  sued Wesleyan University for failing to protect her from a fraternity that she says was known as a "rape factory." There are allegations that other schools mishandled sexual assaults too.

Why this is happening:

Colleges sometimes have staff who aren't trained to handle sexual assault allegations and don't have consistent procedures for conducting investigations, experts say.

Another issue is that colleges can appear to want to protect aggressors as well as victims — sometimes discouraging students from filing formal complaints about sex assaults.

It can be problematic when colleges don't have staff specifically dedicated to handling sexual assault allegations, Leslie Gomez, a leading sexual assault policy consultant, tells Business Insider.

"In society at large … we have very clearly demarcated roles that people play — police officer, attorney, judge, psychologist — and each one of those agencies has a very clear mission," Gomez says.

"When we think about a college or a university, the institutional context is far more complicated … That institution is not trained law enforcement, is not a trained adjudicator, and does not necessarily have the specific, directed staff to address sexual assault," she said.

While sexual assault at colleges has long been a problem, complaints against schools have been more prevalent lately. Gomez and another expert we spoke to, Gina Smith, say a paradigm shift is partly responsible for the recent complaints.

Victims of sexual assault and harassment are talking about their experiences more openly and publicly, which has helped break the "culture of silence" surrounding sexual violence. Social media offers people a new platform to get their stories out to the public.

The Department of Education also furthered the discussion with a 2011"Dear Colleague" letter that outlines clear expectations about how cases of sexual harassment and sexual violence should be handled at universities.

Sex crimes are way too common at universities — in one survey used in 2012 CDC data regarding sexual violence, 19% of undergraduate women reported experiencing attempted or completed sexual assault in college.

The universities involved:

Here are some of the more serious allegations of mishandled cases:

Occidental College in Los Angeles doesn't take sex crimes very seriously, according to a federal complaint filed by female students, faculty, and alumni. The punishment for one student found responsible for two separate incidents of rape and sexual assault was writing a book report, the complaint alleges. One woman said she was raped her first week on campus and that an administrator said she "met with my rapist and he didn't seem like the type of person who would do something like that."

Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania is the subject of a similar complaint accusing it of being soft on sex crimes. One student said that after a fellow student sexually harassed her and broke into her room, college administrators discouraged her from taking formal action and implied that she was partly to blame, according to The New York Times. 

Students at the University of North Carolina filed a complaint with the Department of Education accusing the school of protecting rapists while further victimizing students. One student said an administrator told her she was "being lazy" when she wanted to take a medical leave from her classes after a rape left her with post traumatic stress disorder and depression. Similar allegations from other students at UNC have sparked a widespread conversation on the university's handling of sex crimes. The school's then-associate dean of students, Melinda Manning, eventually resigned, acknowledging that many students who had come to the university for help ended up wishing they hadn't. "It's absolutely heartbreaking," she told The Huffington Post.

Yale University was recently fined $165,000 for underreporting serious sex crimes. The Department of Education said that Yale's failures to comply with the Clery Act, which requires any school whose students get federal financial aid to report crimes on campus, "very serious and numerous." The department also said the violation endangered Yale students and employees who rely on this information to take precautions for their safety.

The University of Montana was the subject of a yearlong Department of Justice investigation regarding its handling of sexual assault on and off campus. The DOJ noted that six football players were accused of sexual assault in a three-year period and, until recently, campus police policies on sexual assault were "nonexistent." Last year, UM allegedly waited a week to report a sexual assault and the suspect fled the country before city police were notified. A DOJ civil rights official said female students who reported sexual assault or harassment were "unfairly belittled, disbelieved or blamed for speaking up about what had been done to them,” according to the Billings Gazette.

Otterbein University's student newspaper reported that the central Ohio school was violating federal law by requiring students involved in sexual assault cases to sign a form that included a nondisclosure clause. The form, which victims were reportedly required to sign, said in part, "Privacy must be maintained and the matter should not be discussed." The university has since removed the clause from the form, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

These aren't the only universities that have been accused of handling sexual assault cases badly.

Dartmouth College, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California are also a target of federal complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education last month, and Amherst College was heavily criticized last year for its treatment of rape victims.

Solutions:

Many universities that have been the subject of these complaints have overhauled their sexual assault policies. A Swarthmore official has said that sex assault on campus and the process in which cases are dealt with is a problem nationally and not necessarily unique to any university in particular.

Amherst, UNC, and Occidental brought in Smith and Gomez to help review their procedures for sexual assault cases. Swarthmore has made personnel and policy changes as well as increased training to improve its handling of sex-related cases. The number of reported sex offenses at Yale has gone up since the Department of Education began looking into its Clery Act violations, suggesting that the school has ended its practice of withholding or misreporting information. And DOJ officials have said that the University of Montana has created a "blueprint for reform that can serve as a model across this country."

"By and large, we don't see lack of good intent [with these colleges], we see lack of effective implementation," Gomez said.

University responses:

We contacted every college and university mentioned in this post for a response. Here's what they had to say:

Occidental College: "Our entire college community is determined to get this right. We have assembled some of the country's top experts and, based on their advice, taken a series of actions that we believe will put Occidental at the forefront of addressing sexual misconduct." (statement from Jim Tranquada, Occidental's director of communications)

Yale University: "The University  believes that the Department [of Education]'s imposition of maximum fines is not warranted based on the particular situations that resulted in findings of violations and, as a result, does not meaningfully advance the goals of the Clery Act. ... As you probably know, in its May 2011 Final Program Review Determination, the Department of Education noted that Yale had taken several corrective measures to strengthen its reporting process. There is no reporting issue now that the University has to address. The matters in question date back a number of years, including as far back as 2001." (statement from Tom Conroy, Yale's press secretary)

University of Southern California: "The University of Southern California takes all reports of sexual violence extremely seriously and has many resources available to assist students who experience unwanted sexual contact. In all reported instances, we thoroughly investigate and take appropriate disciplinary, as well as interim remedial, action. Previous investigations have resulted in a wide variety of sanctions, up to the dismissal of students from the university, including in cases where no criminal charges were filed." The rest of the statement can be found here.

University of North Carolina: Susan Jeannine Hudson at UNC directed us to a Campus Conversation on Sexual Assault website the university set up in response to the allegations. The site includes messages from the university chancellor as well as a page that outlines actions the school has taken, including removing jurisdiction for sex assault cases from the student Honor System.

Otterbein University: "The document in question is a checklist of the items discussed by an administrative investigator with the alleged victim, the alleged perpetrator and any witnesses as part of an internal investigation of an alleged sexual assault.

...One item on the list stated: "Privacy must be maintained and the matter should not be discussed." This item was intended to protect the alleged victim’s privacy by requesting all parties involved in the internal administrative investigation not discuss the matter outside of the investigation. While it is not a binding agreement, the signature confirms the interviewee has been informed and understands the privacy issues involved." (statement from Otterbein Student Affairs Dean Robert M. Gatti)

The university has since removed the privacy clause from the checklist.

Amherst College: "The tragic fact is that sexual assault is terrible and pervasive problem on college campuses and in American society generally. At Amherst, we’ve taken many steps in the past year in particular to try and prevent such acts of violence, and respond effectively when it does occur. We remain committed to making our campus as safe as possible, and will continue to hold our institution accountable in the future." (statement from Amherst Director of Media Relations Caroline Hanna) 

Hanna also pointed us to Amherst's Sexual Respect website and a letter from the president of the college that outlines steps taken and actions planned for the future. Smith and Gomez also helped write this report reviewing the college's policies for sexual assault.

The other universities mentioned in this story did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Complaints:

These documents provide a deeper look at the allegations against Occidental and the University of Montana.

Occidental College Sexual Assault Complaint

University of Montana Complaint

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The line between dinner and dessert has been blurred in the past, but some recent fast food offerings that blend sweet and savory are creating a lot of buzz.

"Replacing buns with the unconventional is the new norm," Foodbeast said of one fast food chain's latest offering — Jack in the Box's "Big Waffle Stack."

From a Krispy Kreme meat sandwich to a sweet pizza, here are some attempts at combining sweet and savory flavors. While some are appealing, others are disconcerting.  

The Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe

San Diego restaurant Chicken Charlie's announced on its Facebook page that it is offering a Krispy Kreme Sloppy Joe at the San Diego County Fair.

The fair lasts through July 4, so there's still time to visit and try the sandwich, which includes sloppy joe meat and cheddar cheese between two halves of a glazed donut.

Taco Bell's Waffle Taco

Taco Bell is testing an 89-cent Waffle Taco at three Southern California locations. 

The sausage patty and scrambled eggs are folded into a waffle and served with a packet of syrup. Whether or not it stays a menu item or expands to other locations remains to be seen.

Reviews so far have been harsh.

The McGriddle Breakfast Sandwich

McDonald's introduced the McGriddle sandwich in 2003 and solidified itself as the fast-food breakfast king. 

The sausage, egg and cheese between two maple syrup-infused pancakes is now a part of every franchise breakfast menu. 

Firefighters somehow saved this house from the Black Forest fire in Black Forest, Colorado. The fire has already destroyed 360 houses. It is the most destructive fire in Colorado history.

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Reuters says this is a herdsman driving his cows, sheep, and goats to their summer pastures in Altay Prefecture, Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. That's a mouthful. But it's a pretty cool picture.

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When Kanye West called himself the next Steve Jobs— on track to revolutionize "downtown, fashion, culture" and lead a company "worth billions of dollars"—  no one was surprised.

The musical superstar has earned a reputation for having the biggest ego in the world.

It's not entirely undeserved either.

His fiercely anticipated album "Yeezus" leaked a few days early and is already getting great reviews.

How did we get to this point?

SEE ALSO: The 8 Best Lines From Kanye West's New Album 'Yeezus'

Kanye Omari West was born in Atlanta, Georgia on June 8, 1977. His parents — Ray, an award-winning photographer and church counselor, and Donda, an English professor — divorced when he was three.

Donda raised Kanye on Chicago's South Side. She said her greatest parenting challenge was learning how to discipline him without killing his spirit.

"My parents required every one of us not just to do our best, but to be the best," Donda wrote in her memoir, "Raising Kanye: Life Lessons from the Mother of a Hip-Hop Superstar." "If you don't set that bar high, you can't expect your children to excel."

Growing up, he spent summers with his father. "He taught me how to think, how to use my mind," Kanye said. "A lot of parents say, 'Because I said so.' But he allowed me to ask questions."

The quote comes from this Teen Diaries TV clip.

Time was, you knew where you were with swimming trunks.

If you were a Village Person, a Dolce & Gabbana model or a PE teacher, you wore tight briefs. If you had athletic pretensions, you wore knee-length swimmers.

If you were anyone else, you wore board shorts.

Recently, however – and I blame Daniel Craig’s bathers in Casino Royale– things have changed.

Not only is your preferred style up for grabs as never before; the range to choose from is insane. Selfridges has 150 styles, Harrods upwards of 100, and one design of trunk from swimwear specialist Orlebar Brown comes in 36 possible colour combinations.

In the face of all that, what is the beach-fearing slob in early middle age to do? Should one take the blaring surf-printed dad-short or risk the more figure-hugging fit? It’s now possible, I am told, to wear shorts without looking like an over-cidered Notting Hill teenager holidaying in Rock; and the brief-wearer is not confined to Peter Stringfellow posing pouches in neon lime or glans purple. That should be good news – yet how it makes one long for the easy certainties of old.

Still, needs must. I girded my loins and took to the swimwear department in order to, er, gird my loins. Here’s what I found.

First, for men no less than women questions of engineering, as well as of style, enter into decisions about swimwear. One man’s budgie­-smuggler is another man’s chicken-strangler.

Take the very brief briefs I tried from Gucci: minimalist, a bit retro, navy trimmed with a stylish battleship grey (£220). The issue with these was that if you yanked them high enough to cover the upper foliage, you also ran the risk of what my gym teacher used to call “non-nuclear fallout” below.

Robinson Les Bains check shorts

This is also an issue with the preppy 1960s-looking Robinson Les Bains range. A blue-and-white tartan Oxford number (£135) – as close as you can get to wearing the tablecloth from a dolls’ house in the pool – pushes the tightness a bit; and its Capri shorts (£130) are even more cosy.

The navy stripes might suit Daniel Craig. A wee number in stretchy royal blue (£140), also from their Capri line, did its best to sterilise me. And unless you have the abs of Christian Bale, you’re looking at Unsightly Overhang as well as nether bisection. They put two poppers at the waist because (I suspect) they knew the top one would be invisible. Approach with care.

Far roomier and more sensible – but leading the field in surf-pattern hideousness – are a pair of shorts by Etro in a lightweight fabric (£139). A mishmash of checks in fuchsia, magenta and two shades of green all overlaid with paisley-style swirly-whirly foliage and secured by a green neon lace, these are the visual equivalent of a vicious hangover in a cheap resort hotel.

Vilebrequin’s big surf shorts (£180), a similar shape, are a more soothing proposition: blue water flowers float on a blue-black background with fish picked out join-the-dot-style in white. Nothing to complain about, and with a waterproof pen you could entertain yourself joining the dots, too.

Chucs ‘Positano’ style

Equally inoffensive were some simple red board shorts by Chucs, detailed with a popper fly and cinched at the waist with a fat cream-coloured lace. “Stand Tall, Live Well, Give Freely, Explore Often” says the label, which is presumably something to do with the popper fly. They cost £145, so the motto must be impressing somebody. Chucs also does a similar thing – “Positano Long” (£145) – with a nice little coin pocket on the right hip and a red-and-black diamond pattern on cream background, which looks jolly and faintly nautical.

I don’t know if Dan Ward is a person or a direction, since he spells his name on his swimming trunks without a space in the middle and with the final “d” reversed. Anyway, his boxer-style shorts (one dark blue with a “logo check”, £135; the other orangey-red trimmed with white stripes round the left leg, £85) are in a very light and slippery fabric reminiscent of an 1980s shell suit – though I dare say they would dry quickly in the sun. His website tells me of his “resort wear”: “It outfits the fabric of our summer.” I the mangles language of it facepalm, so to speak. Onward and Danward.

Thom Browne stripe swim shorts (top) and Orlebar Brown ‘rattan chair’ pattern shorts

But let’s not be churlish. What did I like? Michael Bastian’s seersuckery pale blue bathing shorts with white trim (£155), coin pocket and a narrow vertical stripe alternating duck-egg and cyan, for one thing. Thom Browne’s slightly prankish shorts (£180), with their fat horizontal stripes of blue, orange and white and darling little sperm whales gleaming in the blue stripes when you get up close, for another.

And I very much liked the comparatively nonsense-free shorts of Orlebar Brown (£135). In comfortable fabrics, they have side-adjusters at the hips to tighten, and simple patterns. My favourite was – super-ingeniously – patterned to look exactly like a rattan chair ... so when you’ve sat down on a rattan chair after a swim and it’s done that thing to your bum, your trunks will be a brilliant visual pun. Or at least something for everyone else to talk about on holiday.

www.ft.com/stylestockists

Top tips: The hat parade

Bernstock Speirs’ shirt brim Trilby (top) and Rag & Bone’s coarse weave natural straw

What bathing suit to wear is not the only male style choice when it comes to beach or pool wear: what you put on your head also matters (who knew there were so many sartorial decisions given how few clothes are involved?), writes David Hayes. And again, when it comes to hats, as with suits, the options are seemingly endless: Panama, pork pie, Trilby ... yes, the classic straw hat is giving the ubiquitous baseball cap a run for its money this summer.

Beach-worthy straw hats are everywhere; from Bernstock Speirs’ shirt brim Trilby (£110, pictured, top) to Rag & Bone’s coarse weave natural straw (£145, pictured, bottom), Paul Smith’s cream upturned brim style (£75) and Ralph Lauren’s Madras check-banded number (£65).

“I love to see men looking smart and preppy on the beach,” says Thelma Speirs, one half of British hat duo Bernstock Speirs. “Pastel-coloured shorts and a Panama Trilby work really well together. I like a small brim because it looks more contemporary and a downturned brim offers shade for the eyes.”

Sue Simpson, director of London company Lock & Co, which dates from 1676, says: “We have seen a real revival in hat-wearing in recent years, particularly from younger men, and especially in summer as men become more aware of the dangers of skin cancer.” Simpson also politely points out that a sizeable amount of its summer hat trade is for “gentlemen who are losing, or have lost, their hair”.

Key styles at Lock include the folder Panama (£225), which folds in to a handy travel tube, and the rockabilly pork pie hat (£149) from its Lock & Roll range aimed at younger customers. If you are a novice to the world of brim widths and crown heights, Lock also has a handy guide to sizing on its website.

How do you find which hat style will work best on the beach? “A taller person with broad shoulders will best suit a wider brim hat,” says Simpson. “Whereas a man who is not as tall with a slight build will look better in a narrow brimmed hat.”

Speirs is more pragmatic. “Finding a hat that suits you means trying them on,” she says. And for this summer’s coolest look? “Just imagine Paul Newman at one of Roddy McDowall’s famous beach parties in Malibu, in 1965, and you can’t go wrong.”

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Many conservationists are furious over a recent proposal by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service to drop the gray wolf from the endangered species list.

At least one group of conservationists, however, also supports dropping federal protection for wolves. They are the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, led by hunter David Allen.

“The recovery has surpassed the agreed upon recovery goals by 500%,” Allen told Business Insider. “It is time to let the states do their job.”

Allen's controversial stance has alienated some former supporters of the Elk Foundation, who accuse him of turning the conservation group into a pro-hunting lobby. The family of famed wildlife biologist Olaus J. Murie pulled money last year for its annual Elk Foundation award on account of the organization's "all-out war against wolves," according to the Montana Pioneer.

Allen insists that he really is looking out for the environment.

The reintroduction of wolves is one of the leading causes for the decline of elk herds in the Rocky Mountain region because it gave a top predator a kind of “amnesty,” Allen argues.

"ln 1995, [Yellowstone elk were] the largest herd in North America," Allen said. "It’s probably not coincidental that after wolves were reintroduced, the elk population fell from 19,000 to 4,000.”

Allen would like to see the wolf population in the Rocky Mountain region shrink: "We do feel like the number could be managed downward and not threaten the population overall," he said. 

When asked by the Pioneer about the natural predator-prey relations, Allen said: "Natural balance is a Walt Disney movie. It isn’t real."

The former marketer for NASCAR is not what you might think of today as a conservationist. Allen poses for photos in hunter camo, and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has a page on its site called “The Hunt,” where users can plan their own elk hunts and get game recipes from the “Carnivore’s Corner.”

But he and his cohort maintain that hunters are the original conservationists. They take inspiration from early American hunters and outdoorsmen like Theodore Roosevelt. Founded by three hunters in Montana in 1984, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has acquired 6.3 million acres of land, all of which it has handed over to the public through government agencies.  

The proposal to delist gray wolves across the country and return management to the states comes less than two years after populations in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Utah, which cover the Northern Rocky Mountain region, were stripped of Federal protections. 

Environmental activists who oppose taking gray wolves off the endangered species list argue that the population has not been restored to its historical range, which once extended across the much of the contiguous United States.

Considered a threat to livestock, the gray wolf was nearly hunted to extinction in the early to mid-20th century. Canadian-born gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the mid-1990s and the population has largely recovered due to conservation efforts. 

There is a correlation between the rise of wolf populations and decline in elk, but biologists debate whether the gray wolf is responsible. 

Allen admits that there are likely many causes for elk's gradual demise but is convinced that predation is playing its part.

“The wolf is not 100% responsible,” he said. "But when you combine the wolf with two species of bear, mountain lions, and man’s ever-expanding footprint, you get a kind of a perfect storm.”

Allen maintains that he is not trying to eradicate the wolf from the United States, but he is convinced that management should be left up to the states.  

"Nobody in their right mind is saying that we should exterminate wolves,” he said.“But we should leave this to the people who live in these states [with wolf populations]. Ultimately they are the ones who have to live with the circumstances and they have to make it work."

SEE ALSO: The most famous wolf in the wold has been killed by hunters

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Wall Street has long been plagued by a very special type of communication problem: All too often over the last couple of decades, the words and images Wall Streeters have transmitted electronically have come back to bite then in the, umm, assets under management.

You know what I'm talking about. Henry Blodget calling a stock a P.O.S in an email. Libor traders slapping each other on the back for rigging the rates via instant messaging. S&P analysts rating cows. Goldman's Fabulous Fab trying to impress a girl by saying he would be the only potential survivor of the coming CDO collapse. The list goes on and on.

Those are the more famous instances. There are far more obscure—and arguably less important—instances of Wall Streeters blowing themselves up with help from the Internet. There was the Goldman associate who set up his own blog and was fired for lifting Bloomberg screenshots. Another Goldman associate was secretly a famous sportswriter at Deadspin. A trader at Fortress was fired for emailing a well-known Wall Street blog a picture of one of the firm's traders asleep at his desk.

Somehow Wall Street never seems to learn the lessons of these moments. Be careful whom you email. Stay off the work email account for social conversations. Watch what you say. Things that are jokes in context are the stuff of criminal indictments out of context. (Hint: Text messages from your personal phone are still somewhat safe).

Perhaps the pressures of Wall Street—as well as the loneliness of long hours—are such that it is inevitable that they'll turn to electronic communications to blow off steam.

Suddenly, this summer, many seem to have found that Snapchat is the best way to do this.

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Traveling the world is an exciting adventure in itself, but knowing the exclusive and best-kept secrets of the cities you are visiting makes the trip that much better.

Even if you’re not abroad or in an unfamiliar city, there are places that are simply so high-brow or underground that you would not know about them even if you’ve lived in the same city for your entire life.

These 10 clandestine venues fit that category and are guaranteed fun experiences, all for different and exciting reasons.

This story was originally published by Party Earth.

The Sayers Club – Los Angeles

Starting in the city known for posh nightclubs and celebrity sightings, Hollywood is home to The Sayers Club, one of the best-kept secrets, largely because its entrance is hidden with its sign-less façade backed off the street a bit. Despite its relative anonymity, the door is very tough due to the high volume of industry leaders and celebrities that frequent this sleek speakeasy. If lucky enough to get inside, visitors are treated to unannounced musical performances from notable artists, and have the opportunity to rub shoulders with some of the most powerful people in Tinseltown while waiting for an $18 drink.

Joy Madrid – Madrid

Located in central Madrid, Joy Madrid has long been one of the hottest go-to nightclubs in Europe and is one of the most popular clubs in Madrid for those looking for a true European club experience. Opened in 1981, it was converted from an old 1950’s theater into a huge club warehouse. Joy Madrid offers ample space for partygoers from all over the world to meet new friends and party the night away. Perhaps what makes this venue so unique is its spectacular light effects that add even more flair to this trendy club. Blue lights spectacularly illuminate the spacious sunken dance floor and undulating special effects are projected onto the back wall of the stage. No matter where one turns, myriad futuristic lighting and lasers bounce off the walls and, of course, it wouldn’t be a true nightclub without a disco ball hanging above the crowd.

SL (Simyone Lounge) – New York City

Similar to The Sayers Club with its hipster, yet swanky vibe, New York’s SL (Simyone Lounge) is guarded with classic velvet ropes, followed by a mysterious black-mirrored entrance. Once inside the club, there is plenty to please the eye from the beautiful people to the enticing illuminated glass bricks that line the walls. For those who don’t want to mingle with the run of the mill models, socialites, and Wall Street elites, there is an ultra-exclusive bottle service lounge with an intimate DJ experience. Also, when you’re inside make sure to look up to see an aerial view of the attractive clientele mingling with each other thanks to the mirrored ceilings.

Watchcase, a new condominium complex that's under construction in Sag Harbor, is like no other property in the Hamptons.

There are almost no other condos on the East End, and none as luxurious as Watchcase — which is being built in a dilapidated factory building that's being painstakingly restored — making it an attractive option for wealthy buyers who want convenience.

"There's a trend of people who don't want to deal with the extravagant costs and year-round stress of home ownership out east," said James Lansill, managing director of Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group, which is heading up sales.

They've seen significant interest from European jetsetters who want to come and go as they please, current Hamptons homeowners who want to simplify their lifestyles, and longtime renters, said Gordon Hoppe, SVP at Corcoran.

The 64 homes at Watchcase won't be completed until next winter, but they are already flying off the market: 22 contracts have gone out so far on residences, which are priced between $1.02 million and $10.2 million.

I recently took a seaplane to Sag Harbor to tour the development. It's still a construction pit, but I got a good idea of what Watchcase will look like when it's finished from the model apartment and renderings. 

Between the history and location, it's easy to see why buyers are going crazy for it.

First, a bit of history. Sag Harbor was a major whaling town in the early 1800s, and thrived as an industrial center. The factory building that's being converted into luxury condos was originally a cotton mill. Watch manufacturer Bulova later took it over for watchcase production.

The building, located right off Sag Harbor's Main Street and a couple of blocks from the water, was abandoned in the 1980s and became a huge eyesore for the community.

Instead of demolishing the factory and constructing something new, developer Cape Advisors decided to restore the the building and convert it into luxury apartments. When it's finished, it should be restored to its former glory.

In response to the mounting criticism of Qatar’s ability to host the 2022 World Cup, the “tiny Gulf Arab state” is considering developing floating hotels, luxury villas and a water park off the coast of Doha called Oryx Island to house the influx of visitors that will need accommodation during the games.  

As stated by the WSJ, the island would be developed by Barwa Real Estate Co, a local firm partly-owned by the government, at a cost of $5.5 million.

The concept of the floating hotel can be developed as a space-saving, energy-efficient structure that will provide off-shore hospitality.  In addition to amenities featured at hotels constructed on land, the floating hotels of Oryx Island are proposing to provide electrical vehicles, water taxis, ferries and private boats to transport its 25,000 visitors to the mainland.  The hotel will have an independent sewage treatment plant, power generation and recycling possibilities, freeing it from the limitations of the infrastructure in the surrounding area.

The project is slated for completion in seven to eight years, well within the time frame for the upcoming Qatar 2022 World Cup.  The development is expected to expand the country’s GDP and provide economic growth for years ahead.

Stay tuned as we hear more about this project.

SEE ALSO: The 20 New Most Popular Cities For Tourists

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A natural wonder of the world, stretching more than 1,600 miles, the Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest organically formed structure.

Last month, after years of dreaming about it, I had the opportunity to dive the reef and come face to face with some of the most beautiful underwater landscapes I’ve ever seen.

The experience has a way of spontaneously filling memory cards. In that spirit, here are 44 images I took during my time on the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland, Australia.

[Note: Scott's visit to the GBR was sponsored by Tourism and Events Queensland. Learn more about Queensland on their blog.]

Welcome to the Great Barrier Reef. 1,600 miles long, 133,000 square miles in area, comprising 3,000+ individual reefs and islands, and home to thousands of species.

Finding Nemo is one of the first things you want to do when you dive the Great Barrier Reef. Around the world, these poor fish have probably been extremely confused as to why, for the past 10 years, everyone has been getting in their face for a photo.

The Cod Hole is a special dive site that gives access to the giant potato cod. This friendly fish likes to get extremely close to divers, and oftentimes you can see them looking at their reflection in your goggles.

TIMES are tough for Debbie, a prostitute in western England who runs a private flat with other “mature ladies”. She does two or three jobs a day. A year ago she was doing eight or nine. She has cut her prices: “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t still be open.” She says that she can now make more money doing up furniture and attending car-boot sales than she can turning tricks.

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Understanding the role of your body's metabolism is key to good health.

“Metabolism is the process of transforming food into energy for the body,” says Heather Bauer, R.D., C.D.N., and founder of Bestowed, a subscription service that introduces consumers to healthy foods. “It’s directly related to weight gain and weight loss and therefore to overall health.” 

Some people are simply born with a stellar metabolism — meaning even when they are doing nada, they are burning more calories than a less-fortunate someone else. But that won’t necessarily always be the case. Your ability to down a slice of greasy pizza, skip the gym, and not gain a pound is fading faster than a Taylor Swift relationship.

As you age, your metabolism naturally slows down. After the age of 20, it can decline dramatically with each decade. “This is because the body loses lean muscle mass over the years, so as we get older, we tend to lose muscle and gain body fat,” says Bauer. “And lean muscle mass is more metabolically active than fat tissue, so when you lose muscle mass, your metabolism naturally slows down.” Catch-22 much?

While you might not be able to get it back to what it once was, you can take it up a notch or two by, you guessed it, hitting the gym and building some lean muscle, which uses more energy than fat to just exist. The other metabolism game-changer? Food. Here, the main metabolism boosters you’ll want to weave into your daily diet. Dig in.

Protein
There’s a reason why it’s a bodybuilder staple: Protein helps maintain and build muscle mass, a key component of a healthy metabolism. “Protein is harder to digest than carbohydrates and fats, therefore it uses up more body energy to break it down,” says Bauer. “And it also take more time to be digested, which can keep you satisfied for longer.” You know the major protein powerhouses: fish, chicken, turkey, eggs and lean meat like bison.

Fiber
“Fiber is a non-digestible carbohydrate that uses up energy and can boost metabolism in the process,” says Bauer. Your biggest bang-for-your-fiber-buck: whole grains such as quinoa and wheat germ, fruits like berries, and veggies — especially carrots and leafy greens.

Thermogenic Foods

As in the foods that get you heated can also heat up your metabolism. Think: caffeine, hot peppers (which contain a unique compound called capsaicin), and some teas — green, white, and oolong. Research shows that these types of foods and molecules can uptick your calorie expenditure by four to five percent from just one serving.

Cinnamon
Always skip the cinnamon shaker at the Starbucks station? Not anymore. “It can affect your metabolic rate by helping the sugar in the blood to get into cells and to be used for energy, so less of it is stored as fat — and the less fat you have, the higher your metabolic rate is naturally,” explains Bauer. However, know that you want to be sure to monitor how much cinnamon you ingest daily as some studies show that it can turn toxic in large quantities — keep it in the one teaspoon or less per day range to be safe.

Coconut Oil
Bauer notes that coconut oil has been said to decrease the amount of fat being stored in fat cells, because the oil's molecules are very tiny and bypass the intestines, going straight to the liver where it will be metabolized as a carbohydrate, rather than fat. But, she also points out that studies around coconut oil and its effects on the metabolism are inconclusive, so take that info with a grain of salt, at least for now.

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BEFORE Hurricane Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, it stopped in Florida. Huge waves covered beaches, swept over Fort Lauderdale’s concrete sea wall and spilled onto A1A, Florida’s coastal highway. A month later another series of violent storms hit south Florida, severely eroding Fort Lauderdale’s beaches and a chunk of A1A. Workers are building a new sea wall, mending the highway and adding a couple of pedestrian bridges. Beach erosion forced Fort Lauderdale to buy sand from an inland mine in central Florida; the mine’s soft, white sand stands out against the darker, grittier native variety.

Hurricanes and storms are nothing new for Florida. But as the oceans warm, hurricanes are growing more intense. To make matters worse, this is happening against a backdrop of sharply rising sea levels, turning what has been a seasonal annoyance into an existential threat.

For around 2,000 years sea levels remained relatively constant. Between 1880 and 2011, however, they rose by an average of 0.07 inches (1.8mm) a year, and between 1993 and 2011 the average was between 0.11 and 0.13 inches a year. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast that seas could rise by as much as 23 inches by 2100, though since then many scientists have called that forecast conservative. Seas are also expected to warm up, which may make hurricanes and tropical storms more intense.

Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, caused $1 billion-worth of damage in current dollars. Were it to strike today the insured losses would be $125 billion, reckons AIR Worldwide, a catastrophe-modelling firm. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, caused $23 billion in damage; today it would be twice that.

Most Floridians live in coastal counties. Buildings cluster on low ground; more people than in any other state live on land less than four feet (1.2 metres) above the high-tide line. Florida’s limestone bedrock makes it easy for salt water from surging seas to contaminate its freshwater aquifers. And it relies heavily on canals for flood control, which a sea-level rise of just six inches would devastate.

South Florida is not the only region threatened by climate change and hurricanes. Increased rain, violent storms and rising sea-levels could inundate low-lying areas around San Francisco and Seattle, or burst the levees that protect swathes of Sacramento and California’s Central Valley from the Sacramento and San Joaquin river delta.

Houston, the centre of America’s petrochemical industry, and Norfolk, Virginia, home to its largest naval base, could also be in trouble. So could some of the barrier islands along the Atlantic coast, such as North Carolina’s Outer Banks, and traditional Atlantic maritime regions such as Maryland’s Eastern Shore. These two areas, like South Florida, have seen sharp rises in population and development.

New York is also at risk, as Hurricane Sandy showed last autumn (see charts). Manhattan is vulnerable to rising sea levels: the districts flooded by Sandy corresponded almost perfectly to land reclaimed since the 17th century (see map). That land is far more valuable now than it was then: Jeroen Aerts and Wouter Botzen of the Netherlands’ VU University reckon the value of structures threatened by storms and floods has increased four- to sevenfold in the past century. Since the flood map was last updated in 1983, floor space inside the city’s flood plain has risen 40%, to 535m square feet.

However, traditional flood-mitigation schemes, such as buying out householders or raising existing buildings, are impractical in New York. Seth Pinsky, who spearheaded the city’s post-Sandy adaptation plan, notes that New York now has 400,000 people, 270,000 jobs and 68,000 buildings inside the 100-year flood plain. Ground floors in New York are built for shops. Raising buildings would either be too costly, too destructive to neighbourhoods, or both.

Turning the shoreline over to beaches, dunes or wetlands will not work in crowded Manhattan, which like many cities wants more development along its waterfront, not less. Some have proposed protecting the city with massive storm barriers at the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, similar to the gates that protect London, Rotterdam and St Petersburg. But aside from the steep price tag (as much as $29 billion), such barriers could worsen flood risk for areas outside them.

In 2007 Michael Bloomberg, New York’s mayor, released PlaNYC, a scheme for adapting to climate change, which could be called “ambitious” or “dictatorial”, depending on one’s view of the mayor. It called for, among other things, protecting wetlands and planting more trees, which will keep the city cooler and capture more stormwater run-off. It also demands changes in building codes.

Mike’s dyke

Many of its ideas were incorporated into a more sweeping post-Sandy plan released on June 11th, which calls for floodwalls and levees to protect vital infrastructure, such as a food-distribution centre in the Bronx and hospitals on Manhattan’s East Side, and coastal communities on Staten Island. It recommends storm-surge barriers to prevent creeks and rivers from backing up into residential areas; a new lower Manhattan district, modelled on Battery Park City, protected by a multi-purpose levee; and new or repaired natural barriers such as sand dunes, beaches and wetlands around the outer boroughs.

The city would offer incentives to building owners to move important stuff like electrical equipment higher off the ground. It would amend zoning and building codes to encourage new buildings to be raised higher, and require hospitals, telecoms and other utilities to meet tougher resilience standards. Mr Bloomberg put the price tag at nearly $20 billion, with city and federal sources for only $15 billion identified so far. But put beside New York’s extraordinarily high economic output, the price is hardly outlandish.

New York’s plans illustrate that although climate change is global, adaptation is local. In America such things as land-use, zoning, construction and transport are typically under state or local control. That sets America apart from more centralised countries like the Netherlands. As Rohit Aggarwala, a former adviser to Mr Bloomberg, says: “It’s not clear the federal government is the leader on this issue, even if they wanted to be in charge.” During disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) may come in to clean up, but evacuation orders come from state and local authorities, and police, fire and medical teams also tend to be employed locally.

The federal government does play a supporting role, not least because it brings extra money. For example, FEMA buys up houses that are repeatedly flooded. Since 2009 the Army Corps of Engineers has incorporated forecasts of sea-level rise into all its civil-works programmes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development offers grants to encourage cities and regions to work together on climate-change-adaptation plans and studies. And a separate federal post-Sandy task force has required that any structure rebuilt with any of the $50 billion in disaster funds should be raised to one foot above the most recent federal flood guidance.

Last year Congress required the insurance subsidy that the federal government has long offered to householders who live and build on flood plains to be phased out. Such subsidies, in effect, pay people to live in dangerous places.

A region’s preparedness depends in part on how seriously its leaders take climate change. Proactively minded cities have joined forces; New York and ten others are among the 61 cities around the world that, in partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative, share plans and information to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and adapt to a changing climate. In Florida, four of the southernmost counties—which include the state’s three most-populous ones, accounting for more than a quarter of its total population—have formed the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact. These counties share data, work together on legislation and seek funding in concert.

The federal government has limited sway over regions where people are less convinced of climate change. North Carolina’s legislators, for instance, have outlawed “scenarios of accelerated sea-level rise unless such rates are...consistent with historic trends.” (As one angry North Carolinian noted, this is like ordering meteorologists to predict the weather not by looking at the radar image of a hurricane barrelling towards the coast, but by consulting the “Farmer’s Almanac”.) A survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found cities in America among the least likely, globally, to have plans for adapting to changing weather. But some, at least, are starting.

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Most of us have a favorite sentimental picture with our dad.

Maybe it was snapped at Disneyland, the Grand Canyon, or just hanging around the house.

Some Reddit users had the brilliant idea to recreate these precious moments years later with their fathers.

These would make the perfect Father's Day gift. See a few of our favorites below:

Mr_Smithy recreated a picture he took 15 years ago on a trip with his dad.

Reddit user lilyah re-staged a picture of her and her father from 1995.

Clephtis climbed on his dad's shoulders to relive a 1997 Disneyland picture.

Argmannen's son is MUCH taller now than in the pair's 2004 picture. 

Reddit user sweetgaze, her dad, and her brother recreated an old photo from 18 years ago.

And goofy_goober_YEAH, his brother, and his father restaged a series of images together, but this one's our favorite.

DON'T MISS: 20 Classic Photos Of America Tourists

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Making restaurant reservations is a way of life -- but, for many consumers, so is breaking them. For every reservation that is made in some large cities, around 20% result in an empty table that the business must hope to fill with walk-in consumers. In an industry that, according to a Wall Street Journal article, often has margins as low as 3% to 5%, those are odds that some restaurants can't afford to bet on.

Why do consumers find it so easy to break their commitment to dine in a particular establishment at a particular time? According to Wharton PhD student Jaelynn Oh, it all comes down to perceived value. When someone makes a reservation, as far as the restaurant is concerned, the meal or meals have already been sold and managers will adjust their staffing and supply levels accordingly. It's a different story, however, for consumers.

"Reservations give convenience to customers and can sometimes attract more customers to a restaurant because they take away the wait time. But they are also a risk for restaurants," Oh says, noting that a reservation is a sign that, at the time of making the commitment, a consumer valued the chance to eat a particular establishment's food more than they valued spending that block of time a different way. But, in most cases, a reservation is a no-strings attached situation for consumers. If they decide at some point before the scheduled meal that they would rather eat somewhere else, or do something else, they can simply fail to show up. 

Oh explores the problem of broken reservations in a new working paper, "Pricing Restaurant Reservations: Dealing with No-Shows," co-written with Wharton operations and information management professor Xuanming Su. Using a game theoretic model that took into account businesses' meal prices, diner capacities and other factors, she and Su suggest that many restaurants could maximize profits by employing a solution that involves both punishing customers who break their reservations and rewarding those who keep them. In addition, they note that some restaurants would be better off not taking any reservations at all.

Some restaurants have already started to fight back against no-shows. Le Bernadin, a three-Michelin-star seafood restaurant in New York, charges a $50 penalty to people who fail to show up or cancel their reservations less than 48 hours in advance. Oh notes that other establishments have implemented more public shaming by posting the names of diners who break their reservations on Twitter or Facebook. While most consumers don't think it's fair that they be charged for food they didn't eat, the researchers point out that "restaurant owners have a consensus that the industry is about space" as well as food.

"They consider the open space at dining tables to be the same as a manufacturing machine in a factory," Oh and Su write. "When the machine is not producing, they are losing money." Some restaurants, Oh adds, keep track of customers who don't show up and deny them the chance to make future reservations. Last year, another New York restaurant, Eleven Madison Park, began charging $75 per customer for parties that failed to show up or cancel in a timely manner, the WSJ reported.

"Other restaurants with similarly priced meals charge less -- $50, or even $20," Oh says. "We wanted to answer what is the correct profit-maximizing level that restaurants should charge. On the other hand, some restaurants are using incentive schemes to encourage more people to show up. These restaurants are trying to give discounts to customers who show up and are even giving different levels of discounts depending on the demand or popularity of a particular time slot."

Using their model, the researchers found that charging $50 or $20 isn't enough to make up for the cost of a no-show to a restaurant. They suggest that businesses should impose a fee on no-shows that is equivalent to the cost of eating there: For example, if a reservation was made for a party of four at an establishment where meals cost $50, the optimal fee for not showing up would be $200, or the equivalent of food and beverages for each member of the group. "That was quite shocking because most restaurants are not charging such a high no-show policy," Oh notes. But she says some establishments are, in effect, following such a model by selling tickets for their prix fixe tasting menus. "If customers don't show up, they lose the face value of the ticket," she states. "This is a smart way of framing a no-show fee. Although customers would pay the same price for not showing up either way, the psychology behind [a ticket policy] is different."

But Oh and Su write that restaurants will not get the most bang for their buck by only punishing those who fail to show up for reservations -- they must also reward those who do. "If a restaurant is going to price discriminate, it needs to give a discount to customers who ... bear the risk of paying a no-show penalty," they note. "Because walking in [without a reservation] is an outside option to making a reservation, there is pressure [on] the restaurant to make the inside option more attractive by charging a lower price."

They also point out that having a reservation policy isn't the best option for all restaurants. As the potential market for the business increases, accepting walk-in customers only or implementing a hybrid system of reservations and walk-ins brings in higher profits than relying purely on reservations, Oh says.

Oh cautions that the results detailed in the paper only show what is mathematically optimal. "When it comes to implementing a policy in reality, restaurants should consider that some customers go to very high-end restaurants because they may want to show that they are very sophisticated and that they are not going to wait," she notes. "In those cases where customers have a very, very high aversion to waiting, the restaurant may benefit by taking reservations as opposed to being purely walk-in even though its market size is large."

Carrots and Sticks

Oh and Su also applied their model to the circumstances of some real-life restaurants, including an Asian restaurant in Philadelphia that has about 100 seats at 40 tables. About 60% of the seats are filled through reservations and the rest through walk-ins. Meals cost about $50 a person and last around two hours. In calculating the optimal reservation policy for the establishment, the researchers noted that its main bottleneck had to do with table turnover, and also estimated a dollar value for customers' enjoyment of the meal based on the observation that 20% of reservation holders do not show up when the restaurant does not charge any no-show fee.

Taking all of those factors into consideration, Oh and Su say that the restaurant owners could increase profits by 7.4% by giving a 5% discount on less busy nights to customers who make a reservation and show up. Imposing a fee for no-shows didn't make much of a financial impact on nights with light traffic because the potential pool of customers is smaller. On the other hand, on busy nights -- when, the researchers write, the potential market for the restaurant is twice its total capacity -- they suggest that the owners could earn 14.5% more profit by charging a no-show fee equal to the price of a meal. "Therefore, [the restaurant] should consider giving discounts to reservation customers in slower time slots, such as Monday at 5 p.m., and charging a no-show penalty on busy weekends." Oh adds that the online reservation platform Savored.com uses a similar approach, offering discounts to users who make reservations for less popular nights and timeslots at participating restaurants.

While the model can point restaurants toward what is mathematically the best policy, Oh notes that businesses trying to pinpoint the right reservation policy also have to remember that customers' feelings can't necessarily be plugged into a statistical modeling framework. "I had one restaurant manager tell me that he thinks of what they're selling as real estate rather than food, because if someone has reserved a table, it means they have already purchased that capacity, so it makes sense to charge a no-show fee as high as the price of a meal. Although the customer hasn't consumed the food, when they make a reservation, they have already consumed the table," she says. "But when it comes to really implementing that kind of policy, the restaurateur should be careful. If they consider the chances of a customer making a repeat visit and customer goodwill, they may not want to upset [him or her] by charging such a high no-show fee."

On the other hand, "there is an opportunity for the customer, if they're smart enough to take advantage of potential discounts for keeping their reservations," Oh adds. "It could also turn them into repeat customers if this discount is given in the form of a loyalty program, as it is in OpenTable, where you can redeem a certain amount of points to get a gift certificate."

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You may not have planned to head out of town this summer, but it’s not too late to change your mind.

Whether you want to escape for just a few days or even an entire week, there are plenty of ways to plan a trip on a budget.

The following infographic lays out our favorite last-minute travel tips and names some of the top inexpensive destinations.

Where are you headed this summer?

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