April 2008 Archives

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court said on Tuesday that a new rule requiring New York City fast food restaurants to post calorie information on menu boards is effective immediately.

It's a done deal: NYC calorie-count rule effective immediately: court

I've already become used to these menu boards at Subway, which has had them for over a year because they have nothing to hide:

The slightly more-caloric chains fought the legislation since it might cause customers to reconsider their choice:

One of the claims was that adding the calorie information would the make the menu impossible to read. Here is what Dunkin' Donuts presented:

And here is how New York City responded:

Just another health-inspired law from the first major city to ban smoking and trans fats!

Photo Credit: Most of these photos are from Menu Board Calories Arrive in New York on "Weighty Matters" where they are licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada license.

While the newkai.com domain will be sticking around, I killed the over-eight-year-old "The New Kai" concept of this website. Not only was it horribly out of date content and design-wise, much of it was broken!

"The New Kai" concept was based on fifteen-to-eighteen-year-old me and simply had to be discarded of. I now work about fifty hours a week, spend six-plus hours in the gym, enjoy nightlife, and sleep most of the weekend to recuperate from the previous three. It was time for me to upgrade to a much simpler content management system.

Any of the worthy content from the old site will be carried over here eventually. You'll already find a link to my two photo sites in the "pages" section of the main page. I might even bring back the KaiCams sometime, although I think they'll be a little more outdoors oriented this time! They certainly did a lot for the uniqueness of this site.

Even maintaining a website in this age of Facebook is a struggle. See my post about this last year.

Here are images I dug up of newkai.com versions 1 & 2:

I'm finally freeing myself of frames on newkai.com. While they improved the site's appearance back in the day, there's no use for them in 2008. And last but not least, there's no more 18-year-old me frozen all over the screen!

One of the first things you learn upon arriving in New York City is that Starbucks contain the quasi-public bathrooms of this epicenter of Western civilization. There are two major reason for this:

1. The city only provides one. (There are also about a dozen in the subway system, but they're not recommended)
2. There is a Starbucks on virtually every corner and they do not post "restrooms are for customers only" signs.

The "Starbucks law" will help you out a lot. However, if you find yourself in a pedestrian-heavy areas, you might find yourself in a ridiculously long line several times longer than the coffee line.

That's where the New York City Public Toilet Map comes in... The preview on the site doesn't show you too many examples, but it does mention the SoHo Apple Store. I've been in there at least a dozen times and never even realized it had a public bathroom.

I don't own this map (yet), but happened to find myself in SoHo on Saturday, when it was packed by European tourists spending the formerly valuable currency known as the dollar. There was a line of about 20 at Starbucks on Spring Street by Lafayette Street. Fortunately I remembered that there's a Bloomingdales around the corner with three sets of bathrooms. There was no line.

More background on the map