Housing prices may be sky-high in many parts of the country, but Americans are thankfully catching a break at the supermarket: Grocery prices in July of 2016 were about 1.6 percent lower than they were a year before. Considering groceries make up a large portion of your budget, the dip has been a welcome one.
When dealing with the economy, however, what goes down usually comes up—and that goes for food prices, too. The USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS) recently released projections for grocery price trends in 2017, and it looks like costs in a few categories will increase in the coming year. The increases may be small (in many cases less than 2 percent), but they can have an effect on your wallet over the course of the year.
1. POULTRY
Poultry prices have dropped 3.2 percent in 2016 so far, and the USDA expects them to drop another 1 or 2 percent before the end of the year. According to the USDA, the avian flu, or Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), led to partial bans on U.S. poultry exports, which resulted in an increased supply and, in turn, led to lower prices. This is projected to change in 2017. Next year, you can expect the cost of your poultry to increase between 1.5 and 2.5 percent (chicken breast costs, on average, $3.18 per pound, so a 2 percent increase would add roughly 6 cents per pound).
2. EGGS
Egg prices are extremely volatile, the USDA points out, and 2016 saw a 29 percent drop from 2015. The ERS doesn’t expect the low prices to stick around, though: They predict egg prices will rise between 1 and 2 percent next year.
3. DAIRY
Warmer weather has led to an increase in cattle grazing, which means cattle have been producing more milk. This has created a dairy surplus that, in turn, has decreased prices for the year. However, the ERS expects the price of dairy products to increase between 1.5 and 2.5 percent next year (meaning a gallon of milk would increase from about $3.30 to $3.36), due to the recent decline in dairy imports.
4. FRESH FRUITS
The California drought could have wreaked havoc on the prices of fruits and vegetables this year, but the USDA says a stronger U.S. dollar has made overseas produce sales more difficult, creating a higher supply at home and mitigating price increases. Still, the ERS forecasts the price of fresh fruit (which is up 3 percent from July 2015) to increase another 1.5 to 2.5 percent between now and January. Those prices will be even higher next year—by 1 to 2 percent.
5. OILS
Fats and oils, like peanut butter and margarine, will remain pretty stable for the rest of the year, but next year they’re expected to rise 1.5 to 2.5 percent.
6. RED MEAT
Lovers of red meat have likely enjoyed the nearly 8 percent decrease in beef and veal prices this year. Like poultry, there’s been a decline in U.S. beef exports, so there’s more domestic supply and less demand. The ERS says prices will drop another 4 to 5 percent this year, but will rise an estimated 2 to 3 percent in 2017.
Add another job to the list of careers that are going to be taken over by robots. Museum curators, too, should get ready to be obsolete like the rest of us. The Tate Britain’s latest exhibit, Recognition, is algorithmically curated, as Co.Design reports.
Recognition was the 2016 winner of the Tate’s IK Prize, a digital creativity award sponsored by Microsoft that focuses on innovative ways to explore the Tate’s collection of British art. The artificial intelligence program connects the collection to current photojournalism from Reuters, updated minute-by-minute. It was created by Fabrica, an Italian communication research firm, and the French artificial intelligence company JoliBrain.
The exhibition, which will run until November 27, will be ever-changing as new images come in and are paired with art from the collection. The algorithm matches images based on object recognition; the gender, age, and emotions of the people pictured; the image’s composition; and the title, date, and other descriptors of the image.
Online, users can explore ongoing matches and see what similarities the algorithm found between the two images, whether accurate or not. A comparison of Hillary Clinton and Portrait of an Unknown Lady, by Cornelius Johnson, for instance, mislabels several things, including identifying the woman in the painting as a man and the background of both portraits as a blue sky. The responses people have to the matches will be posted on the exhibition’s virtual gallery at the end of the project.
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Political journalist/author Elizabeth Drew reportedly once accepted a chopped liver hors d’oeuvre at a Washington D.C. cocktail party and pronounced it “delicious.” “Why do people derogate it so?” she wondered.
The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slangpinpoints comedian Jimmy Durante as the first person to use this meaty metaphor to describe something trivial or to be scoffed at; he was known to give praise on his CBS-TV series by noting, “Now that ain’t chopped liver.”
Even earlier than that, however, Joey Adams included this bit of dialogue in his 1949 novel The Curtain Never Falls in a conversation between a (supposedly fictional) comedian named Jackie Mason and a smitten showgirl who was hurt by his inattention:
“You’ve been nice enough, but what am I, chopped liver or something?”
“Are you kiddin’? You’re the sexiest-looking thing up here. But you always seemed interested in all the shmoes.”
According to Ohr Somayach’s “Ask the Rabbi” column, chopped liver suffers from “always a bridesmaid, never the bride” syndrome. On any traditional Jewish dinner or buffet table, chopped liver is either an appetizer or a side dish, meant to be a complement to the entrée, but never taking center stage. To break it down into elementary school playground terms: When it comes to choosing folks to be on a team, the first person chosen is the brisket, and everyone else is chopped liver.
Ubiquitous free public Wi-Fi might seem like a pipe dream for Americans, but for many European countries it could become a reality in as little as four years. The London Evening Standard reports that European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has proposed to provide Wi-Fi connections in public spaces for all EU member states by 2020. He announced the plan during his State of the Union speech to the European Parliament on Wednesday, September 14.
“Digital technologies and digital communications are permeating every aspect of life,” Juncker said in his talk, as quoted by the Evening Standard. “All they require is access to high-speed internet. We need to be connected. Our economy needs it. People need it.”
According to the BBC, the EU wants to provide Europe’s parks, squares, libraries, and public buildings with Wi-Fi by 2020, and for at least one city in each member country to have a 5G mobile network. By 2025, the union wants all households, major railroads and railways, and public services and administrations to be equipped with internet connections of varying speeds. (The jury’s still out on whether the EU’s wireless goals apply to England, as they exited the union before 2020.)
Some people doubt the plan’s viability, and argue that European officials still haven’t made good on other tech-related promises, like getting rid of mobile roaming fees. Others have read the plan’s fine print, and point out that while the EU will take care of installation fees and equipment costs, local organizations will have to foot Wi-Fi subscription and maintenance bills. Meanwhile, additional critics say that 5G technology is still a work in progress, and that many of Europe’s public spaces already have Wi-Fi.
Although they frequently include some pretty epic crowns, crown jewels are not necessarily just crowns—they can also include scepters, jewels, necklaces, tiaras, and enormous gemstones. A nation’s crown jewels are used during a coronation ceremony, with the regalia often being used to represent the transfer of power to the new monarch. Over the years, the crown jewels of many nations have been lost or destroyed—sometimes in very mysterious circumstances.
1. THE HAWAIIAN CROWN JEWELS // REPLACED WITH PASTE
Hawaiian king Kalakaua and his queen Kapiolani decided to hold a lavish coronation eight years into their reign, after witnessing many foreign royals performing such ceremonies. They had two solid gold crowns designed and made in London by Hoffnung and Co., for which they paid £1000. One crown was said to contain 521 diamonds, 54 pearls, 20 rubies, 20 opals, and eight emeralds, among other jewels.
The coronation went ahead on February 12, 1883 and the impressive crown was ceremonially placed upon Kalakaua’s head—the only occasion on which the crown was ever used. Kalakaua died of kidney disease in 1891 and his sister Liliuokalani inherited the throne, but already much of her constitutional powers had been eroded, and by 1893 she was deposed by an American-led military coup. The custodian who took over the provisional government ordered an inventory of royal possessions, but when staff fetched the satin-lined box in Iolani Palace in which crown had been stored, all they found was its twisted and bent remains. Every single jewel had been pried from its moulding and stolen.
Detectives immediately set to work to try and find the lost jewels, and before long one of the guardsmen, George Ryan, was found to have some of the smallest diamonds in his jacket pocket. Ryan was jailed for the theft for three years but no other jewels were recovered. Kalakaua’s crown was restored with glass and paste jewels costing $350 in 1925 and is today displayed alongside Queen Kapiolani’s crown (which had been stored elsewhere and thus remained intact) in Iolani Palace.
The Irish crown jewels included no crown, but a diamond brooch, five gold collars, and a diamond, ruby, and emerald encrusted star of the Order of St. Patrick, an honor created in 1783 as an equivalent to the illustrious British Order of the Garter. In 1903 the jewels were moved to a special safe in Dublin Castle which was supposed to be kept in a newly re-enforced strong room. However when staff came to move the safe into its new position, they realized, a little late, that the safe would not fit through the door. Instead, the Officer of Arms, Arthur Vicars, allowed it to be stashed outside the strongroom in a library.
In 1907 King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra were due to visit Dublin Castle, intending to use the jewels to bestow the Order of St Patrick on a local Lord, but when the custodians came to check on the jewels the found the safe empty. Panic and suspicion swept the castle—the crime was clearly an inside job, because keys had been used to unlock the safe. All fingers pointed to Arthur Vicars, the person in charge of the keys, but he vehemently protested his innocence and instead accused his assistant, Francis Shackleton—brother of the famous Arctic explorer Ernest Shackleton and later a convicted fraudster. Both men were investigated by a Royal Commission which cleared them of the theft but admonished Vicars for not exercising due vigilance. Vicars became a bitter recluse, blaming King Edward VII for making him a scapegoat and continuing to accuse Shackleton of the crime, even using a statement in his will to take another swipe at his former colleague. Modern historians largely agree that Shackleton appears to have been the most likely culprit, but the jewels have never been tracked down and their disappearance remains a great mystery to this day.
King John of England (known as King John the Bad) had a huge cache of crown jewels. In October 1216, just a year after the famous Magna Carta was signed, King John was trying to suppress a rebellion and made a trip through the boggy Fens of eastern England. He and his large entourage travelled with many carts laden down with supplies, including one holding all of King John’s crown jewels. It’s thought that John had fallen ill, and so was in a hurry to get across The Wash, a tidal area criss-crossed with creeks, streams, and treacherous patches of quicksand. The riders got across safely, but contemporary chronicles tell us that the baggage carts laden with jewels sunk forever into the silt. To cap a really terrible week, just a few days later King John the Bad died of dysentery. The legend of the lost jewels has grown over time and archaeologists have sought the treasure in vain—the huge, boggy Fens seem unlikely to ever reveal their resting place.
4. THE SCOTTISH CROWN JEWELS // LOST THEN REDISCOVERED
Getty Images
The Scottish crown jewels are known as the Honours of Scotland and consist of a crown that was remodeled by James V in 1540, a scepter given to James IV in 1494, and the sword of state, which was given to James IV in 1507. The jewels were first used all together at the coronation of all Scottish monarchs starting in 1543, but during the English Civil War, when Oliver Cromwell had Charles I executed, the Scottish crown jewels were spirited away and hidden to prevent Cromwell from destroying them.
The monarchy was restored in 1660, and in 1707 Scotland officially became unified with England under James I. At that point, the historical pieces were placed in storage in Edinburgh Castle for safekeeping. Largely forgotten, they were thought lost until 1818, when the celebrated novelist (and ardent Scot) Sir Walter Scott led a search party through the storerooms of Edinburgh Castle in search of the jewels. Scott stumbled upon a locked oak chest, and there, hidden underneath piles of linen, were the Scottish crown jewels, exactly where they had been left in 1707. Since then the rediscovered jewels have been on display at Edinburgh Castle for all to admire.
5. RUSSIAN CROWN JEWELS // LOST TREASURES OF THE ROMANOVS
The Romanov family ruled Russia for over 300 years: from 1613 until they were overthrown during the Russian Revolution in 1917. The Russian tsars had amassed an amazing collection of crown jewels, and in the chaos following their departure it would not have been surprising had the jewels gone missing. However, despite some revolutionaries arguing that the jewels should be sold as they represented the oppression of the people, historians were able to preserve the collection due to their national importance—or so it was thought. In 2012 researchers uncovered a large photographic record of the jewels from 1922 in the U.S. Geological Survey Library in Reston, Virginia. When they compared this record to the official inventory of the crown jewels from 1925 they discovered at least four pieces were missing, including a sapphire brooch that they later found had been sold at auction in London in 1927. The other three pieces—identified as a diadem, a bracelet, and a necklace—have so far not been traced and their whereabouts remain a mystery. As for the rest of the still extremely impressive Romanov crown jewels, they are on display at the Kremlin in Moscow.
The incredible French crown jewels were last used at the coronation of Louis XVI in 1775 and were thereafter on display in the treasury. They included the priceless Charlemagne Crown, Charles V’s medieval gold scepter, and the coronation sword, as well as an enormous collection of gemstones collected over hundreds of years by the French monarchs.
After the French Revolution it was agreed that the crown jewels should be sold, because keeping them might encourage attempts to restore the monarchy. It took many years for the plan to be put into action, but in 1887 many of the crown jewels were put up for sale (fortunately some of the most historically interesting pieces were preserved for the nation and some can still be seen on display in the Louvre). The auction caused quite a sensation and jewelry fans from all over the world flocked to try and secure a piece of history. The gross proceeds of the sale were put into government bonds for the benefit of the nation.
In 2008 one of the jewels sold at the 1887 auction again came up for sale. The stunning diamond brooch [PDF] had been made for Empress Eugenie in 1855 and was bought by jeweler Emile Schlesinger for Mrs. Caroline Astor at the 1887 auction. When the jewel came up for sale in 2008, it was quickly snapped up by the Louvre so that it might join their collection of surviving crown jewels.
7. ENGLISH CROWN JEWELS // MELTED DOWN
Henry VIII’s crown as painted by Daniel Mytens. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons // Public Domain
After the Civil War in England, when Parliamentary forces under Oliver Cromwell defeated the Royalist forces of Charles I, all emblems of the monarchy were ordered destroyed. Charles I was executed in 1649 and the Parliamentarians agreed that the ancient English crown jewels must be melted down, preventing them from being used as a symbol of the lost monarchy. It is unclear exactly what items were in the crown jewels at this time, but they are thought to have included the diadem of St. Edward the Confessor, used at his coronation in 1043, as well as many other crowns, jewels, and plate. Details of the historical vandalism are scant, but it is thought that the golden crowns were melted down and made into coins.
However, one item survived: the golden Ampulla and spoon used to anoint the monarch with holy oil during the coronation ceremony. Today the English crown jewels—created after the Restoration for the coronation of Charles II in 1661—are kept on display at the Tower of London. The Imperial Crown of State includes a sapphire that once belonged to St. Edward the Confessor and was buried with him in 1066. It’s said, somewhat gruesomely, that the stone was retrieved from the king’s casket in 1101 and set into a crown for Henry I. It is unclear how the jewel managed to survive the destruction of the crown jewels but it thankfully reappeared at the Restoration and now represents the oldest surviving jewel in the current royal regalia.
