Companies are making sure that women get enough mentoring to help them up the career ladder, however a study reveals that some women may actually be getting too much mentoring but still are not getting paid or promoted as much as their male counterparts. The difference is sponsorship.  Mentors offer advice and feedback, but men more often have the added benefit of a mentor who also acts as a sponsor, influencing others and advocating on behalf of their mentee.  That endorsement makes a critical difference in their advancement.  Mentors also need training in how to effectively coach those who have a different style than they are accustomed to.  Women often suffer from the double-bind and choice of whether to behave more like their aggressive peers who are perceived as better leaders, when that same behavior can get them labeled as being not easy to work more often than their male counterparts.

3-D capability, new digital projection, and a new sound system are in the works for Seattle Cinerama as it closes for a two month renovation.  New carpet, paint, and signage will greet theater-goers at a November grand-reopening.  Traditionalists fear not, the 70mm and 3-panel Cinerama formats will remain.  Owner Vulcan Inc (translation: Paul Allen) is also taking the Cinerama independent as the theater will no longer be part of the AMC chain.

Steve Sauer lives in an 182 square foot condo in Seattle.  In that tiny space (11-feet-3-inches wide, by 16-feet-2-inches deep, by 10-feet-4-inches tall) he has fit in “two beds, a full kitchen with a dishwasher, bathroom with a shower, a soaking tub set into the floor just inside the front door. On three living levels. There’s also closet space, a dining table and storage for two bikes.”  Sauer works in airplane interior engineering for Boeing but he says that boats have the most innovations for tiny spaces.

Vogue’s September 2010 issue weighs in at 532 ad pages, a 24%  increase, 726 pages total. Halle Berry is on the cover.  Glamour, another Condé Nast property, had a remarkable 57% ad page gain and they’re calling it their “biggest issue in 20 years.”  There will still be contenders in the inevitable move of magazine pages (I’m not talking about websites here) over to fully digital media, and they won’t have to worry about whether big totes are in style to contain their September issues.

The garden gnome
is a humble little being
Originally made of terra cotta
in the 19th century.

He spread across all of Europe
for lucky ornamentation
then conquered the United States
via clever public relations.

He deliberately ignores
any plastic flamingo associations
despite their both surviving
a pop culture initiation.

But out on the sunny lawn
When we’re all indoors
The two icons commiserate
About who has faded more.

Expensive spa treatments typically include exotic ingredients, but the local food movement has contributed to the new treatment trend of fruits and herbs from local farms. Guests at the Ojai Valley Inn in California can get scrubbed with Pixie tangerines.  Spa Hotel Healdsburg features the same wine, honey, and Meyer lemons found in its restaurant.  As often is the case, don’t expect local to equate to cheaper prices than the exotic stuff.

Jelly Belly has four food scientists who concoct the 100+ flavors of jelly bean to match the original subject as closely as possible. At tasting sessions the candidate beans are sampled alongside the fruit, food, drink that they intend to mimic (presumably “barf” flavor was tested slightly differently). I doubt I was the first or only person to suggest pomegranate as a new flavor, but it is enlightening to see how much care they took to perfect it: “the group taste-tested juices and fruit from different regions, climates, and providers.” Perhaps all that research was parlayed into the pomegranate cosmos in their new cocktail flavor line.

“Max Headroom” the 1987-1988 TV series is being released on DVD and The New York Times takes the opportunity to review it from the perspective of 2010, including a pithy quote from William Gibson.  Movie theaters were a thing of the past in the Headroom future and television was the ruling media, with no World Wide Web in sight.  The 1987 Times review of the first episode seems rather jaded, perhaps tired already of the commercialization of television that the episode itself blatantly skewers with the 3 second “blipverts” that have the unfortunate side effect of killing some people. There’s no mention of cyberpunk or references to “Bladerunner” back then. An earlier 1985 review of the Cinemax series where Max Headroom served as host of an interview show takes note of the video effects but not much else. A 1986 review mentions “Bladerunner” because Rutger Hauer is a guest, but, again, the only innovation mention is that of the Max effects. New Coke anyone?

Officially, Andrew Haines is Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts‘ associate conservator, furniture and frame conservation. He’s the house framer. Before a painting goes on display, Haines will decide if the frame needs repair or replacement. A frame may be swapped from a similar sized painting in the museum’s collection or purchased from a frame dealer. In some cases Haines will make the frame himself.  He has catalogued 4,300 of the 6,000 frames in the museum so far. He’s an artist himself, painting landscapes of houses and buildings.

Seasoned New Yorkers may overlook the uniqueness of the objects holding down the top papers at newstands, but for Harley Spiller those paperweights are a family affair. His parents operated the Mortimer Spiller Company in Buffalo, manufacturers of cast-iron paperweights.  And he wrote his MA thesis, all 25,000 words of it, on these functional objects.  The New York Times published a slide show of a few of the many paperweights Spiller’s father collected over the years. Like many mundane, everyday items, they are an overlooked chronicle of cultural change and industrial design. Harley Spiller is a collector himself of many things. I mentioned his Chinese restaurant menu collection here back in 2005 and I’m sure he’ll show up here again one day.