What kinds of pet travel carriers do you have and how often do you use them in NYC? Have any of you gotten dog strollers? I need tips for selecting strollers and carriers.
I have been looking on eBay.com for different, inexpensive designs of dog carriers and dog strollers until I know what type of style/design is practical and comfortable (for me and the pup). Would love ideas for medium-sized dog under 20 lbs., with a long torso (dachschund, but I think ideas for beagles and other short legged dogs would be great).
For the last year, I have a Sherpa dog carrier to use whenever I take the trains and buses (required on mass transit). Over time, I find the rectangular-shaped carrier rather bulky and awkward when I have to move him frequently. Also I am strongly considering getting a dog stroller since sometimes I like to walk long distances, or go in some retail stores that allow pets only if in a carrier (or fully-enclosed stroller compartment).
These are a couple samples of each of the strollers or tote-style carriers I am considering.
NEW YORK (AP) ? Michael Emerson has played a serial killer, a mysterious, villainous Island leader and currently stars as a billionaire computer genius on "Person of Interest." But he says playing the romantic interest for his real life wife has been his most unsettling role.
Emerson plays the off-beat Harold Finch in "Person of Interest," which airs Thursdays at 10 p.m. Eastern. His wife Carrie Preston has a recurring role as Finch's former fiance, who believes he is dead.
The couple has acted together in a few independent films and Preston even played Emerson's mother in an episode of ABC's "Lost," but this was their first romantic pairing. This season even showed the characters' first kiss.
"Neither of us are the kind to get a lot romantic work in front of the camera so for us to get a big old languid first kiss with music underneath it and everything ? that's a first in my career," he said.
Emerson said having his wife play his love interest can be tricky: "It's a little hard to turn off her wife-ness to me to make her just this other character."
Still, the Emmy-winning actor said he's happy to have his better half on set ? even though he didn't help get her there. "Maybe Jonah (writer Jonathan Nolan) called me on the phone and said, 'Would you have a problem if we asked your wife to play a character that we're working on?' And I said, 'No.' That's how much I politicked to get her the part. I was completely unaware of it."
Preston, who also appears in "True Blood" and "The Good Wife," also found working with him a little strange but that nothing was more bizarre for them than watching the kiss on TV.
"We both sat and watched it together at home on the sofa and we got all kind of giggly and shy about it. It was like we didn't know how to look at each other," he said. "It's like, 'Oh God, there we are. We're kissing.'"
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's best-known dissident, blogger Yoani Sanchez, received a passport on Wednesday under the island's new, freer travel law and said she would go abroad soon, after years of being denied that right.
Sanchez' case was viewed as a test of the Cuban government's commitment to free travel, but the news was not as good for Angel Moya, another dissident who, Sanchez said, was denied a passport.
"Incredible! They called to my house to tell me that my passport was ready. They just delivered it to me," Sanchez wrote on Twitter. "Now the only thing left is to be able to board that plane."
Hated by Cuba's communist government for constantly criticizing the system in her "Generation Y" blog, Sanchez, a 37-year-old Havana resident, has said she was denied the right to travel 20 times under Cuba's old travel law and doubted she would get a passport under the new ones.
Cuba's leaders consider dissidents traitorous "mercenaries" in the employ of the United States and other enemies.
But on January 14, when the reforms took effect, Sanchez went to an immigration office, was told she would get a passport and would be able to come and go as she pleased.
Other well-known dissidents also have been told they will get passports.
The old travel law was put in place in 1961 to slow the flight of Cubans after the island's 1959 revolution.
RESTRICTIONS LOOSENED
The new law got rid of the much-hated need to obtain an exit visa and loosened other restrictions that had discouraged Cubans from leaving.
It was one of the wide-ranging reforms President Raul Castro has enacted since he succeeded his older brother, Fidel Castro, in 2008.
There are still travel restrictions for certain professions, reasons of national security and for those with pending legal cases, which may affect a number of dissidents like Moya.
He was one of 75 people arrested and imprisoned in a 2003 crackdown that provoked international condemnation of the Cuban government.
Moya was released in 2011, but remains on parole for the remainder of the 20-year sentence he received 10 years ago.
Sanchez tweeted that Moya had been denied a passport.
"I am happy and sad. On one side, I have my document for travel, but they will not permit it for several friends like Angel Moya," she wrote.
Neither Sanchez nor Moya could be reached for comment.
Sanchez, who has won a number of international prizes for her blog but has never been able to leave to collect them, said on January 14 she would travel as soon as she got the passport.
She told friends she might be gone for three months because she had so many pending commitments.
She did not say what her plans were, but she was clearly thinking about how much she would miss Havana.
"Havana of the lights and the shadows, of the dusk that smells of sweat and burned oil. I miss it and I'm not yet away," she tweeted.
(Reporting By Jeff Franks and Nelson Acosta; editing by Christopher Wilson)
Study: Store layout an important variable for retailersPublic release date: 24-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A retailer's optimal store layout is the result of balancing the interests of two different types of markets consumers and suppliers, says new research co-written by a University of Illinois business professor.
According to Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, a retailer's strategic manipulation of store layout is driven by an incentive to balance the shopping process of "fit-uncertain consumers" and the pricing behavior of upstream suppliers.
"Retailers face two different kinds of markets the consumers who buy goods, and the manufacturers that supply goods," he said. "It's a very important variable for local retailers and marketing managers to play with in this era of increased competition with online retailers, and it has important implications for companies and consumers."
The study, which will appear in the journal Marketing Science, is the first paper to formally study the significance of store layouts, said Liu, who co-wrote the study with Zheyin (Jane) Gu, a professor of marketing at the State University of New York, Albany.
"If we look at the current retailing environment, local retailers are in intense competition with online retailers, which means real-world retailers really need to think about how they're going to differentiate themselves," Liu said.
Although consumers live in an information-rich environment, where they know just about everything reviews, price and quality about a product before they handle it, they know virtually nothing about the unique "fit" of the product until they walk into a store and handle the product, Liu says.
"For many products, consumers typically remain uncertain about a product's fit until physically inspecting it," he said. "That could mean how a shirt feels when you try it on, or what a certain size tablet feels like in the consumers' hands. And since the consumer has to travel to the store and compare the products, that is to the local retailer's advantage, because that's something that online retailers can't do."
Another way retailers can compete with online merchants is by making the physical act of shopping as convenient as possible for consumers. In a market characterized by what the researchers call "consumer-fit uncertainty," a retailer may design the layout of a store to facilitate the simultaneous inspection of products, Liu says.
"For basic goods like toothbrushes, the fit probability is really high, because to most consumers, a toothbrush is a toothbrush," he said. "In that case, the retailer should group all toothbrushes together in the same location, forcing the manufacturers to compete on price."
But making the consumer shopping experience as easy as possible may not be the best retail strategy for certain products, Liu says.
According to the research, sometimes retailers might want manufacturers to compete on location in the store, even if it's inconvenient for consumers, which may sound counterintuitive to marketing managers.
"Sometimes it's not in retailers' interests to make certain things convenient to consumers, because they have to consider the balance between the consumer market and the manufacturer market," Liu said. "By affecting consumers' fit inspection processes, the retailer's store layout design also influences pricing behaviors of upstream manufacturers."
Not only do marketing managers have to decide whether to group competing firms' products together or separately, they also must balance that strategy with consumers' perception of the store.
"Think about Bloomingdale's versus Sears high-end luxury items versus basic items," Liu said. "Sears puts all of a manufacturers' products together. If you're looking for a table at Sears, they're all stocked together. If you go to Bloomingdale's, you'll notice that they sell furniture by brands. If you go to this room, it has everything from one manufacturer. If you want to look at another set of table and chairs, you have to go to another room."
That's because for basic products, such as the table from Sears, the product's fit probability is very high, Liu says.
"But if you go to Bloomindale's, they have the high-end furniture and for
high-end products, people have different tastes," he said. "So Sears wants manufacturers to compete on price, while Bloomingdale's wants manufacturers to compete for the best location in the store."
It also depends on the product itself, Liu says.
"Even within high-end stores, individual product strategies will be different," he said. "For some product categories, such as kitchenware, which is quite standard, even a high-end retailer will sell everything together."
Name-brand clothes, however, are usually sold by the brand.
"Macy's puts some goods from competing manufacturers together, but if you look at clothing jeans, shirts, sweaters they usually sell them by brand," he said. "Calvin Klein is here, but Ralph Lauren is way over there."
But for low-fit probability products such as shirts, where each shirt is different, "even if retailers put them all together, like toothbrushes, the price competition is not that intense, because consumers have different preferences for shirts than they do for toothbrushes," Liu says.
"Even if one shirt manufacturer is running a promotion with a lower price than the competition if that shirt doesn't fit me; if its material irritates my skin; if it doesn't have the color I like, it doesn't matter how low the price is, because I won't buy it," he said.
"In this case, if the retailer sells all of the products together, it doesn't intensify the competition from the manufacturers. So the retailer should put the products in different locations so the manufacturers have to compete on the locations rather than on prices."
Although many retailers also offer the price-matching policy with online retailers like Amazon.com, that's really not the smartest strategy, according to Liu.
"Retailers probably do not want to play the pricing game with online retailers," he said. "They have certain inherent advantages in their store, in that the consumer has to find the right 'fit' for certain products. That's the frontier on which they have the advantage. So they should not give ground by playing the pricing game."
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Study: Store layout an important variable for retailersPublic release date: 24-Jan-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. A retailer's optimal store layout is the result of balancing the interests of two different types of markets consumers and suppliers, says new research co-written by a University of Illinois business professor.
According to Yunchuan "Frank" Liu, a retailer's strategic manipulation of store layout is driven by an incentive to balance the shopping process of "fit-uncertain consumers" and the pricing behavior of upstream suppliers.
"Retailers face two different kinds of markets the consumers who buy goods, and the manufacturers that supply goods," he said. "It's a very important variable for local retailers and marketing managers to play with in this era of increased competition with online retailers, and it has important implications for companies and consumers."
The study, which will appear in the journal Marketing Science, is the first paper to formally study the significance of store layouts, said Liu, who co-wrote the study with Zheyin (Jane) Gu, a professor of marketing at the State University of New York, Albany.
"If we look at the current retailing environment, local retailers are in intense competition with online retailers, which means real-world retailers really need to think about how they're going to differentiate themselves," Liu said.
Although consumers live in an information-rich environment, where they know just about everything reviews, price and quality about a product before they handle it, they know virtually nothing about the unique "fit" of the product until they walk into a store and handle the product, Liu says.
"For many products, consumers typically remain uncertain about a product's fit until physically inspecting it," he said. "That could mean how a shirt feels when you try it on, or what a certain size tablet feels like in the consumers' hands. And since the consumer has to travel to the store and compare the products, that is to the local retailer's advantage, because that's something that online retailers can't do."
Another way retailers can compete with online merchants is by making the physical act of shopping as convenient as possible for consumers. In a market characterized by what the researchers call "consumer-fit uncertainty," a retailer may design the layout of a store to facilitate the simultaneous inspection of products, Liu says.
"For basic goods like toothbrushes, the fit probability is really high, because to most consumers, a toothbrush is a toothbrush," he said. "In that case, the retailer should group all toothbrushes together in the same location, forcing the manufacturers to compete on price."
But making the consumer shopping experience as easy as possible may not be the best retail strategy for certain products, Liu says.
According to the research, sometimes retailers might want manufacturers to compete on location in the store, even if it's inconvenient for consumers, which may sound counterintuitive to marketing managers.
"Sometimes it's not in retailers' interests to make certain things convenient to consumers, because they have to consider the balance between the consumer market and the manufacturer market," Liu said. "By affecting consumers' fit inspection processes, the retailer's store layout design also influences pricing behaviors of upstream manufacturers."
Not only do marketing managers have to decide whether to group competing firms' products together or separately, they also must balance that strategy with consumers' perception of the store.
"Think about Bloomingdale's versus Sears high-end luxury items versus basic items," Liu said. "Sears puts all of a manufacturers' products together. If you're looking for a table at Sears, they're all stocked together. If you go to Bloomingdale's, you'll notice that they sell furniture by brands. If you go to this room, it has everything from one manufacturer. If you want to look at another set of table and chairs, you have to go to another room."
That's because for basic products, such as the table from Sears, the product's fit probability is very high, Liu says.
"But if you go to Bloomindale's, they have the high-end furniture and for
high-end products, people have different tastes," he said. "So Sears wants manufacturers to compete on price, while Bloomingdale's wants manufacturers to compete for the best location in the store."
It also depends on the product itself, Liu says.
"Even within high-end stores, individual product strategies will be different," he said. "For some product categories, such as kitchenware, which is quite standard, even a high-end retailer will sell everything together."
Name-brand clothes, however, are usually sold by the brand.
"Macy's puts some goods from competing manufacturers together, but if you look at clothing jeans, shirts, sweaters they usually sell them by brand," he said. "Calvin Klein is here, but Ralph Lauren is way over there."
But for low-fit probability products such as shirts, where each shirt is different, "even if retailers put them all together, like toothbrushes, the price competition is not that intense, because consumers have different preferences for shirts than they do for toothbrushes," Liu says.
"Even if one shirt manufacturer is running a promotion with a lower price than the competition if that shirt doesn't fit me; if its material irritates my skin; if it doesn't have the color I like, it doesn't matter how low the price is, because I won't buy it," he said.
"In this case, if the retailer sells all of the products together, it doesn't intensify the competition from the manufacturers. So the retailer should put the products in different locations so the manufacturers have to compete on the locations rather than on prices."
Although many retailers also offer the price-matching policy with online retailers like Amazon.com, that's really not the smartest strategy, according to Liu.
"Retailers probably do not want to play the pricing game with online retailers," he said. "They have certain inherent advantages in their store, in that the consumer has to find the right 'fit' for certain products. That's the frontier on which they have the advantage. So they should not give ground by playing the pricing game."
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Beautiful, calm, long, sandy Magens Bay on St. Thomas was ranked 5th by families, ??Glassy waters make this almost-mile-long Caribbean beach a carefree spot for swimming, snorkeling, and setting sail in the small boats that are available for rent along the shore. No wonder readers considered it the fifth most family-friendly beach??:?
Raise your hand if you have this picture ? amazing Trunk Bay on St. John, ranked 2nd for Wildlife Viewing, ??Located within the Virgin Islands National Park, Trunk Bay, the No. 2?ranked beach for wildlife viewing, is famous both for its marine life?an underwater snorkeling trail has signs to identify coral, sea urchins, and other fish?and the surrounding 7,000 acres of protected jungle??:
I?ve been to St. Croix, but did not make it to this beach, Turtle Beach, ??The offshore reefs on Buck Island, less than two miles north of St. Croix, get most of the attention, which means that the long, forest-lined beaches like this one, rated No. 4 for seclusion, are often empty??:
I have to imagine these sunny pictures are looking pretty good to those of you up North right about now. For more info click here, and to see the rest of the best beaches in the world click here.
Robert Christie,?senior vice president of corporate communications for The New York Times Company since 2010, is leaving the company. Christie came to the Times from Dow Jones & Company.
According to the Times, after Christie leaves, his position will be eliminated.?Eileen Murphy, vice president of corporate communications, will lead the department going forward.
?Bob?s extensive experience and broad range of contacts in the industry have been very valuable over the past three years,? wrote Mark Thompson, CEO of the Times, in a memo.
An All Nippon Airways' Boeing 787 Dreamliner, photographed here by a passenger, made emergency landing at Takamatsu airport in western Japan after there were reports of smoke in the cockpit.
By Mayumi Negishi and Mari Saito, Reuters
Updated at 11:10 p.m. ET: TOKYO - A Boeing 787 Dreamliner headed for Tokyo made an emergency landing Wednesday morning in Takamatsu, Japan after error messages indicated there was a problem with the plane's batteries and smoke in the plane.?
An "unusual smell" was detected inside the cockpit and the passenger cabin, according to a news conference held by All Nippon Airlines, whose plane was grounded. Fire trucks were deployed after the plane landed, but there was no fire to put out. ?
This adds to a slew of recent problems with Boeing's new Dreamliner aircraft. Another 787 -- the world's first mainly carbon-composite airliner -- had two fuel leaks, a battery fire, a wiring problem, brake computer glitch and cracked cockpit window last week.
The two Japanese airlines -- ANA and Japan Airlines -- said they would ground the 21 Boeing 787 jets currently being flown for further safety checks. ?
Both Japan and the United States have opened broad and open-ended investigations into the plane after a series of incidents that have raised safety concerns.
ANA said instruments on the early Wednesday domestic flight indicated a battery error. All passengers and crew evacuated safely by using the plane's inflatable slides, ANA said.
ANA said it evacuated 129 passengers and eight crew members from the Dreamliner after measuring instruments in the flight's cockpit indicated there was a battery malfunction and the pilot smelled something strange.?
Flight 692 bound for Haneda Airport near Tokyo left Yamaguchi Airport in western Japan shortly after 8 a.m. but made an emergency landing in Takamatsu at 8:45 a.m. after smoke appeared in the cockpit, an Osaka airport authority spokesman said.
Boeing spokesman Marc Birtel told Reuters: "We've seen the reports, we're aware of the events and are working with our customer."
Federal Aviation Administration officials said Friday?they would conduct a comprehensive review of Boeing?s 787 airplane program following several high-profile mishaps, including a fire. But the FAA sought Friday to reassure fliers that they still believe the airplane is safe to fly.
In a statement following the emergency landing in Japan, the FAA said it is monitoring the report: "The incident will be included in the comprehensive review the FAA began last week of the 787 critical systems, including design, manufacture and assembly."
The FAA plans to review all aspects of the new aircraft, including design and production. But the?review will focus heavily on the electric components of the aircraft.?
The new 787 Dreamliner, which went into service in the fall of 2011, relies much more heavily on electric components?than previous airplane models.
Boeing officials said Friday?that they welcome a review of the new model aircraft and that the FAA's scrutiny did not diminish the company's confidence in the airplane.
Japan is so far the biggest market for the Dreamliner, with ANA and Japan Airlines Co. flying 24 of the 50 Dreamliners delivered to date.
Shares of Boeing Dreamlier suppliers in Japan came under pressure on Wednesday, with Fuji Heavy Industries, GS Yuasa Corp, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, IHI down between 1.6 and 3 percent, while the benchmark Nikkei shed 1.3 percent.
Japanese authorities said on Monday they would investigate fuel leaks on a 787 operated by JAL, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said later its agents would analyse the lithium-ion battery and burned wire bundles from a fire aboard another JAL 787 at Boston's Logan Airport last week.?
NBC?News' Allison?Linn and Arata Yamamoto contributed?reporting.?
?
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Samsung cancels US Windows RT tablet plans Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/12/13 22:53 UTC Well, this can't be a good sign. Samsung has told CNET that the company will not be launching its Windows RT tablet in the United States, citing a lack of demand and consumer confusion. After I spent an afternoon in my country's largest electronics retailer, it's hard not to agree with Samsung. 7??Read More ? 47 Comment(s) 'Safari is released to the world' Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/11/13 17:28 UTC After relying on third parties for several years - Internet Explorer, Netscape - Apple decided that it was time to take matters into its own hands. It was time Apple created its own browser (again). And so, Safari was born, and released unto the world ten years ago. These past few weeks, Don Melton, the project lead for Safari and WebKit, has been sharing a lot of interesting stories about the origins and development of Apple's browser. 4??Read More ? 24 Comment(s) Nokia sold 4.4 million Lumias in Q4 2012 Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/10/13 17:10 UTC Nokia has just sent out a few preliminary comments about the company's performance during the fourth quarter of 2012. Nokia's figures are a good indicator for how well Windows Phone 8 is doing, and, in all honesty, I'm not exactly blown away. Apparently, neither was Nokia itself, since the company decided to redefine their Asha phones from feature phone to smartphone to prop up their smartphone sales figures. 0??Read More ? 78 Comment(s) Windows RT jailbreak: let the games begin Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/08/13 23:27 UTC So, a rudimentary jailbreak for Windows RT made its way onto the web these past few days. Open source applications were ported right away, and it was confirmed that Windows RT is the full Windows - it's exactly the same as regular Windows, except that it runs on ARM. Microsoft responded to the jailbreak as well. 2??Read More ? 95 Comment(s) Google blocks Windows Phone from Maps, limits Gmail Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/05/13 14:53 UTC And so this situation is starting to get ridiculous - and consumers are, as usual, caught in the middle of it all. Google has just blocked Windows Phone devices from accessing Google Maps on their phones. In addition, it also seems Windows Phone users are now restricted to the basic HTML version of the mobile GMail website. While understandable from a defensive perspective - Microsoft's extortion scheme targeting Android device makers and all that - it's still a massive dick move that only hurts consumers. Update: the media attention has worked - Google is backpedalling, and will remove the redirect. "We periodically test Google Maps compatibility with mobile browsers to make sure we deliver the best experience for those users. In our last test, IE mobile still did not offer a good maps experience with no ability to pan or zoom and perform basic map functionality. As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches. The Firefox mobile browser did offer a somewhat better user experience and that’s why there is no redirect for those users. Recent improvements to IE mobile and Google Maps now deliver a better experience and we are currently working to remove the redirect. We will continue to test Google Maps compatibility with other mobile browsers to ensure the best possible experience for users." 3??Read More ? 247 Comment(s) Icaros Desktop 1.5 released Linked by paolone on 01/04/13 20:56 UTC Icaros Desktop, the popular distribution of the AROS Research Operating System, has recently released its version 1.5, a new milestone since it finally allows to run classic Amiga software and games on full screen or perfectly integrating them into the host AROS desktop. 6??Read More ? 36 Comment(s) Shocker: Android SDK binaries still proprietary Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/04/13 18:29 UTC A blog post on the Free Software Foundation Europe site is making the rounds around the web. The blog post, written by Torsten Grote, claims that 'the Android SDK is now proprietary', because upon download, you have to agree to terms and conditions which are clearly not compatible with free and/or open source software. What Grote fails to mention - one, these terms have mostly always been here, and two, they only apply to the SDK binaries. The source is still freely available. 1??Read More ? 19 Comment(s) Canonical unveils Ubuntu for phones Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/02/13 19:05 UTC Expected, but still insanely cool: Canonical has just announced Ubuntu for phones. This is a new mobile phone operating system, with its own user interface and development platform. It's built around Qt5 and QML, and the interface reminds me of MeeGo on the N9. It's supposed to be on the shelves in early 2014, but the developer preview is out today. 20??Read More ? 120 Comment(s) Ode to Skulpture Linked by Thom Holwerda on 01/01/13 18:19 UTC I tend to believe that the best interfaces have already been made. Behaviourally, CDE is the best and most consistent interface ever made. It looked like ass, but it always did exactly as you told it to, and it never did anything unexpected. When it comes to looks, however, the gold standard comes from an entirely different corner - Apple's Platinum and QNX' PhotonUI. Between all the transparency, flat-because-it's-hip, and stitched leather violence of the past few years, one specific KDE theme stood alone in bringing the best of '90s UI design into the 21st century, and updating it to give everything else a run for its money. This is an ode to Christoph Feck's Skulpture. 6??Read More ? 50 Comment(s) Quick Guide to Fixing Hardware Linked by Howard Fosdick on 12/31/12 20:26 UTC Last month, I explained why I use generic desktops and laptops running open source software. They're reliable and inexpensive. But this presumes you can fix them. I believe that even those with no hardware training (like me), can identify and fix most hardware problems. To prove it, here's a quick guide. Feel free to add whatever I've missed. 6??Read More ? 34 Comment(s)
Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who transformed Hebrew from the rusty language of ancient Israel and the Bible into the dynamic, dominant language of modern-day Israel, would be 155 years old today.
By Christa Case Bryant,?Staff Writer / January 8, 2013
This December, 2012 photo shows visitors at the Mahane Yehuda market, one of Jerusalem's free tourist attractions. Beyond its earthly past, Jerusalem has an impossible beauty with broad appeal. For residents and tourists, secular and religious souls, city slickers or nature lovers, there is always an unexplored alleyway, street corner or vista that will show you the city as you?ve never seen it before.
Ariel Schalit/AP
Enlarge
If it weren?t for Eliezer Ben Yehuda, I wouldn?t be able to order ice cream, ask directions to the local furniture store, or discuss Gaza bombings in Hebrew.
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Since I?m a new journalist in Israel who happens to love ice cream and arrived here with only one piece of furniture to my name, that would be grave indeed.
So I for one am grateful for Mr. Ben Yehuda, who was born 155 years ago today in the Russian empire.
Legend has it that the man was not only brilliant, but a little crazy. And you would have to be, if you were planning to try to resurrect an ancient language after roughly 2,000 years and expect it to become the primary spoken language of a country that didn't even exist yet.
But the Sorbonne-educated Ben Yehuda did just that ??well before the state of Israel was founded in 1948, and even before Lord Balfour of Britain made his famous promise to the Zionists in 1917 to help establish a Jewish homeland.
Of course, Hebrew was the language of the Torah ? the biblical books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy ? as well as other religious writings. So many Jews were familiar with it. But they didn?t use it to talk about things like grocery shopping or even politics.
Where to start? With your family, of course. When Ben Yehuda arrived in Israel with his family, he banned his wife and children from speaking any other language. According to tradition, his family was the first to speak exclusively Hebrew in the home.
He also helped start schools and Hebrew-language newspapers, and published the first dictionary of modern Hebrew, often drawing on biblical words to coin modern terms. Ultra-Orthodox Jews pushed back hard, arguing that Hebrew is a holy language and not to be used to discuss the mundane. Many of them still prefer to speak in Yiddish when discussing daily affairs.
But Hebrew is nevertheless the dominant language in Israel today, although Arabic is an official language as well.
But I digress.
You were wondering about how to order ice cream, right?
IN most fine dining restaurants, your waiter might say something along the lines of, ?Let me tell you about our specials today. We have a miso-glazed Chilean Garoupa with a side of mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach.?
He might then suggest beverages that can accompany this meal. This statement presupposes that what you eat is the focus of your meal. What happens if it?s the other way round ? where what you drink is the focus of the meal?
?Why not we make the drink complement food rather than food complement the drink?? This is what Steven Heng, a 24-year-old mixologist with Classic Coffee and Beverage, asked when he prepared for the J-Infinity Drink Gustation showcase.
?A bartender follows recipes. The moment he creates a drink, he becomes a mixologist,? he explains. His aim was to combine degustation (taking a small amount of food or drink into the mouth to test its quality) and the art of mixing.
Inviting you with, ?You will drink the food and eat the drink,? Steven divides the showcase into a set of eight-course drinks that include aperitifs, salads, pasta, main course, dessert, coffee and tea.
Unlike most dinners, where every dish is paired with an alcoholic beverage, Steven chooses to make his drinks ?mocktails? (non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic beverages). ?My idea is to use the things you will get in a kitchen. For example, I will use something like balsamic vinegar or beef stock. Or even a masala. I will infuse the spices and learn the scent or taste that it creates, such as Lapsang souchong tea has a smoky taste. I can use this as a substitute for smoky beef bacon.?
With that, Steven introduces the salad drink ? Velvet Kult. This drink contains beetroot, cucumber and basil. While it sounds strange, the dose of rose lime vinaigrette make it lovely.
The added bonus is the knowledge that all the ingredients are super foods advocated by healthcare specialists. Indeed, one of the guests at the showcase is overheard saying, ?I wish I had known about this when I was a child. I would have taken more salads.?
For the pasta dish, Duo Speg, Steven says, ?The most common sauces for pasta are Carbonara and Napolitana. One is cream-based and the other is tomato-based. I also want to awaken all your senses, especially taste.? So, he makes pasta using peach puree and the Carbonara is made using a mango-thyme cream sauce.
Preparing a drink can take up to two weeks, says Steven. ?I?m like a mad scientist in the R & D room in the office. I use molecular techniques to test all my drinks and like to give a twist to dishes we all know about.?
This statement is exemplified in the next drink he highlights, Paris Kiss. Steven was inspired by a dessert created a French chef (Pierre Herme) called Ispahan. In its original form, Ispahan is a rose macaroon filled with lychee cream and fresh raspberry. Steven uses the combination of the all the flavours in this dessert and enhances it with orange zest. To add texture, he mimics the lychee cream in the drink by using lychee foam.
In most restaurants, a meal ends with coffee. Similarly, here, Steven serves Illy Cube. In the style of serving a cappuccino, the resulting beverage is one that combines espresso, illy crema (a thin layer of foam at the top of a cup of espresso), milk foam with a hint of orange and cinnamon.
?I hope that, in future, people will see that there are many things you can do with the things in your kitchen to make interesting drinks,? says Steven.
Indeed, his enthusiasm to explore how versatile food can be infectious and you might find yourself is? believing him when he says: ?Mixing is always fun, creative and borderless.?
Allen M. Tough (1936-2012) is best known for his research and writing around the processes that adults use to learn and change. In particular he looked at how adults undertook self-directed learning projects ? and the scale of these within everyday life. His work The Adult?s Learning Projects became a key reference point for writers in the field of adult education. Allen Tough received a number of awards including the Malcolm Knowles Memorial Award for significant lifelong contribution to the field of self-directed learning (2006) He was inducted into the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame. His citation notes:
Tough?s inquiry contributed to an expansion of the dialogue on adult learning to include self-directed learning. He was instrumental in catalyzing movement from research focused primarily on who participates in organized adult education to one that embraces the entire range of intentional adult learning.(IACE 2006)
Tough went on to work in the field of future studies and was also concerned with the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
Born and raised in Toronto, Allen Tough went on to study at the city?s main University before gaining his PhD at the University of Chicago. He came back to the Toronto and? Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) in 1964 to teach and research (The Institute became part of the University of Toronto in 1996). Allen Tough spent 33 years at the University as a faculty member and retired early in 1997 to focus on his research interests. He became a Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto.
Diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy ? a rare degenerative disease ? he continued to research and teach. He died on April 27,? 2012 aged 76. He was? survived by his wife Cathy Rand and his children Susan Tough (Russell Wardell) of Renfrew, Ontario, and Paul Tough (Paula Shapiro), and his grandson Ellington of Montauk, New York (legacy.com 2012).
References
International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame. (2006) Allen Tough. Norman OK.:?University of Oklahoma. [http://www.halloffame.outreach.ou.edu/2006/tough.html. Retrieved January 7, 2013]
Legacy.com. (2012). Allen M. Tough. Obituary. [http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/thestar/obituary.aspx?pid=157356346#fbLoggedOut. Retrieved January 7, 2013].
Tough, Allen M. (1967).? Learning without a teacher.?A study of tasks and assistance during adult self-teaching projects. Toronto: OISE (second edition 1981). The full text is downloadable from allentough.com
Tough, Allen M. (1968).? Why adults learn.? Toronto: OISE. Also available as ERIC Document no. ED 025688.
Tough, Allen M. (1971). The adult?s learning projects: A fresh approach to theory and practice in adult learning. Toronto: OISE (Second edition, Austin, Texas: Learning Concepts and Toronto: OISE, 1979. The full text is downloadable from allentough.com
Tough, Allen M. (1980). Expand your life. New York: College Entrance Examination Board.
Tough, Allen M. (1982). Intentional changes: A fresh approach to helping people change. Chicago: Follett.
Tough, Allen M. (1991)?Crucial Questions About the Future. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. The full text is downloadable from allentough.com
Acknowledgement: Picture: Allen M Tough 2004 speaking at at the International Astronautical Congress, Vancouver BC Canada. Available on Allen Tough?s website: http://www.allentough.com/
DEAR ABBY: I cut my father out of my life years ago, after he declared he could not support my decision to adopt three children from a Russian orphanage with my longtime companion. The adoption announcement coincided with my "coming out" to Dad, who is now married to his third wife. It must have been a lot for him to take in at one time. He told me plainly that he could not support my decision because he could not "understand" it. He has never met our children, and does not acknowledge them as his grandchildren. ...
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Robert Christie,?senior vice president of corporate communications for The New York Times Company since 2010, is leaving the company. Christie came to the Times from Dow Jones & Company.
Well, this can't be a good sign. Samsung has told CNET that the company will not be launching its Windows RT tablet in the United States, citing a lack of demand and consumer confusion. After I spent an afternoon in my country's largest electronics retailer, it's hard not to agree with Samsung. 
7??Read More ? 47 Comment(s) 
After relying on third parties for several years - Internet Explorer, Netscape - Apple decided that it was time to take matters into its own hands. It was time Apple created its own browser (again). And so, Safari was born, and released unto the world ten years ago. These past few weeks, Don Melton, the project lead for Safari and WebKit, has been sharing a lot of interesting stories about the origins and development of Apple's browser. 
Nokia has just sent out a few preliminary comments about the company's performance during the fourth quarter of 2012. Nokia's figures are a good indicator for how well Windows Phone 8 is doing, and, in all honesty, I'm not exactly blown away. Apparently, neither was Nokia itself, since the company decided to redefine their Asha phones from feature phone to smartphone to prop up their smartphone sales figures. 
And so this situation is starting to get ridiculous - and consumers are, as usual, caught in the middle of it all. Google has just blocked Windows Phone devices from accessing Google Maps on their phones. In addition, it also seems Windows Phone users are now restricted to the basic HTML version of the mobile GMail website. While understandable from a defensive perspective - Microsoft's extortion scheme targeting Android device makers and all that - it's still a massive dick move that only hurts consumers. Update: the media attention has worked - Google is backpedalling, and will remove the redirect. "We periodically test Google Maps compatibility with mobile browsers to make sure we deliver the best experience for those users. In our last test, IE mobile still did not offer a good maps experience with no ability to pan or zoom and perform basic map functionality. As a result, we chose to continue to redirect IE mobile users to Google.com where they could at least make local searches. The Firefox mobile browser did offer a somewhat better user experience and that’s why there is no redirect for those users. Recent improvements to IE mobile and Google Maps now deliver a better experience and we are currently working to remove the redirect. We will continue to test Google Maps compatibility with other mobile browsers to ensure the best possible experience for users." 
Icaros Desktop, the popular distribution of the AROS Research Operating System, has recently released its version 1.5, a new milestone since it finally allows to run classic Amiga software and games on full screen or perfectly integrating them into the host AROS desktop. 
A blog post on the Free Software Foundation Europe site is making the rounds around the web. The blog post, written by Torsten Grote, claims that 'the Android SDK is now proprietary', because upon download, you have to agree to terms and conditions which are clearly not compatible with free and/or open source software. What Grote fails to mention - one, these terms have mostly always been here, and two, they only apply to the SDK binaries. The source is still freely available. 
Expected, but still insanely cool: Canonical has just announced Ubuntu for phones. This is a new mobile phone operating system, with its own user interface and development platform. It's built around Qt5 and QML, and the interface reminds me of MeeGo on the N9. It's supposed to be on the shelves in early 2014, but the developer preview is out today. 
I tend to believe that the best interfaces have already been made. Behaviourally, CDE is the best and most consistent interface ever made. It looked like ass, but it always did exactly as you told it to, and it never did anything unexpected. When it comes to looks, however, the gold standard comes from an entirely different corner - Apple's Platinum and QNX' PhotonUI. Between all the transparency, flat-because-it's-hip, and stitched leather violence of the past few years, one specific KDE theme stood alone in bringing the best of '90s UI design into the 21st century, and updating it to give everything else a run for its money. This is an ode to Christoph Feck's Skulpture. 
Last month, I explained why I use generic desktops and laptops running open source software. They're reliable and inexpensive. But this presumes you can fix them. I believe that even those with no hardware training (like me), can identify and fix most hardware problems. To prove it, here's a quick guide. Feel free to add whatever I've missed. 
