25. November 2008 by admin.

Some things are just mind-bending when you think of them. For instance, "I always tell the truth.  I’m lying."  Here’s another one: clothes that, even when submerged for 2 MONTHS IN WATER, don’t get wet. 

How is it possible for clothes to always stay dry? Through the use of nanotechnology.  Not content bringing us good, expensive chocolate and expensive watches, the Swiss have now given us clothes that, some day, you won’t be able to spill soup on no matter how hard you try.

Here’s an extract of an article about this from NewScientist:

If you were to soak even your best raincoat underwater for two months it would be wet though at the end of the experience. But a new waterproof material developed by Swiss chemists would be as dry as the day it went in.

Lead researcher Stefan Seeger at the University of Zurich says the fabric, made from polyester fibres coated with millions of tiny silicone filaments, is the most water-repellent clothing-appropriate material ever created.

Drops of water stay as spherical balls on top of the fabric (see image, right) and a sheet of the material need only be tilted by 2 degrees from horizontal for them to roll off like marbles. A jet of water bounces off the fabric without leaving a trace (see second image).

You can read the rest here.

What will they think of of next? How about food that tastes great going down but doesn’t actually break down into fatty substances in your bloodstream?

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18. November 2008 by admin.

I watch a fair number of movies on DVD, and am always on the look out for films that have a visual style that is distinctive and compelling.  Guillermo del Toro’s newest film, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" is a stunning film at least visually.   The cinematography in this film is distinctive, with a great color palette, and an otherworldly feel that doesn’t seem gratuitous or contrived. I think it is more visually compelling than "Iron Man", "The Dark Knight" or just about any other movie I’ve seen so far this year.

The film itself is well done, as big hero films go.  Ron Perlman, who plays Hellboy is quite good, as are Selma Blair and the rest of the cast (which includes Jeffrey Tambor and John Hurt, among others).  Best of all, you don’t really have to see the first "Hellboy" movie to have this one make sense, though it helps.

I haven’t yet bought a Blu-ray player, but when I do (sometime between now and the end of the year), this will certainly be one of the films I buy in that format.

del Toro is shaping up to be a first-class director, with a very distinctive vision.  I think of him as a Latin Tim Burton.  del Toro is currently working on a 2 movie treatment of "The Hobbit", produced by Peter Jackson (who did the Lord of the Rings Trilogy).  I can’t wait to see what he does with Tolkien…

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18. November 2008 by admin.

Pretty spooky that robots have come this far, no?  Not too many more years before they will walk among us, indistinguishable from Scientologists, Republicans and self-help gurus.  You can read more here.

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17. November 2008 by admin.

Once in a while, there are commercials which advance the state visual effects or just communicate messages in a particularly profound way.  This commercial is one of them–Toshiba Timesculpture.

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11. November 2008 by admin.

The new Dubai Mall:

You’ve got to love the United Arab Emirates.  When there at 1 Billion people either starving to death or permanently malnourished, and when the financial markets are crashing, UAE is building everything it can think of ;  and not just grandiose, but the ultimate-over-the-top, including the world’s tallest buildings, resorts shaped like the countries of the world and now a gigantic mall.

Here’s a press release for what has to be the most ostentatious and probably the most luxe mall in the world (scroll down to see the bolded descriptions of the attractions):

Here are some statistics to warm you up:

Interesting Facts – The Dubai Mall (as of November 2008)
•    Over 13,800 tonnes of structural steel has already been deployed to date – this alone amasses to more than the total amount of steel used in the Eiffel Tower in Paris.
•    External pre-cast works completed with over 2,600 pieces of external pre-cast erected.
•    Over 1.93 million sq ft of stone and tile works has been laid.
•    The Dubai Mall has a current man-power of 13,346.
•    The number of man hours clocked to date on The Dubai Mall is over 1.38 million.

25 October, 2008

Dubai, UAE; November 4, 2008: The future of shopping and leisure is here. The Dubai Mall, opened on Tuesday November 4 2008, at 2pm with close to 600 retailers opening their doors for business – marking the world’s largest-ever single-day mall opening in retail history.

Emaar Malls Group, the developer of The Dubai Mall marked the opening with a series of high profile events, beginning with a public unveiling of the highly anticipated Dubai Aquarium & Discovery Centre at 4pm on the the 4th. The festive vibe will resonate throughout the mall with fashion shows taking place in the Fashion Catwalk, public skating at Dubai Ice Rink and high profile exhibits, galleries and performers providing entertainment for the entire family.

Besides its retail attractions including the Middle East debut of several global, high-profile brands such as Waitrose and Hamleys, The Dubai Mall has varied lifestyle and leisure offerings including a sprawling Gold Souk, the Olympic-sized Dubai Ice Rink and the multimedia-rich Fashion Catwalk atrium. The Dubai Aquarium & Discovery Centre is already in the global spotlight having clinched the Guinness World Record for the ‘World’s Largest Acrylic Panel.’

The Dubai Mall is centrally located in the Downtown Burj Dubai development – ‘the new heart of the city’ – just off Interchange One on Sheikh Zayed Road. Visitors can reach The Dubai Mall via multiple access roads from Sheikh Zayed Road, Financial Centre Road (previously called Doha Road), Emaar Boulevard, Downtown Burj Dubai, the newly opened bridge off Interchange One and through a direct access road near Emaar Square off Sheikh Zayed Road. The Dubai Mall will have a total of over 14,000 spaces for parking across three car parks, with valet services and a car locator ticketing system.

Sprawling over 12 million sq ft - equivalent in size to more than 50 soccer pitches – with an internal floor area of 5.9 million sq ft and a gross leasable area of 3.77 million sq ft, The Dubai Mall is the flagship development of Emaar Malls Group, the shopping malls subsidiary of global property developer Emaar Properties.

When fully operational, The Dubai Mall will have over 1,200 stores of which nearly 165 retailers – equaling 1.1 million sq ft, or 30% of the total gross leasable area of the mall - are either new to the region, or opening standalone or flagship stores for the very first time in Dubai. The retail mix includes two anchor department stores – Galeries Lafayette and Bloomingdale’s, both opening their first store in the Middle East at The Dubai Mall; 220 gold & jewellery outlets; 160 food & beverage outlets including Dubai’s largest food court with 40 outlets; a supermarket and an organic food mart.

Mr Mohamed Ali Alabbar, Chairman, Emaar Properties, said: “The Dubai Mall is Dubai’s tribute to the world of retail and leisure. With the mall, we have set a strong platform for growth for the retail sector, one that reflects Dubai’s forward-looking model of creating robust business opportunities for enterprises from around the world. The Dubai Mall is, indeed, a confident affirmation of the strong economic fundamentals of the Dubai economy.”

He added: “We are thankful to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, UAE Vice President & Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai for encouraging us to stretch our business model, and create a shopping destination that is among the elite malls of the world. The Dubai Mall will address the world-class shopping needs of a population of over 2 billion people in the catchment markets of the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe.”

“The Dubai Strategic Plan envisages an annual GDP growth of 11 per cent and correspondingly a rise in per capita income,” said Mr Alabbar. “The Plan also aims to reach an annual target of attracting 15 million tourists by 2015. This in turn translates to greater purchasing power and a demand for world-class retailing. The Dubai Mall is a response to that demand and will be the choice retail and leisure destination regionally and a magnet for tourists across the globe.”

Mr Jim Badour, Chief Executive Officer, Emaar Malls Group, said: “With the opening of The Dubai Mall, we have the largest number of retailers together-ever for the first time in a mall opening. Malls, now, are not just destinations for shopping – they need to offer a complete experience, and with The Dubai Mall’s integrated offer of retail, leisure and entertainment, The Dubai Mall is positioned as the premier lifestyle destination that revolutionises shopping experiences globally.”
Mr Yousif Al Ali, General Manager, The Dubai Mall, added: “With The Dubai Mall, what matters is not the size but the qualitative difference that we offer to our visitors. All public areas of the mall are now open to customers, and we are readily positioned to cater for the key retail, tourist and festive periods marked by the UAE National Day, Eid Al Adha, New Year and the Dubai Shopping Festival.”

Dubai Aquarium & Discovery Centre will feature over 33,000 aquatic animals including sharks and rays, while the Discovery Centre is an educational window to marine life’s myriad attractions. The Gold Souk with 220 retailers is designed to reflect traditional Arab architectural ethos, and is a celebration of Dubai’s regional hub status in gold and jewellery trade.

Other attractions include The Grove, with its fully retractable roof, which will bring in an outdoor community feel with tree-lined walkways, a lifestyle retail mix and a mix of casual dining cafés and restaurants. The family entertainment precinct, opening in 2009, includes KidZania®, an 80,000 sq ft innovative children’s ‘edu-tainment’ concept, SEGA Republic®, a 76,000 sq ft high adrenaline indoor theme park and a 22-screen cineplex, the largest in Dubai.

The adjoining 5-star hotel, The Address, Dubai Mall and serviced residences will open in the first quarter of 2009, while the adjacent The Address, Downtown Burj Dubai, is now open. The mall’s extensive waterfront promenade will be lined with an array of themed cafés and restaurants, overlooking the spectacular Dubai Fountain and Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world.
Emaar’s expansion into shopping malls is in line with its Vision 2010 to become one of the most valuable companies in the world. Emaar Malls Group has already opened Souk Al Bahar, a modern mall with Arabesque architectural features in Downtown Burj Dubai, and will open the Dubai Marina Mall, in the vibrant Dubai Marina in late 2008.

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10. November 2008 by admin.

With all the rhetoric flung around during the recent election, it is instructive (at least to me) to understand some of the key areas in which the United States leads the world and some of the ways that it falls far down on the list.  Only when we are cognizant of where we stand, can we improve our standing in some very critical areas, I believe.   For instance, there is a myth that socialized medicine doesn’t work and yet the statistics in key health categories show that it works far better than our system does. In areas where we are already great, we have the responsibility to continue those trends and preserve them–freedom of expression, innovativeness, and the most productive workers in the world by far. 

Am I saying that the U.S. isn’t a great country? No. Am I saying that people from other countries don’t want to come here even with George Bush as President? No. What I am saying is that just because the U.S. is a great country (freedom of speech still greater than any other country, despite the Patriot Act and wholesale spying on the populace by the government) doesn’t mean it can’t be better, esp. with respect to children’s health and welfare.

So where are there areas for the U.S. to improve its standing in the world?

The U.S. ranks #1 or #2 in: Health care spending (but 44th in life expectancy and 29th in infant mortality), obesity as a percentage of the population, child poverty, prisoners per capita, total crimes, divorce rates, rape, and total military expenditures.

The following statistics/rankings were taken from the site "Nationmaster.com" and, in the case of the infant mortality rates, from the LA Times.

 Life Satisfaction: The U.S. ranked #11, behind most of the Scandinavian countries (damned socialists again), Malta, Switzerland, Iceland, Canada, Luxembourg, etc.  The premise for this ranking can be found here.

Life Expectancy at birth (DEFINITION: The average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. Life expectancy at birth is also a measure of overall quality of life in a country and summarizes the mortality at all ages. It can also be thought of as indicating the potential return on investment in human capital and is necessary for the calculation of various actuarial measures):

U.S. is #44, at 78 years.  What country is #1?  Of course, the Republicans, who are so terrified of socialized medicine, would say it has to be a country with private health care, right?  Well, it’s Andorra, with an average life expectancy of over 83 years, a full 5 years more on average than the U.S. and a fully socialized health care system.  Some other countries that have higher life expectancy rates at birth than the U.S. does? How about Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jordan, Israel–all peaceful, idyllic spots with no man-made problems at all…

Infant Mortality: the U.S. is #29, as in there are 28 countries with LOWER infant mortality rates,  (as of 2005, the last year for which numbers are available) with 6.86 infant deaths per 1000 live births.  Sweden, Norway, Finland, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore are below 3.2.  Notice that at least 4 of those are countries with socialized health care systems.

Health Care (spending per capita): Want to guess who is #1? That’s right, the U.S.  We are 29th in the world in infant mortality, 44th in the world in life expectancy at birth, but we have the highest spending per capita of any country. 

Obesity as percentage of the Population: Again, guess what country’s #1? That’s right!  The United States, with 30% of the  population, followed by Mexico and the UK.

 Education spending as a % of GDP: This one is stunning–the U.S. is #38, spending only 5.7% of GDP on education.  Which country do you think is #1?  Possibly Japan, or Norway, or Germany?  No, it’s Cuba!

 Percent of adult U.S. population with high literacy level: 19% (U.S. ranked 9th behind a number of European countries), including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, etc.

Percent of adult U.S. population with low literacy level: 47.6% (U.S. ranked 7th)

United States mathematical literacy, measured at 15 years old: ranked 18th (behind 17 other countries) out of 27. Japan was first.

Total years of school life expectancy: The U.S. is #14 with 15.2 years, the #1 being Norway with 16.9 years.

Child Poverty (measured as share of children living in households with income below 50% of the national median): United States had second HIGHEST rate in this category, only topped by Mexico!  There were 21 countries (including those infamous socialistic European countires where everything is supposedly going to hell in a hand-basket because they don’t practice the obviously superior system of free-market capitalism that has yielded such wondrous results for us here in the U.S.

GDP real growth rate (CIA world factbook): United States had a 3.2% growth rate making us 150th with 149 countries having higher growth rates, including such powerhouses as Burundi, Namibia, Saint Lucia.

Business efficiency: United States was #1.

Financial Satisfaction: United States was #8.  The higher-ranking countries included Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, Italy and Ireland.

 Real exports of goods and services annual growth rate: United States ranked 26th out of 30 with a negative 1.2% growth rate. New Zealand was #1, South Korea was #2 and Hungary was #3 all with export growth rates of above +7%.

 Gross Domestic Product (per capita): United States ranked 8th, with $41,890 per capita.  #1-3 were Luxembourg, Norway and Iceland (again, countries with socialized medicine and many more state-run social services than the U.S.). 

Prisoners per Capita: Probably not a surprise that the U.S. is #1 with 715 per 100K people.  What’s more interesting is that you have to get to #61 to find the first Western European country on the list, Spain. 

 Executions (most recent): The U.S. is #7, with 6 countries that have higher execution rates.  Those 6 distinguished countries, all obvious champions of human rights, are: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Congo and Egypt.  We are obviously in good company.  What’s interesting about this list is that there isn’t a single European (forget Western European) country on the list–because no European Country allows the death penalty…

 Total Crimes: U.S. is #1, with just under 12,000,000 and #8 per with total crimes per capita, 80 per 1000.

 Murders with firearms (per capita): U.S. ranked 8th highest, topped only by South Africa, Colombia, Thailand, Zimbabwe, Mexico, Belarus, and Costa Rica.  Every European country had less murders with firearms.

 Corruption: U.S. is 17th.  There are 16 countries less corrupt than the U.S.  The least corrupt include Iceland, Finland, New Zealand and Denmark.

 Divorce Rate: U.S. is #1, with the highest for all countries at 4.95 per 1000 people, followed by Puerto Rico and Russia.

 Rapes: U.S., again, is #1, with just about double the total number of rapes (~95K) as the next country, South Africa (~52K). The U.S. is #9 in rapes per capita, with #1 being South Africa.

 Armed Forces Personnel: U.S. was #3, only topped by China and Russia. 

 Conventional Arms (weapons) Exports: U.S. is #2 behind only Russia, with $6Billion worth of weapons sold to other countries.

 Total military expenditures: U.S. had the honor of being #1, with MORE THAN 4x the total of #2, China.

 Percentage of Population below the poverty line: U.S. was #122 with 12%.  Countries with lower percentages included Syria, Croatia, Ireland, Tunisia.

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9. November 2008 by admin.

This is the Lamborghini Estoque ("ess-toe-kay") I think this is a beautiful car. Don’t call it a ‘concept car’ but rather an ‘operational prototype’.

This car, if produced, would be a 4 door Lambo with a 500hp Gallardo V10 all-aluminum 5.3-liter engine and would retail for around $200,000 USD.  I won’t be buying one any time soon, but it’s a beautiful car.

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9. November 2008 by admin.

We all know about the razors-and-razorblades model.  And, no, it’s not a surprise or news that ink cartridge sales are lucrative for HP, Canon, Epson and Lexmark.  However, it’s rare that anyone gives context to exactly how lucrative this commodity is.

According to a combination of American Consumer Institute, Kodak and MSNBC:

• Consumers spend $6 Billion a year on ink.
• Of the money parents spend during back-to-school shopping, 30% of it is spent on ink
• Ink costs more per milliliter than champagne, perfume or gasoline

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8. November 2008 by admin.

Figuring that there are still people who have lots of money and who have lots of money to spend on things they don’t absolutely need, Aston-Martin will unveil its new One-77 (the Aston Martin One,with only 77 units built) which will retail for about $1.7M USD–yes, $1,700,000.  For that money, you get a V-12 with 700HP, and a claimed top speed of at least 200MPH.  I don’t know what gas mileage is, but probably in the 7-10 MPG range. 

Sometimes you see cars that look cool:

The car above is the Galpin Auto Sports’ Scythe, which has a 5.0 liter 1000 HP (yes, as in 1K) V8 engine with twin superchargers. It started life as a Ford Mustang.

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8. November 2008 by admin.

Statistics like this blow me away. 

From HP’S Vice President, Retail Publishing, Rohit de Souza:

‘People are creating and consuming content like never before–from blogs to social networks, photos, videos, and other MP3 files.  In 2007 alone, the volume of content created was equivalent to about three million times the information in all books ever written.’

And here’s the other one that’s interesting:

‘The current total number of unique images stored is more than 180 billion, and this number is projected to approach 347 billion by 2012′ –Infotrends

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7. November 2008 by admin.

Sometimes you see a picture and  you think, ‘How can one picture generate so many punchlines?’  This, for me, is one of those pictures, even though, in reality, the device that it is a picture of a device that achieves noble objectives for its intended audience.

You can find out what this device actually does here.

Here’s the other picture that I’ve seen lately that could spawn many punchlines and is not for such a noble purpose as the device above….

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3. November 2008 by admin.

I’ve been to Cairns and didn’t experience (thankfully) any of these giant spiders.  I wonder if travel insurance covers run-ins with gigantic carnivorous insects?

These photos appeared in the Cairns Post Limited, and were shot by Les Martin, a resident of Tableland (perhaps a place you might want to set your GPS device to detour as you travel through Northern Australia with your chihuahua).  In fact, perhaps the sequel to "Beverly Hills Chihuahua", the hit movie out now, should be "Cairns Chihuahua" and feature brave chihuahuas battling large Golden Orb Weavers. And, based on personal experience, these aren’t the only large scary creatures living in NorthEastern Australia–my wife was attacked by a very aggressive wild hen in the rainforest when we were there.

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2. November 2008 by admin.

Watch the video below to see how I let down the electorate.

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