Consumers don't fully trust smart home technologies

Smart home technologies are marketed to enhance your home and make life easier. However, UK consumers are not convinced that they can trust the privacy and security of these technologies, a study by WMG, University of Warwick has shown.Smart Home technology

The 'smart home' can be defined as the integration of Internet-enabled, digital devices with sensors and machine learning in the home. The aim of smart home devices is to provide enhanced entertainment services, easier management of the home, domestic chores and protection from domestic risks. They can be found in devices such as smart speakers and hubs, lighting, sensors, door locks and cameras, central heating thermostats and domestic appliances.

To better understand consumers perceptions of the desirability of the smart home, researchers from WMG and Computer Science, University of Warwick have carried out a nationally representative survey of UK consumers designed to measure adoption and acceptability, focusing on awareness, ownership, experience, trust, satisfaction and intention to use.

The article 'Trust in the smart home: Findings from a nationally representative survey in the UK' published in the top journal PLOS ONE reveals their results, with the main finding that the businesses proposal of added meaning and value when adopting the smart home have not yet achieved closure from consumers, as they have highlighted concern for risks to privacy and security.

Researchers sent 2101 participants a survey, with questions to assess:

- Awareness of the Internet of Things (IoT)

- Current ownership of smart home devices

- Experiences of their use of smart home devices

- Trust in the reliability and competence of the devices

- Trust in privacy

- Trust in security

- Satisfaction and intention to use the devices in the future, and intention to recommend it to others

The findings suggest consumers had anxiety about the likelihood of a security incident, as overall people tend to mildlySmart home tehnology agree that they are likely to risk privacy as well as security breach when using smart home devices, in other words they are unconvinced that their privacy and security will not be at risk when they use smart home devices.

It also emerged that when asked to evaluate the impact of a privacy breach people tend to disagree that its impact will be low, suggesting they expect the impact of a privacy breach to be significant. This emerges as a prominent factor influencing whether or not they would adopt smart home technology, furthermore making it less likely.

Other interesting results highlight:

- More females than males have adopted smart home devices over the last year, possibly as they tend to run the house and find the technology helpful

- Young people ages 18-24) were the earliest adopters of smart home technology, however older people (ages 65+) also adopted it early, possibly as they have more disposable income and less responsibilities -- e.g. no mortgage, no dependent children

- People aged 65 and over are less willing to use smart home devices in case of unauthorised data collection compared to younger people, indicating younger people are less aware of privacy breaches

- Less well-educated people are the least interested in using smart home devices in the future, and that these might constitute market segments that will be lost to smart home adoption, unless their concerns are specifically addressed and targeted by policymakers and businesses.

Dr Sara Cannizzaro, from WMG, University of Warwick comments:Dr Sara Cannizzaro, WMG, University of Warwick: "Our study underlines how businesses and policymakers will need to work together to act on the sociotechnical affordances of smart home technology in order to increase consumers' trust. This intervention is necessary if barriers to adoption and acceptability of the smart home are to be addressed now and in the future.

"Proof of cybersecurity and low risk to privacy breaches will be key in smart home technology companies persuading a number of consumers to invest in their technology."

Professor Rob Procter, from the Department of Computer Science, University of Warwick, adds:Professor Rob Procter, Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick: "Businesses are still actively promoting positive visions of what the smart home means for consumers (e.g., convenience, economy, home security)... However, at the same time, as we see from our survey results, consumers are actively comparing their interactional experiences against these visions and are coming up with different interpretations and meanings from those that business is trying to promote."

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Mainstream, the avant-garde and ground-breaking space that Gabriel Bautista has created for Home Decor

You already know that to try to encourage this confinement, in addition to news related to the tasks of cleaning and order, we also want to show you themes beautiful to forget a little of this madness that we are living. Nice houses, trends, wallpapers, beautiful… and of course, some of the spaces of Home Decor.

Because even though the building of Velazquez had to close their doors because of the health crisis, the spaces are still there, intact, until the day that you pass all this and we can re-iterate through these rooms which have been designed with so much care and affection by some of the most prominent interior designers in this country.

Today, we want to tell you about Mainstream, the space created by JOINT Design, the study created by Gabriel Bautista. A space of entertainment created from the luxury, the art and the culture of the masses. The culture Mainstream talk of how to generate the blockbuster, the blockbuster, britney spears, Rosalia, and other major hits that reach all corners of the planet. The design and luxury are cherished by all of the hand of the great houses of ceramics, glassware and furniture Italian.

A luxury that is part of the base material. The tiles in a large format of Emil Groupthe impressive Calacatta Renoir, invades the stay from the wall to the ground, generating a massive match book a visual effect that embraces space and encompassed by a marble base in white and black the whole, to become the foundation of the concept.

The culture Mainstream, and distributed through cinema and television, from the black-and-white, up to currently more technological mechanisms of Hagerpassing by the renewal of the design in Lladroalso in black-and-white. The RGB can be seen in the paint a special Valentine, in a deep greenalong with an impressive sofa in blue velvet, and as part star a red roof of Aistec.

Also designed by the studio ANTRUM Design for this space, is a Ecopanel conceived in geometric forms to dampen the sound of the audio-visual that can be played back, as well as being a piece that is respectful of the environment, because it is made with plastic from recycled bottles.

 

The rest of the elements make up a vision of different objects that at some time in the culture and the design have been mainstream, have reached the masses. The tassels and braided natural lamp Peralta, the poto as the plant most Kitsch, the tanks hanging from ropes from esparto grass weave, live with the pop art geometric wallpaper Styledition, designed especially for the space.

Geometries that, combined with the mirrors, leads to a art installation of Op-art effect free-fall, including that it has become one of the great attractions of this edition of Casa Decor. The years of psychedelia, LSD and other fashions of that and other eras. A facility to which you access through a hallway that contains one of the largest technical revolutions in the installation of floors porcelanicos, the Pave-and-Go of Emil Group is a ceramic pre-installed in a plastic plate tongue and groove.

This base machiembrada allows you to take the mortar, saving water and material, and placed 10 times faster than any tiles. Economy of means, personnel and fewer natural resources to the carrying out of any installation in a record time.

The decoration of the Mainstream, supported by both size of Emil Group, closes with a waitress designed for the study, and is based on the forms of the ArtDecoand the colors of the group Memphis, decorating trends and styles that flooded the art, design and fashion of their times. A bar furniture that sustains the incredible luxury of Vistalegre and its Crystalwarewith famous spirits such as the great Licor 43 Spanish, as an element of Kitsch in the culture of Spanish bars.

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Lifestyle and farming property opportunity

THE properties of “Aberdeen” and “Redbank” at Yerong Creek have been held by the Yates family since 1925 and are now available for sale by tender.

This sale represents a lifestyle and farming opportunity, with 1279 acres to being tendered in four lots - 412 acres, 387 acres, 160 acres and 320 acres.

The properties are the original home of Aberdeen Dorset Horn and Poll Dorset Stud.

“Aberdeen” covers 412 acres with improvements of a substantial four-bedroom brick home, excellent three-stand woolshed, ex stud/machinery shed, sheep yards, hay shed and utility shed providing a great opportunity for a farm build-up or lifestyle parcel with income.

For those looking to extend into a larger holding, “Kubura” (387 acres joins) to the north.

This property is a grazing parcel with a cereal option and about 300 acres has been farmed in the past. Pastures comprise sub clover and areas of natives

“Redbank” (160 acres) has gently undulating red loam soils and is principally all arable and on town water.

Improvements include a woolshed and yards, as well as a neat three-bedroom home set in a pleasant garden with sweeping views of the valley. The 320 acres that joins the home block comprises quality red loam soils watered by dams.

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Ranveer Singh and Manushi Chhillar come together to promote e-commerce fashion brand, Club Factory

Publicis Beehive, the full-service ad agency from Publicis Worldwide has won the creative mandate of popular Chinese e-commerce fashion brand, Club Factory. As its creative partner, Publicis Beehive will play an integral role in launching the brand in India. To further the cause of the brand in India, Club Factory recently announced Bollywood’s leading star and youth icon Ranveer Singh and Miss World Manushi Chhillar as brand ambassadors. The two together star in a high decibel brand campaign that has been executed and conceptualised by Publicis Beehive. The film portrays the broad range of products available on the platform and how users can own these trendy & factory priced brands at just the click of a button.

Watch the spot:

A popular online shopping brand across the world, Club Factory has a strong presence in South Asia, Europe, the United States, the Middle East and other regions. What makes Club Factory unique is that it allows users to shop through millions of products that are trendy and fashionable and available at unbeaten prices.

Commenting on the partnership and the launch of the brand in India, Aviva Wu, Marketing Director, Club Factory said: “Club Factory has managed to carve a unique niche in the hearts of the consumers across various markets that we operate in. India is no exception with consumers, especially the youth, having taken a liking to the brand in a very short span of time. We have ambitious plans for the market and are glad Publicis Beehive is our creative partner.”

On winning the mandate, Paritosh Srivastava, COO – Publicis Beehive said: “The Indian online retail market is at an interesting juncture right now with a plethora of brands vying for some share of the customer’s attention and also his wallet. Though a late entrant, Club Factory is already a well-known brand and our task was to make it a popular & regular online partner of its patrons and keep them coming back for more. With the inaugural launch communication already out, we are confident of achieving that.”

Sharing her views on the film, Shyamashree D’Mello, ECD & Head of Creative Services, Publicis Beehive said: “It was great fun working on the Club Factory launch campaign, as it challenges the notion of fashion being the fiefdom of expensive brands. The bonus was getting the energy of Ranveer Singh and the elegance of Manushi Chillar, paired together for the first time ever, to do that. The light-hearted reverse snobbery they bring to the fore, really hits home as it’s all about being trendy and original in style choices, but paying a fair price for it. Fashion pundits be damned!”

The film has been launched on various digital platforms and has been receiving some rave reviews from the viewers. It has already surpassed 24million views on Youtube since it went live a few days ago. The campaign has also been launched across various platforms including television, digital, outdoor, print etc.

Campaign credits:

Client: Club Factory
Client Team: Aviva Wu
Agency: Publicis Beehive
MD & CCO: Bobby Pawar
MD: Srija Chatterjee
COO: Paritosh Srivastava
Creative Team: Shyamashree D’Mello, Avinash Parab, Savita Nair, Nikhil Warrier, Harish Iyengar, Shreyas Shetty
Account Management: Smita Das, Khushbu Hisaria
Account Planning: Binita Tripathy
Production House: Prodigious
Production Team: Vandana Watsa, Anup Das, Andalib Patel, Sajid Shaikh
Director: Karan Kapadia

Read more at: https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/

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Club Factory Debuts India Market Campaign With Superstar Ranveer Singh And Miss World Manushi Chhillar

Reinforcing the bond and connect with the millennials across the country, Club Factory, a leading e-commerce company, today unveiled its India market brand campaign “For the Brand called YOU” featuring the versatile Bollywood superstar and youth icon Ranveer Singh and the gorgeous Miss World 2017 with a strong sense of fashion Manushi Chhillar.

Well known for his fashion forwardness and edge of adding his individual panache to create unique style statement, the bold and biggest youth icon of India today, Ranveer Singh, in his ambassador role will communicate about Club Factory’s fashion philosophy and introduce more unique fashion selections online into Indian audience.

“There are strong synergies between Club Factory and Ranveer’s inherent sense of style and effortlessly cool persona as well as the ever graceful Manushi Chhillar. Ranveer is a fashion icon and someone who makes head-turning style statements. There is no one better than him to relate to fashion forwardness in India presently. We are positive that Club Factory’s association with both the fashion icons will hit the right chord with our customer and strengthen the brand’s core attributes,” said Vincent Lou, founder and CEO of Club Factory.

Ranveer Singh says, “I’m glad to be associated with Club Factory which provides fashion products online for all and truly defines my sense of style. Club Factory is sure to be a hit with the youngsters with its range of apparels on offer online.”

The campaign involving the two youth icons goes on air on July 7, 2018. It is being unveiled with a powerful 360-degree outreach and engagement plan on diverse media platforms, including English news, infotainment and in the digital arena. Created exclusively for the Indian market, the campaign brings in freshness, dynamism and energy to Club Factory. The TV campaign opens with the stunning on-screen pair deep diving into the Club Factory mobile app as their preferred one-stop shop for their stylish yet fashionable look at an unbeaten factory price.

Club Factory today is ranked amongst the top e-commerce platforms in India. In a span of one and a half years, the company has created a worldwide user base of more than 70 million with 40 million coming from India alone. “India is our most important market currently and our relationship with the country has grown consistently over the last one year. Establishing our commitment to the Indian market, our new campaign captures insights of today’s generation perfectly well and draws on their quest for trendy fashion at unbeatable factory prices,” added Vincent Lou.

Miss World 2017, Manushi Chhillar after being appointed as the brand ambassador said, “It feels great to be a part of the Club Factory family and I am extremely delighted to be able to represent a brand that appeals to the youth and personally is synonymous to my fashion style which is a mix of comfort and glamour. Club Factory has the potential to reach every nook and cranny, giving young women easy access to affordable glamour.”

With an aim to be the “Google of products” Club Factory offers a great selection of modern, trendy products ranging from apparels, shoes, jewellery, home décor, handbags, beauty products to appliances. The company is amongst the first e-commerce entities to offer free shipping and cash on delivery (COD) in India. Club Factory has partnered with five local top-tier logistics players for faster delivery in a little more over than a week.

Club Factory is dedicated to localization to better understand customer needs through its disruptive technology-driven C2M (customer to manufacturer) solution. Powered by this knowledge, the platform offers customers personalized recommendations of selections and helps users make the best choice. In 2017 and 2018, Club Factory closed Series B and Series C funding and raised $20M and $100M, respectively, from top-tier venture capital funds including IDG Capital, Kunlun Capital, Bertelsmann Asia Investment, FreeS Fund, ZhenFund, and others. Club Factory became the leading cross-border e-commerce company with presence in 29 countries worldwide and ranks amongst the top five e-commerce company in 16 countries.

Resource: https://www.apnnews.com/club-factory-debuts-india-market-campaign-with-superstar-ranveer-singh-and-miss-world-manushi-chhillar/

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5 PT-Approved Life Hacks for Healthier Days

Grand Rapids, Mich. (WOTV) - When setting health goals, it is important to keep in mind that these changes don’t happen overnight. Rather, becoming healthier is a lifestyle change that needs to be maintained.

Sometimes small habits are the best place to begin when starting the journey toward living a healthier lifestyle. Building on small habits throughout the year can help you not only reach your health and wellness goals, but sustain them as well. Get started on your health goals by checking out the health tips below that can be implemented on a daily basis.

1. Change your sleeping habits.
Poor sleeping posture and jaw clenching can decrease quality of sleep and lead to headaches and soreness throughout the day. Try sleeping with a neutral spine to avoid putting pressure on your nerves. This can be done by placing pillows under your knees if you sleep on your back, or between your legs if you sleep on your side. For more tips on how to get a good night’s sleep, check out our “Sleep… Beyond Counting Sheep” blog.

2. Wake up your muscles.
Stretching before getting out of bed helps increase blood flow and prepares muscles for activity. Try waking up with a lower trunk rotation stretch. Lay on your back with your knees bent together, and your feet flat. Then slowly rock your knees back and forth to loosen up your muscles for the day ahead. Learn how to perform additional stretches to loosen up your muscles by checking out our weekly “Stretch of the Week” archive.

3. Practice good posture.
It is not uncommon to spend hours slouching in a desk chair or slumped forward looking down at a smartphone during the day. This can lead to poor posture as well as pain in the shoulders, back and neck. Fortunately there are exercises that can help counteract that pain, including the shoulder blade squeeze. For this exercise, pinch your shoulder blades back behind you, as if you are trying to touch your elbows. Once you are back as far as you can go, hold this position for 5 seconds before relaxing. Repeat this 10-15 times. Read “4 Stretches to Help Your Teen Combat Text Neck” for instructions on how to perform three additional exercises.

4. Keep moving.
Help counteract the negative side effects from a sedentary lifestyle by taking a short break every 30 minutes. Try keeping a small cup of water at your desk and get up to refill it often. This will help you stay hydrated while also helping you get more steps in throughout the day. For more tips on how to be more active throughout the day, check out “Stop Sitting, Start Moving! Tips to Kick the Office Chair to the Curb.”

5. Take Full Breaths.
Stay mindful of breathing throughout the day. Instead of short, shallow breaths, breathe through your belly to see your abdomen rise and fall. This increases the amount of oxygen you receive during the day, which can help boost energy while also reducing stress.

When implemented, these small tips can help you gain big health benefits throughout 2018. Should an injury occur during your journey to living a healthier life, request an appointment here at a clinic near you.

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Easy Tips To Save Money On Health Care

(BPT) - As Americans work hard to meet all the obligations that come with work, family and everyday life, many are challenged to find time to manage all the financial elements affecting their health care.

The details associated with health care insurance can be confusing. At the same time, you want to make smart decisions about the quality health care you and your family need.

Out-of-pocket health care spending rose by more than 50 percent between 2010 and 2017, The Atlantic recently reported, partly because half of all health insurance policyholders in the U.S. are dealing with annual deductibles of at least $1,000.

Whether you're uninsured or simply facing a high insurance deductible, you can take several steps to better manage your health care budget. Consider how the following money-saving tips can help control the rising costs of health care.

-- Read bills with a critical eye. Any bill can include administrative errors, and some estimates have indicated errors on as many as 80 percent of medical invoices issued, reports the Medical Billing Advocates of America. That statistic makes it well worth your while to examine and question your expenses before you pay.

-- Lower the cost of your meds. The free Inside Rx prescription savings card provides discounts on prescription medications for eligible patients. According to the data, eligible patients have saved an average of 40 percent on the more than 100 featured brand medications included in the program, and even more on generic medications. Inside Rx is an option to help the uninsured, those facing high deductibles or anyone trying to save money on their meds. Inside Rx even offers prescription savings for pets for qualifying medications. The card is free and easy to download, with no registration process.

-- Compare costs whenever possible. Some medical services can be difficult to compare on an apples-to-apples basis, but it's worth doing your homework before making appointments for more standard services such as annual check-ups, lab work and testing, dental care or dermatology services. Check vendor websites, make phone calls and conduct web searches to find online databases, such as HealthcareBluebook.com, that suggest fair prices for services. If you're insured, your insurance provider can clarify what portion of the bill will be covered.

-- Be bold about negotiations. It's OK to speak up. You have nothing to lose by politely asking your health care provider to work with you on the price of an upcoming service, especially when dealing with a private practice. Start the conversation by aiming for the Medicare rate or an amount close to that paid by commercial insurers. As an alternative, ask the office administrator to set up a manageable payment plan.

-- Consider paying cash up front. Some vendors offer discounts for simply paying cash for your services without funneling everything through insurance. Even if you're insured, you can still evaluate whether immediate cash payments would be lower than your post-insurance costs.

Keeping a close eye on where you might be wasting money on health care can pay off in a big way - and the remedies don't have to be complicated. Conduct your due diligence on such costs to protect your financial health as vigorously as your physical health.

The good life does NOT need to be expensive, check below:
https://www.instagram.com/clubfactoryapp/
https://www.pinterest.com/clubfactory/
https://in.linkedin.com/company/club-factory-1
https://twitter.com/clubfactoryapp

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Coming to Terms with a Life Without Water

A friend of mine got married in her parents’ garden last year, on a lavishly beautiful late-summer afternoon in Cape Town. Many of the guests were British, and they could not stop remarking on the fineness of the weather. It was a startling reminder that some people still relish hot days with no possibility of rain, that not everyone looks upon February in the Western Cape as something to be endured. After the ceremony, my date and I stood by the swimming pool, drinking sparkling wine and monitoring the canapés. My friend’s stepfather came by to say hello, carefully picking his way past the bride’s two young brothers, who were playing an ecstatic game of hide-and-seek on the lawn, getting grass stains on their tiny suits. After gracefully accepting our praise about how lovely everything had been, he told us that he’d been having torrid anxiety dreams. We nodded. Weddings are notoriously hard on the old nerves—guests to be tended to, speeches to be made, and the pool just lying there, waiting for any old idiot to accidentally fall in and cast an undignified pall over the happy day. He shook his head. His dream, he explained, was about the garden.

Cape Town’s drought was officially declared a national disaster a couple of months ago, but even last year it was bad enough that using the municipal supply to water your garden was tantamount to taking out an advertisement in the newspaper that read, “I Don’t Care at All About Other People, the Environment, or Anything Except My Thirsty Hydrangeas.” Like many residents of Cape Town’s wealthier southern suburbs, however, my friend’s parents had a borehole. The garden had been made wedding-ready using groundwater, which is relatively plentiful, rather than municipal water, which is not. In the dream, though, the neighbors didn’t know that. In the dream, the neighbors believed that my friend’s parents were watering their garden day and night with the municipal supply, and were so enraged at this wanton excess that they staged a protest outside, screaming at guests through bullhorns as they arrived.

At that point, I had not yet developed my own personalized version of the water-anxiety dream, and I remember a brief jolt of surprise at how vividly realized his was. What I mainly remember, though, was the cold thread of worry that vined its way up the back of my neck, spread out along my collarbones, and settled there. I don’t know why it dawned on me then that the water crisis wasn’t a temporary problem, or that “crisis” is probably the wrong word for something that is never going away. Perhaps it was the grim specificity of the stepfather’s dream, which contrasted with the whirling happiness of the day. Perhaps it was the slightly too on-the-nose reference to W. H. Auden’s “Musée des Beaux Arts” that I was only just able to prevent myself from making (“how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster”). I don’t know why I felt it then, and, a year later, I still don’t know how to describe it. Something like: Oh, no. Something like: We’re all going to have to be scared about this, every day, forever.

In his new book, “Being Ecological,” the scholar Timothy Morton argues that humans must find “a way of feeling ourselves around the age we live in, which is one of mass extinction caused by global warming.” It is an arrestingly horrible requirement to have to meet. I don’t want to think about the implications of the latest U.N. World Water Development Report, which concludes that, by 2050, around three billion people could be living in “severely water-scarce areas.” I want to avert my gaze at the cinema when the trailer for “An Inconvenient Sequel” comes on. Being in Cape Town for the past year has made these feats of willed obliviousness impossible. It has also revealed them for what they always were: luxuries of middle-class thinking. Water insecurity is both a cause and a symptom of poverty; in the government’s latest community survey, South Africans listed it as the most significant problem facing their municipalities, far ahead of unemployment and crime. According to the same survey, more than two and a half million people in the country have “no access to safe drinking water.” Most of them live in the poorer, less urbanized provinces. They do not need to be told to think about something that already defines their lives. The rest of us are catching up.

It’s true that the threat of Day Zero, the date on which the municipal taps will be shut off, does not dominate conversations as it did earlier this year. Now city officials tell us that Day Zero has been “defeated”—pushed back to July, when the rainy season ought to take care of things for the foreseeable future. (Recent projections by two local climate scientists suggest that this has less than a five-per-cent chance of happening.) Some people already look back on those stricken months with a kind of detached bemusement as to what, exactly, the fuss was all about. There are still buckets in every shower to catch runoff, pleading signs in every restaurant bathroom, electronic billboards informing us that the dam levels continue to drop, water tanks planted in gardens where the agapanthuses used to be. Water restrictions remain at fifty litres per person per day. But the gnawing fear of a few months ago has loosened its grip. In our waking lives, we worry about other things. Two weeks ago, Cape Town’s deputy mayor announced that water consumption had increased by five per cent.

Yet the dreams keep coming. Two, in particular, have visited me often since my friend’s wedding. In one, I am in the quad at my old primary school, and I realize that my brother, who in the dream is a little kid, is about to have a swimming lesson but doesn’t know that the pool is empty. I start sprinting across the quad and screaming at him to be careful, but I know that I won’t get there before he jumps in and hits his head on the concrete. The second dream is set in an old office building, at night, lights off. Every tap in every bathroom on every floor is turned on full blast, and I am tearing up and down the stairs trying to turn them off. The water keeps running, though, and after a while I understand that this is because there is a person, unknown to me, who is turning the taps back on. I don’t know how to get out of the building, or how to turn on the lights, or what is going to happen when the person catches up to me.

Morton suggests that living in the age of mass extinction caused by climate change has resulted in “a traumatic loss of coordinates”: we don’t know how to see the world anymore, and we don’t have the words to talk about it. A few years ago, the same idea drove the artists Alicia Escott and Heidi Quante to found the Bureau of Linguistical Reality, a crowdsourced “dictionary for the future present” that coins neologisms for our troubled age. Solastalgia: “a form of homesickness one gets when one is still at home, but the environment has been altered and feels unfamiliar.” NonnaPaura: “the simultaneous sensation of a strong natural urge for your children to have children mixed with an … urge to protect these yet unborn grandchildren from a future filled with suffering.” Shadowtime: “a feeling of living in two distinctly different temporal scales simultaneously, or acute consciousness of the possibility that the near future will be drastically different than the present.”

I don’t want to need these words, but I do. At the wedding, I didn’t want to think about how much of my youth was spent in swimming pools just like the one in the middle of that lawn, or the one in the dream with my brother, and to wonder at the extent to which I took them for granted. The Bureau has a word for that, too: agualation. It describes the conflicted feeling the comes from watching people, especially children, enjoy water with abandon, and wishing that they would conserve a resource that you yourself never thought about until it had all but evaporated.

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Taxes key in war on ‘lifestyle’ disease, say health experts

PARIS, April 5 — Global health leaders declared war on lifestyle diseases today, decrying the impact of tobacco, alcohol and soft drinks on the world’s poor, while calling for taxes to curb consumption and finance healthcare.

In half-a-dozen studies in The Lancet, a leading health journal, experts detailed the link between poverty and non-communicable diseases (NDCs) such as stroke and diabetes, and made the case for consumer taxes opposed by industry and many politicians.

NDCs, which also include heart disease and cancer, “are a major cause and consequence of poverty worldwide,” said Rachel Nugent, vice-president of RTI International, a non-profit health policy institute in Seattle, and chair of The Lancet Taskforce on Non-Communicable Diseases (NDCs).

Many of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, which run to 2030, will remain out of reach unless governments invest in policies that break the chains binding unhealthy habits and so-called “lifestyle” diseases, she said.

“Every year, almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty because of out-of-pocket health spending,” Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, wrote in a comment, also in The Lancet.

“The costs of treating NDCs are a major contributor to this global scandal.”

NDCs are responsible for 38 million deaths — nearly half before the age of 70 — each year, a large share of them caused or aggravated by smoking, excessive drinking and/or unhealthy diets, according to the WHO.

One of the UN’s 2030 goals is to reduce deaths from NDCs by a third.

In 2011, world leaders at the UN general assembly pledged to develop national plans for the prevention and control of NDCs, and set targets to benchmark progress. But few have followed through.

“There has been a broad failure globally and in countries to act on the commitments made in the 2011 Political Declaration,” Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, and senior editor Jennifer Sargent, wrote in an editorial.

Harm of taxes ‘overstated’

One of the most controversial remedies proposed for getting people to cut back on smoking and the consumption of alcohol or soda pop is point-of-sale taxes.

Opponents argue such levies penalise the poor most of all, and amount to a regressive tariff.

The new studies show a more nuanced reality.

Research looking at the impact of price hikes in 13 poor, emerging and wealthy countries, for example, found that — for alcohol and sugary snacks — low-income households were more likely than wealthy ones to cut back, leading to incremental health gains.

But even if they pay more as a percentage of their income, families can benefit in other ways, the researchers argued.

“The extra tax expenditures involved should not deter governments from implementing a policy that may disproportionately benefit the health and welfare of lower-income households,” said Franco Sassi, a researcher at Imperial College Business School in London.

Additional tax revenue gained should be set aside for “pro-poor programmes”, he added.

For former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has given away more than a billion dollars to curb tobacco use over the last decade, the benefits are obvious.

“Raising taxes on tobacco is the most effective way to drive down smoking rates, particularly among young people,” he told AFP. “It is also the least widespread of all the proven tobacco control policies.

“If we can help more governments raise tobacco taxes, we could make a very big difference in smoking rates, and also raise revenue that countries can invest in other vital services,” he added.

Tobacco claims nearly seven million lives yearly from cancer and other lung diseases, accounting for about one-in-10 deaths worldwide, and a million in China alone, according to the WHO.

“The evidence suggests that concerns about higher taxes on tobacco, alcohol and soft drinks harming the poor are overstated,” said Nugent. — AFP

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Is Taming Your Ambition The Key To A Better Life

What are you really aiming for in life? Do you still have goals? Perhaps you’ve abandoned your earlier dreams. Maybe you’re an embittered loser or perhaps you’re perfectly happy with where you’ve got to.

Brits can be ambivalent, at best, about ambition. The vote for Brexit was greeted with jubilation by the 52% who wanted it. But the ambition of many Leave voters was to get back to an earlier, supposedly simpler version of British life, and not to march boldly on into an unknown future.

Should we be aiming a bit higher? It’s a competitive world out there and perhaps we need to make our peace with ambition; go back in on Monday morning and shoot for the top. Except that the workplace can be fraught and complicated and there are difficult trade-offs to manage. Organisations and bureaucracy can combine to keep us in an “iron cage”, the German sociologist Max Weber observed. We could waste a lot of energy – and suffer a lot of grief – in the attempt to realise our ambitions. Maybe just earning a living and getting by is ambition enough.

“There is no job of your life out there, waiting to be found,” Gianpiero Petriglieri, associate professor at the Insead business school, wrote in a piece for the Harvard Business Review in 2012. “There are only jobs that may make you feel more or less alive.”

Michelle Mone, the serial entrepreneur, founder of Ultimo lingerie and now a member of the House of Lords, is unashamedly, unrelentingly ambitious.

“I think it’s all down to self-respect and looking at yourself in the mirror and asking: ‘Am I happy with myself?’” she says. “If you’re happy with yourself, then fair enough.” Yet she isn’t happy. “I always look in the mirror and I say to myself: ‘You can do more.’ So I push myself all the time. I set goals all the time, I just don’t stop. But once I achieve them, I set more. I’d rather be ambitious than lazy. So I’m proud that I am ambitious.”

For Victoria Pendleton, the Olympic track cycling gold medallist, ambition has always taken the form of a personal challenge. “For me it’s always been a really big battle against myself and what I think I’m physically and mentally capable of,” she says. “It’s very high expectations, I guess, of what I can achieve. I hate feeling like I’ve let myself down or the team around me down by not being as good as I can be.”

Not all of us can be gold medal winners or multi-millionaire business moguls. So how should we recognise what ambition can do for us? What would constitute sensible and meaningful ambition?

Maybe we could start by being more careful with the language we use, which can be off-putting to some. Myles Downey, an executive coach and author, says that we have spoken of people having “drive” for a long time. But this feels like a rather blinkered, and overwhelmingly male, approach. He prefers to talk about people having “desire”. Downey has been working with one client recently, a senior executive, who has a big job, huge responsibility, is a success… and yet he’s “in profound pain”, as Downey puts it. “He’s lost what he used to enjoy about life, abandoned things he was good at,” he says. Laura Empson, professor at Cass business school in London, has labelled such people “insecure overachievers”.

You need the will to succeed, but you also need love, Downey says. Draw on both these qualities and harmful drive can become fulfilling desire. Perhaps the most powerful depiction in literature of ambition, and the harm it can do, is in Macbeth. A new production has just opened at the National Theatre in London, directed by Rufus Norris and starring Anne-Marie Duff and Rory Kinnear. Many of its themes feel more timely than ever, in particular Lady Macbeth’s speech addressed to her absent husband:

“Yet do I fear thy nature.

It is too full of the milk of human kindness

To catch the nearest way: thou wouldst be great,

Art not without ambition, but without

The illness should attend it.”

(Act I, scene 5)

“If you look at anyone successful, anyone successful that I’ve known,” explains Norris, “there is an illness that attends it, and it’s an illness that enables you, to one degree or another, to cut off your humanity, because your success inevitably means someone else not quite making it, whether that’s me going up against a couple of people I knew really well for the job that I’m now in [artistic director of the National Theatre], or the bank manager getting the bank manager’s job, or somebody putting their child into private school, because it’s a form of ambition.”

Yet it is within the confines of the Macbeth marriage that the spark of ambition catches fire. “In some ways they are Shakespeare’s happiest married couple,” Norris says. “The play in one way is a brilliant dissection of a divorce, or a separation of a very strong relationship.”

This is what untamed ambition can do to even the strongest of marriages. And it can also derail careers, too. “Ambition and competitiveness… they can manifest themselves in different ways,” says Duff, reflecting on her own profession. “They can be an internal thing, where you have to strive to be better and better, which can be quite self-flagellating – got to get this right – or it can be looking over your shoulder seeing what other people have, and for some people that’s a great drive, to compare and contrast, but that can make people very unhappy in my experience. So you might want to have the former, which is about having an ambition within your creativity.”

Some people are just permanently ambitious. Rupert Murdoch, who turns 87 today, is not giving up. Ever. Martin Sorrell, who is 73, is equally firmly in place at WPP, the world’s biggest advertising business. Normal people would have retired by now, having achieved what they have achieved. But these two are not normal. Something drives them on that can perhaps never be satisfied.

Does this set a good example to others? Maybe, and maybe not. In the corporate world “talent” is sought and encouraged to flourish, with a view to spotting leaders of the future. But this can promote what Jennifer and Gianpiero Petriglieri, both from the Insead business school in France, have called “the talent curse”. In an article for the Harvard Business Review last year, they argued that businesses should break this cycle. “They should stop referring to talented young managers as ‘future leaders’, since it encourages bland conformity, risk-averse thinking and stilted behaviour.”

The journalist and author George Monbiot takes an even harder line on thrusting ambition. “The world has been wrecked by people seeking status through their work,” he wrote last month. “In many professions – such as fossil fuel energy companies, weapons manufacture, banking, advertising – your prestige rises with the harm you do. The greater your destruction of other people’s lives, the greater your contribution to shareholder value.”

Maybe the French chef Sébastien Bras, who recently gave up his three Michelin stars in search of a calmer and happier life, offers a helpful alternative role model. “I want to give a new meaning to my life… and redefine what is essential,” he said.

So what are you ambitious for, really? Isn’t peace of mind ultimately more important than material possessions? Beyond a certain level of financial comfort, does more money make you any happier? Most research suggests not. As Professor Richard Sennett wrote in The Culture of the New Capitalism more than a decade ago: “Certainly, driven individuals can waste their lives jockeying for position… But most adults learn how to tame the beast of ambition; we live for more than that reason.”

It was Archbishop Oscar Romero, assassinated in El Salvador in 1980, who suggested we might consider a different sort of ambition: “Aspire not to have more but to be more,” he said. So yes, perhaps we should all be aiming higher. But it is our broader quality of life and wellbeing, and not merely a rise up the income scale, that we could be focusing our energies on.

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Hit Documentary Sparks High-quality Iron Pans Trend

A hit documentary has made high-quality iron pans a must-have item in Chinese kitchens, sparking fears the boom could damage the industry.

The first episode of the third season of Chinese food documentary "A Bite of China," produced by China Central Television, premiered Monday evening. The documentary depicts Chinese food culture, particularly the relationship between people and food.

With eight episodes each lasting 50 minutes, this season focuses on areas such as kitchenware, snacks, banquets, chefs and desserts

The first episode focused on a particular hand-made iron pan produced in Zhangqiu District in east China's Shandong Province. According to the documentary, a Zhangqiu Iron Pan needs to go through 12 procedures, be put in a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius and be beaten 36,000 times until it becomes "as clear as a mirror."

The episode helped sales of Zhangqiu Iron Pans to skyrocket overnight, and sales on the pans on the Taobao e-commerce website increased almost 6,000 times.

According to Alibaba, which runs Taobao, the iron pans are most popular in Shandong, followed by Jiangsu, Beijing and Guangdong.

Liu Zimu, who runs the pan factory in the documentary, said that one hour after the episode's premier, he sold all 2,000 pans in his store.

"We have about 50 craftsmen making the pans, and we are able to produce a little more than 100 pans every day," Liu said. "So far, we have received orders that will take two years to deliver. The history of the iron pans spans 1,000 years, and hand-made ones are better at heat conduction than those produced by machines."

"The hand-made pans are not sticky after tens of thousands of times of beating," Liu said. "They are better for cooking."

According to Liu, prices of the pans range from 300 yuan (47 U.S. dollars) to more than 1,000 yuan. A pan made by a seasoned craftsman in Liu's factory can fetch 1,299 yuan.

While the popularity of the pans has brought big bucks, Liu worries about the development of the industry.

"I am really happy that the craftsmanship is getting more attention and the pan makers are getting more respect," Liu said. "But making such pans is very complicated, and our capacity is quite limited, so it is inevitable that there will be fake ones on the market."

Liu said that even some iron pans made in Japan had been labeled as Zhangqiu Iron Pans, not to mention a number of poorly-made copies.

"The market is getting a little irrational," Liu said.

As orders overwhelmed factory capacity, Liu has closed his online store.

"Making the pans is an art, and I don't want money to taint the art," Liu said.

Liu said that making the pans is not easy. A craftsman needs to use a hammer of at least 7.5 kg to beat the pans tens of thousands of times, a "very tough job."

Zhangqiu pan-making culture once faced difficulties in being passed on, as the industry was threatened by mass production by machines, Liu said. As a result, many craftsmen switched jobs to survive.

The situation did not get better until recently, when the public realized the quality of the iron pans.

To help pass on pan-making culture, Liu and his peers have recruited many apprentices.

In Liu's factory, apprentices are paid to attend training sessions, and senior craftsmen enjoy high subsidies to "let them live better lives."

Before the documentary fervor, Liu's pans were already finding their way into other countries. Last year, his pans were purchased by consumers in more than 20 countries and regions, including the United States, Russia and Australia.

"The pans are particularly popular among overseas Chinese," Liu said. In late 2017, a British man bought more than 100 pans. The pans were later sold out when the man returned to Britain, according to Liu.

"I hope that after the documentary fervor, the public can view the art more rationally," Liu said.

"The public need to allow the craftsmen focus on making good-quality, genuine pans rather than churning out a big number of pans just for the sake of money," he said. "We are not just making pans; we are passing on a traditional art."

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Dig Into Caribbean Food in This 19th-Century Fire Station

Caribbean street food and whimsical desserts will replace bar snacks at a new restaurant in a 121-year-old fire station in Bloomingdale.

Spark at Engine Co. 12, formerly Old Engine 12 Firehouse restaurant, opens February 3 under new owner Jenna Mack (who runs an event planning company called Event Emissary). The same chef is in charge, and a few of the old dishes remain in rotation, but that’s about it.

“The menu was large, and it wasn’t as focused as I would have liked it to be,” says chef Peter Prime, who got his start in DC working at Leopold’s Kafe, Citronelle, and Equinox before taking over the kitchen at Old Engine in 2014. His new menu is pared down and highlights the casual island dishes he grew up with in Trinidad.

“We designed it around the way I like to eat out,” he says. “Sit down with a group of friends, try a lot of different things, you know, just have fun, hang out, eat, get in there with your hands.”

He means that literally: smoked meat like oxtail and pork belly come out on wooden platters meant for digging in sans utensils. An entire snapper is fried (complete with head and eyeballs), and a lacquered chicken is a throwback to the Chinese restaurants in Trinidad that Prime went to as a kid. The chef also hopes to carve out a niche for himself with dishes like coconut braised greens, avocado beignets, smoked bone marrow, and chipotle mayo oxtail.

That’s just the food. As a native islander, Prime is determined to bring good rum to the restaurant. Despite a rocky start with the liquor as a teenager, he’s fallen back in love, and plans to have tasting flight options at the bar. He’s using the booze in glazes and sauces, too, like his guava-rum barbecue sauce.

For dessert, there’s ice cream and gelato served in push-pop form, banana fritters topped with a rum-and-Coke syrup and Pop Rocks candy, and a horchata-like cocktail rimmed with crushed Fireballs.

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