iblog

Rushda: The wait is on for the final installment in the Harry Potter series of books, and Royal Mail have decided to mark the occasion by producing millions of stamps with pictures of covers from all seven of the books. The stamps will be available on 17th July, four days before the release of the final book, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows. Well, as anticipated the excitement is building up even more. J.K Rowling is so lucky - as ever she is one of the highest women on this year’s new UK’s rich list, and I only wonder how much richer she’ll get with the sales and surrounding publicity of her new book.

Rushda: I think it’s about time another reputable company apart from Apple have their own music download store, so it was quite interesting to see that Amazon are about to open their own music store “later this year”. And what’ll make it better than ITunes is the fact that the tunes it’ll sell will be without copy protection. DRM will be absent from every track up for sale. This is brilliant news. As much as I love iTunes I’m always feeling like the tunes I’ve just bought aren’t really “mine” because I can’t copy them at will to more than a couple of specially authorised machines. I’ll happily go to Amazon if their stock and pricing is comparable - in fact, I really hope it’s even better! I also think such ventures will help towards the bid to combat music piracy.

Rushda: About a week ago Mars announced that it would change its recipes and start using animal products in its chocolates - thereby making the famous chocolate bar (and others such as Twix and Snickers) unsuitable for vegetarians. Apparently this decision was due to its “methods of food sourcing” and it was an unfortunate but reasoned decision they had to make. As you can imagine, the protest was enormous - indeed the company received more than 6,000 complaints in just one week. As a result, Mars has now stepped down from the decision and apologise deeply for their obvious mistake.

Not being a vegetarian myself, even I was shocked at the initial decision, especially considering Mars even made a point of mentioning that the current products have a best before date till October. What did they expect everyone to do? Start going on a Mars Bar buying frenzy before the new products came in? And then eat greedily until October only to wave goodbye to their favourite chocolate bar forever? Sounds terribly tragic to me and I’m glad Mars came to its senses!

Rushda: It’s interesting what new things become delicacies, especially those which are particularly yucky. I just read an article in the Times about a special new coffee in Australia which is made of beans that have been digested and excreted by Indonesian civet cats. Costing £21 for a single cup, it has been marketed as “the world’s rarest and most exclusive coffee” and many satisfied customers think it’s absolutely worth the price for its “earthy and musty” (hmm, pooey?) flavour. Customers who try the coffee are even rewarded with a “certificate of experience” as a souvenir for their memorable gulps. Well normally I’m all for the “each to his own” mentality, but really, what’s going on here? I think I’m going to start my own business venture now and start selling sock-flavoured coffee. It’s rare and exclusive enough isn’t it?!

Virgil: “Typefaces control the message. Choice of font dictates what you think about something before you even read the first word. Imagine Shakespeare in large capital drop shadow. Our response would be quite different towards the content.” This interesting point made by a leading graphical designer captures why fonts are so important. If a bank’s logo was written in handwriting it might appear too fun and personal - whereas what you really want from a bank is reliability and security - so something less curly would be appropriate. The paradigm of such a font, Helvetica, recently celebrated the 50th birthday of its design. Little do you know it, but this simple clean typeface is seen almost everywhere everyday - it is the staple choice for businesses wishing to give a message of steadfastness - it doesn’t say too much or too little, being neutral and legible. The font is used integrally in the logos of companies such as Gap, Orange, Currys, Hoover, Panasonic and the Royal Bank of Scotland - the full list would go on for pages. However, as popular as it is among corporations, many find it utterly uninspiring and uncreative. Over the years, various campaigns have sought to ban certain fonts, including the Nazis trying to ban ‘Gothic’ fonts, whilst modern online petitions abhor the casual Comic Sans MS. It’s an interesting battle, because as arbitrary as typeface seems, we all have our favourite typefaces, and we tend to be quite particular about what we like to read and write in. A comment on the BBC article sums up the ridiculousness of it all: “Two fonts walk into a bar and ask for a pint, but the barman replies, ‘Sorry lads, we don’t serve your type.’”

Anna: This is the perfect time of year to visit the Seychelles, not too wet and not too windy. This group of 115 islands has always been a luxury destination, though I think the ever-increasing credit limits banks are prepared to give us have allowed some to sample its exclusivity without actually being able to afford it! The archipelago lies in the western Indian Ocean, between 4 and 10 degrees south of the equator, and, at the closest point, still 480km distance from east African coast. The 41 Inner Islands are the oldest, composed of granite, while the remaining 74 are low-lying coral atolls, sometimes so small that they are barely discernible from the surrounding ocean. There are also two UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Seychelles - the Vallée de Mai on the island of Praslin where the coco-de-mer nut grows, and the coral atoll of Aldabra, largest raised coral atoll in the world.

What I think is fantastic about the Seychelles, as well as the pristine beaches, rainforest and abundant birdlife, is the way tourism has been managed so as to have minimal negative impact on the physical and social environment of the islands. Since Seychellois tourism took off 30 years ago, there has been a determination to keep quality high and visitors numbers relatively low. Annual tourist numbers will, by 2010, be limited to 200 000. Almost 15% of the archipelago’s 80 000 inhabitants are employed in tourism and the daily yield per tourist (their spend on accommodation, food and activities), currently at £105 is projected to grow to £365 by 2010. I’m happy not only to have visited and enjoyed the Seychelles, but also to have the knoweldge that this destination won’t be ruined by mass tourism and will, hopefully, retain it’s amazing natural wealth untouched by man for many generations to come.

Virgil: Nature Morte au Melon Vert has set a personal record as the most expensive Cezanne artwork on paper to date. Selling for £12.8million, Sotheby’s auction house (who were selling the painting on behalf of Giuseppe Eskenazi, a private art collector), must have been very pleased. But personally I am, as ever, confused. To this date, I still do not understand why these paintings sell for so very much (my father is an Art Historian, but even he hasn’t been able to explain it to me). Is there that much worth in the actual painting, or is this just the passion of aficionados at work? Personally I look at the image and see a poorly drawn melon - I guess that’s why they call it impressionism - and no argument could possibly ever convince me that it’s worth so much. But maybe I’m just not looking deep enough?

Anna: The ongoing caffeine-wrangle between global behemoth Starbucks and the African nation of Ethiopia seems finally to be nearing resolution. The dispute centres on the the trademarks for three coffees produced in Ethiopia - namely Harar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe. Ethiopia wants to trademark these names, and as they represent about £47 million a year in revenue according to Oxfam, who can blame the country.

Getachew Mengiste, Director General of the Ethiopia Intellectual Property Office (though maybe with a name like that he should have had a career in bubble-gum marketing), is committed to working in partnership with “all international specialty coffee companies and distributors.” I’m not sure I’d be so keen to co-operate if I were him. Starbucks opposes the trademarking, claiming it would like to help establish a geographic certification for coffee bean names, much like the well-known AOC system for wine. Somehow, I think Starbucks is more interested in charging a premium for “exotic” coffees on the highstreet, while avoiding paying a premium to the producer. It means more profit for another global corporation and less control for the developing-world supplier.

Starbucks is already worth £3.2 billion, and can sell a pound of Ethiopian coffee beans for £14. Meanwhile the Ethiopian farmer receives between 30 and 59p a pound - I don’t think it takes a genius to work out who’s making the most profit.

Rushda: Well, hold your horses, how about you make sure you even know how much that is first! Apparently we are entering into “the age of the trillion”, where the number is featuring in all sorts of domains. For example mortgage debt in the UK is now nearly a trillion pounds, and computers can store terabytes. Very few however actually know how much a trillion is and even people who know their numbers are in disagreement. Here is the official claim though:

A trillion is a thousand billion, and a billion is a thousand million.

Essentially we’re talking twelve zeros here. So back to the original question about whether you’d like a trillion pounds. Let’s just say you were to spend £25,000 a day (which is pretty difficult). To own a trillion pounds would mean that it would take you 109,000 years to spend all your prize. You greedy greedy thing!

Rushda: It seems that a spoon full of sugar can make the money go down as well as the medicine, and indeed many companies are now sneakily adding sugar to their products without us noticing in order to make them tastier. Common foods where this occurs is in soups and cereals, and even in wholemeal bread. Apparently the amount of sugar in such foods has doubled in many popular products and many experts warn that because sugar is becoming cheaper, this tactic will become even more common. Obviously this is bad news as excess sugar has been linked to everything from tooth decay to obesity. Let’s hope such new checks into sugar levels will alert the public and keep sugar contents of ordinary foods to a sensible level.