Brand Brazil is good to go- Tyler Brûlé /FT.com / Columnists

Brand Brazil is good to go

By Tyler Brûlé

Published: August 20 2010 22:16 | Last updated: August 20 2010 22:16

It’s time for a little Fast Lane pre back-to-school, back-to-work quiz to sharpen your faculties for the last third of the year.

1. If you were going to buy a holiday home, would you choose:

a) a spacious beach apartment in Sochi, Russia

b) a Thai-inspired villa on the resort island of Hainan, China

c) a thatched bungalow on a beach in Goa

d) a Marcio Kogan designed bungalow in Trancoso, Brazil?

2. Where would you like to spend your retirement years:

a) Russia?

b) China?

c) India?

d) Brazil?

3.) If you were organising an end of summer cocktail party on your terrace, would you choose:

a) Dacha-style discotheque with a vodka bar?

b) Sweaty Shanghai swing with a dumpling buffet?

c) Kerala trance party with buckets of beer?

d) Breezy bossa nova with a caipirinha bar staffed by Brazilian waiters?

While there’s no scientifically correct answer to any of the questions above, they do form part of my ever-evolving list of metrics for my Bric nation liveability, lifestyle and soft-power index. No matter how I shuffle the deck, Brazil always leads the pack.

After a brief stop in Abu Dhabi and Dubai followed by a 16-hour flight on Emirates I happily touched down in São Paulo last week for a 72-hour visit. The drill in São Paulo is always the same: an early evening arrival at the somewhat tired but perfectly compact Guarulhos airport, a blacked-out (sometimes bullet-proof) Kia sedan into town and a warm welcome at the Fasano Hotel.

I have many favourite hotels around the world, but the Fasano is the one brand that I’d like to see more of while I travel.

On Tuesday evening I pulled up in the driveway and was greeted by a doorman in an elegant suit. While his colleagues attended to my bags I walked into the dimly lit, clubby lobby. In the main lounge area a couple of men in business attire were having a meeting, a lone photographer was sipping a glass of red, a chic young couple (she Italian and he perhaps Swiss) were flipping through the São Paulo dailies and the fireplace was filling the whole space with that wonderful fragrance that can never be captured in a scented candle or room spray.

The cosy-modernist theme is carried through to the Fasano’s guestrooms and I’m often tempted by the low-lighting, warm woods and elegant reading chair to abandon my evening plans and settle in for an early night. The hotel’s rooms are neither too big nor too small and have a purposeful sense of scale that allows you to get on with work for a couple of hours, but never make you feel like you’re trapped.

Much of this has to do with the meticulous planning executed by the hotel’s founder Rogerio Fasano and his architect sparring partner Isay Weinfeld. The former is the man behind one of Brazil’s most respected hospitality powerhouses, and Weinfeld is the man who virtually every Brazilian billionaire wants to commission to build their beach houses and city compounds.

Later this year the Fasano brand will venture beyond Brazil’s borders for the first time when the company opens a resort property outside of Punta del Este in Uruguay. This will signal Brazil launching an international luxury brand to take on the likes of the Four Seasons and Hyatt, and exporting its own style of inn-keeping and design that’s a welcome relief from all of the tired and tested Asian formulas mimicked by many of the big global brands.

The following morning, while enduring the tedious stop-start, stop-start traffic of São Paulo I started doing a mental brand audit of shop fronts. Most of the names around the Fasano are the usual international luxury suspects, and I wondered whether this was a new metric worth adding to my Bric index. How many home-grown, designed and owned brands do I consume in daily life from those four economies? By the time I pulled up at the Cidade Jardim shopping mall a few kilometres away it seemed that Brazil was out in front again. I came up with: Made in Brazil Havaianas flip-flops that are found in my luggage on trips to hot climates, Made in Brazil Embraer aircraft to shuttle me around on short haul journeys, elegant Made in Brazil chairs from Sergio Rodrigues under my bum, and Written, Recorded and Pressed in Brazil tunes by Bebel Gilberto and Barbara Mendes stored on my laptop. I tried very hard to think of Indian, Russian and Chinese brands that I owned or used and I couldn’t think of any – no Russian design brands in my house, no reservations at any Indian hotels and no Lenovo laptop in my bag.

Brazil’s energy companies might be the engine for the country’s economy but it’s the softer elements (music, fashion, hospitality, design) that are going to make brand Brazil that little bit more seductive and sexier than Russia, India and China.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle

tyler.brule@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/brule

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

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Space tourism jet has trouble during test run - Technology & science - Space - msnbc.com

Space tourism jet has trouble during test run

 

MOJAVE, Calif. — The left main landing gear on Virgin Galactic's space tourism jet collapsed as it landed after a test flight in the Mojave Desert Thursday, federal aviation authorities said. No injuries were reported.

Two Federal Aviation Administration inspectors were on the scene to examine WhiteKnightTwo, a four-engine jet that will serve as the mothership for Virgin's passenger-carrying spaceship.
"The left main landing gear is damaged, but we don't yet know if that's the extent of the damage," FAA spokesman Ian Gregor said.
The problem occurred around 11:15 a.m. PT at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
In a statement, aircraft builder Scaled Composites described the event as a "minor incident." The company said there was a mechanical problem with the left landing gear.
Scaled did not describe the problem in any detail, but said there were no injuries. The rocket-powered spaceship, known as SpaceShipTwo, was not attached to the jet at the time.
WhiteKnightTwo is designed to carry Virgin's spaceship to high altitude and then release the rocket, which will then fire its engine for a brief dash into space.
Virgin has said the test program is expected to run through next year before commercial operations begin. About 300 clients have paid for a $200,000 ticket or placed a deposit.
Seven years ago, SpaceShipOne — the predecessor of the rocket plane currently being developed — suffered a partial landing gear collapse and ran off the runway at Mojave at the end of its first powered test flight . The plane went on to make three successful spaceflights in 2004, winning the $10 million Ansari X Prize in the process.
This report includes information from The Associated Press and msnbc.com.

© 2010 msnbc.com




Space tourism jet has trouble during test run - Technology & science - Space - msnbc.com

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Tyler Brûlé - Behold brilliant Beirut

Behold brilliant Beirut

By Tyler Brûlé

Published: August 14 2010 00:47 | Last updated: August 14 2010 00:47

The last week has been something of a hot, hazy blur. When I landed in Beirut on Wednesday, the air over the city was so thick and heavy that it felt as if I were being pushed downwards through the soft, mushy pavement. Still, a super-humid evening didn’t stop us (me, Mom, Mats, my magazine colleagues Todd, Bruce and new friend Moritz) from co-hosting a party at Papercup in Mar Mikhael, commandeering a wonderful new Armenian restaurant a few streets away and then enjoying the crowd, fire-show, sounds, sparklers and impossibly large bottles of vodka at Skybar above Beirut’s harbour.

While the quick stop in Lebanon was mostly work, it also marked the official handover of the flat I fell for back in May. If you caught the dispatch from my trip in early June, you’ll recall that I found two flats in the Ashrafieh district but hadn’t managed to secure the one I wanted before I departed.

Fortunately, I now have the keys to the better of the two and have set to work scouring the city’s market, galleries, antique dealers and rubbish heaps for choice pieces to populate the terrace, reception rooms and hotel-size kitchen. My friend Kamal bundled me into his car before I left to select the essentials for the kitchen, and assured me that anything I couldn’t find in the country could be easily made. “Whatever you want,” he said. “Furniture for the terrace, deep sofas for lounging, bed-linen, lamps, storage units. We still know how to make things here.”

Aside from Lebanon’s winning sense of hospitality and an anything-goes lifestyle (elements that should be at the cornerstone of its tourism campaign), it’s the rich culture of craft that makes it a potentially interesting case-study for a country at the cross-roads of Europe and Asia.

A lack of investment in basic infrastructure over the past three decades has turned into a bonus for everyone from book publishers to furniture designers. A young woman who has a stationery business is able to print and hone her craft in the suburbs of Beirut on machines that were long ago replaced by digital equipment in more developed economies. The final product is luxurious and wonderfully tactile – and also incredibly rare.

Across town in Hamra, a furniture gallery that deals in pieces from Jean Royère has started adapting the designs of the respected French furniture designer from the 1950s and launched a local production facility. Boomerang-style tables that have been altered for 21st-century living are covered in plastic laminates that would have been consigned to the bin decades ago but are still found in warehouses around the country. Indeed, small-scale Lebanese furniture manufacturers are now winning jobs that might have otherwise gone to factories in China.

If Turkey is focused on going for volume when it comes to manufacturing clothes, furniture and houseware, then “Made in Lebanon” could become a mark of quality for ceramics, tailored garments, printing, food, even footwear. Lina Audi’s Liwan brand, L’Artisan du Liban, Orient 499, the couture of Rabih Kayrouz, the rustic leather goods of Johnny Farah, Rouba Mourtada’s stationery and Karim Bekdaches’ storage systems are all examples of businesses that combine Lebanese design talent with homegrown manufacturing.

The country has plenty to fix, but a focus on encouraging a culture of craft, which not only bolsters the small and medium-sized business sector but also maintains a sustainable base that allows for a differentiated tourism experience, is a good place to start building. It also puts Beirut in a unique position across the whole region (save for Syria perhaps) by offering up products and experiences that are wholly original.

As more restaurants pop up and hotels start to emerge from the ruins of derelict buildings, Lebanon will need to decide what type of tourists it wants to attract and how it will get them there. For the moment, and not through engineering, it’s a premium destination that’s avoided the hen-party and stag-weekend set or package tours in search of cheap buffets.

Two weeks ago, the government announced an expansion plan that will see the airport almost double in size. As there seemed to be some excitement about building an infrastructure to support big A380s, the government and Lebanon Inc would be wise also to ensure that they support their home-grown carrier MEA (Middle East Airlines) – something of a national treasure. One of my most memorable flights was the first time I flew with them in 1991 from Heathrow to Beirut where the service included a Sunday roast trolley – complete with huge carving utensils and chic flight attendants who smoked in the galley. On my MEA flight to Abu Dhabi last Sunday, I was greeted by an elegant woman with a French twist, deep tan and smoky voice who looked like a poster lady for the “golden age of flying” – and she was. All that was missing was the cigarette.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle

tyler.brule@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/brule

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

FT.com / Columnists / Tyler Brûlé - Behold brilliant Beirut

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Shackleton Scotch Freed From Antarctic Ice - Science News - redOrbit

Shackleton Scotch Freed From Antarctic Ice

A crate of Scotch that once belonged to famous explorer Ernest Shackleton was opened Friday, several months after having been rescued from a 100-plus old prison of Antarctic ice.


The crate, which contained 11 bottles of 'Mackinlay's Rare Old Highland Malt Whisky', was discovered along with four others in Shackleton's hut at Cape Royds on Ross Island in 2006. The famed traveler brought the liquor with him during his 1907 Nimrod expedition, according to the AP, and the cases were ultimately discovered encased in ice under the floor boards of the hut.


The liquor inside, however, had not frozen, despite temperatures of -22 Fahrenheit.
The Scotch, which was defrosted at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island, will eventually be returned to Shackleton's hut and preserved "for its historic significance," according to the AP. However, samples will be sent to Whyte and Mackay, the distiller who took over Mackinlay's operations, so that they can attempt to duplicate the brew.


"The original recipe for the Scotch no longer exists," notes the Associated Press (AP).
The whiskey was first discovered, along with a couple of crates of brandy, back in 2006 by a team that included Al Fastier of the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust. However, it could not be extracted until January of this year because it was too deeply encased in ice.
"To our amazement we found five crates, three labeled as containing whiskey and two labeled as containing brandy," Fastier told French news agency AFP earlier this year. Also included along with the Mackinlay's Scotch were crates of brandy labeled Chas McKinlay & Co and The Hunter Valley Distillery Limited Allandale.


Whyte and Mackay master blender Richard Paterson previously called it "a gift from the heavens for whisky lovers… If the contents can be confirmed, safely extracted and analyzed, the original blend may be able to be replicated. Given the original recipe no longer exists, this may open a door into history."


Ten of the bottles were reportedly perfectly intact, save for the labels, according to an August 13 press release from the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust.


"It's been a delicate and slow process but we are delighted to be able to confirm that the crate contains intact bottles of whisky," Lizzie Meek, the Antarctic Heritage Trust Artifacts Manager at the Heritage Trust, said in the press release.
---
Image Caption: Crates of Mackinlay’s whisky. Credit: nzaht.org
---
On the Net:

• Canterbury Museum
• New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust
• Article: Shackleton's Booze Found In The Antarctic

Story from REDORBIT NEWS:
http://www.redorbit.com/news/display/?id=1904371


Published: 2010/08/13 09:45:00 CDT


© RedOrbit 2005

ShackletonScotch Freed From Antarctic Ice - Science News - redOrbit


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Piemonte addresses

 Piemonte addresses

Great Food and Wine in the Piemonte region of Italy

Dre Caste, or Il Mongetto

Hotel, restaurant, wine producer, as well as sauces and stuff. Great place.

Find more info by googling Dre Caste, or Il Mongetto

http://www.mongetto.it/pag/mappa.htm

Nice Wine estate:

http://www.paitin.it/

Gallina restaurant:

Long heavy meals. Nice and Cheap.

Great Moscato d'Asti but other wines not great.

http://www.gallinagiacinto.it/uk/chi.htm

great restaurant:

Del Belbo da Bardon

http://editore.slowfood.it/editore/riviste/slowfood/IT/27/rubriche/Slowfood27_009.pdf

San Marzano Oliveto
Via Valle Asinari 25
Tel 0141 831 340
Well-known as the ‘Bardon’. Large, easy-going and friendly. Fine local cuisine and the largest wine list in Piedmont. Seats outside.
(Closed Wed p.m, Thurs.)

other place I've been to:

Trattoria della Posta ‘da Camulin’
Cossano Belbo
Via Fratelli Negro, 3
Tel 0141 88 126

Well-known and critically acclaimed for its top quality food.
Excellent wine list.
(closed Sun pm, Mon)

ENJOY!!!

did Lisa Simpson finally get Married Sunday? Funny Stuff

Funny Stuff: "Lisa Simpson is Getting Married Sunday"

Twitter user sends world's 20 billionth tweet

The user who posted the landmark tweet was inundated with congratulations

Twitter, the social networking site which lets users say something in up to 140 characters, has had its 20 billionth message posted.

The landmark and rather opaque tweet was sent at 1544 GMT Saturday by GGGGGGo_Lets_Go, a Tokyo graphic designer for an advertising agency.
It said: "So that means the barrage might come back later all at once."

Is it more amazing than winning the lottery?”

Twitter took four years to reach its 10 billionth tweet, in March this year, and less than five months to double it.

GGGGGGo_Lets_Go was inundated with congratulatory messages from around the world for hitting the milestone with a tweet which appeared to have been part of a longer conversation with another user.
He later posted another message, saying: "Looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweet. I'm getting replies from people all over the world. It's scary. What are the chances? Maybe I'm going to die.
"Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke."
The self-declared fan of Tokyo Yakult Swallows baseball team also warned any would-be followers that he tweets a lot about the sport.
The Japanese send nearly 8m tweets a day, about 12% of the global total and second only to the US, according to the San Francisco-based micro-blogging service.
Evan Williams, Twitter's 38-year-old chief executive, travelled to Tokyo earlier this month to celebrate the service's success in Japan.
Twitter is expected this year to open its first dedicated data centre, in the US state of Utah.
The company hopes the data centre will help prevent service overloads, which have been a particular problem during major sporting events like the recent football World Cup.
BBC News - Twitter user sends world's 20 billionth tweet
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Top 3 Designer Defence Systems

Top 3 Designer Defence Systems

As we touched down with the Embraer EMB 120 in Geneva the other day, the lot was filled with sparsely coloured twin-turboprops of varying decent. The odd FlyBaboo Dash-8 and Swiss A320 were idling at the regular gates, but this is clearly not an airport made for regular passenger travel. It seems unfitting, somehow.

We were in this western Canton to discuss one of the most pressing challenges facing modern nation building today – the design of land-based artillery systems. Building a modern army is not simply a matter of heading down to IDEX in Abu Dhabi and buying the first armoured mortar system in sight. It takes commitment to the real issues involved in creating a sustainable defence system. Design being the primary concern, of course.

Our dinner discussions were long and infused by the local grapes from Domaine de Champlong, but we thought we’d summarize where the state of elegantly designed defence equipment stands, as of May 2010.

1. General Dynamics ASCOD2
Originally released back in 1992, this marvellous little collaboration between Santa Bárbara Sistemas and Steyr Daimler Puch in Austria got an update in 2003. We especially have our eyes on the Advanced Surveillance Vehicle, VCOAV.

2. CTA MTIP2
Sometimes, it’s all about the accessories. Add this turret to anything terrain-driven, and you’ve got yourself a handsome fighting machine.

3. M198 Howitzer

A classic that must be mentioned in these circumstances. 70′s designs are generally speaking nothing to write home about, but this field artillery unit has a certain je-ne-sais-quoi that refuses to fade.

Being Tyler Brûlé » Top 3 Designer Defence Systems

Edgar Ramirez an ideal choice as Carlos the Jackal | poughkeepsiejournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal

Edgar Ramirez an ideal choice as Carlos the Jackal
Jenny Barchfield • The Associated Press • May 24, 2010

CANNES, France — Edgar Ramirez was born to play Carlos the Jackal.

The multilingual Venezuelan actor plays the
infamous terrorist Ilich Ramirez Sanchez — also a
Venezuelan polyglot — in "Carlos," a marathon
biopic by French director Olivier Assayas that
screened out of competition at the Cannes Film
Festival.

"How many Venezuelan actors have the last name
Ramirez, speak all sorts of languages and are
exactly the right age to play the role?" Assayas said
in an interview with The Associated Press. "When I
met him, I wasn't sure I'd do the movie, and my
meeting with Edgar was a determining factor for me."

The movie, more than five hours long, provides
Ramirez — a rising star who began his career in a
soap opera — ample opportunity to flex his muscles
as an actor. He delivers a remarkably three-
dimensional performance that captures the many
facets of the flamboyant gun-for-hire.

The 32-year-old actor said he immersed himself in
news stories about Carlos and brushed up on
contemporary history in order to better understand
the context of his actions, and also spoke with
people who knew him, including some of his many
lovers. Still, once the camera was rolling, Ramirez
said, he went with his instincts.

"I took all of those investigations and I poured them
into the character in Olivier's script and then I ran
with it," Ramirez told the AP. "I trusted that at some
point the character was going to speak to me."

And how he speaks.

Ramirez's Carlos is an alarming hybrid of
revolutionary guerrillero, brutal assassin, playboy,
unscrupulous mercenary and charmer with an
almost magnetic charisma.

We follow Carlos from the beginning of his career as
a terrorist, when he worked for the Popular Front for


the Liberation of Palestine, committing
assassinations in Paris and London, to the infamous
1975 assault on Vienna's OPEC headquarters that
made him a celebrity, through his capture in Sudan
in 1994.

Ramirez — the son of a Venezuelan military attaché
who spent much of his childhood in various foreign
countries — delivers dialogue in Spanish, French,
English, Arabic and German. Ramirez himself speaks
all of those languages — and also Italian — in real
life, except Arabic, which he learned phonetically
for the role.

The 300-page script was so complicated that
Assayas had to pitch the project as a TV series in
three parts. The first part was shown on French
television the same day it played at Cannes.

Assayas, who co-wrote the script, said he tried to
remain as faithful as possible to the facts of Carlos'
life, but gray areas in the terrorist's biography
obliged him to take some artistic license.

"In writing (the script) you adhere to the facts and
the true elements, but when you start to film, it
becomes fiction," said the director, who has won
considerable acclaim for his 2004 drama "Clean"
and the recent "Les Heures d'ete."



Edgar Ramirez an ideal choice as Carlos the Jackal | poughkeepsiejournal.com | Poughkeepsie Journal

Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years: A Half-Century of Automotive Eyesores - BusinessWeek

Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years - A Half-Century of Automotive Eyesores

1 of 52next slideprevious slide

A Half-Century of Automotive Eyesores

By Damian Joseph

Considering how many new cars are rolled out every year, it's no surprise that a few might be just plain homely. There's a chance that certain styles might become fashionable with a dash of retro hip. (Well, maybe not from the 1970s.) But for the most part, the following 50 cars will never be anything but design duds.

next slideprevious slide

Fifty Ugliest Cars of the Past 50 Years: A Half-Century of Automotive Eyesores - BusinessWeek

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