New Champagne Bars: “The Riddler” In New York City

The Riddler Champagne Bar Outside New York CityA restaurant funded solely by female investors, The Riddler is a New York City champagne bar from owner Jen Pelka.

The Riddler is a Champagne bar with locations in the heart of New York’s West Village and San Francisco’s Hayes Valley. We have over 150 Champagnes by the bottle and dozens of sparkling wines by the glass to choose from: old and new, traditional classics and unusual discoveries, by the glass and by the bottle (or magnum or 9L). At the center of each space is an old wooden backbar that we’ve lined with a collection of vintage Champagne buckets and glassware that we’ve picked up at flea markets and estate sales over the last decade.

We’re a women-led team: 100% of our investors are women and most of our management team happens to be led by a crew of women. We love serious wines but don’t take ourselves too seriously: we pair our Champagne with French-inspired seasonal comforts, serve our caviar with potato chips, and offer free popcorn all day and all night.

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Profiles: 71-Year Old Physicist And Author Alan Lightman’s “Creative Life”

From a New York Times online article (February 13, 2020):

“I love physics, but what was even more important to me was leading a creative life,” Dr. Lightman said. “And I knew that writers could continue doing their best work later in life.”

Alan Lightman Books

Lightman is best known in literary circles for his 1992 novel, “Einstein’s Dreams,” which is all about the vicissitudes – romantic, physical and otherwise – of time. It recounts the nightly visions of a young patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, as he struggles to finish his theory of relativity.

But before that, Dr. Lightman was an astrophysicist, a card-carrying wizard of space and time, with a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology and subsequent posts at Cornell and Harvard In 1989, at the peak of his prowess as a physicist, he began to walk away from the world of black holes to enter the world of black ink and the uncertain, lonely life of the writer.

Recently he was in New York for the opening of “Einstein’s Dreams,” an off-Broadway play based on his book. There have been dozens of such stage adaptations over the last 30 years.

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Classic Cars: The “1970 Iso Grifo” – Italian Styling And Chevrolet Engine

1970 Iso Grifo Interior Classic DriverThe Iso Grifo is a limited production grand tourer automobile manufactured by Italian Iso Autoveicoli S.p.A. between 1965 and 1974. Intended to compete with Ferrari and Maserati GTs, it utilized a series of American power trains and components supplied by Chevrolet and Ford to ensure performance and maximize reliability. Styling was done by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Bertone, while the mechanicals were the work of Giotto Bizzarrini.

The first production GL models appeared in 1965 and were powered by American Chevrolet Corvette small-block 327 (5.4-litre) V8s fitted to American supplied Borg-Warner 4-speed manual transmissions. The 5.4-litre engine developed 300 hp (220 kW) in its standard form and could reach 110 km/h (68 mph) in first gear.

Classic Driver logoIn 1970, a styling change was made to the nose section of the car for the Grifo Series II, It got a sleeker look and hide-away headlights. In the IR-9 “Can Am” version the engine was switched from the 427 engines to the newer even more powerful Chevrolet 454 7.4 litre engine.

From Wikipedia

Arts & Travel Videos: “Odunpazari Modern Museum” Is The New Cultural Center In Turkey

Monocle 24 Films logoWe visit a Kengo Kuma-designed art museum in Eskisehir that’s set to become Turkey’s new cultural hotspot.

Odunpazarı Modern Museum is designed by the internationally acclaimed Japanese architecture firm Kengo Kuma and Associates.

Odunpazarı Modern Museum in Turkey

Kengo Kuma and Associates describes its philosophy as “Amalgamating nature and architecture in a manner that creates a strong bond between the ‘building’ and its ‘location’.” In his design of the OMM building, the architect thus reinterprets the historic fabric of the Odunpazarı district with a contemporary perspective. Paying homage to the local architecture of Odunpazarı, Ottoman dome architecture, and traditional Japanese architecture, OMM’s design is highlighted by four major components: geometry, light, stacking, and timber. Breaking away from conventional design through the transformation of simple geometric lines into complex images, the high-quality light entering the building, and the non-linear forms, the architectural stacking and the timber construction system alluding to the historic fabric of Odunpazarı constitute the sources of inspiration for the architecture of the museum building.

OMM – Odunpazarı Modern Art Foundation was founded in 2019 with the aim of contributing towards the development of cultural, social, and artistic life through events and activities centered on the familiarization and popularization of culture and arts in society, the advancement of art education, the support for artistic and cultural production, and the transmission of cultural values to future generations. OMM – Odunpazarı Modern Museum operates under the auspices of this foundation.

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Health Studies: High Milk & Dairy Consumption Not Related To Lower Heart Disease, Diabetes (NEJM)

From the New England Journal of Medicine (February 13, 2020):

Milk and Dairy Product Health NEJMIn our opinion, the current recommendation to greatly increase consumption of dairy foods to 3 or more servings per day does not appear to be justified…When consumption of milk is low, the two nutrients of primary concern, calcium and vitamin D (which is of particular concern at higher latitudes), be obtained from other foods or supplements without the potential negative consequences of dairy foods.

For calcium, alternative dietary sources include kale, broccoli, tofu, nuts, beans, and fortified orange juice for vitamin D, supplements can provide adequate intake at far lower cost than fortified milk. Pending additional research, guidelines for milk and equivalent dairy foods ideally should designate an acceptable intake (such as 0 to 2 servings per day for adults), deemphasize reduced-fat milk as preferable to whole milk, and discourage consumption of sugar-sweetened dairy foods in populations with high rates of overweight and obesity.

For adults, the overall evidence does not support high dairy consumption for reduction of fractures, which has been a primary justification for current U.S. recommendations. Moreover, total dairy consumption has not been clearly related to weight control or to risks of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. High consumption of dairy foods is likely to increase the risks of prostate cancer and possibly endometrial cancer but reduce the risk of colorectal cancer.

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Timelapse Travel Videos: “Drifting Through The Night – Startrails” By Michael Shainblum (2020)

Filmed and Directed by: Michael Shainblum

I am excited to share my new collection of night sky, startrail timelapses. These trails were created by blending hundreds of long exposure images for each individual timelapse.

Drifting Through The Night Startrails Timelapse 4k by Michael Shainblum video February 12 2020

Locations: Lone Pine, California; San Jose, California; Dolomites, Italy; Kauai, Hawaii; Malibu, California; Anza Borrego, California;Yosemite National Park, California; Bristlecone Pines, California; Sparks Lake, Oregon; Point Reyes, California

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Top Exhibitions: “Painting Edo: Japanese Art from the Feinberg Collection”

Painting Edo Illustrated Overview HarvardPainting Edo — the largest exhibition ever presented at the Harvard Art Museums — offers a window onto the supremely rich visual culture of Japan’s early modern era. Selected from the unparalleled collection of Robert S. and Betsy G. Feinberg, the more than 120 works in the exhibition connect visitors with a seminal moment in the history of Japan, as the country settled into an era of peace under the warrior government of the shoguns and opened its doors to greater engagement with the outside world. The dizzying array of artistic lineages and studios active during the Edo period (1615–1868) fueled an immense expansion of Japanese pictorial culture that reverberated not only at home, but subsequently in the history of painting in the West.

By the early 18th century, the new shogunal capital of Edo (present-day Tokyo) was the largest city in the world. After centuries of conflict and unrest, the growing stability and affluence of the period encouraged an efflorescence in the arts. Artists creatively juxtaposed past and present, eternal and contingent, elegant and vulgar in a wide range of formats and styles, from brilliant polychrome compositions to monochromatic inkwork. Painting Edo explores how the period, and the city, articulated itself by showcasing paintings in all the major formats—including hanging scrolls, folding screens, sliding doors, fan paintings, and woodblock-printed books—from virtually every stylistic lineage of the era, to tell a comprehensive story of Edo painting on its own terms.

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Top Upcoming Movies: “The French Dispatch” Directed By Wes Anderson (Jul 2020)

From a New Yorker online review (February 11, 2020):

The French Dispatch Movie PosterWes Anderson’s new movie, “The French Dispatch,” which will open this summer, is about the doings of a fictional weekly magazine that looks an awful lot like—and was, in fact, inspired by—The New Yorker. The editor and writers of this fictional magazine, and the stories it publishes—three of which are dramatized in the film—are also loosely inspired by The New Yorker. Anderson has been a New Yorker devotee since he was a teen-ager, and has even amassed a vast collection of bound volumes of the magazine, going back to the nineteen-forties. That he has placed his fictional magazine in a made-up French metropolis (it’s called Ennui-sur-Blasé), at some point midway through the last century, only makes connecting the dots between “The French Dispatch” and The New Yorker that much more delightful.

The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun Movie Scenes From the New Yorker February 11 2020

Directed by: Wes Anderson

Screenplay by: Wes Anderson

Produced by: Wes Anderson, Steven Rales and Jeremy Dawson

Cast: Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson

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New Exhibits: “Peter Saul – Crime And Punishment” At The New Museum NYC

Peter Saul Ronald Reagan in Grenada 1984Beginning in the early 1960s, Peter Saul began to incorporate imagery borrowed from a range of pop-cultural sources into his exuberant, brightly colored paintings, adopting a style that has proven to be far ahead of its time. His work developed independently from concurrent art historical movements like Pop art, with which it shares some superficially similar concerns. Instead of the cool detachment of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, however, Saul crafted his own unique blend of Surrealism, history painting, vernacular illustration, and the real-life shock and horror of current events.

Marking the artist’s first New York museum survey, this exhibition will bring together approximately sixty paintings from across his long career.

Saul’s earliest paintings, which he created in Paris, demonstrate a loose, gestural style of abstraction, yet he began to incorporate text, recognizable characters, and consumer products into his works as early as 1960. Around this time, he plucked figures like Donald Duck and Superman from the pages of comic books and deposited them into chaotic scenes representative of the avarice and violence of America. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Saul created some of his most shocking and indelible works in response to the Vietnam War, with a series that captured the conflict’s grotesque brutality, racism, and destruction. A later group of paintings, which examines the chaotic sociopolitical fabric of urban life in California, reflects the dissolution of 1960s counterculture and the corruption, racism, and greed of US politics.

Saul extended his interrogation of American history in his portraits of infamous criminals like John Wayne Gacy, archetypes like cowboys and businessmen, and US presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump, whom Saul depicts with disdain and condemnation. He has also looked further back to reimagine supposedly triumphant scenes from America’s past—including Columbus’s arrival in America, Washington crossing the Delaware, and Custer’s Last Stand—as moments of comical failure or disgrace. With a caustic sense of humor, Saul has continuously skewered America’s leaders, rendering their stretched, distorted bodies in Day-Glo colors. His disparate influences range from MAD magazine comics to Surrealist fantasies and American social realist painting from the 1930s.

Peter Saul is an American painter. His work has connections with Pop Art, Surrealism, and Expressionism. His early use of pop culture cartoon references in the late 1950s and very early 1960s situates him as one of the fathers of the Pop Art movement. He realised about 800 paintings during his career.

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Science Podcast: Prussian Blue Structures, Extinct Rodents And Quantum Entanglement (Nature)

Nature PodcastsHear the latest from the world of science, brought to you by Nick Howe and Shamini Bundell. This week, uncovering the structure of materials with useful properties, and quantum entanglement over long distances.

In this episode:

00:45 Analysing Prussian blues

Analogues of the paint pigment Prussian blue are used in a variety of chemical processes. Now, researchers have uncovered their atomic structure. Research Article: Simonov et al.News and Views: Ordered absences observed in porous framework materials

08:17 Research Highlights

Teenagers’ natural sleep cycles impact on academic performance, and an extinct, giant rodent with a surprisingly tiny brain. Research Highlight: A teenager’s body clock can ring in school successResearch Highlight: Giant extinct rodent was all brawn and little brain

10:49 Distant entanglement

Researchers have demonstrated quantum entanglement between two points separated by 50 km of fibre optic cables. Research Article: Yu et al.

17:17 News Chat

The latest on the coronavirus outbreak, and gene editing gets an upgrade. News: Coronavirus: latest news on spreading infectionNews: Super-precise CRISPR tool enhanced by enzyme engineering