Europe

The SRT Viper is easily one of the best American cars on sale at the moment, but unfortunately Chrysler has rejected European availability. Thankfully, GeigerCars has stepped up to fill the void by announcing plans to import a handful of models to Germany

Over the past few weeks, a number of fairly recent new publications have caught my eye that bridged the gap between visual (fine) arts and comics. Here’s one : Rembrandt by the Dutch creator Typex, published in Europe by the very fine Oog En Blik (who I see have been revamping their website recently). This brick of a book, three years in the making, had creator Typex morph his style to fit the clair-obscure, brown tints and the fluent, vague and suggestive lines of his subject’s paintings. in a number of short tableaux, Typex tries to evoke key moments in the life and times of famed Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, from his early days as an apprentice in Haarlem to the twilight of his days, alone with his much lauded (and often very honest) self-portraits. Typex paints a portrait of a man who was to big for his contemporaries, who refused to market his work, but rather spent his time perfecting his craft. Rather than enumerating the creative history of Rembrandt’s most famous paintings, Typex focuses on his daily life, his friends and competitors and how he dealt with them. It’s as if we read an account in pictures from that time itself, not bound by any constraints or convention of the medium but rather totally expressive. Whether all the anecdotes in the book are real, or whether Rembrandt really went about his business as he is portrayed here, is not that important, it is not the essence of this work or the man it depicts. This is Typex’s Rembrandt – his view on an artist who lives for his art, for whom life is an inconvenient obstacle in the perfection of his work, and does not care about social conformity or grace. Whether there’s a lot of Typex in this Rembrandt is a matter for psychologists. (Typex interprets one of Rembrandt’s most famous works, The Night Watch) Sometimes there are books that impose themselves on you, that you simply can’t ignore – you have to read them, you have to let yourself be overwhelmed by them. They’re called masterpieces, and Rembrandt is a prime example, and not translating it would be a crime. Which is why I am so delighted this is not going under my occasionally used ‘translation, please’ banner, where I highlight a remarkable piece of comics work in Europe that deserves to be translated and read more widely. Because others have already read this book and obviously share my opinion, having it translated for the pleasure of the English language readers too – the English language edition of Rembrandt is coming from the good people at SelfMadeHero this summer and is a book we’ve already highlighted in our monthly FPI’s Most Wanted, where our blog crew pick out some of the upcoming releases they want to read (it is available to pre-order on our webstore here). You are in for a wonderful reading experience.

Free and fair trade usually conjures up images of woven textiles, refurbished arts and crafts, unique and original clothing, and exotic coffees. But now a Dutch company is offering Fairphone, adding an entirely new dimension to what it means to own a gadget that can do some good. Behind the glossy screens, smooth edges, and insane technology, are – often times – factory workers who aren’t treated fairly or who work in conditions we would easily consider deplorable, beginning with the precious materials that are used for their internal computational parts through to the thousands of phones that pile up with each upgrade cycle. Fairphone introduces a new business model, where the lifecycle and the lives of everything impacted by our phones is brought to the forefront. Equally exciting, however, is the fact that the Fairphone just straight-up looks good, fitted with a 4.3 inch touchscreen, an 8 megapixel and a 1.3 megapixel camera while a Quad core, Android OS, and Dual SIM operate inside. Currently set for a Fall roll-out, interested buyers can set-up their pre-order now. The catch? Currently they’re limited to Europe and they need 5,000 to start production. Learn more about how you can buy a phone and start a movement here.Read the rest of Fairphone – Conflict-free Smartphone © pmallory for FreshnessMag.com, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Follow us: Facebook | Twitter Post tags: Fairphone

This simple straight dough French bread (not sourdough) is the perfect baguette recipe for new bread bakers. Note: If you're a beginning bread baker, you might find my Ten Tips on How To Bake Better Artisan Breads at Home helpful. And if you've been longing to learn how to make your own sandwich bread, my popular Farmhouse White Easy Basic Sandwich Recipe (which can also be made with whole wheat flour) is a great place to start. While e-mailing back and forth six years ago, I asked Daniel Leader, founder of the renowned Bread Alone Bakery in New York and my bread baking hero, to recommend a summer picnic bread from his new book, Local Breads. He immediately suggested I try the very first recipe, Parisian Daily Bread, or what he calls The Four Hour Baguette. "It's simple, it's foolproof, and it's delicious," he said, and he was right. I've been baking it ever since. I credit Daniel's wonderful first book, Bread Alone, with turning me into a bread baker, and I've been recommending it for years to anyone interested in learning how to bake their own bread. After 20 years it's still in print, and considering there are thousands of new cookbooks published each year, that's really saying something. My original copy of Bread Alone is in four pieces. My second copy was signed and sent to me by Daniel himself when he learned my first one was falling apart, which of course thrilled me to no end. (Sidenote: one of my favorite novels is also called Bread Alone, written by my good friend and fellow Daniel Leader fan, Judi Hendricks.) Fourteen years after he wrote Bread Alone, Daniel came out with Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers. It's the culmination of dozens of trips to Europe over two decades in search of bakers who are still using time-honored methods and ingredients to create loaves unique to their towns and cities. Part travelogue, part bread making class, and part gastronomic history lesson, the book is full of colorful stories of local artisans and 80 of their authentic treasured recipes. Beginning bread bakers needn't shy away from Local Breads. The first 60 pages are packed with detailed information on equipment, ingredients, and techniques, all of it clearly written and easy to understand. Even better are the several dozen Q&As throughout the book, which are Daniel's responses to the questions most frequently asked by his students at the Culinary Institute of America and other places where he teaches bread making. The only trouble you might have is ever making it past this first recipe. Recipe below. . . Click here for the rest of this post »

''I'd Rather Raise My Kids Globally''7:30PM ET May 22nd, 2013Contributor : Rayna Dean A Rocky Williform Company Eve has spent the better part of the last few years living in Great Britain, and the Philly native told Complex that she thinks raising a kid in Europe would be much better for them culturally than raising them in the States. "I'd rather raise my kids globally than exclusively in the U.S." she said directly. "There is so much culture and history in Europe. We have culture in the U.S. but you have to look for it," she added. "A lot of the kids I've met in Europe are more mature because they've gotten to travel. In an hour, you can be in a different country. I'm going to be one of those crazy parents who wants her children to speak three languages. They're going to hate me, but they will love me for it in the end."

After completing an extremely successful tour of Europe in support of Propagandhi, followed by a headlining tour, SHAI HULUD have returned to the states and are preparing for their next set of confirmed shows.

Meg Whitman, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, said that “you can feel the turnaround taking place at HP” in the company’s earnings call today. She touted the fact that the company hit its earnings per share target, but ignored that the company’s revenue fell short in her celebratory comments. But in a conference call with analysts, Whitman took a swipe at Dell, which is in the midst of a struggle to go private under founder Michael Dell. After hours, HP’s stock is up 13 percent on the stock market, at $24.09 a share. “You saw a competitor Dell completely crater earnings,” Whitman said in response to a question. “Maybe that is what you do when you are going private. We are setting up the company for the long term.” She implied that Dell did that on purpose, since Michael Dell is motivated to repurchase shares in the company as cheaply as possible, and deliberately lowering earnings is a good way to get the share prices to fall. Dell hasn’t responded to Whitman’s comment yet. Whitman is probably more than a little angry at Dell because it and other PC makers evidently competed aggressively on price at the low-end of the PC business, stealing market share away from HP, which saw its consumer PC unit sales fall 29 percent in the second fiscal quarter ended April 30. HP hit its earnings targets, but fell short on revenue, reporting earnings per share of 87 cents on revenue of $27.6 billion today. Whitman said she could see the turnaround taking place based on conversations with employees, customers and partners. But she reiterated that the turnaround is a multi-year journey. While it isn’t as cool as Apple and it doesn’t make games like Microsoft, HP is a critical piece of the electronics industry, as it straddles both the consumer and enterprise markets across a bunch of product lines. The company has $120 billion in annual revenue (the biggest in the industry by that measure) and more than 330,000 employees. It has made 70 acquisitions in the past 15 years, but its stock price has been hurting lately. “I must say I am encouraged with where we are,” Whitman said. She said HP is investing in innovation, bringing cost in line with revenue, improving profits, lowering its debt, optimizing cash flow, and exceeding financial performance. In the call, Whitman said the balancing act was tough when it comes to taking market share or growing profits. At the low end of the PC market, HP lost share and gave up some business rather than lose money on deals. She said the team is evaluating what it can offer at the low end. She said HP was getting better at electronic commerce, making its e-ordering portal more streamlined in the quarter, reducing cycle time for quotes up to 20 percent in Asia. Meanwhile, she said she was cautious about guidance for the second half of the year,noting “macroeconomic headwinds” as Europe and China slow down economically. In printers, Whitman said HP was doing well as it moves to high-end printer and ink sales. She said HP gained strength with products like a new OfficePro printer, high-value ink, and multi-function printers. She said HP will roll out a subscription-based service for ordering ink in the home. HP reduced its debt during the quarter. Personal systems (PC) revenue was down 20 percent from a year ago, with a 3.2 percent operating margin. Commercial PC revenue was down 14 percent and consumer revneue was down 29 percent. Total unit sales were down 21 percent, while desktops were down 18 percent and notebooks were down 24 percent. HP is poised like other PC makers to introduce new machines based on Intel’s latest microprocessors, code-named Haswell. Printing revenue was down 1 percent, but its operating margin is still strong at 15.8 percent. Hardware unit sales were down 11 percent from a year ago, with commercial units down 5 percent and consumer units down 13 percent. Enterprise revenue was also weak, down 10

On Sunday, I wrote about the real scandal of the century that the media is ignoring or misreporting — unchecked global warming (see “Worse Than Watergate“). Now I have a name for this growing scandal — No-Water-Gate. It is increasingly clear that the gravest climate threat to the most people in the coming decades will be Dust-Bowlification and the impact that has on food security (see Oxfam: Extreme Weather Has Helped Push Tens of Millions into “Hunger and Poverty” in “Grim Foretaste” of Warmed World). As I wrote in my 2011 Nature article, “The next dust bowl,” which reviewed some of the vast literature on the growing threat of prolonged warming-driven drought, “Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.” You’d think that a New York Times front page story on our current return to Dust Bowl conditions — and how farmers need to adapt — would discuss some of this vast literature. Or at least mention climate change. Once. You’d be wrong. And so this NY Times story is one of the inspirations for naming the greatest scandal of our time No-Water-Gate: The failure to discuss climate change renders the piece less than useless — it is scandalously misleading. The article focuses on how the drought has accelerated the depletion of the High Plains Aquifer by Kansas and Texas farmers: Kansas agriculture will survive the slow draining of the aquifer — even now, less than a fifth of the state’s farmland is irrigated in any given year — but the economic impact nevertheless will be outsized. In the last federal agriculture census of Kansas, in 2007, an average acre of irrigated land produced nearly twice as many bushels of corn, two-thirds more soybeans and three-fifths more wheat than did dry land. Farmers will take a hit as well. Raising crops without irrigation is far cheaper, but yields are far lower. Drought is a constant threat: the last two dry-land harvests were all but wiped out by poor rains. In the end, most farmers will adapt to farming without water, said Bill Golden, an agriculture economist at Kansas State University. No, no, a thousand times no: Farmers aren’t going to “adapt to farming without water”! Farmers might adapt to farming without water from the aquifer for irrigation — but only if the climate is not changing for the worse! An important, if under-reported, 2012 study from the The National Center for Atmospheric Research “strengthened the case” that, unless we reverse emissions trends soon, we risk having a situation by the end of the century where ”most of southern Europe and about half of the United States is gripped by extreme drought” a great deal of the time: [Author Aiguo] Dai’s new work stresses that the drying effect of human-produced greenhouse gases should overwhelm natural variability by later this century. “The U.S. may never again return to the relatively wet conditions experienced from 1977 to 1999,” he says. How will farmers adapt to no aquifer water and dwindling precipitation and rising temperatures (see We’re Already Topping Dust Bowl Temperatures — Imagine What’ll Happen If We Fail To Stop 10°F Warming.) Worse, how will they adapt to no aquifer water and dwindling precipitation and rising temperatures – and the media and other opinion-makers ignoring the latter two irreversible (but not unstoppable) trends? The No-Water-Gate scandal is that the nation and the world has chosen not to heed decades of warning by climate scientists that unrestricted emissions of greenhouse gases would cause ever-worsening droughts. A 1990 Journal of Geophysical Research study, “Potential evapotranspiration and the likelihood of future drought,” projected that severe to extreme drought in the United States, then occurring every 20 years or so, could become an every-other-year phenomenon by mid-century. Ai

The new album "X Vida" by Mexican raiders Thell Barrio is due to be released on every streaming and download platform worldwide on May the 24th, 2013. Thell Barrio, currently on the roads of Mexico showcasing the album, will also be in Europe this coming September to promote the release. Sliptrick Records comments on the band and coming album: Read More/Discuss on Metal Underground.com

Teslagrad is a puzzle platformer with action elements, where magnetism and other electromagnetic powers are the key to go throughout the game, and thereby discover the secrets kept in the long abandoned Tesla Tower. Gain new habilities to explore a non-linear world with more than 100 beautiful hand-drawn environments, in a steampunk-inspired vision of old Europe. You play as a young boy who suddenly finds himself embroiled in a long-forgotten conspiracy, involving the despotic king who has ruled the nation with an iron fist for several years. Jump into an outstanding adventure told through voiceless storytelling, writing your own part. Armed with ancient Teslamancer technology and your own ingenuity and creativity, your path lies through the decrepit Tesla Tower and beyond.