Monday, June 4, 2012
Real Cool
One of the more memorable encounters in the history of modern art occurred late in 1961 when the period’s preeminent avant-garde dealer, Leo Castelli, paid a call at the Upper East Side Manhattan townhouse-cum-studio of Andy Warhol, whose pioneering Pop paintings based on cartoon characters including Dick Tracy, the Little King, Nancy, Popeye, and Superman had caught the eye of Castelli’s gallery director, Ivan Karp, who in turn urged his boss to go have a look for himself. Warhol, eager to make the difficult leap from commercial artist to “serious” painter, decades later recalled his crushing disappointment when Castelli coolly told him, “Well, it’s unfortunate, the timing, because I just took on Roy Lichtenstein, and the two of you in the same gallery would collide.”
Although Lichtenstein, then a thirty-eight-year-old assistant art professor at Rutgers University’s Douglass College in New Jersey, was also making pictures based on comic-book prototypes—an example of wholly independent multiple discovery not unlike such scientific findings as calculus, oxygen, photography, and evolution—he and Warhol were in fact doing quite different things with similar source material, as the divergent tangents of their later careers would amply demonstrate. By 1964, Castelli recognized his mistake and added the thwarted aspirant to his gallery roster, though not before Warhol forswore cartoon imagery, fearful of seeming to imitate Lichtenstein, of whom he always remained somewhat in awe.
In fact, what Lichtenstein and his five-years-younger contemporary Warhol had most in common was being the foremost exemplars of Cool among their generation of American visual artists. The first half of the 1960s was the apogee of what might be termed the Age of Cool—as defined by that quality of being simultaneously with-it and disengaged, in control but nonchalant, knowing but ironically self-aware, and above all inscrutably undemonstrative.
Coolness (which was largely but not exclusively a male attribute) suffused American culture back then, from our supremely compartmentalized commander in chief, John Kennedy, to the action-movie star Steve McQueen, nicknamed “The King of Cool,” and from the middle-class cool of the TV talk-show host Johnny Carson to the far-out jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, whose LP album Birth of the Cool could serve as the soundtrack for that brief interlude before things suddenly turned hot toward the end of the Sixties. Coolness even had its own philosopher-theoretician, Marshall McLuhan, whose influential treatise Understanding Media (1964) codified comic books and television as “cool” means of communication.
Today, a quarter-century after Warhol’s death and fifteen years after Lichtenstein’s (in a hideous coincidence, both unexpectedly succumbed after what had been deemed routine hospital procedures), they remain the two Pop artists best known to the general public, if only in the most simplistic terms, with Warhol as the Campbell’s Soup guy and Lichtenstein as the cartoon guy. A pair of exhibitions that nearly overlapped this spring—a major one on Lichtenstein now at the Art Institute of Chicago before it travels internationally and a numerically comparable but physically more compact one on Warhol at the McNay Museum in San Antonio that was seen only there—offer telling contrasts between these two consummately cool customers.
by Martin Filler, NY Review of Books | Read more:
Illusration: Roy Lichtenstein: Brushstroke with Spatter, 1966. Art Institute of Chicago
WTF in China
My tour guide at the Great Wall of China, Leo, looked at my iPhone and asked, "4S?" I replied yes and he bemoaned the fact that his was only an iPhone 4. By the way, you can get great 3G phone reception at the Great Wall. The Pudong area in Shanghai, which was all farmland 20 years ago, is now adding fantastical skyscrapers so quickly that, when I left for a week to go to Beijing, I thought buildings would pop up while I was away.
There is restricted access to the Internet in China, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and clearly the barriers are pretty easy to work around. Leo asked if I'd like to be his Facebook friend and told me he'd friend me when he got home and could get on the VPN that went around the country's firewall.
But in ways that I wasn't expecting, China was as foreign and incomprehensible as anywhere I've ever been in my life. In the roughly 5 weeks (on and off) that I was there, I had more truly inexplicable encounters and conversations than in the rest of my life put together. My colleague Diana and I coined a phrase, WTF in China (WTFIC). We'd say this to each other every time there was really nothing else to say because words failed us.
One day in Beijing, we were sitting in a taxi in heavy traffic. We noticed a few vendors going between the cars selling mobile phone car chargers. This seemed like a clever idea. Then Diana noticed that each vendor had chargers in one hand and a live turtle in the other. What was the deal with the turtles? Were they selling them? Were they a marketing gimmick? We emailed Leo, who had offered to help us post-tour with any questions. Before I got his reply back, I said to Diana, "you know, even once he answers us, we're not going to be any more illuminated. I just know it's going to be a WTF in China issue." And indeed, this was Leo's answer, "For turtles, they are the symbol of longevity and fortune, so people may buy when they get bored in traffic!" Clearly, this answer made perfect logical sense to Leo. And to all the people sitting in rush hour traffic jams making a spur of the moment purchase of an animal that would probably outlive them.
And talking of driving in China…sometimes driving down the road, it was very hard to tell the difference between "something major has happened" and just the normal everyday chaos. Every day I felt like I took my life in my hands just getting a taxi to the office. Every taxi driver drives insanely fast and wildly, honking his horn even if there are no other cars on the road. It turns out that most of the Shanghai taxi drivers are living and working there illegally from other provinces and none of them seem to know how to get to almost anywhere in Shanghai. I became conversant in enough Mandarin to communicate and direct them to my office and back to my apartment building because this seemed to be a survival tactic.
When I was able to move beyond my fear for my life on these car rides and ones in Beijing, I noticed that cars often stopped, seemingly in the middle of the road or lined up on the hard shoulder, particularly at the weekend. This never helped the terrible traffic congestion. We asked Leo what that was all about. He told us that driving is a pretty new phenomenon for most people in Shanghai and Beijing and they see it as a social activity. When they go out for the day, they want to drive along with their friends. So they'll park in the meridian or by the side of the road to wait for them to catch up. Given that they all have cell phones, I'm not sure why they can't just track each other via GPS or phone and say, "where are you?" But again, this seemed a perfectly reasonable activity to Leo.
by Sarah Firisen, 3 Quarks Daily | Read more:
Expert Issues a Cyberwar Warning
[ed. See also: Why Antivirus Companies Like Mine Failed to Catch Flame and Stuxnet]
When Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Europe’s largest antivirus company, discovered the Flame virus that is afflicting computers in Iran and the Middle East, he recognized it as a technologically sophisticated virus that only a government could create.
He also recognized that the virus, which he compares to the Stuxnet virus built by programmers employed by the United States and Israel, adds weight to his warnings of the grave dangers posed by governments that manufacture and release viruses on the Internet.
“Cyberweapons are the most dangerous innovation of this century,” he told a gathering of technology company executives, called the CeBIT conference, last month in Sydney, Australia. While the United States and Israel are using the weapons to slow the nuclear bomb-making abilities of Iran, they could also be used to disrupt power grids and financial systems or even wreak havoc with military defenses.
Computer security companies have for years used their discovery of a new virus or worm to call attention to themselves and win more business from companies seeking computer protection. Mr. Kaspersky, a Russian computer security expert, and his company, Kaspersky Lab, are no different in that regard. But he is also using his company’s integral role in exposing or decrypting three computer viruses apparently intended to slow or halt Iran’s nuclear program to argue for an international treaty banning computer warfare.
A growing array of nations and other entities are using online weapons, he says, because they are “thousands of times cheaper” than conventional armaments.
While antivirus companies might catch some, he says, only an international treaty that would ban militaries and spy agencies from making viruses will truly solve the problem.
The wide disclosure of the details of the Flame virus by Kaspersky Lab also seems intended to promote the Russian call for a ban on cyberweapons like those that blocked poison gas or expanding bullets from the armies of major nations and other entities.
by Andrew E. Kramer and Nicole Perlroth, NY Times | Read more:
Photo: Alexey Sazonov/Agence France-Presse - Getty Image
When Eugene Kaspersky, the founder of Europe’s largest antivirus company, discovered the Flame virus that is afflicting computers in Iran and the Middle East, he recognized it as a technologically sophisticated virus that only a government could create.
He also recognized that the virus, which he compares to the Stuxnet virus built by programmers employed by the United States and Israel, adds weight to his warnings of the grave dangers posed by governments that manufacture and release viruses on the Internet. “Cyberweapons are the most dangerous innovation of this century,” he told a gathering of technology company executives, called the CeBIT conference, last month in Sydney, Australia. While the United States and Israel are using the weapons to slow the nuclear bomb-making abilities of Iran, they could also be used to disrupt power grids and financial systems or even wreak havoc with military defenses.
Computer security companies have for years used their discovery of a new virus or worm to call attention to themselves and win more business from companies seeking computer protection. Mr. Kaspersky, a Russian computer security expert, and his company, Kaspersky Lab, are no different in that regard. But he is also using his company’s integral role in exposing or decrypting three computer viruses apparently intended to slow or halt Iran’s nuclear program to argue for an international treaty banning computer warfare.
A growing array of nations and other entities are using online weapons, he says, because they are “thousands of times cheaper” than conventional armaments.
While antivirus companies might catch some, he says, only an international treaty that would ban militaries and spy agencies from making viruses will truly solve the problem.
The wide disclosure of the details of the Flame virus by Kaspersky Lab also seems intended to promote the Russian call for a ban on cyberweapons like those that blocked poison gas or expanding bullets from the armies of major nations and other entities.
by Andrew E. Kramer and Nicole Perlroth, NY Times | Read more:
Photo: Alexey Sazonov/Agence France-Presse - Getty Image
In Praise of (Loud, Stinky) Bars
The vaunted “third space” isn’t home, and isn’t work—it’s more like the living room of society at large. It’s a place where you are neither family nor co-worker, and yet where the values, interests, gossip, complaints and inspirations of these two other spheres intersect. It’s a place at least one step removed from the structures of work and home, more random, and yet familiar enough to breed a sense of identity and connection. It’s a place of both possibility and comfort, where the unexpected and the mundane transcend and mingle.
And nine times out of ten, it’s a bar.
So, a little story: Once upon a time there was a scruffy real estate developer who shall go nameless, who made some prudent purchases in a derelict former industrial neighborhood. He had a dream to turn that neighborhood into a vibrant new community that attracted talented young professionals willing to pay at least $1,000 per square foot to live there. But times were hard and everyone thought he was nuts. Now, the developer had three things going for him: time, empty space, and a son who was actively dating. The son would come home from a date and say, “Pops, you know that empty storefront down the side street by the pier? Can my girlfriend turn that into a welding shop?” And poof! A rent-free welding shop would appear. Soon the area was populated with ex-girlfriends running quirky artisanal industries, but still times were tough and the talented young professionals would not come.
Then one day the son came home and said, “Hey Pops, my girlfriend wants to open a bar.” The father considered this gravely, but finally agreed. Bars were stinky and noisy and they sold liquor. But they also attracted people and besides the place was just sitting empty now anyway. The bar was opened, and lo and behold it became a Third Space: a place where poor young hipsters could go and hang their weary heads over cheap beer after a long day of yarn bombing, and also where the local shipping company guys enjoyed the jukebox. Before you knew it, alcohol was flowing freely, and the new locals and old locals were conspiring to illegally convert lofts into residential units and open food co-ops. It wasn’t long before the bar started serving food, and then one day the unthinkable happened – it opened a café next door with really good coffee and quirky flavors of scones….
Look, I’m not telling this story to glorify bars as the ultimate third space intervention – I’m just trying to point out that bars occupy are particular niche in the place-making ecosystem. They are like the prairie grass after the fire: preparing the way for the scrub, and ending with the deciduous trees and their variegated canopy. They are hardy pioneers, taking root where not much else can sustain life.
Wait, was that metaphor too much? Yes, definitely.
But it’s also the point: we shouldn’t romanticize third spaces as only being about brightly lit cafes, pedestrianized streets, and the local public library. Bars work in their scruffy way by offering a place to get away from an overcrowded apartment or a squalid loft or a grimy job. They are a place where someone with little to spare can go for a change of pace, and in many edgy neighborhoods those folks are overwhelmingly low-income, and many are also young. These are the bright young things who do the hard work of place-making, but they aren’t necessarily looking for “vibrancy.” It’s more likely they want cheap beer, a decent burger, and a friendly face.
The goal of a bar patron is to enjoy the primary benefit of any decent third space: a place to linger. I’m still looking for someone to generate a “lingering index” so that we can measure the impact of just plain old hanging out – but that’s really at the heart of place-making, and we shouldn’t forget it.
Place-making is thirsty work, so bottom’s up in praise of bars and the Third Space promise they hold.
by Michael Hickey, Rooflines
Photo: Bree Bailey via Creative Commons, CC BY-SA
And nine times out of ten, it’s a bar. So, a little story: Once upon a time there was a scruffy real estate developer who shall go nameless, who made some prudent purchases in a derelict former industrial neighborhood. He had a dream to turn that neighborhood into a vibrant new community that attracted talented young professionals willing to pay at least $1,000 per square foot to live there. But times were hard and everyone thought he was nuts. Now, the developer had three things going for him: time, empty space, and a son who was actively dating. The son would come home from a date and say, “Pops, you know that empty storefront down the side street by the pier? Can my girlfriend turn that into a welding shop?” And poof! A rent-free welding shop would appear. Soon the area was populated with ex-girlfriends running quirky artisanal industries, but still times were tough and the talented young professionals would not come.
Then one day the son came home and said, “Hey Pops, my girlfriend wants to open a bar.” The father considered this gravely, but finally agreed. Bars were stinky and noisy and they sold liquor. But they also attracted people and besides the place was just sitting empty now anyway. The bar was opened, and lo and behold it became a Third Space: a place where poor young hipsters could go and hang their weary heads over cheap beer after a long day of yarn bombing, and also where the local shipping company guys enjoyed the jukebox. Before you knew it, alcohol was flowing freely, and the new locals and old locals were conspiring to illegally convert lofts into residential units and open food co-ops. It wasn’t long before the bar started serving food, and then one day the unthinkable happened – it opened a café next door with really good coffee and quirky flavors of scones….
Look, I’m not telling this story to glorify bars as the ultimate third space intervention – I’m just trying to point out that bars occupy are particular niche in the place-making ecosystem. They are like the prairie grass after the fire: preparing the way for the scrub, and ending with the deciduous trees and their variegated canopy. They are hardy pioneers, taking root where not much else can sustain life.
Wait, was that metaphor too much? Yes, definitely.
But it’s also the point: we shouldn’t romanticize third spaces as only being about brightly lit cafes, pedestrianized streets, and the local public library. Bars work in their scruffy way by offering a place to get away from an overcrowded apartment or a squalid loft or a grimy job. They are a place where someone with little to spare can go for a change of pace, and in many edgy neighborhoods those folks are overwhelmingly low-income, and many are also young. These are the bright young things who do the hard work of place-making, but they aren’t necessarily looking for “vibrancy.” It’s more likely they want cheap beer, a decent burger, and a friendly face.
The goal of a bar patron is to enjoy the primary benefit of any decent third space: a place to linger. I’m still looking for someone to generate a “lingering index” so that we can measure the impact of just plain old hanging out – but that’s really at the heart of place-making, and we shouldn’t forget it.
Place-making is thirsty work, so bottom’s up in praise of bars and the Third Space promise they hold.
by Michael Hickey, Rooflines
Photo: Bree Bailey via Creative Commons, CC BY-SA
Moonrise Kingdom
But this is only peripherally the story of Walt and Laura, or of their three young sons. Rather, it is the tale of their "difficult" eldest child, 12-year-old Suzy (Kara Hayward) and another young misfit with whom she—there really is no better word for it—elopes. This would be Sam (Jared Gilman), a serious, bespectacled, and unpopular boy who fell in love with Suzy the prior year, when he saw her playing the raven in a summer production of Benjamin Britten's Noye's Fludde. (It is one of several references to the composer in the film.)
Sam goes AWOL from his troop of Khaki Scouts at nearby Camp Ivanhoe to rendezvous with Suzy. United, the two disappear into the wooded thickets of New Penzance Island—the name itself is worth the price of admission—Suzy with her binoculars and pastel suitcases and battery-powered record player; Sam with his coonskin cap and corncob pipe and abundance of camping gear. There, in the dappled forests and sunswept coves, the two young runaways discover freedom, and companionship, and the early, innocent rumblings of sex. As they follow their trail of pseudo-maturity, they are of course sought after by an escalatingly (and understandably) frantic brigade of adults: Suzy's parents, the local police captain (Bruce Willis), and Sam's scoutmaster (Edward Norton). As this last informs the young scouts he's dragooned into the hunt: "This is not just a rescue party. This is a great scouting opportunity."
The book is awash with echoes of children's adventure fiction, from Tom Sawyer to Treasure Island to A High Wind in Jamaica. Underage though they may be, the kids are resourceful, optimistic, capable of loyalty and love—all the qualities with which their elders struggle. It's worth noting that this is the rare tale set in 1965 in which most of the adults are single, and the one marriage to which we are introduced is an unhappy one. (Well, the one legally binding marriage: I should cite here a hilarious cameo by Jason Schwartzman as a renegade scoutmaster with a weakness for performing age-inappropriate matrimonies.)
Moonrise Kingdom is touching, bittersweet, and very, very funny. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman, Anderson's usual collaborator, evokes the the feel of New England (the film was shot in Rhode Island) so precisely that the story's locale need never be mentioned. And the script, by Anderson with Roman Coppola, captures the indolent yet enterprising texture of childhood summers, the sense of having a limited amount of time in which to do unlimited things. The performances are excellent across the board, from the adults who recognize that their best is never quite good enough, to the kids who realize they will be forced to make up the deficit. On the former side, Norton and (particularly) Willis are standouts; on the latter, newcomer Gilman, as Sam, offers a portrait of a boy trying to will himself into premature manhood so indelible that it can almost almost compete with (then-newcomer) Schwartzman's Max Fischer in Rushmore.
by Christopher Orr, The Atlantic | Read more:
Illustration: “Moonrise Kingdom” by Adrian Tomine for The New Yorker. via
Sunday, June 3, 2012
You Are Not a Curator
"Curation is replacing creation as a mode of self-expression." - Jonathan Harris
As a former actual curator, of like, actual art and whatnot, I think I'm fairly well positioned to say that you folks with your blog and your Tumblr and your whatever are not actually engaged in a practice of curation. Call it what you like: aggregating? Blogging? Choosing? Copyright infringing sometimes? But it's not actually curation, or anything like it. Your faux TED talk is not going well for you if you are making some point about "curation" replacing "creation" because, well, for starters, "curation" is choosing among things that are created? So like there's nothing for you to curate without creation? This precious bit of dressing-up what people choose to share on the Internet is, sure, silly, but it's also a way for bloggers to distance themselves from the dirty blogging masses. You are no different from some teen in Indiana with a LiveJournal about cutting. Sorry folks! You're in this nasty fray with the rest of us. And your metaphor is all wrong. More likely you're a low-grade collector, not a curator. You're buying (in the attention economy at least! If not in the actual advertising economy of websites!) what someone else is selling—and you're then reselling it on your blog. You're nothing but a secondary market for someone else's work. Oh and also? You "curators" might want to be careful with your language....
"When you create digital tools that changes people's behavior, you are not a software engineer but a social engineer!" -Jonathan Harris
Oh, hey, you know who else was a social engineer?
Anyway:
In the 16th century, the poet was artist-king. The 19th: the novelist. 20th: the film-maker. I wonder if in the 21st, it'll be the curator. -Joe Hill
Hey, how did we blow past "editor"? Why don't the curators want to be editors?
Anyway, replace "curator" with "people who are really picky with what they share on Facebook" and maybe Joe Hill will be right on the money! Although I suspect that in the 16th century, if not "painter," then actually the "patron" was the "artist-king." (Commissioning is an art! Ask Pope Julius II!) And then that "editors" were the dominant influence in the 19th. And "studios" in the 20th. So I guess now either "ad sales people" or "web engineers" are at the top of the artistic food chain? Oh dear.
by Choire Sicha, The Awl | Read more:
As a former actual curator, of like, actual art and whatnot, I think I'm fairly well positioned to say that you folks with your blog and your Tumblr and your whatever are not actually engaged in a practice of curation. Call it what you like: aggregating? Blogging? Choosing? Copyright infringing sometimes? But it's not actually curation, or anything like it. Your faux TED talk is not going well for you if you are making some point about "curation" replacing "creation" because, well, for starters, "curation" is choosing among things that are created? So like there's nothing for you to curate without creation? This precious bit of dressing-up what people choose to share on the Internet is, sure, silly, but it's also a way for bloggers to distance themselves from the dirty blogging masses. You are no different from some teen in Indiana with a LiveJournal about cutting. Sorry folks! You're in this nasty fray with the rest of us. And your metaphor is all wrong. More likely you're a low-grade collector, not a curator. You're buying (in the attention economy at least! If not in the actual advertising economy of websites!) what someone else is selling—and you're then reselling it on your blog. You're nothing but a secondary market for someone else's work. Oh and also? You "curators" might want to be careful with your language....
"When you create digital tools that changes people's behavior, you are not a software engineer but a social engineer!" -Jonathan Harris
Oh, hey, you know who else was a social engineer?
Anyway:
In the 16th century, the poet was artist-king. The 19th: the novelist. 20th: the film-maker. I wonder if in the 21st, it'll be the curator. -Joe Hill
Hey, how did we blow past "editor"? Why don't the curators want to be editors?
Anyway, replace "curator" with "people who are really picky with what they share on Facebook" and maybe Joe Hill will be right on the money! Although I suspect that in the 16th century, if not "painter," then actually the "patron" was the "artist-king." (Commissioning is an art! Ask Pope Julius II!) And then that "editors" were the dominant influence in the 19th. And "studios" in the 20th. So I guess now either "ad sales people" or "web engineers" are at the top of the artistic food chain? Oh dear.
by Choire Sicha, The Awl | Read more:
The Battery Thermokruzhkus Mug, available at ThinkGeek, helps you power up when your energy levels are low.
Caffeine is our power source, whether it’s from coffee or tea or BAWLS. What better way for us to visualize our batteries being charged than a mug with a battery that powers up when we fill it with our piping hot caffeinated libation of choice?
This ceramic mug is classic black with a white outline of a battery on it. Pour in your hot liquid – anything over 96.8F (36C) – and watch the green cells within the battery light up. As your beverage cools (or is ingested) the battery will fade into emptiness, reminding you that you need a refill.via:
Gratuities Etiquette; Tipping For Success
To tip or not to tip
Arriving at a hotel room with the member of staff whom has just assisted you in finding the way and also brought your bags, there is a momentary awkward pause as he/she waits for ‘something’. You are still absorbing the luxurious fittings, the view from the window and the contents of the mini-bar. Suddenly you become aware they have not yet left. Slightly embarrassed, you apologetically fumble with your cash, a note is offered, it is accepted, but you are left with the distinct impression that they are unimpressed or equally embarrassed. Was that enough, did you get the exchange rate wrong; maybe you actually gave too much?
It is a scenario all but the most savvy of travellers or thick-skinned of us are painfully familiar with, and questions we have often asked ourselves. What is correct gratuities etiquette and how much to tip and when is the right moment to do so? Of course all situations are different; your baggage may have been transported to the room by way of a golf buggy and therefore you may not feel so inclined to provide as much as to the poor young man who carried all your baggage single-handedly up three flights of stairs because the lift was not working!
There is also often a gulf in culture and wealth, both of which can provide a variety of expectations of the gratuity that a hospitality industry worker may expect. Tipping in the United States is almost customary and it is common practice to see American tourists paying small gratuities for almost every service that they receive wherever they travel.
The various cultures throughout Europe have their own customs for providing tips, often dependant on whether it is also common practice for establishments to include a ‘service charge’ within the bill. There was even a television campaign for a well known high street bank in the United Kingdom which inferred that tipping within Iceland was actually considered insulting. However the truth is whilst a tip is never expected as it is usually included in the bill I doubt it is ever refused! Japan however, where gratuities are seldom given, the offer of a tip may cause a degree of embarrassment, confusion and even offence.
Gratuitous gratitude
In some countries, including Egypt (baksheesh), Morocco and even parts of Turkey (bahşiş) tipping is almost de rigueur, and even the tiniest ‘service’ will result in a proffered hand. Examples of this may include showing you the ‘very best’ spot to get your photograph, or just opening a door to see inside a room. It is always a good idea to carry some small denomination coinage around with you for when you feel such a service genuinely warrants a small payment. A word of advice though, if in Egypt do not ever hand your camera to anybody to take a photograph of you, you may have to pay to get it back! (...)
The level of service received and the circumstances of the visit will obviously affect the size of the gratuity. A one off visit to a restaurant where a good meal and excellent service resulted in an extremely pleasant evening will hopefully be rewarded accordingly. Poor service will usually result in little or no tip at all! However a favourite restaurant that you visit regularly and where you have a rapport with the staff will often mean they receive better tips, this encourages better service, you keep returning and it becomes a self perpetuating cycle.
More difficult to judge is the method and size of gratuity that is effective when staying for a week or more at a hotel or resort hotel. It is likely that you will be served by many different staff, chamber maids, bar, waiting and reception staff, pool attendants and concierges, all of which will expect a little remuneration for their services. This is often where some travellers falter, providing a tip for every little act of hospitality they receive. This can work out extremely expensive and may even prove slightly offensive to the receiver as it can be misconceived that their benefactor is actually ‘showing off’ their affluence. (...)
A tipping strategy
It is important to assess the particular person that you are dealing with, how often are they likely to be ‘servicing’ your needs. A chamber maid, waiter at breakfast or pool attendant is likely to deal with you regularly, but the waitress in the expensive a la carte restaurant may only see you once or twice. Upset the wrong member of the team and it could prove costly in terms of your comfort especially as it is likely they will communicate their displeasure with other hotel staff! A horses head in your bed is probably unlikely, but the hospitality industry is awash with stories how of staff have avenged their grievance with guests.
It is appropriate to provide a small, but reasonable tip to staff which are unlikely to be in contact with you often throughout your stay. However those that will be attending to your needs on a daily basis require a more well thought out tipping strategy. I suggest a sensible initial sum is offered to them at the earliest opportunity, hopefully your first encounter with them. Make it perfectly clear that they will get a further tip before you leave if you feel you have been well looked after. This will usually ensure that they work especially hard to keep you happy and will often ask if you have any special requirements. Your room will be well serviced each day and you will often be given the best table available when you arrive for a meal.
by Iain Mallory, Mallory on Travel | Read more:
The Right Chemistry
O.K., let's cut out all this nonsense about romantic love. Let's bring some scientific precision to the party. Let's put love under a microscope.
When rigorous people with Ph.D.s after their names do that, what they see is not some silly, senseless thing. No, their probe reveals that love rests firmly on the foundations of evolution, biology and chemistry. What seems on the surface to be irrational, intoxicated behavior is in fact part of nature's master strategy -- a vital force that has helped humans survive, thrive and multiply through thousands of years. Says Michael Mills, a psychology professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles: "Love is our ancestors whispering in our ears." (...)
Lovers often claim that they feel as if they are being swept away. They're not mistaken; they are literally flooded by chemicals, research suggests. A meeting of eyes, a touch of hands or a whiff of scent sets off a flood that starts in the brain and races along the nerves and through the blood. The results are familiar: flushed skin, sweaty palms, heavy breathing. If love looks suspiciously like stress, the reason is simple: the chemical pathways are identical.
Above all, there is the sheer euphoria of falling in love -- a not-so- surprising reaction, considering that many of the substances swamping the newly smitten are chemical cousins of amphetamines. They include dopamine, norepinephrine and especially phenylethylamine (PEA). Cole Porter knew what he was talking about when he wrote "I get a kick out of you." "Love is a natural high," observes Anthony Walsh, author of The Science of Love: Understanding Love and Its Effects on Mind and Body. "PEA gives you that silly smile that you flash at strangers. When we meet someone who is attractive to us, the whistle blows at the PEA factory."
But phenylethylamine highs don't last forever, a fact that lends support to arguments that passionate romantic love is short-lived. As with any amphetamine, the body builds up a tolerance to PEA; thus it takes more and more of the substance to produce love's special kick. After two to three years, the body simply can't crank up the needed amount of PEA. And chewing on chocolate doesn't help, despite popular belief. The candy is high in PEA, but it fails to boost the body's supply.
Fizzling chemicals spell the end of delirious passion; for many people that marks the end of the liaison as well. It is particularly true for those whom Dr. Michael Liebowitz of the New York State Psychiatric Institute terms "attraction junkies." They crave the intoxication of falling in love so much that they move frantically from affair to affair just as soon as the first rush of infatuation fades.
Still, many romances clearly endure beyond the first years. What accounts for that? Another set of chemicals, of course. The continued presence of a partner gradually steps up production in the brain of endorphins. Unlike the fizzy amphetamines, these are soothing substances. Natural pain-killers, they give lovers a sense of security, peace and calm. "That is one reason why it feels so horrible when we're abandoned or a lover dies," notes Fisher. "We don't have our daily hit of narcotics."
Researchers see a contrast between the heated infatuation induced by PEA, along with other amphetamine-like chemicals, and the more intimate attachment fostered and prolonged by endorphins. "Early love is when you love the way the other person makes you feel," explains psychiatrist Mark Goulston of the University of California, Los Angeles. "Mature love is when you love the person as he or she is." It is the difference between passionate and compassionate love, observes Walsh, a psychobiologist at Boise State University in Idaho. "It's Bon Jovi vs. Beethoven." (...)
A certain smile, a certain face
-- Johnny Mathis
Chemicals may help explain (at least to scientists) the feelings of passion and compassion, but why do people tend to fall in love with one partner rather than a myriad of others? Once again, it's partly a function of evolution and biology. "Men are looking for maximal fertility in a mate," says Loyola Marymount's Mills. "That is in large part why females in the prime childbearing ages of 17 to 28 are so desirable." Men can size up youth and vitality in a glance, and studies indeed show that men fall in love quite rapidly. Women tumble more slowly, to a large degree because their requirements are more complex; they need more time to check the guy out. "Age is not vital," notes Mills, "but the ability to provide security, father children, share resources and hold a high status in society are all key factors."
Still, that does not explain why the way Mary walks and laughs makes Bill dizzy with desire while Marcia's gait and giggle leave him cold. "Nature has wired us for one special person," suggests Walsh, romantically. He rejects the idea that a woman or a man can be in love with two people at the same time. Each person carries in his or her mind a unique subliminal guide to the ideal partner, a "love map," to borrow a term coined by sexologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University.
Drawn from the people and experiences of childhood, the map is a record of whatever we found enticing and exciting -- or disturbing and disgusting. Small feet, curly hair. The way our mothers patted our head or how our fathers told a joke. A fireman's uniform, a doctor's stethoscope. All the information gathered while growing up is imprinted in the brain's circuitry by adolescence. Partners never meet each and every requirement, but a sufficient number of matches can light up the wires and signal, "It's love." Not every partner will be like the last one, since lovers may have different combinations of the characteristics favored by the map.
by Anastasia Toufexis, Time | Read more:
Image via:
The Economic Costs of Fear
The S&P stock index now yields a 7% real (inflation-adjusted) return. By contrast, the annual real interest rate on the five-year United States Treasury Inflation-Protected Security (TIPS) is -1.02%. Yes, there is a “minus” sign in front of that: if you buy the five-year TIPS, each year over the next five years the US Treasury will pay you in interest the past year’s consumer inflation rate minus 1.02%. Even the annual real interest rate on the 30-year TIPS is only 0.63% – and you run a large risk that its value will decline at some point over the next generation, implying a big loss if you need to sell it before maturity.
So, imagine that you invest $10,000 in the S&P index. This year, your share of the profits made by those companies will be $700. Now, imagine that, of that total, the companies pay out $250 in dividends (which you reinvest to buy more stock) and retain $450 in earnings to reinvest in their businesses. If the companies’ managers do their job, that reinvestment will boost the value of your shares to $10,450. Add to that the $250 of newly-bought shares, and next year the portfolio will be worth $10,700 – more if stock-market valuations rise, and less if they fall.
In fact, over any past period long enough for waves of optimism and pessimism to cancel each other out, the average earnings yield on the S&P index has been a good guide to the return on the portfolio. So, if you invest $10,000 in the S&P for the next five years, you can reasonably expect (with enormous upside and downside risks) to make about 7% per year, leaving you with a compounded profit in inflation-adjusted dollars of $4,191. If you invest $10,000 in the five-year TIPS, you can confidently expect a five-year loss of $510.
That is an extraordinary gap in the returns that you can reasonably expect. It naturally raises the question: why aren’t people moving their money from TIPS (and US Treasury bonds and other safe assets) to stocks (and other relatively risky assets)?
People have different reasons. And many people’s thinking is not terribly coherent. But there appear to be two main explanations.
by Brad DeLong, Project Syndicate | Read more:
Illustration by Paul Lachine
In fact, over any past period long enough for waves of optimism and pessimism to cancel each other out, the average earnings yield on the S&P index has been a good guide to the return on the portfolio. So, if you invest $10,000 in the S&P for the next five years, you can reasonably expect (with enormous upside and downside risks) to make about 7% per year, leaving you with a compounded profit in inflation-adjusted dollars of $4,191. If you invest $10,000 in the five-year TIPS, you can confidently expect a five-year loss of $510.
That is an extraordinary gap in the returns that you can reasonably expect. It naturally raises the question: why aren’t people moving their money from TIPS (and US Treasury bonds and other safe assets) to stocks (and other relatively risky assets)?
People have different reasons. And many people’s thinking is not terribly coherent. But there appear to be two main explanations.
by Brad DeLong, Project Syndicate | Read more:
Illustration by Paul Lachine
Saturday, June 2, 2012
Is the Web Closing?
Within the tech community, there is much angst about whether the Web is about to be “closed.” Will it be controlled by companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google, or will it remain “open” to all? Will individuals be able to reach any content they choose? Will developers be able to serve users on any platform?
These questions are not new. Fifteen years ago, in the United States at least, it was America Online (now AOL) that was closing the Internet. Millions of people were relying on it for Internet service and content. Today, AOL’s purported control of the Internet looks like a joke, but it was considered a real threat at the time.
The threats nowadays come from both new companies and new models. (More about governments some other time!) Facebook is getting a lot of press, owing to its omnipresence and its pending stock offering. Increasingly, many people go online to use Facebook and little else, while Facebook encourages people to stay on Facebook to play games on Zynga, shop through Facebook commerce pages, and so on. Will Facebook control who gets to talk to us?
Likewise, Apple not only sells hardware; it controls, through its AppStore, what applications we can use on our iPads and iPhones. Amazon determines which books we read. Google, for its part, is filtering our search results – both by focusing our attention on what also interests our friends, and by excluding Twitter and Facebook results from what we see (mostly because Google and Facebook/Twitter cannot agree on whether Google should pay them or they should pay Google).
Beyond these big players, smaller startups are increasingly focusing on apps – applications that capture a user and keep him or her safe from the open Web. These apps are typically cleared and registered by big players. For many people, Apple’s App Store is a benefit, because it ensures (for the most part) the quality and security of the apps. Various app stores perform the same function for Android phones, but with fewer restrictions and less security.
In short, you can choose from along a spectrum, with more security at one end and more freedom at the other. The Web’s openness or closure is not a matter to be settled once and for all, but rather a fluctuating situation (even if the Web takes on some other name). CompuServe and FTP (file transfer protocol, remember that?) were not the end of Internet history. The same is true of the World Wide Web. Nor will Google or Facebook and apps be the last word of the digital age.
The great thing about Internet companies is that they, unlike governments, can be relatively easily deposed. They cannot outlaw competition, and, though they can engage in anti-competitive practices and filter content for their users, eventually consumers and startups fight back.
by Esther Dyson, Project Syndicate | Read more:
Illustration by Pedro Molina
These questions are not new. Fifteen years ago, in the United States at least, it was America Online (now AOL) that was closing the Internet. Millions of people were relying on it for Internet service and content. Today, AOL’s purported control of the Internet looks like a joke, but it was considered a real threat at the time.
The threats nowadays come from both new companies and new models. (More about governments some other time!) Facebook is getting a lot of press, owing to its omnipresence and its pending stock offering. Increasingly, many people go online to use Facebook and little else, while Facebook encourages people to stay on Facebook to play games on Zynga, shop through Facebook commerce pages, and so on. Will Facebook control who gets to talk to us?Likewise, Apple not only sells hardware; it controls, through its AppStore, what applications we can use on our iPads and iPhones. Amazon determines which books we read. Google, for its part, is filtering our search results – both by focusing our attention on what also interests our friends, and by excluding Twitter and Facebook results from what we see (mostly because Google and Facebook/Twitter cannot agree on whether Google should pay them or they should pay Google).
Beyond these big players, smaller startups are increasingly focusing on apps – applications that capture a user and keep him or her safe from the open Web. These apps are typically cleared and registered by big players. For many people, Apple’s App Store is a benefit, because it ensures (for the most part) the quality and security of the apps. Various app stores perform the same function for Android phones, but with fewer restrictions and less security.
In short, you can choose from along a spectrum, with more security at one end and more freedom at the other. The Web’s openness or closure is not a matter to be settled once and for all, but rather a fluctuating situation (even if the Web takes on some other name). CompuServe and FTP (file transfer protocol, remember that?) were not the end of Internet history. The same is true of the World Wide Web. Nor will Google or Facebook and apps be the last word of the digital age.
The great thing about Internet companies is that they, unlike governments, can be relatively easily deposed. They cannot outlaw competition, and, though they can engage in anti-competitive practices and filter content for their users, eventually consumers and startups fight back.
by Esther Dyson, Project Syndicate | Read more:
Illustration by Pedro Molina
Is It Art? Increasingly, That's a Judicial Decision
When did judges become the ultimate arbiters of art?
Hardly a month goes by without a court being asked to settle a dispute over the nature of artistic meaning, expression or authenticity. These are the big-think questions that confound philosophers, art critics and artists themselves. But judges are regularly obliged to take on these questions—and their answers have huge consequences for what can and cannot be attempted by artists.
Among the most recent legal tussles is a claim for damages involving one of Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings. The conceptual artist made more than a thousand of them before his death in 2007. Which isn't to say he drew or painted all of them. The genius of Mr. LeWitt's Wall Drawings was that they were generally executed by others. He drew up the plan or strategy for each work, with directions—written out on certificates signed by the artist—that were as specific in intent as they were abstract in result.
But the question then arises, what is the work of art? Is it the instructions written out on the signed certificate, or the image rendered according to the instructions? The owner of one LeWitt Wall Drawing is suing a gallery that lost the drawing's certificate. If it comes to determining damages, a judge may have to decide whether the certificate was itself the artwork.
And then there is the continuing litigation over whether Richard Prince's "appropriation" artworks have original meaning or are just copyright-infringing copies of other artists' works.
Or take the litigation over Cady Noland's 1990 work "Cowboys Milking." In February, art dealer Marc Jancou sued Sotheby's and Ms. Noland for $26 million (later adding $20 million more to the claim for damages). The auction house had agreed to sell "Cowboys Milking" for Mr. Jancou, but according to the dealer's court filing, Sotheby's pulled it from the auction at the last moment, at the artist's request. According to the art-industry newsletter Baer Faxt, Ms. Noland had "disavowed" the work.
Can an artist disown a piece long ago sold? And, if so, does the artist have to give a reason? Would it be reason enough if a work were slightly damaged, or if an artist simply no longer liked the work of her salad days? And what then? Does a work cease to be art if the artist renounces it?
This last question, in particular, is the sort of ontological question philosophers make a specialty of noodling. But increasingly these tricky theoreticals about the nature of art are being answered, not by the heirs of Aristotle but by the judiciary. We are in the age of courthouse aesthetics.
by Eric Felten, WSJ | Read more:
Illustration: Alex Nabaum
Hardly a month goes by without a court being asked to settle a dispute over the nature of artistic meaning, expression or authenticity. These are the big-think questions that confound philosophers, art critics and artists themselves. But judges are regularly obliged to take on these questions—and their answers have huge consequences for what can and cannot be attempted by artists.
Among the most recent legal tussles is a claim for damages involving one of Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawings. The conceptual artist made more than a thousand of them before his death in 2007. Which isn't to say he drew or painted all of them. The genius of Mr. LeWitt's Wall Drawings was that they were generally executed by others. He drew up the plan or strategy for each work, with directions—written out on certificates signed by the artist—that were as specific in intent as they were abstract in result. But the question then arises, what is the work of art? Is it the instructions written out on the signed certificate, or the image rendered according to the instructions? The owner of one LeWitt Wall Drawing is suing a gallery that lost the drawing's certificate. If it comes to determining damages, a judge may have to decide whether the certificate was itself the artwork.
And then there is the continuing litigation over whether Richard Prince's "appropriation" artworks have original meaning or are just copyright-infringing copies of other artists' works.
Or take the litigation over Cady Noland's 1990 work "Cowboys Milking." In February, art dealer Marc Jancou sued Sotheby's and Ms. Noland for $26 million (later adding $20 million more to the claim for damages). The auction house had agreed to sell "Cowboys Milking" for Mr. Jancou, but according to the dealer's court filing, Sotheby's pulled it from the auction at the last moment, at the artist's request. According to the art-industry newsletter Baer Faxt, Ms. Noland had "disavowed" the work.
Can an artist disown a piece long ago sold? And, if so, does the artist have to give a reason? Would it be reason enough if a work were slightly damaged, or if an artist simply no longer liked the work of her salad days? And what then? Does a work cease to be art if the artist renounces it?
This last question, in particular, is the sort of ontological question philosophers make a specialty of noodling. But increasingly these tricky theoreticals about the nature of art are being answered, not by the heirs of Aristotle but by the judiciary. We are in the age of courthouse aesthetics.
by Eric Felten, WSJ | Read more:
Illustration: Alex Nabaum
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