We find symbols of wealth in everything we possess, such as the watches we wear, the cars we drive and the homes we live in. So, it’s no surprise that the credit cards in our wallets also allude to our ability to spend.

At the bottom, you’ll find secured credit cards, which cater to people with bad credit profiles for one reason or another. At the top, you’ll discover elusive credit cards that are only available to a small group of consumers, those who don’t hesitate to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars at a moment’s notice.

The credit card industry has discovered a market where the super-affluent takes pride in owning one of these elite credit cards. Unlike your typical credit card, these prestigious credit cards are not heavily advertised. Usually for the price of a high annual fee, cardmembers get extraordinary perks, ridiculously high credit limits and a special treatment wherever they shop.

5. Merrill Accolades American Express

The Merrill Accolades American Express Card, formerly the Bank of America Accolades American Express card, is available only to select clients of the Merrill Lynch Wealth Management division, a part of Bank of America.

The Merrill Accolades card boasts a black design, with the customary Merrill Lynch bull logo. However, the card comes with a relatively low annual fee of just $295, cheaper than many high-tier airline credit credit cards.

Benefits of the Merrill Accolades card include premium concierge service, hotel discounts and upgrades, complimentary credits and amenities on select resort and cruise programs, discounts through Virgin Atlantic Airways, discounts and complimentary credits toward Sentient Jet private jet membership, an extensive rewards program, and more.

4. Citigroup Chairman American Express

The Citigroup Chairman American Express Card is another distinguished credit card known to be available only to a small group of clients of Citi’s private bank and investment units.

The card touts a black design to match its prestige, but it isn’t made of any special materials like some other elite credit cards out there. It has an annual fee of $500 with no preset spending limit.

The Citigroup Chairman American Express Card offers a 24/7 personal concierge, a travel rewards program, complimentary lounge access, statement credits for flight- and in-flight-related expenses, access and opportunities to purchase private jet services, room upgrades at Hilton HHonors hotels and more.

3. Stratus Rewards Visa

The Stratus Rewards Visa card is a highly exclusive credit card that is often dubbed the “White Card,” in contrast to American Express “Black Card.” The card is available only by invitation through a current cardmember or Stratus Rewards partner company. The target audience for this card are high-net-worth consumers who must have private jet travel.

The Stratus Rewards Visa card has an annual fee of $1,500. The card’s loyalty program revolves around private jet travel as a redeemable reward. Cardmembers can pool their earned points with friends and other members to redeem for flight hours on private jets, available through MarquisJet.

Other perks include personal concierge services, quarterly award-show-style gifts and trend-setting items, discounted charter flights, complimentary car service, upgrades and special amenities at luxury hotels, upscale merchandise discounts and more. With a Stratus Rewards Visa card, cardmembers can also redeem their points for consultation with lifestyle experts and personalities.

When Swiss photographer Gus Petro took a trip to the United States last year, he was struck by the juxtaposition of "emptiness and density."

Petro is used to seeing plains and mountains (staples of Switzerland's landscape), but massive skyscrapers in the same country? "One is so full and the other so empty," he says. "One goes up, the other down."

Petro came up with a clever way to highlight this phenomenon during his visit to the Grand Canyon, one week after seeing New York City.

The "contrast between the two was so strong and overwhelming that I had to express it somehow," he says.

So he created a photo project he calls Merge. To make it, Petro took the photographs he had of the two sites, matched their perspective points and lens angles, then put them through a process he calls "Photoshop magic." And he's been surprised by the reaction.

"After showing the images, most of the people who haven't been in either place thought it was real," he says. "They began questioning me where it is. I didn't expect that for sure."

All images courtesy Gus Petro.

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Couponing became something of a national sensation when TLC started featuring "extreme" savers on dual reality shows, "Extreme Couponing" and "Extreme Cheapskates."

Newspaper theft skyrocketed— any couponer knows that's where the best deals are — and the shows have developed their own cult followings.

But there are some things people just shouldn't have to do to save money.

We rounded up the most outrageous moments from the shows and  countered them with some money-saving tips of our own.

1. Washing clothes in the dishwasher.

In another episode, featured cheapskate Ben washes his clothes, hats, comb, dishes and even his toothbrush in the dishwasher.

"It's kind of an all-in one cleaner," he says, claiming that the dishwasher gets hot enough to wash anything he throws in there.

Estimated savings: $5-10 per month

Our tip: According to energy.gov, a dishwasher uses 3.5 times more wattage to run than a clothes washer, costing you much more to run. Also, washers have a special way of agitating clothes in order to clean them. A dishwasher does not. ... plus, there's no spin cycle to be sure you're getting all the excess water and dirt out. A dishwasher is only recommended for use on clothing items like shoes and baseball hats, things that would lose their shape in the washing machine. 

2. Turning a bottle into a toilet.

A TLC-featured "Extreme Cheapskate," Victoria has a pretty gross way of saving water: Using a bottle for bathroom breaks instead of wasting money on toilet flushes.

On top of that, she dumps her urine in her compost bin afterward.

"I thought wow, I can pee in a jar, grow my compost and not have to flush my toilet," she said. 

Estimated savings: $10 a month

Our tip: We fully support the compost and water saving initiative here, but you don't have to take it to this extreme. Try the "if it's yellow, let it mellow" approach and you can easily cut back on water use. In fact, you can save 2,190 gallons of water per person per year by only flushing once a day.

3. Using a makeshift bidet instead of flushing the toilet.

What is with extreme savers and their bathrooms? In this episode, featured cheapskate Kay uses a water bottle and soap to clean herself after using the bathroom so she doesn't have to buy toilet paper.

"I don't believe in spending money on something that you are going to throw away, such as toilet paper or paper towels," she says.

Estimated saving:$150 per year

Our tip: OK, she has a point about wasting money, but toilet paper is so cheap already that there are definitely better and bigger ways to save than by compromising sanitation. Toilet paper and other paper products are among the best items to buy in bulk to save — up to 40 to 50% off retail prices.

Like the proverbial phoenix rising from the ashes, Berlin keeps adding new feathers to its cap, from ghetto gourmet dinner clubs to romantic cuddle bars that rarely make it into the tourist guidebooks. To lift the veils that shroud these hidden delights, find one of those decadent hotels in Berlin and head for these eclectic hotspots where you can rub elbows with the coolest crowd in town.

Shopping:

Flohmarkt am Mauerpark is Berlin’s newest flea market and definitely qualifies as bargain hunter’s dream. Rummage through booths brimming with reclaimed treasures from the 50s to the 70s and relish the thought that you could pay lots more for the same goodies in high end collector’s shops. Established in 2004, Flohmarkt takes place every Sunday under the beautiful chestnut trees in Prenzlauer Berg next to Mauerpark. Besides the novel antiques, art supplies and homemade curiosities, prepare to be tempted by the delicious treats like waffles with Nutella and fresh squeezed orange juice.

Culture:

Dedicated to art created solely by women, the Verborgene Museum is a non-profit organization that unearths and displays works by relatively unknown ladies whom might otherwise be forgotten. Focusing on 20th century female German artists, this museum is not considered hidden because it’s tucked away (but it’s relatively easy to find at its location at Schlüterstrasse 70). But its focus on the obscure works of female painters, photographers and even architects is what makes this museum a one-of-a-kind exploration of the sacred feminine.

Private Dining:

Make new friends and indulge in gourmet German food at the intimate dining experience offered exclusively at Zuhause. Seating is limited to 12 people per evening and the dinner menu is driven by the seasonal harvest so they never offer the same menu twice. Although you will be presented with eight courses, it’s not an eating marathon; it’s a tasting menu complete with appropriate wines for each serving. The elegant yet relaxed atmosphere fosters a sense of geniality where fun is shared regardless of language barriers.

Known as “the ghetto gourmet,” Fisk & Gröönsaken in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg serves you dinner in their living room. That’s right, their living room. Only eight lucky people at a time get to savor this exclusive menu served on a rather erratic basis. To know when they are serving, you have to sign up for the newsletter available on their website. With emphasis on locally-produced ingredients, you’ll find inventive salads with ingredients like with scallops, couscous and oranges. Fresh fish dishes are sautéed with mushrooms swimming in cream sauce and complimented with fresh picked parsnips. The lemon tart topped with thyme ice cream is an unexpectedly divine combination.

Hidden Bars:

This place is too cool to have a phone or even bother with putting their name on the door, so when you make it to Gipsstraße 5 Mitte, just walk into The Greenwich like you knew it was there all along and you’ll be cool, too. Prepare to be enchanted by the dreamy atmosphere created by the huge fish tanks flanking both sides of the narrow lounge that’s covered in lime-green upholstery. It really doesn’t look as gaudy as it sounds –must be the green lighting that makes it work. Hang with Berlin’s totally hip crowd while sipping exotic drinks and trancing on tunes.

Music Venues:

If you get a kick out of the music of the fifties and the sixties, head to the Soul Cat at Reichenberger Straße 73, one of Berlin’s secret hideaways that deliver more for less. Not only is it cheap in comparison to other venues around town, dressing down is considered hip, so there’s no need to put on the nines to have a great evening.

For the hard core rock and punk, Dazzle Danz club at the corner of Danzigerstr and Schönhauser. The venues attracts some of the best acts in the biz. On weekends you will find the place packed to the rafters with locals dancing to live bands in a concert setting, but during the week DJs rock the house spinning hot tunes in a chill atmosphere.

Considered one of the best cuddling bars in Berlin, the laid back music you’ll find Ä Neukölln on the corner of Weserstraße 40 and Ecke Fuldastraße fits perfectly with the retro ambiance. Billed as Berlin’s only live music and soap opera venue, this cozy pub offers delicious drinks and nibbles in a romantic, relaxed atmosphere where you can curl up on a comfy sofa in a corner booth lit by candles and indulge in a little friendly one-on-one fraternizing.

To find out what’s happening during your visit to Berlin, check out their underground magazines Tip and Zitty that feature weekly club listings and the articles on the hottest places that have mushroomed from the fertile streets of this blossoming city.

This post has been sponsored by HostelBookers, a leading budget accommodation website in the travel industry that does not to apply a service charge and is, on average, 8.7% cheaper than its nearest competitor. It features over 20,000 hostels, cheap hotels and budget properties on its website in over 3,500 destinations across the world.

SEE ALSO: The Exuma Cays Are Filled With Swimming Pigs

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More than two months after the Cronut emerged as a food craze, the trend is still gaining traction. 

Every day, people stand in line for more than two hours before Dominique Ansel's bakery opens to get their hands on the croissant and donut hybrid. 

The bakery, in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, makes about 200 Cronuts per day, and limits the number each person can buy to two. 

The scarcity of the pastries, which cost $5 a pop and change flavors monthly, has spurred an online black market and a number of die-hard fans. 

Business Insider recently did its time on the Cronut line. While waiting, we spoke to several other people on line about why they were there.

College students Danielle Owens and Camara Lewis said they had stood in line together and eaten Cronuts six times — a remarkable number, considering the pastry has only been available since mid-May.

The pair said they tried to arrive at the bakery around 6 a.m. every Wednesday to wait in line and pick up cronuts.

“It’s a journey. It’s an experience," Owens said. "You have to go through the waiting. You have to get up early. But once you get the cronut, it’s really good. I think it’s worth it.”

Two Chicago chefs affiliated with the James Beard Foundation who were visiting New York also hoped the Cronut would be worth the wait. They arrived before 6 a.m. to stand in line.

“There’s a few knock-off places by us that hopped on the bandwagon and took off," said one of the chefs, who asked not to be identified. "They are kind of rough, kind of funnel-cakey. "Also, we cook for a living and so we were familiar with Dominique Ansel before he came out with the Cronut. I actually didn’t even know he had his own pastry shop before the Cronut.”

They said they didn't have any plans to replicate the Cronut for commercial gain, but thought they might try to bake them for fun.

Another line denizen was Matt Schulman, who buys and delivers Cronuts to clients who contact him via Craigslist. The University of Pennsylvania student got to Spring Street around 5:30 a.m. to wait in the line for the second time.

He charges $45 per Cronut, and said the first time he delivered two, the recipient also tipped him $10.

She had bought the Cronuts for her boyfriend, and asked Shulman to deliver them to a midtown hotel, where he also sang happy birthday when he handed them over.

This time, he was buying them for a coworker who had shoulder surgery (and no, he wasn't planning to charge her). Shulman had tried the pastry himself and said they were good.

“It’s just another way to make some extra bucks," he said. "I’m just a college student trying to get by here for the summer.”

Erin Wiedenman lives in New York City and didn't arrive until around 7 a.m. At that point, chances of her getting Cronuts for herself and her boyfriend were slim, but she wasn't too upset and said she would consider waiting again.

“Maybe the line is longer because it’s the summer and people are visiting from other places and they heard about it?” Wiedenman said. "In a few months, the excitement will probably wear down.”

Or maybe it won't. The August Cronut flavor, chosen by fans, is Coconut.

You've Met Die-Hard Cronut Fans... Now See The Pastry Creator's Delicious Frozen S'more

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Way back in 1874, people throughout the U.S. would start a conversation with "Have you seen Tom Collins?"

The listener who was asked that question would predictably say that he or she didn't know such person, and the person who asked the question would try to convince them that Tom Collins was just talking at length about the listener and that they were surely acquainted.

This ongoing, practical joke was so widespread that it became known as The Great Tom Collins hoax of 1874.

Two years later, Jerry Thomas, the father of American mixology, first wrote about the Tom Collins cocktail, a mixture of gin, lemon juice, sugar and soda, named after the hoax.

Since then, several drink variations using the same preparation fashion and some of the same ingredients became known as Collins cocktails.

We recently stopped by one of the top cocktail bars in New York, ZZ's Clam Bar in Manhattan, where head bartender Thomas Waugh showed us his dynamic twist on the Collins. Watch below.

Produced by Robert Libetti

SEE ALSO: Top New York Bartender Shows Us Why This Strawberry-Gin Cocktail Costs $20

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Nearly all packaged foods we eat have a nutritional label. The amount of calories on that label is a guiding factor in helping consumers make good or bad food choices. The problem is, calorie counts are not entirely accurate.

Scientists are learning that not all calories are created equal. The traditional method that we use to measure calories needs to be updated, according a session called “Re-examining the Energy Value of Food" presented at the annual meeting of the Institute for Food Technologists on Sunday, July 14.

The current system "provides only an estimate of the energy content of foods," but "determining the real caloric value of a food item requires actual feeding experiments," one speaker said.

What is a calorie?

At its most basic, a calorie is a measure of energy. One Calorie (equal to one kilocalorie, or 1,000 calories) is the amount of energy that is required to heat one kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius at sea level.

The energy content of food was traditionally measured using a bomb calorimetry. A sample of food, for example a small piece of a hot dog, is placed into a metal vessel called a bomb. The bomb is filled with oxygen and placed inside a container where it is surrounded by water.

Then, the sample is ignited by a current of electricity. The water chamber absorbs the heat that is released as the food sample burns. A thermometer measures the rise in temperature of the water.

Since a Calorie raises the temperature of 1 kilogram (1 liter) of water by 1 degree, the calorie count is found by calculating the change in temperature of the water multiplied by the volume of water.

How are calories measured today?

In the 1800s chemist Wilbur O. Atwater determined the average number of calories in the three main sources of energy in food: fat, carbohydrates, and protein.

He found that fats were worth around 9 calories per gram and carbs and proteins were worth 4 calories per gram.

The "4-9-4 Method" or the Atwater system is how calorie values on food labels are determined today. For instance, a bag of crackers that has 5 grams of fat, 22 grams of carbohydrate, and 2 grams of protein should contain around 140 Calories.

Not all calories are created equal

The problem with the Atwater system is that not all the energy in foods is completely digested or absorbed. The Atwater system corrects for losses in energy in the form of urine or feces (the energy that isn't excreted is known as metabolizable energy), but it does not account for how absorption varies based on the type of food or the individual who is consuming it.

A single factor is used for each energy-containing component — protein, fat, and carbohydrate — regardless of the food.

What does this mean for us? Even if two foods contain the same number of calories on the label, the number of calories that is actually absorbed by the body can vary with each person and the type of food. 

One example: nuts. In a study published in the Journal of Nutrition in 2008, U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher David Baer concluded that "nuts are a food group for which substantial evidence suggests that the Atwater factors may be poorly predictive."

Bear found that whole almonds have about 20% less calories than the value calculated using Atwater factors. In a separate study, he found that pistachios had 5% less calories than originally thought.

This has to do with how nuts — especially whole nuts — are absorbed by the body. With whole nuts, compared to peanut butter or peanut oil, more fat ends up in the poop. People who eat more nuts also lose more fat in the stool. 

The way people chew their food also makes a difference. The more people chew their food, the more calories are absorbed. 

In nuts, a lot of the fat is stored inside the cells walls. So if the cells are not broken during chewing they may pass right through the gastrointestinal tract without releasing the oil they contain, Baer found.   

SEE ALSO: QUIZ: Which Food Has More Calories?

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From Berkeley to Brooklyn, our country's most left-leaning parents are taking on decidedly conservative child rearing traits.

At least that's what Mark Oppenheimer is arguing in his latest Fatherland column for The New Republic. The same writer who recommended (reasonably) that kids be allowed to watch more TV and (questionably) that it might be a good idea to pick up a late-night pot habit, is back to combat what he sees as the left's "Puritan" childrearing style. 

Also known as helicopter parents—or that couple from the PTA meeting that gasped when you admitted to buying Lunchables for your kid—these moms and dads monitor everything their children eat, watch and read.

Their parenting habits are as illiberal as their politics are liberal. After all, it wasn't conservatives who shot down Portland's fluoridation efforts for the fourth time, even though water fluoridation helps prevent tooth decay.

And these are, by and large, the same parents who might think that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's effort to limit poor people's ability to buy sugary drinks with food stamps is onerous and paternalistic — even if they would never let their own children touch something that wasn't organic.

While, in Oppenheimer's telling, in the past, "only right-wingers would sacrifice children’s health to their own psycho-political neuroses," now liberals are letting fear govern their parenting techniques. And whereas the right-wing parents fear the government, these left-wing parents fear a lack of purity: 

On the right, these mental illnesses stem from fear of government. On the left, their origins are a bit harder to pin down, but as I see it, they stem from an old mix of righteousness and the fear of contamination—from what we might recognize as Puritanism.

Generally, one might expect liberals who become parents to remain open-minded and flexible. After all, the very notion of liberality is bound up with freedom, while conservatism is ostensibly concerned with keeping things from breaking apart. But as Oppenheimer notes, it's today's liberal parent who has come to fear freedom:

One mother was trying to keep her daughter from eating a cupcake, because of all the sugar in cupcakes. Another was trying to limit her son to one juice box, because of all the sugar in juice. A father was panicking because there was no place, in this outdoor barn-like space at some nature center or farm or wildlife preserve, where his daughter could wash her hands before eating [...]Like any moral panic, nobody was immune to its contagion. Soon, I was fretting—but for different reasons. For all I knew, some of these kids weren’t immunized, and they were fed only unpasteurized milk. The other parents were worried about germs and microbes and genetically modified apricots—I was worried about the parents. I was surrounded by the new Puritans: self-righteous, aspiring toward a utopian perfectionism, therefore condemned to perpetual anxiety—and in their anxiety, a threat to me and my children.

At the same time, conservative parents have generally become relatively more open-minded. Lenore Skenazy was famously called the worst mom in America after admitting that she let her 9-year-old ride New York's subway home alone. But really, she's just instilling her kids with self reliance and pull-yourself-up- by-your-bootstraps-grit. Skenazy's Free Range Kids movement supports events like "Take Our Children to the Park and Leave Them There Day," which is both self-explanatory and (potentially) horrifying. And yet none of her children has gone missing or been taken away by the authorities. 

All those liberal worries about about obesity, high blood pressure, germs, autism and industrial chemicals, is leading to a lot of stress, which may in the end be more harmful than anything. Your bickering about the virtues of antibacterial hand lotion might give your kid a complex. Oppenheimer writes:

We know from research—which I have read—that stress increases the risk of various ailments, including cardiovascular disease. And sociologists have shown that children thrive best when they live with two parents in a low-conflict marriage. So it follows that if concerns about our children’s health cause the children stress, or if they become a source of conflict between the parents, they may actually be counterproductive.

And while Oppenheimer's solution is simplistic—basically, calm down—it might be a good place to start. "Between the heyday of Progressive reform and our current Puritan moment, there was another possibility on the left: the hippie ethos of not worrying so much," Oppenheimer writes. So maybe just chill out, okay?

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Taylor Swift's fans threatened to kill two designers from an indie clothing company over a t-shirt listing the names of the singer's ex-boyfriends. 

Lex Houser and Andi Cross of Bad Kids Clothing told Fashionista that they designed the shirt for a friend to wear to a concert. 

But it didn't take long for the threats from so-called "Swifties" to start pouring in. 

Houser wrote about the incident on the company's blog: 

"I was about to go to sleep and my phone rang. I saw it was a random number and let it go.  Suddenly, 3 more calls right in a row.  I thought to myself that this was odd, so I checked my email.  The subject of the emails were "F--- YOU" and "OFFENSIVE TAYLOR SWIFT SHIRT - TAKE IT DOWN!".  Suddenly I realized what was happening." 

The designers also wrote that the Swifties threatened to kill them and burn down their store (which is, for the record, online-only).

Houser said in the blog post that all the uproar made him decide to make more of the shirts and sell them for $19.99. 

The shirt originally had the name of Glee singer Cory Monteith, but was removed out of respect after his death. 

Abercrombie & Fitch was the latest target of the Swift fans' rage. 

The brand pulled a shirt that said "More boyfriends than t.s." after a deluge of complaints. 

SEE ALSO: 19 Small Businesses On The Verge Of A Breakthrough

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If you've ever been guilty of reading a book just for the author, you're not alone.

Sales on a new crime novel called "The Cuckoo's Calling" shot up more than 500,000% when it was revealed that the author, Robert Galbraith, was really J.K. Rowling writing under a pen name. Rowling, author of the best-selling "Harry Potter" series, explained that she wanted the chance to "publish without hype or expectation."

As it turns out, Rowling isn't alone in the secret world of famous authors penning stories under pseudonyms. See if you recognize any of these eight books written under pen names by some of the most well-known authors around.

"The Regulators," by Richard Bachman

Author's real name: Stephen King

Though King is one of the most popular and well-known authors of all time, he started his writing career with short novels, like "The Regulators," as Richard Bachman.

When asked why he decided to take a pen name for some of his work, King explained that in the early days of his career, there was a belief by publishers that the public would only accept one book a year from an author; King wrote as Bachman so that he could write two books a year, one under each name.

"Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell," by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell

Authors' real names: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë

"Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell" was a collection of poetry written in male pen names chosen by the Brontë sisters. Each sister used the first initials of their first names and adopted men's names instead so they could preserve their identities and avoid the sexist views of those who didn't take kindly to female writers.

The Brontë sisters are known for their poetry and novels written in their own names, including "Jane Eyre" (Charlotte), "Wuthering Heights" (Emily), and "Agnes Grey" (Anne).

"The Adventures of Lucky Starr," by Paul French

Author's real name: Isaac Asimov

The author of "I, Robot"; "Foundation"; "Nightfall;" and over 300 other works wrote a popular young adult sci-fi series called "The Adventures of Lucky Starr" under the alias Paul French. The books share the story of an orphan, David Starr, who becomes a space ranger who solves intergalactic mysteries.

According to a reviewer of the "Lucky Starr" books, Asimov eventually grew tired of his pen name, and left clues in later books that would lead readers to discover Asimov as the real author.

Take a trip on the Edelweiss Bike tour, and soon the hills will be alive with the sound of… your Ducati Monster twisting and burning around the Alpine roads of Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Italy for nine days.

If the European roads have your head going in circles or roundabouts or whatever, they offer an Alpine Motorcycle Training Course before each trip, where you'll learn the traffic and driving patterns.

The seven days spent riding take you through five countries-worth of asphalt (with optional dirt and gravel road sections), clocking a total distance of 900-1250mi while hitting mountain passes every day.

During each 6-8hr riding day, there will be plenty of stops to take in scenic views, and interact with the locals.

Available bike options include Ducati beasts like the Monster 696, Monster 1100, and Multistrada 1200 -- which, at 1200cc, makes that straddler quite the crotch rocket.

Sightseeing highlights include the King Ludwig’s Castle, Castle Linderhof, Swiss Glaciers, Passo di Stelvio, the Dolomites, and peaks as high as 13000ft, meaning you'll experience serious altitude sick-ness, bro.

Unless you're making a quick stop at your Swiss bank account, the price of the trip is no joke, and comes in around 4-6K per person.

Click here to read the original article at Thrillist.

SEE ALSO: How They Filmed The Crazy Motorcycle Chase In 'Skyfall' >

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Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and his wife have just listed their home in San Francisco's Noe Valley for $2.995 million, Curbed SF reports (via Trulia).

They purchased the four-bedroom, 4.5-bathroom Victorian home back in 2009 for $2.4 million, and completely remodeled it.

The property has a guest house, and lots of outdoor space with expansive views of the city.

Williams left Twitter in 2011; last year he launched a new publishing platform, Medium, along with Biz Stone and Jason Goldman.

The Noe Valley home has a restored Victorian facade from the 1880s.

It has around 3,200 square feet of living space.

And an open floorplan that spans three floors.

Whenever I return from traveling, I love to tell stories about my ‘cultural experiences.’

Usually, at the end of these stories, I come off as a bit of a jackass, but if I call it a ‘cultural experience,’ I sound like a fabulously worldly jackass.

I’ve learned that a lot of cultural experiences are complete bullshit. A lot of the time they’re tourists traps, at best an inside joke among the locals at tourists’ expense, while others are simply not worth the time, or are unsafe, or are reprehensible. Here are 5.

1. The Mona Lisa

Honestly, I don’t really ‘get’ art. And I know some people do ‘get’ art, and that it’s not ‘open-minded’ to say they are ‘objectively wrong.’ But don’t waste your time on the Mona Lisa.

The Louvre is an awesome building in itself, and it’s a lot of fun to walk through and stumble across works you recognize from the walls of many a college dorm room. But the physically tiny Mona Lisa is kept behind bulletproof glass in an insanely crowded room. You’d get a better view of it from a postcard.

There are a billion things to do in Paris. Check out the most beautiful cathedral in the world, Notre Dame, just a few blocks away, or better yet, go find a place that sells insanely cheap bread and wine and get soused.

2. Kissing the Blarney Stone

The Blarney Stone is a piece of rock in the battlements of Blarney Castle in Blarney, Ireland. I have absolutely no idea how the stone got its name. Legend has it that if you kiss the Blarney Stone, you are granted the “gift of gab,” or great eloquence. Countless people have been kissing it for centuries now.

If you’re going to draw a line, draw it at poop.

Full disclosure: I have not kissed the Blarney Stone. By the time I made it to Ireland, I’d already read Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, in which the narrator, after getting drunk one night with his college friends, breaks into the castle and pisses on the Blarney Stone. I’ve looked around online as to whether anything like this was verifiably true. I wasn’t able to get solid confirmation.

What I did find is thousands of pictures of people kissing the stone. It is actually smooth from the number of times it’s been kissed. This in itself is a deal-breaker. Statistically speaking, at least one of those people had mouth herpes. Besides, the Irish know better: A gift of gab is not granted, it’s a talent that’s earned and honed over many, many pints.

3. Kopi Luwak

Kopi Luwak is an insanely expensive coffee made in Southeast Asia. The reason it’s so expensive is that each bean was, at one point, eaten by an Asian palm civet — a relative of the weasel — and then pooped out. The coffee producers pull the beans out of the poop, roast them, and serve them up in what I assume could be described as a “nutty, heady brew.”

I have never actually tasted this, because it costs $35 a cup. But it sounds suspiciously like a product invented on a dare and sold to tourists by people who really hate tourists. I’m all for trying new foods, but if you’re going to draw a line, draw it at poop.

4. Getting altitude sickness

The reason I call altitude sickness a cultural experience is that I’ve gotten it at two very famous trekking spots, one in the Andes and the other in the Himalayas. In both, it appeared to be a pretty standard part of the culture. Everyone in each group who hadn’t spent a significant amount of time in the mountains suffered it in varying levels of severity. One of the men in our group went temporarily blind from what’s known as a high-altitude cerebral edema.

The guides always had remedies or suggestions — “Did you drink a lot of water?” or “Try this milk made from rancid yak butter, that helps,” or “How about you go back down the fucking mountain?”

Getting sick while you’re traveling actually makes for pretty fantastic stories. I once, for example, ate a nasty burrito in London during a trip around Europe and two days later found myself miming diarrhea to a pharmacist in Paris. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t go to Peru or Tibet, but environment does affect culture, and it will, inevitably, make some places impossible to enjoy to the fullest.

5. Slum tourism

Slum tourism is when tourists pay companies to drive them on a bus through Indian shantytowns, or South African townships, or Brazilian favelas. They get off the bus at controlled, pre-planned points, and are escorted around for picture taking and possibly a brief trip to a school or a market. Then they are bused back to their hotels to dine on caviar and count themselves lucky that the maid showed up for turndown service.

There’s an element of voyeurism and schadenfreude to slum tourism that strikes me as icky. Although personally, I haven’t been the same person since I first walked past an Indian slum. So I think there’s a certain amount of value in rich, entitled kids like myself coming into contact with extreme poverty, if for nothing else than to make the hashtag #FirstWorldProblems more meaningful.

But, as a South African friend put it, “If I were to visit you in Washington, and you were acting as my guide, would you want to take me to the ghetto?” No, I probably wouldn’t.

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UPPER EAST SIDE — The dean of a prestigious Catholic high school on the Upper East Side was arrested last week in Connecticut for heroin possession, cops said.

Nicholas J. deSpoelberch, dean of students at Regis High School at 55 E. 84th St., was arrested July 11 on charges of narcotics possession, possession of drug paraphernalia, and retaining prescriptions pills outside of their original container, according to a police report.

The Darien Times reported, officers from the Wilton Police Department found deSpoelberch asleep in a car parked in the middle of a dead end street around 10 p.m. last Thursday. A search of his car allegedly turned up multiple packages of heroin, drug paraphernalia, Oxycodone and Clonidine pills, according to the paper.

Regis, a competitive all-boys Jesuit college preparatory high school, has suspended deSpoelberch "pending further investigation," according to a statement on its website Tuesday.

"Regis High School is just now learning about the allegations against Mr. deSpoelberch, and takes those charges very seriously," the statement reads. "Regis has zero tolerance for such activities."

The president of the school, Father Philip Judge, notified parents and school alumni of the charges in an e-mail that was sent out on Tuesday.

"I ask that your prayers remain with the deSpoelberch family as they cope with this difficult matter," he wrote.

SEE ALSO: The Most Expensive Private High Schools In America

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Yesterday, we posted a chart that Josh Fischer at Snap Interactive (STVI: OTC BB) sent us based on analytics from their dating website Are You Interested. 

It shows the likelihood that a someone on AYI.com responds to a message from a member of the opposite sex given their age difference. To the left, -10 means the sender was 10 years younger, on the right, the sender was 10 years older, with zero indicating that the sender and the recipient are the same age. 

Here are the two plots for men responding to messages from women (blue) and women responding to messages from men (red).

So, we can see that women are much more selective than men when it comes to responding to messages. Not exactly Nobel-quality findings here, but it's definitely interesting to see the exact levels of response.

But for folks in the dating game, how is this information actually usable?

Well, let's find out how many messages the average man will have to send to a woman his own age in order to guarantee various levels of response, and vice versa.

We can't guarantee a response, per se, but we can say how confident we are that these average bachelors and bachelorettes will receive at least one response given the number of messages they send.

We know, from the chart above, that a woman who sends a message to a man her own age has a 17.5% likelihood of receiving a response to that message.

We know that a man who sends a message to a woman his own age has a 4% likelihood of receiving a response to that message. 

Extrapolating from there, here's how confident men and women can be that they will receive a response given the number of messages they send en masse:

Fascinating. 

An average man who sends 18 messages to women his own age can be 50% certain he'll receive at least one response. For women, they need to send only 5 messages to be 50% certain they'll get a response. 

Looking at higher confidence levels, if a woman wants to be 90% certain she'll receive a response from a man her own age, she'll have to send 13 messages. A man will have to send 58 messages.

Finally, to be 99% certain she'll receive a response, a woman must send 25 messages to men her own age. 

A man will have to send 114 .

This leads us to believe that one potential cause of the disparity between the male response rate and female response rate is the system itself.

If men must spam women with messages in order to elicit a response, then women will be more selective when responding to the surplus in general. Since women are understandably disinclined to respond to all the messages, men must send out more in order to guarantee any response. It's cyclic. 

Everyone is acting in their own self interest, inadvertently leading to further imbalances in the system. 

It's one of the fundamental issues with online dating in general. 

Anyway, best of luck out there folks. 

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This post originally appeared at Real Men Real Style.

Black shoes and a black suit work great if you’re going to a funeral, but most of the time we’re a little more colorful in our wardrobes.

How does a man wearing a navy, light-grey, or brown suit match his shoes with the suit color? 

Take a moment to get to know the chart below.

It pairs the five most common suit colors — navy, medium or mid-gray, charcoal, brown, and black — with three different shoes to show you which colors work with which leathers.

Now, are these shoe matching rules absolute? Not entirely — but it’s a very safe guide to follow.

If you’re bucking the advice here, it should be because you’re going for a really unique look or you know the rules and make a conscious decision to ignore them!

For example, we don’t have the burgundy shoes paired with a black suit. But a rocker might wear a black suit with red Converse All-Stars, and that would be, if not exactly timeless men’s style, certainly a style choice that could work.

There are going to be exceptions.

But there aren’t many of them, and if you’re sticking to classic business and business-casual dress, let this chart be your guide.

Most of the time it’s not too hard. Strict business formality is easy — a charcoal gray or navy blue suit and plain black shoes.

But as the suits (and the business climate) become more relaxed, you get the option of wearing different colors of leather with them. That’s a stumbling block for a lot of men — and the wrong color of shoes and belt can ruin even a fine suit.

Here’s how most of these combinations play out in practical, day-to-day dress:

1. Navy Blue Suits

Pair with:

• Black shoes
• Brown shoes
• Red or burgundy shoes

Navy can go comfortably with all three of the main color families of men’s leather shoes. You can probably even make a navy suit work with more exotic colors if you have them, although blue is generally too close to make a good contrast.

The leather color mostly affects the formality and attitude of a navy suit. Black shoes are business dress, while brown are more relaxed, and red or burgundy give it the most playful, social feel.

2. Medium and Light Grey Suits

Pair with:

• Black shoes
• Brown shoes
• Red or burgundy shoes

Medium gray suits are less formal than navy suits, and share a similar flexibility. You can pair them effectively with just about any color of leather.

In the case of medium gray, black is the best option when you’re wearing a white shirt and a necktie. It’s still not proper business dress (the suit itself is too light), but it’s quite typical in offices where suits are mandatory but somewhat relaxed. Brown and burgundy shoes make it more of a casual/social look, and work best when the shirt has a bit of pattern or color to it as well.

3. Brown Suits

Pair with:

• Brown shoes
• Red or burgundy shoes

Do not pair with:

• Black shoes

Take a caveat here — brown suits work with most brown shoes. You want a visible contrast between the color of the shoe leather and the color of the suit. If they’re identical or almost-identical, it looks off.

Apart from that, brown’s great with most casual leather shoes. It’s generally better to have the shoe leather darker than the suit (helps keep the eye from being drawn downward), but either way can work so long as you have a clear contrast.

4. Charcoal Grey Suits

Pair with:

• Black shoes
• Burgundy shoes

Do not pair with:

• Brown shoes

Here’s where we get to our first firm “no” on the list: don’t pair charcoal suits with brown shoes.

Dark browns look like you’re trying for a close match and coming up short. Light browns are too informal, and draw the eye jarringly downward. Plain black works best, or a deep burgundy for a look that’s relaxed but still elegant.

5. Black Suits

Pair with:

• Black shoes

Do not pair with:

• Brown shoes
• Burgundy shoes

Black’s not very flexible. That’s why we generally recommend charcoal gray or navy blue in its place as a first suit. If you own one, pair it with black shoes, and save the outfit for funerals and strict business dress occasions.

Any other color of shoe is going to look too casual with black.

6. Other Colors

The chart at the top is built around the most common colors of suit and leather dress shoes.

You’ll probably end up with more colors of suit/trouser than just those five, and more colors of shoe than those three. That especially gets true once you start wearing leather shoes with casual trousers (like jeans), or dress suits with casual shoes (like canvas sneakers).

Experiment and find out what works for you. The more casual the outfit, the less strict the rules, so if you’re doing something deliberately convention-defying (like the rocker example we used at the start), don’t sweat it too much. If it looks good in the mirror, go with it, and don’t worry whether it’s “right” or not.

As with all colors, the most important thing to remember is to avoid things that are close but not quite matching. Those are the worst-looking clashes — it looks like you tried for a unified outfit and screwed it up a little. Keep the contrast clear and you should be fine.

SEE ALSO: 9 Accessories Every Guy Should Have In His Bachelor Pad

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If Yelp is correct, Brooklyn has close to 1,500 restaurants that serve Japanese food.

And now Japan has exactly one restaurant dedicated to Brooklyn.

Aptly named Fort Greene is chef Makoto Asamoto's newest restaurant on Tokyo's west side. According to an article by Jason Jenkins in Bon Appetit, the environment is entirely reminiscent of the hipster borough where Asamoto lived for a year.

"I wanted [this place] to have the same mood I felt in the cafes around Fort Greene," he told Bon Appetit. "My food is mostly French, but the restaurant itself is my interpretation of Brooklyn."

Typewriters and antique jars line the walls while guests sit around the communal wooden table that can hold 10 to 12 diners. Asamoto cooks in the same room on a four-burner gas stove, using the same ingredients that "decorate" the walls.

And — just to drive the point home — Fort Greene restaurant also serves its own organic wine and sells homemade granola.

See a picture the restaurant's interior posted to its blog below.

SEE ALSO: The 20 Best Restaurants In Williamsburg, Brooklyn

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Disneyland, arguably the most famous theme park in the world, had an invitation-only soft opening 58 years ago today.

A few thousand guests flocked to the new theme park in Anaheim, Calif. on July 17, 1955.

Due to the Disney brand's massive popularity, however, 28,000 visitors showed up that day — most with counterfeit tickets in hand.

But that was the least of the park officials' worries. There was also a July heat wave to contend with, only a handful of water fountains working due to a plumbers' strike, and the problem of women's shoes sinking into the soft asphalt that had been laid only hours before.

Despite these preliminary issues, Disneyland still opened to the public officially the following day for the admission cost of $1 — a far cry from today's average adult price of $92.

The blog Disney History Institute (not affiliated with the company or theme park) has compiled shots from color home movies guests took of the park during its first year.

Though many of the rides you see have since been closed and/or updated, the classic Main Street USA entrance still looks virtually unchanged.

Disney History Institute also has a great rundown of what to pay attention to in the video. Below are a few of our favorite tidbits, but check out the rest and full explanations over at the website:

• There are no costumed Disney characters in the 1950s, so you won't see Mickey or Minnie Mouse anywhere in the video.

• The "Hollywood Maxwell's Intimate Apparel" shop at the 1:20 mark was a real shop at Disneyland that was there for only six months. It had a history of women's underwear in one room with miniature displays, and another room where you could buy modern bras. At Disneyland!

• The monkey at 1:29 performed from 1955 when the park opened to the late 1950s. Because the park did not yet have the budget for costumed characters to roam the streets, Main Street entertainment was the kind you would have found on an actual city street.

SEE ALSO: A Former 'Snow White' Dishes About Life As A Disney Park Princess

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Kitchen remodeling sits at the top of many homeowners’ wish lists, and for good reason: If properly done, a renovation makes the kitchen more attractive, improves its efficiency and raises the resale price of your home.

Unfortunately, overhauling the kitchen is a complex job. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, and even skilled designers and veteran do-it-yourselfers can miss critical details. Mistakes are not only common. they are inevitable. You can, however, keep them to a minimum if you watch out for the following missteps.

Set a budget

If you’re planning to renovate your kitchen completely, be prepared to pay about 10 percent or 15 percent of your home’s current value. That’s no arbitrary percentage; it’s a budget that ensures the quality of your improvements stays in line with your home’s worth. Although spending too little is a concern, it’s equally important to avoid overspending. Be sure to allow leeway for surprises. Who knows what plumbing or wiring nightmares lurk in the walls behind those old cabinets?

Size matters

Are the cooks in your household taller or shorter than average? Careful shopping and strategic design can make their lives much easier without making your kitchen overly specialized. For example, manufacturers recommend installing a hood 30 inches above the cooktop — in other words, right in the face of a 6-foot-tall cook. Luckily, there’s a simple solution: Most hoods work just fine if mounted slightly higher. The lesson is that no matter how lovely something looks on the drawing board, you must account for the lifestyle and physical characteristics of the people who will actually be using the kitchen.

Focus on lighting

In the hardest-working room of your house, don’t underestimate the benefits of living with neither shadows nor glare. Use a mix of fixtures to layer light of different types — ambient, task, accent and mood.

Recessed ceiling fixtures provide good overall light, while pendants and chandeliers are versatile choices for islands and dining areas. For kitchen work areas, under-cabinet task lights are popular, but you may wish to offset the reflectiveness of highly polished surfaces, like countertops, by choosing fixtures with diffusers or frosted glass.

Also important are your lighting controls. Install a separate, conveniently located switch for each light source, preferably near the doorway. Dimmers are excellent for modulating the strength of lighting according to the occasion or time of day.

Indulge (some of) your whims

Maybe you’re right on top of the latest trends, or maybe you love bright colors. Remember, materials and colors that look fantastic in a sample-size swatch might very well appear over or underwhelming in a larger dose. Resist the temptation to go over the top with busy tile patterns or purple appliances. Instead, integrate the design elements you love as accents, not centerpieces. Otherwise, you run the risk of alienating future buyers who don’t happen to share your idiosyncratic style sense.

Base choices on reality

Who wouldn’t want a big bay window? The question is whether it would work in your individual kitchen. A bay window shown overlooking a lake may look great in a catalog, but if you live on a busy street, it’s likely you’d regret giving in to your whim. Likewise, oversized professional appliances are swoon-worthy but not practical in a small, cozy kitchen. In short, don’t lie to yourself!

Lots of landing zones

Include plenty of wide-open countertop space around each of your appliances. You know the feeling of removing a heavy, piping-hot pan from the stove, then finding there’s no convenient place to set it down? Think about how you use appliances like the dishwasher, refrigerator and microwave, and adjust your kitchen design to suit your day-to-day habits.

Island style

These days, a kitchen island is practically a must-have. But choose carefully — an oversized or poorly located island can block traffic and workflow. Allow sufficient space on all sides of the island, enough so that you can easily open cabinet doors. And, as you are making design decisions, remind yourself that the island, being of finite and usually modest size, cannot be a catchall. Adding a sink or cooktop to your island could eat up real estate you might like to have on hand for, say, casual dining.

Don’t forget the backsplash

Oh, the wonders of a backsplash. It ties together disparate elements even as it creates a focal point. (Plus, it makes cleanup so much easier.) Some complain about the paralyzing, seemingly infinite number of choices, but stick with the selection process and you’ll be amply rewarded. The best advice is to select your backsplash at an early stage of the renovation. Typically, the backsplash is installed shortly before project completion. If you postpone your decision until then, you may have to rush through the decision and end up settling on something you don’t love — or end up hating.

Related:

• 7 DIY Pantry Hacks and Kitchen Storage Ideas
• Old Country Farmhouse Gets City-Slick Kitchen
• Designers Tell All: Top 12 Kitchen Trends Revealed

Bob Vila is the home improvement expert widely known as host of TV’s This Old House, Bob Vila’s Home Again, and Bob Vila. Today, Bob continues his mission to help people upgrade their homes and improve their lives with advice online at BobVila.com. His video-rich site offers a full range of fresh, authoritative content – practical tips, inspirational ideas, and more than 1,000 videos from Bob Vila television.

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A Chinese museum has been forced to close after claims that its 40,000-strong collection of supposedly ancient relics was almost entirely composed of fakes.

The 60 million yuan (£6.4 million) Jibaozhai Museum, located in Jizhou, a city in the northern province of Hebei, opened in 2010 with its 12 exhibition halls packed with apparently unique cultural gems.

But the museum’s collection, while extensive, appears ultimately to have been flawed. On Monday, the museum’s ticket offices were shut amid claims that many of the exhibits were in fact knock-offs which had been bought for between 100 yuan (£10.70) and 2,000 yuan (£215).

The museum’s public humiliation began earlier this month when Ma Boyong, a Chinese writer, noticed a series of inexplicable discrepancies during a visit and posted his findings online.

Among the most striking errors were artifacts engraved with writing purportedly showing that they dated back more than 4,000 years to the times of China’s Yellow Emperor. However, according to a report in the Shanghai Daily the writing appeared in simplified Chinese characters, which only came into widespread use in the 20th century.

The collection also contained a “Tang Dynasty” five-colour porcelain vase despite the fact that this technique was only invented hundreds of years later, during the Ming Dynasty.

Museum staff tried to play down the scandal.

Wei Yingjun, the museum’s chief consultant, conceded the museum did not have the proper provincial authorizations to operate but said he was “quite positive” that at least 80 of the museum’s 40,000 objects had been confirmed as authentic.

“I’m positive that we do have authentic items in the museum. There might be fake items too but we would need [to carry out] identification and verification [to confirm that],” he told The Daily Telegraph.

Mr Wei said that objects of “dubious” origin had been “marked very clearly” so as not to mislead visitors and vowed to sue Mr Ma, the whistle-blowing writer, for blackening the museum’s name.

“He [acted] like the head of a rebel group during the Cultural Revolution – leading a bunch of Red Guards and making chaos,” Mr Wei claimed.

Shao Baoming, the deputy curator, said “at least half of the exhibits” were authentic while the owner, Wang Zonquan, claimed that “even the gods cannot tell whether the exhibits are fake or not,” the Shanghai Daily reported.

China’s vibrant online community begged to differ, reacting with its customary barrage of disgust and ridicule.

One micro-blogger urged local authorities to re-open and re-brand the museum as “China's biggest fake item museum.” “If you can’t be the best, why not be the worst?” mused the user, “Jizhou magistrate”.

China is currently in the midst of an unprecedented museum boom with nearly 400 new museums opening in 2011 alone, according to government figures.

But fake relics have proved a persistent thorn in the industry's side. In 2011, state media reported claims that 80 per cent of the fossils in Chinese museums were fake.

“Fake fossils are like poisoned milk powder that injure and insult visitors,” a scientist from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences was quoted as saying.

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