I've not been terribly impressed with most eco/green/earth-friendly products, but I came across one in New York magazine recently that just strikes me as a really great idea.  It's a small sink that's built into a toilet tank lid replacement, that spouts clean tap water for you to wash your hands (post-tinkle), then all the "grey" water drains into your toilet bowl, filling it up for the next use.  How clever is that? 

Most "grey water" solutions I've read about are ugly, awkward, and/or hard to do unless you are the type who burns yak butter for electricity, but this one is quite an elegant idea, methinks. 

Listen up, caffeineholics.  (shin{k}aide, this means you)    Energy Fiend has a handy calculator that will figure out how much of your favorite caffeinated beverage it would take to kill you.  And if you call in the next 10 minutes, you'll also get this nifty calculator that'll do the same for your favorite snacks, like Penguin Mints or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

Recently the New York Times Select had an article (below) about how U.S. versions of British candy bars like Kit Kats and Cadbury Dairy Milks taste very different ("sour," to the British palate).  Having lived in England in the '70s-'80s, I can remember eating what were called Marathon bars, which here in the States are called Snickers bars.  Now, of course, they've made it more confusing by having Snickers Marathon bars, which are like energy bars for athletes.  And apparently, the U.S. had also had a Marathon bar (no longer made) that was entirely different from a Snickers bar.

Anyway, found this snippet from Wikipedia about the renaming of the UK Marathon bars to "Snickers":

In the UK and Ireland, Snickers bars were originally sold under the name "Marathon". In October 1989, Mars standardised many of its global brand names, and the name was changed to Snickers.

M&M Mars used an aggressive advertisement campaign with memorable portrayals of irate foreign visitors attempting to order "Snickers" from confused shopkeepers. For eighteen months thereafter, both names were retained on the wrapper— first with "Marathon" in large letters, then with "Snickers" in even larger letters. This caused a certain amount of derision, as the unfamiliar "Snickers" was, to Irish and British ears, meaningless, and sounded a little like "knickers" (e.g. the tongue twister "Granny Snickers").

The change of name attained some prominence in British and Irish popular cultures. As of 2006, it still occasionally appears as the subject or punchline of comedy routines.

But I was fascinated to read about the different versions of Kit Kats for different countries--who knew?  And shame on me for assuming that Smarties were just like M&Ms.
 

July 11, 2007

The World's Best Candy Bars? English, of Course

By KIM SEVERSON

A TELEVISION news producer from recently made a deal with her boss, who was traveling in . The producer promised she would submit her script for an investigative story ahead of deadline in exchange for two British Kit Kats and a Curly Wurly bar.

The woman, who did not want her name revealed for fear of being teased endlessly by her colleagues, so loves her British chocolate that she takes an extra suitcase when she travels to just to bring back a haul.

''Should I admit I am carrying two U.K. Kit Kats with me in my briefcase right now, just in case I get into a bind on my trip?'' she e-mailed this reporter from the road.

At this point, it would be easy to take a long, clichéd side trip into a discussion of the relative inferiority of British food. But for the rarefied palate that can appreciate the soft, immediate pleasure of an inexpensive candy bar, it's not difficult to give the edge to sweets from the realm of the queen.

That's why Malcolm Smart takes his son, Rowan, for a stroll to Blue Apron in Park Slope, , twice a week for a proper British candy bar. Rowan is 6 years old, and tends toward the mint Aero bar.

Mr. Smart, who grew up in Birmingham, England, home of the chocolate manufacturer Cadbury-Schweppes, is a Flake man himself. The Cadbury Flake, a crumbly bar of compressed ribbons of chocolate, was invented in 1920. It is thrust into swirls of soft ice cream at parks all over London, creating a dessert called a 99.

Alan Palmer, who is an owner of Blue Apron, said the British candy bars have been strong sellers since he opened the shop five years ago.''Anybody who went to school there or had any kind of business or family connection over there is totally addicted to them,'' he said.

Mr. Smart, who has lived in the United States for 25 years, learned early on in his life here that British and American chocolate bars are different, even if they share a name and a look.

''One day I was eating a bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk and I thought, this has absolutely no flavor,'' he said. ''I looked at the label and saw it was made by Hershey. I was outraged.''

Cadbury Dairy Milk is the iconic British candy bar, the one most likely to be tucked into the suitcase of a Yankee tourist looking for an inexpensive souvenir. Versions are filled with caramel, whipped fondant, whole nuts or pellets of shortbread cookie.

It's a different bar from the Cadbury bar available in the United States. According to the label, a British Cadbury Dairy Milk bar contains milk, sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, vegetable fat and emulsifiers. The version made by the Hershey Company, which holds the license from Cadbury-Schweppes to produce the candy in the United States under the British company's direction, starts its ingredient list with sugar. It lists lactose and the emulsifier soy lecithin, which keeps the cocoa butter from separating from the cocoa. The American product also lists ''natural and artificial flavorings.''

Tony Bilsborough, a spokesman for Cadbury-Schweppes in Britain, said his company ships its specially formulated chocolate crumb -- a mash of dried milk and chocolate to which cocoa butter will be added later -- to Hershey, Pa. What happens next accounts for the differences.

''I imagine it's down to the final processing and the blending,'' he said. After consulting with chocolate manufacturers in each country, Cadbury tries to replicate the taste people grew up with, he said. In the United States, that means a bar that is more akin to a Hershey bar, which to many British palates tastes sour.

Kirk Seville, a spokesman for the Hershey Company, declined to explain the manufacturing process, saying the company preferred not to take part in a discussion about the manufacturing differences between a British and an American Cadbury bar.

For people here with a taste for British candy, no explanation is necessary. Their opinions are already formed.

''Hershey's tastes like ear wax,'' said Kevin Ellis, a Canadian-born designer with Adobe Systems in San Francisco. Mr. Ellis, who says Canadian and British chocolate bars are comparable, anticipates with delight the boxes of imported chocolate bars his family sends.

The appeal of British chocolate is powerful. When the Ellis family moved not long ago to another Bay Area house, a burly man from Birmingham who was helping to haul the sofa spied a box.

''Do you mind if I have a Curly Wurly?'' he asked with the tenderness of a hopeful child.

The Curly Wurly, a thick strip of braided caramel covered in chocolate, is a sibling to the discontinued Marathon bar, which any American who was in high school when Jimmy Carter was president will remember fondly.

The Curly Wurly is not as popular in Britain as the Crunchie. With its crisp honeycomb interior, it's what a Butterfinger might be if it went to finishing school and married up.

But neither rivals the Mars bar, the prom queen of British candy bars. About three million of them are made daily in Slough, just west of London. It's like a less sweet version of the American Milky Way, rather than the almond-stuffed American Mars bar. The smart set in London melts it over ice cream for a fast dinner party dessert. Mars bars are also fried in the same sort of batter used to coat cod.

And then there is the television producer's beloved Kit Kat, invented in York, England, in the early 1930s and available in versions that match the tastes of, variously, Japanese, Germans, Australians, Canadians and Americans.

Nicky Perry has sold chocolate bars from her home country for more than a decade at her store, Tea and Sympathy, in Greenwich Village.

Her theory is that the bars from the United Kingdom are made from a better recipe, containing fewer stabilizers. They melt more quickly than a Hershey bar, which is why she cuts back on the amount she stocks in summer.

''I can't afford to keep the A.C. on all night or a chocolate bar would cost $10, wouldn't it?'' she said.

At the London Food Company in Montclair, N.J., about 17 percent of the store's sales are British chocolate bars, said Samantha Codling, the owner.

Ms. Codling, who is from Essex, offers a range of Cadbury Milk bars, including the mint crisp, whole nut and Turkish delight with rose jelly. The British Smartie, which resembles an M & M but has a thicker shell, and the Malteser malt ball, also sell well.

''All the ex-pats definitely know the difference already and the Americans soon figure it out,'' she said.

Bryn Dyment, a Web developer in the Bay Area who grew up in Canada, said he was shocked when his parents took him to a candy counter in the United States. He found out that not every child in the world was eating the same chocolate bars he was.

It wasn't until he moved to the United States as an adult that he realized just how vast that divide is.

''You get in these religious arguments with people,'' he said. ''I haven't met a Canadian who likes a Hershey bar, but Americans think you're crazy when you say that, because they think everyone loves a Hershey bar.''

From Popular Mechanics:

Survival rates for various parts of the passenger cabin, based on all commercial jet crashes in the United States since 1971 where detailed seating charts were available. (Illustration by Gil Ahn. Diagram courtesy of seatguru.com.)

A follow-up to Rottin' in Denmark's post on Robert Frank and the cost/benefit explanations behind everyday design enigmas...  Here are more interesting questions answered in Frank's book, The Economic Naturalist:

On the positioning of buttons on clothes:

Why are they on the right for men, and the left for women, especially since, for the 90 percent of the population who are right-handed, it's much easier to do up buttons from the right? It's because when buttons were introduced in the 17th century, they were affordable only by the wealthy. As rich men then dressed themselves, they did so from the right; whereas wealthy women were dressed by servants, who preferred to button them up from the left. The custom continues today, even though fewer women are dressed by servants, because there has been no incentive for the fashion industry to change it.

On VCRs:

Why do manufacturers load them up with so many functions - most of which we seldom, if ever, use - that recording a television program is infuriatingly difficult? The answer is because it costs so little to add each function to a VCR that is cheaper to install them on every machine - just in case anyone wants them - than to "edit" models for different customers.

Kind of the same idea with regard to the reason for Braille buttons on drive-up cash machines:

ATM producers have to make keypads with Braille dots for their walk-up machines anyway, and so it is cheaper to make all machines the same way.

On eggs:

Why are brown eggs more expensive than white ones? Because the hens that lay them are bigger and tend to eat more.

IHT review

Yotel opened its first capsule hotel at London's Gatwick airport last month.  At 75 square feet or 7 square meters, the term "capsule" is pretty descriptive, but from the pictures I've seen the rooms are sleek and nicely appointed.  Who really needs more than a bed, bathroom, wi-fi, and desk during an airport layover anyway?  Heck, I'd be happy with the bed.

(Now, if they could make airplane cabins like this, that would be something)  (Economy class, I mean)

Times article

Um... Can I be Martin Sheen and not Marlon Brando?

I wish to apologize in advance to Aput, who tagged me for the Book meme... My intellect and attention span are such that what few books I do read, I typically leave unfinished.  As such I'll have to "amend" some of the questions so I can formulate somewhat satisfactory answers (i.e., that won't be too humiliating).

1. One book that changed your life: Er... Many of the Jeffrey Archer ones, the first one being Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less.  Changed my life because...er...I realized I could actually become engrossed by and read an entire book from cover to cover. 

2. One book that you’ve read more than once: The Little House on the Prairie collection by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  Not to be confused with the vapid TV series.  I read the books many times during my childhood abroad, and through them learned quite a bit about life in America during its frontier days.

3. One book you’d want on a desert island: A really big, thick one so I could make signal fires with it.  Or maybe a survival handbook.  Or even better, a big, thick, survival handbook.

4. One book that made you laugh: Neither Here Nor There, by Bill Bryson.  Absolutely one of the most bitingly funny AND culturally astute travelogues I've ever read.

5. One book that made you cry: Another book that made you laugh:  Bridget Jones's Diary, by Helen Fielding. Laugh-out-loud funny, and read in a couple of days--extremely unusual for me.  I am particularly fond of some of Bridget's expressions, like "Frrrrrrck."

6. One book that you wish you had written: Any of the Julia Child cookbooks, because then I'd really know what I was doing when cooking.

7. One book that you wish had never been written: Another of my favorite books of all time: Material World: A Global Family Portrait, by Peter Menzel, Charles C. Mann, and Paul Kennedy.  Just fascinating, with superb, contrasting photo portraits of families around the world and their material possessions.

8. One book you’re currently reading: La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind, by Beppe Severgnini.  Some of his commentary is spot-on, such as when he describes Italians' view of the traffic light as a suggestion, rather than a directive.  Funny if you've spent time in Italy with its inhabitants.

9. One book you’ve been meaning to read finish: 102 Minutes: The Untold Story of the Fight to Survive Inside the Twin Towers, by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn.  A devastating analysis and collection of first-person accounts of the attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.

10. Now tag five people:  Wanna play?  You're it!  (Dear reader, consider yourself tagged)