Social Fabric

Midway through his documentary television series All in the Best Possible Taste, the artist Grayson Perry visits a show home in a new residential estate in southeast England. The house is a full-scale version of the other homes available for purchase in the estate, furnished and decorated to give prospective buyers a sense of the living environment that could be theirs. The woman guiding Perry around explains that the house encapsulated a lifestyle that she felt could suit her own—so much so that she decided to buy the show home itself, and all of its contents (even the crackers in the cupboards). “It was like moving into a hotel,” she tells Perry. “All I brought was my handbag. It was all done.”

The scene exemplifies the notion of an aspirational purchase—buying into a decidedly middle-class neighborhood—but receives special focus in the show for what it says about taste. The choice to buy the fully decorated house over its identical but undecorated neighbor precludes the need for future taste decisions. Rather than coming to reflect the owner’s taste, the show home becomes the owner’s taste: a middle-class palate bought ready-made.

Perry’s artistic interests coalesce around how taste is informed by class, and his TV show is a kind of anthropological safari through the landscapes of Britain’s three taste “tribes”: working class, middle class, and upper class. As research, he trains his binoculars on rituals: primping for a night out at the social club in postindustrial Sunderland, sipping rosé while perusing Jamie Oliver kitchenwares, selecting the appropriate pink trousers for an after-polo reception. He is particularly interested in default choices, those positions and judgments made unconsciously—from hosting dinner parties and purchasing cars to simply having curtains. He doesn’t come down heavily on either side of the tastes he explores, but does critique close-mindedness and occasionally ridicules stuffy behavior. Perry’s aim is to push society to reflect on the motivations or pressures that produce their decisions. As he explains in the interview that follows, “I’m trying to do therapy on the whole society, by saying, ‘Here’s what you’re like. If you like it, great. If you don’t, you can change it. But if you don’t know that’s what’s going on, you’re stuck with it. You’re a victim of it.’” (...)

Guernica: Where does taste begin?

Grayson Perry: Well, taste is a phenomenon. Most of taste is unconscious—it comes from your upbringing, from your family, from your society, your gender, your race; it’s a melange of all those things. The basic premise of taste, as Stephen Bayley, the cultural critic, said, is that taste is that which does not alienate your peers. Most people want to fit in with their tribe in some way or another, so they give off signals, whether it’s with their clothes, their behavior, their car, their whatever, and gain status. Every tribe has a hierarchy, and that’s what taste is: it’s an unconscious display of who you are, and where you want to be. (...)

Guernica: Looking at the three class taste tribes you trace in the TV program (working, middle, upper), it struck me that working-class taste and upper-class taste share certain qualities—namely, a sense of nostalgia and holding on to a past identity—while middle-class taste seems to not.

Grayson Perry: There’s a desperation in middle-class people to try to be individual. I think it’s an illusion on the whole, because curiously they all end up being an individual in the same way. Because not many people are creative, really. They’re kind of individualistic but within a very narrow bandwidth of what is acceptable at the time in fashion, or what they’ve seen in magazines. Genuine maverick taste is quite rare. Say someone chooses their tattoo, right, they have a tattoo. They’re a groovy person and they have a tattoo. The real decision they made was to have the tattoo. It’s not what the tattoo is. All tattoos are basically the same. But it’s having the tattoo. They all mean the same thing, the tattoo. What is on the design is bollocks. It’s squiggly blue lines that you have on your arm.

It’s always the default position I’m interested in, the things that people do without considering it. The fact that they’ve chosen to have curtains. Middle-class people, in Britain, anyway, tend to be the intelligentsia; they’re well educated, they’re very aspirational, they’re very anxious because they’re looking down thinking, “Am I going to go that way?” or they’re looking up saying, “Oh, I’d quite like a bit of that action.” They’re the most self-conscious about it, and best informed.

Guernica: How conscious are domestic choices?

Grayson Perry: Your bobos [bourgeois-bohemians], they all agonize over their kitchen work surfaces, which is one of the epicenters of taste in the middle-class home. One woman told me, very proudly, that her kitchen work surfaces were recycled chemistry benches. And I thought, “Wow. That’s a cliché and a half to deal with.” She could name the paint shades in all her rooms as well. And the most middle-class moment was when we went up into her bedroom and I looked at the curtains, and they were sort of off-white sheet material, and she said, “Oh, they’re not curtains. They were dust cloths I had made into curtains.” And I said, “Wow, that’s the most middle-class thing I’ve ever heard. Not only are you using dust cloths as curtains, you told me you’re using dust cloths as curtains.”

Guernica: You note how a lot of effort goes into making aesthetic choices appear individual and distinct, when they are actually studiously self-conscious.

Grayson Perry: Self-consciousness, I’m very interested in that. To be creative, you need to be unselfconscious. It’s like the sound barrier when you’re an art student. You have to reach the terminal velocity where you go through the sound barrier of self-consciousness, and then pop out the other side where you’re confident enough to handle it. A lot of people never make it through and that’s a real block to being creative. You’ve got to not give a shit.

Guernica: Moments in your show convey self-righteousness in taste. How do people use taste to demonstrate their morality?

Grayson Perry: Well, the British middle class particularly want to appear good people. In the past they would have gone to church, or they would have done good works for charity, or whatever. Now, you do organic, and you recycle. Mainly it’s lip service to green issues. Because the greenest thing you can do is nothing. The greenest things you can do are: a) not have children, and b) don’t go anywhere and don’t buy anything. Of course that will be an anathema to the middle classes. So it’s a sort of superficial morality on the whole, having an allotment full of vegetables that you probably never get round to eating because there’ll be too many all at once.

Guernica: You make a distinction between displaying cultural capital and being showy with your money, but isn’t it all about consumption, fundamentally?

Grayson Perry: It’s all about status. Cultural capital is something you accrue, and it’s a subtle thing. Middle-class people in particular are more aware of it. They want the culture they consume to sort of rub off on them somehow. A big part of culture is to be seen to be consuming it.

by Henry Peck, Guernica |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

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All About Fish Sauce

The anchovy is not a universally loved fish. In fact, that may be understating the matter. A lot of people hate the pungent, bottom-of-the-ocean flavor of anchovies, and they're very vocal about it. The very suggestion of anchovies on a pizza may make them dump the Italian take-out menu and switch to Chinese instead.

Of course, people who love anchovies are often just as passionately outspoken. The humble anchovy is food that divides a room. I find myself in the odd position of having crossed from one side to the other, and all because of a sauce. I used to hate anchovies, but I'm a convert, thanks to fish sauce.

Actually, my conversion started with Worcestershire sauce, that divine savory liquor of vinegar, tamarind, and, yes, anchovy. As a lad, I liked to put Worcestershire sauce on almost everything, from shepherd's pie to cheese on toast. I had no idea that it contained the hated anchovy, and my world almost fell apart when I discovered the terrible truth, cunningly hidden in plain sight on the ingredients on the back of the label.

I didn't give up Worcestershire sauce, but I also didn't rethink my position on anchovies. It was only when I tried to make my first Thai green curry that I really had to give the matter serious thought.

Thai cooking relies heavily on fish sauce, as do the cuisines of Vietnam, Indonesia and southern China. Called nam pla in Thai, fish sauce is the seasoning that provides much of the saltiness in Thai recipes. It also has a very short ingredients list. It's essentially just anchovies and salt. It can be made with other fish, but it's unusual. On a visit to my local Asian supermarket I saw bottles labeled with pictures of squid, crab, and whole cornucopias of aquatic life, but they all contained the same ingredients: anchovies and salt.

Nam pla is made by layering those two ingredients in big barrels and leaving it to ferment under the hot sun over the course of several months. The anchovies break down in their own juices, and the resulting liquid is extracted, filtered, sweetened with a little sugar, and bottled.

by Andrew Wheeler, Serious Eats |  Read more:

Image: Max Falkowitz

Georgetown Carnival (Seattle) June, 2015

[ed. What a great weekend, what a great beer-soaked party in Seattle's historic Georgetown District, next to the old Ranier brewery. I especially enjoyed the power tool races with hacked-up skill and band saws racing side by side down two narrow tracks, the loser getting bashed by one of two large mallets at the finish line. Five music stages. Belly dancers. Gymnasts. Lowriders. Food and vendors. Much more. A wonderful time had by all.]
photos: markk

Machine Dreams

There is a shrine inside Hewlett-Packard’s headquarters in Palo Alto, in the heart of Silicon Valley. At one edge of HP’s research building, two interconnected rooms with worn midcentury furniture, vacant for decades, are carefully preserved. From these offices, William Hewlett and David Packard led HP’s engineers to invent breakthrough products, like the 40-pound, typewriter-size programmable calculator launched in 1968.

In today’s era of smartphones and cloud computing, HP’s core products could also look antiquated before long. Revenue and profit have slid significantly in recent years, pitching the company into crisis. HP is sustained mostly by sales of servers, printers, and ink (its PCs and laptops contribute less than one-fifth of total profits). But businesses have less need for servers now that they can turn to cloud services run by companies like Amazon—which buy their hardware from cheaper suppliers than HP. Consumers and businesses rely much less on printers than they once did and don’t expect to pay much for them.

HP has shed over 40,000 jobs since 2012, and it will split into two smaller but similarly troubled companies later this year (an operation that will itself cost almost $2 billion). HP Inc. will sell printers and PCs; Hewlett Packard Enterprise will offer servers and information technology services to corporations. That latter company will depend largely on a division whose annual revenue dropped by more than 6 percent between 2012 and 2014. Earnings shrank even faster, by over 20 percent. IBM, HP’s closest rival, sold off its server business to China’s Lenovo last year under similar pressures.

And yet, in the midst of this potentially existential crisis, HP Enterprise is working on a risky research project in hopes of driving a remarkable comeback. Nearly three-quarters of the people in HP’s research division are now dedicated to a single project: a powerful new kind of computer known as “the Machine.” It would fundamentally redesign the way computers function, making them simpler and more powerful. If it works, the project could dramatically upgrade everything from servers to smartphones—and save HP itself.

“People are going to be able to solve problems they can’t solve today,” says Martin Fink, HP’s chief technology officer and the instigator of the project. The Machine would give companies the power to tackle data sets many times larger and more complex than those they can handle today, he says, and perform existing analyses perhaps hundreds of times faster. That could lead to leaps forward in all kinds of areas where analyzing information is important, such as genomic medicine, where faster gene-sequencing machines are producing a glut of new data. The Machine will require far less electricity than existing computers, says Fink, making it possible to slash the large energy bills run up by the warehouses of computers behind Internet services. HP’s new model for computing is also intended to apply to smaller gadgets, letting laptops and phones last much longer on a single charge.

It would be surprising for any company to reinvent the basic design of computers, but especially for HP to do it. It cut research jobs as part of downsizing efforts a decade ago and spends much less on research and development than its competitors: $3.4 billion in 2014, 3 percent of revenue. In comparison, IBM spent $5.4 billion—6 percent of revenue—and has a much longer tradition of the kind of basic research in physics and computer science that creating the new type of computer will require. For Fink’s Machine dream to be fully realized, HP’s engineers need to create systems of lasers that fit inside -fingertip-size computer chips, invent a new kind of operating system, and perfect an electronic device for storing data that has never before been used in computers.

Pulling it off would be a virtuoso feat of both computer and corporate engineering.

by Tom Simonite, MIT Technology Review |  Read more:

Image: Leo Espinosa

Bold in Business

Just as an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs that ruled the Earth and made way for small furry mammals, a new wave of planetary disruptions is about to occur. The new asteroid is called “exponential technology.” It is going to wipe out industries in a similar manner to the rock which fell on Earth during the Cretaceous Period.

That is the premise of a new book by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler, Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World. It makes bold predictions and teaches entrepreneurs how to thrive in the same way as our mammalian ancestors: by being nimble and resilient.

In their previous book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, Diamandis and Kotler discussed how advancing technologies are making it possible to solve problems that have long plagued humanity, such as disease, hunger, and shortages of energy. The authors analyzed the exponential progress of fields such as computing, medicine, 3D printing, robotics, and artificial intelligence and postulated that shortages of material goods and knowledge would soon be a thing of the past; that humanity is heading into an amazing era of abundance.

As most people still are, I used to be pessimistic about the future. I feared overpopulation; worldwide shortages of food, water, and energy; pandemics and disease; and a bankruptcy of our health care and social welfare systems. Then, about three years ago, I joined the faculty of what is effectively an “abundance think-tank,” Singularity University, which had been founded by Diamandis and legendary futurist Ray Kurzweil. I learned that the future that Diamandis described in Abundance is actually coming true — and doing so faster than we would expect.

But I have also come to fear that Singularity University’s futurists are overlooking some of the risks in exponential technologies, particularly the legal and ethical dilemmas they are creating. As well, automation and industry disruption will have many negative social consequences — such as the elimination of the vast majority of jobs. Humans may have their physical needs met and live healthier and longer lives, but what about their social and professional needs? This is what I would criticize Bold for: it looks only on the bright side. But I know that in their hearts Diamandis and my futurist colleagues believe that mankind will rise to the occasion and better itself; that it will avert the catastrophes.

I am counting on their being right.

The key premise of Bold –that entrepreneurs can solve global-scale problems — is based on a framework called the “six Ds of exponentials:” digitalization, deception, disruption, demonetization, dematerialization, and democratization. These are a chain reaction of technological progress, the path that technology takes, to create the upheaval — and the opportunity.

by Vivek Wadhwa, Washington Post | Read more:
Image: Simon & Schuster

photo: markk

Brenda Cablayan, Up Alakea
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Let's Get It On: The Race for the World's Best Condom

Brendan Weinhold and Christina Pederson began experimenting with new kinds of condoms four years ago, when they saw an ad on Craigslist for couples to test contraceptives for cold hard cash.

Get paid to have sex? How could you say no?

“If anything was difficult, it was having to schedule sex,” Brendan says. “You know: ‘Ugh, we have to do it now.’ Filling in a calendar was bothersome.”

After sex, they had to fill in paperwork, recording all sorts of details for the California Family Health Council (CFHC), America’s top testing facility for experimental condoms: whether they were both sober, which partner put the condom on, what positions they took, if the condom made any noise, if pubic hair snagged, how long they lasted, if either had an orgasm (and how many), if anyone felt pain. Plus the obvious: how far the condom came down the penis. “It was a bit strange writing down the amount of time we had sex for. ‘Are we good at having sex or bad at having sex?’” Christina says. Was the paperwork a mood-killer? “Somewhat, but it’s not the worst mood-killer we’ve encountered,” Brendan says.

Christina and Brendan, both 33, live in a house share in LA: she is an as-yet unpublished novelist, he is trying to make it as an actor. Christina had previously volunteered as a subject in a medical study that required her to lie in a hospital bed, donating blood, receiving intravenous drugs. “That made me feel like much more of a lab rat,” she says. “This time I felt as if I was actually doing something. It felt as if our opinions actually mattered.”

Brendan and Christina are part of an accelerating race for better 21st-century contraception, perhaps among the closest to understanding what future safe sex might look and feel like. The bottom line is, there are problems with the condom: while it is 98% effective when used correctly, it is hugely unpopular – worn by an estimated 5% of men worldwide. This is a fatal flaw in developing countries, where an HIV diagnosis remains a death sentence, due to the high cost of antiretroviral drugs. Condom design, almost unchanged in 120 years, is ripe for a makeover.

In 2013, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that their Foundation was making condom innovation a priority (alongside toilets, vaccines and neonatal care): they offered a $100,000 grant to any team with a strong proposal for a “next generation condom that significantly preserves or enhances pleasure, in order to improve uptake and regular use”.

The Foundation received more than 800 submissions, which in 2013 they narrowed down to 11 winners, announcing a further 11 winners of the grant in 2014. The successful proposals ranged from those using Nobel prizewinning materials (graphene) to those with built-in applicators or lubricant. The Gates Foundation also gave money to simple behavioural studies, and to a shrink-to-fit condom dreamed up by the CFHC. Those proposals are now able to apply for phase two funding of up to $1m each – the winners will be announced later this year, with only a handful likely to be successful.

Meanwhile many of them are in the testing phase.

by Zoe Cormier, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Steve Schofield

See and Be Seen

More intimate than underpants precisely because they are plain for all to see, eyeglasses are no mere detail of costume. Acting as a mask that fuses with the features, glasses serve as a spotlight or a proscenium arch or a stage for the soul in the theater of everyday life. The bespectacled face asks the world to see it a certain way by telling the world something about how it is seen.

Practical people, choosing the unassuming oblong frames that are the plain vanilla of this realm, declare their contentment with presenting the illusion of a neutral perspective. But glasses have steadily evolved from strict practicality to become spectacles in themselves. The dominant models of the day are “library glasses,” with big lenses mounted in bold plastic frames made of cellulose acetate. On the face of a fashion executive about town, such glasses dare party photographers to ignore galactic glances designed to be seen. In postgame interviews, basketball stars flash frames that, whether fitted with prescription lenses or nonprescription lenses or no lenses at all, broadcast an eagerness to discuss strategy.

There is a generational swing in this motion away from the understated titanium frames — light and strong, hypoallergenic and uncorroding — that let baby boomers feel they were aging gracefully into reading fine print that had grown fuzzy. The low-key futurism of titanium, with its promise of better living through metallurgy, is out of step with the future that has arrived, where this foundational piece of wearable technology is styled to evoke a plastic past of indistinct vintage. People who wear large lenses are announcing that they do not share the cast of mind suggested by small lenses that pierce and finely peer. The little rimless numbers of the sort once favored by Steve Jobs are precision tools conspicuous only in the elegance with which they reject excess. The new glasses — outsize and omnivorous — reject that rejection.

Glasses have long been understood as signs of seriousness; this holds true for squarish metal rims bespeaking Midwestern plain-dealing and round owlish ones telegraphing bankerly diligence. The subgenre of seriousness now in vogue seems interrogatory to a combative degree. The assertive new glasses pre-empt the gibe of “four eyes” by saying, I know I am, but what are you? (...)

If we had to choose one moment when eyeglasses entered the gravitational field of fashion, it would be the day, early in the 1930s, that a Manhattan window dresser named Altina Sanders was bored by the dreary sameness of the wares displayed by a neighboring optician. When she filed a patent for a “new, original, ornamental design for a spectacle frame” that swept up at the corners, she had a harlequin mask in mind. The term “cat’s eye” caught on. The woman wearing them was never entirely without a smile.

When I visited the New York headquarters of the mostly online eyewear store Warby Parker, one of its founders showed me an old photo of Charlotte Rampling that served as the company’s muse and in-house icon. Behind lenses as large as coasters, grinning with a wholesome sense of mischief, the actress is glancing down a shoulder and out of the frame, warm with expectation. Warby Parker presents this picture to indicate not merely an ideal of design but also an incarnation of brand essence. The buzzwords are “approachable” and “accessible,” and the demeanor is a major mode of today’s eyeglasses: open and guileless and actively inquisitive, adventuresome as a critter out of Japanese animation.

The opposite face of the going style wears a glamorous glower. These glasses train a hard glare of sophistication, and they proudly invite admiring countersurveillance, and en masse they can be a bit much to bear. A nearsighted friend of mine has begun setting his acetate frames aside in self-contempt, not wanting to be part of a demographic that would have him as a member. But he wears them when coaching his son’s Little League team, an obligation that brings him into contact with adults from other cultural niches. They’ve got him pegged on the basis of his specs. Imagine a rival coach who has emerged from the white shell of an S.U.V. and a long gestation in an old school of machismo, and who says, with a socially acceptable jeer: “You know who you look like? Elvis Costello.” It’s certainly a more elegant formulation than “Die, yuppie scum.”

by Troy Patterson, NY Times |  Read more:

Image: Marilyn Monroe, 20th Century Fox

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Winslow Homer, Gallow’s Island, Bermuda (c.1899-1901)
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Man Treats Mother To Detail About His Personal Life

ELKHART, IN—Saying that he likes to indulge her every once in a while, local man Wayne Timmons, 28, reportedly treated his mother to a small detail about his personal life during a phone conversation Thursday. “I was talking with my mom earlier, and I figured I’d make her day by sharing a single piece of private information that genuinely reflects something that’s going on in my life,” said Timmons, referring to a phone call in which he decided to give his mother a little thrill by briefly mentioning that he had recently met a woman at a colleague’s party and that he was considering inviting her out on a date. “I even told her this girl’s name before going back to flatly stating that work’s going fine, and that just about put her on cloud nine. It had been a while since I actually offered her anything other than the most general descriptions of my life, so the way I see it, she’d earned a little peek into the things I actually think about and feel.” After his spontaneous act of generosity reportedly elicited a series of probing follow-up questions into his recent dating prospects, Timmons decided that he would not be revealing any further non-superficial personal information to his mother for a minimum of six months.

by The Onion |  Read more:

Image: uncredited

How to Design a Metaphor

[ed. A metaphor designer. Who would've thought something like that would ever be a job title? But today that actually makes a lot of sense.]

If you could ask Dante where he got the idea of life as a road, or Rilke where he found the notion that time is a destroyer, they might have said the metaphors were hewn from their minds, or drawn from a stock of poetic imagery. Their readers might have said the imagery had origins more divine, perhaps even diabolical. But neither poets nor readers would have said the metaphors were designed. That is, the metaphors didn’t target people’s cognitive processes. They weren’t engineered to affect us in a specific way.

Can metaphors be designed? I’m here to tell you that they can, and are. For five years I worked full-time as a metaphor designer at the FrameWorks Institute, a think tank in Washington, DC, whose clients are typically large US foundations (never political campaigns or governments). I continue to shape and test metaphors for private-sector clients and others. In both cases, these metaphors are meant to help people to understand the unfamiliar. They aren’t supposed to make someone remark: ‘That’s beautiful.’ They’re meant to make someone realise that they’ve only been looking at one side of a thing.

Here’s an example. In the 1960s, the US philosopher Donald Schön spent some time at the consulting firm Arthur D Little (he eventually became a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nearby). He was working with product researchers trying to figure out why a new paintbrush design with synthetic bristles didn’t apply paint smoothly. As Schön related it later, someone in the group suddenly said: ‘A paintbrush is a kind of pump!’

Ordinarily, seeing a paintbrush this way would be considered a mistake. In this case, what the researchers knew about pumps suddenly became available for thinking about paintbrushes too. ‘Paintbrush as pump’ isn’t beautiful, but it’s very useful. It was, as Schön wrote later, ‘a generative metaphor for the researchers in the sense that it generated new perceptions, explanations, and inventions’. (Among other things, it led to new bristle designs that would bend the right way.)

Metaphor designers create these pseudo-mistakes deliberately. Sometimes the metaphors end up in op-eds or public-service announcements. Sometimes they’re useful for helping people conceive of solutions to problems, or for internal communications in organisations. The challenge for the designer is to generate lots of pseudo-mistakes, some of which can be used for thinking and that have the power to stick around. For someone like me who is reflexively metaphorical (my wedding invite was built around the idea of a labyrinth), these are satisfying tasks, and, as a writer, I have no problem leaving material on the cutting room floor. But it’s when we start testing our metaphors for their social and cognitive usability that design can become really powerful.  (...)

That said, you do have to be careful with emotional responses. I worked on a project about childhood resilience. The question was how do children turn out well despite difficult circumstances? We had become acquainted with the metaphor of dandelions and orchids, which originated with the paediatrician Tom Boyce at Berkeley. He used it to describe two types of child, one who did well in a range of circumstances (the dandelion), and one who succeeded only under a narrow set of circumstances (the orchid). Journalists liked it – the US science writer David Dobbs was writing a book under this title. It was thought to be conventionally successful. But it had never been tested with users.

We found that people knew what orchids and dandelions were (not always something you can count on). Also, the comparison appeared to help them understand why certain children do well and others don’t. Yet there was a problem: people valued the orchid and looked down on the dandelion. The culture said they should value the rare, beautiful thing, not the sturdy weed. And so the average American saw no sense in making more dandelions. Besides, their child was not common but special and rare. When people won’t use a term to describe their own kids, that’s a giveaway that the metaphor won’t work. In the end, we developed the metaphor of a weighing scale to explain how positive influences can outweigh negative ones in a child’s early life, thereby making resilience not a trait of the individual person but a function of that person’s environment.

When I describe my work, people often ask whether these new metaphors actually change how people think. They can. When my colleagues and I tested a set of candidate metaphors on the streets, asking random strangers what skills are, the respondents mumbled in their usual ways. Then we gave them a metaphor in which skills are like ropes, woven out of many components braided together, and asked them more questions. It’s not that they became silver-tongued, exactly, but the fumbling abated. They began to talk about the parts of skills, how they have to be combined, and so on. It’s as if this new idea, which we gave to them, had taken them by the hand. Now they were walking down the street together, and the metaphor was showing them things. That’s how we knew that what we were doing with metaphors was working.

by Michael Erard, Aeon | Read more:
Image: Gallery Stock

How the Legendary Birkin Bag Remains Dominant

When Hermès opens its new Miami Design District flagship on Nov. 6, local clients will find a selection of leather goods, fashion, and accessories chosen specifically for them. Every Hermès outpost is run like an independent boutique, with a store director who visits Paris each year to buy pieces he or she believes will appeal to the location’s particular flavor.

But certain items resonate, no matter where in the world they land. Consider the Birkin Sellier 40, the latest version of what a casual observer might call the original It Bag. Crafted out of what is called Hunter cowhide—which holds its shape without much manipulation—the 40-centimeter-long style is unlined, with raw-edge straps, palladium hardware, and a retail price of $14,900.

The Sellier 40 will be available in Miami, although “available” is a relative term. Birkins of all shapes, sizes, and styles still sell out instantly, with wait lists typical of 10 or 15 years ago. The Birkin really holds up, says Robert Chavez, Hermès’s chief executive officer in the U.S. “Customers appreciate the quality, craftsmanship and timeless style.” ‘

Elite Sales

Yes, clients are suckers for a solid product that takes 18 to 20 hours to make from start to finish, all done by one craftsperson (who starts by selecting just the right piece of leather or exotic skin for the bag and ends with a series of painstaking quality control tests). But they are also suckers for careful, shadow marketing, high prices, limited supply, and a permanent air of exclusivity. It’s probaby the latter, more than the former, that has kept the Birkin the most elite handbag in the world. (...)

How to Get a Birkin

“No one can walk in and buy a Birkin ‘from the back,’” says Michelle Goad, CEO of P.S. Dept., a personal shopping app that services 20,000 luxury customers globally. "The key to getting one is to find someone who has a relationship with one of their associates, [which means they’ve] bought one in the past."

If this sounds a bit like a Catch-22, that's because it is: To be sold a Birkin, you have to have bought one already. Unless you get lucky.

Very occasionally customers can waltz into an Hermès shop and scoop up a surprisingly available version—the 2009 memoir, Bringing Home the Birkin: My Life in Hot Pursuit of the World's Most Coveted Handbag, detailed personal shopper Michael Tonello’s experience in doing that very thing—but that’s far from the norm. Instead, you need to snag a spot on an unofficial waitlist. And then wait.

“Think of it like almost being interviewed,” says Goad. “You have to have a purchase history at the store to just get started, then they meet with you, assess how serious you are about spending, and then you go on their list.

by Lauren Sherman, Bloomberg Business | Read more:
Image: Jeremy Allen

Miracle Tree

Moringa oleifera, also called the “miracle tree,” is a native of northern India and a distant relative of mustard and cabbage. It’s a small deciduous tree with compound leaves and a smooth gray trunk, often curiously swollen, like a baobab’s. It is an impressive organism by any reckoning, and it tends to inspire unreasoning, near-hysterical adulation. According to the website Cancer Tutor:

Moringa oleifera is a tree brought from the mind of God to the hands of man. It was recognized by the National Institutes of Health as the Botanical of the Year for 2007, and praised again in 2011 and 2012. It is valued worldwide for its ability to treat over 300 diseases. It has the ability to retain high concentrations of electrolyte minerals, allowing it to stay internally hydrated in the driest of conditions. Africans have honored it with names that translate to: “Never Die,” and “The Only Thing that Grows in the Dry Season,” and “Mother’s Milk.” I think it’s safe to say that this plant has saved more lives in 3rd world countries than any other.

That list of three hundred diseases includes: prostate disorders, tonsillitis, tuberculosis, stomach ulcers, skin infections, cholera, conjunctivitis, psoriasis, asthma, anemia, gonorrhea, semen deficiency, colitis, jaundice, malaria, arthritis, cancer, and stroke.

These are outrageous claims, but I share the author’s enthusiasm. I have a moringa tree growing in a small pot outside. It’s 88 degrees today, and the dew point is 76, and the sun—I live close to the Tropic of Cancer—is almost directly overhead and so hot that it will boil all the water out of the tree’s black pot as soon as I pour it in there. But I don’t need to pour any water in there, because the moringa tree doesn’t mind the heat at all. I can almost watch it grow. And this is a potted moringa tree, too. If it were in the ground, it would sink a taproot all the way to the aquifer and it wouldn’t mind if it never rained again.

Many parts of the miracle tree are edible. The leaves are particularly nutritious, containing large amounts of vitamins and minerals and a staggering amount of protein—9.4 grams per 100 gram serving, almost three times as much as cow’s milk. They are a popular cooking green in many parts of the tropical world, and an ingredient in Cambodian samlor korko, various South Indian and Sri Lankan lentil dishes, Bengali curries, and Maldivian fish soups. The immature seedpods are also edible, as are the mature seeds, which can be roasted like nuts or pressed to make oil. Even the roots are edible, or at least some people eat them (other people say they’re toxic). They can be grated, like the roots of the moringa’s relatives in the mustard family, to make a spicy condiment. For this reason it’s sometimes called the “horseradish tree.”

And the wonders continue: Moringa oil burns clean and clear, and can be used as a fuel. And some of those medical claims are real, although more research is needed. Most amazing of all, cakes of the pressed seed husk can be used to purify water.

by Aaron Thier, Lucky Peach |  Read more:

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