art, ballet, bookshelf: I asked several friends who are involved in the ballet world and they agree with much about this book’s conclusion.
Perhaps a later history will view all these as the final gutterings of a spent flame. This is no golden age, and several of its ballets are indeed dead. My own main alarm about ballet — not one that troubles Ms. Homans — is that its dependence on pointwork for women and partnering by men proposes a dichotomizing view of the sexes that is at best outmoded and at worst repellently sexist. Nevertheless, this balletgoer testifies that the scene feels brighter than it did 10, 15 or 20 years ago.
via Jennifer Homan’s ‘Apollo’s Angels’ – Critic’s Notebook – NYTimes.com.
restaurants, pop ups: I am going to one of these if I have to ride the MegaBus to get there!
Mr. Fraser’s novelty, scheduled to open on Jan. 25 for what he estimates will be a nine-month run, is one answer — an especially striking, even eccentric one. It’s called What Happens When, and if the thought were finished and the predicate filled in, it would mention rules being rewritten and assumptions challenged.
Diners, for example, will be expected to set and reset the cutlery on their tables with utensils from drawers beneath. That way Mr. Fraser won’t need as many servers. It will save him money, he said, and translate into fewer intrusions for diners. “You’re visited only at points of the meal when you really need help,” he said.
Rather than woo bigwig investors who might make big-time demands, Mr. Fraser has decided to solicit hundreds of what are essentially contributions, from $5 to $2,500, through a micro-financing Web site, Kickstarter, which helps raise money for creative projects.
It’s an improvisatory approach for an improvisatory time, when chefs are finding all sorts of ways to eliminate overhead, streamline operations, edit out distractions and focus on the cooking, which is the beginning, end and point of it all.
In Chicago, the chef Grant Achatz is preparing to open Next, where diners will buy tickets in advance for an appointed hour and a predetermined menu. The pinpoint planning that allows him will save money on service staff.
Some chefs are hatching pop-up restaurants, which squat for just days or weeks in locations already furnished and equipped. Some are giving meals on wheels a spin.
via Temporary Restaurants – Now You See It, Now You Don’t – NYTimes.com.
restaurants, business models: My favorite restaurant advertises … “Over 245 billion served!”
Sixty. That’s the number of diners a night that chef André Chiang sets as the maximum for a good restaurant. Any more and quality starts to slip, he says.
His Singapore restaurant serves even fewer people than that. André, which opened in October 2010, accommodates just 30 diners each a night.
via Asia’s Restaurants Want Fewer Customers — Scene Asia – Scene Asia – WSJ.
statistics, Congress: Welcome to the 112th Congress …
The Wall Street Journal examined the list of freshmen and came up with some stats on the 112th Congress:
Average age: 57.4 (down from 58.5 in the 111th Congress)
Blacks: 42 (up from 40)
Hispanics: 26 (down from 27)
Asians: 11 (no change)
Women: 89 (down from 90)
Veterans: 113 (down from 119)
No college degree: 28 (no change)
Attorneys: 202 (down from 203)
Farmers or ranchers: 6 (down from 7)
via 112th Congress: By the Numbers – Washington Wire – WSJ.
travel, budget travel: I have heard it was just OK. My kith nieces came home to Charlotte at Christmas on the MegaBus.
First, an overview: This is not your father’s Greyhound. For the most part, the buses are incredibly pleasant, dirt cheap and full of bonuses like free bottled water and electrical outlets by the seats. They run on time from convenient locations, making them practically as fast as airplanes at a fraction of the cost and a microscopic speck of a fraction of the hassle.
…
THE UPSHOT
The pricing revolution that started out with a few Chinatown buses has now given us a fairly reliable way to travel. Even, occasionally, after a blizzard.
via Frugal Traveler: A Guide to Cheap Buses (Including How to Score $1 Tickets) – NYTimes.com.
spring: Thinking of spring. I gave John a composter for Christmas and maybe I’ll try my hand at cold frames …How to Make a Simple Cold Frame | eHow.com.
products, advertising: Are they really making anything new. Seems like a waste of time and energy.
The product, called Purex Complete Crystals Softener, is being billed as “a purer way to get laundry that smells clean and fresh for weeks.” It is making its way this month onto the shelves of American grocery, drug and mass-merchandise stores, priced around $4 to $7 for a 28-ounce package that can be used for 32 loads of laundry.
A campaign for the new softener is to be introduced next month by Energy BBDO, the agency that created the ads to introduce Purex Complete 3-in-1. The budget is being estimated at $40 million to $50 million.
via Laundry Products Put Into Yet Another Form – NYTimes.com.
college, youth, gap year: I have heard great things from a few people about the value of this.
Burnout from the competitive pressure of high school or a desire “to find out more about themselves,” are the top two reasons students take gap years, says a survey of 280 people who did so by Karl Haigler and Rae Nelson, co-authors of a forthcoming guidebook on the topic. To benefit, a student should be able to set worthwhile goals, says Holly Bull, president of the Center for Interim Programs, a gap-year consultant in Princeton, N.J. Those who take a year off just to procrastinate on college applications or party nonstop aren’t likely to gain much. In fact, Haigler advises having students apply to college before starting a gap year, then ask to defer admission.
Weary of the college admissions race during his senior year of high school, one Illinois student says his gap year in a wilderness training program, then a cultural-immersion program in Nepal, turned him around academically. After enrolling the next year in college, he posted his best grades ever, competed on a mock-trial team and edited a campus literary magazine.
via Is a ‘Gap Year’ Right for Your Family? – The Juggle – WSJ.
culture, online dating: Why does online dating just seem creepy to me?
FOR the lovelorn, the new year can be an unhappy time, as they cast envious glances in the direction of lovey-dovey couples at the season’s parties. For online-dating agencies, it is a golden opportunity, as people who have spent the holidays ruminating over unsatisfactory or non-existent love lives log on in their thousands, hoping to find romance—ideally before February 14th. “The period between New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day is our busiest six weeks of the year,” explains Sam Yagan, the boss of OkCupid, a big American dating site.
via Online dating: Love at first byte | The Economist.
random: I was just talking about this with my kids the other day. You’re Out: 20 Things That Became Obsolete This Decade PHOTOS.
innovation, consumer products, autos, green: By the time I buy one, it will all be pretty easy!
Powermat, founded in Israel in 2007, says automotive applications have long been part of its plan. Powermat CEO Ran Poliakine says besides cordlessly recharging portable electronics, the system can be used with special cups to keep coffee hot and soft drinks cold. “We want every car in GM to have this wireless charging system to help consumers charge everything they have without the hassle of plugs,” he said.
But the larger opportunity might be recharging the batteries of electric cars without having to plug them in. Poliakine says Powermat has already demonstrated the capability. It holds the prospect of being able to park an electric car atop a charging mat at a shopping center, office, airport or at home and have it wireless recharged. “It is part of this whole vision,” he says. He declined to estimate how soon such a technology might be rolled out.
The best application for such cordless charging would be public stations, says Chelsea Sexton, an electric-car activist who was among the first to receive a Volt for long-term testing.
via GM-Powermat deal turns cars into cordless chargers – USATODAY.com.
random, lottery: I always buy a ticket when it gets high … but the Curse scares me … Do you think you could handle the sudden influx of fortune and fame?
Curse of the lottery
Some winners don’t live happily ever after. The so-called lottery curse, popularized by the corpulent character “Hurley” on ABC’s show “Lost,” has ruined at least a dozen winners over the years who couldn’t handle the sudden influx of fortune and fame.
The most infamous case is that of Andrew “Jack” Whittaker, a construction company owner from West Virginia who won $315 million from Powerball in 2002.
Already a millionaire before he won the lottery, Whittaker pledged part of the winnings to his church.
But it all went downhill from there, according to published reports.
Whittaker’s post-lottery problems are said to have included lawsuits, divorce, drunk driving, the theft of a cash-stuffed briefcase in a strip club, and the untimely deaths of his daughter and granddaughter.
via Mega Millions $355 million jackpot is dream to many – Jan. 4, 2011.
Apple: Ah, Apple … groundbreaking again.
The technology-industry analysts Macworld spoke with seem to feel that Apple is making a savvy move in bringing the success of the iOS App store to the Mac, suggesting that it’s a strategy that opens open another difference between the Mac and PCs running Windows.
“It’s groundbreaking,” said Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies. “I think this will be more than just an experiment—I think it’ll be quite successful within the Apple community. Those who are familiar with the Mac way of doing things will easily accept this, and probably embrace it.
via Mac App Store opens with more than 1,000 apps | Software | Macworld.
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