The NY Times' "On the Road" column examines the experience of female business travelers at hotels. Embassy Suites is specifically marketing to the needs of women travelers, making the environment more comfortable. A survey they took revealed that "while nearly two out of three female travelers define themselves as extroverts at home or at work, more than half of those same travelers change behavior on the road and classify themselves as introverts who often avoid public areas in hotels." Embassy has wide open public areas that women tend to prefer instead of closed lounges where men are being clubby. Women certainly vary in their reactions to unfamiliar social situations, but attemping to make them more comfortable can't hurt. Would the men feel less comfortable? A spokesman for Embassy's parent company, Hilton, says that their research showed that women don't want to be treated differently. It's a decent point to make, but if hotels are smart, they'll realize that better security and comfort for the typical female response is equitable, if not equal. The men may even consider it a marked improvement if they are treated the same way as the women, not the other way around.
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In the risque Guys & Dolls number "Take Back Your Mink", Adelaide tells her generous beau to "Hollanderize" the mink he gave her and give it to someone else. If you do a Google search on "Hollanderize" the result is, not surprisingly, a page of links to Guys & Dolls lyrics. But if you search on "Hollander Furs" you get a page of information from Virtual Newark N.J. on A. Hollander & Son, dyers and dressers of furs. This firm was one of the "oldest established permanent (not floating)" businesses in Newark. And unless I get further proof, I'm going to believe they are the origins of the coined verb that may have been in prominent use amongst the society gals of New York back in the days of Runyonland.
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Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Recognizing similar styles of art is easy and once you know the various categories you can identify some pieces, sometimes even naming the artists of popular works. But when you see a similar style in different contexts, especially out of the art world context, sometimes you don't know to make a connection. I stumbled upon David Lance Goines' website today and my brain finally clicked together the wine labels, Chez Panisse cookbook covers, other book covers, and posters that I had encountered in the past and never thought to connect as the work of one mind.
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Staying Cool
For almost endless variations on a theme, browse through the photos at the Antique Fan Collectors Association website. You'll find vintage fans with 2 blades, 6 blades, metal blades, rubber blades, engines for oscillation or other mechanical tricks to create back and forth motion, and even different engine types. If you prefer your fans unplugged, take a peek at the International Fan Collector's Guild where human-powered fans are the focus. Here, paper, feathers, fabric, wood, ivory, and early plastics combine to create a self-directed breeze.
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Monday, July 29, 2002

Words New to Me

Chronolith - a coinage (time + stone) you may be familiar with if you've read the book by Robert Charles Wilson. A clever and unusual clock created by Marcel Bétrisey also bears the Chronolith title. The pendulum of the clock is powered by light, using the principle you may have observed in a Crooke's radiometer. Two sensors help keep the clock accurate by checking the swing of the pendulum using the lights that power it. Ingenius. (thx j.r.)

Tellurians and Orreries - when a globe just isn't enough. A tellurian (or tellurium) is designed to show phenomenon such as seasons and eclipses which are best illustrated by showing the relationship between the earth, sun, moon and maybe a planet too. You can operate the gears to watch the earth go around the sun and the moon around the earth. An orrery shows all the planets and their positions, sometimes not to scale, around the sun. It may even include the moons of the other planets as well. Again, mechanical gears allow you to see the various orbits.
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Friday, July 26, 2002

Blu-tack, which kept the posters from falling off my walls in college, is not just a handy tool, it's an art medium. With works such as "Bunny", "Cerulean Primate", "Brontosaurus" and "Fishy" can international recognition from the art community be far off?
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Prosody is "the rhythmic and intonational aspect of language" and it can be a useful feature in language recognition and absolutely critical when the language is tonal like Chinese. Researchers are developing prosody detection methods with the intent of deciphering emotions. Determining the models of various speech characteristics is a first step, and sometimes a daunting task as the various characteristics of volume, pitch, and pauses must be identified across words and sentences. Once the patterns are established, the recognizer can make the matches and guess that a speaker is angry because they are speaking louder and with exaggerated emphasis. Of course if yelling at a voicemail system gets you quickly transferred to a live person, won't everyone do it? Perhaps the next step will be judging the sincerity of the angry tone.
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Thursday, July 25, 2002

The second article in the NY Times' series "Notes from Music Camp" concentrates on Toby Perlman. The idea of the camp, though she may not have known it at the time, formed early on in her musical training as she experienced the competitiveness of Interlochen where students audition each week in front of the entire camp for placement. I know people who have thrived there, and perhaps those are the ones who can successfully navigate a difficult career in music, but many do lose the joy and purpose, as Mrs. Perlman envisioned it, of music camp. She also had a father who prioritized her music over everything else. She found she could actually enjoy studying violin under Dorothy DeLay's tutelage and met Itzhak Perlman at Meadowmount in 1963. Four of their five children are musicians. Perlman Music Program is a dream Mrs. Perlman didn't know she had, as the idea of it sprang almost fully grown from her head, nurtured by years of personal experiences.
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Even more fruity, colored sodas are on the way. Joining Pepsi Blue, Dr Pepper is introducing another primary color, Red Fusion. It has the Dr Pepper flavors as a base with berries thrown into the mix. Meanwhile, Sobe nabbed the other primary color and introduced its first carbonated drink, Mr. Green. Named after their lizard mascot, it is "a cola with a cherry overtone, a peppery kick, a pinch of ginseng." Not to be left in the dust with their merely brown Vanilla Coke, Coca-Cola is reviving the Fanta brand with strawberry, pineapple, grape and orange flavors. All this color may make you yearn for the spectacular flop Crystal Pepsi. I just want some tart homemade lemonade. Or water.
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Wednesday, July 24, 2002

Busy busy. Back tomorrow.
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Tuesday, July 23, 2002

I enjoy reading old cookbooks. Actually, I enjoy reading all cookbooks, new, old and somewhere in between. But I enjoy the old ones the same way I enjoy old girls' series books. They bring you back to a time when a woman's place was in the home, and yet there were opportunities for her to make her mark if she was creative. I enjoy reading through the Cookery section of an early edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, written by Fannie Farmer, because it explains how a cooking range works and how to build a fire in it using wood and coals. In 1918, an "electric range is desirable where electricity is inexpensive or cost need not be considered." We've made a lot of progress since the times of recipes that never begin "preheat oven to 350 degrees."
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Did you know that Britain's ex-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher trained to lower the pitch of her voice and improve her elocution so that she would sound more authoritative? The results were successful. A researcher in Tokyo is developing a voice processing system with genetic algorithms that "evolve" a person's recorded voice into one that is clearer and authoritative. It doesn't work in real-time yet, so there won't be any Milli-Vanilli public speakers immediately, but who knows what will happen in the future. So much is faked or made-over in the media already that altering a speaking voice could be as accepted as the plasticine processing of pop music vocals.
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Monday, July 22, 2002

The mystery may never be solved, but private and government researchers are still looking into who exposed Anne Frank's hideout. The called-in tip was acted on immediately, which leads them to believe that the informant was known by the Germans and trusted. The reward for turning in a Jew was 40 Dutch gilders, which is the equivalent of about $250 today. Keep in mind there were eight residents in hiding, a sizeable reward indeed, sadly.
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If you're an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright's work, you may appreciate the Building Locator which allows you to plug in a zip code and discover what he designed nearby. It is part of the website for a documentary on his life. The site also includes transcripts and RealVideo of interviews of Wright by Mike Wallace, and excerpts from his letters, viewpoints from his family and biographers.
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I wanted to make note of this commentary about TV shows being released on DVD merely to respond to the statement "Heck, I bet there'd be a market for a Square Pegs DVD. That thing would sell like hotcakes." Yes, I'd buy one. That's a caricature of my high school life you're talking about.
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Friday, July 19, 2002

Another study for moms to try not to panic over: "Researchers measured the cognitive and verbal development of children at various ages and found lower scores for 3-year-olds whose mothers took jobs working 30 hours per week or more before the child was 9 months old." An author of the study says: "There are effects, but they are not huge effects. Your child's life will not be ruined." She is also "very surprised that children of married couples were more affected than those of single mothers", to which I offer the theory that single moms may try harder to make time to interact with their kids, compensating for the fact that they only have one parent. The article never mentions the world "father", though the research paper might, nor does it mention the effect of older siblings. (via brig)
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Alternative Transportation
Yesterday's SFGate: Day in Pictures inspired a few delvings into alternative transportation methods that are not the Segway.

A gyroplane was named one of Time Magazine's Inventions of the Year in 2001. It looks like a helicopter, but on closer inspection you notice the extra propeller which, on the Groen Brothers Aviation model is gas turbine­powered. Fixed-wing craft training is recommended before flying one as it navigates similarly in the air. Other models, mostly for sport, are available as evidenced by this Popular Mechanics write-up. The unfortunate gyroplane referenced in the SFGate photo was an experimental model which lost a part, killing pilot and passenger.

The Airboard, inspired by Back to the Future II and developed in a Australia, is an honest to goodness hovercraft. It runs off a gas-powered lawn mower engine with a 1.3 gallon tank, maximum speed is 15 MPH. It is available in the U.S. through ZAP Electronics and, wouldn't you know it, Hammacher Schlemmer. Price is $14,999.95 with disclaimers "Not for use on public streets, sidewalks, and thoroughfares." But you do get a choice of Red, Blue, Green, or Yellow. TechTV reviewed it with a summary of "extremely pricey and cumbersome." Hammacher Schlemmer also has a 2 person all-terrain hovercraft.
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Thursday, July 18, 2002

Yellowstone Park's "let it burn" policy did not result in devastation. Since the 1988 fire, researchers believe that the park has achieved a natural balance. Trees that have evolved to mechanisms to survive fire were able to flourish. Animals who had greater competition prior to the blaze have made a comeback. With more sun on the forest floor, seedlings sprang up from the soil. It's a cycle that is expected by nature.
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With its genesis in a slide talk from the National Park Service's former historical architect, The Walk Through educates and informs readers about identifying characteristics of historical buildings. The intent is to teach you how to examine and assess the features of a building, not just in historical context but for its current "character." The photos of historical houses are an artistic accompaniment. (via Yahoo Daily)
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Wednesday, July 17, 2002

This time around in The NY Times' ongoing Writers on Writing series, David Mamet connects lessons learned from music with his own craft. If you are familiar with his sparse, minimalist style, often with twists, you will feel no surprise that he found inspiration from the musical philosophy "leave out the third -- we hear it anyway." How much can you leave out while keeping it intelligible, he asks? This minimal formula is an elegance, he claims, that separates those who can write from those who can really write. But the truly inspired will discover the creative way to get from point A to point B, or, the note A to note B, in a way that can surprise, delight, and refresh.
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LibraryBookSales.org is fun to browse and another good place to search for something you've been seeking at the used bookstore. It's a super way to network library booksale offerings. My only regret is that I may no longer be able to find the coveted bargains I'm accustomed to at library sales since they now have a convenient way to seek market value for their rarities. (via rebecca and BrainLog)
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Tuesday, July 16, 2002

A burning question I've been pondering for 10 years has not yet been answered, but someone else was curious too and wrote to the Seattle Weekly's Ask Master about it (second item). Why does butter in California come in shorter, chunkier sticks then in other states? Arizona, Oregon, and Washington butter is also in this form. My best shot at an answer is that these states are hotter and a chubby stick with less surface area is better. Let's forget the fact that the temperatures in the other states are often higher in the summer months. The actual answer may be as mundane as learning it was the shape of the first west coast dairy farmer's wife's butter crock. But we may never know. Most people, upon hearing of my curiosity about this subject, shrug it off. They are saner people than I. (via Alt-log)
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"As Norma Desmond might have remarked, classical music didn't get small -- the media world that it's trying to be part of got real, real big." In a two-part series, the Chronicle examines why the business of classical music is not growing, though it still has an active audience. Compared to the world of pop music, classical is small potatoes, and companies are no longer willing to wait for the long term return on slow, but steady, album sales. Online businesses are hoping to grow into this market, but they'll need paying subscribers and advertisers.

The article mentions in passing that classical radio stations "are tweaking their formats to try to reach larger audiences." The two stations I've listened to are playing shorter parts of longer pieces and putting the more popular tunes on heavy rotation. With the vast catalog of classical recordings and many unrecognized B+/A- composers, as my conductor likes to call them (he teaches), this is unfortunate. One doesn't need William Tell all the time, nor the same Holst planet played every day. My husband owns a 200 disk CD changer and we are considering filling it with all our classical albums and using that instead of the radio. After a few days of listening to cropped popular symphonies on our classical station, it seems it can't be that much worse. But if this format gets more people to support classical music, I will not complain.
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Monday, July 15, 2002

The cracks that grounded the space shuttles have been found in all four orbiters. The same cracks were found on test equipment used before the first shuttle ever took off (that's over twenty years ago now!). NASA believes missions can begin again this fall, but the investigation into safety concerns continues.
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Chocolate. These do not keep well at blood temperature.
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A former resident of the Bronx reminisces about the New York blackout of July 13, 1977, when the city and surrounding areas were completely dark, allowing him to see the Milky Way. There was no moonlight in the way either. Twenty-five years ago today I learned what the word "looting" meant.
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Friday, July 12, 2002

The Musee Mecanique has found a temporary home at Fishermen's Wharf. Interestingly, Disneyland "expressed interest" in housing the collection at California Adventure. Let's hope the permanent home negotiations with the National Park Service go well.
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A cat is stuck in a tree in the town next to ours. The owners of the tree are paying about $350 to have landscapers in a cherry-picker try to rescue it. It's been there almost a week. And they don't know whose cat it is!
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Thursday, July 11, 2002

I'm always suspicious of motives, sometimes overly so. When I browsed through the fluffy Parade Magazine that comes with the Sunday paper and read about Rob Lowe's involvement in cancer research working with Amgen (this was in the "In Step With" column), my first thought was "shill! shill!". Bells rang in my head when he said "I'm not endorsing any medicine...[but] talk to your doctor about infection..." But the article also mentioned that he has lost relatives to cancer and his dad has non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, so I felt guilty about my cynicism. Then I read in Salon that Lowe has "recently embarked on a drug-company sponsored awareness campaign for a cancer-related illness called febrile neutropenia that will reportedly net him $1 million." My cynicism came back. I appreciate that people can get paid (and paid well) to raise awareness, so I don't fault him or anyone for making money hawking anything. But it's good to know all the motives. When he says he's not endorsing any medicine, but he clearly is "raising awareness" for Amgen's Neulasta, it makes me feel duped. Raise your own awareness about health issues and products by researching why people say what they say. Lowe has good intentions, I'm sure, but he's being paid too.
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Even more forward motion has been announced on the issue of trans-fat labeling. The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, released a report on Trans Fatty Acids yesterday (report in PDF format). The report lists funding from various U.S. and Canadian public service groups (e.g. FDA, NIH) and a "Dietary Intakes Corporate Donors' Fund" which has contributors like Roche Vitamins and M&M Mars. The finding of the report which has weighty bearing on the FDA's plan to alter food labels is that there is no safe level of trans fats to recommend for people's diets. You know how the nutrition labels have a "% Daily Value" column? Well, that doesn't work when the RDA of trans fat is a big fat zero. Despite a suggestion to combine the saturated and trans fat amounts and keep an RDA, the FDA food labeling chief is currently maintaining that there will be a separate line. Will it be clear that no amount of trans fat is good for you? And how furiously will the food industry fight back against this new policy? Trans fat is everywhere in processed foods, and it is about to be brought out of hiding.
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Wednesday, July 10, 2002

A SF Chronicle writer tested out the Sirius satellite radio service and found it similar to the XM system he tested in November. The main difference was that he installed the XM himself in a 1993 Chevy company car, whereas the Sirius system he tested arrived preinstalled in a new BMW X5 SUV. We now know who's putting their PR money where it counts. Both have CD quality sound, decent coverage, and similar station lineups. Sirius is a little more expensive because it is commercial-free. Both are using ground repeaters to enhance coverage; XM has many more since it has one less satellite up there. Will we soon be buying radio the same way we buy cable/satellite TV? (for satellite radio news, check out the SatRadio weblog)
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I've been wondering how old the tree in front of our house is. It is an American Sycamore, which means it will drop seed balls all over the lawn every year. It isn't huge, but it probably was planted by early owners, if not the original owners of our house, which was built in the 1950s. Although a home inspector told us that the roots were not going to disturb the foundation, I don't know if he meant not in the near future or not in twenty years. For that reason, I wish the tree was a little further away from the house, but it does offer ample shade. I stumbled across an article in The Washington Post about determining the age of trees. Many trees aren't as old as people would like to assume. With good conditions trees can grow large in a short amount of time. An increment borer can be used to take a core sample and read the growth rings, but it can harm the tree. We seem to be over-eager to place historical significance in trees when they are not actually as old as we'd like to believe.
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Tuesday, July 09, 2002

Alton-Brown-Watch: Looks like he's doing a few benefits and a mini-tour of Sur La Table cooking classes later this year. Mark your calendars. (also noted: Alton-Brown's-Watch)
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This goes in the "learn something new every day" department for me: "Mohawk ironworkers have built bridges and skyscrapers throughout the United States and Canada for more than 100 years." The National Museum of the American Indian has a photography exhibit that covers the past and present of ironworkers who came from the Akwesasne and Kahnawake communities. Mohawks began working on bridges in the mid-1800's and have helped construct the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, George Washington Bridge, World Trade Center and, currently, the AOL Time Warner towers. (source: NY Times)
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Monday, July 08, 2002

The Glass Museum in Tacoma, Washington had its grand opening this past weekend. The docent training includes drama techniques as professional actors will be adding theatrical elements to the tours. Dale Chihuly's website has photos of the 500-foot-long Bridge of Glass. It was commissioned by the museum and gifted to the city.
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A NY Times article lists retailers who are getting wired, or should I say unwired, up with radio frequency identification. 5.5 million people have signed up for Exxon Mobil's Speedpass, which lets them buy gas and convenience store items at 7,500 of their 16,000 locations. McDonald's is testing Speedpass at 400 locations in Chicago. Personal preferences can be stored with the account, so if you like a plain burger you may not have to say "just the meat and the bun" again. Phillips Petroleum and Shell Canada are testing systems, but Shell in the U.S. ended its trials this year. McDonald's tests have been successful enough for them to try two other systems, FreedomPay, and a hookup with E-ZPass that allows people with the automatic toll paying devices to buy burgers at the drive-through window. Imagine a standing morning order at a drive-through coffee shop. Just pass through on your way to work, pick up your latte, and get back on the road in seconds.
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Thursday, July 04, 2002

In 1942 some five hundred magazine publishers banded together to display the American flag on the cover of their July issues. It was a concerted effort in the face of potential rationing to demonstrate their patriotism and importance in keeping America informed and lifting morale. The government also appreciated the help in selling war bonds. The Smithsonian has created an online exhibit of these magazine covers including a section highlighting the award-winning designs as judged by The United States Flag Association.
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The political philosophy of "saving people from their own stupidity" and deaths from tetanus are the reason why fireworks, once a backyard activity, are now public spectacles in the U.S. A campaign, started in 1912, restricted the sale of at home firecrackers and drove the manufacturers to create large scale pyrotechnics for exhibitions. Fireworks-related tetanus deaths are still occuring in the Philippines around New Year's, the traditional time to make lots of noise. This Philippine article says that horse manure is used to make firecrackers, making tetanus easy to contract from a firecracker wound. Even if your wound heals, the tetanus germs may still be breeding inside. I'm not sure if that is what caused the U.S. tetanus cases; one would think that they would have just banned the use of manure, but, as we know, the government doesn't always fix the root cause.
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Wednesday, July 03, 2002

Educational and cool: Mathematical Lego sculptures. (via Graham)
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Before you buy the clothes off the racks at the store, someone decides to put them there. Kal Ruttenstein is the "senior vice president for fashion direction" at Bloomingdale's, which means that he has the ability to trigger trends and launch designers' careers. He's pretty sure "Hairspray" will be a big hit, so he's got boutiques ready with sportswear inspired by the musical and a plan for gigantic cans of Aqua Net on the sidewalks spraying something yet to be determined. Hopefully this won't be a miss like the time he told Gloria Vanderbilt no one would want to wear jeans with her name on the rear. But despite a couple of faux pas and accusations of knock-off designs over the years, he commands respect in the sometimes fickle fashion industry.
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Tuesday, July 02, 2002

Alton Brown smoked a fish and demonstrated his hair dryer-enhanced Weber grill on NPR's All Things Considered. The segment and extras are available on the web. Only Alton could make a cooking segment actually come across well on the radio. Listen to him effectively turn on the charm with Korva Coleman; I don't think I've ever heard her laugh so hard. (Thanks Renee!)
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There are various theories on why human childhood is longer than that of other species'. A NY Times Science article examines some newer explanations of the expanded period of dependency that most of us enjoy. The traditional theory attributes the long childhood to our larger brains which need time to be "programmed" and learn survival skills. Thus, childhood is all about education, something modern society has certainly forced upon us with years of school. But after studying hunting-gathering cultures, some anthropologists have proposed that our long childhood is related to our long lifespan and that there are benefits to us not becoming adults quickly. Children learn quickly and can hunt as well as their elders, except for physical differences. As humans lengthened lifespans with better nutrition and hunting skills, childhood also lengthened. "With early mortality reduced, there was a good chance that the investment in an extended phase of juvenile growth would pay off in higher reproductive fitness later." Of course, opinions are mixed, but the theories are interesing to consider. I always accepted our lengthy childhood, and never considered it as a curiosity.
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Monday, July 01, 2002

177 years ago, Joseph Nicephore Niepce exposed a pewter plate coated with bitumen and oil of lavender to a view of a French farmyard. The result is known as "The First Photograph," but it was only last week that the scientists at the Getty Conservation Institute announced how it was made. The components of the process were guessed at previously, as older articles mention them and Niepce left written notes, but they have now been scientifically verified. There is surprisingly little oxidation of the image, and the institute will be keeping it in a box filled with inert argon gas.
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I was an early devotee of Pottery Barn as it began in my neck of the woods long before Williams-Sonoma, Inc acquired it. Crate & Barrel still doesn't have a store in Connecticut so I didn't get exposed until later, and knew it as a housewares and kitchen store. Some people get the two stores confused, which, now that they've evolved into style arbiter wannabes, I can understand. But I still have an easy time telling them apart: Crate & Barrel carries practical items; Pottery Barn does not. I'm not saying PB doesn't sell anything useful, but if they did happen to carry a potato peeler, it would probably look like a twig or a mollusk. And they do have placemats. But they'd be caught dead with a salad spinner on the shelf. There is certainly overlap between the two stores, especially now that they both have stylish furniture. But if you want to stylishly outfit your household, go to Crate & Barrel (or, more affordably, Target). If you need finishing touches after that, give Pottery Barn a try. (By the way, the C&B spokesperson says they have chip & dips in "glass, straw, wood, ceramic, porcelain", but she left out plastic.)
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