Michele Ferrero, Creator of Nutella Gone
Michele Ferrero, Tycoon Who Gave the World Nutella, Dies at 89
By
Michele Ferrero, widely regarded as the richest man in Italy and — a distinction more notable to lovers of sweets everywhere — the creator of Nutella, died on Saturday at his home in Monte Carlo. He was 89.
Mr. Ferrero presided over a vast international confectionary empire; he was sometimes referred to as a real-life Willy Wonka. He ranked 22nd on the most recent Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated net worth of $26.5 billion. The magazine stated the source of his wealth simply: “chocolates.”
Actually, it was more than chocolates; Ferrero products include fruity and minty Tic Tacs, as well as Ferrero-Rocher candies and Kinder snacks. The company, which Mr. Ferrero’s father, Pietro, started in a Piedmont pastry shop in the 1940s, grew under the younger Mr. Ferrero’s leadership into a worldwide powerhouse, rivaling Mars, Nestlé and Hershey. Its sales in 2014 totaled about $10 billion.
It was Nutella, a thick spread of chocolate and hazelnut, that truly captivated the world’s taste buds.
“World’s flags should be at half-mast: Nutella owner has died,” read one of the many posts on Twitter after Mr. Ferrero’s death — which poetically enough came on Valentine’s Day — was reported.
$2.5 Billion Per Annum On Oreos
The World Spent $2.5 Billion on Oreos in 2014
by Khushbu Shah
The Oreo is going through a bit of a renaissance. Sure the beloved sandwich cookie has been around for over a century, but it’s made headlines recently with its introduction of novelty flavors. Oreos now come in flavors like cookie dough, watermelon, peanut butter, caramel apple, and many more. So far, 2015 has already seen the debut of the Red Velvet Oreo and, if rumors are true, a S’mores flavor is coming soon. According to Quartz, Oreo is currently the most popular cookie in the world, and it doesn’t look like that’s going to change anytime soon. Below, Oreo by the numbers:
1912: The year of Oreo’s birth.
103: Years Oreo has been around.
$1.5 Billion: Amount spent on Oreos 2007.
$2.5 Billion: Amount spent on Oreos 2014.
5: How many times more Oreos sell each year than boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
30 Years Of Meat Is Murder
Meat Is Murder, 30 Years Later
By Mack Hayden
Thirty years ago, The Smiths followed up a self-titled debut album which featured songs like “This Charming Man” and “Hand in Glove” with a record called Meat is Murder. It may not have the visceral punch of the debut, the gothic beauty and cohesion of The Queen is Dead or the pop confidence of Strangeways, Here We Come, but it’s still my favorite of their records, the reason for that being that this is the record in which all of the members of the band showed off their chops in equal measure to the best of their abilities. Don’t believe me? Listen to the first 10 seconds of “Barbarism Begins at Home” and we can talk again after. The fact it was their only No. 1 album on the UK Charts is further testament to its greatness.
To set the scene, let’s talk about music in 1985. In February of that year, two songs held the No. 1 spot: “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner and “Careless Whisper” by Wham! Schmaltz and sax riffs were reigning supreme. The only other album of importance to the latter-day post-punk movement to be released that month was Night Time by Killing Joke. Tears for Fears’ Songs from the Big Chairdropped too, just in case you were wondering what kind of rad pop music was available to consumers during that month. Then in walk The Smiths ready for their round two.
Allow yourself to feel small in the presence of the group’s overwhelming talent. Johnny Marr was 21 when this record was released. This means he’d written “How Soon is Now?” at that point in his life, and all I’m doing is writing about how amazing that is. Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce’s rhythm section never gripes for unnecessary authority over the songs but when they’re in the spotlight, they always shine. Morrissey’s eloquence and command over the English language can be deceptive. Sometimes it’s easy to forget how recently these Manchester masterminds graduated from the institutions they decry. Their music is so fully formed it’s hard to believe it was being written by people in their early to mid twenties.
Lost Leonardo Found
‘Lost’ Leonardo da Vinci painting seized by Italy
“Priceless” painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci discovered in 2013 seized by Italian police from bank vault in Switzerland
A long-lost painting attributed to Leonardo da Vinci was confiscated from a bank vault in Switzerland after Italian police said it had been exported illegally and was in danger of being sold for up to £90 million.
Swiss police, acting on a request by their Italian counterparts, seized the portrait of Isabella d’Este, a Renaissance noblewoman, from a private bank vault in Lugano on Tuesday.
After being lost for centuries, the painting was rediscovered in 2013 in a collection of 400 artworks kept in a Swiss vault. The authorities then were alerted to the existence of the painting, but it went missing again.
It turned up again last summer during an investigation into insurance fraud and it later emerged an Italian lawyer was trying to negotiate the sale of the painting for €120 million (£89 million).
Monarch Massacre
The monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished
By Darryl Fears
Threatened animals like elephants, porpoises and lions grab all the headlines, but what’s happening to monarch butterflies is nothing short of a massacre. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service summed it up in just one grim statistic on Monday: Since 1990, about 970 million have vanished.
It happened as farmers and homeowners sprayed herbicides on milkweed plants, which serve as the butterflies’ nursery, food source and home. In an attempt to counter two decades of destruction, the Fish and Wildlife Service launched a partnership with two private conservation groups, the National Wildlife Federation and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, to basically grow milkweed like crazy in the hopes of saving the monarchs.
Monarch butterflies are a keystone species that once fluttered throughout the United States by the billions. They alighted from Mexico to Canada each spring on a trek that required six generations of the insect to complete. Afterward, young monarchs about the quarter of the weight of a dime, that know nothing about the flight pattern through the United States, not to mention Mexico, fly back, resting, birthing and dining on milkweed. Only about 30 million remain.
Original Les Paul Prototype On The Block
Les Paul’s Groundbreaking Guitar Prototype Is Headed for Auction
Guitar Player magazine mentioned Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend of the Who and Peter Frampton. Arlan Ettinger, the president of Guernsey’s, an auction house on the Upper East Side, mentioned more: Paul McCartney and George Harrison of the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Frank Zappa, Carlos Santana, Sheryl Crow, Lenny Kravitz.
None of them would have achieved their fame, Mr. Ettinger said, without Les Paul — and without the guitar that Gibson Guitar began manufacturing in the 1950s to Mr. Paul’s specifications. Bob Marley not only owned one, he was buried with it. (Not to mention a Bible, a soccer ball and some marijuana.)
But before there were all those guitars, there was one, a prototype that came to be known as Black Beauty. Guernsey’s is preparing to auction it on Feb. 19 at 7 p.m. at Arader Galleries on Madison Avenue. The auction catalog does not list a presale estimate, but Mr. Ettinger said it could sell for over $2 million.
It was, in fact, the second prototype, said Thomas Doyle, a luthier who worked with Mr. Paul for more than 30 years. Mr. Paul had declared the first unsatisfactory, even unplayable.
But Mr. Paul was a tinkerer — he had made his own solid-body electric guitar in 1940 or 1941 — and he told Gibson what he wanted. Mr. Paul’s godson, Steve Miller, said the result was “literally part of the lexicon and fabric” of music history. “Without this very guitar, no other Les Paul guitars could exist in the form that we have come to know and love,” he wrote recently. “From the mid-50s right up until this moment, every guitar hero and rock star we have all ever listened to that played one of Les’s masterpieces would literally not exist.”
Spongebob Kicks American Sniper’s Ass
‘SpongeBob’ cleans up at box office; ‘American Sniper’ slips to No. 2
SpongeBob SquarePants with, from left, Squidward Tentacles, Sandy Cheeks and Mr. Krabs in a scene from “The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.” (Paramount Pictures)
By SABA HAMEDY
Sixteen years after SpongeBob SquarePants first appeared on television, the yellow animated character made a splash on the big screen this weekend with the release of “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.”
The film opened to an estimated $56-million gross in the U.S. and Canada over the weekend, exceeding tracking projections and pushing “American Sniper” out of the top spot after its three-week reign there.
Still The Best Butt In Show Business
Madonna Wears Sexy Matador Outfit to the Grammys
Madonna stole the spotlight on the Grammys red carpet, when she showed up in this revealing matador outfit, custom-made by Givenchy, that screamed “Ole!”
The 56 year-old singer, known for pushing the fashion envelope, was accompanied by rapper Nas and the DJ Diplo, who worked with her on her upcoming album “Rebel Heart.”
Brian Williams, Neil deGrasse Tyson, George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, James Frey
from The Las Vegas Review-Journal
Brian Williams isn’t the first big name to ‘misremember’ a story
By MICHAEL MARTINEZ
Call it a false memory. A trick of the mind. Or a “misremembrance.”
Television anchor Brian Williams isn’t the first person to be embarrassed by claiming a remembrance that, well, never really happened.
Recent history shows how several famous figures suffered what one expert labels a false “flashbulb” memory.
NEIL deGRASSE TYSON
Astrophysicist and television host Neil deGrasse Tyson, a protege of the late Carl Sagan, claimed he heard President George W. Bush make a remark intended to highlight divisions between Judeo-Christian Americans and fundamentalist Muslims.
Tyson’s assertion is still published on the webpage of the Hayden Planetarium, which he runs.
“After the 9/11 attacks, when President George W. Bush, in a speech aimed at distinguishing the U.S. from the Muslim fundamentalists, said, ‘Our God is the God who named the stars.’ The problem is two-thirds of all the stars that have names, have Arabic names. I don’t think he knew this. This would confound the point that he was making,” Tyson said in a 2008 speech.
PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH
Even President Bush suffered a false memory of what he saw on television the day of the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Bush recalled more than once how he saw the first plane hit the north of the World Trade Center before he entered a classroom in Florida, where his reaction to the devastating attacks was forever captured on television cameras.
“In reality, he had been told that a plane had hit the building, but had not seen it — there was no live footage of the plane hitting the tower,” the two professors wrote.
HILLARY CLINTON
In her own campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2008, Hillary Clinton stated she evaded sniper fire when visiting Bosnia as first lady in 1996.
While seeking votes, she provided a dramatic recollection of the event, which occurred on March 25, 1996.
“I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base,” said Clinton, a Democrat.
Thank You Philippines, Thank You National Book Store
Gauguin @ $300 Million
Gauguin Painting Is Said to Fetch $300 Million
By and
The sale of the 1892 oil painting, “Nafea Faa Ipoipo (When Will You Marry?),” was confirmed by the seller, Rudolf Staechelin, 62, a retired Sotheby’s executive living in Basel, Switzerland, who through a family trust owns more than 20 works in a valuable collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, including the Gauguin, which has been on loan to the Kunstmuseum Basel for nearly a half-century.
Guy Morin, the mayor of Basel, acknowledged news of the sale of the Gauguin and bemoaned its loss. On Tuesday, The Baer Faxt, an art world insiders’ newsletter, said Qatar was rumored to be the buyer of the Gauguin at $300 million, which would exceed the more than $250 million that Qatar reportedly paid for Paul Cézanne’s “The Card Players” in 2011.
Todd Levin, a New York art adviser, said of the Gauguin, “I heard that this painting was in play late last year.” He added, “The price quoted to me at that time was in the high $200 millions, close to $300 million.”
Bureaucracy Lands On The Moon
Exclusive – The FAA: regulating business on the moon
BY IRENE KLOTZ
(Reuters) – The United States government has taken a new, though preliminary, step to encourage commercial development of the moon.
According to documents obtained by Reuters, U.S. companies can stake claims to lunar territory through an existing licensing process for space launches.
The Federal Aviation Administration, in a previously undisclosed late-December letter to Bigelow Aerospace, said the agency intends to “leverage the FAA’s existing launch licensing authority to encourage private sector investments in space systems by ensuring that commercial activities can be conducted on a non-interference basis.”
In other words, experts said, Bigelow could set up one of its proposed inflatable habitats on the moon, and expect to have exclusive rights to that territory – as well as related areas that might be tapped for mining, exploration and other activities.
However, the FAA letter noted a concern flagged by the U.S. State Department that “the national regulatory framework, in its present form, is ill-equipped to enable the U.S. government to fulfill its obligations” under a 1967 United Nations treaty, which, in part, governs activities on the moon.
The United Nations Outer Space treaty, in part, requires countries to authorize and supervise activities of non-government entities that are operating in space, including the moon. It also bans nuclear weapons in space, prohibits national claims to celestial bodies and stipulates that space exploration and development should benefit all countries.
Madame Tussaud’s Up For Sale
The landlord of Madame Tussauds hopes to raise more than £300m by selling the building that has housed the waxworks since 1884, in a further sign of London’s booming commercial property market.
Property entrepreneur Nick Leslau has instructed agent CBRE to market the freehold of the central London premises in Marylebone and is seeking offers in excess of £300m, according to people familiar with the situation.
Ranked as one of London’s top 10 tourist attractions by visitor numbers, Merlin has tapped the rise of “selfie culture”, removing barriers around celebrity waxworks to allow easier access. The company runs 20 Tussauds attractions including in Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore.
Fist Bump In The Philippines
Fistbump with James Frey
Posted
Last Saturday James Frey went to National Bookstore, Ayala Cebu. It was for his book signing of the his book Endgame:The Calling. I’m a big fan of his I Am Number Four Series, and when he revealed Last January 25 that he was Pittacus Lore I immediately thought “Sh*t I HAVE TO MEET HIM!” So with my fellow Lorics, we walked from our University to Ayala.
He was really amazing, I was lost for words. He read a part of his new book and gave tips on how to become a writer.
“Write a book that you want to read,” James Frey said. And I can’t help but nod in agreement eventhough I knew he wouldn’t see me in the see of fellow fans.
When it was my turn to get my book signed, my hands were really shaking and Iwas close to tears.
To be a writer, as great and known as him would be unattainable. But to be a writer with the same principles, and the same work ethic as him, will be one of my life goals.
Books make me happy, and someday (hopefully) I’ll make other people happy by writing books just like James Frey
Thank You! National Bookstore for making this event Possible!
[ click to read at chedistriestoblog ]
And many many thanks to all the other readers fans writers who covered the Philippines tour, here’s just a few….
etherealpages
Fragments of Life
amaterasureads
Sab The Book Eater
sumthinblue
G/ST
Philippine News
Two handsome, virile naked men riding triumphantly on ferocious panthers
Michelangelo’s bronze panther-riders revealed after ‘Renaissance whodunnit’
Sculptures to be displayed at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, thought to be the only surviving bronzes by the Renaissance artist
Two handsome, virile naked men riding triumphantly on ferocious panthers will on Monday be unveiled as, probably, the only surviving bronze sculptures by the Renaissance giant Michelangelo.
In art history terms, the attribution is sensational. Academics in Cambridge will suggest that a pair of mysterious metre-high sculptures known as the Rothschild Bronzes are by the master himself, made just after he completed David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
If correct, they are the only surviving Michelangelo bronzes in the world.
Lechon In Cebu
Best-selling YA author enjoys lechon, beaches in Cebu during signing tour
James Frey, also known as “Pittacus Lore” when writing the young adult Lorien Legacies series, is in the Philippines to meet fans of his new YA book “Endgame: The Calling.” And one of his tour stops is in Cebu, where he is currently enjoying some downtime.
Apart from a few photos of a few locals he met and befriended, Frey took some time to sample the famous lechon.
Rod McKuen Gone
Rod McKuen, Poet and Lyricist With Vast Following, Dies at 81
Rod McKuen, a ubiquitous poet, lyricist and songwriter whose work met with immense commercial success if little critical esteem, died on Thursday in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 81.
Mr. McKuen, whom The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture described as having been, at his height, “the unofficial poet laureate of America,” was the author of dozens of books of poetry, which together sold millions of copies.
For a generation of Americans at midcentury and afterward, Mr. McKuen’s poetry formed an enduring, solidly constructed bridge between the Beat generation and New Age sensibilities. Ranging over themes of love and loss, the natural world and spirituality, his work was prized by readers for its gentle accessibility while being condemned by many critics as facile, tepid and aphoristic.
Mr. McKuen’s output was as varied as it was vast, spanning song lyrics, including English-language adaptations (“Seasons in the Sun”) of works by his idol, Jacques Brel; music and lyrics, as for “Jean,” from the 1969 film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” for which he received an Academy Award nomination; and musical scores, including that of the 1973 television film “Lisa, Bright and Dark.” He also appeared as a singer on television, on many recordings and in live performance.
“What McKuen guarantees is that a certain California sexual daydreaming can be yours for the asking even if you do move your lips rapidly as you read,” Louis Cox sniped in The New Republic in 1971.
Death Valley Bar Fight With Geezer Butler
Black Sabbath’s Geezer Butler arrested in Death Valley bar fight
Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath, left, was arrested following a bar fight in Death Valley. (Dan Steinberg / Invision / Associated Press)
By AUGUST BROWN
Geezer Butler, the longtime Black Sabbath bassist, allegedly has a knack for bashing listeners offstage as well.
The 65-year-old Terence Michael Butler was arrested Tuesday on charges of misdemeanor assault, intoxication and vandalism at the Corkscrew Saloon in Death Valley National Park.
According to BBC reports, Inyo County police said that an argument at the bar involving Butler quickly escalated into a physical confrontation. Police arrived shortly after midnight and reported a broken window and one person struck during the altercation.
Asteroid Moon
Big asteroid that skimmed Earth has its own moon: NASA
Miami (AFP) – An unusually large asteroid that just skimmed by Earth had its own moon, NASA said Tuesday as the US space agency released its first radar images of the flyby.
The asteroid known as 2004 BL86 made its closest approach late Monday at a distance about three times further than Earth’s own Moon.
Radar images from NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, California show that the asteroid itself was about 500 feet (150 meters) smaller than expected, and measured about 1,100 feet (325 meters) across.
The asteroid’s small moon was approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across.
From James Frey to The Imitation Game
Television Review: A million little works of fiction
Illustration: Jim Cogan
‘Based on a true story” ….”Inspired by actual events”…automatically these words on the opening credits lend an extra frisson to a film or a TV series. But to arrive at some understanding of this fiendishly tricky subject, we should probably start with a book, A Million Little Pieces, by James Frey.
It was a book about alcohol addiction which was offered to various publishers as a work of fiction, and rejected. It was eventually published as “non-fiction” and it sold millions, driven by an endorsement from Oprah – who then had to haul the author back to berate him like a bold boy for misleading her and the American people, when it emerged that several parts of the book were exaggerated or just invented.
Frey was in no position to argue, but I would argue on his behalf that he was to some extent the victim of an industry which had lost its confidence, which was dumbing down. That he had written a powerful novel, but that it needed this fake stamp of authenticity – “it all really happened, you know” – to get it on Oprah.
So I think there is more to this “based on a true story” racket than issues of artistic licence, and of where exactly you draw the line between fiction and non-fiction and all that. There is also at times an element of cynicism, of declaring that a story is true and then making it up anyway, a bit like the events recalled in Charlie when they were putting bogus stamps on the beef to Iraq.
Charlie itself was not motivated by any of that dark stuff, but the arguments that blew up around it are being replicated all over the free world – The Imitation Game, the biopic of the code-breaking genius Alan Turing, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, is accused of taking horrible liberties, of misrepresenting really important parts of Turing’s story, and of actually making the man more unloveable than he was.
The $1.5 Million Potato
from The Sydney Morning Herald
Kevin Abosch sells photograph of potato for $1.5 million
by Megan Levy
The Kevin Abosch photo Potato #345 which has sold for $1.5 million. Photo: Kevin Abosch
The chips certainly aren’t down for photographer Kevin Abosch.
He recently sold this photograph of a potato for £750,000 ($1.5 million). Really.
It should be noted that it’s an organic spud, from the spiritual home of the potato, Ireland, so you’d expect it to be a bit pricier per kilogram than the dirt-cheap variety.
But even Abosch, better known for taking portraits of celebrities including Johnny Depp, Bob Geldoff and Steven Spielberg, acknowledges that some might find the price tag for the photograph, entitled Potato #345, a little “absurd”.
Abosch’s explanation of how the sale came about suggests wine might have had something to do with the transaction.
Abosch, who is based in France and Ireland, was having dinner with an unnamed European businessman at his home when his guest saw the photograph hanging on the wall, The Sunday Times in London reported.
Abosch had photographed the potato in 2010, after it was delivered to his home in a batch of organic vegetables.
“We had two glasses of wine and he [the businessman] said, ‘I really like that.’ Two more glasses of wine and he said: ‘I really want that,’ ” Abosch said
“We set the price two weeks later. It is the most I have been paid for a piece of work that has been bought [rather than commissioned].”
Full Fathom Five’s Samantha Streger on YA Publishing
from Adventures in YA Publishing
Editor Samantha Streger of Full Fathom Five Digital
Samantha Streger is the Publisher of Full Fathom Five Digital, where she has the badass job of publishing and promoting commercial books. Before joining FFF, she was Associate Editor in the teen & children’s department at Open Road Integrated Media, so ebooks are her forte. She also holds a publishing certificate from NYU and previously worked at Disney Publishing Worldwide and the Wallace Literary Agency. When she’s not reading and editing, Samantha can be found watching “Vampire Diaries” and re-runs of “The Office,” and trying to quit the gym.
1. How did you decide to become an editor?
I wanted to be an editor since the third grade. Of course, at the time, I thought being an editor was the same thing as being a copyeditor or proofreader, fixing typos and perfecting grammar! I was a stickler for mistakes. When I learned more about content editing, though, I found it even more interesting to give creative input. Even though I don’t have a large opportunity to edit these days, I keep taking on projects because of how much I enjoy being involved in the artistic process.
2. What are some of your favorite YA/children’s books?
Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine—the best Cinderella. The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce is one of those series that forever changed me as a person. And I’m not ashamed to say that I love Harry Potter. (And I trusted Snape all along.)
3. What are some things NOT to do when submitting work?
Do not describe your book as containing “the marketability of Harry Potter with the mystery and intrigue of the Hunger Games.” Yes, that’s a real pitch letter I’ve received. Comparing your book to the most popular mainstream titles of the day digs a hole of expectation it’s almost impossible to crawl out of.
4. What title are you most proud of and how did you find the author? Besides myself of course! LOL
I am incredibly proud of my first acquisition for FFFDig: The Apartment Novels by Amanda Black (an adult romance series). I was a fan of Amanda’s stories when they were originally published online for free, and for years I’d dreamed of acquiring and publishing one of the amazingly talented fanfiction authors whose work I admired. I reached out to her on my first day at Full Fathom Five Digital; she had just begun the process of sending the manuscript out to agents. It was meant to be!
5. What is more important: character, plot, or world?
Character. Particularly in YA / coming-of-age novels, there’s nothing better than the emotions evoked by a characters reactions and misperceptions. An incredible world and a strong plot is useless without characters to care about.
[ click to continue reading at Adventures in YA Publishing ]]
Your Lightbulbs Are Watching You
How Pink Is Your Floyd?
The Rise of the Smartbulb
Get ready to dust off the old jokes about how many (fill in the blank) people it takes to change a light bulb. I just spent a week changing some of the bulbs in my house, and the complexity was enough to give me a migraine.
Programmable light bulbs — you never knew you needed such things, but maybe you do — are among the latest offerings of a technology industry that wants to fill homes with new Internet-connected appliances. So now the humble bulb of old is no longer a throwaway commodity.
It’s a smartbulb, complete with a computer-chip and wireless technology that connects it to the great hive brain in the sky.
The punch line, I suppose, is that these bulbs are worth considering if you ever fantasized about living in a Jetsons-type household, and if you have enough disposable income to pay the early-adopter tax currently being levied on them. For that price, you’ll enjoy features that may impress your friends, lower your electric bills and possibly even save the life of a loved one. But more on that later.
100 Robi
100 humanoid robots perform synchronized dance routine in Tokyo
One hundred humanoid robots performed a synchronized dance routine in Tokyo on Monday. Each of the one hundred ‘Robi’ robots weighs just 2.2 pounds and stands just a little over a foot tall.
The ‘100 Robi’ project is the brainchild of Tomotaka Takahashi of Tokyo University. The synchronized dance lasted three minutes and went off without a hitch.
Konnichi wa, CommU – Konnichi wa, Sota
Japanese androids hold news conference, chat with baby droids
The female robots introduced a pair of tabletop conversation robots, CommU and Sota
by Tim Hornyak (IDG News Service)
If you find lifelike robots unnerving, try attending a news conference held by a pair of androids.
That was the scene on Tuesday in Tokyo when the androids Kodomoroid and Otonaroid introduced a new pair of communication robots developed by an Osaka-based company, Vstone, and its partners.
Sota and CommU, each about 30cm tall, engaged in dialog with their full-sized counterparts at the Miraikan technology museum as journalists looked on, entranced. The smaller, tabletop droids can only move their arms and upper bodies, but spoke in cute Japanese resembling the speech of a toddler.
“We’re good at natural dialog and that’s tough to do,” CommU, which looks like a baby, told Otonaroid, a hyper-realistic robot “woman.” The exchange was like a cybernetic mother and child, evoking both the lifelike “replicant” androids and the sentient toys in the 1982 science fiction film “Blade Runner.”
James Frey Visits Philippines
JAMES FREY VISITS PHL FOR A BOOK SIGNING TOUR
WHAT: James Frey book signing tour
WHEN: January 31 and February 1
WHERE: National Bookstore Cebu and Manila
ABOUT: facebook.com/pages/National-Book-Store
Bullshit 451
Bulldoze first, apologize later: a true L.A. landmark
Architect Thom Mayne, new owner of the late Ray Bradbury’s home, says he plans to build a wall on the property that will pay tribute to the writer. (Byron Espinoza)
It was beginning to feel like a demolition derby.
On Tuesday, word started to spread that the canary-yellow 1937 house in Cheviot Hills where the writer Ray Bradbury lived for more than 50 years was being knocked down.
The person razing it to make room for a new house on the site was the Pritzker Prize-winning architect Thom Mayne, whose firm Morphosis designed the Caltrans headquarters in downtown L.A. and a new campus for Emerson College in Hollywood, among other prominent buildings.
The next day, the preservation group Los Angeles Conservancy added an alert to its website that the new owner of the 1957 Norms restaurant on La Cienega Boulevard, a time capsule of the space-age L.A. coffee-shop style known as Googie, had been granted a demolition permit on Jan. 5.
By week’s end, Googie fans at least could breathe a sigh of relief. At a Thursday hearing on Norms at the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission, an attorney for the owner said that there were “no current plans to demolish the property.” The commission voted to consider the building for cultural-monument status, protecting it for at least 75 days.
Drone-hunting Drones
Being pestered by drones? Buy a drone-hunting drone
Are paparazzi flying drones over your garden to snap you sunbathing? You may need the Rapere, the drone-hunting drone which uses ‘tangle-lines’ to quickly down its prey
by Matthew Sparkes – Deputy Head of Technology
With drone sales soaring it’s inevitable that new and nefarious applications for them will emerge. Never has a technology emerged which someone, somewhere has failed to find an annoying or illegal use for.
There have already been several cases of celebrities including Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Rihanna having their privacy invaded by paparazzi drone pilots hovering overhear and snapping away on a remote-controlled camera.
One was even said to have disrupted Tina Turner’s wedding.
But even non-celebrities may not appreciate having the whirring aircraft flying near their homes or places of business.
Enter the Rapere, a prototype drone-hunting drone which can down other tiny unmanned aircraft by entangling special string in their rotors.
A group claiming to be “commercial drone developers” have created the machine which can automatically identify drones, hover above them and release a “tangle-line” that falls into their rotors and causes it to crash. It will then return to its base station for recharging and re-arming.
The Super Bull
A Breeder Apart: Farmers Say Goodbye to the Bull Who Sired 500,000 Offspring
Fans Commemorate ‘Toystory,’ a Dairy Legend With a Ravenous Libido
Toystory, a Wisconsin bull who set a record for semen production, was 2,700 pounds and sired an estimated 500,000 offspring. The famed bull died on Thanksgiving. GENEX
by MARK PETERS and ILAN BRAT
SHAWANO, Wis.—Atop a wooded hill here in the heart of America’s Dairyland, an industry legend was recently laid to rest.
It wasn’t some milk magnate or a famed innovator, but an ornery, 2,700-pound bull named Toystory—a titan of artificial insemination who sired an estimated 500,000 offspring in more than 50 countries.
“He was a dream bull,” said Jan Hessel Bierma, editor in chief of dairy-breeding magazine Holstein International.
In the increasingly high-tech world of cow reproduction, a top bull’s career tends to last just a few years as farmers chase better genetics to boost milk output and animal durability, playing a numbers game not unlike a Major League Baseball manager.
Rare is the bull with the genes and testicular fortitude to sell a million units of semen, known among breeders as the millionaires club.
Over nearly a decade, Toystory shattered the record for sales of the slender straws that hold about 1/20th of a teaspoon and are shipped using liquid nitrogen to farmers around the world. A unit fetches anywhere from a few dollars to several hundred.
Free El Capitan
2 men reach top of Yosemite’s El Capitan in historic climb
By Associated Press
YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — A pair of Americans on Wednesday completed what had long been considered the world’s most difficult rock climb, using only their hands and feet to conquer a 3,000-foot vertical wall on El Capitan, the forbidding granite pedestal in Yosemite National Park that has beckoned adventurers for more than half a century.
Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson became the first to “free-climb” the rock formation’s Dawn Wall, a feat that many had considered impossible. They used ropes and safety harnesses to catch them in case of a fall, but relied entirely on their own strength and dexterity to ascend by grasping cracks as thin as razor blades and as small as dimes.
The effort took weeks, as the two dealt with constant falls and injuries. But their success completes a years-long dream that bordered on obsession for the men.
The trek up the world’s largest granite monolith began Dec. 27. Caldwell and Jorgeson lived on the wall itself. They ate and slept in tents fastened to the rock thousands of feet above the ground and battled painful cuts to their fingertips much of the way.