Ratings: 7.7/10 Released On: 21 June 2002 Directed by: Steven Spielberg Genre(s): Action | Mystery | Sci-Fi Star Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton Synopsis: In the year
2054 A.D. crime is virtually eliminated from Washington D.C. thanks to
an elite law enforcing squad “Precrime”. They use three gifted humans
(called “Pre-Cogs”) with special powers to see into the future and
predict crimes beforehand. John Anderton heads Precrime and believes the
system’s flawlessness steadfastly. However one day the Pre-Cogs predict
that Anderton will commit a murder himself in the next 36 hours. Worse,
Anderton doesn’t even know the victim. He decides to get to the
mystery’s core by finding out the ‘minority report’ which means the
prediction of the female Pre-Cog Agatha that “might” tell a different
story and prove Anderton innocent.
La
Sportiva updated their popular line of Nepal mountaineering boots with
the new Cube GTX. The Cube is an incredibly lightweight, single layer,
technical winter boot that's ideal for mixed terrain. We put it to the
test in the country of its namesake while climbing in the Himalayas.
What Are They Supposed to Do?
Previous versions of the Nepal offered amazing warmth and superb
technical performance on all types of climbing terrain while remaining
lightweight. The 31 oz Nepal Cube GTX ($575) is designed to offer similar performance, but is a full 4 oz lighter than the EVO GTX. Additionally, the Cube's insole and midsole are a combined 12mm thinner than the EVO's — creating a lower profile for added stability.
Many of the
EVO's existing construction materials and features have been carried
over to the Cube including the use of a 3.2 mm thick
silicone-impregnated leather upper, resolabe Vibram soles with an Impact
Brake System (which slants the sole lugs in opposing directions to
provide traction both forwards and back) and a GoreTex insulated liner.
The Cube also uses a hinged ankle to prevent lateral torsion and has a
removable, adjustable tongue for a custom fit. These features combined
make the Cube GTX one of the most technically-advanced mountaineering
boots on the market.
Expand
Fittingly, I tested the Nepal Cube GTX in Nepal.
How're They Supposed To Do It?
The Cube uses a 4mm thick carbon fiber honeycomb insulated insole. The
honeycomb design allows the insole to be incredibly lightweight and thin
while providing adequate insulation and rigidity for climbing cold,
rough terrain. Additionally, the crampon-ready polyurethane midsole is
only 2mm thick. For contrast, both the EVO's insole and midsole are 9mm
thick. Thinner soles allow climbers to have more stability by lowering
their center of gravity, putting them more in-touch with the ground,
with or without crampons.
The Cube is
nearly 15% lighter than the EVO; that weight savings was achieved
through the improved insole. Lighter boots improve the climber's
performance both during approach (less weight in the pack) and while
climbing (lighter feet equals less energy exerted with every step).
The
silicone-impregnated leather supplied by Perwanger of Italy. They tan
the leather with a special process that makes it extremely
water-repellent, while still remaining breathable. It's the most durable
leather available; made from the corium, which is the strongest part of the leather.
The ankle
utilizes a hinge system that allows lateral flexibility while still
allowing longitudinal lockout for excellent support and safety.
Expand
Air-injected rubber rands protect the Cube's leather from cuts, gashes, and abrasion.
How Does It Perform?
I put the Nepal Cube GTX to the test all over the world in all kinds of
climbing conditions. First, on an end-of-season climb of Mt. Baker in the North Cascades.
That climb was cold, wet, and featured mixed terrain. Then I tested
them in Iceland, again in cold, wet conditions with fresh snowfall and
lots of glacier travel. Finally, I brought them to the country of their
namesake for an end-of-season climb of the 20,305' Imja Tse — more
popularly known as Island Peak. Though that climb was only one day long
and dry, it was cold and high.
The first
thing worth noting about the Cubes is their low weight for a winter
boot. My "approach hike" to Island Peak was more than 100 miles long. In
addition to climbing gear and clothes, I was carrying computer and
camera equipment. All of that added up to about 60 pounds and I shaved
weight wherever I could. The Cubes are about a pound lighter than my La
Sportiva Spantiks and they still did the trick for a short, but
high-altitude climb.
Expand
The
resolable Vibram soles feature the unique Impact Brake System, which is
said to increase braking power and reduce impact forces.
Wearing the
Cubes is like wearing a pair of very supportive (but very warm) hiking
boots. They do not feel heavy or clunky; this is arguably due to their
low weight (heavy duty hiking boots can often weigh up to 30 oz) and
thinner soles, which noticeably improve contact with the ground. When we
finished glacier travel and started hiking down from Island Peak,
everyone switched out of their heavy double boots into hiking boots; I
was able to leave the Cubes on without any exertion penalties. While the
boots are light — they still provide massive support. When climbing
rock, I was able to step up using only my toes without worrying about
slippage caused from boot flex. Yet even with their rigidity, the Cubes
remained comfortable for hiking.
Mt. Baker,
the snowiest mountain the world, is known for its cold wet conditions;
my experience was no different. Our entire climb was through wet snow;
the Cubes did not wet out, yet they vented well - keeping my feet dry
the entire day. While climbing down from a volcano in Iceland, we got caught on an outlet glacier
during a torrential, all-day-long downpour. The boots eventually did
wet out, but mountain boots are not designed to endure the type of rain
that we experienced. Though they wet out, my feet stayed warm in the
near-freezing temperatures.
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Imagine you're in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Behind you is
China, below you are thousands of tons of consumer goods destined for
faraway ports, then stores, then maybe a spot beneath a Christmas tree.
You are part of a vast economy that supplies the things we buy—a galaxy
of cities, systems, and people that is largely unacknowledged and rarely
seen. Unless you know where to look.
Liam Young and Kate Davies,
a pair of designers and researchers based in London, know where to
look, and have done just that. As part of their ongoing design research
studio called Unknown Fields Division, they've been focused on parts of the world that even fewer people have ever visited:
Tracing the supply chain of the global economy in reverse, documenting
the complex systems and spaces that deliver electronics and other
products to stores all over the world.
Imagine their route as the reverse of the path your new
smartphone might take on its way to your door. The crew began by
climbing aboard massive cargo ships bound for Chinese ports, then docked
along with thousands of cargo containers. Then on to the massive
wholesale market where international buyers snap up everything from
Christmas decorations and RC planes; then to the factories and worker
dorms themselves, and then deeper into Inner Mongolia, to the villages
where the rare earth elements used to build electronics are mined.
Like macro-scale detectives, they began at the end and traced the
supply chain back to the very beginning, when the circuitry in your
phone was just dust in an Inner Mongolian mine. In doing so, they
documented the vast landscape of the global economy.
"What we're trying to do is talk about this extraordinary,
planetary-scale infrastructural system that we've put in place that most
of the world doesn't know exists," Young tells me over the phone after
having returned from the second of two trips to Asia. "The scale and
production of infrastructure required to deliver the world that we know
is utterly extraordinary, but it's so big and so ubiquitous that it's
kind of become invisible," he adds. "This project is trying to reveal
the systems behind modern living."
Since Young and Davies decided to trace the supply chain in reverse,
the last leg of your average gadget's journey was actually their first
leg: The massive cargo ships themselves.
Hitching a ride on some of the world's most advanced commercial
ships was, as Young tells me, mostly just a matter of asking. They
contacted Maersk, the Danish company that is by far the biggest shipping
corporation in the world, to ask that it allow six of their members
aboard Maersk vessels arriving in Yantian, a port in Shenzhen, around
the same time. After he had assured Maersk's reps that the group wasn't
preparing an expose on international shipping, things fell into place
quickly
It's
been over a decade since the MTA did away with subway tokens, those
dirty metal bits of New York-ness that seemed unremarkable until,
suddenly, they were gone. Since then, rumors have swirled about the fate
of the 60 million tokens once in circulation—where were they? Now, we
have an answer.
The
question of what the MTA did with all those tokens—tons of them—is an
ongoing bit of lore in NYC. Back in 2003 when the tokens were
decommissioned in favor of Metrocards, The New York Timeswrote that "the
agency will not say what will become of the remains, 60 million of
them, except that it has no plans for disposing of them." The same year, Gotham Gazette reported that 41 million of them had ended up in a "vault somewhere in Queens." And earlier this week, a listicle from Thrillist about the NYC subway brought up the fate of the tokens once again. "After a few calls to the MTA, it seems what happened to them is still largely a mystery," they write.
It's a
romantic thought: An anonymous warehouse, perhaps in some industrial
part of the city, where piles and piles of bronze tokens glitter in the
darkness. I got in touch with MTA spokesperson Kevin Ortiz to find
out for sure. Turns out, my dream was just that. Ortiz says that 45
million of the tokens were scrapped—meaning that they were melted down
and turned into scrap metal for other uses. "We still have
an inventory of approximately 9 million tokens of different varieties
that are sold to licensees as part of agreements to use the tokens for
marketable items like cufflinks, watches, golf markers, etc," he says.
We
already knew that Japanese architects (and the public) are no fans of
Zaha Hadid's massive Olympic stadium—they've been protesting the design
for a year. But last month things escalated—rapidly—when a whole slew of
new insults emerged, and now, Hadid has responded. It's pretty bad!
If you're
just tuning in, here's a little synopsis. Hadid was chosen to build the
new National Stadium for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics based on a design that a
group of high-profile Japanese architects quickly criticized as too
big, too expensive, and offensively ill-designed. Protests against the
chosen design have escalated to include hundreds of members of the
public, and eventually, an altered design was announced that would cut down on the exorbitant cost of the proposed design, originally $3 billion.
In November, some of critics spoke toThe Guardian about their qualms. Here are a few notable quotes included in the post from critics and architects of the design:
"A monumental mistake."
"A disgrace to future generations."
"I'm saying it's just ridiculous [...] We are raising our voices, but they don't listen. We are not a civil society where citizen voices can be critical."
"Like a turtle waiting for Japan to sink so that it can swim away"
"The
sight left me in despair. If the stadium gets built the way it is,
Tokyo will surely be burdened with a gigantic white elephant."
This week, Hadid struck back. In an interview with Dezeen, calling them hypocrites and hinting that their derision is based on xenophobia:
"They
don't want a foreigner to build in Tokyo for a national stadium. On the
other hand, they all have work abroad. Whether it's Sejima, Toyo Ito,
or Maki or Isozaki or Kengo Kuma.
"The
fact that they lost is their problem, they lost the competition. If
they are against the idea of doing a stadium on that site, I don't think
they should have entered the competition."
"It saddens me. What can I do? They're going ahead with it irrespective. So..."
It's not
exactly the most flattering set of statements—from either side—and it's
almost definitely not the last we'll hear from either side of the feud.
As if the architecture world needed any more bad press. [Dezeen; The Guardian]
For the last ten years, Andy Baio has been performing an experiment
on his son. It is equal parts cruel and fascinating. Rather than let
him play whatever video game he wanted, Baio made his boy work his way
to modernity by playing through the history of video games
chronologically. Starting with 1979's Galaxian.
His son Eliot was born in 2004, so Baio has this week published the findings of his decade-long "experiment in forced nostalgia and questionable parenting."
The point was to let his son explore the history of the medium and how
it has transformed over the decades, maybe giving him an appreciation of
older (or newer but cruder) games that he might otherwise have
dismissed as relics.
Eliot was
given his first video games on his fourth birthday. Those games were
Galaxian (1979), Rally-X (1980), Bosconian (1981), Dig Dug (1982),
Pac-Man (1980), Super Pac-Man (1982), Pac-Man Plus (1982) and Pac &
Pal (1983).
Next was
the Atari 2600. Then the NES. Then the SNES. And so on. And by God,
whether it was working or not, it sounds like Eliot was kicking ass.
It's a difficult world out there, people. War, poverty,
brutality, corruption, social and racial injustice … these are not civil
times we live in. Which is why, more than ever, we NEED the comfort
and warmth that only life inside the Williams-Sonoma catalog can
provide. Follow me, America. Follow me inside these glossy pages,
where there is no anger. No violence. No internet commenters
explaining why YOUR SO STOOPID.
In here, there is nothing but endless kitchen countertops, and
meticulously arranged buffet spreads with pre-made bundt cakes (prep it a
day early, and your party is a snap!) that have been drizzled just so
with triple-butterscotch icing. There are fancy chocolates enrobed in
other fancy chocolates. There are WHIMSICAL TINS (yes, the
copy actually says that). There are thousands of newfangled cooking
tools and gadgets and devices that only a Greenwich, Conn., kitchen
could possibly have space to accommodate. There are dustings and
sprinklings and twee little bows, all perfectly arranged for your
perfect little evening of perfect holiday entertaining with your perfect
neighbor guests and your perfect children standing by the table in
their john-johns and singing gaily to you all as you pipe fresh, warm
cognac into each other's butts.
There is grace in this catalog. You are safe from the outside world
here. It's just you, your $685 Vitamix blender ("No waste and plenty of
extra fiber!"), and no possible way for city residents to access your
neighborhood via public transit. While the world burns outside, you
will be snug and secure with all your loved ones, talking about your
times at Princeton (I assume all of you went to Princeton), breathing in
the scents from a literal Dutch oven, and spooning out fresh cassoulet
from one of your MANY Le Creuset cooking dishes. Isn't life FABULOUS?!
Isn't Christmas just grand when you spent thousands of dollars and
hours upon hours of your free time making everything just so perfect, so
you can spend the rest of your time micromanaging your family into
oblivion, so that they are always within your maniacal control? I bet
this catalog is for people who freak out if a dog nuzzles against them.
Anyway, as a card-carrying white person, I have once again received this catalog in the mail. So as we did in
2012 and 2013,
let's go through it and point out some of the more ludicrous items to
be found. I'm sad to report that there are NO chicken coops on sale
this year. You'll have to source those elsewhere, amigo. But there IS
an Ina Garten cameo here! You knew there would be.
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With few cities willing to host them, the Olympics are in trouble. And with ongoing allegations of fraud and incompetence,
the International Olympic Committee is in even more trouble. Today, the
IOC approved dozens of new rules that attempt to address the expense
and mismanagement of the Games.
The new
guidelines are expansive—suspiciously so—and they range from allowing
multiple cities or even multiple countries to host the same Olympics, to
cutting down on the cost of bidding to host at all, to new rules for
auditing and transparency within the IOC. It's easy to see why the IOC wants the world to know it's changing.
The
last few years have seen a seemingly endless parade of outrageous
stories about corruption and mismanagement from within the IOC. And from
without, there's been the growing international objections to the
extraordinary financial burden the Games—and even just the bidding
process for the Games—puts on cities.
And so last month, the IOC published a document (PDF)
in advance of its yearly meeting details a plan called 20+20, in which
it described 40 different recommendations for how the organization could
improve. At the IOC's 127th annual session this weekend, every single
recommendation was approved unanimously—according to the IOC, there were zero votes against any of the items, though the Chicago Tribune reports that there were clearly members who did not raise their hands during voting.
Making It Cheaper and Easier to Host
What's the
IOC so desperate to change? First of all, the way cities host the games.
The IOC will now guide potential host cities through the process, and
"actively promote the maximum use of existing facilities and the use of
temporary and demountable venues," a nod to the horrendous effect the
Olympics have had on past host cities' financial and urban health. Going
even further, the IOC will also allow hosts to split events between
multiple cities within a country—and if it's necessary, host some events
in entirely different countries.
So if
a country didn't have the ski jump necessary to hold the event, they
could appeal to a neighboring country or city to host it. It's a model
that looks more like the World Cup, where multiple cities split the
burden, and it could open the door to the Olympics behind held in, say,
New York City and Philadelphia, or Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Rosa Khutor, an area near Sochi that hosted Olympic venues. Image: Alexander Belenkiy
The idea is
to make it less financially taxing to build venues and space for every
single event in a single city, and the IOC says it will also help cities
balance "long-term investment in infrastructure and return on such
investment on the one hand, and the operational budget on the other
hand," ostensibly to avoid the kind of budget overruns seen in the Sochi
Olympics, which went more than $40 billion over budget building infrastructure and venues—the long-term urban benefit of which still remains to be seen.
We're Green, We Swear
As you read further into the long list of promises the IOC is making, you'll notice a core theme: sustainability. The
IOC is also making it cheaper to bid at all, cutting down on the
meetings and sessions the cities must pay for during the bidding
process. It's also pledging to completely change how the Olympics are
organized to make the process more sustainable: Not only by letting
cities and countries share the burden and promoting reusable venue
design, but by putting a cap on the number of athletes and events in
each year's games and monitoring labor standards, which have been an
issue at Brazil's Olympic venue sites, below.
Expand
Rio's Olympic Village under construction. AP Photo/Leo Correa
The
IOC will "include sustainability in its day-to-day operations," it says
vaguely, and "integrate and implement sustainability measures that
encompass economic, social and environmental spheres in all stages of
their project." What's more, it's pledging to be far more transparent
with its dealings, auditing its financial records to International Financial Reporting Standards and requiring the IOC to "produce an annual activity and financial report, including the allowance policy for IOC members."
If it feels
like a whole lot to promise, that's because it is. In the end, the list
is an ambitious attempt to fix some of the IOC's most high-profile
missteps over the past few years. Whether or not the committee ends up
overhauling the way it spends money and governs itself, the new rules
for how cities compete to host the Games are a long-overdue step towards
making the Olympics a worthwhile investment for cities—something they
haven't been for a long, long time.
