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lifesTyle<br />
BiG in jAPAn: enViROnMenTAllY<br />
fRienDlY Bikinis MADe Of PlAsTiC<br />
BOTTles<br />
By serkan Toto | 4/17/09 | Crunchgear tpburl.com/4wn1c7<br />
Tokyo-based chemical company Asahi Kasei, a corporate giant with 25,000 employees,<br />
has announced an environmentally friendly product of the very special kind: swimsuits [JP].<br />
The lovely ladies you can see on the picture (Ayumi Kura, 20, on the left and eighteen-year-old<br />
Shi Weng Lu on the right) are wearing bikinis made of polyethylene tephthalate. Polyethylene<br />
tephthalate (PET) is the stuff they use to make plastic bottles.<br />
Asahi Kasei claims the swimsuits they make from PET (marketed under the brand name<br />
Sunplay ECO) are very quick to dry and offer a high level of elasticity. I bet they do. The<br />
company also says that compared to conventional swimwear, Sunplay products have a better<br />
environmental footprint by using less oil and releasing less carbon dioxide in the production<br />
process.<br />
Unfortunately, Asahi Kasei hasn’t said yet when the new swimwear will be sold and if it will<br />
find its way outside Japan, too.<br />
PhoTos<br />
Too faT To fly (BuT noT Too Tall?)<br />
By harriet | 4/18/09 | feed me! tpburl.com/ntxh4q<br />
My daughter took a flight recently and sat next to a man who she guessed was over seven<br />
feet tall. No lie. And because there was no elbow rest between their seats, she spent the flight<br />
hunched into a corner of her seat.<br />
You can be damn sure this gentleman was not charged for two seats. And yet anyone who<br />
now flies United who takes up more than his or her allotted seat centimeters due to weight will<br />
be charged for two seats. So flying fat will cost you double, but flying tall won’t.<br />
I find United’s new policy offensive and discriminatory on many levels. If you do too,<br />
consider following the directions in the form letter below, which was created by Marilyn Wann,<br />
to protest. Because you better believe that if United gets away with this, all the major carriers<br />
will start imposing a fat flyers’ penalty. And who’s to say what’s “too fat” to fly with a single<br />
ticket? Down the line, could ticket agents be whipping out BMI charts when you get your<br />
boarding pass? I put nothing past this fatphobic society (and the airlines’ desperation to turn a<br />
profit).<br />
10<br />
hi:<br />
united airlines is the last of the major carriers to announce proudly a policy of charging fat passengers<br />
double.<br />
they say they received 700 complaints last year (out of 80 million passengers carried) from thin<br />
people who did not like having a fat person sit next to them and perhaps take up some of their<br />
seat space.<br />
i am convinced that the 700 fat seatmates who didn’t complain were not too happy about the situation,<br />
either. people in the fat pride community have decided to try and beat that 700 complaints<br />
statistic.<br />
i’m writing to ask you and the people you know to complain at united.com about this costly and<br />
discriminatory targeting of one demographic group. if this policy stands, it means fat people have<br />
less right to interstate air travel than other people. everybody deserves a safe and comfortable<br />
chair on an airplane, at an affordable price!<br />
here’s the link for Customer Relations.<br />
expect to be asked to fill in some irksome required fields:<br />
- if you don’t have a united frequent flier number, you can use mine: 00229870823.<br />
- For flight info, i just put 4/15/2009 (the day united announced its policy).<br />
- For departure and return cities, i put San Francisco in both slots.<br />
please copy your complaint letter to my e-mail address, so we can keep count as we approach<br />
and pass 700.<br />
thanks tons! - [insert your name and e-mail address]<br />
Janka Mudrakova | tpburl.com/tf07rj<br />
life wiTHOuT eVenTs is like A COOkie wiTHOuT CHOCOlATe<br />
CHiPs. sO sHARe YOuR eVenTs wiTH THe wORlD, Be THeY leCTuRes,<br />
COnCeRTs, PlAYs, sPORTinG eVenTs, ZePHYR lAunCHes, OR MARTY<br />
MCflY fAn CluB MeeTinGs BY senDinG An eMAil TO eVenTs@<br />
THePRinTeDBlOG.COM.<br />
google kind of love or why TBid and i are going To The<br />
shooTing range<br />
By amanda | 4/27/09 | noisiest Passenger tpburl.com/xrpf3w<br />
I’m really good at beginning relationships - open, adventurous, and unavailable enough to<br />
stay interesting.<br />
The problem begins when I start to like the guy. Because people who really like and grow<br />
to love each other tend to want to spend time together. Sometimes they want to hear each<br />
other’s voices before they drift off to sleep or share the most banal details of their days and feel<br />
captivating and supported. Occasionally, they just want to be around with no purpose but to<br />
say, “I could do nothing with you all day, and it would be something.”<br />
Over a year into dating TBID, I’m starting to get itchy. Some article I once read talked about<br />
how new love is intoxicating, but lovers develop a tolerance over time. That explains those<br />
moments when the person who made your heart skip a beat starts raising your blood pressure.<br />
You realize your significant other has the potential to be significantly annoying.<br />
“If he says ‘initiative’ in five syllables one more time,” you tell yourself, “I am so outta<br />
here.”<br />
Still, TBID rarely annoys me. (We’ll give that a few more months). What does bother me<br />
is that I worry that we don’t spend enough time together. Then again, that may be why this<br />
relationship is working. Is that a problem?<br />
Do two committed people who live five express stops from each other normally talk<br />
everyday? TBID and I don’t always. Because we both have our own creative and professional<br />
pursuits outside of our jobs, we often spend one weekend day apart and one together. During<br />
the work-week, we’ll generally see each other once.<br />
This wasn’t the case in my previous relationship. Giddy goo-ga in the beginning, the<br />
ex-boyfriend and I spent a ridiculous amount of time together. The fall I began tutoring and<br />
freelancing, he started to complain that I always seemed distracted and that we didn’t spend<br />
as much time together. But my new pursuits thrilled me. The relationship, for various reasons,<br />
slowly gathered dust and eventually became something I used to be in.<br />
Alone time is a godsend and a necessity, even more so for me than TBID. Yet I wish I could<br />
demarcate what time is his, mine, and ours with ours somehow growing at the same time as our<br />
creative output. It’s not balancing the national budget or anything, but it’s hard.<br />
The latest initiative (that’s “initiative” in four syllables) in our relationship is a shared<br />
Google calendar and list of stuff to do. This way, neither TBID nor I can ever shrug and resolve<br />
that, “Nope. There’s absolutely nothing to do in NYC today.” The list includes boxes for who<br />
thought of the idea, where it is, when it is, price, and why on Earth you’d want to do this<br />
activity as a couple.<br />
No one has used, “Because we’re dating, so you just have to” in that last box yet, though<br />
I’m certainly considering it for this Make Your Own Yarn Animals workshop I heard about.<br />
Events go on the calendar after we’ve officially IMed, emailed, or mentioned them to each<br />
other and received a yes.<br />
This new system has been successful so far. The best part of this is that TBID came up with<br />
the system - not me, the control freak. No wonder he’s always toward the top of my to-do list.<br />
PhoTos<br />
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Kaisern Chen | tpburl.com/dkpsqg
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