For guests used to staying in the best rooms at luxury hotels, the top suite at the Four Seasons Hotel New York may offer the ultimate in bragging rights: To sleep in it, you have to stomach its $35,000 a night price tag. The Zen Room The Ty Warner Penthouse, named for the Beanie Baby mogul and the hotel’s owner, is the most expensive hotel room in the country outside of Las Vegas, an important distinction in the industry since rooms in the gambling capital are often comped for high rollers. The suite has sweeping views of Manhattan in every direction, bathroom sinks made of solid blocks of rock crystal and a personal butler on-call 24 hours a day. Guests have the use of a Maybach or Rolls-Royce-with driver, of course. Room service from the hotel’s restaurants, including one run by celebrity chef Joël Robuchon, is included in the price and nearly unlimited (though one guest was charged for a $1,000 order of caviar). The suite, which opened in 2007, cost $50 million to build and took seven years to design, the hotel says. Mr. Warner says the room is important because it gives the entire […]
Hopefully, by now, you’ve already read the oil spill apocalypse pieces penned by our own Ryan Grim — who documented ‘BP’s Long History Of Destroying The World’ — and Sam Stein, who got the following diagnosis from a top lawyer in Exxon Valdez litigation: ‘[I]f you were affected in Louisiana, to use a legal term, you are just f–ked’. Well, here’s something else depressing that you can add to your oil spill woes. The Exxon Valdez disaster, which occurred on March 24, 1989, played a major role in the collapse of the economy some 19 years later. See, as Stein documented, after lengthy litigation, Exxon managed to get the amount of punitive compensatory damages reduced from the hoped-for $5 billion to a paltry $500 million. But, back when Exxon had reason to imagine it might actually have to part with the $5 billion, the oil giant needed to find a way to cover its hindquarters. Exxon found a savior in the form of J.P. Morgan & Co., who extended the beleaguered company a line of credit in the amount of $4.8 billion. Of course, that put J.P. Morgan on the hook for any potential judgment against Exxon. So […]
ne challenge for electric-car buyers has just been solved for those who get on the list quickly. ChargePoint America, a program sponsored by charger-maker Coulomb Technologies to install chargers in nine U.S. cities, is offering the first 4,600 chargers in the program, worth $37 million, for free. Referred to as Level II chargers because they provide electricity at 220 volts to 240 volts, the chargers will be available to both private individuals and to cities for public charging locations. The recipients, however, will have to pay for installation. Home installations are expected to cost up to several hundred dollars, depending on the location. The nine cities include: Austin, Texas; Detroit; Los Angeles; New York; Orlando; Sacramento, Calif.; the San Jose/San Francisco Bay area; Redmond, Wash.; and Washington, D.C. The company says three main factors went into the selection of the cities. First, each region had to be on at least one of the participating automakers list of target regions where their vehicles will be for sale by September 2011, when the chargers are expected to be installed. Second, the regions themselves had to write a letter to support the grant proposal. Third, the […]
The Food and Drug Administration, the nation’s chief watchdog on food safety, is too often caught flat-footed when problems arise, a health advisory panel said Tuesday, urging the agency to focus more on preventing outbreaks of illness by targeting facilities and products most likely to make people sick. The panel said the FDA is trying to apply so-called risk-based management in food safety in piecemeal fashion and does not have an overall plan, or the money, to implement it effectively. The assessment came in a report from the Institute of Medicine, the health arm of the National Academies. Making the recommended reforms so the FDA heads off problems instead of trying to solve them after they crop up would require ‘a cultural change, a different way of doing business,’ said the study’s main author, Dr. Robert Wallace of the University of Iowa’s College of Public Health. Devising a proactive plan would include pulling together fragmented food safety information in a master database that would allow the FDA, other federal, state and local agencies, and industry to share information to prevent food borne illnesses, the report said. ‘You want to put your limited resources where they’ll do […]
A nearly 25-year study concluded that children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers. The study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, followed 78 lesbian couples who conceived through sperm donations and assessed their children’s well-being through a series of questionnaires and interviews. Funding for the research came from several lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender advocacy groups, such as the Gill Foundation and the Lesbian Health Fund from the Gay Lesbian Medical Association. Dr. Nanette Gartrell, the author of the study, wrote that the ‘funding sources played no role in the design or conduct of the study.’ ‘My personal investment is in doing reputable research,’ said Gartrell. ‘This is a straightforward statistical analysis. It will stand and it has withstood very rigorous peer review by the people who make the decision whether or not to publish it.’ Gay parenting remains a controversial issue, with debates about topics including the children’s psychological adjustment, their parents’ sexual orientation and adoption restrictions. Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, a group that supports biblical values, questioned the legitimacy of the findings from a study funded by gay […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
