All I can afford to do is email this.

Most Expensive Cigar
Gurkha Black Dragon
Price: $1,150 each

Gurkha Cigars’ Black Dragon cigars were introduced in 2006, according to cigar.com. The cigars are hand-crafted in Honduras and come in a box made of carved camel bone and brass. Gurkha Cigars produced only five chests of 100 cigars, each chest priced at $115,000, and only one chest remains. A new and less expensive version of the Black Dragon was released in 2007.

Most Expensive Champagne
Heidsieck Monopole Champagne 1907
Price: $35,000*

In 1997, a search team uncovered a ship that sank in the Baltic Sea containing valuable cargo, including 2,000 bottles of Heidsieck Monopole Champagne. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Moscow claimed 10 of the bottles and made them available for sale in 2008. According to the hotel’s spokesperson, Sergey Logvinov, the first bottle sold within the first month to a Russian collector. A few bottles are still available for purchase.

*Converted from 880,000 rubles

Most Expensive Hotel Room
Royal Penthouse Suite, Hotel President Wilson in Geneva
Price: $65,000 per night

This palatial suite, which occupies an entire floor of the hotel and measures 18,083 square feet, has 10 rooms and seven bathrooms. It was renovated in January 2009 to add a new private fitness area, according to a spokesperson.

Most Expensive Bicycle
Aurumania Gold Bike Crystal Edition
Price: $114,464*

Scandinavian design company Aurumania made only 10 of these hand-crafted, 24-carat gold-plated bicycles. Each is decorated with 600 Swarovski crystals. According to Chief Executive Bo Franch-Mærkedahl, this bike was originally conceived as a show piece but quickly attracted interest from buyers. The firm, founded in September 2008, has sold five units to buyers in the U.K., Dubai, Russia, Italy, and most recently, Australia. He adds that four of the clients also bought a matching gold-plated wall rack.

*Price converted from €80,000

Most Expensive Golf Club
Long-Nose Putter Stamped “A.D.,” attributed to Andrew Dickson
Price: $181,000

An “A.D.” stamp on this circa 18th century, long-nose putter is attributed to Andrew Dickson, the oldest known clubmaker to mark his clubs. He is said to have served as a caddy to the Duke of York as a young boy, according to Sotheby’s. This item was estimated to sell for $200,000 to $300,000 but fetched $181,000 in a Sotheby’s auction in New York in 2007.

Most Expensive Wine
Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon 1992
Price: $500,000

This sale is left off many lists because the proceeds went to charity, but Screaming Eagle’s $500,000, six-liter bottle of cab holds the top spot for the most expensive bottle of wine ever sold. It was purchased at the Napa Valley Wine Auction in 2000 by Chase Bailey, a former Cisco Systems executive, reported Time magazine.

Most Expensive Chess Set
Chess Set by Charles Hollander*
Price: $600,000

Jeweler Charles Hollander’s Royal Diamond Chess (shown in photo), priced at half a million dollars, is often cited as the world’s most expensive, but Hollander tells Bloomberg Businessweek that the first of his seven chess sets, which made their debut about 10 years ago, quietly sold for $600,000 just after launching. The set was studded with 320 carats of black and white diamonds and two kilograms of 14 carat white gold. Hollander says he presented the unnamed piece at the Basel Jewelry Show and sold it within the first hour to a Russian collector. Hollander has made seven luxury chess sets, all designed by Bernard Maquin, and has moved all but one. Another set, called the Jewel Royale chess set, by U.K. jeweler Boodles, was valued at $9.8 million but has not yet sold.

*No images of the set were taken before sale, according to Charles Hollander. The image shown is of the Royal Diamond Chess.

Most Expensive Motorcycle
Dodge Tomahawk V10 Superbike
Price: $700,000

The Dodge Tomahawk, a 1,500-lb. motorcycle with four wheels, has a Dodge Viper’s V10 engine and can go from zero to 60 mph in 2.5 seconds, according to Edmunds.com. The top speed is estimated to be more than 300 mph. The vehicle, which made its debut at the 2003 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, was reportedly priced at $550,000, but a Dodge spokesperson confirmed to Bloomberg Businessweek that two units were sold at an even higher $700,000.

Most Expensive Camera
Susse Freres daguerreotype camera
Price: $775,000

A daguerreotype camera designed by Frenchman Susse Freres that dates back to 1839 sold at the WestLicht Auction in 2007 for €576,000 ($775,000). It was believed to be the oldest commercially manufactured camera in the world, reported the Most Expensive Journal. Another daguerreotype camera will be auctioned in May and is expected to fetch up to $950,000.

Most Expensive Speakers
Transmission Audio Ultimate System
Price: $2 million per pair

With a total of 12 units—four dipole subwoofers, two dipole mid-woofers, four dipole medium-frequency and high-frequency ribbon panels, and two dipole high-fidelity super ribbon panels—Transmission Audio’s Ultimate speaker system is a hefty piece of equipment, spanning 37 feet and weighing 5 metric tons. All units are made from aircraft aluminum and have stands in polished red or black granite. The set was introduced in late 2009, and so far two pairs have been preordered, says Bo Bengtsson, president of Transmission Audio. None has yet been delivered, as the assembly time is about six months.

Most Expensive Television
PrestigeHD Supreme Rose Edition by Stuart Hughes
Price: $2.3 million*

Swiss luxury television maker PrestigeHD asked Stuart Hughes of Goldstriker International to design a spectacular piece for the company, says Hughes. So he took a 55-inch PrestigeHD television and covered it in 28 kilograms of 18-carat rose gold and 72 diamonds. Alligator skin was hand sewn into the bezel. This limited edition TV, introduced just this year, surpasses Hughes’ £1 million television for PrestigeHD, which uses 22-carat yellow gold and 48 diamonds. PrestigeHD CEO Simon M. Troxler says the company is close to closing its first contract for the Supreme Rose Edition and “we are very confident that the limited edition of only three TVs will be sold out soon.”

*Price converted from £1.5 million

Most Expensive Guitar
Fender Stratocaster guitar
Price: $2.7 million

A group of the world’s renowned musicians signed this guitar, auctioned in Qatar in 2005, to raise funds for tsunami victims, according to a press release. Signatures include Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Brian May, Jimmy Page, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend, Mark Knopfler, Ray Davis, Liam Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Tony Iommi, Angus & Malcolm Young, Paul McCartney, Sting, Ritchie Blackmore, Def Leppard, and Bryan Adams. It was bought by Qatar’s royal family earlier that year, donated back to the charity, and sold again for $2.7 million.

Most Expensive Cell Phone
iPhone 3GS Supreme Rose by Stuart Hughes
Price: $2.97 million*

Stuart Hughes—who also designed the most expensive television—made headlines in 2009 when he crafted a 22-carat gold iPhone studded with 53 diamonds for an unnamed Australian businessman for £1.92 million. More recently, he says, he was commissioned to make an even pricier version of the phone in 18-carat rose gold with hundreds of diamonds, including a single-cut, 7.1-carat diamond for the main navigation button.

*Price converted from £1.93 million

Most Expensive Piano
Heintzman Crystal Piano
Price: $3.22 millio

A nine-foot piano made by Heintzman Piano in Beijing was recently purchased at auction by a private bidder for a record $3.22 million, according to a company release.

Most Expensive Domain Name
Insure.comPrice: $16 million

In 2009, California-based Internet marketing firm QuinStreet bought insure.com for $16 million, setting a new record for the most expensive domain name. It was previously held by sex.com, which sold in 2006 for more than $12 million, reported the Guardian.

Most Expensive Ring
Chopard Blue Diamond Ring
Price: $16.26 million

The centerpiece of Chopard Blue Diamond Ring is a 9-carat blue diamond (in photo) with diamond shoulders. The 18-carat white gold band is paved with diamonds. It sold overseas in 2007 to a fancy color diamond collector, reportedly for $16,260,000, but a Chopard spokesperson says the estimated value of the ring today is $18,561,310.

Most Expensive Car
1954-55 Mercedes-Benz W196
Price: $24 million

Think a brand-new $1.7 million Bugatti Veyron is expensive? Try the Mercedes-Benz W196, which won the Grand Prix in 1954 and 1955, and sold at auction in 1990 for a staggering $24 million. According to the U.K.’s Times Online Times Online, Mercedes donated the car to the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu in the 1980s, which later sold it for £1.5million to finance a museum renovation. It was again sold in 1990 to a French industrialist for $24 million but changed hands once more to a German industrialist for less than half that sum.

*The image shows a model of the W196.

Most Expensive Watch
Haute Joaillerie Watch from Chopard
Price: $25 million

Chopard’s colorful, glittery timepiece sold in early 2000 for a reported $25 million. The watch has 201 carats of pink, blue, and white diamonds, including a 15-carat, heart-shaped pink diamond, a 12-carat, heart-shaped blue diamond, and an 11-carat, heart-shaped white diamond. The hearts spring open to expose the yellow diamond-studded watch face. The bracelet has 163 carats of white and yellow pear-shaped diamonds.

Most Expensive Drawing
Raphael’s Head of a Muse
Price: $47.9 million

The most expensive work on paper was sold at auction in December 2009 by Christie’s London. Raphael’s Head of a Muse, a black chalk drawing on paper, sold for $47,941,095, handily beating the estimate, which ranged from $19.7 million to $26.3 million.

Most Expensive Sculpture
L’Homme qui marche I (Walking Man I), Alberto Giacometti (1961)
Price: $104.3 million

After only eight minutes of bidding at a Sotheby’s auction in London in February, this life-size bronze sculpture sold for three times its asking price to an anonymous telephone bidder, reported the Daily Telegraph. The work not only set a record price for a Giacometti; it is also the most expensive piece of art ever to sell at auction. The previous record was held by Picasso’s Boy with a Pipe, a painting that sold for $104 million.

Most Expensive Painting
Number 5, 1948, Jackson Pollock (1948)
Price: $140 million

Billionaire record and film producer David Geffen reportedly sold the 4-ft. by 8-ft. painting to financier David Martínez in 2006, although neither commented on the deal, according to an article in The New York Times.

Most Expensive Private Jet
Boeing 747-8 VIP
Price: $295 million*

This jet, which has 4,786 square feet of cabin space, is the newest member of the 747 family and replaces the 747-400. Boeing has sold seven 747-8 VIPs since May 2006 and will start delivering them next year. While the interior is intended to look less like a plane and more like home, Boeing does not furnish the jets—customers must hire interior designers, which can easily add millions of dollars in additional cost, says Boeing spokesman Bernard Choi. He says the jet probably will not enter service until after 2012, because the interior has to be put in.

*Price does not include the interior.

Most Expensive House
Antilla
Price: $1 billion

According to a February report by Property Magazine Property Magazine , the most expensive house in the world, named Antilla (in picture above at left), is in downtown Mumbai, India, and will be the residence of Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani. The 27-story, 570-foot-tall tower has a helipad, a health club, and a six-floor garage that can hold 168 cars. Each level has gardens. It will be serviced by a staff of 600 people. Some reports list the price of the house at $2 billion. The architecture and design firms working on this project, Perkins+Will and Hirsch Bedner Associates, declined comment.

Most Expensive Yacht
Eclipse
Price: $1.2 billion

This 560-foot-long yacht has two helipads, 11 guest cabins, two swimming pools, three launch boats, an aquarium, and a minisubmarine that can dive to 50 meters below the ocean surface, according to London’s Daily Mail. The master bedroom and bridge have bulletproof glass, and the security system includes missile detection systems that warn of incoming rockets. The owner Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire who also owns Britain’s Chelsea Football Club, reportedly fitted the yacht with a laser system that prevents paparazzi from taking photos. It was built by Blohm + Voss in Hamburg, Germany

HBR Blog Network

JEFFREY F. RAYPORT

Jeffrey F. Rayport is an Operating Partner at Castanea Partners, a Boston-based private equity firm focused on retail, information, and marketing services, and was formerly a faculty member at Harvard Business School.

India’s Exploding Digital Economy

9:19 AM Thursday March 8, 2012
by Jeffrey F. Rayport | Comments (13)

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Recently, I had the privilege of moderating a conference of global entrepreneurs and venture capitalists in Mumbai — an event called Founders Forum India. Founders Forum is a franchise started by two successful UK-based entrepreneurs, Brent Hoberman and Jonnie Goodwin, to stimulate US-style entrepreneurship in the European region, and now around the world. The event brought together some 250 entrepreneurs and investors for a series of panels, round tables, and a business plan competition. It also featured a showcase of hot new Indian start-ups.

What the event made clear — beyond the striking array of talent in the room assembled by our Indian host, Reliance Group’s Rajesh Sawhney — was a stunningly bright future for all things digital in India. Indeed, practically any statistic you might cite about Digital India suggests that something unusual is going on. And the impact will occur in the next 24 to 36 months, based on the following data and projections:

Let’s start with Internet access. Today, India’s population of Internet users is 80 million, which equals a penetration rate of just seven percent (or 17 percent of the urban population). That is about to change. The government is rolling out what it calls its National Broadband Plan, a $4.5 billion initiative to build a country-wide fiber optic network that will connect an additional 160 million Indians by 2014. An Indian investment bank, Avendus, projects 376 million Indian Net users by 2015.

Part of what’s fueling growth in Net penetration is an explosion in mobility. The Indian government sponsored the introduction of 3G services in 2011 with a $30 billion spectrum auction. Morgan Stanley projects that 3G penetration will reach 22 percent by 2015. Government and the private sector have spent something like $55 billion on related infrastructure. Further, we’ll see a roll-out of 4G wireless services across the country in 2012. While there are nearly 800 million mobile subscribers in India, very few use smart phones; most have feature phones that deliver, at best, premium text-based services. As unit economics enable ever cheaper smart phones (the lowest price in the market is now $65), their penetration will rise.

Fueling this explosion is a fact of national culture: Indians love media. No one aware of the nation’s obsession with "ABC" (Astrology, Bollywood, and Cricket) will be surprised to learn that the average Indian consumes 4.5 hours of media and entertainment a day, while 70 percent of the national population spends money on content, both online and off. Time spent online already comes to 40 minutes per capita per day.

Mobility will drive much of the expansion in Internet usage. One of every four Internet users in the country now accesses the Net using a mobile device. A leapfrog effect will mean that three of every four Net users will do so by 2015. Bye-bye to the clunkier and more costly PC.

One result of this expansion is that e-commerce is rapidly taking off. Granted, only 11 percent of Indian online users are transacting online. As in China several years ago, there’s a reluctance to pay for goods using the Web; most of today’s online transactions are in the travel industry (representing 87 percent of a $6.3 billion e-commerce sector, says Avendus). Still, Amazon lookalike Infibeam is growing sales handily. It’s a reflection of what’s happening in the domestic retail space more broadly. Infibeam’s founder projects growth of the retail economy from $400 billion today to $1 trillion by the end of the decade. Digital will inevitably play a starring role in propelling this growth.

At the same time, there is an abundance of local capital ready to deploy to feed new ventures. Consumer demand for innovative digital services, when executed ably, seems unquenchable; and that demand is stimulating capital flows. For this reason, one entrepreneur observed, "More companies [in India] die of indigestion than of starvation." According to Mergermarket, the value of investment activity rose from $111 million in 2010 to $829 million in 2011, while the number of deals doubled from 33 to 66. This expansion isn’t just domestic. Indian entrepreneurs are feeling bullish about global markets. One publicly traded company, OnMobile, an operator of premium SMS services, now does business in 52 countries around the world.

Growing confidence among Indian entrepreneurs is related to one other market attribute: Indian consumers are extraordinarily demanding. Many at the conference articulated the idea simply. As they say in Manhattan, the Mumbai crowd averred, "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere."

Yes, there are challenges. There are at least 16 languages spoken throughout the country. There’s the question of how to develop robust legal, regulatory, and financial infrastructure (including payment systems). There’s the problem of sound policing of intellectual property rights. There’s an aversion to subscription-based offerings. And, as ever, there’s something else you cannot ignore: executional risk.

But it was hard for me, from a moderator’s perch, not to feel exhilarated by the dramatic upside for Digital India. The subcontinent seems on the cusp of amazing developments, only beginning with broadband Net access, high-speed mobility, and e-commerce. The idea that India — with its scale, its energy, its consumers — could become a digital laboratory and growth engine for the world struck me as both likely and inspiring.

Given that, is it any wonder many who attended the conference regard India’s digital opportunity in the next few years as greater than China’s?

Chilla-nashini

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sufi Maulvi (teacher) meditating

Chilla-nashini (Persian: چله نشینی‎) is a spiritual practice of penance and solitude, known mostly in Indian and Persian traditions. In this ritual a mendicant or ascetic attempts to remain seated in a circle practicing meditation techniques without food for 40 days and nights. The word ‘chilla’ is adopted from the Persian word ‘chehel’, meaning ‘forty’.[1] The nashini is the person who does the 40-day fast and remains seated in the circle of seclusion. It is (falsely) believed that those who try it but do not succeed usually die or suffer madness.[2]

Chilla-nashini is a severe penance. A circle is drawn on the ground by the penitent’s own hand; for forty days and nights he must not step out of the circle, he must forgo food, and avoid falling sleep. He must face whatever comes. Chilla-nashini is known to both Sufi and Vedantic ascetics.[3]

The chilla is performed for spiritual as well as worldly attainments, psychic abilities (siddhis), or complete enlightenment depending on the desire of the practitioner who performs it.[4]

The chilla is commonly performed in a solitary cell called chilla-khana.

[edit]In Music

A practice similar to Chilla Nashini is also performed by "Hindustani Classical Music" practitioners at an advanced level. It is known as simply "Chilla". The musicians lock themselves up in a special room (chilla-khana) for forty days and practice their instrument severely. Special diet (often omitting meat and grains) is taken during this period (very little food is taken).Any contact to the outside world is avoided during this period.People try not to fall asleep at any cost, if necessary they will tie their hair to a noose at the ceiling. It is done to achieve a very high level of skill, that cannot be achieved due to normal regular practice.The Chilla details may differ from family (Gharana) to family.

[edit]People who have performed partial or complete nashini chillas

The most famous case of a chilla-nashini is found in the biographies of the 14th century Sufi poet Hafiz of Shiraz.[5][6][7]

Sheriar Mundegar Irani, father of Meher Baba, performed 30 days of a chilla in 1884, but could not complete the required 40 days.[8]

[edit]Similar accounts in other cultures

Jesus fasted in the desert for forty days and forty nights.[9]

Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights on Mount Sinai.[10]

Elijah fasted for forty days and forty nights during his journey to the mountain of God.[11]

Gautama Buddha achieved enlightenment after fasting and meditating under the Bodhi Tree for forty days.However, enlightenment came after he broke his strict fasting and accepted some rice milk from a girl.[12]

Saint Patrick fasted for forty days on mount Croagh Patrick before expelling all the snakes from Ireland.[13]

[edit]See also

• Khalwa
• Vision quest
• Meditation
• Sadhana

[edit]References

1. ^ The Path of Khalwati and Shabani
2. ^ Meher Prabhu, Bhau Kalchuri, Manifestation Inc. 1986, VOL I, p.129
3. ^ The Nothing and the Everything, Bhau Kalchuri, p.78
4. ^ Infinite Intelligence, Meher Baba, Sheriar Press, 2007
5. ^ Teachings of Hafiz: Translated by Gertrude Lowthian Bell
6. ^ Hafiz حافظ Biography
7. ^ Iran Chamber Society
8. ^ Bhau Kalchuri, Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher, The Biography of the Avatar of the Age, Meher Baba, Manifestation, Inc., 1986, p. 129.
9. ^ New Testament Bible, Matthew 4:2
10. ^ Deuteronomy 9:9
11. ^ "The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, ‘Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.’ So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God." 1 Kings 19:7
12. ^ Sacred Destinations
13. ^ "In imitation of the great Jewish legislator on Sinai, he spent forty days on its summit in fasting and prayer, and other penitential exercises." Catholic Encyclopedia

To all my students to attended my ’3 brain’ workshops:

http://asianheartinstitute.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/can-you-stomach-your-brain/

From WSJ Onlinehttps://apps.facebook.com/wsjsocial/articles/SB10001424052970204468004577164732944974356

A Gut Check for Many Ailments

By Shirley S. Wang

What you think is going on in your head may be caused in part by what’s happening in your gut.

A growing body of research shows the gut affects bodily functions far beyond digestion. Studies have shown intriguing links from the gut’s health to bone formation, learning and memory and even conditions including Parkinson’s disease. Recent research found disruptions to the stomach or intestinal bacteria can prompt depression and anxiety—at least in lab rats.

Better understanding the communication between the gut and the brain could help reveal the causes of and treatments for a range of ailments, and provide diagnostic clues for doctors.

"The gut is important in medical research, not just for problems pertaining to the digestive system but also problems pertaining to the rest of the body," says Pankaj J. Pasricha, chief of the division of gastroenterology and hepatology at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The gut—considered as a single digestive organ that includes the esophagus, stomach and intestines—has its own nervous system that allows it to operate independently from the brain.

This enteric nervous system is known among researchers as the "gut brain." It controls organs including the pancreas and gall bladder via nerve connections. Hormones and neurotransmitters generated in the gut interact with organs such as the lungs and heart.

Like the brain and spinal cord, the gut is filled with nerve cells. The small intestine alone has 100 million neurons, roughly equal to the amount found in the spinal cord, says Michael Gershon, a professor at Columbia University.

The vagus nerve, which stretches down from the brainstem, is the main conduit between the brain and gut. But the gut doesn’t just take orders from the brain.

"The brain is a CEO that doesn’t like to micromanage," says Dr. Gershon. The brain receives much more information from the gut than it sends down, he adds.

Many people with psychiatric and brain conditions also report gastrointestinal issues. New research indicates problems in the gut may cause problems in the brain, just as a mental ailment, such as anxiety, can upset the stomach.

Stanford’s Dr. Pasricha and colleagues examined this question in the lab by irritating the stomachs of newborn rats. By the time the animals were eight to 10 weeks old, the physical disturbance had healed, but these animals displayed more depressed and anxious behaviors, such as giving up more quickly in a swimming task, than rats whose stomachs weren’t irritated.

Compared to controls, the rats also showed increased sensitivity to stress and produced more of a stress hormone, in a study published in May in a Public Library of Science journal, PLoS One.

Other work, such as that of researchers from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, demonstrated that bacteria in the gut—known as gut flora—play a role in how the body responds to stress. The exact mechanism is unknown, but certain bacteria are thought to facilitate important interactions between the gut and the brain.

Electrically stimulating the vagus nerve has been shown to reduce the symptoms of epilepsy and depression. (One treatment approved by the Food and Drug Administration, made by Cyberonics Inc., is already on the market.)

Exactly why such stimulation works isn’t known, experts say, but a similar procedure has been shown in animal studies to help improve learning and memory.

Earlier this month, researchers made a small step toward understanding a gastrointestinal ailment that typically affects children with autism.

In a study of 23 autistic children and nine typically developing kids, a bacterium unique to the intestines of those with autism called Sutterella was discovered.

The results, published online in the journal mBio by researchers at Columbia’s school of public health, need to be studied further, but suggest Sutterella may be important in understanding the link between autism and digestive ailments, the authors wrote.

Dr. Gershon, professor of pathology and cell biology at Columbia, has been studying how the gut controls its behavior and that of other organs by investigating the neurotransmitter serotonin.

Low serotonin levels in the brain are known to affect mood and sleep. Several common antidepressants work by raising levels of serotonin in the brain.

Yet about 95% of the serotonin in the body is made in the gut, not in the brain, says Dr. Gershon. Serotonin and other neurotransmitters produced by gut neurons help the digestive track push food through the gut.

Work by Dr. Gershon and others has shown that serotonin is necessary for the repair of cells in the liver and lungs, and plays a role in normal heart development and bone-mass accumulation.

Studying the neurons in the gut also may also help shed light on Parkinson’s disease. Some of the damage the disease causes to brain neurons that make the neurotransmitter dopamine also occur in the gut neurons, researchers say.

Researchers are now studying whether gut neurons, which can be sampled through a routine colonoscopy, may help clinicians diagnose and track the disease without invasive brain biopsies, says Pascal Derkinderen, a professor of neurology at Inserm, France’s national institute of health.

Write to Shirley S. Wang at shirley.wang@wsj.com

Tequila: I’m a single woman
Rum: I’m a woman who likes to have one night stands
Champagne: I’m an engaged woman
Red Bull: I’m a woman in a relationship
Beer: I’m a married woman
Vodka: I’m a woman looking to hook up
Sprite: I’m a woman who can’t find the right man
Whiskey: I’m a single woman who loves to party
Liquor: I’m a woman who wishes she was single
Gin: I’m a woman who wants to get married

Schumpeter

Too much buzz

Social media provides huge opportunities, but will bring huge problems

Dec 31st 2011 | from the print edition

THE only area of business that seems to be recession-proof is social media. Industrial firms are battening down the hatches. Banks are tossing thousands of workers overboard. But Facebook is looking to raise $10 billion for a small fraction of its shares when it goes public in 2012.

A recent conference in Madrid, put on by the Bankinter Foundation of Innovation, captured the enthusiasm. The assembled cyber-gurus argued that “social technologies” that allow people to broadcast their ideas (eg, Twitter), or form connections (eg, LinkedIn), are some of the most powerful ever devised. They can be supersized quickly, linked together easily and spread by customers. And they can be accessed from almost anywhere. Two billion people are already online. E-commerce sales are $8 trillion a year. So, the argument goes, this more “social” element to the internet is the next great revolution. Over-caffeinated cyber-champions talk of “empowerment” and “transparency”. But is all this as wonderful as it sounds? Or is it a new bubble in the making?

More information ought to be useful, but only if companies can interpret it. And workers are already overloaded: 62% of them say that the quality of what they do is hampered because they cannot make sense of the data they already have, according to Capgemini, a consultancy. This will only get worse: the data deluge is expected to grow more than 40 times by 2020.The great virtue of social technologies, say their boosters, is that they break down the barriers between companies and their customers. They allow firms to gather oodles of information: big companies now obsessively monitor social media to find out what their customers really think about them. Social media also allow companies to respond to complaints more quickly: firms as different as Chrysler and Best Buy employ “Twitter teams” to reply to whinging tweets.

Responding quickly to bitter tweets sounds like a nifty way to soothe angry customers. But there is a risk that companies will concentrate on a handful of activists (who tweet a lot), while neglecting average customers (who don’t). They may also ignore non-customers (who are the biggest potential source of growth) and the elderly (who seldom tweet). Many firms think that they can improve customer service by using social media to respond to complaints quickly. Really? It is already virtually impossible to talk to a real person on the telephone. Will it be any easier online?

Undaunted, cyber-enthusiasts maintain that social technologies are shifting power from a few Goliaths to many Davids. Ordinary people can easily broadcast their opinions and extend their networks. Big firms have to adjust to this new reality or go under. (As the digerati put it: “All businesses will end up looking like the internet.”) But big firms can use social data to add to their already formidable influence over the consumer: Ford, PepsiCo and Southwest Airlines monitor postings on social-media sites to gauge the impact of their marketing campaigns and then adjust their pitch accordingly. And some of the most successful internet-savvy companies, such as Google and Microsoft, are as secretive about what they do as any old-line company.

The “Army of Davids” argument—to borrow a phrase from Glenn Reynolds, an American blogger—is often applied to politics. For example, Ilya Ponomarev, a member of the Russian Duma, argues that social media make it easier for protesters in Russia to organise. (Russians spend more time on the internet than western Europeans, not least because they have no faith in state television.) This is true, but the secret police in many countries are equally excited about technology. New tools allow them to eavesdrop retrospectively, and to trace networks of dissidents. During the Egyptian uprising the advantage was clearly on the side of the dissidents, since the Egyptian secret police were digital dullards. But this may not be the case in China, where the regime’s online snoops are highly sophisticated.

Cyber-enthusiasts gush about the way social media help entrepreneurs. They have a point: disruptive technologies reconfigure old businesses and create new ones. Facebook could let companies aim their ads more accurately. Firms are starting to use internal social-networking tools, such as Yammer and Chatter, to encourage collaboration, discover talent and cut down on pointless e-mails. Youngsters are happy to embrace it, but older managers may be less keen. The use of social media within companies could be quite disruptive to traditional management techniques, particularly in strongly hierarchical firms.

Dreaming up new companies is not terribly difficult: at the conference Andreas Weigend, the founder of Social Data Lab, came up with the idea of “another person’s hat”; a product that allows you to don the digital identity of, say, an Islamic fundamentalist and see what the world looks like through his eyes. This sounds neat, but some of the new social-media technologies have a clown-suit quality to them. They are amusing the first time, but rapidly become tedious.

A new medium: neither rare nor well-done

Most commentary on social media ignores an obvious truth—that the value of things is largely determined by their rarity. The more people tweet, the less attention people will pay to any individual tweet. The more people “friend” even passing acquaintances, the less meaning such connections have. As communication grows ever easier, the important thing is detecting whispers of useful information in a howling hurricane of noise. For speakers, the new world will be expensive. Companies will have to invest in ever more channels to capture the same number of ears. For listeners, it will be baffling. Everyone will need better filters—editors, analysts, middle managers and so on—to help them extract meaning from the blizzard of buzz.

Economist.com/blogs/schumpet

The Jesus Hairstyle

Did a lot of men have flowing locks in ancient Judea?

By Brian Palmer|Posted Friday, Dec. 23, 2011, at 7:03 AM ET

What, Jesus might not have had hair like this?

Photograph by iStockphoto.

It’s time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, the Christian savior and owner of a divine mane of flowing locks. We know that "Jesus" was a pretty common name back then, but was his trademark hairstyle normal for the time?

No. It’s very unlikely that the Jesus hairstyle shown in religious icons has anything to do with his actual coiffure. A Roman triumphal arch from that era depicts enslaved Jews with short hair, and one of the earliest images that scholars think could be Jesus—on a third-century chapel at Dura-Europos in modern Syria—also shows men with short hair. The early Christian evangelist Paul wrote, “Doth not even nature itself teach you that if a man have long hair, it is a shame unto him?” Paul may never have seen Jesus in the flesh, but he would have known the popular hairdos of the time.

The classic image of a bearded, long-haired Jesus emerged as the favorite in the sixth century. Early Christians painted Jesus’s hair in many different ways— long or short, curly or straight, bearded or clean-shaven. There’s even a bald Jesus on display in the British museum. The artists probably weren’t attempting to create a historically accurate image of the man. The New Testament offers virtually no physical description of him, so they would have based the portraits on their own, diverse ideas of what a god should look like. Some philosophers, like St. Augustine, appreciated the diverse ways of portraying the incarnate Jesus. He thought ineffability was more consistent with divinity. It’s easy to paint a man, he agued, but hard to paint a god.

There are two possible explanations for why the bearded, long-haired Jesus eventually won out. Some think the depictions were based on the iconography of Roman gods. Romans who viewed Jesus as the son of God would have likened him to second-generation pagan deities like Apolloand Bacchus—clean-shaven and youthful, with mid-length, curly locks. But as he increasingly came to be thought of as the king of kings, sitting on a heavenly throne, his image had to resemble the patriarchs of Olympus.Neptune and Jupiter were mature and bearded, with longer manes of hair.

Art historian Herbert Kessler of Johns Hopkins offers a more specific explanation. Pagan gods who were associated with water, like Neptune, often had long-flowing hair that merged with the water itself in statues and paintings. Ancient cities built at the confluence of waterways had their own local river gods who were similarly depicted. Jesus, too, had a relationship with water. He walked on water, he turned water into wine, and, in early paintings, he’s often shown above the four rivers of paradise. Early Christians might have favored the long-haired Jesus because they identified that hairstyle with water gods.

There have also been suggestions that early portraitists confused Jesus of Nazareth with the religious order of the Nazirites, who vowed not to cut their hair. This explanation, however, is inconsistent with the many short-haired Jesus images that survive from antiquity.

Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.

Explainer thanks Robin Jensen of Vanderbilt University, Herbert Kessler of Johns Hopkins University, and archaeologist-anthropologist Joe Zias.

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2011/12/RIP-Maybach

CARS

R.I.P. Maybach

By

Bruce McCall Illustration by

Hamish Robertson

7:15 PM, December 15 2011

Photograph by Kenjonbro/Flickr (Maybach).

Daimler AG is euthanizing its ultra-luxury Maybach brand after a nine-year lifetime of sickly sales and, more painful for the iconic lord of German industry, muted public wailing at the funeral.

God knows what the Maybach cost to develop and produce—probably north of a billion, counted in dollars or euros. Which makes its abrupt departure, announced late last month, all the more mysterious.

Or not. When it comes to royalty, aura is everything: cars that can easily crest a $350,000 price point should reward the expenditure with Ozymandias-scale mystique: look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair. They should be automobiles of such charisma as to crush the spirits of lesser breeds. The Maybach was a very good car, even superior in certain ways. Alas, as an icon, it overbowled nobody, aside from a few rappers drawn to its admitted virtue as a signifier of money wastage. Otherwise, neither movie stars nor tin-pot dictators nor Arab princelings lusted after it.

I wonder if this had to do with the fact that the Maybach flaunted an image without content. Against legends like Rolls and Bentley, the name radiates a nomenclatural sexiness somewhere between Agnes and Edsel. Daimler’s history is long and glorious, but outside the Daimler-Benz Museum, “Maybach” evokes zero historical resonance or romance. The worthy Herr Dr. Wilhelm Maybach (1846–1929) designed Mercedes engines and Zeppelin engines and built a trickle of eponymous luxury cars between the wars. Good for him, but when not even the all-time winningest Jeopardy contestant could identify who he was, presenting his name as a synonym for world automotive supremacy is an uphill trudge.

O.K., but if the car itself boggles the mind with technological innovation, or otherworldly performance, or stunning looks, couldn’t a mystique eventually develop? Maybe. But in that regard, the Maybach was thunder without the clap. Oh, of course, it was outfitted with fluted crystal champagne glasses and seats that electrically melted into beds and other such nabob amenities; but fanatical polish of creature comforts isn’t innovation. The new Wunderwagen declined to sweeten its impact and appeal with any major technological advances—exceedingly odd for a car-maker as prodigiously innovative as Daimler had been for 125 years.

For equally inexplicable reasons, the board chose to give its all-new brand a physical presence mild to the point of underwhelming. A car meant to signal more than double an S-Class Mercedes sedan’s price and triple its status looked almost exactly like . . . an S-Class Mercedes. They didn’t even bother changing the shape of the radiator grille.

Doubly odd, because Daimler had always owned the bold Wagnerian automotive gesture. Even in the 20s, the Emperor of Japan rode in a boxcar-size Mercedes limousine. In the 30s, a succession of overpowered and overbearing Grosser Mercedes sedans and limousines and landaulets—big Brunhildes festooned with lights and horns up front between bulbous front fenders; with hoods long enough to bowl on; with multiple fat exhaust pipes spilling out the sides—radiated a sort of merciless swagger, before which all motordom scattered like squirrels.

Even after World War II had hammered a near-fatal dent into the prestige of everything Germanic, bombed-to-smithereens Mercedes brushed off the brick dust and by 1953 had climbed back to eminence. The stately Mercedes 300 quickly became Official World Car of the Winners, with Hollywood stars and international playboys queuing up to buy coupe and cabriolet versions.

A new apogee came in 1963, just as Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder economic comeback crested. Enter the immodestly named Grand Mercedes 600, all three tons of it—still, almost half a century later, maybe the most bullish iteration of a limited-production luxury car ever conceived.

The Grand Mercedes had so much attitude it made Otto von Bismarck look bashful. It was positively and unmistakably Teutonic: a blunt object, all squared-off edges and rigid straight lines, and with its wide, low stance and big chunky tires, managing to look three tons heavier than it was. That was just the standard “short” sedan; the aptly named Pullman stretch version was long enough to host 120 Scrooge McDucks.

The 600 defined what my automotive mentor, the late editor and publisher David E. Davis Jr., once said: “You can be blindfolded and spun around three times and sat down in a Mercedes-Benz, and you’d know it was a Mercedes-Benz.”

What I believe he meant was that, whereas “luxury” in the popular vernacular is synonymous with soft and warm, the luxury of the 600’s interior decor was as cool as a casket, deluxe only in a specific, austere Swabian way: hard, thick, upright seats in stiff leather that must have been torn off rhinos; enough glassy-finished dark-chocolate hardwood to trim a yacht; a horn loud enough to bore a hole through a glacier. Buried deep inside was a network of hydraulic pipes and tubes, a system complex enough to baffle a Citroën engineer, which powered everything the engine didn’t. That design also helped guarantee that timeless quirk of great automobiles: horrendous maintenance costs.

Cars meant for the gentry usually provide a decorous mode of travel, valuing restraint above all. Not the 600. A 6.3-liter V-8—humungous by European displacement standards—propelled those three tons briskly. No, energetically. No, fast. I’ll forever treasure the memory of being hurtled around California’s Riverside Raceway in a 600 with the great Mercedes chief engineer (and grand-prix-level driver) Rudolf Uhlenhaut at the wheel, discovering in a few bowel-loosening minutes what it felt like to move over the earth in the first caviar-quality sedan to fuse the build of a Sumo wrestler with the agility of a Barishnikov. This in an era when a Rolls-Royce still manifested all the road-going panache of a 1939 Hudson.

Everybody with money and ego wanted a Grand Mercedes. What an owners’ club: Mao Tse Tsung, Elvis, the Pope, Averell Harriman, Leonid Brezhnev, Jackie Gleason, Saddam Hussein, and every Third World tinhorn extant. Even tyrants and assholes slavered after the car and its cachet.

Daimler never replaced the Grand Mercedes after its run ended in the late 70s. Meanwhile, Volkswagen has returned Bentley to its long-neglected glamour, while in 2003, BMW yanked Rolls-Royce out of its prolonged dotage with an intimidatingly big and brawny new design dripping with mystique.

In brief, the stakes for what constitutes the best car in the world have shot upward since the heyday of the Grand Mercedes; with the Maybach, Daimler seemed content to take a pass.