Random Thursday – The Friday Edition

Yesterday was sort of a lost day. Debbie had her LASIK “touch up” surgery – it went well, according to the doctor – and we were both fighting colds, so once we got her home we just crashed. That’s my excuse for this late Random Thursday post.

• The Ballroom Dance Society is using recorded music for its March dance instead of a live band. To my knowledge, this is the first time in the twenty year history of the group that this has been tried, and we have no idea how it will be received. In theory, it should be a separate but equal answer (as Pogo would put it), and in some ways superior (e.g. no uneven performances, a wider variety of steps, better volume control, etc.) but a live band does provide a certain attractive ambiance. In any event, we had to come up with a 3-hour playlist, which is harder to do than you might imagine.
• Pantone has selected Honeysuckle as the 2011 Color of the Year, supplanting the apparently old-and-busted Turquoise that was all the rage last year. In case you can’t picture Honeysuckle, think pink.
  “In times of stress, we need something to lift our spirits. Honeysuckle is a captivating, stimulating color that gets the adrenaline going – perfect to ward off the blues,” explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. “Honeysuckle derives its positive qualities from a powerful bond to its mother color red, the most physical, viscerally alive hue in the spectrum.”

  It’s nice to know that we can recession-proof our lives via color, although I could have sworn that that particular accomplishment depended more on green.

• Ever seen a front wheel drive, rear wheel steering recumbent trike? Me neither, until now:

  

  This particular bike is made by a Dutch company called Jouta. I admire the creativity of the design and engineering, although I’m not sure what benefits accrue to this approach. [Link via the Recumbent Blog]

• This sneaked in under the radar: Starbucks has just rolled out its Mobile Payment App nationwide. If you have an iPhone or a Blackberry, once you install the free Mobile Card app, you can make purchases at Starbucks simply by waving your phone in front of the store’s scanner. Sure, it’s a hipster way of buying coffee, and it still requires having a Starbucks card, but you avoid the tedium of having to extract the card from your wallet and interact with the barista. Plastic is so 2010. (And, yes, both Midland Starbucks are set up for mobile pay, according to the app. I figured we’d fall under an asterisked category entitled, “Please check back for future service announcements.”)
• Speaking of Starbucks, there was a lot of media hoo-haw surrounding the company’s announcement of its new 31-ounce “Trenta” iced coffee, and much of that reporting seemed to center on the outrageous quantity of caffeine. Makes sense, other than its utter rubbish, factually speaking. According to the Starbucks website, the Trenta has only 195 mg of caffeine, which is 65 mg less than the 12 oz “tall” version of its regular brewed coffee. Anyone who has tried the iced coffee knows that about half the volume of the drink is, well, ice…plain old zero calorie, zero caffeine, frozen water. Our society may well be over-caffeinated, but it’s not because of a 31 ounce iced coffee from Starbucks.