LEXUS LS 400 VS. AUDI A8 - IT MIGHT SURPRISE YOU!

Almost 2 decades ago Lexus' flagship model, the LS400, was released as Toyota's new Champion Vehicle. After a review of its performance, any early dismissal of the brand was soon silenced. Though the Lexus brand's roots are not in years of experienced racing, Lexus vehicles run better and cost less then it's competitors, like Audi.

Today, we are going to do a brief evaluation of the Lexus LS460 compared to Audi A8. After an initial look, it's clear that both cars perform well, but the interior and ride quality of the Audi, in particular, does not live up to the grandeur the performance promises. Both cars have quite the sticker price. The A8 starts at $72,900, and the LS460 begins at $71,000. But, for the price, it's been said that no other luxury car offers more for your money than the Lexus LS460.



In summation, the Audi A8 is a good ride, but it compromises some luxury for performance. On the other hand, for a high-achiever (or should we say over-achiever) in capability, luxury, engineering, reliability, and value the Lexus LS460 is at the forefront of the market. There is no doubt; this vehicle was designed to conquer and there is no doubt, it does.

GET THE FULL STORY AT ASKMEN.COM

17 INNOVATIONS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR TOMORROW

The electric light was a failure.

Invented by the British chemist Humphry Davy in the early 1800s, it spent nearly 80 years being passed from one initially hopeful researcher to another, like some not-quite-housebroken puppy. In 1879, Thomas Edison finally figured out how to make an incandescent light bulb that people would buy. But that didn’t mean the technology immediately became successful. It took another 40 years, into the 1920s, for electric utilities to become stable, profitable businesses. And even then, success happened only because the utilities created other reasons to consume electricity. They invented the electric toaster and the electric curling iron and found lots of uses for electric motors. They built Coney Island. They installed electric streetcar lines in any place large enough to call itself a town. All of this, these frivolous gadgets and pleasurable diversions, gave us the light bulb.


We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do.


When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. If you don’t know that the incandescent light was a failure before it was a success, it’s easy to write off some modern energy innovations — like solar panels — because they haven’t hit the big time fast enough.

Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. The incandescent light was a 19th-century failure and a 20th- century success. Now it’s a failure again, edged out by new technologies, like LEDs, that were, themselves, failures for many years.

That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome.

 1. ELECTRIC CLOTHES
Physicists at Wake Forest University have developed a fabric that doubles as a spare outlet. When used to line your shirt — or even your pillowcase or office chair — it converts subtle differences in temperature across the span of the clothing (say, from your cuff to your armpit) into electricity. And because the different parts of your shirt can vary by about 10 degrees, you could power up your MP3 player just by sitting still. According to the fabric’s creator, David Carroll, a cellphone case lined with the material could boost the phone’s battery charge by 10 to 15 percent over eight hours, using the heat absorbed from your pants pocket.
 
2. THE NEW COFFEE
Soon, coffee isn’t going to taste like coffee — at least not the dark, ashy roasts we drink today. Big producers want uniform taste, and a dark roast makes that easy: it evens out flavors and masks flaws. But now the best beans are increasingly being set aside and shipped in vacuum-sealed packs (instead of burlap bags). Improvements like these have allowed roasters to make coffee that tastes like Seville oranges or toasted almonds or berries, and that sense of experimentation is trickling down to the mass market; Starbucks, for instance, now has a Blonde Roast. As quality continues to improve, coffee will lighten, and dark roasts may just become a relic of the past.
 
3. ANALYTICAL UNDIES
Your spandex can now subtly nag you to work out. A Finnish company, Myontec, recently began marketing underwear embedded with electromyographic sensors that tell you how hard you’re working your quadriceps, hamstring and gluteus muscles. It then sends that data to a computer for analysis. Although the skintight shorts are being marketed to athletes and coaches, they could be useful for the deskbound. The hope, according to Arto Pesola, who is working on an advanced version of the sensors, is that when you see data telling you just how inert you really are, you’ll be inspired to lead a less sedentary life.
 
4. THE MORNING MULTI-TASKER
The problem with laptops and tablets, says Mark Rolston of the design firm Frog, is that they’re confined by a screen. He wants to turn the entire room into a monitor, where you can have the news on your kitchen table while you place a video call on your fridge. And when you’re done, you can swipe everything away, like Tony Stark in “Iron Man.”

 

 

 

 
 
 
 
5. CLEAN HAIR - HANDS FREE
This 15-minute shampoo treatment begins when you lean your head back into a machine that looks like a sink at the salon. First it maps your scalp, then it shoots streams of warm water and foam shampoo from its 28 nozzles before 24 silicone “fingers” work up a lather. One conditioning mist, scalp massage and light blow-dry later, you’re done.
 
6. THE CONGESTION KILLER
Traffic jams can form out of the simplest things. One driver gets too close to another and has to brake, as does the driver behind, as does the driver behind him — pretty soon, the first driver has sent a stop-and-go shock wave down the highway. One driving-simulator study found that nearly half the time one vehicle passed another, the lead vehicle had a faster average speed. All this leads to highway turbulence, which is why many traffic modelers see adaptive cruise control (A.C.C.) — which automatically maintains a set distance behind a car and the vehicle in front of it — as the key to congestion relief. Simulations have found that if some 20 percent of vehicles on a highway were equipped with advanced A.C.C., certain jams could be avoided simply through harmonizing speeds and smoothing driver reactions. One study shows that even a highway that is running at peak capacity has only 4.5 percent of its surface area occupied. More sophisticated adaptive cruse control systems could presumably fit more cars on the road.

 •When a quarter of the vehicles on a simulated highway had A.C.C., cumulative travel time dropped by 37.5 percent.


•In another simulation, giving at least a quarter of the cars A.C.C. cut traffic delays by up to 20 percent.


•By 2017, an estimated 6.9 million cars each year will come with A.C.C.

A BETTER BIKE
7. Anti-theft handlebars



Here’s an old idea whose time has come again. The bearing system that allows the bike to turn can be locked so that a thief can’t steer his stolen bike. The lock is internal, meaning that he’d have to destroy the bike to ride it away.






8. No more greasy chains


An updated shaft drive — which replaces the chain with a rod and internal gear system — would be perfect for urban riders. They’re popular in China right now, but new versions will be lighter and have more sophisticated gearing.






9. One-piece plastic and carbon-fiber frames


Plastic frames were tried back in the ’90s, but they were too heavy. The materials and technology have improved. Thermoplastics are cheap and practically impervious to the elements.


10. DOCTOR ON BOARD
Your car is already able to call for help when an accident occurs, but within a few years, it’ll tip paramedics off to probable injuries too. E.M.T.’s would know the likelihood of internal bleeding or traumatic head injury, for example, before arriving on the scene, which would help them decide whether to move you to a Level 1 trauma center or a standard emergency room. Researchers at the University of Michigan International Center for Automotive Medicine have created the predictive models by cross-referencing the crash data provided by sensors on cars, like speed and location of impact, with 3-D scans of accident victims.

11. NICE LITTLE CABIN IN THE SKY
The typical plane cabin is drier than the Arizona desert, and the air is so thin it feels as if you were visiting Machu Picchu. This brutal environment contributes to the parched, exhausted feeling you get after you fly. But there are already planes in the air — made mostly of carbon fiber — that solve this problem. Carbon fiber is markedly stronger by weight than the aluminum used for most existing planes, which means that the interior air pressure can be adjusted to more comfortable levels without the risk of damaging the fuselage. Airlines also keep humidity levels low now to prevent the plane’s metal skin from corroding, but carbon fiber doesn’t rust. That will allow a new system to maintain humidity at a more comfortable 15 percent (up from around 5 to 10 percent). Japan Airlines and Nippon Airlines bought the first crop of these new planes. They’re currently in service between Tokyo and Boston.
 
12. THE ROLLING ARCADE
The industrial designer Jiang Qian has conceived of a subway strap that’s also a video game. It has a button on each side that you push with your thumb as you hang on; instead of a joystick, you control movement by twisting the handle from side to side. Jiang imagines that new types of games could be created, where keeping your balance while the train is motion is part of the challenge. And unlike Angry Birds on your phone, Strap Game (that’s the official name) will alert you when your stop is approaching.
 
13. ANTI-SLOUCH SCREEN
If you slump down when you’re typing on an ErgoSensor monitor by Philips, it’ll suggest that you sit up straighter. To help office workers avoid achy backs and tired eyes, the device’s built-in camera follows the position of your pupils to determine how you are sitting. Are you too close? Is your neck tilted too much? Algorithms crunch the raw data from the sensor and tell you how to adjust your body to achieve ergonomic correctness. The monitor can also inform you that it’s time to stand up and take a break, and it will automatically power down when it senses that you’ve left.
 
14. THE SHUT UP GUN
When you aim the SpeechJammer at someone, it records that person’s voice and plays it back to him with a delay of a few hundred milliseconds. This seems to gum up the brain’s cognitive processes — a phenomenon known as delayed auditory feedback — and can painlessly render the person unable to speak. Kazutaka Kurihara, one of the SpeechJammer’s creators, sees it as a tool to prevent loudmouths from overtaking meetings and public forums, and he’d like to miniaturize his invention so that it can be built into cellphones. “It’s different from conventional weapons such as samurai swords,” Kurihara says. “We hope it will build a more peaceful world.”
 
15. THE KINDNESS HACK
Researchers at Wharton, Yale and Harvard have figured out how to make employees feel less pressed for time: force them to help others. According to a recent study, giving workers menial tasks or, surprisingly, longer breaks actually leads them to believe that they have less time, while having them write to a sick child, for instance, makes them feel more in control and “willing to commit to future engagements despite their busy schedules.” The idea is that completing an altruistic task increases your sense of productivity, which in turn boosts your confidence about finishing everything else you need to do.

16. YOUR BODY - YOUR LOGIN

A team of Dutch and Italian researchers has found that the way you move your phone to your ear while answering a call is as distinct as a fingerprint. You take it up at a speed and angle that’s almost impossible for others to replicate. Which makes it a more reliable password than anything you’d come up with yourself. (The most common iPhone password is “1234.”) Down the line, simple movements, like the way you shift in your chair, might also replace passwords on your computer. It could also be the master key to the seven million passwords you set up all over the Internet but keep forgetting.

 

17. MIND READING SHOPPING CARTS

In February, Chaotic Moon Labs began testing a robotic shopping cart that acts a bit like a mind-reading butler. To start it up, you can text message the cart’s built-in tablet computer. Now it knows who you are and what you need for dinner. The cart uses Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensor technology to track and follow you through the store, pointing you — in a synthy voice reminiscent of a G.P.S. navigator — toward products on your list. The system will also warn you if you’ve added something that violates your dietary restrictions. Still only a prototype, the cart isn’t nearly as nimble as its human-powered cousin, but it does have one main advantage. Items you add to the cart can be automatically scanned, and you can finalize your purchase from the device, skipping the checkout line entirely.

 

There are MORE fun innovations - in this article!

SUNDAY POWER BRUNCH

Ahh...Sunday. For several of us, it's our favorite day of the week. If you are like me, there is nothing better than Sunday Brunch in Kansas City with the family. (This author likes to make it HERSELF as opposed to going out!) But the same ole' veggie omelet gets a bit tiresome after a while. So we found some ways for you to SPICE up Brunch at home!

Take a look at these fun recipes! Let us know what you think.



ONION RING EGGS

Mold eggs by frying them inside vegetable cross-sections with this lovely recipe for onion-ring eggs: just half-cook rings of sliced onion, turn over, and crack in an egg. Add some water to the pan and cook covered over low heat. Fantastic!




FLOWER POWER EGGS

There’s no recipe, really, just three steps: 1) Cut bell peppers into 1/2 inch rings; 2) Place in a non-stick lightly oiled skillet; and 3) Crack an egg in the middle of each ring and cover and cook over low heat until done. If you like your yolks runny, just cook over low heat until whites are done. If you like your yolks firm, break the yolks and then cook over low heat until both whites and yolks are firm. SO FUN!




OATMEAL MINI CAKES

Oatmeal Cake with Coconut Pecan Frosting



Recipe by For the Love of Cooking


1/2 cup quick cooking oatmeal -- I used old-fashioned and it came out fine.


3/4 cups boiling water


1/2 cup sugar


1/2 cup brown sugar


2/3 cups flour


1/2 teaspoon salt


1/2 teaspoon baking soda


1 egg


1/4 cup of shortening -- We used butter.


Mix the oatmeal with the boiling water, stir and cover. Mix the remaining ingredients then stir in the oatmeal mixture. Grease and flour a 9x9 pan. I used small ramekins. I split up the batter in 5 small ramekins. Pour batter into pan and bake at 350 for 23-25 minutes. I baked the ramekins for 20 minutes.


The cakes fresh from the oven; they are ready to be topped with the frosting. Don't you just love individual desserts?







DOUBLE CHEESE BACON AND EGGS BISCUITS

•4 large eggs



•2 Tablespoons milk


•1/4 teaspoon kosher salt


•1/4 teaspoon black pepper


•1/4 Cup crumbled feta cheese


•1 can refrigerated biscuits, 10 count


•6 strips cooked Smithfield bacon, crumbled


•1/4 Cup shredded cheddar cheese


Instructions


Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place eggs into mixing bowl and add milk, salt and pepper. Whisk to combine then stir in feta cheese. Press each biscuit round into 10 regular size muffin cups that have been sprayed with cooking spray. Bake for 6 minutes, remove from oven and with the end of a wooden spoon press centers of dough to make room for egg mixture. Pour in egg mixture into each partially baked biscuit, top evenly with crumbled bacon and shredded cheese. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until eggs are set. Remove and enjoy. 10 individual servings - JUST YUM!
 
 
 
 
BREAKFAST QUESADILLAS
 
 

 
4 large flour tortillas
 

4 eggs, lightly beaten with a pinch of salt


1 cup raw baby spinach


2 chicken, pork or soy sausage patties (I used Morningstar Farms), cooked and roughly chopped


1 tbsp butter, divided


1/4 cup goat cheese crumbles

1/2 cup grated mozzarella cheese

hot sauce to taste


Directions:

Scramble the eggs in a small skillet with half of the butter. Once scrambled, scoop eggs into a small bowl and set aside.

Heat up a large skillet and drop the rest of the butter in. Lay a tortilla flat down then sprinkle with half of the eggs, sausage bits, goat cheese, spinach, mozzarella cheese and a drizzle of hot sauce. Lay other tortilla on top and press down. Cook quesadillas until golden brown on both sides. Repeat with remaining ingredients.


Slice into quarters and serve.

I'm hungry - Let's eat!

10 Things You Can Officially Stop Worrying About

It's the end of the month, tax season, the kids' school schedules, our health, our financial situations, our parent's health, the past, the future! These are all things we stress over everyday in some way or another! We LOVED this article by Martha Beck (in the March issue of O Magazine) and wanted to share with you her ways of coping with it all!

 Attention, worrywarts: Martha Beck hereby grants you permission to stop fretting, agonizing, panicking, and otherwise losing sleep over things you can't control.

Everywhere I turn these days, people are urging me to worry. "Restaurants are swarming with bacteria!" shouts a local news promo. "We'll tell you what to beware of!" From the computer in my lap, a parenting blog warns, "There's plenty to be anxious about." Noting the pallor of my furrowed brow, a neighbor clucks, "I think you should be more concerned about your health."

Friends, there are many areas in which I need encouragement, but worrying is not one of them. I worry the way Renée Fleming sings high Cs: Effortlessly. Loudly. At length. You may be similarly gifted, because worrying comes easily to a certain subpopulation of humans, namely those of us with pulses. We're constantly creating new, worry-based strategies for living.


But worrying is worrisome: It's stressful, and as we all know, stress will kill you. I worry about that a lot. So today I'm striking a tiny blow for sanity with my list of ten things you can officially stop worrying about.

1. What's on Your Plate


"If I can just finish this project," says my ultrabusy friend Nancy, "I can stop worrying." She's said this every time I've ever spoken to her. No matter how much work Nancy finishes, by the time it's done she's fixating on a whole new crop of chores. In our achievement-obsessed society, this is "normal." But I realized just how insane it is when a friend was dying of cancer. On her deathbed she managed to joke with me, "Hey, at least I only have one more thing on my to-do list."

Instead of fretting about getting everything done, why not simply accept that being alive means having things to do? Then drop into full engagement with whatever you're doing, and let the worry go.

"But," you may be thinking, "I can't just cut my anxiety loose! It isn't under my control!" I empathize with this argument. I also know it's bunk. To stop worrying about something, simply direct your attention toward something else. Personally, I like to interrupt my flow of worry by imagining—vividly—what I'd do if an elk walked into the room. See? Distraction works.


2. Needing Help


I used to be one of those people who spurned assistance—from other people, from God, from chemicals. Not anymore! These days—whether I'm begging for divine intervention, enlisting a fellow coach to help me overcome my aversion to e-mail, or refilling the awesome prescription that helps me sleep no matter how disruptive my schedule—I pretty much walk around hollering, "Help wanted!"


Are my helpers crutches? You betcha. Mama needs crutches, and she doesn't worry one little bit about using them. If you worry about needing what you need—a shoulder to cry on, a standing date with a shrink, whatever the shrink prescribes—come to Mama, and she'll smack you upside the head with her crutches until that worry flies right out of your mind.


3. Your Children


There was a time when I spent many hours worrying about my kids. In fact, I was so worried my firstborn would feel unloved that I "soothed" her constantly, blasting the poor child with a fire hose of anxious energy. It's a wonder she survived.


My second child, who arrived with an extra 21st chromosome, eventually led me to a shocking conclusion: We don't actually have much control over the way our kids turn out. Genes do a lot of the deciding, and the owner of those genes does most of the rest. Some kids let parents have a great deal of influence; others don't. Either way, people blossom when we love them, not when we worry about them. Worry just teaches worry. Let it go.

4. Your Face (and Hips, and Butt...)


As long as we're on the subject of DNA, let's take on the big kahuna of worries: our appearance. Ten bajillion product ads notwithstanding, your looks are another thing that's basically genetic. Stressing about them only deepens the facial creases that make everyone in your family resemble perturbed bulldog puppies. Key phrase: everyone in your family.



Instead of obsessing over your own appearance, try noticing—and mentioning—beautiful things about everyone else. This will make people adore you, which, last time I checked, is what most of us are hoping to achieve by worrying about our looks in the first place.


5. What You Own


The trick here is learning to reframe your perspective. For example, my friend Kathy always lays a colorful towel over her expensive tablecloth before serving her twin 7-year-old granddaughters a snack. One of the twins recently said, "Grandma, you don't need to worry about us spilling. Spills are just memories." If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you.


6. Everything You're Doing Wrong


I don't know any perfect people, but I know many who worry about being perfect. They exercise religiously and serve their families home-cooked organic free-range Tofurky recipes. They are unbearable.


I love the Buddhist concept of enlightenment as living without anxiety over imperfection. You can strain every fiber of your being trying to be flawless, only to face inevitable failure—or you can stop worrying about perfection, which instantly makes everything feel great. Save time and tofu: Choose option two.


7. The Past


I agree that your divorce settlement was a travesty of justice on par with the sack of Troy, that your last boss was abusive, and that you shouldn't have calmed yourself with so many appletinis prior to testifying before Congress. I do not agree that worrying about it now will do any good.


The word worry comes from the Old English wyrgan, meaning "to strangle." When we fixate on something in the past, we grab our own histories by the throat, cutting off the flow of physical and emotional energy that keeps us fully alive. To start the flow again, look forward. Think how you can apply what you've learned. Let your divorce teach you to negotiate assertively, your horrible boss help you spot and avoid other creeps. Let the debacle at Congress send you to a 12-step meeting. Embracing the lesson always loosens the stranglehold of worry.



8. What People Are Saying About You Right This Very Second


People are always telling me elaborate stories about the elaborate stories other people are supposedly telling about them. "I know people mock my pain," growls one client. "Everyone expects me to be strong," says another. "You think I'm expendable," sobs a wife, while her husband protests, "You think I'm a robot." All of these people are wrong, but they've got company. We all worry what people think about us—until we decide not to waste the energy.


When I first started coaching, I noticed that I never worried what my clients thought of me. Why not? All my attention was focused on understanding them. I watched like a Martian observer, not a vulnerable peer. This took me out of worry mode, and it helped clients feel seen. By not worrying about what they thought of me, I accidentally ensured that they thought well of me.

Today, pretend you're a Martian gathering data on humans. As you notice what they do and say without focusing on your fear of their opinions, you'll feel less self-conscious, and they'll feel the nonjudgmental attention they've always wanted from you. Win-win.


9. Your Account Balance


I have nothing against the globally sacred rite of worrying about money. Except this: People, it has no payoff.

I stopped worrying about money when I was unemployed, living on credit card debt. It wasn't that my ship came in. It was just that I'd decided to try writing for a living, yet I was too worried to write. So I proactively pushed aside worry as I worked. Did I make money that day? No. Did I make money sooner because I stopped worrying? I think so. Did I enjoy my life more from that moment on, regardless of how much I had in the bank? Abso-freaking-lutely. Go about your business, whatever it is, with full energy. And drop the worry. Watch how much stronger your moneymaking skills become when you're not dragging around a hefty load of anxiety.

10. Worrying


If your Spanx are now totally knotted from trying to stop worrying, it's time to take a nice, cleansing breath. Aaahhhh. Remember point number six: We're not after perfection here. If you've felt even a tiny release from worry while reading this list, you're succeeding. That slight lessening of anxiety is all you need.



Wiggle your worries a little each day, and they'll gradually lose their hold on you. Trust that you're already counteracting the barrage of messages that tell us, every day, to worry, worry, and worry some more. Enjoy the liberating sense of bucking the cultural tide. And speaking of bucks, if you have further questions, please feel free to direct them to my elk.