Four Seasons to host Twitter wine tasting

by Melanie Nayer on

Social media just got a little sexier.

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts are bringing the fine art of wine tasting to Twitter on Nov. 17.

Join three Four Seasons sommeliers in a virtual wine tasting using the hashtag #FSWine. Sommeliers James Tidwell, Mark Sayre and Dana Farner will lead participants in a guided tasting of three distinct wines – Loosen Bros. Dr. L Riesling, Paraiso Syrah and Chappellet Mountain Cuvee. They’ll discuss each wine and its unique flavors, how to pair them with seasonal dishes and tips for weaving the wines into holiday menus. The virtual wine event will end with a question and answer session.

So how does one actually *taste* the wine if it’s virtual? Buy the wines yourself, or head to a Four Seasons hotel for a “tweetup” during the event, where participants can sample the wines and mingle in person while also conversing over Twitter. Tweetups will be held in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Las Colinas, Houston, Miami, New York City, Palm Beach, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Toronto.

If you can’t make it to one of the hotels, log on to Twitter at 7 p.m. Eastern time Nov and search for the hashtag #FSWine. To ensure that comments and questions are woven into the conversation, include the #FSWine hashtag with each tweet.

Cheers!

Eerie underwater sculpture finished in Caribbean

by Sean McLachlan on


If you go diving off Isla Mujeres near Cancun, Mexico, you’ll see more than the usual coral reefs and colorful tropical fish. You’ll see a ghostly crowd of people standing on the bottom of the sea.

Silent Evolution is the creation of Jason de Caires Taylor, who specializes in underwater sculptures cast from real people. Taylor uses inert, PH-neutral concrete that doesn’t pollute the water. The figures attract sea life and become platforms for coral and other marine creatures. With coral reefs on the decline around the world, a little extra help from artists can come in handy. Check out the gallery below to see how life begins to grow on the figures, transforming them from realistic replicas of living people into something alien and a bit spooky.

Taylor took eight months to install the sculptures in a big crowd of talking, walking, and thinking people. The exhibition encourages repeat visits to see how “sea change” transforms the art into a living ecozone.

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The Domesday project – or how we did computer mapping in 1986

by Scott Carmichael on

When Google launched its Street View map service in 2007, viewing maps as we knew it changed forever. The foundation for a lot of the thinking behind this handy tool was actually laid back in 1984 when the BBC, Acorn Computers, Logica and Philips teamed up to create the Domesday project.

The Domesday project was an ambitious idea, designed to create a computer based survey of the United Kingdom, using their 1981 census, maps, color photos and video – long before anyone had heard of the term “multimedia”.

In total, over one million people participated in creating the content. To browse the country, you accessed data off a Laserdisc, quite revolutionary for the time, especially since it stored a whopping 300MB – a lot of data when the average hard disk at the time was no larger than 20MB.

Controlling the Domesday system was done with a trackball, and users could select portions of the country, view photos and load video segments. The video even included some virtual reality features, another phrase nobody was using at the time, and long before virtual reality became a common term thanks to the 1992 movie “The Lawnmower Man”. Unlike current online mapping tools, the Domesday Project only displayed a couple of photos per mapped grid of the UK, but it was still more than anything anyone had ever done before.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the whole project is that it shows how vulnerable our data can be – in 2002, fears arose about the future of the Domesday Laserdiscs, and a project was started to transfer the content to a more reliable storage medium.

As fascinating overview of the technology and its challenges can be found here.

[Photo from Flickr/ljw]

SkyMall Monday: Lasagna Pan Battle

by Mike Barish on
Cold weather has begun to hit the East Coast, where SkyMall Monday is headquartered. While walking the dogs this morning, I actually donned a knit cap and cursed the decision to leave my gloves at home. This can mean only one thing: It’s comfort food season. With Thanksgiving just around the corner (or still visible in the rear view mirror for our Canadian friends), we’re gearing up for that magical time of year when carbs are king and starch is the star. Cold weather requires adding some meat to your bones (yes, vegetarians, you’re made of meat – deal with it) and there may be no better food for that than lasagna. The combination of noodles, sauce, cheese, more cheese, some cheese and meat (or vegetables – geez) fills you up and helps you hibernate through those frosty nights. Thankfully, SkyMall knows that making lasagna can be a chore. They want to make carbo loading easy and fun. But, how do you choose which SkyMall lasagna pan to buy. Well, you turn to SkyMall Monday’s Lasagna Pan Battle. It’s the Edge Simple Lasagna Pan versus the Lasagna Trio Pan. Two pans enter. One pan wins.

This isn’t our first SkyMall Battle rodeo. Previously, we saw the Edge Brownie Pan (the Edge Simple Lasagna Pan’s sister) best the Giant Cupcake Pan in a dessert battle. This time, however, we’re getting savory. Which lasagna pan will earn the SkyMall Monday endorsement? Grab some noodles and fill the bathtub with ricotta. It’s go time.

Practicality

The Edge Simple Lasagna Pan operates on the principle that no one likes mushy heaps of messy lasagna. The Lasagna Trio Pan is a people pleaser that allows everyone to be satisfied by a lasagna of their choosing. While it’s nice to have pretty rectangles of lasagna, it’s best to keep all your guests happy by making a variety of lasagna options.

Advantage: Lasagna Trio Pan

Ease of Use

The Edge Simple Lasagna Pan has easy to grip handles. The Lasagna Trio Pan has a wide lip to grab. So, you won’t be dropping either of these pans when they are hot. However, you may run into problems when figuring out how long to keep the Lasagna Trio Pan in the oven. With different ingredients in each trough, cook times may vary (especially if you have meat in one and vegetables in another). The Edge Simple Lasagna Pan cooks evenly throughout since the ingredients are uniform.

Advantage: Edge Simple Lasagna Pan

Related Products

We’re well-versed in the Edge Simple Lasagna Pan’s sweet sibling, the Edge Brownie Pan. It’s fantastic. Well, SkyMall does sell the Lasagna Trio Pan’s brother from the same mother parent company, the Meatball Baker. I love meatballs. However, meatballs can be made in a pan. Or baked. Or started in a pan and finished in the oven. Who needs a Meatball Baker (and don’t argue that no one needs a lasagna pan – that’s nonsense)? The Edge Brownie Pan defeats all.

Advantage: Edge Simple Lasagna Pan

Price

I’ll be brutally honest here: Both of these lasagna pans are expensive pieces of kitchen equipment. People have been tightening their belts lately (and then loosening them after dinner for comfort), so price has to be a key factor. The Edge Simple Baking Pan normally retails for $49.99 but is currently on sale for only $39.99 on SkyMall. The Lasagna Trio Pan is $79.95 (though it is way cheaper on Amazon).

Advantage: Push – This is a SkyMall column, so the Trio’s SkyMall price has to be considered but it’s nice to see it cheap elsewhere.

Lids

Neither one of these pans includes a lid. WTF?! No one finishes an entire batch of lasagna in one sitting and foil can only do so much. Who do you have to massage to get a lid around here?

Advantage: Failure Push

Well, after battling it out, the Edge Simple Lasagna Pan just barely squeaks out a 2-1 win (with two pushes). Not a resounding victory by any means. What does it win? Well, just like I did with the Edge Brownie Pan, I will now do an actual hands-on review of the Edge Simple Lasagna Pan. What will become of the Lasagna Trio Pan? Should the Edge Simple Lasagna Pan prove unable to fulfill its duties, the Lasagna Trio Pan will be called upon to step in.

Of course, we’d love to know your thoughts on this pressing SkyMall matter. What say you?

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Check out all of the previous SkyMall Monday posts HERE.

Top American alpinist perishes in the Himalaya

by Kraig Becker on

Joe Puryear, one of America’s top mountaineers, fell to his death last week while climbing in the Himalaya. He was just 37 years old, but had earned himself a reputation as one of world’s elite climbers, having put up routes in all of the planet’s major mountain ranges, including the Andes, the Himalaya, and the Alps. Joe had reached the summit of more than 30 mountains in the Alaskan Range alone and made more than 80 successful climbs up Mt. Rainier in the state of Washington, where he was a mountain ranger.

Puryear was attempting to make just the second ascent of the remote Labuche Kang, located in Tibet. The 24,170 foot (7367 meter) tall mountain remains largely unexplored even in this day and age, which made it all the more alluring to Joe and his climbing partner David Gottlieb. In the midst of that challenging climb, Puryear fell through a cornice and plummeted hundreds of feet to his death, bringing a premature end to his adventurous life.

Joe is survived by his wife Michelle, who shared his passion for adventure and climbing. She posted her final goodbye to her husband on the expedition’s blog.

The video below comes to us courtesy of the Today Show and offers more insights into Joe’s life.

[Photo credit: Joe Puryear]