Features

TOKYO  — From the country that brought you Godzilla, Hello Kitty and Pokemon, comes a hyperactive “pear fairy” with a love for heavy metal that has taken Japan by storm — and now plans to conquer the world.

“Funassyi”, a devil-may-care lifesize fruit mascot who risks life and limb by performing eye-watering stunts, has just returned from a triumphant visit to New York and on Thursday threw down the gauntlet to rivals such as Kumamon, a tubby bear with whom it once had a punch-up on national television.

“I was a celebrity in New York — people were going crazy,” the yellow blob told foreign reporters in Tokyo. “They’re going to hang my picture in the Empire State Building, along with the Crown Prince and Yoko Ono.”

The genderless Funassyi, famous for its high-pitched shrieking, jumping and violent gyrating, shot to fame as the unofficial mascot of Funabashi city, 20 kilometres east of Tokyo, after videos of the chubby prankster on a treadmill and taking a bath went viral.

“I’d like to help boost the Japanese economy,” squeaked Funassyi, who used to turn up to official functions uninvited after being snubbed by city bigwigs. “You could call it ‘Funanomics’.”

“Next I want to break into Hollywood, like Mickey Mouse, Spiderman and the [Teenage Mutant Ninja] Turtles.”

The head-banging Funassyi, who thrills legions of fans by dashing through fire as explosions go off, and getting tossed around television studios by presenters, has muscled its way into a licensed character industry worth around $30 billion a year.

“Japanese people like to root for the underdog,” Funassyi said of the rapid rise since — in its own words — falling from the tree three years ago.

“I’m a one-pear act, a pear fairy with no agent. People saw me being rejected and started to show support for me. I still only charge about 1,000 pears an hour.”

‘Walk this way’

Funassyi’s popularity is no mean feat given the ferocious competition among Japan’s “yuru-kyara” (mascot characters). Creations such as Kumamon and Pokemon have become part of the country’s cultural landscape, adorning everything from keychains to commercial airplanes.

Funassyi, who worships Aerosmith and Ozzy Osbourne, once came to blows with archrival Kumamon on live TV.

“I have tremendous respect for Kumamon as my senior,” said Funassyi, a sunflower bobbing up and down on its head. “But he got on my nerves that night so I slapped him. We’re friends again now.”

Funassyi, who adds the suffix “-nasshi” — from the Japanese word for pear — to the end of each sentence, has a fan base in Taiwan, Hong Kong, London and now the United States.

“In Taiwan I’ve heard there are fake Funassyis walking about the streets,” said the squidgy funster, before bursting into a chorus of Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way”.

With typically nifty footwork, Funassyi side-stepped a question about Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s controversial plans to change the country’s pacifist constitution, squealing: “Ooh no, I’m not getting into that! I’m for world peace.”

Asked about the future and the risk of injury, Funassyi tweaked the nose of fear.

“I’d love to run with the bulls in Pamplona,” it said. “I’m going to the South Pole next month. They’re going to sink me in the South Pole. The things Japanese TV channels make me do. I’ll probably turn into pear sherbet.”

Launched in 2013 as a practical mid-size four-seat convertible with premium car features, feel and qualities yet with attainable price points, the Vauxhall Cascada is essentially based on a lengthened version of the Vauxhall Astra family hatchback and coupe platform.

Practical and spacious, the Cascada was designed to be a viable only car for a household, and for year-round drop-top motoring.

Offered with a range of powerful, gutsy and economical turbocharged petrol and diesel engines, the Cascada drives with a reassuringly planted “big car” confidence that Vauxhall does so well, and features an extensive list of premium convenience and safety equipment.

Sold as a Vauxhall in the UK where it was driven, the Cascada is identically available in most markets under parent company General Motors’ German Opel badge, and was introduced to North America under the Buick badge as of 2015.

Founded in 1857, Vauxhall became a carmaker by 1903 and General Motors subsidiary by 1925. An indigenous British brand, Vauxhall began merging with Opel by the mid-1970s, and now fields a near identical model line-up.

Resiliently popular, Vauxhall maintained its’ long-held position as Britain’s second best-selling car through the global financial crisis, and holds a comparatively stronger position in the UK than Opel does in its combined global market.

Upmarket aesthetic

With only right-hand-drive configuration and Griffen badge differentiating from its Opel sister, even the now circular Vauxhall badge fits the same recess as the German brand. As a model, the Cascada’s details may differ slightly for a slightly more upmarket position, but to the trained eye it is almost immediately identifiable as an un-official or quasi Astra convertible.

With more elegant and relaxed front design, the Cascada’s horizontally uninterrupted bumper and less aggressive lower intakes emphasise width. The Cascada’s grille features a prominent chrome horizontal centre slat, which is reflected with a similar chrome strip running through and connecting the high set rear lights.

An elegant and swept-back design with a lower roofline and clean uninterruptedly rising waistline — flush with roof down — the Cascada features subtly muscular surfacing including an L-shaped lower flank crease, while the driven car’s large optional 19-inch alloys complemented its high rear deck.

Built on the same 10mm longer Astra GTC coupe wheelbase for added stability, the longer Cascada is just 2mm shorter than the Astra Sports Tourer estate version. The longer body both provides a more elegantly upmarket aesthetic and the necessary space to accommodate the flush folding fabric roof behind the rear seats while allowing for a sufficiently practical and spacious luggage compartment.

Indefatigable diesel

Offered with a choice of efficient and versatile turbocharged engines the Cascada can be had with 138BHP 1.4-litre and 168BHP and 197BHP 1.6-litre direct injection petrol engines. And it is testament to how clean and smooth European diesel engines and fuel have become that convertibles are offered as oil burners, with the Cascada featuring two powerful 2-litre turbodiesel engines of 163BHP and 192BHP.

Driven with the range-topping 2.0 CDTI BiTurbo engine introduced last year, the Cascada develops 192BHP at 4,000rpm and gut-wrenching 295lb/ft peak torque throughout 1,750-2,500rpm. Only available with a six-speed manual gearbox in CDTI BiTurbo guise, other engine options can be specified with automatic transmission. 

With little low-end lag typical of turbodiesel engines, the Cascada’s twin-turbochargers spools up quickly to deliver effortlessly flexaible mid-range sledgehammer torque, which soon gives way to peak power.

Charging through 0-100km/h in 8.9 seconds, the Cascada feels yet quicker in daily driving, where mid-range overtaking manoeuvres are completed with utterly muscular assurance, whether in town or at speed in top gear.

Smooth and refined, the Cascada’s engine is well-insulated from diesel-clatter, and with stop/start function, fuel consumption is frugal at 5.2 litres/100km, combined. Working through ratios to keep the Cascada’s mid-range engine sweet spot, shifts are satisfyingly precise and notchy, while clutch pedal travel is light and biting point intuitive.

‘Big car’ feel

Channelling its’ vast torque through the driven front wheels, the Cascada can easily unstuck otherwise grippy tyres, sending them scrambling for traction when launched aggressively with electronic stability and traction controls switched off. To mitigate torque steer when launching or coming back on power out of corners, the Cascada uses HiPerStrut front suspension, which is a modified MacPherson-type suspension with a separate steering axis knuckle.

Weighing a hefty 1,816kg owing to high equipment levels and structural reinforcements compensating for rigidity lost by chopping off the roof, the Cascada well controls weight transfer and body through corners, while rebound control is buttoned down and settled. Adaptive dampers can be optionally specified.

Sophisticated, smooth and firmly comfortable on road, only the most jagged potholes disturb the Cascada’s refined ride. Big sticky 235/45R19 tyres provide excellent grip, but standard 235/50R18 tyres would expectedly be more supple.

Indefatigably effortless and confidently composed on highways, the Cascada has a ‘big car’ feel to it, with superbly pinned down stability and smoothness for relaxed long distance touring capability. A refined and well built car, the Cascada feels almost as rigid as a fixed head Astra, while wind noise is seldom noticed for a fabric roof convertible. Electric-assisted steering is light and well-damped from vibrations, while brakes are reassuringly effective, with ABS and electronic brakeforce distribution.

Comfort and equipment

Comfortable, well spaced and extensively-equipped, the Cascada is a practical everyday all-weather convertible. With quick-acting heating, heated seats and steering, side window defroster, dual-zone climate control and wind deflector for two- or four-seat use, top-down driving was possible in freezing UK January weather.

Practically, the quick electric folding roof stows behind the rear seats at up to 50km/h, while generous 380-litre boot space expands to 750 litre with the rear seats folded. With roof down, luggage space contracts to 280 and 650 litres, but configuration becomes narrow under the stowed roof. Front cabin space is generous and rear seat access and space is adequate for regular adult use.

With big comfortable and supportive seats with four-way adjustable lumbar support, thick flat-bottom adjustable steering, refined soft texture surfaces and quality leather upholstery, the Cascada has a premium car feel and generous equipment levels in top-of-the-range Elite spec, as driven.

Too long to list in full, Elite spec features include rain-sensitive windscreen wipers, anti-dazzle rear mirror, electric seatbelt presenters, ambient interior lighting, remote roof operation and automatic lighting control with high beam assist.

Elegant and business-like with chrome accents, the Cascada’s centre console is busy but user-friendly. Infotainment systems include Bluetooth and satnav. Safety equipment includes active head restraints and rollover protection, multiple airbags, Isofix child seat latches and reversing camera among other features.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, transverse in-line twin-turbo diesel 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 83 x 90.4mm

Compression ratio: 16.5:1

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, common-rail direct injection

Gearbox: 6-speed manual, front-wheel drive

Final drive ratio: 3.9:1

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 192 (195) [143] @4,000rpm

Specific power: 92.8BHP/litre

Power-to-weight: 105.7BHP/tonne

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 295 (400) @1,750-2,500rpm

Specific torque: 204.5Nm/litre

Torque-to-weight: 220.2Nm/ton

0-100 km/h: 8.9 seconds

Top speed: 230km/h

Fuel capacity: 56 litres

Fuel economy, urban/extra-urban/combined: 6.3-/4.6-/5.2-litres/100km

Carbon dioxide emissions, combined: 138g/km

Length: 4,696mm

Width: 1,839mm

Height: 1,443mm

Wheelbase: 2,695mm

Track, F&R: 1,587mm

Overhang, F/R: 975/1,026mm

Luggage volume, min-max, roof up/down: 380-750-/280-650 litres

Kerb weight: 1,816kg

Steering: Electric-assisted speed sensitive rack & pinion

Turning radius: 12.2 metres

Suspension, F: HiPerStrut (MacPherson struts with independent steering axis pivot)

Suspension, R: Watt’s link semi-independent

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated discs/discs

Tyres: 235/45R19 (optional)

WASHINGTON — The blackpoll warbler accomplishes a mighty big feat for a such a little bird.

Scientists documented how this songbird that weighs 12 grammes completes an arduous nonstop flight over the Atlantic Ocean from forests in New England and eastern Canada to Caribbean islands as it migrates each fall toward its South American wintering grounds.

By placing miniature backpacks with geolocators on the birds, the researchers determined they flew an average of nearly 2,540km over two to three days.

“No other bird this size migrates for this long in one go. It is truly one of the most amazing migratory feats ever recorded,” said ecologist Ryan Norris of the University of Guelph in Ontario, describing “a fly-or-die journey”.

They landed in Puerto Rico and Hispaniola, resting for a couple of days to a couple of weeks before flying to Colombia and Venezuela. University of Massachusetts ecologist Bill DeLuca described the migration as “on the brink of impossibility”.

The spring return flight follows a predominantly overland route through Florida and up the US East Coast.

The recent research resolves a half-century mystery about blackpoll warbler migration. There had been indirect evidence they were performing this transoceanic migration — for example, blackpolls landing on ships in the Atlantic under bad weather conditions.

But could they really complete such a journey considering a water landing would kill them?

“Some doubted that such a herculean flight would be physiologically and physically possible for a songbird weighing one-half ounce,” said Vermont Centre for Ecostudies ornithologist Chris Rimmer.

Ocean birds including albatrosses and gulls make transoceanic flights, and tiny ruby-throated hummingbirds cross the Gulf of Mexico, although that is not as far. Most migratory songbirds that spend winters in South America fly a safer overland route through Mexico and Central America.

Blackpolls, with 20cm wingspans, have distinctive yellow legs and are speckled with black, white and grey feathers with two white wing stripes, a white chin and cheeks, and a black “cap” atop the head.

Before migrating, they gorge themselves to build strength and shrink many of their digestive organs to minimise any part of the anatomy not needed during an extended flight.

“They nearly double their body mass in fat reserves and absorb many non-essential organs during migration to become lean, mean flying machines, with a little help from southerly trade winds,” DeLuca said.

The research appears in the journal Biology Letters.

Intelligence & Compassion in Action: The Seven Pillars for Social Entrepreneurs
Lauren Speeth
Elfenworks Productions, 2012
Pp. 224

The point of departure for this book is that the world is not as it should be; nor does it have to be that way. The persistence of poverty, inequality, disease, environmental degradation and violence are well documented. The question is what to do about it. Lauren Speeth offers an inventive, carefully charted approach for those aspiring to be agents for change.

Her guidelines for social entrepreneurship, encased in Seven Pillars, go well beyond charity to empower both benefactors and beneficiaries, and actually solve problems. Hers is “a practical, working methodology to help create an alternative storyline that can turn apathy into action, and wilful blindness into clear vision”. (p. 14)

Substantial expertise and experience underpin the evolution of the Seven Pillars. Speeth holds degrees in psychology, business administration and ministry, added to her extensive IT know-how. Wanting to be an agent for change, she established Elfenworks in 2005, “to identify issues that weren’t being effectively addressed, create change in new and different ways, and amplify successes through storytelling”. (p. 3)

The Foundation produces media content to promote improvements and equality via initiatives in film, music, education, management, law, finance, human development and social justice, in cooperation with other groups working in these fields. 

At the start, Speeth sought the advice of former US president Jimmy Carter; she gives much credit to the successful example of the Carter Foundation’s work in peace making, human rights and the alleviation of suffering. In the book’s dedication, she writes of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter: “Their intelligence and compassion in action is unrivalled.”

It is this combination of intelligence and compassion that makes one an effective agent of change. Good intentions are not enough; one must also be cognisant of entrepreneurial principles, particularly the concepts of risk and initiative. “All strategic analysis used in the business world is relevant to the social entrepreneur,” but where “the business person sees competitors, the social entrepreneur may, in the best cases, see potential partners.” (p. 70)

Nor is business sense alone sufficient; the social entrepreneur is driven not by profit, but by compassion for those suffering from the problems being targeted; cooperation supersedes competition.

In a nutshell, Speeth’s Seven Pillars are: Vision, Special Skills, Non-Duplication, Partnership, Credit Sharing, Feedback and Staying Power. Expressed in paragraph form, the Seven Pillars “involve implementing your vision regardless of naysayers, using your special skills in a non-duplicative way, work in partnership with others, giving others opportunity to share the credit for results, having a valid feedback loop to measure those results, and allowing for bumps in the path as you work over time towards greater success”. (p. 41) 

Each of the Seven Pillars and the process involved in its implementation is explained in a chapter of the book, augmented by descriptions of the work of organisations that bear witness to the effectiveness of this approach. These real-life examples are quite exciting and indicate real possibilities for change, especially organisations that train their clients to be part of staff.

One of these is Fr. Gregory Boyle’s Homeboy Industries, the largest youth gang intervention programme in the US, where 200 former gang members help run a bakery, café and other shops that fund about a third of the organisation’s operations. Similarly, Robert Egger’s DC Central Kitchen employs those who previously needed food aid as cooks, while feeding 4,500 of DC’s hungry. The many descriptions of other groups’ work also demonstrates the broad outreach that Speeth and Elfenworks have achieved by practicing partnership as a pillar of success.

For Speeth, engagement in social entrepreneurship is connected to her Christian faith, as it is for the Carters, but she asserts that the Seven Pillars harmonise with other faith traditions and can also be valuable to those who are engaged for purely humanitarian reasons. In a supplemental essay at the end of the book, she discusses the basis for social action in relation to Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, as well as Christianity. 

Written in a tone which combines confidence with humility, this book is both inspirational and energising. With the Seven Pillars logically presented and backed up by real-life examples, and each chapter followed by challenging questions, it could serve as the basis for a course or training sessions in social entrepreneurship. Speeth is visiting Jordan this week and will speak at the World Affairs Council on Wednesday.

AMMAN — A more appropriate title could not have been given to Clara Amado’s exhibition at Instituto Cervantes. For, the word “Horizons” perfectly describes the images on display and they, in turn, open for the viewer infinite perspectives, both perceptible and imaginary.

Amado’s are horizons that she wishes to see “sunny and happy” for Jordan, the country whose nature, she confesses, inspires her, touches her deeply.

A rough translation of the artist’s creed on the invitation card says that “horizon exists in your look, your origin, is present, past and tomorrow; horizon is only a word, window, door, colour, brushstroke and spot.... This work that I humbly present to you is a tribute to the horizon of the future, of utopia inspired by clear, transparent horizons whose perspective translates, mostly, into peace, not a peace dreamt of only, but one real that, in order to be attained, forces us to climb steep surfaces full of obstacles...”.

By such philosophical reasoning, horizons can then be both unbounded open spaces or imagination and walls that impede a far-reaching view or the attainment of goals.

In Amado’s works, however, there are no barriers blocking passage.

Landscape after landscape opens up like magic doors, letting the viewer in, making the eye wander and challenging imagination.

The satisfaction one feels upon recognising an image — the iconic Siq of Petra, Wadi Rum’s rock formations or the immense stretches of warm sand — is almost childish.

Amado’s images induce serenity and happiness, longing for times long gone when life was simpler, time was measured by the rising and setting sun, and vast spaces were navigated with the help of guiding stars and experienced animals.

The landscapes seem frozen in an age of bucolic life when man’s life was run by nature’s cycles. They transport the viewer into a mesmerising world of purity and colour.

Nature is caught at different times of the day, close up or from a distant, or high, perspective.

Scenery projects itself sharply against the background, earth meets sky to form striking horizons.

Mountains are clearly outlined against the intense red skies of a fiery sunset, or the turquoise or anil blue of a darkening sky where whirling clouds chase each other and the rays of a dying sun get reflected by the myriad grains of sand, giving off an infinite palette of colours.

Amado uses natural pigment and acrylic to create a great variety of colours, and collage to produce the images.

She paints on paper, tears it down, applies it to the wood base and paints again over it, creating layers and texture often barely visible, subtle and highly artistic.

Some paintings in light peach-pink hues depict starker landscape that, for all its minimalism, contains a wealth of details awaiting discovery.

In these make-happy images, sky and earth are the same colour — universe at its most harmonious — and the horizon is created by the outlines of the relief in an amazing range of shades: orange, black, white, maroon, pale ochre, dark peach.

A few miniature landscapes inviting discovery in their white obtruding frames are intriguingly beautiful. 

Quite abstract and almost monochromatic, they contain fascinating images: bodies of water, mountains, amorphous shapes and plant life, haphazard brushstrokes and deliberate lines that are as enigmatic as their bigger counterparts, and equally attractive.

Amado, a Barcelonan by birth and a painter by education, held 26 individual exhibitions in Spain, Italy, Mexico, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, and took part in over 28 international collective exhibitions.

Her latest works inspired by Jordan’s landscape are on display until April 30.

NEW YORK — Billie Holiday died with just $50 to her name taped to her thigh, but on the 100th anniversary of her birth the jazz legend is enjoying a renaissance as a trailblazer for generations of singers.

Holiday was broken down by heroin use, police harassment and a husband who would beat her so severely she would tape her ribs before concerts.

When her body gave way at age 44 in 1959, she was under arrest in her hospital bed for narcotics and her savings consisted of the $50 slipped by a reporter who wanted a deathbed interview.

But ahead of the centennial of her birth on April 7, a more complete picture of Holiday is emerging as artists acknowledge her foibles yet hail her not only for her ineffable voice but for her dignified stance against racism.

Author Lanie Robertson has seen the changes in perceptions first-hand. His play “Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill,” which depicts Holiday looking back at her life before a meagre crowd at one of her final shows, premiered in 1986 but enjoyed a popular revival last year on Broadway starring Audra McDonald that was later turned into an HBO television production.

“In 1986 when the play was produced, Billie Holiday was disparaged by a very large segment of the African American population — she was a terrible role model, she was a drug addict, she was an alcoholic, she slept around, she was not a ‘good woman’,” Robertson said.

“Last year, there was a total turnaround in society’s view of Billie Holiday. She was a fighter for civil rights, she was someone who put up with the staunchest, meanest kinds of prejudice and racial bigotry, which probably cut her life short by decades,” he said.

“I think she is now a symbol of the African American who fights and stands up for her rights, and is seen as a forerunner of that.”

Ultimate protest song

Holiday — nicknamed “Lady Day” — endured racial slights even at home in New York, where a singer with a global reputation would be asked to take service elevators at expensive hotels.

In 1939, Holiday debuted one of musical history’s great protest songs, “Strange Fruit,” a searing denunciation of the lynchings of African Americans in the South — land of the “scent of magnolia sweet and fresh/and the sudden smell of burning flesh”.

Holiday’s label, Columbia, initially refused to release the song out of fear of upsetting the Southern market and the singer quickly came under greater scrutiny from federal narcotics investigators.

“When she sang it, you could pretty much hear a pin drop. The audience was in dead silence,” said Mikki Shepard, executive producer of the Apollo Theatre where Holiday performed the song.

The Apollo, the celebrated and racially integrated jazz venue in Harlem, was one of the few places where Holiday could perform late in her career along with Carnegie Hall, as a new cabaret licensing system shut her out of most clubs on account of her character.

The Apollo will celebrate the centennial with a series of events including a tribute concert by Cassandra Wilson, the Grammy-winning singer who is also releasing an album of Holiday covers.

Columbia has put out “The Centennial Collection”, a CD with 20 of Holiday’s most influential songs including “Summertime”, “All of Me” and “Strange Fruit”.

The pianist Lara Downes in turn has performed “A Billie Holiday Songbook”, which takes inspiration not only from Lady Day’s music but her capacity for improvisation.

An authentic voice

Holiday, born in Philadelphia to a house cleaner mother and an absent father, never had a formal musical education.

In a memoir that was explosive at the time, Holiday said that she learned jazz when she ran errands in brothels as a child.

Holiday had numerous outside influences, notably Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, but built her reputation as perhaps the greatest-ever jazz singer through her inner passion and a vocal style that was at once emotive and rugged.

A vast array of singers have taken inspiration from Holiday’s music and style including Diana Ross — who played her in the 1972 film “Lady Sings the Blues” — to Annie Lennox and the late Amy Winehouse.

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The mystery of Mercury’s excessively dark surface may have just been solved.

A team of researchers working at Brown University say the planet’s inky appearance may be the result of a near constant rain of impacts from tiny specks of cometary dust that “painted” the planet black over billions of years.

The research was published Monday in Nature Geoscience.

Scientists have long wondered why Mercury was so much darker than our moon — reflecting just one-third of the amount of light that the moon reflects.

The two bodies are often compared, explained lead author Megan Bruck Syal, who is a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. They are roughly the same size, and because neither one has much of an atmosphere, they are both subject to a constant bombardment from bits of space dust and other micrometeorites.

(Here on Earth, micrometeorites burn up in the atmosphere, causing shooting stars).

Many airless bodies get their dark colour from iron-bearing minerals on their surface, but that is not the case with Mercury. Observations by NASA’s Messenger spacecraft have shown that the surface of Mercury is less than 2 per cent iron. Scientists intent on solving this mystery had to look for another darkening agent.

“One thing that hadn’t been fully considered before was carbon,” Bruck Syal said. “Carbon is really abundant in comets and could be delivered by cometary dust.”

Paradoxically, full-size comets could not be responsible for depositing enough carbon on Mercury’s surface to darken it. That’s because a large comet would strike the planet with so much speed that all the impact material would go shooting off into space. But impacts from cometary dust were a different story.

“The little dust particles less than a millimetre in size are also very carbon rich, and they come in at lower speeds,” Bruck Syal said. “We did a lot of calculations about different impact angles and velocities and found you could retain most of the material on the planet.”

After determining that carbon from cometary dust could remain on Mercury’s surface, the team had to make sure that Mercury would be hit with enough dust to account for the planet’s dark appearance.

Here again, the pieces fit together. The density of cometary dust increases as you get closer to the sun, and after further calculations, the researchers determined that Mercury is likely struck by 50 times as many bits of cometary dust as the moon.

“It’s pretty constant,” Bruck Syal said. “Unlike asteroid or comet impacts that are kind of hard to predict, this is more of a steady state.”

The final step was to make sure that the impact of carbon dust on the surface of Mercury would indeed have a darkening effect. To test that, the researchers turned to the NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range in Mountain View, Calif. There a 4.2-metre cannon fuelled by hydrogen gas allows researchers to shoot projectiles into targets at speeds of more than 5.6km per second, imitating celestial impacts.

By creating target materials similar to what they expect to find on the surface of Mercury, the scientists were able to demonstrate that cometary dust impacts would indeed produce dark materials that would be deposited on the planet’s soil.

The hypothesis addresses a lot of questions about what is making Mercury so dark, but Bruck Syal said it still needs to be tested.

PARIS — Their creations are usually reserved for a few wealthy clients, but European museums are currently allowing the public to admire up close the works of star fashion designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen and Karl Lagerfeld.

The Gaultier show, which opened in Paris Wednesday as part of a global tour, and the McQueen one in London running for the past two weeks have proved to be hits according to organisers.

The Lagerfeld exhibition, in the German city of Bonn, has just begun and is certain to draw crowds curious about the Chanel designer’s work.

“Those who don’t get a chance to attend the fashion shows rarely see what a haute couture creation looks like,” said Jean-Paul Cluzel, the president of the Grand Palais exhibition hall in Paris displaying the Gaultier retrospective.

“Even the very best images, the very best televised reports are not able to show the richness of the material, of the embroidery. Only an exhibition allows common mortals to see that.”

The success of the Gaultier exhibition shows no sign of flagging. It has already been seen by 1.4 million visitors since starting out in Montreal in 2011 and making eight other stops around the world.

The French designer is famous for innovative and sometimes outrageous pieces, perhaps most famously Madonna’s cone bra.

In London, the Victoria and Albert Museum is featuring “Savage Beauty”, the biggest-ever exhibition in homage to Alexander McQueen, the brilliant British designer who committed suicide in 2010 aged 40.

The display started out in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2011, organised by its Costume Institute, where it achieved “blockbuster” status that year with 660,000 visitors.

Trend started by US journalist

The Met has been at the forefront of the thriving retrospective shows of designers ever since launching the trend in 1983 with an Yves Sant Laurent show that was the brainchild of influential American journalist Diana Vreeland.

Vreeland, a Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue columnist who was also consultant at the Met’s Costume Institute before her death in 1989, was behind numerous fashion exhibitions around the world.

“She felt that clothing as art had to be associated with individuals, charismatic individuals in any period,” explained Harold Koda, the curator in charge of the Costume Institute.

“She didn’t believe that art percolated up from the masses, she believed it trickled down.”

But, Koda admitted to AFP, “she had a very loose connection to fact. I think if people saw her shows now they would say ‘But there is no content!’.”

That aspect has changed, as today’s public is more sophisticated and knowledgeable, the curator said.

Now, the focus is on more substance — “the public requires it”, he said.

‘Interpreting’, not selling the designer

Olivier Gabet, director of Paris’ Museum of Decorative Arts that organises two or three fashion exhibitions each year, also stressed how much more demanding the public has become.

“It’s so hard to escape fashion these days. Advertising is everywhere. And, what’s more, it fascinates people,” he said.

What is important in the museum exhibitions, he said, is to include scientific and artistic information. “There has to be a point of view and analysis. Otherwise it’s just a marketing operation.”

The collaboration of a designer with a museum showing his or her work is valuable, but contains its own danger of the designer “also becoming his own curator”.

SUNNY ISLES BEACH, Florida — The wow factor for Miami’s skyscraper condos no longer comes from a dazzling Atlantic Ocean view.

It takes something more audacious to sell beachfront property these days to the global ultra-wealthy who arrive in Miami with millions to spend on second or third homes. It takes words invested with meaning in the language of the international jet set:

Porsche. Giorgio Armani. Fendi.

With a slew of residential and hotel developments, Miami is embracing the notion that homes, like cars, handbags and jewellery, should carry luxe designer labels. The trend has spread from Europe, Asia and the Middle East, where developers discovered a few years ago that luxury-branded hotels and homes could command huge premiums that the moneyed set would happily pay.

Having transformed New York and London, the wealthy are increasingly pursuing new havens. Miami is luring Argentineans, Brazilians, Chinese, Russians and French, some of whom seek refuge from political instability and higher taxes at home. The purchases go beyond the appeal of haute logos: Owning an asset priced in dollars can protect fortunes from the shrunken values of euros, pesos and rubles.

The pull is so powerful that developer Gil Dezer’s Porsche Design Tower is mostly sold-out, even though construction won’t wrap until 2016, meaning that most buyers committed millions based on blueprints.

Shaped like a piston driven into sand, the concrete-and-glass Porsche Design Tower will contain three car elevators. Each can whisk a convertible up 60 stories and then slide it into the owner’s personal steel-reinforced garage. (The owner can stay in the driver’s seat.) Inside the apartments, curved windows capture a vista of waves billowing from a midnight blue into a pale green along the shore.

“What we’re selling is luxury,” Dezer said. “The buyers already know the brand. They like the style, they like the look and that’s why they feel more comfortable buying it.”

Dezer is also taking reservations for condos at the Armani Casa. The Chateau Group is building the Fendi Chateau (named for the Italian fashion house) steps from the Chanel, Gucci and Tiffany boutiques. Nearby is the Faena District, a condo, hotel and cultural centre backed by Argentinian hotelier and fashion designer Alan Faena.

Their emergence has spawned thousands of skilled construction jobs. Yet it’s also walled off Miami’s coastline behind a phalanx of skyscrapers that has isolated low- and middle-income residents. Many have had to buy farther and farther inland, said Aaron Drucker, a managing agent for Redfin, the real estate brokerage.

“Locals are not really part of the party,” Drucker said.

Demand from European and South American buyers caused prices for the top 5 per cent of homes around Miami Beach to surge 66 per cent in the past year to $6.3 million, according to Redfin. That compares with a 5 per cent increase in luxury prices nationwide.

Real estate developers enjoy a growing pool of wealth to target. Roughly 173,000 individuals worldwide are worth above $30 million, according to a report by London-based real estate consultancy Knight-Frank. Their numbers are forecast to swell an additional 34 per cent in the next decade.

In setting up the Porsche Design Tower, Dezer identified and sent packages to 1,500 individuals with an affinity for the German automaker. The outreach produced 62 sales.

More than 90 per cent of the 132 condo units have been sold. Prices started at $4 million, with penthouses listed for above $30 million. The buyers agree to pay 50 per cent of the price in installments during construction — essentially financing the development on more generous terms than some banks would.

Just the idea of the car elevator was enough to persuade Juan Pablo Verdiquio to buy at the Porsche Design Tower.

“I took a leap of faith,” said Verdiquio, who had moved to Miami from Argentina a few years earlier and launched a construction business.

For Verdiquio, who drives a Porsche 911 4S, the tower seemed a perfect fit. So he bought an apartment.

But then Dezer showed him blueprints for the Armani building, where prices start at $1.5 million. Verdiquio bought a unit there, too.

Yet Dezer also pitches Miami as a bargain. The average Miami Beach condo sells for roughly $760 a square foot, making it cheaper than most other international cities, according to the brokerage Christie’s International.

The condos can also insulate buyers from the devaluation of foreign currencies against the dollar.

A Russian who bought a $1 million home in Miami last year would have spent the equivalent of 34 million rubles. Because the ruble has since plunged, that home is worth roughly 60 million rubles.

“People look at these apartments as bank accounts,” Dezer said.

Aren’t you tired, when calling a large organisation, to have to go through the usual maze of dial-this-for-that only to reach a dead end, after a nerve breaking and frustrating wait-time? Unfortunately big business and automation come at a price and I don’t mean just money.

The pattern is typical to big enterprises that have to provide customer support and cannot, understandably, keep answering the phone and helping millions of users in the old traditional, one-on-one natural manner. But what about the client’s side of the story?

From Orange or Zain in Jordan, to Microsoft, Network Solutions, GoDaddy, HostGator, Amazon and other tech-giants abroad, they all realise they have to provide clients with answers and support. None have yet found a really good way of doing it. Well, perhaps we must give some (moderated) kudos to Amazon for providing an automated phone service that is closer to the ideal thing than most others; it is definitely above average.

Regardless of the result you may or may not obtain by calling an automated phone system, the vast majority of us need to talk to a human being when looking for answers or technical support of any kind. Nothing has yet replaced this kind of time-honoured means of communication and its efficiency.

Again, some automated phone systems are more perfected than others, but globally they would lead you to frustration most of the time, even if someone answers you eventually.

An example on the imperfection side. Last week, I had to call one of the above-mentioned organisations (I will abstain from specifying which), looking for answers to a given problem. After going through the usual dial-this menu that involved not less than nine steps and 15 minutes of waiting, a real person finally answered me. I thought it was my lucky day. Alas, and with all due respect to her ethnicity or mother tongue, which I could not pinpoint, the English accent of the lady was such that I honestly could not understand what she was saying. It was most likely a decentralised call-centre like most big companies sub-contract these days to reduce operating costs.

Whereas many claim to provide a personalised customer service, they just fall short of doing it right. One must admit that the problem is big, given the huge numbers involved and the perfect solution is out of reach for now.

Sometimes, however, the system works alright and you are glad to have had a refined automated phone system to “talk to”. Royal Jordanian for one runs a great voice operated system based on voice recognition and that is a pleasure to use. Microsoft provides a more or less similar system that lets you activate Windows or Office over the phone. It’s a bit long but it is very accurate and it does work.

The most difficult instances are those that involve dial menus that simply do not cover the very case you are calling for and that do not leave room for you to dial a key to talk to a human operator. Understandably no system can cover all cases. Haven’t you ever had a final answer by the automated phone system that simply was “for more information please consult our Q&A pages on our website?” So much for personalised service.

The robot age is upon us that is a certainty. How intelligent these systems may become is another story. Billions have been injected in research in the Artificial Intelligence field since 1990, in Japan more particularly. Twenty-five years on and no tangible results have been felt by the population. Many countries have even cut down their budget for this specific kind of scientific research, Germany and France among others. Could it be a sign that we should go back to the vital human touch after all? I’d love to have someone to talk to and I don’t mind being tagged as being old-fashioned.