Overnight Briefing & General Reality Check - Mar 23, 2011

Reality Round-Up:

SIMON COWELL says he's not finished with the picks for judges on his upcoming "X Factor" show. The new show will have four judges on the panel [Editor's note: could ya take a clue from how poorly four judges were received on "Idol"?] and only Simon and L-A REID have been announced. Yesterday, Simon said during a Twitter chat he was still considering CHERYL COLE, who does the judging gig on the British version of the show. But he'd better hurry, since auditions begin Sunday in Los Angeles.

What's hot in Hollywood from Star magazine:
--Cozy's Cuts for Kids on Madison Avenue in New York City
--the Skinny Shirt available at www.skinnyshirt.com
--Holsteins Shakes and Buns in Las Vegas
--SocialEyes.com: multi-person live video chatting (Myers)

Guilty Pleasures:

No winner in Tuesday night's drawing for the Mega Millions Lottery. That means Friday night's drawing is valued at $304 million ($193.6 million cash value). Mega Millions is played in 42 states and Washington DC. Chances of winning the big prize are 1 in 175.7 million.

Your Body:

Those disclaimers on the erectile dysfunction drug ads to “make sure you’re healthy enough for sexual activity” have gotten a boost from a new analysis in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It concludes that exercising or having sex just about triples a person's risk of heart attack in the hours immediately afterward, particularly if the person indulges in those activities infrequently.
But before you dedicate your days to life in a monastery lifting nothing heavier than the Bible, researchers say the overall likelihood of having a heart attack after working out or making whoopie is still very low: it goes up to three in one million, from one in a million.
The medical experts say the takeaway is that regular exercise and regular sex are healthy --and if you’re out of shape in either area, increase your frequency gradually. (Kaye)

Weird science:

Tired of seeing athletes too young to compete in the Olympics and too old to compete in Little League? There's a new technology to keep things on the straight narrow.
A leading Chinese sports official wants to implement something called bone age analysis to stop the cheaters --those who fake birth certificates to claim they're older than they actually are. (You might recall there was lots of controversy about the Chinese gymnastics team and girls who were not quite 16, claimed to be and won medals.)
A Danish company has developed bone expert software that provides automatic age analysis from standard hand radiographs. Does it in five seconds. Costs about $20. You can determine the age of 13 bones in the hand and it also predicts the child's expected adult height.
More important: Are you age eligible? That's where we're headed.
The head of the Chinese Olympic federation says he'll adopt bone age analysis as a test case. (Maiman)

One on One:

Use it or lose it: We mentioned a couple of months ago that the VOGEL FAMILY --JOHN (56), NANCY (50), and their twin boys, DAVY and DARYL (both 13), were on a mission to bicycle across the Americas. They left Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in June 2008, and yesterday, they arrived in Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern end of the Americas. Their kids are now the Guiness World Record holders as the youngest ever to cycle the length of the Americas.
They've made the entire 17,289 mile trip through 14 countries on three bikes, including one tandem for John and Daryl. They carried everything on their bikes: tents, sleeping bags, a stove and pot, clothes for all seasons, spare parts and tools, and homeschooling materials for the boys.
Their blog is HERE; if you're interested in contacting the family for an interview (they're supposed to fly back to their home in Boise, ID, on Apr 03) drop them a line at familyonbikes@gmail.com.