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INFOTAINMENT Friday, 12 April, 2013
The Exchange Bar & Grill where prices fluctuate like stocks
You don’t have to be an experienced stock trader to make a killing at the Exchange Bar & Grill in New York City, where prices of food and drink fluctuate according to the law of supply and demand. The way it works is quite simple. According to the Exchange website, “The prices for your favorite drinks fluctuate depending on supply and demand. Watch a while when no one is ordering your favorite drink and snag it when the cost falls to unbelievable lows – or use your leverage to jack up the price of any cocktail, drink or shot for the whole bar.” Unlike the real stock market, insider trading isn’t illegal. You are welcome to make use of the tactic to catch the ‘market crash’, when every drink in the bar hits rock bottom. At times like this, beers are sold for as low as $2 to $4. Exchange can seat up to 60 people and atmosphere is like a nice lounge with dim lighting, HD screens and leather couches. The ‘ticker tape’ flashes the fluctuating menu prices in red lettering according to an algorithm, the secret to which even Steven Yee, an operating partner at Exchange, claims he doesn’t know. “The algorithm was created by the person who wrote the software, and the guy won’t even share it with me.” Yee also says that the ticker is just a fun feature, and that they are more about good food, fantastic staff, a bar and a great atmosphere. Owners Levent Cakar and Damon Bae agree the fluctuating price thing is a bit of a gimmick, but claim it’s done a great job of attracting customers. 35-yearold Bae, who has an MBA from Georgetown University, says “It’s definitely something a little bit different. There is a little bit of a twist.” At Exchange, customers have the power to move the prices of all beverages and bar snacks. For example, the price of a plate of hot wings is generally $7, but it could fluctuate either way in 25 cent increments to as low as $5 or as high as $9. A glass of Guinness could start trading at $6 and be pushed quickly to $8. Or sometimes, fall to $4 depending on popularity. According to Bae, good prices and a good location should be enough to make the unique project work. But when they first went to liquor distributors with their idea, they were pretty much laughed at. Cakar was confident though. “One day you are all going to come to me to put your drinks on my ticker tape,” he told them. And he was right, as the Exchange Bar & Grill is now 3 years old and still going strong. NEws DEsk
My thesis is that what we call ‘science’ is differentiated from the older myths not by being something distinct from a myth, but by being accompanied by a second-order tradition—that of critically discussing the myth. … In a certain sense, science is myth-making just as religion is. –Karl Raimund Popper
The hand craftsmanship behind McLaren C COURTESy HUMANS INvENT LEO kENt
AR enthusiasts tend to talk about the McLaren Technology Centre (MTC) in hushed tones such is the reverence for the place. Since it opened in 2003 it has taken on an almost mythical quality and it is true, as you approach the glistening, curving edifice walled with glass from the other side of the artificial lake, it does all start to feel a little otherworldly. Humans invent had a chance to take tour of the center, and here is what we found. BEHIND THE SCENES We are led into the press room where Ron Dennis, in a neat pair of tassel loafers, proceeds to give a talk about the importance of paint, which sounds boring but turns out to be quite interesting. In 2007, Dennis began the hunt for a chrome coating on the McLaren F1 car that wouldn’t weigh the vehicle down – his initial inspiration came from the unlikeliest of sources. Dennis says, “I was finishing my shower and reached for my aftershave and noticed that on this bottle was chrome and yet the material was plastic. Normally chrome is achieved through an electroplating process, you wouldn’t think that you would be able to achieve chrome with the application of a coating.” Paint company AkzoNobel were up to the challenge and managed to create a paint that makes the McLaren F1 cars look as if they have been electroplated. We were ushered down a spotless corridor past spartan, brightly-lit workshops within which employees were noiselessly working away, and into a lab where the nose of the F1 car was being painted, to see the chrome effect for ourselves. THE PRODUCTION CENTRE Before we enter the McLaren Production Center, Alan Foster, the operations director responsible for the guided tour,
declares, “I’m going to take you through this door and show you 21st century manufacturing.” It’s nothing like what I imagined. The immensity of the 20,000 sq. meter openplan factory floor is made more apparent by how uncluttered it is, devoid of the robots and machines you might expect in a normal car plant. And, even though most of the engineers are on their lunch break, it’s strange how quiet the place is. Foster says, “People are quite surprised to learn that when the plant is working it is not much louder than this. There are no air tools, jackhammers, conveyors or robots. The emphasis is on the manual and on the precision, hand craftsmanship.” The hall is lined with small stations, each one with a computer terminal (all the cables are hidden) beside which the car, in its various states of development, sits. As we walk down the line you can see the car, almost like in a flip book, slowly come into existence. Currently the factory can produce one
car every 45 minutes – nine a day and roughly 2,500 year. Foster says, “It is an assembly line, but it is a manual one. The cars are passed from station to station by the team members, so they qualify their work before they move it on. Really, the MPC is where science meets Disney world. The science all sits in the background and what you perceive as you walk through the facility is the manual craftsmanship.” What perhaps typifies this relationship between man and technology, is the way every operator needs to swipe into the terminal of the station they are working on. Foster says, “We have quality gateways, so nothing is allowed to flow forward but… you personally have to pass your work onto your colleague in front of you, so it adds to that extra dimension to accountability and responsibility.” THE HUMANS BEHIND SUPERCARS Foster then shows us into the paint room, which, like in the main hall, is visually open with large, glass rooms within
thai family uses crocodiles as watchdogs to fend off burglars NEWS DESK Who needs watchdogs and alarm systems when you have two full grown crocodiles protecting your house? Awirut Nathip says no burglars have dared come anywhere near his home in the 15 years since his two crocodile pets have been keeping guard. Burglaries are reported regularly in the city of Phitsanulok, where Awirut Nathip and his family live, but thanks to a perfect security system, they haven’t had any problems for a good fifteen years. Just like everybody else, they used to worry
about their safety, until they bought their t pet crocodiles, Thong and Ngen. After that, no one dared set foot on the property uninvited. And for good reason, as Awirut’s unusual guard dogs are very aggressive, especially during the hot summer days. In order to keep them under control and make sure they don’t become frustrated by the unbearable heat, he sprays them with cold water at least 10 times a day, and even lets them cool off in his air-conditioned office from time to time. Even so, Ngen is kept in a ditch next to the house, because he is so aggressive, while Thong does his rounds in the yard. ”If
we’re upstairs he’ll come and lie in front of the door. We’re not worried at all. No one would dare to get in,” Mr Nathip says. Although some would argue the crocodiles are a danger not only to Awirut and his family, but also to his neighbors, they actually approve of his unusual protection method, and feel safe with the predators close by. One of them, Prajit Charoensakkhajon, says: ”I’m not frightened of him. I’d rather feel secure because he’ll watch our homes. Thieves wouldn’t dare to come round because they think the crocodile is fierce, right?”
which the cars are spray painted by humans rather than robots. Everything has been thought through in the design of this facility. For example, the ventilation panels in the painting chambers circulate the air in such a way that an air curtain is created on the inside of the glass; this stops dust and dirt settling on the windows. The car is separated into two parts when it is being painted, the main body on one skid and the secondary panels such as the doors on a second skid. AkzoNobel and McLaren have been working together to create new varieties of paint. Foster says, “Some of the finishes we’re using are quite unique so you get a very deep reflection of the colour. The Volcano Red is an interesting one, you can see the base colour looks like a satin pink but when you apply the effect clear coat onto it you get this really deep, lusty red colour that comes from it.” Back in the main hall of the MPC, we are shown where the final testing goes on. Previously, the car has been tested by a 3D coordinate-measuring machine (CMM) where 320 points are checked to make sure the car has been put together properly. Now it is time for some more vigorous testing. There is a dynamic rolling road that puts each car through it’s paces as well as a monsoon test, where the car is put in a glass chamber and introduced to 16,000 litres of water in 7 minutes. After this, the car is then taken on a 50km road test, to check the car handles well and doesn’t make any annoying rattling noises. If there are any issues they are dealt with straight away by one of the engineers. Foster says, “Our ability to respond is very much like the F1 team. If they’ve been racing on Sunday, there will be one or two things they don’t like about the car, and these will be fixed before the next race. It’s all about rapid recirculation of information and rapid fixes. Having worked in a lot of factories, this is uniquely simple and it is a fantastic place to work.”
In Sea of Galilee, a mystery bigger than stonehenge
Stonehenge has some company in the department of mysterious stone structures: In a new paper, researchers are now revealing that an unusual rock formation was discovered via sonar in the Sea of Galilee a decade ago. Divers who have since gone down to inspect it say it’s a 32-foot-tall coneshaped formation made of “unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders,” reportsLiveScience, which describes it as a cairn—a stack of rocks piled on top of each other. Its diameter measures about 230 feet (double that of Stonehenge’s outer circle), and it’s estimated to weigh 60,000 tons. Though the researchers admit they don’t know what the structure’s purpose was (LiveScience notes similar cairns have been used to mark graves), they have determined it was definitely made by humans, likely on land; a rising sea would have later submerged it. “The boulders have natural faces with no signs of cutting or chiseling,” researchers wrote in the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. “Similarly, we did not find any sign of arrangement or walls that delineate this structure.” Up next: The team hopes to conduct an underwater archaeological expedition in order to mine for artifacts and pinpoint the age of the structure—which one researcher believes could date back more than 4,000 years. NEws DEsk