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It can take just 90 seconds and a rubber band. Curious cooks have begun hacking carbonators, the soda-making machines that are proliferating in American home kitchens. Most buyers are happy to use them for their intended purpose: turning tap water into sparkling water. But off-label, they have been used to make herb-infused sparkling wine, newfangled sangria, heady cocktails and nonalcoholic — but intoxicatingly delicious — sodas. Recently, in a storefront laboratory in Chinatown, Piper Kristensen, a bartender and occasional lab assistant who works for the avant-garde bar Booker and Dax in the East Village, studied a SodaStream Penguin. It had...

SodaStream is an Israeli company which makes a really cool and really popular product, essentially a make your own soda at home device. I plan on getting one. Its U.S. division is SodaStreamUSA.This video shows the SodaStream story of building bridges between Jews and Arabs:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl85AL1l0H0Nonetheless, SodaStream has been the subject of a vicious boycott by the anti-Israel BDS movement, that grouping of Islamist, anti-Israel leftists and academics and other fringe players like Code Pink, which seeks to delegitimize Israel. The latest iteration, as you know, was the pressure campaign which succeeded in convincing Stephen Hawking to boycott an Israeli conference.SodaStream...

Radical Left-wing activists demonstrated in Vancouver, Canada on Sunday in a call to boycott Israeli company SodaStream for operating in “occupied territories” and “mistreating” Palestinian workers. SodaStream manufactures and distributes machines for home use to make carbonated drinks, eliminating the need to buy environmentally harmful plastic bottles. It has been discriminated against by the boycott movement for holding its headquarters in the eastern Jerusalem suburb city of Ma’ale Adumim, located over the 1949 Armistice lines. …

For a century, the executives of Coca-Cola Co. have done everything possible to put their famed cola "within arm's reach of desire," to the point that one chief executive frequently pondered an extra tap at the kitchen sink—with Coke flowing from it. The company's plan to team up with the maker of the Keurig single-serve coffee brewers to develop a do-it-yourself countertop Coke machine comes pretty close. The new cold drink machine won't look anything like SodaStream, the leading home soda maker, says Coke's new partner, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Inc. It will have a similar design to Green Mountain's...

It keeps getting easier to ditch the soda can. When Coca-Cola said this week that it would let people make its drinks at home using a beverage machine, it became the latest company to take advantage of a growing trend: People turning to flavored drops or at-home carbonation machines that do away with the need to haul home bulky cans and bottles from the supermarket. […] Options that do away with cans and bottles are faring far better. Revenue for the Americas region at SodaStream, which makes at-home carbonation machines, surged 88 percent in 2012 from the previous year, the...

A delegation of 14 leaders from the Presbyterian clergy, a church that in the past supported boycotting Israeli products manufactured in Judea and Samaria (Shomron), arrived last week to visit Israel. The visit was organized by the America-Israel Friendship League (AIFL); the delegates’ goal was to discover Israel personally and to better understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Representatives from the Presbyterian Church, which has an estimated six million followers, visited the Soda Stream factory, which is located in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem. They spoke to representatives from the management and several employees. While some United States-based religious groups, such as...

George Soros, the leftists’ billionaire version of Sheldon Adelson, has bought $24.3 million worth of shares in the Israeli-Based SodaStream company, which has a factory in the same Judean Desert claimed by the Palestinian Authority and for which Sorors has donated millions of dollars.

Oxfam, the global charity that describes itself as "determined to change that world by mobilizing the power of people against poverty," has decided it prefers Palestinians to be poor, hungry and unemployed. This all involves a Hollywood actress, a Super Bowl ad, an at-home soda maker and some confused liberals who appear to prefer their poor people stay poor. Scarlett Johansson has been an Oxfam global ambassador, helping to raise money and the profile of the charity's work around the world, but after ScarJo, as her fans call her, opted to appear in a Super Bowl ad for SodaStream, things...

A manual worker at the settlement-based factory that sparked the Scarlett Johansson controversy, Nahida Fares of Ramallah earns triple the pay of her husband, an officer in the PA ISHOR ADUMIM, West Bank — The SodaStream factory, situated just off the highway leading down from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, was abuzz on Sunday with journalists from across the globe trying to get a glimpse of the action. The tour of the carbonated beverage-maker plant was organized especially for curious foreign correspondents on the eve of the Super Bowl, which featured an ad starring its glamorous spokeswoman Scarlett Johansson. The...

SARAH Palin's life reads like an Oscar-worthy script: moose-hunting former beauty queen-cum-hockey mum who could be a heartbeat away from scoring the US presidency. But Hollywood is having none of it. Politics and movies have always mixed - from Joe Kennedy and silent-films siren Gloria Swanson to son John F. Kennedy and bombshell Marilyn Monroe, to the McCarthyism that swept through back lots to blackball artists over real or imagined Communist sympathies. Hollywood is liberal and right now there is no love for the conservative Alaskan Governor who made history last month by becoming the first woman on the Republican...

My male friends all seem to have the same assessment of the Republican nominee for the vice presidency of the United States: She's pretty hot. I guess that depends on what you mean by hot. If GOP leaders had intended to pick on the basis of pulchritude, I would have suggested perhaps a Scarlett Johansson lookalike. Instead they chose a Tina Fey clone. But apparently much of America is willing to vote for her based on her looks. The GOP better hope so. She sure isn't going to win based on her brains. We got a hint of that during...

Johansson: I'm in love with Obama! By ERIN CARLSON, The Associated Press Fri Jan 25, 7:29 PM ET NEW YORK - Scarlett Johansson returned from the Persian Gulf with a whole lot of soldiers' trinkets and a delusion of her own engagement — to Barack Obama. "I am engaged ... to Barack Obama," Johansson joked in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday. "My heart belongs to Barack, and that is who I am currently, finally, engaged to. Yes." Johansson, who showed her support for the Democratic presidential candidate at the Iowa caucus earlier this month, was really just...

<p>According to Politico, the actress frequently e-mails the Democratic nominee, campaigns tirelessly on his behalf, hosts lucrative fundraisers and appeared in the “Yes We Can” viral video that got 10 million views its first week online.</p> <p>The actress has been an Obama supporter for years, even before the first Democratic caucus in Iowa, and doesn't even try to hide her affection for the candidate. “I am engaged to Barack Obama,” she said back in January, joking with reporters after a USO tour to the Persian Gulf. “My heart belongs to Barack.”</p>

Hollywood beauty Scarlett Johansson has fueled reports she will star in the New York City production of South Pacific, after declaring her love for the musical during an interview. Last month, the New York Post reported Johansson was in talks to play US Navy nurse Nellie Forbush in a revival of the musical at the Lincoln Center, which is scheduled to open in January 2008. In an interview with the latest UK edition of Glamour magazine, Johansson admits she's a huge fan of the Rodgers And Hammerstein show, but she has a problem with the heroine's surname, which shares a...

The reviews aren't yet in for Scarlett Johansson's new movie Lucy, but a single viewing of the trailer is enough to give the film a resounding "two thumbs down" on science... The idea that humans only use 10% of their brains is a complete, utter, and total myth. Lucy is entirely premised on neuroscientific BS...

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kERy_1r2LxQ]   I noticed that Roger Waters, formerly of the iconic rock band Pink Floyd, has been publicly scolding a few fellow celebrities in the field of music and film for not sharing his fanatical anti-Israel political views. Specifically, Scarlett Johansson drew Waters' ire for filming some ads for the Israeli beverage maker SodaStream and classic rocker Neil Young, who ignored Waters' directive to not book concerts in Israel. Waters has chugged the kool aid of the 'Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment', (BDS) movement, which is in reality a political movement whose underlying mission is to portray Palestinians as victims of...

Anti-Israel musician Roger Waters proved this week that he supports freedom of speech, but only as long as it is his opinion that is presented. Waters published a post on his Facebook page in which he attacked actress Scarlett Johansson and Canadian musician Neil Young for their refusal to boycott Israel. […] Ben Red, who hosts a daily music program on Kol Yisrael radio station 88FM, responded to Waters in a polite post. […] Red’s response to Waters received almost 3,000 “likes” from other Facebook users and was widely quoted in both the Israeli and international media. It was at...

After Actress Scarlett Johansson stepped down as Oxfam’s ambassador over her advertisement with Israeli company SodaStream, a company Oxfam boycotts, Canadian Employment Minister Jason Kenney said their move spurred him to buy from SodaStream. […] Kenney bashed the “anti-Israel obsession” with which leftist groups pursue Israel, even while they ignore countries like Iran which executes political dissidents and homosexuals. …

What’s your favorite Woody Allen movie? Before you answer, you should know: when I was seven years old, Woody Allen took me by the hand and led me into a dim, closet-like attic on the second floor of our house.

US actress Scarlett Johansson has quit as global ambassador for Oxfam after the aid group deemed the role "incompatible" with her promotion of an Israeli firm that has a factory in the occupied West Bank. Johansson, 29, appears in an advertisement for home drinks carbonation firm SodaStream, which is due to air during the US Super Bowl on Sunday. Urgent: Do You Approve Or Disapprove of President Obama's Job Performance? Vote Now in Urgent Poll It has already been seen more than 4.5 million times on the YouTube video-sharing website. The Hollywood star has worked for Oxfam since 2005 but...