Now EVERYTHING is Pumpkin

Every year as fall encroaches, the heads of food manufacturers meet at a secret Pumpkin Spice Convention to discuss the kinds of "edible" products they intend to inject with artificial pumpkin spice flavor.

These flavor scientists have introduced pumpkin spice Pringles (preposterous), pumpkin spice seltzer (inexplicable) and pumpkin spice gum (sad) to our planet. In a post-Pumpkin Spice Latte world, anything is possible.

Most recently, the folks at Nabisco made sure the calendar didn't turn a page without making their own pumpkin spice mark. Enter the Pumpkin Spice Oreo.

The "spice" part of pumpkin spice overtook as soon as we peeled open the product. "Smells like a candle!," one editor declared. The cookie most certainly does. This package reeked of that distinctive cinnamony scent -- the one that pervades every trinket store and Pinterest-y apartment the moment the first leaf falls from a branch in September.

Fortunately, the candle perfume doesn't bleed over into the actual taste of the cookie. Our editors were mostly delighted, though, much like Starbuck's famous Pumpkin Spice Latte, the cookies lack actual pumpkin. "They taste more gingerbready than pumpkin piey, but I'm OK with that," one editor said. "The smell was way stronger than the taste," said another. "It's not too sweet, and the pumpkin flavors are mild, not overpowering at all."

The blonde-colored cookies reminded editors of cookies they've eaten in the past. The creme-filling is definitely less familiar, and had a sweet but in-attributable flavor.

While these cookies look and smell different than the original black and white Oreo, they perform just the same. When twisted open, the creme filling sticks to the inside of one of the cookies. And that classic, inner-cookie grid gets imprinted on the soft stuff.

We are shocked to admit we enjoyed snacking on these trendy little numbers. You win this time, pumpkin spice.

LA coffee house invents the best edible coffee cups in the whole wide world

Now is the time to cry about the fact you don’t live in LA and therefore can’t eat organic sushi and rollerblade everywhere and DRINK THESE AMAZING COFFEES.

Alfred Coffee & Kitchen serve their freshly brewed cups of the good stuff in chocolate-dipped waffle cones.

Uh huh. You heard right.

You could be getting your morning cappuccino in a waffle cone that has a lining of milk chocolate, y’know to help make it sort of waterproof.

Anyone else having a ‘Homer Simpson drooling’ sort of moment?

The store serves the edible cups in wax paper holders to save from people getting chocolatey coffee down themselves on the way to work.

The only teeny tiny downside is the $5 additional fee on top of the coffee just for the cone cup.

But hey, what’s a handful of dollars for the best coffee OF ALL TIME?

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DC Park:11th Street Bridge

The subject of Washington’s buzziest architecture competition isn’t a Smithsonian museum or a downtown office building, but a series of concrete piers jutting out of the Anacostia River a dozen blocks east of Nationals Park.

More than 40 architecture teams comprised of 82 firms initially expressed interested in designing a park traversing the Anacostia  – what could become a local version of New York’s High Line Park — atop piers that held up the old 11th Street Bridge before it was replaced.

The four finalists submitted their proposals to the project’s organizers Tuesday, and they leave nothing to the imagination: there are amphitheaters, education centers, dining piers, urban gardens, waterfalls, climbing walls and an array of eye-catching architectural features, any of which could transform the old bridge site into a distinctive landmark.

Scott Kratz, director of the 11th Street Bridge Park, said the project has the chance to bring needed attention to a river that has suffered environmentally and long served as a barrier between the majority of the city and some of its poorest communities. He said he was thrilled at the quality of responses.

“These are some of the best designers in the world and their work reflects that,” he said. “We were hoping that the proposals would not just be shades of gray and we received reds and blues and greens and purples. They are all so different while still responding to the community’s vision.”

The teams will come to Washington to present their ideas to a jury of experts in design, architecture, health and economic development on Sept. 29-30 and a final decision is expected Oct. 16.

Whoever is named the project’s designer will do so with a caveat, as some $40 million needs to be raised to build and operate the park. The project is a collaboration between the D.C. government and the non-profit Building Bridges Across the River, and already the D.C. government has committed to providing $14.5 million of the $25 million construction price tag, Kratz said.

Here is an initial look at each of the proposals. In addition to the jury, public input will play a factor in making a final selection, so for readers interested in taking a more detailed look at the proposals and offering opinions, pleasetake our poll. (All images are courtesy of the architecture teams, via the 11th Street Bridge Park.)

The subject of Washington’s buzziest architecture competition isn’t a Smithsonian museum or a downtown office building, but a series of concrete piers jutting out of the Anacostia River a dozen blocks east of Nationals Park.

More than 40 architecture teams comprised of 82 firms initially expressed interested in designing a park traversing the Anacostia  – what could become a local version of New York’s High Line Park — atop piers that held up the old 11th Street Bridge before it was replaced.

The four finalists submitted their proposals to the project’s organizers Tuesday, and they leave nothing to the imagination: there are amphitheaters, education centers, dining piers, urban gardens, waterfalls, climbing walls and an array of eye-catching architectural features, any of which could transform the old bridge site into a distinctive landmark.

Scott Kratz, director of the 11th Street Bridge Park, said the project has the chance to bring needed attention to a river that has suffered environmentally and long served as a barrier between the majority of the city and some of its poorest communities. He said he was thrilled at the quality of responses.

“These are some of the best designers in the world and their work reflects that,” he said. “We were hoping that the proposals would not just be shades of gray and we received reds and blues and greens and purples. They are all so different while still responding to the community’s vision.”

The teams will come to Washington to present their ideas to a jury of experts in design, architecture, health and economic development on Sept. 29-30 and a final decision is expected Oct. 16.

Whoever is named the project’s designer will do so with a caveat, as some $40 million needs to be raised to build and operate the park. The project is a collaboration between the D.C. government and the non-profit Building Bridges Across the River, and already the D.C. government has committed to providing $14.5 million of the $25 million construction price tag, Kratz said.

Here is an initial look at each of the proposals. In addition to the jury, public input will play a factor in making a final selection, so for readers interested in taking a more detailed look at the proposals and offering opinions, pleasetake our poll. (All images are courtesy of the architecture teams, via the 11th Street Bridge Park.)

*****

Bridge Park

Balmori Associates / Cooper, Robertson & Partners

Three concepts shape the proposal from Balmori Associates and Cooper Robertson, both of New York. The predominant architectural feature is an undulating overheard feature called “the Walk,” meant to evoke the daily strolling routine of Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist whose former home in Anacostia is a National Historic Site.

“The structure allows for the design of a suspended deck giving freedom to the overall shape, program, and topography of Bridge Park and permits the deck edge to be varied, thin, and elegant,” the team writes in its proposal.

This bridge would meander side to side as it crosses the river, a design the team calls “the Thread.” In the center of the bridge is “the Clasp,” a prominent events space that hangs out over the water.

The architects said they hoped their project “can help re-connect the diverse neighborhoods on both sides of the river, re-engage the Anacostia River, improve the general quality of public health through physical and social activity, and generate new jobs for local citizens of the district.”

*****

Anacostia Crossing

Olin/OMA

Olin, based in Philadelphia, and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in New York,  propose two grand ramps that slope from either end of the bridge, creating a series of paths and a giant ‘X’ shape that would serve as an easily recognizable symbol on the river.

“The intersection point of the two paths shapes the central meeting point of the bridge—an open plaza that provides a flexible venue for markets, festivals, and theatrical performances held throughout the year,” the companies wrote in their submission. “The paths that frame this plaza further enhance the bridge as a hub of activity, providing a sequence of zones designated for play, relaxation, learning and gathering.”

On the slopes, the companies propose a series of special spaces, among them an amphitheater, an urban agriculture center, an environmental education center and a boat launch. Other features include a sculpture garden, interactive art features and a “hammock grove.”

*****

Anacostia Landing

Wallace Roberts & Todd / Next Architects

Philadelphia-based Wallace Roberts & Todd teamed with a firm based in the Netherlands, Next Architects, to propose a bridge with a billowy canopy that its designers liken to a “noble and grand old tree” in that it “fulfills multiple and vital needs: providing shade, funneling prevailing breezes, supporting greenery and solar panels, framing public art, and creating the setting for gatherings, frolic, and play.”

“We aim to spotlight the Anacostia River as a bountiful, beautiful, and exciting watercourse, a place where the juncture of human and natural ecologies ‘land’ as a productive, fun, and life-affirming exchange,” they write.

Beneath the canopy and surrounding it the team plans a staggering 35 different amenities arranged in four zones along the length of the bridge and overflowing onto parkland along the eastern banks of the river.

The centerpieces are an amphitheater and a three-story community and education center. For foodies there is an urban farm, market, greenhouse and dining piers. For recreation there are trampolines, climbing nets and an urban beach.

*****

The Crossing

Stoss Landscape Urbanism / Höweler + Yoon Architecture

The submission from two Boston firms, Stoss Landscape Urbanism and Höweler and Yoon, is rooted in the history of the river, to the days when ferries escorted workers from Anacostia to their jobs at the Navy Yard on the west side of the river.

“These ferry crossings became as much places of congregation and assembly, places of social exchange, as they were places of passage,” they write. “Our proposal for the 11th Street Bridge Park puts in place a new crossing, one that establishes new connections across and to the Anacostia River and to the burgeoning and socially and culturally rich neighborhoods along its banks.”

They propose a series of angular walkways and park spaces along the bridge and extending along the eastern bank of the river. Two raised structures pop from the bridge’s main plate, creating space for an environmental education center and other enclosed features.

RIP: IPod

Not everything Apple did during its event on Tuesday was announced on stage by the executive team.

As the company focused the world’s attention on the stage of Cupertino’s Flint Center, it was carrying out a murder in the wings. The victim: theiPod Classic.

By far Apple’s longest-running product, the iPod Classic – once known simply as the iPod – was introduced in its final form in September 2007: the sixth generation of iPod had a thinner body, longer battery life and an aluminium design. Three months earlier, the iPhone had been introduced and the writing was on the wall for the classic.

At the event where the iPod Classic was introduced – and given its new, respectful moniker – the iPod Touch was also born. It had the advantages of an iPhone bar the cellular connectivity but a price closer to the rest of the iPod line. The Touch was supposed to be the death knell for the classic.

But instead, the design showed a remarkable durability. A large part of that was down to the capacity of the device, which started at 80GB and had been bumped up to 160GB by 2009. Next to an iPod Touch which, even today, maxes out at 64GB of space, it appealed to those with enormous music collections and a desire to carry everything with them all the time.

Even though Apple appeared happy to take the classic fans’ money for the time being, every new hardware announcement was shadowed by the possibility that this would be the end for the venerable MP3 player. It was the last product the company shipped with a 1.8 inch hard-drive, an expensive component liable to fail with over-use. And in a world of streaming music services even the idea of a “music collection” was starting to seem outdated, let alone the idea that it needs to be stored on the same device.

Still, we didn’t expect the murder of the classic to be done with such brutality. Apple’s never been a company for looking back but typically when they discontinue a product they offer up something new as recompense. Not this time. The iPod line was not mentioned once onstage – though a redesign of the iPod touch might come in October – and no time was spared for the classic. The future is touchscreens on our wrists, not scrollwheels in our pockets.

Except. Announcing the Apple Watch, the company’s CEO Tim Cook put special emphasis on the “digital crown”, a whole new input paradigm invented just for the device. “It translates rotary movement into digital data,” he told the audience, dazzling them with the “IR LEDs and diodes” used to make it work. But beneath the bluster, it’s a physical scroll wheel, the same technology introduced in the original iPod in 2001. 

Maybe that’s the send-off the iPod Classic deserved?

EA Should have known better....they didn't

f you thought the new Madden NFL 15 video game couldn’t get any sillier after the tiny Christian Kirksey glitch, strap in. EA either completely underestimated how silly the internet can get, or they entirely counted on it. They created Madden GIFerator, a website where you create your own captioned GIFs by choosing animated players and backgrounds, then add your own text. Even though many words are banned, there are workarounds and plenty of absurd captions which aren’t off limits. Consider us razzle dazzled.

EA’s Madden GIF generator was also underwritten by the NFL and Google, who should have seen this coming. You could say this promotion has backfired, or you could say they had to know exactly what they were doing. After what happened with Lay’s Do Us A Flavor and Pacific Rim‘s Jaeger designer, companies seeking to crowdsource free viral content would be wise to just roll with it when we oblige with maximum snark.

Our favorite Madden GIFerator entries are collected below, with each source credited under the bottom left corner of the GIF. Thanks to Polygon for the assist.

Ray Rice CUT by Ravens, Suspended by NFL

Ray Rice -- ELEVATOR KNOCKOUT ... Fiancee Takes Crushing Punch [Video] - Watch More Celebrity Videos or Subscribe

FOX NEWS Laughs......The message is Fox & Friends should be canceled too

Teenagers Just Can't Figure Out the Original NES

Video game technology has come a long way since the Nintendo Entertainment System debuted in the 1980s, so it's no surprise that the teenagers examining the device in the Fine Brothers' latest React video are kind of bemused by the device. "Is this a projector?" one asks. Game of Thrones' Maise Williams thinks it might be a video player; another guesses that it's a Gameboy 1. "I've played with a PlayStation 2," one girl notes, "but this is as old as it gets for me

"It looks like a brick," one boy notes; his friend adds that it looks like it's "from, like, 1920." Another teen says that his dad probably played with it. One boy says its color is "bland," then imagines the meetings inside Nintendo about the NES: "'We're going to make a system that's like, gonna be, like, all futuristic and stuff, but it's going to be beige.'" When asked if they'd ever played a game on the NES, some respond that they have. One girl, though, seems to find the question ridiculous: "I wasn't even born yet!" (Meanwhile, those of us who owned the NES shortly after it debuted in North America are feeling older by the minute.)

Then, of course, they get the opportunity to play Super Mario Bros. Watch as they try to figure out how to open the NES and properly insert the game. When they can't get the TV to stop flashing, they even blow on the cartridge (which we now know didn't actually do anything). When they finally get the game to work, they complain about the controllers and the fact that they can't go back. Ultimately, they rate the NES worse than consoles of today, but acknowledge its role in making video games as huge as they are today.

For added fun, check out this video of the teenagers playing Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

Nashville Zoo celebrates the arrival of an adorable baby red panda

Nashville Zoo has welcomed a baby red panda after the the zoo's female red panda gave birth to a healthy female cub. 

Caretakers took a hands-off approach, monitoring the mother and cub through cameras hidden in the den. 

Red pandas have a high infant mortality rate, but 'the mother has done a great job of nursing and caring for the baby,' said carnivore supervisor Karen Rice.

'Red panda mothers are very prone to stress and easily agitated, which could cause them to reject or unintentionally harm the cubs,' she said.

'Because of the high infant mortality rate, we took every precaution possible to ensure the baby was delivered and cared for safely.'

The female cub is doing well and bonding with her mother in their off exhibit den. 

Animal care staff monitored her for signs of stress and added video cameras to her nest boxes so that they would know when she gave birth and could watch for important things, like the cub nursing and possible overgrooming by the mother, all without having to disturb them. 

'After our female gave birth we made the decision to continue our hands-off approach since all was going so well. At one month of age, we did our first neonate exam and determined the cub to be female, in good health and weighing just under two pounds. The cub and mom both did well and were happily reunited right after.'

Visitors can expect to see the cub, which is the first red panda born at the zoo, this fall.

At about 1 year old, the cub will likely leave the Nashville Zoo and be paired with a mate for breeding.

The zoo's red pandas are part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums' Species Survival Program, which manages breeding. 

Known for their teddy bear-like appearance and red fur, the red panda is native to the mountains of Central China, Nepal and northern Myanmar (Burma). 

They are considered vulnerable to extinction due to habitat destruction. In addition, slow rates of reproduction and high infant mortality rates make it very hard for this species to rebound from population declines. 

$139 million, newly listed Florida home is most expensive in U.S.

Entered through a vaulted foyer, the residence centers on a sweeping, $2-million staircase cased in steel-iron and gold leaf. Among the more opulent features are an Imax home theater, a 1,300-gallon aquarium and a subterranean garage with parking for 30 vehicles.

The second-floor presidential suite comes complete with private outdoor terrace with a plunge pool while three additional master suites sport Jacuzzis with ocean views.  In all, the mansion touts 11 bedrooms and 17 bathrooms in 60,000 square feet of living space.

Set beneath a 12-foot cascading waterfall, an infinity edge pool features an LED-lit water slide, fire pit and swim-up bar. Above the waterfall is a Jacuzzi. Designed for year-round enjoyment, an entertainer’s courtyard includes a summer kitchen, a pizza oven, an outdoor lounge and an entrance to an indoor spa and massage rooms.

For the mega-yacht owner, Le Palais Royal boasts a 492-foot dock capable of accommodating seafaring vessels up to 185 feet in length. Occupying four acres on Millionaires Mile, the estate also includes 465 feet of private beachfront and is slated for completion in 2015.

William P.D. Pierce of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate is the listing agent.

The $139-million price tag tops the Beverly House, the one-time home of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst that reentered the market at $135 million this year. The Manor, a Holmby Hills estate formerly owned by Candy and Aaron Spelling and currently occupied by Formula One heiress Petra Ecclestone, is currently being shown off-market with an asking price of $150 million.

A Life Revealed: Afghan Girl

A Life Revealed

Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story.

By Cathy Newman

Photograph by Steve McCurry

She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.

The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. “I didn’t think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day,” he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan’s refugees.

The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the “Afghan girl,” and for 17 years no one knew her name.

In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film’s EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn’t her.

No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her.

It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her.

Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist.

Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. “She’s had a hard life,” said McCurry. “So many here share her story.” Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.

Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away.

“There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war,” a young Afghan merchant said in the 1985 National Geographic story that appeared with Sharbat’s photograph on the cover. She was a child when her country was caught in the jaws of the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction smothered countless villages like hers. She was perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night the dead were buried. And always, the sound of planes, stabbing her with dread.

“We left Afghanistan because of the fighting,” said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in the narrative of her life. He is a straight line of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. “The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice.”

Shepherded by their grandmother, he and his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week they moved through mountains covered in snow, begging for blankets to keep warm.

“You never knew when the planes would come,” he recalled. “We hid in caves.”

The journey that began with the loss of their parents and a trek across mountains by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living with strangers.

“Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult to live in the cramped surroundings of a refugee camp,” explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as interpreter for McCurry and the television crew. “There is no privacy. You live at the mercy of other people.” More than that, you live at the mercy of the politics of other countries. “The Russian invasion destroyed our lives,” her brother said.

It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? “Each change of government brings hope,” said Yusufzai. “Each time, the Afghan people have found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their friends and saviors.”

In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fighting, Sharbat Gula went home to her village in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. To live in this earthen-colored village at the end of a thread of path means to scratch out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some walnut trees, a stream that spills down the mountain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water.

Here is the bare outline of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage.

Her husband, Rahmat Gul, is slight in build, with a smile like the gleam of a lantern at dusk. She remembers being married at 13. No, he says, she was 16. The match was arranged.

He lives in Peshawar (there are few jobs in Afghanistan) and works in a bakery. He bears the burden of medical bills; the dollar a day he earns vanishes like smoke. Her asthma, which cannot tolerate the heat and pollution of Peshawar in summer, limits her time in the city and with her husband to the winter. The rest of the year she lives in the mountains.

At the age of 13, Yusufzai, the journalist, explained, she would have gone into purdah, the secluded existence followed by many Islamic women once they reach puberty.

“Women vanish from the public eye,” he said. In the street she wears a plum-colored burka, which walls her off from the world and from the eyes of any man other than her husband. “It is a beautiful thing to wear, not a curse,” she says.

Faced by questions, she retreats into the black shawl wrapped around her face, as if by doing so she might will herself to evaporate. The eyes flash anger. It is not her custom to subject herself to the questions of strangers.

Had she ever felt safe?

”No. But life under the Taliban was better. At least there was peace and order.”

Had she ever seen the photograph of herself as a girl?

“No.”

She can write her name, but cannot read. She harbors the hope of education for her children. “I want my daughters to have skills,” she said. “I wanted to finish school but could not. I was sorry when I had to leave.”

Education, it is said, is the light in the eye. There is no such light for her. It is possibly too late for her 13-year-old daughter as well, Sharbat Gula said. The two younger daughters still have a chance.

The reunion between the woman with green eyes and the photographer was quiet. On the subject of married women, cultural tradition is strict. She must not look—and certainly must not smile—at a man who is not her husband. She did not smile at McCurry. Her expression, he said, was flat. She cannot understand how her picture has touched so many. She does not know the power of those eyes.

Such knife-thin odds. That she would be alive. That she could be found. That she could endure such loss. Surely, in the face of such bitterness the spirit could atrophy. How, she was asked, had she survived?

The answer came wrapped in unshakable certitude.

“It was,” said Sharbat Gula, “the will of God.”

Nationals Park Will Host 2015 Winter Classic

Get ready, hockey fans: the 2015 Winter Classic will officially be held at Nationals Park.

The Post reports that an "agreement has been reached for Nationals Park to host the 2015 Winter classic on Jan. 1 between the Washington Capitals and Chicago Blackhawks, multiple individuals with knowledge of the situation said Saturday."

As previously reported, a D.C.-set 2015 Winter Classic has been in the works for months now, but nothing has been confirmed until now. Prior to settling on Nats Park as the venue, NHL officials were also looking at RFK Stadium, FedEx Field, and briefly entertained the idea of the National Mall, which would have been as awesome at it would have been impractical.

Although no official word has come from the team in regards to the Winter Classic, the Post says that an announcement will probably come within the month.

The last time the Capitals played in a Winter Classic was in 2011 against the Pittsburgh Penguins, which they won 3-1.

Yet another reason not to shop at Urban Outfitters

MyCheck: The Negotiating Table

The world of apps promises something like a frictionless existence—eliminating all the moments of pause, of tension, of quotidian vulgarities like handling money. On a recent afternoon, Tal Zvi Nathanel, a thirty-one-year-old Israeli expat with funky, big-framed glasses, sat down for lunch at Sala One Nine, a tapas restaurant in Chelsea. I met him there with one of his associates, Mike Paffmann, who was dressed in business casual and hardly uttered a word. Nathanel’s outfit left some room for contextual interpretation—a blazer over an X-Men T-shirt—but his manner was straightforward. “We’re in a business meeting,” he said, as if setting terms. He began telling a story about a night out in Tel Aviv in 2011 that led him to an entrepreneurial epiphany. “Sake doesn’t get me drunk; it gets me somewhere else,” Nathanel said. He was a generous talker with a salesman’s enthusiasm, touching his beard and his smooth, shaved head. The menus went untouched for a while. “There are social aspects that come with dinner that nobody likes to talk about. Like settling a bill. It gets awkward,” he said. The hazards are particular to the circumstance. On this occasion—the officially declared business lunch—Nathanel explained, “If the server asks me if I want to use a punch card, I wouldn’t do it right now.” If it were a birthday party, that would create another set of complications entirely. “Nobody wants to talk about it.”

Nathanel is the America-based C.E.O. of MyCheck, which allows people to split and pay a bill on their phones, sans wallet. On that night at a bar in Tel Aviv, he thought, Wouldn’t it be cool if I just walked out like I owned the place? But how can you just walk out of a place? Obviously, you need to pay. Paying is a ritual that Nathanel seems to find excruciating. (This holds whether or not one has the money.) “For centuries, nothing has changed,” he explained. “Then, fifty years ago, the credit card came. Paying, it’s almost like surgery. It’s a clinical act.” He went on, “Check comes; it’s always the same thing. It doesn’t matter how great the experience of dining was. When you want to go, you want to go.” Lingering at a table, plates cleared, wine glasses empty—what’s there left to do but fidget anxiously?

Some time passed. The water glasses were filled. Paffmann remained quiet. A thought occurred to Nathanel, “Do you want to eat?”

“Do we have to do anything first?” I asked.

Nathanel took out his phone, which had been in his pocket. “I usually recommend people adding each other at the beginning,” he told me. “I don’t like people messing with their phones during the meal.” But, for the sake of demonstration: MyCheck is an app, and it’s also the technology that enables the app, which can be used by other apps—which Nathanel’s company will customize for particular brands, such as Aroma Espresso Bar, for instance—and PayPal’s app, with which MyCheck partners. As far as diners are concerned, no matter which app they use, they input their credit-card info, check into the restaurant (Foursquare style), and, voilà, a four-digit code is generated. “So, instead of giving your credit card, you give the code,” Nathanel explained. He announced his code to the waiter. Once the waiter selected a MyCheck button on the touchscreen of the restaurant’s service system, the order appeared live within the app, allowing each person to select which items, or percentage of the meal, to pay for. There’s a sliding scale for the tip; each shop sets a base percentage, but you can fiddle with it at will, keeping the servers on their toes or posing as a high roller until the last dish comes. MyCheck gets a cut of each transaction—somewhere around three and a half per cent, depending on the restaurant.

I hadn’t yet downloaded the app. Nathanel shrugged. “Even if I’m the only person with the app, I still avoid the social awkwardness, because I can say, ‘I just paid for my part.’ ” This assumes, of course, that his fellow-diners don’t mind sorting out the rest among themselves. Or that Nathanel wouldn’t be too aggrieved by witnessing the exercise. But, if he were, he could just walk out.

Bread came, followed shortly after by fried goat-cheese balls. “This experience is made possible by twenty-five points of sale around the world,” Nathanel said, referring to the checkout systems that restaurants use to input orders. In addition to New York and Tel Aviv, MyCheck has offices in the United Kingdom and Brazil. In some cases, the point-of-sale companies—like POSitouch, at the place where we had lunch—will contact restaurants about adding a MyCheck button; other times, Nathanel will make his pitch directly, promising faster turnaround, fewer walkouts, and higher tips. He said that some three thousand spots around the world (restaurants, coffee shops, gas stations) have a MyCheck button on their service screens, including a couple hundred in New York. “What surprised me is that the high-end places have them,” he said. (They include Rouge Tomate and Gotham Bar and Grill.) “In a high-end restaurant, everything is so fine, so the idea that you don’t have to deal with money at the end makes so much sense.”

The main course came, but Nathanel asked the waiter not to take away the last cheese ball. We got sandwiches. Though it went unspoken, tapas seemed too logistically confusing to share among strangers in a professional context. And then there was the matter of paying—how to split if there’s an uneven number of dishes?

As we were about finished eating, the waiter tried to clear our plates. Nathanel resisted. “They keep trying to take our plates away!” He still had something left. Then he demonstrated how to close out. He pulled up our order on his phone, selected all the items—he insisted that we not split this time, and I lacked the technological means to do the ritual insisting—and paid the bill. He received a receipt by e-mail. We could have left, then and there, but he continued to nibble. The waiter returned, smiling and offering dessert menus. This presented an awkward moment: we had already settled up, but perhaps the server didn’t know it. We looked down at the table, unsure of what to do.

99 Per Cent Of Sweden's Garbage Is Now Recycled

There’s a “recycling revolution” happening in Sweden – one that has pushed the country closer to zero waste than ever before. In fact, less than one per cent of Sweden's household garbage ends up in landfills today.

The Scandinavian country has become so good at managing waste, they have to import garbage from the UK, Italy, Norway and Ireland to feed the country’s 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, a practice that has been in place for years.

“Waste today is a commodity in a different way than it has been. It’s not only waste, it’s a business,” explained Swedish Waste Management communications director Anna-Carin Gripwell in a statement.

Every year, the average Swede produces 461 kilograms of waste, a figure that's slightly below the half-ton European average. But what makes Sweden different is its use of a somewhat controversial program incinerating over two million tons of trash per year.

It’s also a process responsible for converting half the country’s garbage into energy.

“When waste sits in landfills, leaking methane gas and other greenhouse gasses, it is obviously not good for the environment,” Gripwell said of traditional dump sites. So Sweden focused on developing alternatives to reduce the amount of toxins seeping into the ground.

At the core of Sweden’s program is its waste-management hierarchy designed to curb environmental harm: prevention (reduce), reuse, recycling, recycling alternatives (energy recovery via WTE plants), and lastly, disposal (landfill).

Before garbage can be trucked away to incinerator plants, trash is filtered by home and business owners; organic waste is separated, paper picked from recycling bins, and any objects that can be salvaged and reused pulled aside.

By Swedish law, producers are responsible for handling all costs related to collection and recycling or disposal of their products. If a beverage company sells bottles of pop at stores, the financial onus is on them to pay for bottle collection as well as related recycling or disposal costs.

Rules introduced in the 1990s incentivized companies to take a more proactive, eco-conscious role about what products they take to market. It was also a clever way to alleviate taxpayers of full waste management costs.

According to data collected from Swedish recycling company Returpack, Swedes collectively return 1.5 billion bottles and cans annually. What can't be reused or recycled usually heads to WTE incineration plants.

WTE plants work by loading furnaces with garbage, burning it to generate steam which is used to spin generator turbines used to produce electricity. That electricity is then transferred to transmission lines and a grid distributes it across the country.

In Helsingborg (population: 132,989), one plant produces enough power to satisfy 40 per cent of the city’s heating needs. Across Sweden, power produced via WTE provides approximately 950,000 homes with heating and 260,000 with electricity.

Recycling and incineration have evolved into efficient garbage-management processes to help the Scandinavian country dramatically cut down the amount of household waste that ends up in landfills. Their efforts are also helping to lower its dependency on fossil fuels.

“A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil … so there is a lot of energy in waste,” said Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country’s leading energy companies.

So if Sweden burns approximately two million tons of waste annually, that produces roughly 670,000 tons worth of fuel oil energy. And the country needs that fuel to operate its well-developed district heating networks which heat homes in Sweden's cold winters.

This is why the country has taken advantage of the fact a number of European nations don’t have the capacity to incinerate garbage themselves due to various taxes and bans across the EU that prevent landfill waste. There's where Sweden comes in to buy garbage other countries can't dispose of themselves at a reasonable cost.

But trash burning isn’t without controversy. Some critics claim the process as anything but green because it sends more pollution and toxins into the air.

According to a study in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology, more than 40 per cent of the world’s trash is burned, mostly in open air. It’s a process markedly different from the regulated, low-emission processes Sweden has adopted.

Start-up costs for new incineration plants can get pricey and out of reach for some municipalities depending on the integration of processes used to filter ash and flue gas byproducts. Both contain dioxins, an environmental pollutant.

The incineration process isn't perfect, but technological advancements and introduction of flue-gas cleaning have reduced airborne dioxins to “very small amounts,” according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

Unless manufacturers stop making products with materials that can't be reused or tossed into incinerators, a 100 per cent recycling rate is unlikely to be achieved in our lifetime. Goods that are or contain tile, porcelain, insulation, asbestos, and miscellaneous construction and demolition debris can't be burned safely; they have to be dumped in landfills.

“The world needs to produce less waste,” explained Skoglund.

Sweden's success handling garbage didn't come overnight — the latest results are the fruits of a cultural shift decades in the making.

“Starting in the ‘70s, Sweden adopted fairly strict rules and regulations when it comes to handling our waste, both for households and more municipalities and companies,” Gripwell told HuffPost Canada, referring to the country’s “waste hierarchy” now ingrained in Swedish society.

“People rarely question the ‘work’ they have to do,” she said.

Deadmau5 Gets Offered a Replacement Nyan Cat GTR by Nissan

If you’ve been following the latest happenings in deadmau5′s life, then you know that Joel Zimmerman has gotten in trouble with the law not once but twice in the past week, with two rather large companies, one being Ferrari and the other being Disney. While the Disney situation hasn’t developed since yesterday, Deadmau5 might be getting a nice little gift from Nissan that could sweeten the Ferrari news.

Nissan just tweeted at deadmau5 that they have a brand spanking new GTR with a nice Nyan Cat wrap all ready for him. Now it’s unclear how serious Nissan is about the offer but truthfully I wouldn’t be surprised if this happened as the car company most likely recognizes the momentous amount of advertising and promotion this would result in. Either way the news is funny and should put a nice smile on your face.

Will Dyson wipe the floor?

ROBOTIC vacuum cleaners, generally, are not news. Electronics companies such as iRobot, LG and Neato Robotics already make their own versions. Yet even the best on the market offer enormous scope for improvement—and the worst little in the way of suction power. Last September Consumer Reports, an American magazine, even warned purchasers to think twice about buying one. But on September 4th, Dyson, a company famous for its bagless vacuum cleaners, announced in Tokyo that it was launching its first robotic model, the Dyson 360 Eye. It will be available in Japan from early next year.

Dyson has so far remained firmly out of the robotic market, despite 16 years of research in the area. It came close to launching a robotic vacuum cleaner in 2001, but the company pulled the device from production at the last moment. James Dyson, the firm's founder, decided the model was too expensive and heavy to be of interest to most consumers. But since then the company has improved the power output of its robotic cleaner and has reduced the size of its motors and other components. The firm has also managed to marry new technology with academic expertise, by working with researchers at Imperial College London. The final result is a cleaner that Dyson says has more suction power than any other robotic vacuum on the market.

The sleek device has a number of innovations that, Dyson claims, put it far ahead of its competitors. Its vision system, with a 360° panoramic camera, allows it to see where it has cleaned in a room and what it has left to do, unlike its competitors which roam about in a seemingly random fashion in the hope that they will eventually cover the entire floor. This means it can clean a given area much faster by prioritising the places it has not yet covered. It also has tank tracks, rather than wheels, which allow it to climb rugs and small obstacles such as carpet edges (see picture). There is even an app to activate the device remotely.

As a result, the Eye is likely to be an expensive, high-end product. This will limit its sales in many places, where the market for vacuum cleaners is ruthlessly price competitive. But the technology-mad Japanese, with their tiny apartments, are likely to be keen. Moreover, if consumers agree that Dyson has managed to create an exceptionally good robotic vacuum, it could expand the market in America—a country which has so far shown limited interest in domestic robots. And even if the new model fails to produce much in the form of direct profits, the smart little device may whip up a storm of interest which will help Dyson promote its other household appliances, such as cyclone vacuum cleaners, washing machines and heaters. But Dyson will be hoping for more than just a whirlwind of publicity: it hopes the Eye will wipe the floor with the competition.

Text a Taco

Taco Text is an app by software product design and development studio XOXCOthat can send an image of a delicious taco to people via text message. The app features both “weird sounds” and four different tacos to choose from. Taco Text is currently available on iOS.

Want to eat tacos? Send a taco!
Want to say I love you? Send a taco!
A taco is the perfect message for any occasion!
Tacos!

Why Apple's iPhone 6 Won't Make Your Wallet Obsolete--At Least Not Yet

A lot is expected when Apple AAPL +0.78% reveals its new iPhone 6 on September 9th–a bigger screen, slimmer profile, faster processor and tougher glass (sapphire!). Now it seems Tim Cook has packed in payment technology that could make your wallet obsolete. On Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Apple will include near-field communication  technology in its new gadget and has signed payment deals with Visa V +1.04%, American Express AXP +0.19% and MasterCard MA -0.3%.

Are payments about to get the iTunes treatment? I doubt it, at least not soon.

It’s never wise to bet against Apple. As a payment device, it has a lot going for it–the iPhone thumb sensor is a secure and simple authentication tool, customers are already comfortable handing the company their financial data (iTunes has more than 600 million credit cards on file), and the brand is so respected and cool that larger, lamer companies would kill to partner with Apple  hoping some of that coolness would rub off on them. And Apple will take this product seriously–the stakes are huge. Mobile payments should hit $720 billion this year (based on Gartner estimates) up from $235 billion last year. That’s fast growth but the upside remains enormous: humans made $15 trillion worth of retail transactions in 2013.

The trouble is that humans aren’t ready for mobile payments.

Apple’s iPhone 6 Will Not Change Mobile Payments, at least not yet

As I’ve written before–the current system works pretty well. Credit cards and cash are easy and reliable–the customer knows how to use them and, more importantly, so do retail employees. Card-readers and payment equipment are costly–no business owner is looking to replace a system that already works. In short–a merchant doesn’t care if his payment processor is cool, neither do most consumers. Scanning a phone is no better than swiping a credit card. For the customer and retailer to make a switch, the new technology must be vastly better than the old ways. What might that improvement look like? Former PayPal president David Marcus (who’s now with Facebook) envisioned it as bringing the online experience off-line. “You’ll get what you want really fast, pay really fast and get out. And the merchant will know more stuff about you, and that will make your experience better.”

Today that experience is absent, and not because large tech company haven’t tried to create it. The list of want-to-be wallet makers is illustrious and long. Square gave it shot and then quit. Google has whiffed twice. And then there was (the unfortunately-named) ISIS –a joint venture between Visa, American Express, Mastercard, Verizon and AT&T wireless which was nothing more than a  $100 million flop.

Now American Express, Visa and MasterCard are back at it and backing a sexier partner in Apple. It’s a big step to have Apple in the mobile payment world, but even with Apple that world will remain small. Cards and cash will still dominate. How might the market grow? As I posted earlier, retailers must act less like Visa, and more like Starbucks SBUX -0.42%–offering an experience faster, smoother, cooler and more rewarding than cash. Today more than 10 million Americans use its app to pay for their Americanos.

Watch a Tokyo Chef Explain the Rules of Eating Sushi

Use fingers, not chopsticks, and don't even think about putting that pickled ginger on the fish. Dip the fish side of the sushi into soy, Tokyo chef Naomichi Yasuda says, and whatever you do, never, ever shake off the excess soy.