| Jury-rigged, jerry-built: Maybe a problem?
The word had popped up the week before in The New York Times Magazine article, "The Sleep-Industrial Complex," all about the mattress and pharmaceutical industries. The piece included a reference to a man who was such an enthusiast for Sleep Number Beds that he "jury-rigged something similar for his bulldog." On the subject of exactly how the dog expressed its preference for a particular Sleep Number, the author was silent. Jury-rigging is a term with nautical origins. "Rig" is one of those little words so short that it contains nearly infinite meanings (an early form of nanotechnology). One of its meanings is "the arrangement of masts, sails, etc., on a vessel." In the days of the tall ships, when a vessel on the high seas lost a mast in a storm or a battle, the ship's carpenter would fashion what was known as a jury mast from spare parts down in the hold.
Cells of urban sweetness
"I had no idea!" I laugh, mildly alarmed, and LaMourie gives me a glowing grin. He's been keeping bees for only a year, but he's already obsessed with them, and an unsecured bee box or the sting he's about to get on his upper thigh doesn't deter him. Throughout the day I pepper him and his fellow beekeepers with questions as I'm given a tour of Detroit beehives, and I begin to realize how much there is to know about bees. For one thing, while they're not exactly on the endangered list yet, honeybees have been in big trouble lately. As Elizabeth Kolbert points out in "Stung," an essay in the Aug. 6 issue of The New Yorker, beekeepers have "lost 70 percent of their colonies" during the past two years. Even the bee carcasses are missing hives brim with pollen and larvae, but lack the adult bees needed to tend them.
Top Ten
The film stars Keira Knightly, James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan. The tragedy is that the trappings and recreation of the era are wonderful, but the characters are one-dimentional. We aren't given enough information about the relationship between the lady of the house and the housekeeper's son before they are separated to care about their fate as much as we should. ** Before The Devil Knows Your Dead At age 83, director Sidney Lumet has delivered a delightfully wicked film. It's the cherry on top of a career that brought us such classic films as Serpico, The Verdict, 12 Angry Men, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince of the City, Murder on the Orient Express, Network and Fail-Safe. This cynical and tasty melodrama is about a family that puts the “dys" in dysfunctional. Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman play brothers with very little in common except a desperate need for money.
TCS Signs Agreement With Taiwan's Allion to Provide Location Solution ...
TCS' Xypoint SUPL Server conforms to the standard for Internet Protocol (IP)-based A-GPS location as defined by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). Specifically, the Xypoint SUPL Server supports the OMA SUPL 1.0 standard to enable innovative location applications such as navigation and fleet tracking. TCS software and services help network operators differentiate their service offerings and create new revenue opportunities. Allion is relying on the TCS Xypoint SUPL Server to initially deliver Location-Based Services in Taiwan and then will expand to offer a variety of precise location services via UMTS throughout the Asia-Pacific region. "This contract win marks our first SUPL in-network deployment in the Asia-Pacific region," said Timothy Lorello, Chief Marketing Officer of TCS. "TCS continues to demonstrate innovation and market leadership in developing and delivering the location-based solutions subscribers demand while opening up new lines of revenue streams for our customers.
|
