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HOUSE OF THE DAY: A SoHo Penthouse With High Ceilings And Great Views For $8 Million


The Most Important Features In Nokia's Lumia 920 (NOK, MSFT, T)

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nokia lumia 920

Nokia's new flagship phone, the Lumia 920, is one of the most unique devices you can buy today.

It runs Windows Phone 8, the new mobile operating system from Microsoft, and has some interesting hardware features like wireless charging.

You can read our full Lumia 920 review here, but take a look at our tour of the most important new features in the gallery below.

The Lumia 920 has a 4.5-inch display.



But even though the display size is normal by today's standards, the rest of the phone is incredible thick and heavy.



Here's what it looks like next to the iPhone 5. But get ready for the real kicker...



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The Hostess Sno Ball Is A Brilliant Reinvention Of Another Hostess Product

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snoball

Most Americans are mourning the loss of the Twinkie following news that its maker, Hostess Brands, will shut down. But the baking giant's announcement spells the end for many other packaged treats. 

That list includes a smattering of fluffy baked goods like Ho Hos, Ring Dings, Donettes, Hostess CupCakes, and bright pink Sno Balls.  

What's interesting about the Sno Ball is that it's actually just a jazzed-up version of another (and more famous) Hostess snack cake. Beneath a dusting of coconut flakes and a layer of marshmallow is simply an upside-down Hostess CupCake

And that's just the beginning of the Sno Ball's interesting history.

More details about the Sno Ball's past and how the pillow-y treat is made are uncovered in an episode of the Food Network's "Unwrapped." We've pulled out the key points. 

The Sno Ball was introduced in 1947, shortly after rationing on goods like flour and sugar from World War II had ended.



For this reason, the sugary mounds were instantly popular with Americans who were just re-discovering their taste for processed baked goods.

See the full Unwrapped episode > 



Sno Balls were originally just chocolate cakes covered in marshmallow and coconut. The gooey orbs didn't receive creme filling or their signature pink tint until 1950.

See the full Unwrapped episode > 



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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6 Factors That Decide The Makings Of The Perfect Bond Girl

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eva greenWhile the James Bond franchise has given the world one of its most iconic characters, it's also delivered a slew of beautiful femme fatales and sexy super spies that add up to a pop culture institution we call the Bond Girl.

But after 23 films filled with lovely ladies, what makes the ideal Bond Girl?

Zimbio ran the numbers, sampling more than 40 Bond Girls (at least one from every film), and this is what they found.

Ideal Hair Color: Brown

Blonde, brown, red, black — James Bond may not discriminate when it comes to the hair color of the women in his life, but he certainly has a type. Nearly half of all Bond Girls are brunette. Daniel Craig must be especially fond of the brown-haired bombshells — four of the five major Bond Girls during Craig's stint as 007 are brunettes — and since he's attached to the next two Bond films, expect the trend to continue.

Candidates Who Fit the Bill: Natalie Portman, Kate Beckinsale, Olivia Wilde, Marion Cotillard, Rachel Weisz



Ideal Height: 5'7"

In the history of the Bond franchise, no Bond Girl has ever been taller than her 007 counterpart. Even Daniel Craig, the shortest Bond of the bunch at 5'10'', is taller than all of his female co-stars (although, it was close with Olga Kurylenko who is only an inch shorter than Craig). If we call the average Bond Girl height the ideal, it's 5-feet, 7-inches. Skyfall's ladies juuuust missed it.

Candidates Who Fit the Bill: Keira Knightley, Katie Cassidy, Zoe Saldana, Victoria Justice, Troian Bellisario



Ideal Nationality: American

As an international man of mystery, James Bond meets ladies from all over the world, and the history of Bond Girls reflects that. Poland, China, Russia, Jamaica, Sweden, Italy, the Philippines, and, of course, 007's homeland, England, are all represented. But by a narrow margin, the most common country of origin for the Bond Girls is the USA. The next most common countries of origin are France and England, which means as a region, Western Europe is more popular than the States.

Candidates Who Fit the Bill: Any hot American actress



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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How Israel Developed Such A Shockingly Effective Rocket Defense System

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iron dome

On the receiving end of Hamas' unremitting rocket campaign, Israel has been looking for an effective defense for years.

With questions about the U.S. Patriot missile system abounding, there was no doubt Israel's new rocket defense needed to be built from the ground up and dedicated to intercepting short range incoming rockets.

By the end of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Israel was tired of waiting and started developing the Iron Dome platform that currently protects the country.

Developed by Haifa-based Rafael SPYDER, a company already known for its anti-aircraft systems, the Iron Dome has three separate parts to which it owes its success.

  • Detection and Radar Tracking designed by a second Israeli defense company, Eltna, sits at the rear of the potential strike zone and layers the area with 40 kilometers of radar waves (about 25 miles). Picture a projector at the rear of a theater shooting light at the screen, the radar covers an area in that pattern for up to 40 kilometers.
  • The raw data absorbed by the radar is sent to the middle Dome component called the Battle Management and Control (BMC) center, built by mPrest Systems. This is a small workspace filled with monitors and electronics where IDF personnel interpret the radar information. If the team determines the incoming object is a threat to a populated area, they light up the rocket firing unit by offering new coordinates.
  • The Missile Firing Unit, stationed in yet a third location, receives the coordinates from BMC, layers them over its own tracking algorithms and fires a Tamir missile that's equipped with sensors and fins that make it highly maneuverable. From available pictures it looks like each firing station holds 20 rockets.

Iron DomeWe've watched over the past couple years as the Iron Dome was released and put through its paces, finally getting operationally deployed to Beersheba in late March 2011. Israel had spent huge sums getting the Iron Dome on the field, but it still needed more than three stations deployed around the country.

The $200 million offered by the Obama White House in 2010 helped build a fourth installment.,

In March of this year Israel announced the Iron Dome had successfully intercepted 90 percent of incoming Gaza missiles that would have landed in populated Israeli areas.

Within a month of that announcement, the U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee ranked by Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.) and chaired by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) approved an additional $680 million in funding for the Iron Dome.

The Dome funding has all been in addition to the $3 billion a year the U.S. provides to Israel's defense budget.

It appears the U.S. indeed got what it paid for. Tony Capaccio at Bloomberg questioned some high ranking officials at the Pentagon Friday, Nov. 17 who corroborate the 90 percent success rate:

Israeli officials including Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren said the system has been about 90 percent effective this week against the Hamas rockets fired from Gaza against Israel. That figure is seen as credible by analysts such as Steve Zaloga, who’s with the Fairfax, Virginia-based Teal Group.

“What they mean is, of the rockets that they are actually shooting at, they are hitting 90 percent,” Zaloga said in a telephone interview yesterday. The military has been “tweaking” the system for improvements since its first combat intercept in April 2011 because “early on they weren’t scoring at that rate,” he said.

Ninety percent “is an extremely high level,” Zaloga said. “Air defense systems are typically not in that range.”

Israel has achieved this success using only four Iron Dome batteries. Nine additional batteries are expected Iron Domeby 2013. Currently, Israel doesn't even try to shoot down all of Hamas' missiles.

Hamas is renowned for throwing together incredibly crude projectiles that may never become a threat at all as they head into Israel. The Iron Dome's second stage Battle Management and Control is where human input decides whether the incoming object is a threat and launches a $90,000 rocket to neutralize the possibility. Or not.

Capaccio also reports Prime Minister Netanyahu is so satisfied with Iron Dome's results he called President Obama Friday to express his "deep appreciation" for U.S. funding of the Dome, "which has saved countless Israeli lives."

This is how Iron Dome's maker pictures the system: Literally an iron dome over Israel



Radar station in the rear picks up incoming threats and sends the information to Battle Management and Control



This is where it starts at the Radar Station



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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LEAKED: MySpace's Master Plan To Raise $50 Million And Relaunch As A Spotify Killer

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justin timberlake sad

The parent company of MySpace is trying to raise $50 million in order to re-launch MySpace as a direct competitor to Spotify and Pandora in 2013.

This is according to documents obtained by Business Insider, which we have included in this post.

Six years after buying MySpace for $580 million, News Corp sold it last summer to a company called Specific Media for $35 million.

Specific Media, a private company owned mostly by the Vanderhook family, changed its name to its name to Interactive Media Holdings, and took new funding from investors including Justin Timberlake.

Then Interactive launched a re-designed MySpace to a sup rising amount of critical praise. In a bigger surprise, since December 2011, MySpace traffic is up 36%.

But MySpace continued to flounder commercially. Documents show that it will generate revenues of just $15 million this year, up from a miserable $9 million in 2011. MySpace lost more than $40 million in 2012. Interactive Media expects it to lose another $25 million next year.

Meanwhile, Interactive's other big property, Specific Media took a hit as ad buyers turned to real-time bidding solutions over traditional ad networks. Revenues declined from $42 million in 2011 to a projected $35 million in 2012 – both down from a high of $60 million in 2010.

Now, Interactive Media holdings is out looking for another $50 million in funding.

In pitch materials dated from November 16, 2012, Interactive says it plans to use most of the money to re-launch MySpace as an alternative to Pandora and Spotify. $10 million will go to marketing and $15 million to $25 million to for licensing deals with the labels. Another $15 million to $25 million for "general working capital."

Interactive says it plans to launch a music subscription business for mobile in the second quarter of 2013. 

In the deck, Interactive says the big competitive advantages for MySpace versus Spotify and Pandora is that it pays labels a lower rate for song plays than Spotify and Pandora. MySpace relies on 27 million songs from unsigned artists, who account for 50% of the music played on its site. 

We've included Interactive Media Holdings pitch deck below.

interactive media holdings revenues projection

It's fascinating, for two reasons: 

  • We get to look at hard numbers you'll never find a press release. Can you believe that only 6 years after selling for $580 million, MySpace revenues were only $9 million in 2011? 
  • We get to see how tech companies pitch themselves for a huge fund-raise. The optimism is thick. Look, to the right, at how Interactive takes actual declining revenues and then "estimates" their stunning turn around and growth.






See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The 21 Worst Employees Of The Year

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Burger King

It's inevitable to have a bad day at work every once in a while, but how you choose to handle that stress can greatly affect the future of your career. 

We rounded up the most horrifying tales of bad behavior in the workplace and found the most egregious, appalling employee acts that were reported in the past 12 months.

From retail to government to corporate executives, the employees on this list lied, cheated, urinated on doors, contaminated other people's food, hired prostitutes while on the job, and much worse. 

The Secret Service agents who hired a bunch of Colombian prostitutes.

The night before President Obama's visit to Colombia last April, 10 U.S. Secret Service agents and at least eight members of the U.S. military allegedly hosted a sex party with 20 Colombian prostitutes. 

After the scandal broke, several government officials, including two senior supervisors, resigned.



The Burger King worker who stepped into a tub of lettuce.

A Burger King employee posted a photo on 4Chan of feet stepping on a tub of lettuce with the caption "this is the lettuce you eat at Burger King."

4Chan users who saw the photo used the photo's data to track down the culprit to the Mayfield Heights, Ohio, franchise. Cleveland Scene magazine spoke to a shift manager at the location about the incident, who reportedly said, "Whoever this is is getting fired. And whoever the manager was at the time will be fired, too."

Three employees were fired over the incident, though no names were  given.



The TSA agent who stole an iPad—and then blamed it on his wife.

After hearing reports of TSA agents stealing travelers' belongings at the airport, ABC News launched an investigation to see how extensive the problem is; they planted ten iPads at ten different airports to find out what would happen.

After two weeks, nine of the ten iPads were returned. The tenth was tracked back to the Orlando-area home of TSA agent Andy Ramirez, who first blamed his wife when he was confronted by ABC reporters and a camera crew before returning the iPad.

"I'm so embarrassed," he told ABC reporters. "My wife says she got the iPad and brought it home."

The TSA removed Ramirez from his position, and released a statement saying that they have "a zero-tolerance policy for theft and terminates any employee who is determined to have stolen from a passenger."



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The 10 Media Companies That Control America's News

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jon stewart sarah palin

Ten major media companies control most of the news content in America.

Each of these companies reaches millions of people. The five largest reach more than 50 million people each.

Discussions about news media in America often focus on two main issues. The first is whether the news is influenced by one person or family who owns a controlling interest in the media company.

See the companies that control the news >

Sumner Redstone owns voting control of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. The Sulzberger family has controlled The New York Times Company for over a century.

The second is whether the personalities who deliver the news also influence it. People like Brian Williams, Rush Limbaugh and Oprah Winfrey are believed to be able to express their opinions on facts and events. While this may be true, their influence is also fleeting. Keith Obermann, the central personality at MSNBC for years, quit the network and can no longer be found on air.

The most objective way to measure who controls the content and distribution of news is by looking at audience size. How many people watch a media company’s network news or cable news, read its magazines, listen to or watch its local news channels, or go to its websites? Research firms that independently track traffic and viewership include Nielsen for TV, the Audit Bureau of Circulations for newspapers and Comscore for online traffic.

What helps build audience size across news media? The largest factor is likely branding. Nearly all the companies that control the news are themselves a recognized news brand, or they own powerful brands: CBS is its own brand, Comcast Corp. owns NBC and Gannett Co. Inc. owns USA Today. News brands in most cases have reputations that have been built over decades.

In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Tom Rosenstiel, Director of Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism observed, “These are mostly familiar brands that have been in the marketplace for a long time, and that have been engaged in repertorial journalism. As a consequence, they offer things that consumers really can’t find anywhere else.”

These powerful news brands also have been created at great cost, making it hard for new entrants to compete effectively with them. The number of brands spending money on gathering news has not grown a great deal, according to Rosenstiel. Those that do tend to spend money are “legacy media.” They have “a number of reporters who know how to call people up, report, observe events with press passes,” and have a “shoe leather, boots-on-the-ground orientation.”

The composition of media property ownership reflects how Americans consume news today. Most of the largest brands have only a fraction of their business in magazines or radio, which once represented a much larger share of American media. None of the largest media companies derive more than 10% of total audience from newspapers, and five do not have any presence at all in the medium. Meanwhile, eight of the largest media corporations have at least 20% of total viewership from local TV, and seven of the ten have at least 15% of total viewers online.

As a measure of audience and news content broadcast at the local level, in individual cities, is just as important as news broadcast nationally because of the overall size of the country’s combined local markets. Many of the largest news organizations own televisions stations in the country’s most populated cities. Some companies have dozens of local radio stations. Others own dozens of newspapers. A large media company may offer news access to millions of people, even if it does not have a single national news outlet such as a television network, a widely visited website or a national magazine or newspaper.

Based on Pew’s State of the News Media report, 24/7 Wall St. identified the 10 companies that control the news in America. We considered newspaper circulation, television viewership at the national and local level, radio audience and online traffic. Unless otherwise indicated, all figures related to viewership are as of June 2012. In several cases, the media companies surveyed only gave Pew the audience size for their largest property. Where this was the case, the sizes of the total online audience and the largest online property were recorded as identical. 

Companies that have the greatest effect on news consumption are those that own media across several of these property types. For example, CBS, which is the biggest media company by audience, owns network television, local television, local radio and national Internet businesses. Together, these CBS outlets reach over 130 million people, an extraordinary number given that the entire population of the United States is about 315 million.

10. The Washington Post

Total combined audience: 18.4 million
Number of platforms: 3
Total local TV audience:5.6 million (18th highest)

The Washington Post Companyis most well-known to the public because of The Washington Post, one of the most prominent newspapers in America. The Post broke the story of the Watergate scandal in 1972, which gave the paper even more visibility. What the wider public does not know is that the print version of Post newspaper is now a very small portion of the company, based on revenue.

The Post’s greatest presence among the national news media is by far the company’s flagship media site WashingtonPost.com because of the size of its online audience, which Pew puts at 12.2 million monthly visitors. The Post also has a moderate-sized national news commentary site, Slate. In its most recent quarter, sales from the newspaper division of The Washington Post Company were less than 15% of the company’s total revenue of $1 billion.

The Post owns six local television stations that reach 4.82% of the nation’s total TV households. The Post is also a cable company, which does not contribute to its presence in the news industry, but obviously makes it a carrier of cable news from other companies like CNN and MSNBC.



9. Cox Media Group

Total combined audience: 29.2 million
Number of platforms: 3
Total local TV audience:6.2 million (16th highest)

Cox’s public news influence comes almost entirely on its great local strength, unlike most other companies on this list. The company does not own any national medium such as a TV network or newspaper, and its national presence on the web is relatively small.Although it does own the daily newspaper in one of the largest metro markets—The Atlanta Constitution.

Cox has a dominant presence in both the local TV and radio markets. According to Pew, Cox owns TV stations in 14 local markets. Cox reports that these include WPXI-TV 11 in Pittsburgh and KIRO-TV in Seattle. Cox’s greatest strength as a provider of news is its tremendous radio network, which includes 84 stations, according to Pew. But despite the fact that these stations have a combined audience of more than 22 million listeners, the division brought in only $38 million in 2011.



8. National Public Radio

Total combined audience: 32.6 million
Number of platforms: 2
Total local TV audience:n/a

NPR is the only nonprofit media company on the list. Its national news presence comes largely from its radio audience of more than 27 million listeners. “About 93 percent of the U.S. population is within the listening area of one or more of the 975 stations that carry NPR programming.

NPR’s 270 Members operate 822 of those stations, providing national and local news to individual communities,” NPR reports. The number of stations with NPR programming has doubled over the past 20 years. The network’s flagship shows are “Morning Edition,” which runs from 5 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET on most NPR stations. This is “drive time,” as it is known in the radio industry, the portion of the day that usually has the most radio listeners in almost all markets.

The other anchor show for the network is “All Things Considered,” which usually runs in “evening drive time” on the East Coast, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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You Definitely Don't Want To Hear About The Life Of Your Thanksgiving Turkey...

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happy turkey

It's turkey time.

Millions of Americans will dive into the big bird on Thursday, smothering it with gravy or cranberry sauce or both.

Many will also face the scornful stare of their vegetarian cousin, silently asking, "do you know how that turkey got here?"

We can assure you: You don't want to know.

From conception to carcass, here's the short, hellish life-cycle of your industry-produced turkey.

Not the most romantic beginning...

Domestic turkeys aren't interested in sex, and even if they were, the size of their breasts would make it impossible.

To get around this problem, major turkey breeders rely on artificial breeding, which often takes place at separate artificial insemination facilities.

According to the Merck Veterinary Manual, the process involves "stimulating the copulatory organ by massaging the abdomen and the back over the testes... pushing the tail forward with one hand and, at the same time, using the thumb and forefinger of the same hand to 'milk' semen from the ducts of the organ."

Subsequently, the turkey semen is propelled into the oviduct via syringe. The semen produced by one male bird -- a "tom" -- can usually inseminate several hens.

Photo: Farm Sanctuary



Next, keep knocking up the same hen again and again...

As soon as a hen lays an egg -- within one or two days -- the breeders inseminate her again. She can keep this up for around 25 weeks, at which point she is "spent," says the National Turkey Federation.

Some breeders then ship off these hens to be processed for meat. Others take time to recondition the hen for another round of breeding.

The so-called "molting" (rehabilitation) of a turkey hen takes a leisurely 90 days, according to the NFT. Force-molting is much faster, however, and involves a 72-hour trauma in a completely dark room with no food or water, according to the Humane Society. This resets the hen, and she is ready to be knocked up again.



Then it's on to the hatchery

As soon as an egg hits the hay, inseminators ship it off to a separate facility for hatching.

At the hatchery, thousands of eggs are put in large incubators, set for high speed with bright lights and optimal heat and humidity, according to the Humane Society.

Turkey eggs hatch in less than a month.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The Best Features Of HTC's Droid DNA

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droid dna, droid, android, bi, dngHTC's latest Verizon smartphone, the Droid DNA is available now and starts at $199 with a two-year contract.

We have the full review of the smartphone here, but take some time and check out the gallery of the best new features.

The DNA features a slim profile. It measures 5.55 inches high x 2.78 inches wide x 0.38 inches deep and weighs 5.0 ounces.



The battery is 2020mAh. Officially you can expect: 12.8 hours of continuous usage or 14.7 days of stand by time. On average we got about 10 hours of battery life in our tests.



The rear camera is 8 megapixels, while the front facing camera is 2.1 megapixels with a wide-angle lens.



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Here's Waverly Advisors' Excellent Presentation On The Economy And The Coming Slaughter Of Sacred Cows

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calf cow bull

In their latest presentation on the state of the economy, Waverly Advisors weighs in on which "sacred cows" in the U.S. budget are likely to be taken to the slaughterhouse as Congress debates how to close the deficit.

They also warn that taking firm long-term positions for most trades remains a dangerous move given market uncertainty.

They also have a great Simpsons reference.

What's guaranteed?



Waverly sees widespread overextension



Although consumer discretionary stocks appear immune



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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The 7 Best NYC 'Young Members' Clubs For Meeting An Eligible Bachelor

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New York Public Library Lions

The New York social season is already in full swing, but it's never too late to join one of the Young Members circles.

Besides being able to fill up your social calendar with annual bashes like last week's Apollo Circle Benefit, the main reason young aspiring socialites and arts patrons join these societies is to mingle with the city's most well-heeled bachelors.

Whether you're into the art aficionados or bow-tie clad socialites, we've got you covered. We've rounded up a list of top organizations you can join to find the right type of guy for you this winter!

This post originally appeared on Guest of a Guest.

Met Young Members

Ages: 21-35

Membership fee: $70/year and up

Boys: The MET young members circle is your best bet for finding the largest selection of boys. The membership fees range from $70 to $20,000, so you'll have plenty of boys from all different tax brackets. As it is one of the more inclusive junior philanthropy circles in the city, you should expect to find down-to-earth members with full-time jobs.

The perks of this membership (and the reason many members choose to join), is the Young Members Party. This annual bash is known for being one of the rowdiest parties, where members come together for a night of drunken debauchery. Most boys will show up in after-work attire (some even in jeans), and it's a great way to meet single boys and get a good feel of the art patron world.

Go here to join.



Met Apollo Circle

Ages: 21-39

Membership fee: $1,000/year

Boy: As one of the more prestigious committees in the Young Members circles, you're going to find the NYC bachelors who are considered the cream of the crop in the Apollo Circle. This one tops our list as their giant fete is tonight and well, why not?

In addition to a number of invitations to private collection viewings, gallery talks, evening receptions, and curatorial tours, you get discounted tickets to the Apollo Circle Benefit Dance and reservations in the exclusive Trustees Dining Room. If you're looking to attend some of the most important events on every junior social's calendar, this is the circle for you. Often referred to as the Upper East Side matchmaking club, expect to see bow tie clad boys being dropped off in a fleet of black Escalades and town cars.

Go here to join.



The Whitney Contemporaries

Ages: 21-40

Membership fee: $500/year

Boys: Forget the opening cocktail receptions or gallery walks around the city, this membership guarantees you an invite to one of the best parties of the season. Their annual art party brings together artists, fashion designers, and other celebs in support of the museum's Independent Art Programs.

Past guests included Bradley Cooper, Emma Roberts, Mariah Carey, Kate Bosworth, and Olivier Theyskens. The Whitney Contemporaries crowd is definitely one of the circles with the most clout, which should give you an idea of how trendy the boys will be.

Go here to join.



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Inside The Journalists' Drama On Rihanna's Crazy 777 Tour

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rihanna 777 tour

Roughly 200 journalists were invited to join Rihanna on her seven-day tour across seven countries.

It turns out not everyone can handle the pressure.

Instead of a star-studded red carpet flight with Rihanna, reporters from E!, HuffPost, Billboard, MTV, and more have offered that the trip isn't the dream they imagined. 

They claim to have experienced sleepless nights and a lack of food mixed with too much booze. They say they haven't even seen the hostess herself since day one. 

By day five of the week event, their restlessness has led to all-out insanity, with reporters referring to their time on the plane as #occupy777. (One reporter even took to streaking.)

On November 14, more than 200 journalists fittingly accompanied Rihanna on a 777 plane to take part in her #777 tour.



Here's the letter you received if you were one of the lucky few to join the singer.



It all seemed to start out like a fantasy with everyone freaking out to see Rihanna aboard the 777 ... and with reason.



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13 Crazy Things You Didn't Know About Food

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angry kid eating

Food. We all eat it and need it to survive, but how much do we know about it? A visit to The American Museum of Natural History's newest exhibit showed me I don't know all that much about food.

Here's what I learned >

The American Museum of Natural History's newest exhibit, which opened over the weekend, celebrates global food — the culture, history and technology of producing and eating food.

The Our Global Kitchen exhibition will run from November 17 to August 11, 2013. I got to tour the exhibit before it opened, and learned a ton of crazy stuff about food. Here are some of the interesting things about what you put in your mouth that you might not have known.

One record-setting chicken laid 364 eggs in one year. Before being domesticated, chickens only produced about a dozen eggs a year.



The biggest strawberry ever weighed about half a pound.



Broccoli, Brussels sprouts and Kale are all the same species of plant, the wild cabbage Brassica Oleracea.



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NEW DATA: How The Tablet Revolution Is Already Turning Ecommerce On Its Head

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ipad girl face

Although there are far fewer tablets in existence than there are smartphones, Ipads, Samsung and Nexus tabs are already changing online shopping.

In some arenas — such as the conversion rate of visiting users into actual shoppers, and the average amount they spend — tablets are already at parity with old fashioned desktop computer shopping.

Monetate, a company that optimizes ecommerce sites, examined a sample of 100 million online shopping experiences to produce this data on the way tablets are replacing smartphones as shopping devices — and even threatening the dominance of the desktop.

Here's the overall ecommerce market, broken down by share of traffic from shoppers' devices. The U.S. is ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to tablet adoption.



Both mobile formats are increasing their share of ecommerce traffic. Note that tablet share is keeping pace with smartphones for shopping — even though there are fewer tablets in the market.



Maryland has the highest percentage rate of mobile device traffic in ecommerce. Wisconsin has the least.



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The 11 Most Exotic Places To Celebrate Thanksgiving

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Montpelier Plantation & Beach

Thanksgiving is a cherished American holiday, when families from sea to shining sea gather to celebrate and give thanks over a bountiful meal.

For the travel-minded, Thanksgiving weekend also provides the perfect opportunity to get out of town, where manic Black Friday disasters are but a faint memory.

See the 11 best locations to celebrate Thanksgiving abroad >

Fortunately, traveling outside the United States doesn’t mean those who love a traditional meal need go without. While not necessarily acknowledging the cultural importance of the holiday, an increasing number of restaurants abroad are preparing special menus and dinners to accommodate those who crave them.

Chef Laurent Manrique, of the New York restaurant Millesime, will be spending the holiday in Paris, where he has been invited by chef Flora Mikula to cook a traditional Thanksgiving meal at her hotel restaurant Auberge Flora. The pair will offer a special menu, including roasted turkey and a scallop and cheddar fondue appetizer. “I am excited to bring to Paris a taste of Thanksgiving and allow those visiting Americans or adventurous diners to celebrate with us abroad,” says Manrique.

Though most restaurants participating in the trend stick primarily to the culinary framework of turkey, stuffing and pie, there are those who fuse the American foundations of the dishes with local techniques and spice. For the third consecutive year, Marrakech’s La Maison Arabe, where Americans make up 40 percent of the clientele, won’t just be serving a Thanksgiving meal at its Trois Saveurs dining room — its cooking-class program will teach guests how to make it (complete with a turkey cooked in a tagine). Even Etihad Airways will offer Thanksgiving-inspired options in addition to regular in-flight menus on the big day. We’ll say thank you to that.

More articles from Departures:

Aqua Expeditions, Peru

Trade in Thanksgiving football for a visit to the Amazon. Luxury river-cruise outfit Aqua Expeditions will arrange an unforgettable South American outing aboard one of its tricked-out water vessels before wining and dining guests with a Peruvian-inspired Thanksgiving meal.

Spend the day photographing some of the area’s unique wildlife or meeting with fishermen of the Ucayali River and then sit down to a dinner of baked turkey stuffed with breadfruit, a starfruit chutney and cocona side dish and sweet humitas for dessert.

Three-night itinerary (including meals and tours), from $2,700

866-603-3687

aquaexpeditions.com



Auberge Flora, Paris

Chef Flora Mikula is starting a new trend at the restaurant in the Auberge Flora hotel by inviting some of her favorite culinary masters to cook a meal in its kitchen.

The first of these partnerships will take place on Thanksgiving Day, when Laurent Manrique, chef at the Carlton Hotel’s Millesime restaurant in New York, will be on hand to serve guests and locals alike a time-honored American culinary experience. Mikula and Manrique’s menu will feature turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce as well as less traditional fare like a celery-and-pear soup.

Rooms, from $178; dinner, from $60

44 Bd. Richard Lenoir

33-1/47-00-52-77

aubergeflora.fr



CUT, 45 Park Lane, London

At Wolfgang Puck’s first European restaurant, the world-renowned chef will celebrate Thanksgiving with a variety of additions to its steakhouse menu, which is particularly popular with London’s robust American population.

Dinner on the day will feature a traditional meal of turkey with all the trimmings, plus quirky pie sliders (from pumpkin to pecan) and the 1863 cocktail (whiskey, port, lemongrass, ginger). “We wanted to create a special menu so our guests who are spending time in London on Thanksgiving could get a taste of home or an opportunity to experience an all-American tradition,” Puck explains. The pie sliders and cocktail will be available at Bar 45 from November 19 to 25.

Rooms, from $610; dinner (excluding drinks), from $133

45 Park Lane; 44-20/7493-4545

45parklane.com



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13 Mistakes Your Business Is Making On LinkedIn (LNKD)

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linkedin Krista Canfield

LinkedIn isn't just a good resource for professionals.

When used the right way, it can be a powerful tool for businesses too—and not just for recruiting, the way most managers think of using the site.

Businesses that navigate LinkedIn properly engage customers, generate sales leads, and swap internal information among employees.

We got in touch with Krista Canfield, LinkedIn's senior manager of corporate communications. True, it's her job to get people to use LinkedIn, but we think she has a perspective worth sharing, since she trains companies on nontraditional uses of LinkedIn. She knows the platform like the back of her hand, having joined LinkedIn when it only had 18 million members and 200 people on staff (now it has 187 million members and 3,177 employees). Her team has also trained more than 13,000 journalists to better navigate LinkedIn.

Canfield told us the most common mistakes she sees businesses make on LinkedIn, and how all companies can use the professional social network better.

1. Your company isn't even listed on LinkedIn

"More than 2.6 million companies already have a LinkedIn Company Page," Canfield says.

So why is it a big deal to add yours?

LinkedIn shows companies statistics about their followers for free. Companies with pages can also share news and information with their followers to keep people engaged and attract new clients or employees.

Canfield recommends checking out LinkedIn's own company page (which has a hidden joke for hackers), as well as CNBC, Dell, and Philips for some good examples.



2. Your company doesn't follow competitors on LinkedIn

LinkedIn company pages can be a good way to keep tabs on the competition.

"When you follow a competitor’s LinkedIn Company Page, you can find out what talent is joining, and leaving, those companies," Canfield says. "You’ll also get updates from the companies (when they share recent news articles or discussions with their followers) and you’ll be the first to know when they post jobs on
LinkedIn. This information can help clue you in to the direction those companies might be heading in."

Canfield also recommends following company pages for partners, potential customers and acquisition targets on LinkedIn.



3. Your employees haven't spent much time on their LinkedIn profiles

Employees are an extension of your brand on LinkedIn, so it's important to make sure their profile pages are a good representation of your company.

"LinkedIn Profiles (which appear in Google search results not just for names, but also in Web searches for skills and areas of expertise) may be the first encounter a potential customer or business partner has with your company," says Canfield. "A bare-bones profile on LinkedIn suggests that your employee and your company may not have stellar online networking skills, so encourage your people to fill out their profiles so they are 100 percent complete."

Canfield suggests even little touches, like making sure employees have uploaded profile pictures. A LinkedIn profile is 7 times more likely to be viewed if it has a photo.



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Take A Virtual Tour Of Philadelphia's Inspiring 'Mural Mile'

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Philadelphia Mural

Back in 1984, when Philadelphia was rife with crime and the city was covered in graffiti, Philadelphia's then-mayor, Wilson Goode, decided that it was time to make a change.

So he teamed up with some artists and instituted the Mural Arts Program, a program that encourages aspiring artists to leave their mark on the city. 

Since then, the program has grown into a thriving network of muralists, youth, local businesses, and Philadelphia residents all seeking to add more beauty to the City of Brotherly Love. More than 3,000 murals have now been painted all around the city, and many more are in progress.

We've heard some incredible praise for the program, so we decided to go see it in person. We took the self-guided walking tour of Mural Mile in the Center City neighborhood, and thought it was astounding. See for yourself.

Photographs by Melissa Stanger/Business Insider

'A People's Progression Toward Equality'

Location: S. 8th Street & Ranstead Street

Artist: Jared Bader

This mural represents the ascent toward equality, with each level representing a step forward and the top level being the most progressive. Naturally, Abraham Lincoln—a symbol of emancipation—is depicted. Artist Jared Bader worked with the community to create this mural.

Mural, Art, Philadelphia



'Pride & Progress'

Location: S. Juniper Street & Spruce Street

Artist: Ann Northrup

Located in the heart of the Philadelphia "gayborhood,""Pride & Progress" is the largest gay-themed mural in the world. It captures the progress of the American gay rights movement, which began in Philadelphia in the 1960s. Protesters began gathering outside Independence Hall on July 4, 1966 (depicted in the painted poster on the left), and have been doing so every year since.

Mural, Art, Philadelphia



'Garden of Delight'

Location: Locust Street & Sartain Streeta

Artist: David Guinn

This mural is a tribute to the garden it stands over. The space was once a dirt lot used to store concrete, but the community worked together to transform it into a luscious flower and vegetable garden. The artist, who played in the garden as a child, captured the space in a peaceful, almost dreamy style.

Mural, Art, Philadelphia



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HOUSE OF THE DAY: A Massive Stone Mansion In Connecticut Is On Sale For $13 Million

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greenwich connecticut $13 million house

A 15,800-square-foot house in Greenwich, Conn. is on sale for $13 million.

The Georgian mansion sits on five acres of land. It has six bedrooms, seven full bathrooms, and two half baths.

The home also features a wine cellar, a golf room, and expansive terraces.

Welcome to this grand estate in Greenwich, Conn.



The home was built in 2001 and "enhanced" even further in 2006.



The home is asking $821 per square foot.



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These Beloved '90's Toys Are Making A Major Comeback

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gak

Retailers are betting on a '90's comeback this holiday season. 

Some of the most-ordered toys this holiday season include throwbacks like toy Elmos, Furby, Polly Pockets and Razor scooters, according to trade data company Panjiva Research

“Parents who played with some of these toys as kids are now out shopping for their own children and may be willing to put their precious holiday budget behind the toys they knew and loved themselves,” said Panjiva CEO Josh Green.

“It’s probably a safe bet for retailers, and we’ll find out in the month ahead whether it was a smart bet as well."

9. Gak

Gak is a bouncy, stretchy, substance manufactured by Nickelodeon that went back on the market with much fanfare this year. Kids like it because of the funny sounds it makes.



8. Bop It

The Bop It is an audio game that orders the player to follow different instructions like "Bop it!" or "Twist it!" Thanks to a cool new design, it's in demand again. 



7. Power Rangers

The Power Rangers are toys based on the television show that features young superheros fighting for justice. Since then, the brand has grown to include toys, video games and online streaming. 



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