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Eye-watering price tag for "remarkable" first class Titanic menu

A first class dinner menu from the Titanic has been found and sold at an auction in England for £84,000 (around $162,000 AUD) on November 11. The water-stained menu was dated April 11, 1912 just three days before the ship hit an iceberg, ultimately meeting it's ill-fated end causing over 1500 deaths. Wealthy passengers at the time were spoiled with choice, with oysters, salmon, beef, squab (baby pigeon), spring lamb among other dishes on the menu, and that's not including dessert. Auctioneers Henry Aldridge & Son said it was unclear how the menu made it off the ship intact, but the slight water damage suggests that it was recovered from the body of a victim. The rare artefact, which is over 111 years old belonged to amateur historian Len Stephenson, from Nova Scotia, Canada, who passed away in 2017. No one knew he had it, including his family, who only discovered it after going through his belongings following his death. “About six months ago his daughter and his son-in-law, Allen, felt the time was right to go through his belongings,” auctioneer Andrew Aldridge said. “As they did they found this menu in an old photo album. “Len was a very well thought-of historian in Nova Scotia which has strong connections with the Titanic. The body recovery ships were from Nova Scotia and so all the victims were taken back there. “Sadly, Len has taken the secret of how he acquired this menu to the grave with him.” Stephenson worked at a post office and would talk to people, collect old pictures and write letters for them, which might be how he got the rare artefact. According to the auctioneer, no other first class dinner menus dated April 11, 1912 have been recovered from the titanic making this “a remarkable survivor from the most famous Ocean liner of all time”. “There are a handful of April 14 menus in existence but you just don’t see menus from April 11. Most of them would have gone down with the ship,” Aldridge said. “Whereas with April 14 menus, passengers would have still had them in their coat and jacket pockets from earlier on that fateful night and still had them when they were taken off the ship," he added. A few other items recovered from the Titanic were also sold, including a Swiss-made pocket watch recovered from passenger Sinai Kantor which fetched £97,000 (around $187,000 AUD). A tartan-patterned deck blanket, which was likely used during the rescue operation also sold for £96,000 (around $185,000). Images: Henry Aldridge & Son of Devizes, Wiltshire

Cruising

Transgress to impress: why do people tag buildings – and are there any solutions?

<a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/flavia-marcello-403040">Flavia Marcello</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/swinburne-university-of-technology-767">Swinburne University of Technology</a> In 1985 photographer Rennie Ellis <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/8707788">defined graffiti</a> as “the result of someone’s urge to say something – to comment, inform, entertain, persuade, offend or simply to confirm his or her own existence here on earth”. Since the mid-1980s, graffiti has crossed from vandalism to an accepted form of art practice through large murals or “pieces” and stencil art aimed at informing, entertaining and persuading us. But these are outnumbered by the tags you see everywhere. These stylised icon-type signatures define a hand style and confirm their author’s existence on Earth. These, for many of us, remain an eyesore. If you walk through an urban environment filled with tags, you may feel less safe. Heavily tagged areas can suggest the area is not cared for or surveilled. So why are Australian cities so full of tags? The problem is, the main solution proven to work is expensive. When tags go up, paint over them – and keep doing it. While anti-graffiti paint exists, it’s not widely used at present. <h2>Why do people tag?</h2> Graffiti in urban centres is often tied to the world-wide proliferation of hip-hop culture. Along with DJing, rapping and breakdancing, “Graf” or “writing” is considered one of its <a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/hip-hop">four pillars</a>. Posturing (or showing off) is a big part of tagging. When you see a tag on a freeway overpass or seemingly inaccessible building parapet, it’s not only confirming the tagger’s existence, it’s bragging. See how high I climbed! See what crazy risks I took! As one tagger in Sydney’s outer south-western suburb of Campbelltown <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/vandalism-graffiti-state-rail-authority-nsw.pdf">told researchers</a> in the 1980s: <blockquote> If you get on a train and see your name and know you’ve been here before that’s real good. Like, I was here. Or you see your mate’s name and you can say, hey, I know him […] It’s really good if you can get your name up in a difficult place where nobody else has. Other kids look at that and think, great! </blockquote> So why do people tag? <ul> <li> it boosts self-esteem and a sense of belonging to a social network, particularly for teens experiencing alienation at school </li> <li> it demonstrates bravado. Risky places have the added advantages of being both highly visible and harder to remove </li> <li> it gives graf artists practice for bigger pieces. You have to work quickly and accurately, especially in precarious positions where you could get caught at any moment. </li> </ul> While cities like Melbourne <a href="https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/art/where-to-find-the-best-street-art-in-melbourne">have embraced</a> larger murals and pieces as street art – even making them a tourist attraction – tagging isn’t regarded the same way. So why do non-taggers hate it? On a broader level, tagging can signify a sense of social degradation which makes people feel less safe. There’s no clear link between <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rip/rip6">more graffiti and more crime</a>. Even so, the public perception is that tagging is a sign warning of the presence of <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/vandalism-graffiti-state-rail-authority-nsw.pdf">disaffected and potentially violent</a> people in gangs. Asked to picture a tagger and you will most likely come up with a stock photo stereotype: a male teenager in a hoodie from a seedy area. But you would not be completely right. It is true just under half (46%) of graffiti damage and related offences are committed by 14 to 16 year old males, but the largest percentage of offenders actually come from <a href="https://www.goodbyegraffiti.wa.gov.au/Schools/Facts-for-Students/Who-are-the-most-likely-offenders-of-graffiti">middle- to high-income families</a>. So what tools do we have to manage it? <h2>Punishment</h2> It’s perfectly legal to commission a graf artist to paint a wall of a building you own. Many people do this to avoid a street-facing wall being tagged. For it to be illegal, tagging or graffiti has to be done without the owner’s permission. Since the majority of taggers are under 18, if they’re caught, punishment will usually include a caution, fines (presumably paid by bemused but cashed up parents) and cleaning off tags. But punitive measures only go so far because the appeal of graffiti is the transgression. Other measures include keeping spray paint locked away or not for sale to under 18s as well as zero-tolerance rapid removal. This can work for a while, but taggers know their tags are temporary. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse a committed tagger will eventually win. <h2>Technical solutions</h2> If you’ve walked past workers scrubbing or pressure washing tags off walls, you may have wondered why there are no coatings which don’t let paint stick. These actually <a href="https://www.ipcm.it/en/article/anti-graffiti-paints-what-are-they-and-how-they-work.aspx">do exist</a>, and can work well. When in place, you can remove graffiti with a solvent rather than having to repaint. But they’re not widely used. Unless paints such as <a href="https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/7-inventions-from-mexico-that-would-go-on-to-change-the-world">Deletum 3000</a> are used everywhere this approach is unlikely to be effective. <h2>Prevention</h2> The problem with punitive and technical measures is the limited reach. The vast majority of unwanted graffiti <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rip/rip6">goes unreported</a>. That’s why prevention is becoming more popular. How do you prevent tagging? By making it easier to report. By setting aside areas for taggers and graf artists. By commissioning pieces to deter graffers from illegal modes. And by talking directly to taggers about strategies. But these behaviour change efforts take time. People who hate tagging often believe taggers are motivated by negative emotions such as <a href="https://www.aic.gov.au/publications/rip/rip6">boredom and rebelliousness</a>. For them it’s vandalism, a criminal act associated with gangs, petty crime, broken windows and a less attractive environment to live in. But the truth is, taggers are often motivated by positive emotions. Tagging, for them, brings pride, pleasure, enjoyment and community. That’s why behaviour change approaches can be hard. <h2>So what’s the best way forward?</h2> In the 1990s, many cities declared war on skateboarders, using punishment and installing metal stoppers on well-skated urban areas. But the real solution was simpler: create skate parks. For taggers, the answer may be similar. Give them spaces such as little-used alleyways to practise their art. And for the rest of us, the solution may be to look at tags with different eyes. Not as a sign of crime and the collapse of civilisation, but as a need for validation, for transgression, for community and all the other things you probably wanted when you were a teenager.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205492/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/flavia-marcello-403040">Flavia Marcello</a>, Professor of Design History, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/swinburne-university-of-technology-767">Swinburne University of Technology</a> Image credits: Getty Images This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/transgress-to-impress-why-do-people-tag-buildings-and-are-there-any-solutions-205492">original article</a>.

Art

Madonna to offload home with a huge price tag

Madonna’s nine-bedroom Los Angeles home has hit the market with an eye-watering price tag of $US 26 million ($NZ 40.2 million). The pop megastar bought the sprawling estate in the Hidden Hills, California, from Canadian singer, The Weeknd, last year, dropping $US 19.3 million ($NZ 29.8 million). Sitting on nearly three acres, the home sits beyond a driveway lined with olive trees and a “storybook bridge” according to the <a href="https://www.thebeverlyhillsestates.com/listing/24220-long-valley-rd-3/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">listing</a>, and boasts a range of upgrades. Interior features include a foyer filled with natural light from two-storey walls of windows, a great room with an indoor-outdoor bar, an outdoor living room, a formal dining room with a fireplace and glass wine cellar, a home theatre and music lounge. Out of the nine bedrooms, seven come with an ensuite, including the primary ensuite which boasts dual closets, a steam shower and a stone bath. Heading outside, the property includes a two-bedroom, two-bathroom guest house with a full kitchen, a barn housing a gym and dance studio, a zero-edge saltwater pool, a spa that can fit over 10 people, and a full-size basketball court, all surrounded by grassy lawns and sunny hillsides. Images: @madonna (Instagram), The Beverly Hills Estates

Real Estate

What drives our wine choice – taste or the price tag?

Can a wine drinker judge the quality of a bottle by its price? The nature of this relationship has always been contested. We expect that consumers are willing to pay more for higher quality wines, while higher quality wines typically cost much more to produce. Some studies have identified that better quality wines do in fact <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-0862.2001.tb00058.x/abstract">sell for higher prices</a>, others <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504850701222145#.VI5EmnuK2Vo">have not</a>. Fundamentally, it is the subjective nature of wine quality assessment and the lack of quality information held by consumers which potentially drives a wedge between price and its quality. Even though expert wine tasters are able to provide a sensory evaluation of a wine’s characteristics, evaluation is subjective and different tasters often maintain different opinions for the same wine. Further, wine is often argued to be an “experience good” - which means that consumers need to purchase and consume the good first to evaluate it. This subjective nature of wine evaluation and the inability of consumers to know what’s in the bottle before consuming it means that the pricing of wines according to some measure of quality may prove particularly difficult. To explain how wine prices differ statistical models have been developed to examine the relationship between wine price and its quality and a series of other factors thought to influence prices. These statistical models are called hedonic price functions. These hedonic functions recognise that price depends upon both demand and supply factors and are employed generally for differentiated goods, such as houses, personal computers and cars. For wine, hedonic price functions statistically estimate the relationship between prices and measures of a wine’s quality, reputation, variety, region, vintage, and other factors for one of the seminal wine studies. In an attempt to shed light on the price-quality debate, Chris Doucouliagos and I have recently <a href="http://ajae.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/07/12/ajae.aau057.short">undertaken a meta analysis</a> of the relation between wine prices and quality ratings. The purpose of a meta analysis is to summarise previously published results from studies and make general conclusions of the major findings of a body of literature. The meta analysis examined more than 180 hedonic wine price models developed over 20 years covering many countries. The research identifies that the relation between the price of wine and its sensory quality rating is a moderate partial correlation of +0.30. This correlation is positive and statistically significant in approximately 90% of cases. In other words, approximately 90% of models estimated in the literature identified that the positive relation between prices and quality is not due to chance. The findings from the meta-analysis indicate, however, that the correlation between price and its quality is not perfect. That is, some wines are over-priced compared to quality, others may be under-priced. This recognition suggests some important implications for both wine producers and consumers. For wine producers specific pricing strategies to follow will depend on the quality of the wines produced and the nature of competition that producers face in the market. For example, some low quality producers may be able to charge higher prices than implied by quality, in the short term, as buyers may find it uneconomic to conduct the necessary search to identify quality. In other words, some consumers may be fooled by higher prices inferring higher quality, and pay higher prices than they really should. This deception may only occur for a short period of time as consumers become more aware of the wine’s quality over time. Alternatively, high quality producers may seek to charge higher prices than suggested by the wine’s quality level given that low-quality producers cannot sustainably follow a similar strategy. For consumers, the results imply that price may or may not infer quality. In other words, consumers should be wary of using price as a sole indicator of a wine’s quality. This implies that better informed buyers could potentially identify bargains in the short run. The question naturally arises, if wine experts differ in their opinions of a wine, what does a consumer do? Wine expert Jancis Robinson suggests that individual consumers may wish to follow the “preferences and prejudices” of a specific wine critic in making wine purchase choices. The moderate price-quality correlation identified across numerous studies occurs despite the lack of information held by consumers about a wine’s quality and the inconsistency of expert tasters when evaluating wines. Despite all this, it can be argued that quality still does matter.<img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/35252/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /> Written by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/eddie-oczkowski-147677">Eddie Oczkowski</a>, Professor of Applied Economics and Quantitative Methods, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/charles-sturt-university-849">Charles Sturt University</a>. Republished with permission of <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-drives-our-wine-choice-taste-or-the-price-tag-35252">The Conversation</a>.

Food & Wine

Shoppers find disturbing messages in clothes tags

Shoppers at a Zara store in Istanbul were deeply distressed after finding heartbreaking messages from exploited Turkish workers claiming they had not been paid for their labour. Workers from Bravo, an outsource manufacturer for Zara (and a number of other retailers), had been entering Zara shops and attaching tags to clothing, reading, “I made this item you are going to buy, but I didn’t get paid for it." The message also urges Zara shoppers to pressure the fashion giant into paying them. Bravo closed down overnight after the messages were discovered. Campaigners allege the company owes them three months’ worth of pay and severance allowance. Tell us in the comments below, have you ever found a strange message in an item of clothing?

Beauty & Style

The best way to remove skin tags

Skin tags, or as known by the medical community, acrochordon, are usually not harmful, though they are annoying. Doctors do not know for sure what causes the development of skin tags, but skin rubbing up again skin may play a part, as they are usually found in armpits, on the neck, groin, and sometimes the eyelids. You’ll be happy to know that there are home solutions, and this is the best one we have come by so far. <a href="http://www.drdougwillen.com/" target="_blank">Dr Doug Willen</a> is a chiropractor and nutritionist who offers natural solutions to everyday health problems. In the video above, he reveals how apple cider vinegar can help treat skin tags. What’s a home beauty remedy that you swear by? Let us know in the comments below. Related links: <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/09/how-to-naturally-reduce-dark-circles-under-eyes/">How to naturally reduce dark circles under eyes</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/08/how-to-make-your-own-blackhead-strips/">How to make your own blackhead strips</a> <a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/08/things-to-eat-and-drink-to-make-your-skin-glow/">6 things to eat and drink to make your skin glow</a>

Beauty & Style

Wife’s hilarious name tag for husband travelling alone

A wife in the US has come up with an ingenious solution to help her husband as he ventures into the world by himself for the first time in their 23-year relationship. Kim Gip created a lanyard with a hilarious name tag for her husband Jim, just in case he gets into any mischief. “My name is Jim,” the badge reads. “If I look lost, please call my wife Kim Gip. If I am in a restaurant just staring at the menu, pleasure order me some sort of Asian food, especially white rice. I've never been away from my wife who does everything for me.” <img width="499" height="665" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/28881/tag_499x665.jpg" alt="Tag" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"/> Photos of the tag went viral after the couple’s son Brandon shared them on Twitter with the caption, “My mum made this for my dad because he's going to Vegas this weekend without her.” It has since been retweeted more than 35,000 times and received over 70,000 likes. “My mum and her friend Patty came up with a funny idea to make the name tag thing as a joke,” Brandon told <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/wife-makes-husband-wear-special-lost-found-tag/story?id=42719952" target="_blank">ABC News</a>. “My mum then texted me a picture of it and I thought it was hilarious. Not knowing my tweet would go viral, I didn't blur out my mum's phone number because I was expecting no more than 50 likes, which turns out to be nearly 70k now. “But the tweet going viral onto Facebook and Instagram is still a shock to all of us. Besides the fact my mum's phone has gone off the hook, we are starting to enjoy the reality of it as people think the tweet is entertaining.” Related links: <a href="/news/news/2016/10/grandson-orders-pizza-to-check-if-grandma-is-safe/">Grandson orders pizza to check if Grandma is safe</a> <a href="/news/news/2016/10/tough-guy-grandpa-moved-to-tears-by-grandson/">Tough guy grandpa moved to tears by grandson</a> <a href="/news/news/2016/10/six-year-old-girl-passionate-about-saving-the-planet/">Six-year-old girl passionate about saving the planet</a>

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