The World’s First Floating Space Hotel is Launching in 2021

Are you always looking for something a little different when it comes to travelling? Well, booking a “room” in a hotel that floats in space would probably be right up your street.

Robert Bigelow, a billionaire hotel mogul, has announced plans to launch just that.

The 72-year-old says a ‘B330’ line of space stations, advertised as ‘fully autonomous standalone space.

He’s hoping to sell time slots to governments that need time in space for scientific reasons but also to sell “holidays” to people. The units will reportedly hold around six people each.

The 72-year-old says a ‘B330’ line of space stations, advertised as ‘fully autonomous standalone space stations’, is already underway.

Consisting of two 17-metre modules that will be linked to create outer-space accommodations – the units, once conjoined, will actually offer twice the cubic capacity of the International Space Station. The modules will be able to function in low-Earth orbit (a zone about 250 miles above Earth) and cislunar space.

Sadly for the majority though, spending a night in space won’t be a reality. Reserved for the mega wealthy, Bigelow says bookings will cost in the “low seven figures” though most likely in the “low eight figure”.

Bigelow made his money by launching the hotel chain Budget Suites of America in 1987 but was always fascinated by space. Growing up in Las Vegas, he was privy to science through witnessing – from a distance – a number of atomic tests conducted in Nevada.

He has previously said that at the age of 12 he “decided that his future lay in space travel, despite his limitations [in mathematics, and] he resolved to choose a career that would make him rich enough that, one day, he could hire the scientific expertise required to launch his own space program. Until then, he would tell no one — not even his wife —about his ultimate goal.”

In 1999 he finally founded his private space firm, Bigelow Aerospace but this hotel is part of his new company Bigelow Space Operations. The project is reported to be costing a cool $2.3 billion.

Three Iconic Brands Partner to Create a Whiskey Lover’s Dream Gift

Ashford Castle, Midleton Rare Whiskey and Waterford Crystal Produce the Perfect Blend

Ashford Castle, Ireland’s 800 year-old quintessential castle hotel, has announced a new and exciting partnership with Midleton Very Rare Whiskey and Waterford Crystal to launch a bespoke cask specifically for Ashford Castle, along with crystal whiskey tumblers and carafe bearing the Ashford logo.

Built in the 13th century and once home to the famous Guinness family, Ashford Castle became a hotel in 1939, hosting royalty, dignitaries and heads of state. In 2013, it was purchased by Red Carnation and the Tollman family, and after a $75 million restoration project, it was brought back to its former glory. In addition to a complete restoration, the project also added a wine cellar, billiards room and cigar terrace. Long a whiskey aficionado, owner Stanley Tollman has particular interest in this project, and has been involved in it from inception to finish.

The Midleton Distillery is home to the largest inventory of maturing Irish whiskey in the world. Its Master Distiller, Brian Nation, hand-selects the finest whiskeys for the Midleton Very Rare collection. This includes releases such as single pot stills, single cask bottlings, travel retail exclusives, special editions and prestige and ultra-prestige bottlings.

Cask #70345 is an American virgin oak barrel that was filled with a medium style pot still. A virgin oak barrel means it hasn’t held bourbon prior to arriving to Midleton, thus making the contribution from the oak a lot richer and more profound. The style of pot still distillate retains the classic spicy character holding up to the significant wood element to give good balance.

Waterford was first established in 1783 on land adjacent to Merchants’ Quay in the heart of the Irish harbor town of Waterford, just minutes from the present day House of Waterford Crystal. The business thrived for 70 years before falling victim to the economy and world events. The company saw a resurgence after World War II, and has since regained its status as some of the world’s finest crystal today. “We are thrilled to be partnering with two such iconic brands,” said General Manager Niall Rochford, “particularly ones that so closely reflect the standard and attitude toward guest experience that Ashford Castle espouses.”

Drive from Ireland to Scotland by Bridge?

Just a matter of hours after Boris Johnson announced that it was possible to build a bridge crossing the English Channel from England to France a leading architect has suggested that a bridge from Ireland to Scotland is feasible at a fraction of the cost to the England/France connection.

If such a bridge were to come to pass it would be possible to visit Ireland on a self drive tour and then drive over the bridge to Scotland avoiding the need to book a flight or ferry!

A PROPOSED BRIDGE connecting Ireland and Scotland could create a “Celtic powerhouse”.

Leading architect Professor Alan Dunlop from Liverpool University has said that a combined road and rail crossing could be created between Portpatrick, Dumfries and Larne in Northern Ireland.

The expert believes that the new structure would boost the Scottish and Irish economies and help solve any longer-term disputes over the re-emergence of an Irish border post-Brexit. He spoke out after the Foreign Secretary raised the prospect of a bridge over the English Channel last week.

Carnival Fascination Returns to San Juan

Courtesy  Tom Stieghorst

San Juan has regained its homeported Carnival Cruise Line ship, five months after Hurricane Maria knocked the Carnival Fascination out of the market.

The 2,056-passenger Fantasy-class ship was chartered to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for use by relief workers in St. Croix for several months after the storm while Carnival repaired damage to its terminal in San Juan.

The 24-year-old ship then went into a drydock to be upgraded before returning to cruising duty.  Several Funship 2.0 restaurants were installed during the drydock, including Guy’s Burger Joint, the BlueIguana Cantina and Bonsai Sushi Express. Bar concepts new to the ship will be the Alchemy Bar, the RedFrog Rum Bar and the BlueIguana Tequilla Bar. The candy store Cherry on Top was also retrofitted to the ship.

The Fascination will depart San Juan on Sundays for seven-day round trip voyages stopping in St. Lucia, Barbados, St. Kitts, St. Thomas and St. Maarten.

“Out of this World” First-Ever Space Festival Coming to Las Cruces, New Mexico

It’s time to have fun and enjoy the accomplishments and importance of space in Las Cruces and the surrounding community. To celebrate all things space, volunteers have come together to create New Mexico’s first ever Space Festival. It will take place over three days and nights, April 12^th to 14^th, across three locations. The theme is “Making Space for Everyone.”

The festival kicks off on April 12^th — the day of “Celebration.” On this day, events will be geared toward children and families in celebration of the anniversary of human space flight. Yuri’s Night, which has been celebrated worldwide since 2001, marks the date when the then USSR launched Yuri Gagarin into a single orbit around the Earth in 1961.  Events will take place on the New Mexico State University campus, including an evening event organized for youth by NMSU’s Women in STEM (WiSTEM) group, a mobile planetarium in which people can experience and learn about the night sky, and a Tech Center featuring a flight simulation specifically tailored to space travel. There will also be educational NMSU Space Talks and stargazing. Las Cruces Public Schools are also planning events earlier in the week.

On Friday, April 13^th, the day of “Raising Awareness,” some of the greatest minds in the area will gather for a Space Showcase at Mesilla Valley Mall. Representatives from NASA White Sands Test Facility, Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic, New Mexico Space History Museum, UTEP’s aerospace program, the Experimental Aircraft Association, and others will be featured. The Space Showcase will offer the perfect opportunity for budding astronauts, curious minds and science buffs to interact with and ask questions from experts in space travel, aerospace and space exploration. The evenings of the first two days will also include free space-themed movies at the Rio Grande Theater on Main St.

On Saturday, April 14^th, the day of “Entertainment” will take place on the Plaza de Las Cruces and surrounding locations in the downtown area, and will be a full range of interactive events. Virgin Galactic will bring a full size replica of their suborbital SpaceShipTwo to the Albert Johnson Park, adjacent to Las Cruces City Hall. There will be many hands-on activities provided by ¡explora!, Insights El Paso Science Center, Asombro and Cruces Creative, amongst others. Experts from the Space Showcase will be back on-hand to interact with attendees. The NMSU Atomic Aggies Rocket Club will display their competition rocket, New Mexico Space Grant will have their high altitude weather balloon used to observe the recent solar eclipse. There will be at least two Challenger Center Missions, including one open to adult members of the public for the first time, and a unique space pickleball game in the afternoon, plus a ‘space walk’, in which participants are encouraged to dress in their best space or alien costumes.

The Las Cruces Space Festival will provide an incredible opportunity for youth to learn about and get excited about space and for older generations to celebrate the impact that space has had in their daily lives. For all lovers of space and all those with a growing curiosity, the Space Festival will bring education, entertainment and fun together in one package, with some of the key organizations behind regional space activity involved, and it will be a one-of-a-kind event, said Festival organizers, who are also aiming to set up a space tour from Las Cruces to Spaceport America as part of the event. KTAL 101.5 Community Radio in Las Cruces will broadcast special features and interviews throughout the week of the Festival.

“We all benefit from space related activity and innovations, including cell phones, GPS and weather tracking, just to name a few,” said Jonathan Firth of Virgin Galactic, one of the festival’s partners. “There is already much space-related activity in New Mexico, and it’s set to increase dramatically over the coming years — especially with commercial space flights just around the corner. Many activities for the Festival are already confirmed, and we are now working on adding to them and confirming sponsors before April 12^th.”

Event partners include New Mexico State University, City of Las Cruces, Greater Las Cruces Chamber of Commerce, Las Cruces Public Schools, Big Brothers Big Sisters Mountain Region, Virgin Galactic, Jacobs Technology, ¡explora!, EAA, Spaceport America, New Mexico Space Grant, NASA White Sands Test Facility, Mesilla Valley Mall, Visit Las Cruces, KTAL Community Radio, Las Cruces Sun News, Las Cruces Bulletin, Hotel Encanto, Insights El Paso Science Center, Las Cruces Challenger Learning Center, Cruces Creatives, and the Rio Grande Theatre.

For more information, visit Space Festival. To participate in the festival, contact

lc******@gm***.com











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Cruise Cools to China

Courtesy  Tom Stieghorst

The cruise industry’s gold rush to China, if not over, has entered a new phase: For the first time in at least four years, cruise capacity in China will not grow in 2018.

That means that the focus and management attention that has been lavished on the world’s most populous country may now be turning elsewhere.

To hear evidence of that, listen to the list of places that Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings CEO Frank Del Rio reeled off when asked if he’s ready to put a second ship in China.

“We have many other either unserved or underserved markets that we would also consider in the mix, should ships become available to us,” Del Rio said in response to a question from a Wells Fargo analyst. “We don’t have a presence in the mid-Atlantic states. We’re not in Baltimore. We’re not in Charleston. We don’t have a presence at all in the world’s second largest port, which is Fort Lauderdale. We don’t have a presence in the Gulf States of Texas or Alabama. We don’t have a year-round presence in Tampa or New Orleans or in Los Angeles.”

Del Rio went on to say that the Norwegian Cruise Line brand will have three ships in Alaska this summer, where some competitors have as many as eight.

“So, given our fleet size today and the fact that we will only be taking one ship per year, it could be a couple of years before we consider adding more tonnage to China, if the conditions in the rest of the world remain as robust as they are today,” Del Rio said.

The Chinese boom really got going in 2014 when Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. announced it would devote its brand-new Quantum of the Seas, the first of a new class of ship, to the Chinese market.

In a world full of supposedly bold moves, that one really was. And it prompted other lines for the first time to put brand new ships in China, as everyone feared being left behind in the scramble to impress the Chinese.

Being the preferred brand in a market that was projected to be the biggest in the world in a decade or so was worth the gamble of putting brand new tonnage in an unproven and opaque market.

So when Princess Cruises sent the Majestic Princess to Shanghai last year and Norwegian sent the Norwegian Joy, in addition to the Quantum and ships from Costa Cruises and others, the result was a crowded field.

Throw into the mix the spat between China and South Korea that limited itineraries out of northern China, and China became a much weaker cruise market last year.

While cruise lines insist that they’re in it for the long haul, and even in the short term it has been profitable, the sense that China is going to deliver a big increase in global cruise revenues has been tempered.

Already Norwegian’s focus for 2018 has turned to introducing Norwegian Bliss to the North American market, and in particular the U.S. West Coast. Who knows where else in the U.S. Norwegian ships might be coming next?

Airlines Inching Closer to Dynamic Pricing

Courtesy Robert Silk

Imagine if airlines could tailor fare offers based on who was making the ticket inquiry, rather than strictly on the search criteria. Well, industry technology and revenue-management experts say those days are fast approaching.

In fact, a few airlines have already implemented what is known as dynamic pricing on some ticket searches within their own channels, according to the revenue management software provider PROS, which works with some 80 airlines worldwide, including Southwest, Lufthansa, Emirates and Aeromexico.

“2018 will be a very phenomenal year in terms of traction,” said John McBride, director of product management for PROS. “Based on our backlog of projects, there will be a handful of large carriers that move toward dynamic pricing science.”

Critics of the technology warn of a growing lack of transparency if fares are priced dynamically.

Conceptually, dynamic ticket pricing is simple. An airline identifies the person making a flight inquiry, then mines its data for that person’s flying history. The person could be identified if he or she is logged into an OTA or into an airline website through a frequent flyer account.

Much as Amazon does today to remember shopping histories, those sites could also set cookies at login to identify a person (or at least the device being used) for subsequent searches in which the individual is not logged in, said Phocuswright technology analyst Bob Offutt. And there are also technology companies that provide the capability to identify consumers across multiple devices without the need for login information, McBride said.

The revenue-management platform then uses an individual’s flight-shopping history to generate a person-specific fare offer that differs from the offer some other shoppers might get for the same fare inquiry at the same time.

Experts say such technology is most likely to be used to offer discounts to customers with loyalty status and to generate bundled fare offerings that fit the customer’s profile. But in theory the technology could also be used for different purposes, such as to induce a new customer with an especially affordable ticket or to offer a higher ticket price to someone who is likely to be undeterred by an upcharge.

Dynamic pricing platforms will also generate specialized offerings based on the profile of a fare search, even if they don’t have the specific identity of the shopper, said Peter Belobaba, the airline industry program director at MIT who helped author a recent discussion paper on advances in airline industry revenue management and distribution for the Airline Tariff Publishing Co. (ATPCO), the airline-owned corporation that collects and distributes fare data.

For example, if a person were to query a one-night, midweek trip from New York to Chicago, the platform might make the assumption that the inquirer is traveling for business, then prepare fare offerings that fit the profile of a business traveler.

By employing dynamic price offerings, airlines would hope to increase conversion rates while driving incremental revenue increases, in part by showing more travelers that there is value in paying a bit extra for a more comfortable flight.

“I believe a lot of consumers are so focused on the lowest fare that they end up buying a degraded product, then complaining when they don’t get a seat assignment,” Belobaba said.

But according to the recent ATPCO paper, prepared by PODS Research, moving into a world of dynamic price offerings has proven technologically difficult for the airline sector, in large part due to the legacy distribution system that was put in place after deregulation in 1978.

That distribution system allows for just 26 fare classes, one for each letter of the alphabet. Airlines assign prices and restrictions to each fare class, then file those classes with ATPCO for dissemination to GDSs. At present, carriers are able to update prices in each fare class four times per day on domestic flights and hourly on international flights, said Tom Gregorson, vice president of products and solutions for ATPCO.

But in practice, Belobaba said, most airlines typically keep their set of price points for weeks at a time and mainly manage fare offerings by altering the fare classes that are up for sale at any given time. To move into a world of dynamic price offerings, the airline distribution industry will have to get away from the legacy fare-filing system or institute a hybrid solution, Gregorson said.

Under a hybrid system, airlines would still do fare filings, but then revenue-management programs would be able to offer price changes from those base fares depending on who is doing the fare search.

The key to enabling such technology is the development of a working interface that would enable the shopping engine of a GDS or OTA to communicate with an airline’s own pricing engine, which would be doing the adjustment, Gregorson said. He added that ATPCO’s Dynamic Pricing Working Group, which reconvenes for three days this week, has implemented a pilot project to work on protocols for such an interface.

In a purer version of dynamic pricing, however, airlines wouldn’t file fares at all. Instead, a fare offer would be generated from scratch, in real time, based on who the shopper is, the nature of the inquiry and existing demand and availability for a given flight.

McBride of PROS said that 11 of the company’s airline clients are already using its software to generate real-time dynamic offers within direct sales channels, including their websites. Several of those airlines are making the price offers by adjusting from their published fares, while others are generating offers from scratch. 

Though he wouldn’t identify the airlines for contractual reasons, McBride said they are mainly major carriers and are based around the globe.

Rollout of dynamic pricing by those carriers has been cautious and segmented, with much of it concentrated on group travel and on routes that compete against low-cost carriers, including against Europe’s Ryanair and EasyJet, neither of which files fares with ATPCO.

“Our customers have definitely seen increased conversion rates of up to 50%, and it has enabled airlines to achieve incremental revenue in the 7% to 10% range,” McBride said. “Dynamic pricing clearly speaks to the opportunity for airlines to service a wider range of customers with a broader set of fares.”

Gregorson said it’s unclear when dynamic pricing will become a possibility through GDSs and other indirect sales channels. But he added that ATPCO’s working group meeting this week could provide more clarity on that question.

Easter, 1916

By William Butler Yeats

I  have met them at close of day
Coming with vivid faces
From counter or desk among grey
Eighteenth-century houses.
I have passed with a nod of the head
Or polite meaningless words,
Or have lingered awhile and said
Polite meaningless words
And thought before I had done
Of a mocking tale or a gibe
To please a companion
Around the fire at the club,
Being certain that they and I
But lived where motley is worn:
All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born

That woman’s days were spent
In ignorant good-will,
Her nights in argument
Until her voice grew shrill.
What voice more sweet than hers
When, young and beautiful,
She rode to harriers?
This man had kept a school
And rode our wingèd horse;
This other his helper and friend
Was coming into his force;
He might have won fame in the end,
So sensitive his nature seemed,
So daring and sweet his thought.
This other man I had dreamed
A drunken, vainglorious lout.
He had done most bitter wrong
To some who are near my heart,
Yet I number him in the song;
He, too, has resigned his part
In the casual comedy;
He, too, has been changed in his turn,
Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Hearts with one purpose alone
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road,
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A shadow of cloud on the stream
Changes minute by minute;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of all.

Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart.
O when may it suffice?
That is Heaven’s part, our part
To murmur name upon name,
As a mother names her child
When sleep at last has come
On limbs that had run wild.
What is it but nightfall?
No, no, not night but death;
Was it needless death after all?
For England may keep faith
For all that is done and said.
We know their dream; enough
To know they dreamed and are dead;
And what if excess of love
Bewildered them till they died?
I write it out in a verse —
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.

Send Deb your favorite travel poems.

The post Space Hotel, Whiskey, Cruise Ships, Dynamic Pricing appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Anthony Bourdain’s Most Interesting Places to Eat in America Right Now

Despite getting his start in kitchens, as painstakingly detailed in his memoir Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain will be the first person to say he doesn’t have much of an interest in restaurants, at least not in the conventional sense.

“I don’t really care about restaurant culture that much,” Bourdain tells Food & Wine at the 10th Annual Cayman Cookout. “Street food and traditional food — and discovering that — is exciting to me.” The Parts Unknown host still eats out, but he dreads getting special attention because of his fame. “I like going to places where nobody fusses over me or sends me any extra courses,” he says. (For this reason, his go-to drinking spot in New York is a low-key Irish pub, the name of which he will never divulge.)

Bourdain talks about the places in America he’s most excited about eating in when he’s not schlepping around the globe.

The South

“I think the South right now is really interesting. I think what Sean Brock is doing, and has been doing, is really cutting-edge and a direction forward that I think a lot of people are following: rediscovering traditional ingredients, species, specific types of food — varieties of rice, for instance, that haven’t existed. He’s a seed collector. A botonist.”

Mid-Size Cities

“What I find when I travel in America nowadays is that everywhere you go, mid-size to small-size communities like Asheville or Madison or Pittsburgh, there’s a hipster chef with a full sleeve of tattoos, and he or she is doing really good food, often reflective of the foodways of the region. So you really can’t safely sneer at any place. Chances are there’s someone or a few people who are flying the flag.”

Korean BBQ and Yakitori in N.Y.C.

“I love Torishin, the yakitori place. I love Baekjeong, the Korean barbecue place; you can eat with your hands basically over chopsticks. What I don’t want is extra courses.”

On an international scale, Bourdain is most excited about eating in the regions where he has the most to learn. “China is endlessly exciting to me,” he says. “Malaysia and Singapore, of course, are always exciting because I’ll never know it all. It’s so old and deep. Senegal, Oman, Lebanon, Iran: these are relatively new cuisines to me, but also very old.”

Alcatraz Inmates Survived Infamous 1962 Escape, Letter Suggests

It is one of America’s greatest mysteries: What happened to three men after they pulled off a daring prison break at Alcatraz in 1962? Only the worst criminals were sent to Alcatraz. And for 29 years, it was the most secure federal prison in the country – surrounded by the cold, rough waters of the Pacific. But brothers John and Clarence Anglin and Frank Morris disappeared into the night and have never been found.

The men have become folklore – fueled by Hollywood and popular shows. And in the last 55 years, theories about their fate have multiplied as new evidence surfaces. A letter allegedly written by one of the escapees recently came to light. CBS San Francisco exclusively obtained it from a source. “My name is John Anglin. I escape from Alcatraz in June 1962 with my brother Clarence and Frank Morris. I’m 83 years old and in bad shape. I have cancer. Yes we all made it that night but barely!” The FBI says this is the most recent piece of evidence that forced the agency to reopen the iconic cold case. The letter was sent to the San Francisco Police Department’s Richmond station in 2013.

“It’s interesting, I mean it’s obviously a very famous case here in San Francisco,” said jeff Harp, a security analyst for CBS San Francisco. Harp spent 21 years with the FBI, but did not work directly on this case. “As a law enforcement person I’d like to think that their escape attempt was not fruitful for them. Personally, as someone who swims in the bay, and we have a triathlon that goes on every year, and there’s not a single person that doesn’t make that swim,” he added. This past summer, we got an exclusive tour of some never-before-seen parts of Alcatraz. After months of meticulous planning – on the night of June 11, 1962 – the trio of bank robbers squeezed through the vents in the back of their cells.

The FBI says they used a homemade drill made from a broken vacuum cleaner motor to widen the vents. Once they crawled through, they climbed up a network of pipes and plumbing in a commonly unguarded space. They set up a secret workshop on the top of their cells, where they built and hid what they needed to escape. They eventually made it out through the ventilator that led them to the prison roof. They slid down the smokestack to the ground and launched their raft – made of more than 50 raincoats. They also created life vests and wooden paddles.

The next morning, guards found dummy heads made of plaster, paper mache, paint and real human hair in their cells.

According to the letter, Frank died in 2008 and John’s brother died three years later. The writer makes a deal – “If you announce on TV that I will be promised to first go to jail for no more than a year and get medical attention, I will write back to let you know exactly where I am. This is no joke.”

Shaq Fits the Fun Ship Brand

Former basketball star Shaquille O’Neal is now Carnival’s newly-named Chief Fun Officer. Yes, Shaquille O’Neal. Of course it makes sense for he embodies the kind of people Carnival wants on its ships: social, happy and a tad goofy around the edges.

The hulking 7-foot-1 O’Neal will appear in a 30-second video tour of the Carnival Vista in his first assignment as CFO (chief fun officer).

Shaq will show his playful side during the tour, sporting a Love Boat-style captain’s hat and visiting the SkyRide, Havana pool and the Cloud 9 Spa, among other Vista attractions.

On the ship’s basketball court, Shaq stuffs an attempted layup by a co-worker. At Guy Fieri’s Burger Joint, he tries to swipe a burger from an inattentive companion.

“We are very excited to have Shaq as part of the Carnival team!” said Carnival Cruise Line president Christine Duffy. “He will serve as a great ambassador ensuring everyone knows all about our one-of-a-kind brand of fun.”

Since retiring from the National Basketball Association in 2011, O’Neal’s principal role has been as a commentator on the TNT channel’s basketball coverage. In the past, he has done TV commercials for Buick, Pepsi, Reebok, IcyHot and other products.

O’Neal played for six teams over a 19-year career and was part of four championship teams, including one for the Miami Heat in 2006. The Heat’s principal owner is Carnival Corp. chairman Micky Arison.

Carnival said O’Neal’s role at the brand will be to lend his “fun, larger-than-life personality and playful spirit” to inspire travelers to “Choose Fun” when planning their next vacation and in their everyday lives.

An Analysis of It Sifts from Leaden Sieves

“It Sifts from Leaden Sieves” is a wonderful Emily Dickinson poem; it is also a beautiful winter poem. In a few lines, Dickinson captures the movement of the snow and the way it settles upon the winter landscape, rendering the road, the railings of the fence, and the lampposts different and strange.

This poem describes the snow that falls (or ‘sifts’) from the dark grey clouds in the sky (‘leaden sieves’). ‘Sifts’ is a nice use of what is normally a transitive verb as an intransitive verb (you sift something, e.g. flour; things don’t sift); it also chimes with ‘sieves’, immediately evoking the metaphor of flour being sifted through a sieve. The metaphors continue: the snow is ‘alabaster wool’ and like ‘fleeces’, a ‘crystal veil’ coating the roads and the fences, eradicating our former memories of the landscape before it was coated in a covering of snow.

The poem is a beautiful description of the way snow obscures familiar objects, rendering them strange and ghostly to us. Who but Emily Dickinson would have thought to describe snow as ‘alabaster wool’? But the most remarkable thing about the poem is that it never mentions snow by name. It doesn’t have to. ‘It sifts from leaden sieves’ (like ‘It rains’, that common idiom where the precise meaning of ‘it’ is hard to define) captures the spectral beauty of snow much more effectively.

“Games of Thrones”-Themed Ice Hotel Opens in Finland

A “Game of Thrones”-themed ice hotel complete with a bar and a chapel for weddings has opened in northern Finland in a joint effort by a local hotel chain and the U.S. producers of the hit TV series.

Lapland Hotels said Friday they chose “Game of Thrones” to be the theme for this season’s Snow Village, an annual ice-and-snow construction project covering 20,000 square meters (24,000 sq. yards) in Kittila, 150 kilometers (93 miles) above the Arctic Circle.

Snow Village operations manager Janne Pasma told Finnish national broadcaster YLE that he was a huge fan of the series and it was “a dream come true” that HBO Nordic agreed to go along.

The hotel, which stays open until April, suggests that guests stay only one night due to below-zero temperatures.

Here’s How Being in Power Messes With Your Brain, According to Science

From the bully on the playground to the big-wig in the corner office, power dynamics are everywhere in our lives.

Courtesy Hilary Brueck, BUSINESS INSIDER

A flood of allegations that powerful men in media, politics, and tech have been abusing their positions of power and preying on those below them have surfaced in recent months. High-profile figures including Harvey Weinstein, President Donald Trump, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, Roy Moore and, Senator Al Franken and have been accused of various kinds of unwanted advances, including exposing themselves to co-workers and employees, groping, and rape. People are starting to wonder: Is there something about the rush of being in power that leads people to commit these despicable actions?

Science suggests that there are unusual things happening in the brains of power-holders. Decades of study have shown that the psychology and physiology of powerful people are notably different from those of average people – down to the architecture of the brain’s prefrontal cortex, and the way the heart pumps blood.

Here’s what feeling powerful does to your body and your brain, according to science.

Being powerful can dampen your ability to empathise with others.

Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, has been studying the way powerful brains work for decades. He even lent his expertise about emotions to Pixar’s “Inside Out”.

Keltner’s research has shown that being powerful can disengage your prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain that helps you understand how others are feeling.

“Power makes it harder to empathise with other people, at the level of the brain,” Keltner told Business Insider.

Powerful people are less able to mirror people they observe or interact with.

Powerful people’s “mirroring” systems are not as strong as those of others. That means they’re less likely to mimic a person they’re having a conversation with, and they will do less laughing or shrugging along with their companion.

A 2014 study looked at brains of “high-power” people and revealed that when observing others squeeze a ball, they had less resonance in certain brain areas that should typically light up, suggesting their brains had become less empathetic and able to ‘mirror’ others. The more power someone had, the less resonant they were.

Leaders can find it tough to muster up compassion.

The vagus nerve, which runs from the top of the spinal cord down to the abdomen, has been shown to promote compassion, gratitude and appreciation.

But Keltner’s work has shown that this nerve bundle gets “de-activated” in powerful people. He says that could partially explain why “it’s harder to know how people feel when you’re feeling powerful.”

Some research has shown that being powerful makes people more likely to break the rules, and less likely to share.

A 2011 study showed that people driving high-end cars were four times more likely to cut off other drivers, and three times more likely to cut off a pedestrian about to cross the street. (Some say this could just be a sign that the rich and powerful are more willing to take risks.)

The same researchers also observed how people acted when told that a bin of candy nearby was going to be given to kids. Upper-class people were more likely to be greedy and take extra candy from the bin.

Counterintuitively, greater income inequality leads powerful people to be less generous.

Income inequality can make powerful people less generous and foster a sense of entitlement.

A study of over 2,000 Americans revealed that high-income people in more unequal states were less generous. High-income people living in conditions of low inequality, however, showed about the same level of generosity as lower-income people.

That suggests rich people may not necessarily be inherently less generous, but they are likely to be less charitable if income distribution is more unfair.

Power can help buffer against stress.

For years, researchers have hypothesised that powerful people have a kind of built-in “stress buffer”: they consistently demonstrate lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and higher testosterone, which helps reduce fear.

This holds true across genders (though women have about one-sixth the amount of testosterone that men do).

This isn’t just the case once people have attained power – having lower levels of cortisol and higher levels of testosterone can also predict whether someone rises into a position of leadership.

Pranjal Mehta, who studies hormones and power at University College London, told Business Insider that these common traits wind up propagating inequality.

For example, a job candidate who comes from a wealthy or privileged background already has more sources of power, so they may walk into an interview with extra “psychological resources” that buffer them from stress.

Mehta explained that such a candidate might “appear more competent, regardless of their actual abilities.”

The effects of power extend from the brain into the body.

Powerful people such as police officers have been shown to process blood in the heart faster and deliver that fresh, oxygenated blood to the brain quicker, according to research from Wendy Mendez, who studies how power impacts the body at the University of California San Francisco.

In this way, powerful people can stay healthier and are less likely to develop deadly diseases.

Powerful people who make more money live longer, healthier, less stressful lives.

The richest Americans can expect to live more than six years longer than people living below the poverty line, because they have access to things like healthier food, better health care, and relatively pollution-free neighbourhoods.

That’s true for anyone making an income more than four times the federal poverty level. (That’s a family of four living on over US$98,400 a year, or a single person making more than US$48,240.)

A 2011 study showed that people making more than US$100,000 a year also report lower levels of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness than their lower-income counterparts.

But the effects aren’t just about money: Research has shown that a person’s perception of their own socioeconomic status and where they fit in the social hierarchy also impacts their health.

Data from the World Bank suggests that countries with higher income inequality have lower life expectancy rates at all income levels. Researchers say the wealth inequality leads to less “social cohesion” – and more fear and stress for everyone.

We may be primed to give strong-looking men more power.

Research from 2016 showed that men who are perceived as more “physically formidable” tend to be perceived as having greater leadership abilities.

But the effect isn’t universal. Strong men who were seen as “aggressively self-interested” were not seen as any more worthy of leadership status.

Those who appear to be power-dressers can even have an effect on the heartbeats of the people around them.

A 2014 study by Wendy Mendez pitted power-dressers against those who looked more casual – some men wore black dress suits from Macy’s, while others wore white t-shirts and plastic sandals from Walgreens.

Mendez found that “high-class” dressers had an impact on their counterparts’ hearts: When the heartbeats of the men in suits started racing, their partners’ did too. When the power-dressers heart rates slowed, the pulses of the sandal-wearers mirrored that as well.

But power doesn’t always help your health.

When a person who’s in power thinks they might lose their status, their cortisol levels can skyrocket. Mehta said this might play out in an election year.

“People in positions of power, their stress levels might be increasing,” he said.

On the flip side, in power voids or times of uncertainty about leadership, people of lower status can feel like they have got a fairer shot at making it big.

There are some antidotes to power’s corrupting influence, however.

Not all studies about power are bad news. Research has shown that people who focus on the needs of others and work to improve social welfare are better at understanding peoples’ needs and desires, and improve their ability to manage and cooperate with colleagues.

When people feel a heightened sense of social responsibility in connection with their position of power, they’re more in tune with the needs and views of others.

It’s important for people in power to remember their roots …

Pepsi CEO Indra Nooyi loves to tell the story of the day she became president of the board, and her mother sent her out to fetch milk.

She returned in a huff. Here’s how she told the story to The Atlantic:

I banged [the milk] on the counter and I said, ‘I had great news for you. I’ve just been told that I’m going to be president on the Board of Directors. And all that you want me to do is go out and get the milk, what kind of a mum are you?’ And she said to me, ‘let me explain something to you. You might be president of PepsiCo.

You might be on the board of directors. But when you enter this house, you’re the wife, you’re the daughter, you’re the daughter-in-law, you’re the mother. You’re all of that. Nobody else can take that place. So leave that damned crown in the garage. And don’t bring it into the house.’

Social scientists say that ability to remember one’s roots – the background and people that helped a person make it to the top – is an exercise in gratitude that can keep powerful people in touch with others.

… And keep listening

Leaders who remember that their power is only as good as the respect others have for them also have an easier time staying grounded.

Keltner said that in order to keep his own power in check, he channels his inner Abraham Lincoln, who was known for actively listening to everyone who spoke with him.

“That really is a quality of great leaders,” Keltner said. “They stay fascinated by and devoted to other people.”

History of Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne has become an anthem sung the world over at New Year.

In 1788 the Robert Burns sent the poem ‘Auld Lang Syne’ to the Scots Musical Museum, indicating that it was an ancient song but that he’d been the first to record it on paper. The phrase ‘auld lang syne’ roughly translates as ‘for old times’ sake’, and the song is all about preserving old friendships and looking back over the events of the year.

It is sung all over the world, evoking a sense of belonging and fellowship, tinged with nostalgia.

It has long been a much-loved Scottish tradition to sing the song just before midnight. Everyone stands in a circle holding hands, then at the beginning of the final verse (‘And there’s a hand my trusty friend’) they cross their arms across their bodies so that their left hand is holding the hand of the person on their right, and their right hand holds that of the person on their left. When the song ends, everyone rushes to the middle, still holding hands, and probably giggling.

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