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Bike World | 16 March 2013

World 3036









Shave Soap Hoarding

I use shave soap and a badger brush a couple of times a week, usually on weekends when I am not in a rush in the morning. I've tried many different types of shave soap, and the soap from The Art of Shaving ranks very high. A few weeks ago I was thinking about buying a new puck of soap (because I am near the end of my puck of Tabac soap, which, by the way, is another top notch performer even though some say that it smells like an ashtray lurking in your Grandma's linen closet), so of course I browsed over to the Badger & Blade website to see about the latest and greatest trends in shave soap.

After spending some time in the "Shaving Soaps" sub-forum, I saw a post about the end of the shave soap universe - The Art of Shaving changed its soap formulation! They will no longer be tallow-based soaps. Zounds! You see, some believe that tallow is a magic ingredient for a proper shave soap, and many feel that The Art of Shaving BLEW IT by making the change. So there you go, I scratched that soap off of my wish list and decided to move on to something else.

Fast forward about a week, and I found myself wandering about in my local mall, waiting for the females in my family to complete some trivial and unimportant shopping. I spotted a brick and mortar Art of Shaving store, and the mission was ON. I immediately targeted the shave soap display but my trek across the store was intercepted by the young lady working at the store. "Are you looking for anything in particular?" she asked. At this point, I felt ready to test her knowledge of the product line, and blurted out in a holier-than-thou tone: "Yes. I'm interested in your old tallow-based shave soap formulation because I really liked that product and am disappointed that you changed it." Take that!

I was expecting a blank stare from her, but was pleasantly surprised by her response: "We actually do have some old stock left, and you're not the first person to ask about it. We have some of the unscented, lemon, and lavender soap left. You can tell which ones are the old tallow soaps by looking at the packages and [TOP SECRET CONTENT REDACTED]. See, this one is the old soap, and this one is the new stock."

Wow, this person knew her stuff, and her unexpected response caught me off guard. "If you like the old soap, you should stock up on them now," she said. I thought to myself: "Damn, she is right. This is a great product and soap has a long shelf life. Whatever." So, although I was really looking for the sandalwood flavor, I convinced myself to load up on some lemon and lavender soaps. After getting home and realizing how idiotic my acquisition was, I did some rationalization and convinced myself that the soap could be considered to be an "investment" (I should be able to break even at the very least by selling them to other like-minded idiots).

The sales lady at the store suggested that I keep the soap in a cool, dry, dark place (e.g., Grandma's linen closet). I took the advice of this knowledgeable person, wrapped the boxes in Saran Wrap, and stashed them away in a cabinet.

Hermetically Sealed AoS Soaps
As shown, I bought six pucks. My plan is to save them for a few years to see whether or not they become highly sought after on the seedy shaving goods market. Or I might sell them or trade them for other goods or services. Or I might actually use them. I have options.

After the thrill of finding these awesome soap pucks wore off, I realized that I still needed to buy something to actually use. I decided to try the Windsor soap from D.R. Harris, an English brand that claims to be one of London's oldest pharmacies (200+ years in existence). I wonder if they have any 200 year old shave soap lurking somewhere in their stockroom.


I'm not sure why the box says "Shaving Bowl" on it, because there was nothing but a piece of soap inside. Pleasantly scented, and made with tallow of course!

One Hyde Park | The Most Expensive Residential Development on Earth



Vanity Fair

One Hyde Park is the world’s most exclusive address and the most expensive residential development ever built anywhere on earth. With apartments selling for up to $214 million, the building began to smash world per-square-foot price records when sales opened, in 2007.

they can drive their Maybachs into a glass-and-steel elevator From the Hyde Park side, One Hyde Park protrudes aggressively into the skyline like a visiting spaceship, a head above its red-brick and gray-stone Victorian surroundings. Inside, on the ground floor, a large, glassy lobby offers what you’d expect from any luxury intercontinental hotel: gleaming steel statues, thick gray carpets, gray marble, and extravagant chandeliers with radiant sprays of glass. Not that the building’s inhabitants need venture into any of these public spaces: they can drive their Maybachs into a glass-and-steel elevator that takes them down to the basement garage, from which they can zip up to their apartments.

The emphasis everywhere is on secrecy and security, provided by advanced-technology panic rooms, bulletproof glass, and bowler-hatted guards trained by British Special Forces. Inhabitants’ mail is X-rayed before being delivered.

Investment banker David Charters says, “One Hyde Park is a symbol of the times, a symbol of the disconnect. There is almost a sense of ‘the Martians have landed.’ Who are they? Where are they from? What are they doing?”



The really curious aspect of One Hyde Park can be appreciated only at night. Walk past the complex then and you notice nearly every window is dark. As John Arlidge wrote in The Sunday Times, “It’s dark. Not just a bit dark—darker, say, than the surrounding buildings—but black dark. Only the odd light is on. . . . Seems like nobody’s home.”

That’s not because the apartments haven’t sold. London land-registry records say that 76 had been by January 2013 for a total of $2.7 billion—but, of these, only 12 were registered in the names of warm-blooded humans. The remaining 64 are held in the names of unfamiliar corporations often registered in offshore tax havens.

Who are the owners in One Hyde Park?
One $39.5 million apartment is registered openly in the name of Anar Aitzhanova: this may be a Kazakh singer.

Another two, for a combined $49.8 million, are held jointly by Irina Viktorovna Kharitonina and Viktor Kharitonin. The latter is likely to be a co-owner of Russia’s largest domestic drugmaker.

Another apartment is registered to Rory Carvill, a British insurance broker; another is held in the name of Bassim Haidar, who appears to be the founder and C.E.O. for Channel IT, a Nigeria-based telecommunications company. A $35.5 million apartment is registered in the name of Karmen Pretel-Martines, who could not be further identified, as is the case with a Beijing-registered buyer named Kin Hung Kei, who paid $11.6 million.

The best apartment of all—a triplex on Floors 11, 12, and 13 of Tower C—is owned (via a Cayman company) by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, of Qatar, a partner of Project Grande consortium which is behind One Hyde Park.



Another buyer, who bought and merged two apartments for a total of $215.9 million, is Rinat Akhmetov, the Ukraine’s richest man, with an estimated personal net worth of $16 billion. He has interests in coal, mining, power generation, banking, insurance, telecoms, and media, and has been a big beneficiary of privatization auctions in his native country. A spokeswoman for Akhmetov’s holding company, System Capital Management, said last year that the purchase was a “portfolio investment”; U.K. land-registry documents say it is held through a B.V.I. company, Water Property Holdings Ltd.

Another owner is Vladimir Kim, who chairs the London-listed Kazakh copper giant Kazakhmys P.L.C. Kim was once a top official in the political party behind Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has often been accused of sanctioning severe abuses of human rights and media freedom. Sheikh Mohammed Saud Sultan Al Qasimi, head of finance for the government of Sharjah, bought an $18.1 million apartment, while at least one more belongs to the Russian real-estate magnate Vladislav Doronin, who is dating model Naomi Campbell.

An $11.7 million second-floor apartment is owned by Galina Weber, a significant shareholder in the Russian gas giant Itera. Two apartments, worth a combined $43.7 million, are owned by Professor Wong Wen Young, with London and Taipei addresses. This is presumably the billionaire Taiwan-born entrepreneur Winston Wong Wen Young, who has enjoyed a close business relationship with Jiang Mianheng, the son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. A $12 million apartment is held jointly by Desmond Lim Siew Choon and Tan Kewi Yong, a billionaire Malaysian couple with a big property empire. Last September the real-estate company Jones Lang LaSalle estimated that nearly a sixth of all recent buyers of new central-London property were Malaysian—and only 19 percent British. Wealth is currently pouring out of Malaysia ahead of imminent elections, which could see the scandal-ridden ruling coalition ousted for the first time since independence.



Less is known about others, but clues can be found. Land-registry documents for four apartments provide contact details for Alastair Tulloch, a British lawyer who Hollingsworth said is known in Russian-oligarch circles as “the new Stephen Curtis”—a reference to the Russians’ go-to London lawyer, who died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2004. Tulloch has represented the interests of Alexander Lebedev, a banking oligarch who owns London’s Evening Standard and a sizable piece of the Russian airline Aeroflot, among other holdings, and has worked closely with the jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

One apartment was purchased by the Caymans-based Knightsbridge Holdings Ltd., registered in Ugland House—a modest building where some 20,000 companies are registered and which President Obama in a 2009 speech said was “either the largest building in the world or the largest tax scam in the world.”

A company called Postlake Ltd.—registered on the Isle of Man—which owns a $5.6 million apartment on the fourth floor. Postlake is in turn registered as owned by Purcey Ltd., a B.V.I. entity, which is registered as held on behalf of an Isle of Man trust set up by the bankrupt Irish property developer Ray Grehan, who has been pursued by Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency to recover more than $350 million it says it is owed. Grehan had argued that the apartment is not really his but belongs to a family trust. Martin Kenney, a B.V.I. lawyer, says B.V.I. companies are frequently owned by foreign trusts from more outlandish jurisdictions, such as Nevis or the Cook Islands, deepening the secrecy. These structures are “debtor-friendly and creditor-unfriendly,” he says, so in cases of fraud it can be very hard to recover assets.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia

National Public Radio

In his new novel, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, Mohsin Hamid's nameless protagonist is an ambitious young man who moves from the countryside to a megalopolis in search of his fortune.

“Something like half the world's people now live in cities for the first time in human history, but in the course of the next generation, 25, 30 years, that number’s going to go to 80 or 90 percent, which means that a couple billion people are going to move to cities in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America.”

PBS Off Book | The Rise of Webcomics


Take My Picture | Fashion Bloggers & Street Style


Sexcereal



Sexcereal

SEXCEREAL is the world’s first and only gender-based whole food cereal, a mélange of carefully formulated, extraordinarily delicious (and expensive) ingredients and spice sourced both from Canada as well as from exotic locations worldwide. It is not a Granola, it is much more of a whole food. Granola is comprised of 70% oats. SEXCEREAL is made with only 40% certified gluten-free oats. SEXCEREAL is cereal with purpose.


Nanoblimp



Microflight

The radio controlled Nanoblimp and is a standard latex party balloon filled with helium gas and a gondola consisting of 3 Motors with propellers.

All you need to fly is an inexpensive helium tank and batteries available from WalMart or Costco stores. The Nanoblimp gondola is attached to the balloon with double sided foam tape.

Urban Earth Worm Skyscraper Cleans Air and Soil Pollution


eVolo

Lee Seungsoo of South Korea conceived the Urban Earth Worm skyscraper which uses one of the basest of creatures as its inspiration. Just as earthworms clean the soil and solve pollution problems, promulgating life in thriving ecosystems, this skyscraper will clean air and soil pollution in cities and also feed cities–literally.

The structure which is shaped like a worm, horizontally extends and curves throughout the city, cleaning the air, processing waste and providing food in not just one but many points. The top part of the structure has growing tubes that are filled with soil and grow trees and plants. This green area cleans the city’s air and also provides crops for the city’s residents.


An energy station near the ground (but still within the worm) takes the city’s garbage and processes it into biomass from which energy can be generated. This energy fuels the skyscraper’s own processes but also is sent back to the city. The biomass is also used to replenish the soil that is used to grow the trees and crops in upper levels. Soil is periodically transported down to the energy station and mixed with biomass. It is left to sit for some time and replenish its nutrients. When that process is complete, it is transported back up to the growing levels, and the soil already up there is moved down to be regenerated.

Japan is First Nation to Extract ‘Frozen Gas’ From Seabed



Russia Today

In a move to lessen its dependency on fuel imports, Japan has succeeded in extracting gas from undersea frozen gas deposits, known as ‘burning ice.’

The gas was tapped from deposits of methane hydrate, a frozen gas near Japans central coast 80 kilometers off Atsumi Peninsula in Aichi Prefecture.

Experts estimate that the carbon found in gas hydrates worldwide totals at least twice the amount of carbon in all of the earth’s other fossil fuels, making it a potential game-changer for energy-poor countries like Japan.

Energy researchers estimate there are at least 1.1 trillion cubic meters of methane hydrates near the country's Atsumi Peninsula, enough for about 11 years of Japanese gas consumption; in total, the seas around Japan could have enough gas to supply the country for the next 100 years.

Zalando Fashion Car | Shop Without Leaving Your Car



Zalando

Here’s the idea: you’re driving your Zalando when you spot someone wearing an outfit that you gotta have. Using an augmented reality app, outfits discovered on the streets are recognised by an onboard iPad camera and can be ordered directly from the Zalando online shop. Using GPS, the package is delivered automatically to the integrated package station in the boot. The outfits can then be tried on in the car’s mobile changing room and the Fashion Box has plenty of room for your favorite outfits.

6th Grader Brings $20,000 to School & Hands Out $100 Bills in Class



WPTV

A 12-year-old student in Taylor, Michigan showed up to school with $20,000 in $100 bills in her backpack and started handing out money to classmates.

Oblivion Featurette



Tom Cruise play a blue-collar drone repairman.

Light Park Floating Recreational Skyscraper


eVolo

Cities are filled with pavement and concrete so how can green space and recreational areas be added? Ting Xu and Yiming Chen of China have a concept to answer this question for Beijing—a skyscraper that floats in the sky above the land.

The Light Park stays afloat thanks to a large, mushroom cap-like helium-filled balloon at its top, and solar-powered propellers directly below. Programmatic platforms that host parks, sports fields, green houses, restaurants, and other uses are suspended from the top of the structure by reinforced steel cables; the platforms fan in different directions around the spherical vessel to balance its weight. These slabs are also staggered to allow for maximum exposure to sunlight on each level.

Translucent solar panels cover the top of the vessel to power the uses below, and water collectors, also located at the top, direct precipitation towards filters that send clean water throughout the structure.

The Light Park can return valuable green space to the public, and also help mitigate the pollution that comes with increased development–with parks and plants floating in the sky above the city, the air is partially cleaned.

Dennis Hope Will Sell You Land on the Moon



The New York Times

Dennis Hope will sell you property on the moon, Mars and Venus. Some say he’s part of a hallowed American tradition, whereby land speculators sell plots of useless land on the next “frontier,” from the southern swamps to the western desert.
“This is as real as any property you can buy on Earth.” ~Dennis Hope

Bangkok Tree House


Bangkok Tree House

For a unique experience in Bangkok, sleep in a floating bed on the Chao Phraya River for the night. The tides rock you to sleep and the morning sun rise is your alarm clock. Includes 24/7 ice cream, bicycle rental, WIFI an cell-phone rental with local Thai number—all free during your stay.

If you are spooked by wet dreams or the thought of rolling out of bed in the middle of the night but still desire to sleep outdoors, consider staying at the Bangkok Tree House’s onshore accommodations like their “View with a Room” 23 feet up in the air shown below.

The boutique inn is nestled amid a wilderness of mangroves and palm trees on Bang Krachao, a small island known as Bangkok’s ‘green lung’ and is accessible only by boat, foot or bicycle. A rare treat in a city of 10.5 million.




Changsha China | Zaha Hadid’s Modern Art Center



Zaha Hadid Architects have unveiled conceptual plans for Changsha Meixihu International Culture & Art Centre—a Grand Theatre, a Contemporary Art Museum, and a Multipurpose Hall—in Changsha, China designated for celebrating the arts.



Student Plays With Billy Joel



Inside Vandy

Lifelong Billy Joel fan Michael Pollack stood up to ask his childhood idol a question during the Piano Man's recent Q&A at Vanderbilt University. Pollack, a piano player himself, asked Joel if he could accompany him in a performance of “New York State of Mind” — Pollack’s favorite song.

My roommate and I decided that we would try and find a way to get a question to be asked, and see if we could get on stage. And the day came, I put together a question, and I was raising my hand, and my friends to the right of me kept pointing to me, and finally after a few questions he picked on me and I hesitantly said how “New York State of Mind” was my favorite song, and how I had performed it with his saxophonist Richie Cannata in the past and wondered if I could go up and play it with him. And then he thought for a little — he took a second — and then he just said “Okay.” Which wasn’t quite convincing, but it was good enough. I walked up, we spoke about the arrangement for about 15 seconds — he just went through what he wanted me to play — and then…
 

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