Russian Sledges

24 countries and more than 250 events will celebrate together around the world, May 20th- May 26th 2013

A well-known exorcist said Francis helped free a Mexican man possessed by four demons, but the Vatican was more cautious, saying he simply said a prayer for the man in St. Peter’s Square.

A minority owner of the Boston Celtics presented a jersey to Pope Francis at the Vatican Wednesday.

noseupvt:

Note: you may feel that certain towns were improperly included or excluded. You probably think you know better than us. You may be correct and you may be a snob. Discuss the snobbery on

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Ben Marks, our pal at Collectors Weekly, says, "We just published an article on Zoe Mozert, Pearl Frush, and Joyce Ballantyne, who created some of the most memorable pin-up art in the 1940 and '50s. While most people today associate pin-up art with male artists like Alberto Vargas, George Petty, and Gil Elvgren, the contributions of these women are every bit as important, and their work every bit as good. For her article, associate editor Lisa Hix interviewed a number of authorities on pin-up art, from art dealer and author Louis K. Meisel to Marianne Ohl Phillips, who got to know both Mozert and Ballantyne before they died.

“You find mistakes in the male paintings,” Phillips told me. “Elvgren’s got a famous painting where she’s got two left feet, and there are just these things that don’t fit every once in a while. The women never made those mistakes. I think they looked in the mirror a lot and they got things more right. The men tended to make the breasts larger, and they made the legs longer. The women tended to paint very proportionate women, more of a 36-26-36 look, whereas men would make them a little top-heavy.”

Three female artists who shaped the American Pin-Up

“It is a soft ‘G,’ pronounced ‘jif.’ End of story.” - the Creator of the GIF: I’m sticking...

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Could be about to follow Apple.

Following the poor performance of Apple shares over the past 8 months, many investors are starting to wonder if Google shares are about to follow a similar fate.

Apple’s share price has dropped from over US$700 in September 2012 to US$440 in May 2013. Over the same period, Google’s share price has increased from less than US$700 to over US$900.

What lies Beneath

Apple shares now trade a relatively low multiple for a tech company. The company currently has a trailing PE ratio of 10.5x and a forward PE ratio of 9.9x (for year-end 2014). This shows that the market expects little further growth from the company after 2014.

On the other hand, Google is valued highly. It trades at 27x earning on a trailing basis and 17x on a forward basis.

The Steve Jobs factor

There is no doubt that Steve Jobs was a revolutionary thinker. His multiple successes at Apple and Pixar are testament to that.

When he died, many felt that Apple would struggle immediately. However, these fears were quelled as Apple’s share price rose strongly. When Jobs died in October 2011, Apple share price was at US$400. Then, following a few months of static growth, the share price rose steadily to reach its peak of US$705 in September 2012.

The share price then declined heavily, dipping to as low as US$390 in April 2013, before recovering to US$440 in May 2013.

Why has this happened?

There are a number of possible reasons for this decline, including:

• Apple’s upcoming products lack the enthusiasm they had under Jobs and although their previous products remain market leaders, they now face strong competition from the likes of Samsung, Google and Amazon.
• Now that a couple of years have passed many of the best ideas that Jobs put in place – the ipod, the iphone, the ipad - have been used up and any new products going forward will have to be ones that he was not involved with. While there is no disputing that Apple still has a great design team led by Jonathan Ive, they perhaps lack the final decision over which new product to go with. Steve Jobs was notoriously difficult to argue with and that was surely one of his greatest strengths in pushing through products he liked.
• With Jobs gone, Apple’s rivals sense blood. They know that Apple’s x-factor is gone and have therefore been more keen to innovate themselves. In short, the fear that Apple will always be two steps ahead is gone.

In closing, Apple’s core consumers loved Steve Jobs. They went wild when he gave his speeches in his turtle neck at product unveilings. They lined up to meet him. They slept on the streets outside Apple stores to be the first to get their hands on his latest gadgets. They miss him… and the market has finally started to realise it.

Google, on the other hand, is a different story.

WEST HAVEN, CT—Following Microsoft’s official unveiling of their latest video game console Tuesday, 41-year-old father of two Richard Shearer excitedly told his son David, 10, about the new features of the Xbox One.

The French Riviera, 1955.

With Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

"The new music community needs to make less of an emphasis on premieres and put more energy into making less familiar repertoire (e.g. recent compositions) more familiar by programming the music tons of times. A new piece should get programmed several times during the course of a season, not just one time or for a single consecutive run of performances." NewMusicBox 05/21/13

Before and after

Experimental band readies latest LP, and without Hydra Head

This is a content summary only. Click on the story to read the whole thing at InvisibleOranges.com

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The Tea Leaf Nation online magazine posted this article on May 19, 2013:  "VP Biden’s Penn Commencement Speech Inspires Viral Rant by ‘Disappointed’ Chinese Student."  The article, by Xiaoying Zhou, offers an excellent account of this tempest in a teapot (as it were), and the comments that follow it are also germane.

Still, a closer look at what the angry student, Zhang Tianpu, actually wrote will help us put the controversy in a clearer perspective.

Zhang's accusation against the Vice President appeared in an entry he posted on his renren.com (Facebook clone in China) account.  The entry is entitled "Bàidēng Bīndà bìyèshì yǎnjiǎng bùhéshíyí de yǒuguān Zhōngguó bùfèn" 拜登宾大毕业式演讲不合时宜的有关中国部分 (Outmoded portion about China in Biden's graduation speech at Penn).

Here are the two portions of Biden's speech about China to which Zhang took exception:

I love to hear people tell me how to use the vernacular "China is going to eat our lunch."

China is a great nation, and we should hope for the continued expansion. But ladies and gentlemen, their problems are immense, and they lack much of what we have. We have the best universities in the world. We have a legal system that is open and fair. We have the most agile venture capital system in the world. We lead the world in innovation and technology, all for a simple basic reason. Steve Jobs, speaking at Stanford was asked by a young man "how can I be more like you, how I can become like you?" And Job famously answered: think different.

You CANNOT think different in a nation where you cannot breath free. You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy, because change only comes from challenging orthodoxy.

…

I spent 10 days with President Xi at the request of former president Hu and President obama…I listened to his questions and the interests he had and he asked me how I felt after the 5 days in the U.S. and 5 days in China. And I said he's a strong bright man, but he has the look of a man who is about to take on a job he's not at all sure is going to end well. I mean that seriously.

These sections appear at 11:05 and 17:41 of Biden's speech as recorded on this YouTube video.  Although there are a few minor errors, I won't quibble with Zhang's transcription of the VP's speech, but should point out that the very first sentence makes a lot more sense if "to use the vernacular" is set off with commas or dashes.

What is remarkable about Zhang's criticism of Biden's remarks is that he focuses so heavily on the VP's use of the word "nation" to refer to China:

Bàidēng zài “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy” zhè jù huà li yòng de shì nation zhège cí. Zhè yīdiǎn shì zuì ràng wǒ qìfèn de, yīnwèi Yīngyǔ zhòng nation zhǐ de “mínzú” de yìsi, hé country, state shì yǒu qūbié de. Country, state kěnéng gèng qiángdiào de shì yīgè guójiā zhěngtǐ de gàiniàn, shènzhì dài yǒu zhǐ zhèngfǔ de yìsi; huàn jù huà shuō, rúguǒ tā zhè jù huà li miàn yòng de shì country zhège cí, nàme jiù kěyǐ lǐjiě wèi kěnéng yóuyú zhǒngzhǒng wàibù yīnsù de zhìyuē, wǒmen mínzú de qiánlì méiyǒu 100% de fāhuī chūlái.

拜登在 “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy” 这句话里用的是nation这个词。这一点是最让我气愤的，因为英语中nation指的“民族”的意思，和country，state是有区别的。 country, state可能更强调的是一个国家整体的概念，甚至带有指政府的意思；换句话说，如果他这句话里面用的是country这个词，那么就可以理解为可能由于 种种外部因素的制约，我们民族的潜力没有100%地发挥出来。

In this sentence, “You CANNOT think different in a nation where you aren't able to challenge orthodoxy”, he used the word "nation".  This is what really infuriated me, because in English "nation" indicates "race, ethnicity", which is different from "country, state".  "Country, state" perhaps places more emphasis on the notion of the entirety of the country, even to the point of referring to the idea of government.  In other words, if he had used the word "country" in this sentence, then perhaps one could understand that, due to various external constraints, our people's potential has still not been brought to bear 100%.

N.B.:  Underlining indicates words in Zhang's text that are originally in English.

Note that, in the last sentence quoted, Zhang uses mínzú 民族 in a positive light (I have translated it as "people" here), whereas above he uses the same expression in the probable sense of "race, ethnicity".

The weakness in Zhang's reasoning lies mainly in his confusion over the multiple meanings of the word mínzú 民族.  As pointed out on Language Log just a few days ago in "Racist Park", mínzú 民族 can mean "ethnic group; race; nationality; people; nation".  Coming from the English side, we must keep in mind that "nation" can be translated into Chinese as guó 国 ("country"), guójiā 国家 ("country"), guódù 国度 ("country; state"), bāng 邦 ("state"), and, yes, mínzú 民族 ("ethnic group; race; nationality; people; nation").

It is clear that, when Biden said "China is a great nation", he was respectfully referring to the country as a whole.  Yet the sensitivity to questions of ethnicity in China, especially with regard to the shǎoshù mínzú 少数民族 ("ethnic / national minorities"), e.g., Uyghurs, Tibetans, and scores of others, caused Zhang to take umbrage over something that the Vice President never intended.

Finally, I should point out that mínzú 民族 is a neologism coined specifically for conveying the meaning of "nation".  It is but one of a host of new terms designed to convey Western intellectual, political, and scientific concepts that entered the Chinese lexicon around the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, many of them coined or calqued in Japan.  Consequently, one would do well to avoid becoming overly testy and proprietary when using and defining polysemous terms such as mínzú 民族 ("ethnic group; race; nationality; people; nation").  Rather, one needs to be sensitive to their diverse meanings in various contexts and not insist upon a single interpretation for all situations.

Speaking of which, I'd be very curious to know how the folks over at Tea Leaf Nation render their name into Chinese.  I'd be surprised if it were cháyè mínzú 茶叶民族.

[h/t to Neil Schmid]

I have a hard time resisting geometric prints and patterns. They’ve been around for a few years now, but they continue to pop up in contemporary designs and they definitely had their moment again at this year’s ICFF. I feel like my entire life is an ode to the humble, but beautiful, triangle so seeing them pop up on everything from tiles and wallpaper to chairs and tables made me very happy. Here are 10 of my favorite geometric designs from this year’s show. I can’t wait to see how designers push this trend forward next year…

If you missed yesterday’s ICFF trends they’re right here: Green and Great Tables.

Image above: Tiles by Keiou Design Lab

Images above: Sofa by O & G Design. I fell in love with that zig zag upholstery.

Image above: A triangle-print wooden credenza from MatterMade.

More geometric designs from ICFF 2013 continue after the jump…

(more…)

Client: The site isn’t working right.

Me: That’s strange.

I download a page and take a look at the code.

Me: It looks like a bunch of the code is missing. Did you have anyone modify the site?

Client: No, nothing like that.

Me: Well there are entire chunks of code missing that was there yesterday.

Client: Oh yeah, that was me, some of the code seemed unnecessary. Back to the issue at hand, why isn’t the site working?

Sarah Kaufmann’s Pietà is in Gruyère

Read the full post on Food Republic »

Some cities have a litter problem, some suffer from high crime rates. And then you have Dubai, which for the last several years has been facing the unusual problem of high end sports cars being abandoned and left to gather thick layers of dust at airport car parks and on the roadside across the city.

If our planet's increasingly extreme weather isn't caused by man-made climate change, then it stands to reason that it's actually caused by man-made supervillains using government technology to take American Freedoms with superstorms like Monday's mile-wide monster tornadoes.

Graduate

Last month we heard that a French-Cuban restaurant in Cambridge had been sold, and that it would have a new name and some other changes. Now we have learned that this isn't necessarily true, though it could happen at some point in the future.

BostonChefs.com mentions that Chez Henri on Shepard Street has not actually been sold and it remains open for the foreseeable future, though owner Paul O'Connell says that he is "entertaining some possibilities for change." In April, it was reported that Greg Reeves (the executive chef at Green Street in the city's Central Square neighborhood) had purchased the eatery, and that he would give the spot a new name and tweak the menu to include steak dishes. Now it appears that this will not be happening--at least not for now.

Chez Henri, which first opened nearly 20 years ago, is known in part for its Cuban sandwiches.

The address for this restaurant in Cambridge is: Chez Henri, 1 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138. Its website can be found at http://chezhenri.com/

[Earlier Article]
Chez Henri in Cambridge Sold to Green Street Owner; Will Have New Name

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“I have long ago dealt with the issue of: What if something I create is put to bad use?” the mathematician says. “And I have found that, throughout history, the benefit of building good things outweighed the hazards,” he says, citing lasers and the Internet as net-positive inventions despite ample opportunity for abuse. “That’s true in my research; it’s also true in my teaching.”

The Monocle Years.

Karl Lagerfeld, by Helmut Newton.

via http://www.stumbleupon.com/refer.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2F9%2F9e%2FTwain_in_Tesla%2527s_Lab.jpg

[Photo: Amy's Baking Company]

Amy's Baking Company — now infamous for its Facebook freakout following a terrible showing on Kitchen Nightmares — has cancelled a press conference on threat of legal action from Fox. Radar Online reports that Fox's lawyers sent a letter to restaurant owners Amy and Samy Bouzaglo last Friday reminding them of their agreement to not "spea[k] publicly about Kitchen Nightmares, other than to acknowledge 'the mere fact of your participation in the Series in personal publicity relating to yourself.'" The press conference was supposed to precede tonight's "Grand Re-opening." A source tells Radar Online that the conference may have also been cancelled to protect Amy and Samy from the death threats they've received.

Amy and Samy acknowledged their NDA-type arrangement last week in an interview with CBS 5 Arizona. Despite the fact that both Amy and Samy seem to understand that they are not allowed to speak with reporters about Kitchen Nightmares, the couple just participated in a radio interview in which they discuss their negative portrayal on the show. The letter from Fox, posted online here via CBS 5 Arizona, states that if the couple breaches their contracted agreement, they might owe damages of $100,000.

Shortly after receiving the cease and desist from Fox, Amy's Baking Company was dropped by their new PR firm, Rose+Moser+Allyn Public & Online Relations. After working with the Bouzaglos for a mere five days, publicist Jason Rose tells the Phoenix Business Journal that he had and the couple had "differences" in the way they worked and that "there were differences on public relations strategies." Maybe he just pulled a Gordon Ramsay and decided the couple was too delusional to help? Today will be the firm's final day with Amy's Baking Company.

· 'Kitchen Nightmares' Lawyers Threaten Restaurant Owners: Shut Up — Or You Owe Us $100K [Radar Online]
· Amy's Baking Company dumped by new PR firm, press conference canceled over threats [Phoenix Business Journal]
· Amy's Baking cancels presser; Cites legal threats [CBS 5 AZ]
· Kitchen Nightmares Restaurant Freaks Out on Facebook [-E-]
· Kitchen Nightmares Restaurant Will Relaunch Next Week [-E-]
· All Kitchen Nightmares Coverage on Eater [-E-]

The latest Fed report on student loan debt includes some neat-o maps showing how all of America's student debt is distributed geographically. Washington DC sure is smart, and broke!

Read more...

“I said to a minister I know: have you thought this through? Because you’re doing the law of succession, too. When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?” – Norman Tebbit, former chairman of the Conservative Party, on the bill for marriage equality in Britain.

[Photo: Parade Magazine via USNI News]

Parade magazine is apologizing for a recent design layout that used the silhouette of a ship that strongly resembles World War II Bismarck-class Nazi battleship. The image was part of Sarah DiGregorio's feature "How Do You Feed an Army?" that spotlighted Senior Chief Culinary Specialist chef Derrick Davenport, winner of the March 38th Annual Military Culinary Arts Competition in Fort Lee, Virginia.

Parade's editorial director Maggie Murphy was apologetic, saying to USNI News, "I regret we didn't dig deeper into the exact descriptions of the graphics we used for our story on Derrick Davenport this past Sunday," explaining that the silhouettes used were pulled from a collection of "naval images that didn't distinguish between U.S. and foreign ships." Murray hopes that readers won't get stuck on the similarities of the two images and that chef Davenport's story will stay the main focus.

· How Do You Feed an Army? [Parade]
· Parade Mag Apologizes for Nazi Ship Image [USNI News]
· All Food Media Coverage on Eater [-E-]