To get those crazy-fast 5G speeds on Apple’s iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro, you have to find the 5G. So WSJ’s Joanna Stern set up on the field at MetLife Stadium to put the new phones — including their cameras and improved durable body — through the paces.
Tag Archives: Reviews
Great Books Podcast: ‘The Old Man And The Sea’ By Ernest Hemingway (1951)
The Great Books presents: John J. Miller is joined by Missy Andrews of the Center for Literary Education to discuss Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea.
The Old Man and the Sea is a short novel written by the American author Ernest Hemingway in 1951 in Cuba, and published in 1952. It was the last major work of fiction written by Hemingway that was published during his lifetime. One of his most famous works, it tells the story of Santiago, an aging Cuban fisherman who struggles with a giant marlin far out in the Gulf Stream off the coast of Cuba.
New Restaurants: “Ampia Rooftop NYC” – “Sanitary, Social Distance Dining”
Ampia Rooftop (Ampia meaning “Space” in Italian) is a sprawling 4,500 Sq. foot outdoor rooftop terrace featuring individual greenhouses for a social distance dining experience, opulent clusters of colorful flower gardens, and Italian-themed art and décor dispersed throughout. Chef Michele Iuliano offers up an authentic Italian menu of lite casual fare, along with a selection of inventive seafood paninis.
Restaurant Business (August 1, 2020) – The first step was a name change. When New York City announced that restaurants could open for outdoor dining during Phase 2, the Iulianos changed the name from Gnoccheria Rooftop to Ampia—a move that gave it a distinct identity. Then they set about redesigning the space to satisfy all the restrictions.
The entire space was sprayed with an electrostatic sanitary coating, including the tables, chairs, bar and every touchable surface. The process sanitizes for up to three months. The pair also purchased a facial recognition thermometer and all the essential PPE specified in New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Phase 2 guidelines.
Next, the space was reconcepted from the original 250-seat restaurant to an outdoor dining venue with a limited bar and food menu. The beer garden in the original plan had to be scrapped; it’s impossible to enforce social distancing in that kind of setting. Instead, tables were spread out and seating areas set far apart, accommodating 60 to 65 guests.
The regulations around social distancing state that if tables cannot be arranged six feet apart, a restaurant can use plexiglass dividers between them. But the Iulianos wanted to infuse Ampia with the same stylish elements that differentiate their other restaurants.
Design: “LivingHomes YB1” Accessory Dwelling Units
When governor Jerry Brown signed a law that made Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) legal in California, it started a revolution in the ways that homeowners, builders and city planners think of small living. Homeowners’ applications for these small backyard buildings have skyrocketed after this regulatory reform in 2018.
The structural system of YB1 allows for a wide range of internal layouts. It is based on a 4’ grid that is full height, allowing the homeowner to pick full height windows, clerestory or rigid walls all around the building. This allows for shaping light, privacy and cost needs very precisely. A unique feature of YB1 is that it allows for multiple roofline options: the home can be designed with a standard 8’ ceiling height and flat roof, a 10’ ceiling with a clerestory running the entire building, or a pitched roof that provides climate adaptability, neighborhood style integration, or adds a loft addition.

The design is cost-efficient and adheres to LivingHomes’ high environmental efficient standards, using materials like wood slats paneling, concrete and stucco panels. The model options are also responsive to climate. Flat roofs that allow for solar panels can be incorporated, which work well in southern regions; likewise, the design of pitch roofs assimilate well in colder areas and mountain regions. YB1 homes offer a wide range of creative building configurations — modules for full kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms and bedrooms (or offices) will be available, and because of the flexible features, they can accommodate different sites, design interests and lifestyle preferences.
Books: “The Clock Mirage – Our Myth Of Measured Time” By Joseph Mazur
With a narrative punctuated by personal stories of time’s effects on truck drivers, Olympic racers, prisoners, and clockmakers, Mazur’s journey is filled with fascinating insights into how our technologies, our bodies, and our attitudes can change our perceptions. Ultimately, time reveals itself as something that rides on the rhythms of our minds. The Clock Mirage presents an innovative perspective that will force us to rethink our relationship with time, and how best to use it.
A tour of clocks throughout the centuries—from the sandglass to the telomere—to reveal the physical, biological, and social nature of time.
What is time? This question has fascinated philosophers, mathematicians, and scientists for thousands of years. Why does time seem to speed up with age? What is its connection with memory, anticipation, and sleep cycles?
Award‑winning author and mathematician Joseph Mazur provides an engaging exploration of how the understanding of time has evolved throughout human history and offers a compelling new vision, submitting that time lives within us. Our cells, he notes, have a temporal awareness, guided by environmental cues in sync with patterns of social interaction. Readers learn that, as a consequence of time’s personal nature, a forty‑eight‑hour journey on the space shuttle can feel shorter than a six‑hour trip on the Soyuz capsule, that the Amondawa of the Amazon do not have ages, and that time speeds up with fever and slows down when we feel in danger.
The Future Of Cycling: “Bosch eBike” (2020)
The Concept Bike is designed as an Urban Sports Cruiser – its carbon frame with fully integrated front and rear suspension offers maximum comfort for city adventures, commuter trips and off-road trails.

The Bosch drive system merges with the frame and handlebar to form one unit in this design concept.

The perfect integration of the Performance Line CX, the PowerTube 625, the new Nyon on-board computer and the Bosch eBike ABS make the eBike Design Vision a visual experience.

Health & Nature Books: “The Well-Gardened Mind” By Sue Stuart-Smith (2020)
‘The Well-Gardened Mind’ provides a new perspective on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. Here, Sue Stuart-Smith investigates the many ways in which mind and garden can interact and explores how the process of tending a plot can be a way of sustaining an innermost self.
A distinguished psychiatrist and avid gardener offers an inspiring and consoling work about the healing effects of gardening and its ability to decrease stress and foster mental well-being in our everyday lives.
The garden is often seen as a refuge, a place to forget worldly cares, removed from the “real” life that lies outside. But when we get our hands in the earth we connect with the cycle of life in nature through which destruction and decay are followed by regrowth and renewal. Gardening is one of the quintessential nurturing activities and yet we understand so little about it.
Stuart-Smith’s own love of gardening developed as she studied to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. From her grandfather’s return from World War I to Freud’s obsession with flowers to case histories with her own patients to progressive gardening programs in such places as Rikers Island prison in New York City, Stuart-Smith weaves thoughtful yet powerful examples to argue that gardening is much more important to our cognition than we think. Recent research is showing how green nature has direct antidepressant effects on humans. Essential and pragmatic, The Well-Gardened Mind is a book for gardeners and the perfect read for people seeking healthier mental lives.
Reviews: Director Of Film “The Truth”, Scholar Joyce Zonana’s Translation Of “Malicroix” (LARB Podcast)
This week, Medaya speaks with acclaimed filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda about his new film, The Truth (La Vérité), starring French film screen legends Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche. Kore-eda discusses complicated family dynamics, the relationship between art and truth-telling and what brought him to France.
In our second interview, Kate and Medaya are joined by scholar and translator Joyce Zonana, who discusses her translation of Henri Bosco’s 1946 novel Malicroix. This is the first time the French novel has been translated into English.
TOP JOURNALS: RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS FROM SCIENCE MAGAZINE (July 3, 2020)
Coronavirus Update: State Of The Pandemic After Six Months (Nature Podcast)
We take a look back over the past six months of the pandemic, and discuss how far the world has come. It’s been a period of turmoil and science has faced an unprecedented challenge. What lessons can be learned from the epidemic so far to continue the fight in the months to come?
Also in this episode:
12:55 Unanswered questions
After months of intensive research, much is known about the new coronavirus – but many important questions remain unanswered. We look at the knowledge gaps researchers are trying to fill.
Nature Medicine: Real-time tracking of self-reported symptoms to predict potential COVID-19
20:36 How has lockdown affected fieldwork?
The inability to travel during lockdown has seriously hampered many researchers’ ability to gather fieldwork data. We hear from three whose work has been affected, and what this means for their projects.

