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Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Some very welcome news today for doughnut and coffee lovers living in the UK – Dunkin’ Donuts is preparing to launch itself onto our shores, with ambitious plans to open 150 restaurants over the next five years.

Yes please.
Yes please.

The Telegraph reports:

The chain, which pulled out of Britain in the mid-nineties as its sugary offerings and coffee failed to whet appetites in the UK, plans to develop 150 restaurants around in country.

Dunkin’ Donuts said on Thursday it had signed agreements with two franchise groups – The Court Group and DDMG – to open restaurants in North and East London. It is also in advanced talks with other franchise partners.

North London, as well! Bloody marvelous. I have always favoured Dunkin’ Donuts over Krispy Kreme (who established themselves in Britain back in 2003), not just for the doughnuts themselves but also the delicious breakfast food.

I had no idea that Dunkin’ had a UK presence back in the 1990s – apparently, as was the case with Taco Bell, the insular British palate was not yet ready for tasty, exciting things in those dark ages. We have come a long way in the intervening decades.

Of course, The Guardian cannot resist chiding us for allowing our mouths to water at the prospect of more choice in the doughnut market, publishing a less-than complimentary list of Dunkin’ Donuts facts, including:

1. There are 49g of sugar in a single one of its donuts. That’s more than half the guideline daily amount. The first casualty of the doughnut war is health.

Thanks, Mr. Buzzkill. But no matter; let us celebrate by enjoying this amusing Dunkin’ Donuts commercial from the United States:

 

I will, of course, be posting a review as soon as the first outlet opens. Stay tuned.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

If you have not already discovered TED Talks, the online channel featuring short, insightful lectures by prominent people from all fields and walks of life about topics that interest them, I highly encourage you to take a visit, either to their YouTube channel or their homepage.

For those who don’t know: With the slogan “Ideas Worth Spreading”, TED began as a conference for people from the worlds of technology, entertainment and design (hence the acronym), but has since expanded to cover just about every conceivable topic. One of the principle outputs from the TED conferences, which take place in cities all over the globe, are the TED Talks, in which an expert in their given field must give an informative, entertaining talk in eighteen minutes or less.

Which brings me to this excellent example from Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, whose work is notable for using sustainable building materials such as cardboard tubes and paper. As well as their obvious usefulness in terms of providing temporary shelter and accommodation during humanitarian disasters, these principles can also be applied to longer term constructions, as Ban’s talk demonstrates:

 

I had no idea that it was conceivably possible to construct multi-story structures out of such materials, and much as I love watching the rise of the new steel and glass skyscrapers in my home city of London, it is wonderful to appreciate these radically different, more natural structures too.

Pushing the boundaries of possibility even further in another TED Talk, architect Michael Green proposes building safe, multi-purpose structures such as skyscrapers out of wood:

 

As Green says (and I am in no position to refute despite my love of the steel frame skyscraper):

“Every time I go into my buildings that are wood, I notice that [people] react completely differently. I’ve never seen anybody walk into one of my buildings and hug a steel or a concrete column, but I’ve actually seen that in a wood building, I’ve seen how people touch the wood. And I think there’s a reason for it. Just like snowflakes, no two pieces of wood can ever be the same, anywhere on Earth. That’s a wonderful thing.”

Definitely my best discovery of the day.

In England, We Call It Autumn

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

This, apparently, is a decorative gourd.

 

The bleak grey skies, rapidly cooling weather and the incessant rain did tip me off, I must admit. But I was only certain that fall (I’ll stick with autumn, thank you very much) was really upon us when I read this amusing piece by Colin Nissan in McSweeney’s, trumpeting the return of “decorative gourd season”.

He writes:

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I’m about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it’s gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There’s a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

I may even throw some multi-colored leaves into the mix, all haphazard like a crisp October breeze just blew through and fucked that shit up. Then I’m going to get to work on making a beautiful fucking gourd necklace for myself. People are going to be like, “Aren’t those gourds straining your neck?” And I’m just going to thread another gourd onto my necklace without breaking their gaze and quietly reply, “It’s fall, fuckfaces. You’re either ready to reap this freaky-assed harvest or you’re not.”

I’m glad that someone is expressing excitement about the change of season, albeit satirically. From Semi-Partisan Sam’s perch in London, autumn tends to involve more desperate winter coat purchasing and wondering why only one radiator in the goddamn apartment seems to be working than dusting off seasonal decorations and festooning the place with harvest vegetables and fallen leaves. But to each their own. I assume that autumn enthusiasts must live in places that actually experience a reliably hot and enduring summer every year.

Of course, unlike the United States (which has Halloween and Thanksgiving to look forward to in terms of autumnal – sorry, fall – celebrations) we here in Britain jump straight from summer to Christmas. Indeed, the speed at which the charcoal and barbecue accessories are swept from the supermarket shelves to make room for Christmas ornaments and mince pies with an expiration date in early November is quite astonishing. *

* and unwelcome for those of us who like to continue grilling outside right through the deep midwinter.

Now on sale in our local superstore. In September.
Now on sale in our local superstore. In September.

 

So, here’s wishing a happy fall or Christmas season (depending where you live) to my readers.

In September.

Best Thing Of The Day

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

A retro one this time, from the 1997 movie “Good Will Hunting”:

 

Even when I was at Cambridge I never saw a guy try to pick up a girl using the “let me dazzle you with memorised passages from a pretentious textbook” approach (though that is not to say that it never happened).

Plagiarism – how not to do it.

Semi-Partisan Survey – On Syria

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

I want to poll my readership on the divisive issue of Syria, and the appropriate international response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians in that country.

 

Of course, raw numbers and binary choices are not much use without the rationale behind them, so please take a minute to justify your opinion in the Comments section below.