SLOW Movement

WSJ: Professional Decorating Ideas in the Houzz

THE DIGITAL SOLUTION
Updated April 4, 2012, 2:37 p.m. ET

Professional Decorating Ideas in the Houzz

Service Brings Consumers and Interior Designers Together Through Sample Rooms and Social Networking

• By KATHERINE BOEHRET

Ask anyone who has decorated a home or even just one room in a house and they'll tell you: It's tough work. The overwhelming variety of pendant light fixtures, farmhouse sinks, transom windows, paint colors and wainscoting patterns make it clear why interior designers get paid to do the job.

People who prefer the do-it-yourself route may find inspiration in HGTV shows or Better Homes and Gardens magazine. But a free digital option is available in Houzz, which works as a website, iPhone app and iPad app.

Houzz brings consumers and interior designers together through sample rooms and social networking, Katherine Boehret reports on digits.

Depending on how you use it, Houzz can work like Pinterest, the idea- and photo-sharing social network, complete with lots of lush photos of designed rooms that users admire and save in personal Ideabooks for reference later. Also like Pinterest, users can follow one another. I followed a few designers and design firms with photos of sample rooms I liked. After following Siemasko + Verbridge, I saw all of the design firm's activity on the website in a My Houzz section.

Unlike Pinterest, which makes everything public, Houzz Ideabooks and the comments people add to photos in their Ideabooks can be kept private, which I liked.

I've been using Houzz (a combination of the words "house" and "buzz") on the Web and as an app for the past week, and I've already learned a lot. I moved into my new place last summer, so flipping through photos of living rooms, bathrooms and kitchens was motivating. I just might add a wallpapered accent wall in my living room if I ever find some spare time.

Houzz

The Houzz website and apps show rooms designed by professionals, like the architect firm pictured, and identify items in rooms using green tags.

I felt most engaged in the site when I used Houzz.com, where I could read informative discussions among designers and people asking questions about rooms. Answers included details about product pricing, availability and design tips on things like how to combine black and brown in a room (answer: use throw pillows with both colors). The prospect of getting new clients draws designers to Houzz, where they offer free advice.

But the Houzz website holds so much information, it can feel jumbled and overwhelming—especially when compared with the simple, clean interfaces of the free Houzz iPhone and iPad apps.

For home decorators, Houzz is a website and app that offers an almost limitless number of ideas. WSJ's Katherine Boehret says the site allows users to mix and match ideas and consult with other users and designers.

I especially liked a recently added feature to the site and apps: In photos of rooms, tiny green tags hang from items that have been marked by professionals, and tapping on a tag displays details like where the product can be bought and how much it costs.

I found tags on things ranging from chandeliers to painted walls (a tag on a wall told the name and brand of its paint color). In the Houzz mobile apps, these tags swing back and forth whenever the iPhone or iPad moves—a whimsical touch. Next month, the site will launch Houzz Lightbox, which automatically starts a slide-show mode for scrolling through photos faster.

One source of frustration with Houzz was that certain products I thought about buying, like wallpaper from Schumacher & Co., were only available to people in the design trade. A spokeswoman said 11% of products on Houzz are in this category. But she said more manufacturers are starting to sell to both consumers and professional designers.

While Houzz can be used to motivate people to decorate their own homes, it will also direct them to local interior designers who created an admired room. Each photo of a room includes contact information about who designed it. If you prefer to limit your Houzz to photos of rooms done by designers in your area, you can filter by location. I looked at the D.C. Metro area and found thousands of nearby designers.

Many products used in these designer rooms cost thousands of dollars, but discussions about rooms may help people get ideas for lower-priced alternatives.

Houzz

Tapping a tag displays details on the product, above. Pictured, a tagged room as seen on an iPad.

I really liked the look of Ochre's Arctic Pear Chandelier, but by reading the discussion surrounding it, I found out that it cost around $5,300. (This information wasn't readily available because Ochre doesn't sell directly to consumers.) Another Houzz user suggested a $400 alternative from Pottery Barn that looked similar.

Other items are easier to buy. The $299 Balencia Folding Chair from Frontgate is clearly marked with a green tag and a link that takes you to Frontgate.com, where you can buy the chair.

I created several Ideabooks where I saved images of rooms I liked. Shortcuts in Houzz let me share photos with friends on Facebook and Twitter, or via email. After any user saves 10 images to an Ideabook, Houzz will start recommending similar images the user might like. These are generated by an algorithm and were in line with my taste.

People who are aware of their design deficiencies and who don't think Houzz's do-it-yourself encouragement will help them can open the site's Professionals section. Here, over 1.3 million suppliers, remodeling and design professionals are listed for hire. These listings can be filtered by category or location.

Whether you are looking for an interior designer or are just looking to find some great decorating ideas, Houzz will help.

Write to Katherine Boehret at [email protected]

A version of this article appeared April 4, 2012, on page D2 in some U.S. editions of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Professional Decorating Ideas in the Houzz.

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

Inspired, in equal measures, by Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton, The Wizard of Oz, and a love for books, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore is a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story.Using a variety of techniques (miniatures, computer animation, 2D animation) award winning author/ illustrator William Joyce and Co-director Brandon Oldenburg present a hybrid style of animation that harkens back to silent films and MGM Technicolor musicals. Morris Lessmore is old fashioned and cutting edge at the same time.

Especially for those who love books, enjoy!

The Unreal Times: BCG hires McKinsey to advice it on how to become number 1

 

This is hilarious! :D

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The Unreal Times

India's favourite satire, spoof, parody and human portal

Source: http://www.theunrealtimes.com/2011/08/12/bcg-hires-mckinsey-to-advise-it-on-how-to-become-number-1/

BCG hires McKinsey to advice it on how to become number 1

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McK will use the BCG matrix to slot BCG consultants as dogs and cows

Strategy consulting major Boston Consulting Group (BCG) announced today that it has hired the services of the world’s number 1 strategy consulting firm McKinsey to advice BCG on how to replace McKinsey as the number 1 strategy consulting firm.

“We are sick of being second best. After a rigorous year long internal analysis session that involved 35 BCG consultants (editor – this translates to roughly over 2.9 lakh manhours assuming each consultant put in 18 hours a day,7 days a week), 45 proprietary BCG frameworks, and over 900 Powerpoint slides, we came to the firm conclusion that the best strategy would be to hire McKinsey to advice us on becoming #1,” said Vijayendra ‘Baba’ Haryal, Global Head, BCG.

McKinsey has readily agreed to serve its new client as professionally as possible. “In normal times, we’d have asked them go climb a tree. But with another looming recession, we can’t afford to be choosy. Hopefully we should be able to retain BCG as an anchor client for at least 5 years,” said Achal Nath, Senior Partner, McKinsey.

Achal pooh-poohed the idea of a potential conflict of interest. “As long as they are paying us, we are happy to advice them. One of the firm’s core values is to place the client’s interest above everything else, so there is no question of  a conflict of interest” said Achal. The Senior Partner however did concede that in theory BCG can replace McKinsey as the number 1 firm at the end of the engagement. “Yeah, in theory they should. But the cool thing about consulting is that we are not required to put our money where our mouths are, so I am not gonna lose sleep over it,” he shrugged.

The McKinsey team deployed for this prestigious assignment has been persuaded by BCG to use the famous BCG Growth-Share Matrix for some of the analysis. “Yeah, we have our own tools but these guys seem quite sentimental about this stuff and insisted that we use it. So in the first phase of the engagement, we are gonna slot BCG consultants into dogs, cows, question marks, and stars so that the dogs can be kicked out and the stars can be promoted. We will then see what to do with the question marks,” said team lead and rising McKinsey star, Raghib Ahmed.

Pundits think BCG’s move is a master-stroke. “If McK indeed helps them become #1, great! If not, BCG can then tell prospective clients that Mck’s advice does not always produce results,” said Li Chin, a Hong Kong based business journalist. “Hmm… that’s an interesting line of thought. To be honest, we just want to get hold of some nice Mck slides, but that will help too,” said ‘Baba’ Haryal, Global Head, BCG to The UnReal Times.

Cook and Share A Pot of Curry - From Foodie's Kitchen :)

I am also participating in this event! :)

Cook and Share A Pot of Curry

Mr Brown's Curry Song - Hilarious!

The curry song by Mr Brown - Hilarious :)

A follow-up on my post of "Cook and Share A Pot of Curry on 21 Aug 2011". Nice adaptation of "Vincent". Have a good laugh! :)

Will you be cooking curry today? :) Participate in this meaningful event and spread the importance of intercultural understanding between countries and also between the different races and nationalities within one country!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=254441147918239

Foodie

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FT: The pasta equation

Source - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/7134bd64-c874-11e0-833c-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1VXfcSHlu

August 19, 2011 10:07 pm

The pasta equation

By George L. Legendre. Photographs by Stefano Graziani

In a new book, an architect uses mathematics to give a surreal vision of the varied world of pasta

Left: Galletti, use in tomato sauces. Right: Fusilli Lunghi Bucati, eat with meat ragu

The architect Marco Guarnieri and I share a professional address in a quiet lane off Bermondsey Street in south London. On most evenings we mill about the office’s communal table and exchange our impressions of the day’s crop of problems: delayed professional fees, contractual instructions and interim certificates. But first we sit ­­down and eat pasta.

Being Italian, Marco knows all about pasta. It takes him around eight minutes to prepare the simplest of pastasciuttas – a dish of spaghetti all’aglio, olio e peperoncino. Sadly, it takes us no more than a few minutes to finish our portions.

During one of these evenings, the concept for a book about pasta emerged. Its premise is simple: to work out the mathematical formulas of pasta and use the results to produce a culinary resource that is both beautiful and useful. My firm uses mathematics to model anything from pedestrian bridges to playground slides, so why not food too?

There is a huge canon of pasta, and often names or forms overlap, or become confused. Many regions in Italy produce lesser-known varieties of pasta, or spawn minor variations of established ones, then give them local names. This all makes classification a difficult task. Inspired by the science of phylogeny (the study of relatedness among groups of natural forms), we pared down the startling variety of pasta to 92 unique types, divided according to their morphological features, with each pasta illustrated by its parametric equations, a 3D diagram and a specially commissioned photograph by Stefano Graziani.

Left: Funghini, good in minestrone. Right: Fagottini, fill with ricotta or fruit

In the examples above, you can see the complexity of galletti, combining a bent longitudinal profile, a hollow cross section, striated surface and smooth edges; fusilli lunghi bucati, a distinctive member of the fusilli clan with a spring-like profile; funghini, with their dainty crenellated edges; and fagottini, pinched into shape from a circle of durum-wheat dough.

Combined, these representations capture the essence of each pasta, and give a concise, elegant and unique expression of a familiar thing. It is a surreal presentation of a wildly popular food, perhaps sometimes overlooked for its aesthetic depth and variety.

And does this scientific approach result in tastier pasta? Absolutely. The topological properties of each shape impacts how it absorbs heat and water, cooks, soaks in liquids, and retains a sauce – a shape may even be designed for a given sauce.

Our next project, to make a pasta derived from periodic equations, pasta ioli, is still a work in progress. But the pasta family, in all its shapes and sizes, is bound to keep growing.

‘Pasta by Design’ by George L. Legendre is published this month by Thames & Hudson, £16.95

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

Coca Cola "Heist" Superbowl Commercial

Apt illustration of team work. Enjoy!

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FT: The dull names of those who rose

The dull names of those who rose

By Lucy Kellaway

Published: May 1 2011 19:17 | Last updated: May 1 2011 19:17

Whenever I used to hear that someone had saddled a son with a name like Tarquin, Apollo or Silas, I always feared that the child would be teased at school. I now find I’ve been worrying about the wrong thing. The real damage done by an outlandish name doesn’t happen in the playground but in the boardroom.

LinkedIn has just consulted its database of 100m professionals and found that chief executives overwhelmingly have boring first names. When it comes to the corner office, Ed will do nicely but Tarquin will not do at all: the most popular CEO names are Peter, Bob, Jack, Bruce and Fred.

EDITOR’S CHOICE

Must I remember my kids’ ages just to log on? - May-08

Lucy Kellaway: Drivel is in the detail on pay - Apr-17

Lucy Kellaway: You might be a genius, but I won’t tell you - Apr-10

Writing is on the wall for ‘customer care’ - Mar-27

Lucy Kellaway: China conniptions - Mar-20

Lucy Kellaway: Business leaders are worse than they think - Mar-13

I wonder that I have never noticed this before. If I trawl my mind for the names of the most remarkable corporate titans, they all have unremarkable, monosyllabic first names – Bill (Gates), Paul (Allen), Jack (Welch), John (Chambers). If they were born with longer names, they make them shorter: Jeffrey becomes Jeff (Immelt); Robert becomes Bob (Nardelli, Horton); and Christopher becomes Chris (Gent).

Two syllables are only really acceptable when they are a cute version of a more formal name. There is Jamie (Dimon), Sandy (Weill), Larry (Bossidy). But three syllables are not acceptable at all. I can’t think of a single famous boss in the US or UK with a long first name. Even less can I think of one with a flamboyant or weird one. The only mad name that sticks in my mind is Loïk Le Floch-Prigent, the disgraced former head of Elf. But he doesn’t really count as he is a) French and b) has spent rather a long time in prison.

The LinkedIn research suggests different sorts of corporate jobs attract people with different names. If you have a cheery-chappy name such as Budd or Troy or Chip, then you will do well in sales, while a longer, straighter name such as Andrew will make you a perfect engineer. If, however, your name has seven or more letters, corporate life isn’t right for you at all. You should open a restaurant instead.

This idea – that your name shapes your career – passes under the name of “nominative determinism”. One of its supporters is the journalist David Brooks, who has dredged up the peculiar fact that people called Dennis are more likely than most to end up as dentists, while people called Lawrence are more likely to become lawyers. We want, he says, to do things that sound like us. I’ve often marvelled at how this idea works negatively: financial villains tend to have dodgy names – think of Madoff or Fuld, for example.

When I was at school, I thought such things a tremendous joke. “Have you read Great Falls by Eileen Dover?” I’d ask, and then scream with laughter. But real life turns out to be funnier than childish jokes: there was an article written on incontinence in the British Journal of Urology (vol 49, pp173-176, 1977) by J.W.  Splatt and D. Weedon.

Though the statistical evidence for nominative determinism may be a bit flaky, it figures. If we accept that the way people look affects their careers, then it isn’t unreasonable to think their names do too.

However, in the case of CEOs, what the Bob-Bill-Jack ascendancy tells us about corporate life is rather depressing. It says that diversity is bunkum: B-B-J puts foreigners at a clear disadvantage. Indeed, if you are born Gróf András István, but fancy running a big semiconductor company in the US, then you would be well advised to change your name to Andy Grove instead.

Indeed, the standard management guff tells us that the people who get ahead are the ones that are “unique” and “authentic”. Yet B-B-J shows this to be nonsense – if you want to get on, you need to sound and seem as unremarkable as everyone else.

B-B-J is evidence of a pervasive corporate lie. We are led to think that CEOs are friendly, when in fact it is their job to make people do things they don’t want to do and then fire them if they are not up to scratch. The matey little names – that seem to say “let’s have a couple of beers” – hoodwink us into thinking otherwise.

Finally, B-B-J tells us that it’s different for girls. The women CEOs on LinkedIn aren’t called Sue and Jill and Beth. They are Cynthia, Deborah and Carolyn; like my own CEO, Marjorie Scardino, they choose to use all three glorious syllables. Their names aren’t saying “let’s have a beer” but something more honest, if a bit more desperate: “Take me seriously.”

People often say that there will only be equality at the top when there are as many incompetent women CEOs as there are incompetent men. I’ve got another measure. Equality will be with us only when our female leaders ask to be called Debs and Marge.

[email protected]

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

NY Times: 36 Hours in Singapore

 

 

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April 28, 2011

36 Hours in Singapore

By ONDINE COHANE

From left Bikes for rent at Vanguard, on Robertson Quay; the observation deck of the Marina Bay Sands offers spectacular 360-degree views; in the kitchen at Dim Joy restaurant.

JUDGING from the number of cranes that dot the city’s skyline, Singapore is booming. In the last few years, casinos and hotels have sprung up; museums and galleries in former colonial landmarks have flung open their doors; and international designers have staked out prime real estate alongside up-and-comers just starting to make their fashion mark. Throughout the city, street vendors and sleek restaurants — new and well-established — serve up the city’s renowned mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian ethnic cuisines. And, best of all, sexy lounges and rooftop bars are helping the city-state shake off its formerly staid image.

Friday

4 p.m.
1) BIRD’S-EYE VIEW

There are few better symbols of Singapore’s recent success — or excess, depending on your perspective — than the year-old Marina Bay Sands (10 Bayfront Avenue; 65-6688-8868; marinabaysands.com), a gargantuan, three-towered complex with more than 2,500 rooms that looms over the city. Even if you aren’t staying at the hotel or hitting the casino, a ticket costing 20 Singapore dollars, or $16.50 at 1.22 Singapore dollars to the U.S. dollar, will provide access to the most impressive feature: SkyPark, an observation deck with 360-degree views. In one direction you’ll see the city’s expansive harbor; in the other, its sparkling skyline. Entry also includes a gander at what is billed as the world’s largest infinity pool, an architectural marvel that links the tops of the trio of towers.

5 p.m.
2) DUAL PURPOSED

The city’s new Museum of Contemporary Arts (27A Loewen Road; 65-6479-6622; mocaloewen.sg), known as MOCA, exemplifies Singapore’s ability to conserve existing colonial structures while creating cutting-edge interiors. In this case a former army barracks dating from the 1860s now showcases work from artists from all over Asia. Since opening in December the gallery has featured the Chinese provocateur Guo Jin and sculptors like Jiang Shuo and Wu Shaoxiang. This month the museum focuses on S. P. Hidayat, an up-and-coming Indonesian expressionist. In the fall a 2.5-acre sculpture garden will be unveiled.

8 p.m.
3) CULINARY ARTS

It’s not just for business deals that Singapore competes with Tokyo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. The food scene is also notable. One of its most impressive arrivals, Restaurant André (41 Bukit Pasoh Road; 65-6534-8880; restaurantandre.com), opened late last year in the Chinatown neighborhood with an eight-course seasonal tasting menu that combines Asian and European ingredients — Hokkaido scallop ravioli is served with cured purple shallots, basil and shiso flowers, while wagyu beef from Omi is accompanied by vegetables from France, all paired with wine from small producers in Burgundy and Alsace. The downside is the price (the tasting menu is 288 Singapore dollars; and wine pairings, 200 dollars). For a more reasonable but still excellent meal, head to Wild Rocket (10A Upper Wilkie Road; 65-6339-9448; wildrocket.com.sg), a foodie favorite where a four-course tasting menu includes dishes like soft-shell crab with Granny Smith salad and baked red grouper with French beans and laksa broth, and costs 62 dollars.

11 p.m.
4) NIGHTTIME MAKEOVER

With night-life options now ranging from multiplex techno clubs to more intimate spots that feature D.J.’s and specialty cocktails, the city is shedding its uptight reputation. In the Emily Hill complex, for example, a former colonial estate has been transformed into a multi-use compound that is home to artists’ studios and a theater school as well as Wild Oats restaurant and bar (11 Upper Wilkie Road; 65-6336-5413), where Singapore’s beautiful crowd convenes for drinks after dinner on a sprawling terrace. In Chinatown, Ying Yang (28 Ann Siang Road; 65-6808-2188), a black-and-white rooftop bar at the new Club hotel on Ann Siang Road, has also become a city hot spot — try the litchi martini for 18 Singapore dollars.

Saturday

10 a.m.
5) TRAINING WHEELS

After a coffee or fresh watermelon juice at Kith Café (7 Rodyk Street, nos. 1-33; 65-6341-9407; kith.com.sg) on Robertson Quay — where neighborhood families and fashionable couples convene for breakfast — rent a vintage single- speed French city bike or a Raleigh six-speed from Vanguard next door (65-6835-7228) for 10 Singapore dollars per hour. Singapore is still very orderly in many ways, which comes in handy when trying to navigate city traffic by bike; neighborhoods like Clark Quay and the Colonial Center are especially easy to explore. Just remember to get off your bike when going through the tunnels — or you might get a hefty fine for breaking a city law.

Noon
6) STREET SMARTS

A long tradition of strong regional cuisine and strict hygiene laws makes for some of the world’s best — and safest — street food. Nowadays most of the hawkers are concentrated in covered food halls so that ingredients are kept cool, and preparation methods and cleanliness can be kept to a uniform standard. At the Maxwell Road Food Center near Chinatown, vendors sell everything from dumplings to onion pancakes to dessert: at Tian Tian (No. 11), try the chicken rice; at Hokee (No. 79), the soup dumplings, and at No. 848, fresh fruit and juice (one, a bitter gourd and honey mix, promises “to reduce heatiness (sic).” Prices are 1 to 8 Singapore dollars.

2 p.m.
7) STYLE MAVENS

Many of the city’s promising young designers and fashion curators have set up shop in former chophouses along Haji Lane near Arab Street, a counterbalance to the more ubiquitous shopping malls in town. Know It Nothing (51 Haji Lane; 65-6392-5475; knowitnothing.com) showcases mostly men’s clothes like checked shirts, well-cut khakis and hats (all chosen for the balmy climate), as well as a more limited just-launched women’s line. Salad Shop (25 Haji Lane; 65-6299-5805) has chic basics like stylish summer dresses, many for less than 125 Singapore dollars, and Pluck (31/33 Haji Lane; 65-6396-4048; pluck.com.sg) is an emporium for home-grown talent with a collection that ranges from home accessories to bags and jewelry (and includes an ice-cream parlor on site).

5 p.m.
8) PASS THE CRUMPETS

For a taste of the British colonial past, book a table for high tea at the Tiffin Room at Raffles (1 Beach Road; 65-6337-1886; raffles.com), a hotel from the 1800s that hosted literary types like Rudyard Kipling and Noel Coward. Tea sandwiches, crumpets and a harp player, not to mention the white glove service, are the vestiges of a more rarefied era; 55 Singapore dollars a person for adults, 27.50 for kids.

8 p.m.
9) TABLE WITH A VIEW

Orchard Street, the city’s main shopping district, received a multimillion-dollar revamp in 2009 when it became home to another retail giant, a mall called the Ion Orchard. Now the Australian chef Luke Mangan has opened Salt Grill on the 55th and 56th floors (65-659-25118; saltgrill.com), with jaw-dropping views over the city. The menu includes dishes like yellowtail kingfish sashimi, a salad of seasonal baby vegetables, slow poached hen’s egg, buffalo mozzarella and candied walnuts, and more substantial entrees like a strip loin from Rangers Valley in Australia for 52 Singapore dollars. The combination of the panorama and the food has made Salt Grill one of the city’s hardest reservations to snag.

Sunday

10 a.m.
10) GREEN SPACE

Join local residents on a Sunday morning stroll in the city’s impressive Botanic Gardens (www.sbg.org.sg; 5 Singapore dollars for access to the orchid area, otherwise admission is free), a 150-acre-plus green space with meandering pathways, pretty lakes and an excellent variety of local plants and trees. Don’t miss the Orchid Garden with more than 1,000 species and 2,000 hybrids of the show-stopping blooms.

Noon
11) SWEET AND SAVORY

Forget brunch. Dim sum at the aptly named Dim Joy (80 Neil Road; 65-6220-6986; www.dimjoy.com/home.html) involves plates of delicate handmade dumplings based on seasonal ingredients from local markets like delicate char siew so (4 Singapore dollars) and chive and pork wor tip, as well as pan-fried radish cake (3.50 dollars), stewed pork belly and mui choy buns (8 dollars). Leave room for the sweet custard buns.

IF YOU GO

With spectacular views over the city and a secluded pool area, the newly renovated Ritz-Carlton Millenia (7 Raffles Avenue; 65-6-337-8888; ritzcarlton.com) is a luxury option that’s also child friendly. Doubles start at 380 Singapore dollars, or about $312.

A few boutique hotels have sprung up in the last couple of years, including the Club (28 Ann Siang Road; 65-6808-2188; theclub.com.sg; doubles from 225 Singapore dollars) in a historic 1800s building; the Scarlet (33 Erskine Road; 65-6511-3333; thescarlethotel.com) in Chinatown; small rooms from 320 dollars; and Wanderlust (2 Dickson Road; 65-6396-3322; wanderlusthotel.com), the latest arrival in a 1920s building in little India; opening rates from 180 dollars.

IF YOU GO

With spectacular views over the city and a secluded pool area, the newly renovated Ritz-Carlton Millenia (7 Raffles Avenue; 65-6-337-8888; ritzcarlton.com) is a luxury option that’s also child friendly. Doubles start at 380 Singapore dollars, or about $312.

A few boutique hotels have sprung up in the last couple of years, including the Club (28 Ann Siang Road; 65-6808-2188; theclub.com.sg; doubles from 225 Singapore dollars) in a historic 1800s building; the Scarlet (33 Erskine Road; 65-6511-3333; thescarlethotel.com) in Chinatown; small rooms from 320 dollars; and Wanderlust (2 Dickson Road; 65-6396-3322; wanderlusthotel.com), the latest arrival in a 1920s building in little India; opening rates from 180 dollars.

Calvin and Hobbes: Dreaded moments - food you hate

We have our share of such dreaded moments... forced to eat what's on our plate...

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ST: Pen pals for life

This article resonates with me :D

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Lifestyle

Home > Lifestyle > Reflect > Story

Apr 24, 2011

Pen pals for life

Every now and then, I must go to stationery shops to buy pens - the unsung heroes in this digital age

By Ignatius Low

-- ST ILLUSTRATIONS: ADAM LEE

 

Last week, I went to the bookstore Kinokuniya at lunchtime, but it was not to buy a book or to browse magazines.

Once in a while, I get this urge that I cannot control. I simply have to go to a stationery store and buy pens.

It's been a guilty habit of mine since I was a child. And over the decades, I have found that this pleasurable and borderline fetishist experience hasn't changed much.

This is why I am dedicating this column to the unsung Japanese corporate heroes of my life that have too long been under- appreciated.

In this digital age, who even bothers to remember the difference between trusty old Pilot, its marginally flashier cousin Zebra and unfortunately named Uni-ball?

Yet they soldier on and produce a mind-boggling array of products that greet you at stores.

In fact, every time I go to the pen department of a stationery store, I find that a few more intriguing sub-species of a particular genus of pen have emerged.

If I'm lucky, a new technological breakthrough in ink or gel has led to the formation of a new genus or family altogether.

It's all for the advancement of the whole order, I think to myself, as I happily attack the shiny plastic army before me.

I inevitably start with Pilot pens because they hold, for me, many bittersweet memories of my time in school when I used their trendy Hi-Tecpoint V5 liquid ink pens by the carton.

I started with pens such as the Papermate Kilometrico (ugh!) in primary school but soon realised that while they cost less than a dollar, these pens were tough on a writer like me.

I tend to press down so hard on the paper I leave an imprint several sheets in, so both skinny pens and ballpoint pens make my fingers ache. Besides, they were ruining my wonderful handwriting.

So the first time I tried a Pilot Hi-tecpoint V5, it was like my entire inner being had suddenly become unclogged.

Never mind that my hard-writing style bent and even broke the nibs, the words came out smooth and beautiful. I felt I could write forever with the thing, until of course the ink in the super cool transparent window ran out.

It got to a point where I became convinced that my grades would actually suffer if I went into the exam halls with the wrong type of pen.

Since then, it's been an unstoppable habit - from V5 to V-Ball Grip, G2-EX to the signature Signature Pen. In the 1990s, I became a fan of the Mitsubishi-owned Uni-ball, going through countless versions of the Signo before arriving at the sublime Vision Elite.

I hover, as I always do, for a good half hour at Kinokuniya, trying out all of these instruments, as if on a voyage through history.

I used to wonder what I should write when I test a pen on the 'testing paper' the stores tape to the glass shelves.

I used to sign my name, until I realised one day that this - or my handwriting - would give me away too easily as the class pen nerd. Now I just do 'waves'.

I try the Zebras again (confirming that I don't like them for some irrational reason) and glance very, very discreetly at the Pentels with their girly J-pop colours. When no one is looking, I've been known to bust a couple of pink ones out and write 'Takeshi Forever!'.

Finally, I bought three Uni-ball Jetstream rollerball pens that pumped out a unique shade of dark blue on a lovely 0.4mm writing line. It's smooth as butter with rubber grips to die for and has the oh-so-perfect 'new sensation air suspension click'.

Appetite sated, I ended my ritual by sitting alone in a cafe afterwards and spending 10 minutes carefully peeling away the price tags, so as not to mar their stylish blue-grey plastic bodies.

My friends and colleagues have often asked me why I don't just save myself the trouble and buy a 'proper' pen, such as a Parker, Sheaffer or even a Mont Blanc.

If you're successful, your pen should say it, they argue.

Besides, a nice pen can also impart a sense of occasion. You use it to sign your name on important documents, said one friend, slightly scandalised that I signed the papers to buy my house with a $2 pen.

I don't know. There have been brief flirtations with [ixi:z] pens (a 'must have' for all cool kids in the 1980s) and some Lamy pens by design gurus such as Konstantin Grcic, but I have not really found reason over the years to spend more than $5 on a writing instrument.

Perhaps it is because in my profession, pens are utilitarian objects that we tend to chuck around and often misplace.

Maybe I have, like many others, come to mentally associate designer pens (especially Mont Blanc) with pushy sales people and insurance agents in their matching suits.

But I think I have resisted it mostly because I love the sacred ritual of pen buying too much.

I've studiously avoided stationery shops in Tokyo for this very reason - afraid I will get sucked into a vortex of pen-testing delight, never to return.

The sad thing is that although writing pens have more or less survived the IT wave for decades, I sense they are now starting to lose the battle with technology.

The inks are now water-resistant, quick-drying, eraseable and even eco-friendly, and there are state-of-the-art ink flow systems even for simple ballpoint pens - but these innovations are low-tech compared to the writing technologies in computers and tablet PCs today.

More and more schools are ditching paper altogether and migrating their lesson materials and student assignments entirely onto standard-issue notebooks and iPads.

In offices all around the world, there is hardly any need to physically write anything on paper. Applications and proposals are put up and approved all electronically.

Even journalists are discarding their pens and notebooks in favour of digital recording devices and transcribing interviews directly into computer files.

These days, the urge to go and buy pens at the store usually coincides with some special assignment.

Last week's outing, for example, was inspired by my being asked to judge some essays for a competition. (I resisted the temptation, this time, to buy a red pen.)

I write these words not to urge people to bring the practice of physical writing back, but to pay tribute to an underrated joy that it brought.

The world must of course move on, but it was great while it lasted.

[email protected]

Boing Boing: Found Sign- Why the Internet is No Substitute for a Library

Chance upon this on Boing Boing. Interesting.

===

Found Sign: Why the Internet is No Substitute for a Library

Xeni Jardin at 11:59 AM Thursday, Apr 14, 2011 

 

Joe Sabia says, "This is a sign that hangs from the wall of my local public library in Milford, Connecticut. It's a large but quaint building occupied by maybe 6 or so people, and 3 elderly kind women at the check out desk." Click for larger size.

Update: Boing Boing pal Seth Godin writes,

Apparently, it comes from this book which is in itself quite an amusing read, as far as the reviews indicate...

Culture

WSJ: How to Get a Real Education

THE SATURDAY ESSAY
APRIL 9, 2011

How to Get a Real Education

Forget art history and calculus. Most students need to learn how to run a business, says Scott Adams. 

By SCOTT ADAMS

I understand why the top students in America study physics, chemistry, calculus and classic literature. The kids in this brainy group are the future professors, scientists, thinkers and engineers who will propel civilization forward. But why do we make B students sit through these same classes? That's like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn't it make more sense to teach B students something useful, like entrepreneurship?

Scott Adams

I speak from experience because I majored in entrepreneurship at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y. Technically, my major was economics. But the unsung advantage of attending a small college is that you can mold your experience any way you want.

There was a small business on our campus called The Coffee House. It served beer and snacks, and featured live entertainment. It was managed by students, and it was a money-losing mess, subsidized by the college. I thought I could make a difference, so I applied for an opening as the so-called Minister of Finance. I landed the job, thanks to my impressive interviewing skills, my can-do attitude and the fact that everyone else in the solar system had more interesting plans.

The drinking age in those days was 18, and the entire compensation package for the managers of The Coffee House was free beer. That goes a long way toward explaining why the accounting system consisted of seven students trying to remember where all the money went. I thought we could do better. So I proposed to my accounting professor that for three course credits I would build and operate a proper accounting system for the business. And so I did. It was a great experience. Meanwhile, some of my peers were taking courses in art history so they'd be prepared to remember what art looked like just in case anyone asked.

One day the managers of The Coffee House had a meeting to discuss two topics. First, our Minister of Employment was recommending that we fire a bartender, who happened to be one of my best friends. Second, we needed to choose a leader for our group. On the first question, there was a general consensus that my friend lacked both the will and the potential to master the bartending arts. I reluctantly voted with the majority to fire him.

But when it came to discussing who should be our new leader, I pointed out that my friend—the soon-to-be-fired bartender—was tall, good-looking and so gifted at b.s. that he'd be the perfect leader. By the end of the meeting I had persuaded the group to fire the worst bartender that any of us had ever seen…and ask him if he would consider being our leader. My friend nailed the interview and became our Commissioner. He went on to do a terrific job. That was the year I learned everything I know about management.

Read More

• Turning the Classroom Upside Down

At about the same time, this same friend, along with my roommate and me, hatched a plan to become the student managers of our dormitory and to get paid to do it. The idea involved replacing all of the professional staff, including the resident assistant, security guard and even the cleaning crew, with students who would be paid to do the work. We imagined forming a dorm government to manage elections for various jobs, set out penalties for misbehavior and generally take care of business. And we imagined that the three of us, being the visionaries for this scheme, would run the show.

We pitched our entrepreneurial idea to the dean and his staff. To our surprise, the dean said that if we could get a majority of next year's dorm residents to agree to our scheme, the college would back it.

It was a high hurdle, but a loophole made it easier to clear. We only needed a majority of students who said they planned to live in the dorm next year. And we had plenty of friends who were happy to plan just about anything so long as they could later change their minds. That's the year I learned that if there's a loophole, someone's going to drive a truck through it, and the people in the truck will get paid better than the people under it.

The dean required that our first order of business in the fall would be creating a dorm constitution and getting it ratified. That sounded like a nightmare to organize. To save time, I wrote the constitution over the summer and didn't mention it when classes resumed. We held a constitutional convention to collect everyone's input, and I listened to two hours of diverse opinions. At the end of the meeting I volunteered to take on the daunting task of crafting a document that reflected all of the varied and sometimes conflicting opinions that had been aired. I waited a week, made copies of the document that I had written over the summer, presented it to the dorm as their own ideas and watched it get approved in a landslide vote. That was the year I learned everything I know about getting buy-in.

“Why do we make B students sit through the same classes as their brainy peers? That's like trying to train your cat to do your taxes—a waste of time and money. Wouldn't it make sense to teach them something useful instead?”

For the next two years my friends and I each had a private room at no cost, a base salary and the experience of managing the dorm. On some nights I also got paid to do overnight security, while also getting paid to clean the laundry room. At the end of my security shift I would go to The Coffee House and balance the books.

My college days were full of entrepreneurial stories of this sort. When my friends and I couldn't get the gym to give us space for our informal games of indoor soccer, we considered our options. The gym's rule was that only organized groups could reserve time. A few days later we took another run at it, but this time we were an organized soccer club, and I was the president. My executive duties included filling out a form to register the club and remembering to bring the ball.

By the time I graduated, I had mastered the strange art of transforming nothing into something. Every good thing that has happened to me as an adult can be traced back to that training. Several years later, I finished my MBA at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. That was the fine-tuning I needed to see the world through an entrepreneur's eyes.

If you're having a hard time imagining what an education in entrepreneurship should include, allow me to prime the pump with some lessons I've learned along the way.

Combine Skills. The first thing you should learn in a course on entrepreneurship is how to make yourself valuable. It's unlikely that any average student can develop a world-class skill in one particular area. But it's easy to learn how to do several different things fairly well. I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The "Dilbert" comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people. The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person. That's how value is created.

Fail Forward. If you're taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time. The trick is to get paid while you're doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later. I failed at my first career in banking. I failed at my second career with the phone company. But you'd be surprised at how many of the skills I learned in those careers can be applied to almost any field, including cartooning. Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle.

Find the Action. In my senior year of college I asked my adviser how I should pursue my goal of being a banker. He told me to figure out where the most innovation in banking was happening and to move there. And so I did. Banking didn't work out for me, but the advice still holds: Move to where the action is. Distance is your enemy.

Scott Adams

Attract Luck. You can't manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you. To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn't work, which can be 90% of the time, do something else. Luck finds the doers. Readers of the Journal will find this point obvious. It's not obvious to a teenager.

Conquer Fear. I took classes in public speaking in college and a few more during my corporate days. That training was marginally useful for learning how to mask nervousness in public. Then I took the Dale Carnegie course. It was life-changing. The Dale Carnegie method ignores speaking technique entirely and trains you instead to enjoy the experience of speaking to a crowd. Once you become relaxed in front of people, technique comes automatically. Over the years, I've given speeches to hundreds of audiences and enjoyed every minute on stage. But this isn't a plug for Dale Carnegie. The point is that people can be trained to replace fear and shyness with enthusiasm. Every entrepreneur can use that skill.

Write Simply. I took a two-day class in business writing that taught me how to write direct sentences and to avoid extra words. Simplicity makes ideas powerful. Want examples? Read anything by Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett.

Learn Persuasion. Students of entrepreneurship should learn the art of persuasion in all its forms, including psychology, sales, marketing, negotiating, statistics and even design. Usually those skills are sprinkled across several disciplines. For entrepreneurs, it makes sense to teach them as a package.

That's my starter list for the sort of classes that would serve B students well. The list is not meant to be complete. Obviously an entrepreneur would benefit from classes in finance, management and more.

Remember, children are our future, and the majority of them are B students. If that doesn't scare you, it probably should.

—Mr. Adams is the creator of "Dilbert."

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

WSJ: What in the Word? Rules For Better Punmanship

WORD CRAFT
APRIL 9, 2011

What in the Word? Rules For Better Punmanship 

By JOHN POLLACK

The hardened vegetables, stalkers on death row, began chanting: "Lettuce out!" A gourd, sensing a plot, scanned the celery, but Cool Head Luke was already over the garden wall and into his getaway car. A Pinto, it wasn't mulch to look at, but the hot tomato behind the wheel sure was. Luke gave her a peck and told her to floret. "I'm a new man, Julie Anne," he said. "Head for Boston. I can blend in there—just arugula guy."

View Full Image

Getty Images

March 19 was National Corndog Day

For readers who can't stand puns, this tale of escape is both crime and punishment. For punsters, it is a cornucopia of 20 puns. But in the perpetual war of wit between those who would steal meanings and those who would lock them up, there is a middle ground—rules to pun by, most of which I've just broken.

Puns are at their best when spoken, because they derive most of their power from ambiguity—ambiguity that is often diminished in the act of writing. Spelling a word requires us to favor one meaning over another, which saps a pun of dual interpretations as soon as it is read. This is one reason puns enjoyed their heyday in English prior to the spread of the printing press.

Shakespeare and his audiences loved puns, both comic and serious—think, for example, of Richard III's unhappiness with the "glorious summer" made by "this sun of York." Since the Elizabethan era, though, the standardization of English and the pursuit of scientific certainty have elbowed the unruly pun out to the very margins of acceptability.

To avoid making an unwelcome pun, focus first on the meanings or associations the pun will evoke and only secondarily on humor. Contrary to popular perceptions, a pun doesn't have to draw a laugh or a groan. Its primary role is to serve as an intellectual hyperlink, a form of shorthand that lets us pack more meaning into fewer words. This is not an argument against funny puns, but effective humor usually flows from unexpected meaning. In 2006, for example, the New York Post announced President George W. Bush's dismissal of his long-serving Secretary of Defense with the headline RUMS FELLED.

Also, never underestimate the intelligence of your audience. As listeners, we constantly intuit meaning from incomplete and approximate information; this is intrinsic to every conversation. It's why we can hear "lettuce" and, in the right context, understand it as "let us." That said, if a listener or reader somehow misses or ignores your wit, just let it go quietly. Even a fine bottle of wine will languish from time to time, overlooked in the cellar.

And just because you can make a pun doesn't mean that you should. Quality counts, and others will consider you wittier for being selective in your wordplay. Remember, puns generally make great appetizers but rarely fare well as conversational entrees, so choose your puns carefully.

Finally, pun with pride. Not only do we need more levity in this world, but we owe our very literacy to the humble pun. It was frustrated ancient scribes who first realized the limitations of literal pictographs and began decoupling and recombining sounds, symbols and meanings—in short, punning—to invent history's first true alphabet. Without puns, you wouldn't be reading this newspaper—unless it were in hieroglyphs.

So the next time you're inspired to pun, make it count. With practice, it's as easy as pi.

—Mr. Pollack's new book is "The Pun Also Rises: How the Humble Pun Revolutionized Language, Changed History and Made Wordplay More than Some Antics." —He is a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page C12

Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Mary and Max

Mary and Max: Funny, lovely, dark and sad - all in one movie. Love it.

A tale of friendship between two unlikely pen pals: Mary, a lonely, eight-year-old girl living in the suburbs of Melbourne, and Max, a forty-four-year old, severely obese man living in New York.

Director:

Adam Elliot

Writer:

Adam Elliot

Stars:

Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Eric Bana

NY Times: When the Data Struts Its Stuff

 

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April 2, 2011

When the Data Struts Its Stuff

By NATASHA SINGER

IN an uncharted world of boundless data, information designers are our new navigators.

They are computer scientists, statisticians, graphic designers, producers and cartographers who map entire oceans of data and turn them into innovative visual displays, like rich graphs and charts, that help both companies and consumers cut through the clutter. These gurus of visual analytics are making interactive data synonymous with attractive data.

“Statistics,” says Dr. Hans Rosling, a professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, “is now the sexiest subject around.”

Dr. Rosling is a founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit group based in Stockholm that works to educate the public about disparities in health and wealth around the world — by offering animated interactive statistics online that help visitors spot trends on their own.

Hit the play button and an animated graphic, called Gapminder World, shows a constellation of brightly colored bubbles, each representing a different country, bouncing along over two centuries. Without ever having to view yawn-inducing numbers on gross domestic product per capita, you can watch some countries, like the United States, rapidly growing healthier and wealthier before your eyes while smaller bubbles, for countries like Congo, rise on the life expectancy axis even as they dip on the income line.

 
The advanced animation has let Dr. Rosling make wonky statistics about poverty as intuitive and potentially fascinating for viewers as a nature program about the Serengeti on TV. “If we show a herd of zebras, and one zebra has a bad leg and lags behind, you can see that immediately,” says Dr. Rosling, whose video clip from the BBC on health and wealth statistics has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube. “If one country gets left behind, you can see that, too.”

Visual analytics play off the idea that the brain is more attracted to and able to process dynamic images than long lists of numbers. But the goal of information visualization is not simply to represent millions of bits of data as illustrations. It is to prompt visceral comprehension, moments of insight that make viewers want to learn more.

“The purpose of visualization,” says Ben Shneiderman, founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at the University of Maryland, “is insight, not pictures.”

The growing field has implications for companies, governments, academic institutions, nonprofit groups, news organizations and marketers — just about anybody who tries to convey huge amounts of information in visual, interactive forms. But advances, he says, come with both benefits and risks.

On the benefit side, people become more engaged when they can filter information that is presented visually and make discoveries on their own.

On the risk side, Professor Shneiderman says, tools as powerful as visualizations have the potential to mislead or confuse consumers. And privacy implications arise, he says, as increasing amounts of personal, housing, medical and financial data become widely accessible, searchable and viewable.

“The visual analytics research community works on these issues,” he says, “but more needs to be done.”

In the 1990s, Professor Shneiderman developed tree mapping, which uses interlocking rectangles to represent complicated data sets. The rectangles are sized and colored to convey different kinds of information, like revenue or geographic region, says Jim Bartoo, the chief executive of the Hive Group, a software company that uses tree mapping to help companies and government agencies monitor operational data. When executives or plant managers see the nested rectangles grouped together, he adds, they should be able to immediately spot anomalies or trends.

In one tree-map visualization of a sales department on the Hive Group site, red tiles represent underperforming sales representatives while green tiles represent people who exceeded their sales quotas. So it’s easy to identify the best sales rep in the company: the biggest green tile. But viewers can also reorganize the display — by region, say, or by sales manager — to see whether patterns exist that explain why some employees are falling behind.

“It’s the ability of the human brain to pick out size and color” that makes tree mapping so intuitive, Mr. Bartoo says. Information visualization, he adds, “suddenly starts answering questions that you didn’t know you had.”

For entertainment value, the Hive Group has also posted a tree map of the 100 most popular songs on iTunes, updated every 24 hours.

The fact that serious software companies are now tree mapping the pop charts is a sign that data visualization is no longer just a useful tool for researchers and corporations. It’s also an entertainment and marketing vehicle.

In 2009, for example, Stamen Design, a technology and design studio in San Francisco, created a live visualization of Twitter traffic during the MTV Video Music awards. In the animated graphic, floating bubbles, each displaying a photograph of a celebrity, expanded or contracted depending on the volume of Twitter activity about each star. The project provided a visceral way for viewers to understand which celebrities dominated Twitter talk in real time, says Eric Rodenbeck, the founder and creative director of Stamen Design.

Information visualization has changed substantially in the 10 years since the studio has been in business, Mr. Rodenbeck says. Designers once created visual representations of data that would steer viewers to information that seemed the most important or newsworthy, he says; now they create visualizations that contain attractive overview images and then let users direct their own interactive experience — wherever it may take them.

“It’s not about leading with a certain view anymore,” he says. “It’s about delivering the view that gets the most participation and engagement.”

 

TO that end, the company has just introduced an initial version of mondowindow.com, a site that shows airline passengers a detailed satellite map of the landscape they are flying over — and lets them direct the view.

For passengers with Wi-Fi access who enter their airline and flight number on the site, mondowindow.com displays more than just the terrain below. It also offers information bubbles highlighting different place names, local landmarks and tourist attractions like schools and botanical gardens, and photos of native fauna, like a blue jay.

On the ground, we may live in a world of T.M.I. — too much information. But Stamen Design is betting that we will relish rich images of ground data when we are flying several miles high.

The Telegraph: Robert Bunsen's birthday marked with Google Doodle

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/8417723/Robert-Bunsens-birthday-marked-with-Google-Doodle.html

Google

Robert Bunsen's birthday marked with Google Doodle

Robert Bunsen, the German scientist who developed the Bunsen burner, has been honoured on what would have been his 200th birthday with a Google Doodle.

Robert Bunsen's Google Doodle 

8:00AM BST 31 Mar 2011

19 Comments

The distinctive laboratory gas burner used by generations of schoolchildren in science lessons takes centre stage in an animated graphic on Google's home page.

It shows a flame changing colour from blue to purple as a multicoloured chemicals bubble in a series of pots and test tubes while steam flies out of a coffee pot.

Born in Gottingen, Germany, on March 31 1811, Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen was a prominent chemist in his day who discovered the elements caesium and rubidium and developed the Bunsen cell battery.

But he is best remembered for the distinctive gas burner he developed with his laboratory assistant Peter Desaga in 1854 and 1855 to study the colour spectrum of different heated elements.

It was during the construction of new lab facilities at Heidelberg University that he came up with the idea.

ST: OMG! Look this up in the dictionary

News

Home > News > World > Story

Mar 27, 2011

OMG! Look this up in the dictionary

Internet-inspired and other new abbreviations make it to Oxford English Dictionary's online update

 

London - OMG! The exclamatory online abbreviation has won the approval of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The term - short for 'Oh my God' or 'Oh my gosh' - is one of dozens of new entries in the authoritative reference book's latest online update.

Other Internet-inspired expressions given the stamp of approval include LOL, 'laughing out loud'; IMHO, 'in my humble opinion'; and BFF, 'best friends forever'.

Dictionary compilers say that although the terms are associated with modern electronic communications, some are surprisingly old. The first confirmed use of 'OMG' was in a letter in 1917.

'Things people think are new words normally have a longer history,' says Mr Graeme Diamond, the dictionary's principal editor for new words.

'Who knows how many people from 1917 onwards were using that term, in correspondence that we just don't have access to. With the advent of the mass media we have access to much more personal information.'

That helps explain a flood of new terms from the online world, including ego-surfing - the practice of searching for your own name on the Internet - and dot bomb, a failed Internet company.

But not all the new abbreviations originated online. One new entry is wag, for 'wives and girlfriends'. First used in 2002 to describe the female partners of the England football team, it is now used to denote the glamorous and extravagant female partners of male celebrities.

The new update includes about 900 new words and meanings, from 'flat white' - a milky espresso-based drink originating from Australia and New Zealand - to 'muffin top', defined as 'a protuberance of flesh above the waistband of a tight pair of trousers'.

The dictionary includes a new entry for 'heart' as a verb, a casual equivalent of 'to love' that is represented with a symbol, as seen on millions of souvenirs proclaiming 'I (heart) New York.' Editors publish updates to the online Oxford every three months.

The Internet version of the dictionary, launched in 2000, gets two million hits a month from subscribers and may eventually replace the mammoth 20-volume printed Oxford English Dictionary, last published in 1989.

By the time lexicographers finish revising and updating a new edition - a gargantuan task that takes a decade or more - publishers doubt there will be a market for the printed form. By then, a multi-volume printed work may be - to use another new OED entry - TMI: too much information.

Reuters

The dictionary includes a new entry for 'heart' as a verb, a casual equivalent of 'to love' that is represented with a symbol, as seen on millions of souvenirs proclaiming 'I (heart) New York.'

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LOL, TEACHERS WON'T ACCEPT IT

Just because the Oxford English Dictionary has accepted abbreviations such as OMG, LOL and BFF and usage of 'heart' as a verb to mean 'to love', it does not mean that English language and literature teachers in Singapore are prepared to accept them in students' schoolwork and essays.

Five teachers The Sunday Times spoke to unanimously agreed that they would penalise a student who uses the abbreviations in essays.

Most of them, like Mrs Shamini Rajandran of St Margaret's Secondary School, cited reasons of formality.

'Any writing piece is a formal piece of work, and these words are rather informal, the sort you would use in an e-mail or SMS.

'They're definitely not acceptable in national exams, so why allow the use of them at school level? Regardless, I'm personally quite traditional and particular about these sorts of things, and wouldn't allow them.'

And what about students who argue that they should be allowed to use these newfangled words because they are in the dictionary?

An English department head of an all-boys secondary school, who wanted to be known only as

Mr Liang, had this to say: 'The four-letter word is in the dictionary, but that doesn't mean you use it in your schoolwork, right?'

Heather Marie Lee

ST: 'Cupid' course - Participants will be taught how to matchmake their single friends

:D

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Mar 26, 2011

'Cupid' course

Participants will be taught how to matchmake their single friends

By Carolyn Quek

An SDN survey of 1,500 singles last year found that:

• Almost half felt the best way for them to find a partner was through friends

• One in 10 said their family's informal introductions would be the best way to find a mate

Married couple Ian Lin and Liang Yiwen (background) brought their friends Tom Ng and Lio Weiyun together. Mr Ng and Ms Lio are now engaged. Ms Liang feels that pairing two people is a matter of common sense. -- ST PHOTO: NEO XIAOBIN

View more photos

 FRIENDS and relatives of singles are being sought after to play Cupid.

The Government, anxious to get more people hitched and into nesting mode to arrest the falling birth rate here, even wants to help them learn the fine art of matchmaking.

What love is about, the science of attraction, how to set up their friends with panache, and the advice to dish out on what to wear and what to say on that first date - these are topics to be covered in a course run by the Social Development Network (SDN) and to be taught by counsellors or social workers.

It will cost an aspiring Cupid about $20 to learn the moves.

The reason the course is targeted at members of the public is that singles prefer to meet a potential partner through family or friends.

A survey by the SDN last year found that nearly half of the 1,500 singles who responded wanted to meet that someone special through friends; 10 per cent preferred introductions through family.

Minister of State for Community Development, Youth and Sports Yu-Foo Yee Shoon said yesterday at the opening of Real Loves 2011, a week-long slew of events to celebrate marriage, that the pilot run of the course in July will be for marriage solemnisers, because they already show an interest in helping others find love and can spread the word about the course to grassroots workers.

Mrs Yu-Foo said families are now smaller and rely less on the ties that used to bind entire kampungs and spurred villagers to step in to matchmake eligible men and women in their midst.

Today, formal channels like matchmaking agencies do the job, she said.

She had some numbers to show that the exercise is more than a passing amusement: The number of singles is growing. They now make up 32.2 per cent of the resident population aged 15 and older, up from 30.5 per cent in 2000.

If the 61-year-old sounds evangelistic, it is because her own marriage is the result of a crack-shot Cupid. She said she met her husband Yu Lee Wu, now a 64-year-old retired professor, through friends.

Meanwhile, among those who are already playing matchmaker are some who are open to attending the course.

Credit analyst Liang Yiwen, 27, and her research-engineer husband Ian Lin, 28, already claim one success in matchmaking - without formal training: Their friends Lio Weiyun, 27, and Tom Ng, 28, who they brought together last year, are now engaged to be married.

Ms Lio, a human resources executive, and Mr Ng, a bank analyst, met during preparations for the wedding between Ms Liang and Mr Lin last October.

Ms Liang said: 'I'd find out from Weiyun how she felt about Tom, and my husband would tell him. They were shy so we became the middlemen, relaying messages to the other party.'

Ms Liang said she would consider attending the course, although pairing two people was a matter of 'common sense', and the fee may be a deterrent.

Online media-firm manager Yang Huiwen, 24, agreed the fee was a turn-off but thought some tips were worth picking up, going by her 'zero success rate' with matchmaking five couples.

The chief executive of Lunch Actually, Ms Violet Lim, said she does not feel threatened by the programme because a dating agency like hers offers a wider pool of contacts than friends or family can.

'Friends may be well-meaning, but they have their own lives and jobs so the help they give may not be consistent. I think, ultimately, it's good to equip those who are interested in matchmaking with skills, because we all want to see singles married off as well.'

[email protected]

Nuclear Boy

うんち・おならで例える原発解説

A rather light hearted piece amidst the chaos of the nuclear incident...

Pray and hope that it will soon be over.

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