When you’re in London and you want the finest food served in the classiest ambiance, where do you go? To the Tube, of course! There you can a butternut velouté with crushed cumin and a crispy arancini. But you’ll have to go to one spot in particular for food like this: the Basement Gallery.
It’s a supper club that chef Alex Cooper created in an old car first used on the London Underground in 1967. Cooper uses a kitchen in what was a Victorian-era waste pumping station to prepare the food, then waiters deliver it to the train car. Guests eat on fine silverware and pristine white tablecloths. You can see more photos at Messy Nessy Chic.
Some McDonald’s outlets have computer kiosks that let you design a burger. The kiosk sends the order to the counter and the people in the kitchen build it to your specifications.
There’s a great moment at the 1:31 mark in the video when the McDonald’s worker sees the order. You can almost see the thought processes in her head. Sensibly, she goes to alert the manager.
Tamssot discovered a bug in the burger machine program. Technically speaking, his burger should cost $890.80. But the system won’t accept a charge higher than $24.89 per burger.
I work online, so it’s less of a problem. But, yes: we rakishly good-looking men endure nothing but sorrow as a result of our superior appearances. Marko Pitesa, a professor of management at the University of Maryland, found that handsome men are less likely to get hired in competitive workplaces. That’s because people tend to think of handsome men as more competent, and thus dangerous competition. You don't want to hire someone who's better at your job than you are, right? The Daily Telegraph reports:
While the attractive men were more likely to be hired to work in a team environment, unattractive men had the advantage in a competitive one.
Pitesa said: “In situations where there are subtle or less subtle cues of competition among colleagues then the fact that attractive men are seen as more competent is going to create a disadvantage for attractive men.”
He added: “I was taken by the fact that people were unaware of [their bias].”
Society must find a way to do justice for the aesthetically-enhanced like us. Well, maybe not you. But me, at least.
Back in 1998, Spanish artist Merta Alonso Yebra wanted to experiment with stained glass. But she didn’t have the specialized equipment necessary to melt and manage glass. She discovered an alternative: gummy bears. They melt at a much lower temperature than glass and can be poured and shaped using ordinary kitchen implements.
Yebra melts the gummy bears, then pours them in successive layers, creating what she calls “a wall full of colors.” In addition to being pretty, they smell nice—which is another advantage over glass.
The United States has the White House and Argentina has the Pink House. That's what the presidential palace in Buenos Aires is called--the Casa Rosada. The color comes from a traditional blending of lime and the blood of oxen. It's been that color since 1870. This one of 13 visually striking presidential residences around the world, including a very modern-styled building in Brasilia and a beautifully blue-tiled building in Seoul.
When people rescue animals, sometimes the animals express their gratitude toward their benefactors. We've previously seen this with a dog, a dolphin, and a sea turtle. And now we can see this expression of thanks from a snake.
Two teenage boys in the US found a snake trapped in a net. They patiently cut it free with a knife. When the snake was free, it regurgitated a whole frog that it had swallowed. It was surely a gift offered to the boys to repay them for their kindness. Unfortunately, the video ends before the boys partake of their reward.
Brittany Wright, a photographer in Seattle, thinks of food as an art form--for both the eyes and the mouth. One of her recent explorations of this field includes arranging foods from her garden and grocery into assemblies sorted by color gradient. Each edible canvas is a smooth blend of colors, from light to dark. You can track her progress in the series on Instagram.
That's all the time that 17-year old Collin Burns needed to solve a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube. He did so at a competition at Central Bucks West High School in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. This broke a previous world record of 5.55 seconds.
It's a very casual scene. People are playfully milling about, unaware that someone is about to perform an astonishing feat. Burns checks out the cube for a few seconds and places it on the table. When he picks it up, the clock starts.
On Saturday night, Professor Stephen Hawking took questions from an audience in the Sydney Opera House. The acclaimed physicist addressed an important issue: the abrupt and wrenching depature of singer Zayn Malik from the boy band One Direction. BuzzFeed quotes the questioner:
What do you think is the cosmological effect of Zayn leaving One Direction and consequently breaking the hearts of millions of teenage girls across the world?
“Finally, a question about something important,” he said.
“My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay close attention to the study of theoretical physics. Because one day there may well be proof of multiple universes.”
“It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another different universe.”
“And in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction.”
It got better still for the questioner. “This girl may like to know that in another possible universe, she and Zayn are happily married,” Hawking added.
Dutch artist Henk Hofstra is known for his huge public installations, such as when he turned a city street into a river by painting it blue. In 2010, he created this massive work that Eugene of My Modern Met describes as "if God threw giant eggs down at us." It's called Art Eggcident and was placed in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden. It's not an act of serious commentary, but a joke based on a Dutch expression. Hofstra explains:
What was your inspiration for the "Art Eggcident" project?
There's a Dutch expression: "To lay down the first egg, you have to start with the first egg." In the city of Leeuwarden people talked a lot about what to do with Zaailand. It's one of the biggest city squares in Holland. There were a lot of plans for it, but nobody started. That's why I started with the first egg (and several more) and made them huge.
What kind of reactions did you get from people?
I had a lot of reactions. Off course, the reactions were not always the same. Some people liked it very much, some people didn't. When it was ready for a couple of hours 80 % was negative, just a few weeks later 80 % was positive. The surrounding shops were very positive because it attracted a lot of tourists and they sold more than otherwise.
Cadbury has produced a new chocolate bar that will contain no fewer than 7 different flavors inside its chocolate blisters. They are solid chocolate, caramel, almond, fruit and nut, Oreo, almond butter, and Turkish delight. It's called the Dairy Milk Spectacular 7. Food artist Prudence Staite helped Cadbury design this ingenious candy bar.
You won't be able to buy it in stores. Cadbury is making only 50 of them, which will be prizes in a contest available to residents of the United Kingdom.
At a mere 200 pounds, this elephant seal is just a little baby. He's been abandoned by his mama, so he's eager for some snuggling. Charlene Fritz, a tourist from Canada, was glad to provide it. While she visited Snow Hill Island off the coast of Antarctica, the little seal crawled over to her and climbed on of her lap.
Yoyo Chan is one and a half years old. She has a big task ahead of her: nailing the nursery school interview. Doing so can get her into the best nursery school, which can lead to the best kindergarten, then elmentary school, and, eventually, the best medical school.
It all comes down to now. Focus, Yoyo. Focus.
In Hong Kong, many parents want their kids to offer their best at the competitive nursery school interview process. A dozen openings at a top school can lead to a thousand applications. So some companies now offer to train toddlers to perform better than their competitors during the interviews. Helier Cheung reports for the BBC:
At interview class, Yoyo is asked to greet the tutor and introduce herself. The tutor then asks her to complete a number of tasks, including building a house with bricks, drawing a picture, sticking two felt eyes in the right position on a felt face, and identifying pieces of fruit.
A little shy to begin with, Yoyo quickly warms up and appears to enjoy the tasks and playing with the toys.
"These classes and interviews can be hard work," says her mother, Emma. "But I do want her to be prepared. Most parents want their child to have a good start."
One nursery Emma is keen on had more than 100 interviewees for just nine places, so she'll do whatever she can to increase her daughter's chances of success.
Yoyo's younger brother, still a baby, will begin interview classes in a few months, she says - when he's about eight months old.
And I'm not entirely sure why. But I couldn't help but grin through this entire performance. It's by the band Goose House, which added a banjo to its normal repertoire. This version of the song is just a bit different from this performance of it by John Denver while touring in Japan. No matter who sings it or where, everyone wants to go back home to West Virginia.
With a few bell peppers, olives, and the right shape, Wendi created a pizza that looks just like the helmet of Star Wars fans' favorite bounty hunter. Now it just needs to be slowly baked inside the oven for over a thousand years.
