There is more to letters to shareholders than self-publicity. They give a sense of how America’s corporate bigwigs see the world. This what they have to say: https://econ.st/447MYX6Illustration: Brett Ryder
Whatever happened to the Santa Fe sign that used to top the Railway Exchange Building?
We've got the lowdown: http://bit.ly/SantaFe_CAF
There is more to letters to shareholders than self-publicity. They give a sense of how America’s corporate bigwigs see the world. This what they have to say: https://econ.st/447MYX6
Illustration: Brett Ryder
Whatever happened to the Santa Fe sign that used to top the Railway Exchange Building?
We've got the lowdown: http://bit.ly/SantaFe_CAF
We've got the lowdown: http://bit.ly/SantaFe_CAF
A Whimsical Trip Around the World
By GREGORY SCHMIDT
"It's a Small World," an app from Disney Publishing Worldwide, was inspired by a children's book illustrated by Joey Chou. The artwork is beautifully rendered, evoking the charm and delight of the Disney ride without being overly saccharine.
saccharine
Saccharin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Origins. Saccharin derives its name from the word Saccharine, meaning of, relating to, or resembling that of sugar. [edit] Properties. Saccharin is unstable ...
The lowdown on Google's Safari tracking cookiesITworld.com
Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student at Stanford, caused a major stir this morning when he published research showing how Google used loopholes within Apple's Safari browser cookie-blocking policy to place unexpected third-party cookies within the ...
Motorola welcomes Google slurp with open armsRegister
Motorola shareholders have voted overwhelmingly to accept Google's $12.5bn bid to buy the company's mobile phone arm, and any patents it may happen to have lying around. Over 99 per cent of shareholders who voted approved of the deal, ...
甜食大戰，「天然假糖」搶味蕾！
作者：經濟學人 出處：Web Only 2010/02
相關關鍵字：經濟學人
美國人熱愛甜食，他們把焦糖瑪奇朵當咖啡喝，而且相信糖果丟到碗裡就會變成穀片。怪的是很多人仍希望自己最愛的人造糖精，不要如此人造！糖類製造商Merisant於2009年1月宣告破產，如今準備捲土重來，把希望寄託在「天然的假糖」。
人造糖精在美國擁有11億美元的市場；1957年糖精首度問世、八Ｏ年代有健怡可樂和阿斯巴甜（aspartame）、 2000年推出蔗糖素則攪亂了市場。蔗糖素是由Tate & Lyle製造，McNiel Nutritionals負責行銷；蔗糖素和阿斯巴甜不同，不會因為烘烤而分解，也創造天然產品的形象。2007年時，蔗糖素在代糖市場的佔有率高達 61%。
不過，以蔗精素製造的健怡可樂是個失敗品，在去年國際貿易委員會的裁決下，其它企業也開始生產蔗糖素與之競爭。代糖市場最新的競爭者是甜菊，由甜菊提煉的糖精也獲得核可。
甜菊糖精就某些方面來說非常棒，它沒有熱量而且是天然產品，嚐起來則像甘草糖。美國食品巨頭則大力支持這項產品，Merisant與百事可樂合作，Cargill則與可口可樂合作，用天然配方改進甜菊糖精的口味。
超市中已經可以買到甜菊糖精的產品，阿斯巴甜製造商McNeil和NutraSweet也急著推出甜菊糖精產品。Cargill和可口可樂合作推出的Truvia目前領先群雄，去年12月，Truvia在甜菊糖精的零售市場市佔率達58%。
不過，Truvia在代糖零售市場的佔有率仍然只有6%。甜菊糖精想真正受到歡迎，必須先克服兩項障礙。其一，甜菊糖精的生產成本較高；其二，大多數甜菊糖產品仍然有著明顯不同的味道。（黃維德譯）
The sweetener battle
Sweet and lowdown
The competition to make the most natural fake sugar
Jan 28th 2010 | CHICAGO | From The Economist print edition
Advertising Archives
Eat, drink and be thin
Eat, drink and be thin
AMERICANS have a sweet tooth and odd expectations. They slurp caramel macchiato as coffee and believe that candy, when placed in a bowl, becomes cereal. Strangest of all, many want their beloved artificial sweeteners to be less artificial. Merisant, which makes Equal, an aspartame sweetener, declared bankruptcy in January 2009, having been caught out by changing tastes. This month the firm emerged from bankruptcy ready for a comeback. It is betting heavily on the industry’s new divine ambrosia: a fake sugar that is natural.
Artificial sweeteners, now a $1.1 billion business in the country, have been part of Americans’ diet for decades. In 1957 saccharine made its debut as Sweet’N Low; the 1980s brought aspartame in Diet Coke and in Equal’s blue packets. The arrival of sucralose in 2000 upended the market. Manufactured by Tate & Lyle and marketed as Splenda by McNeil Nutritionals, sucralose had many advantages. Unlike aspartame, it did not fall apart when baked. Splenda’s slogan, “made from sugar so it tastes like sugar”, created a natural image. By 2007 Splenda had seized 61% of sugar-substitute sales in grocery and drug stores according to Information Resources Inc, a research firm.
There have been dark spots, however. Splenda-sweetened Diet Coke was a bust. The sugar lobby and Merisant sued McNeil, claiming that its slogan was misleading (McNeil changed it). Buoyed by a ruling from the International Trade Commission last year, other firms are now producing sucralose to compete with Splenda. And now there is another white hope.
The latest pretender is stevia, a shrub, and a sweetener extracted from it that was cleared for use by the Food and Drug Administration in December 2008. In some ways stevia is ideal. It contains no calories. It is natural. It also happens to taste like odious liquorice. Yet America’s food giants have thrown their weight behind it. Merisant, partnered with PepsiCo, and Cargill, with Coca-Cola, promptly introduced PureVia and Truvia, improving stevia’s taste with natural ingredients.
In supermarkets, green-and-white boxes of PureVia and Truvia now beckon to shoppers with promises of being “all natural” and “nature’s perfect sweetness”. Wary of being left out, McNeil and NutraSweet, a big producer of aspartame, have rushed to offer stevia products. Truvia, Cargill and Coca-Cola’s product, is in the lead. Food processors, used to working with Cargill, are adding it to their ingredients. In December Truvia captured 58% of retail sales in the stevia-sweetener market, according to ACNielsen, a research firm.
Still, Truvia accounts for just 6% of retail sales of sugar substitutes. If stevia sweeteners are to become truly popular, they must overcome two obstacles. First, they cost more to make than their rivals. Second, most stevia products still have a distinct flavour. Merisant reckons it can solve both problems. Yet when Craig Petray, NutraSweet’s chief executive, is asked whether stevia tastes good, he replies gently: “I would say it tastes really different.”
Chinese teenagers slurp it, as do British royals, although they’d probably prefer a more refined description.
It's almost impossible to duplicate the electronic "atmosphere" inside and out of a car when an electrical problem occurs. "Intermittent electronic problems" are the most frustrating (and hardest to pinpoint and fix) glitches in vehicles worldwide.
in·ter·mit·tent (ĭn'tər-mĭt'nt)
adj.
- Stopping and starting at intervals. See synonyms at periodic.
- Alternately containing and empty of water: an intermittent lake.
intermittently in'ter·mit'tent·ly adv.
Overclock Your Body With Geek Cuisine: Can caffeinated chips and drinks stuffed with more herbs than you'd find in an Asian pharmacy really make you more productive? We slurped and chewed our way through lots of so-called energy food to find out. (Roger Hibbert, PC World)
overclock
To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put some slop into the specification to account for manufacturing tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent crashes, and can even burn things out, since power dissipation is directly proportional to clock frequency. People who make a hobby of this are sometimes called “overclockers”; they are thrilled that they can run their CPU a few percent faster, even though they can only tell the difference by running a benchmark program. See also case mod.
要在迅速中產化的烏魯木齊路上找個地方補充能量，面前的選擇可能令你眼花撩亂——其中包括波奇飯(poke bowls)、越式法包(banh mi)和土耳其烤肉。不過，食物最美味的地方非Slurp!(烏魯木齊中路247-3號)莫屬，它供應正宗（更別提還超級便宜）的來自雲南省和緬甸交界處的舒心美食，比如可以呼嚕嚕吸溜進嘴裡的麵條——上邊加了豆腐、豆芽、腌菜——還有格外誘人的油煎雲南山羊奶酪。overclock
To operate a CPU or other digital logic device at a rate higher than it was designed for, under the assumption that the manufacturer put some slop into the specification to account for manufacturing tolerances. Overclocking something can result in intermittent crashes, and can even burn things out, since power dissipation is directly proportional to clock frequency. People who make a hobby of this are sometimes called “overclockers”; they are thrilled that they can run their CPU a few percent faster, even though they can only tell the difference by running a benchmark program. See also case mod.
slurp
verb
1 [I or T] INFORMAL to drink a liquid noisily as a result of sucking air into the mouth at the same time as the liquid:
Do try not to slurp.
I wish you wouldn't slurp your soup like that.
He slurped down his coffee.
2 [I] UK INFORMAL When a thick liquid slurps, it makes loud noises:
The lava slurped and bubbled down the mountainside.
slurp
noun [C] INFORMAL
slurp
(slûrp) 
v., slurped, slurp·ing, slurps.
v.tr.To eat or drink noisily.v., slurped, slurp·ing, slurps.
v.intr.To eat or drink something noisily.
n.
- A loud sucking noise made in eating or drinking.
- Slang. A mouthful of a liquid: took a slurp of grape juice.
[Dutch slurpen.]
am·bro·sia (ăm-brō'zhə, -zhē-ə)
n.- Greek & Roman Mythology. The food of the gods, thought to confer immortality.
- Something with an especially delicious flavor or fragrance.
- A dessert containing primarily oranges and flaked coconut.
[Latin, from Greek ambrosiā, from ambrotos, immortal, immortalizing.]
low-down
or low·down (lō'doun')adj.
- Despicable; base: a low-down coward.
- Gloomy; depressed.
- Earthy; funky: a low-down blues; the low-down sound of a clarinet.
1. mod. rotten; bad. What a dirty, lowdown thing to do.
2. n. the facts on something; the scuttlebutt about something. What's the lowdown on that funny statue in the park?
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