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Now that we've entered the "craft cocktail" era, drinks with double-digit price tags are just par for the course. And in many cities, there's a decent chance that your fancy craft drink now comes with a large, crystal-clear cube or rectangle that melts unhurriedly in your glass. That's right: Artisanal ice is a thing.

Excuse me? That's what we said when the Washington City Paper reported that a restaurant called Second State will charge $1 per "hand-cut rock" if you order from its rye whiskey menu. (If you order one of the cocktails, which range from $11 to $17, the fancy cubes are included gratis.)

Perhaps you're having the same thought: Is there something wrong with plain old regular ice? Was the ice industry really crying out for disruption?

Well, not exactly. Turns out the rise of artisanal ice probably has more to do with bars trying to justify their high-priced cocktails with one extra perk: ice like you've never seen it before.

"If you're gonna get a drink that's $15, it better have the best ice," says Joe Ambrose, a bartender at the W Hotel who co-founded Favourite Ice, the company that's hand-chiseling frozen water for about 30 restaurants and caterers in the D.C. area. There are several similar fancy ice ventures around the country.

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So what exactly makes this ice better? Ambrose says it's a combination of aesthetics and practicality.

Regular ice is cloudy because of the minerals like calcium in tap water, Ambrose says. (Editor's note: Air bubbles that form as water crystallizes also contribute to the clouds, as some commenters pointed out.) So he filters water, and then puts it in a big machine made by Clinebell — the same machine that makes those huge blocks for ice sculptures.

The machine churns out 200- to 300-pound blocks of crystal-clear ice. Ambrose and his employee Caleb Marindin, who Ambrose dubs "the Eskimo" because of his Inuit routes, then cut up these giant blocks into 25-pound slabs or 2-inch cubes with a band saw.

"It's hard work: You're dealing with ice and slippery surfaces, and working with a blade that's made for cutting up cows," says Ambrose. "It's a little scary, especially when the blades wear down and pop and metal goes flying across the room. Oh, and your hands get really cold."

Sounds like fun, right? And keep in mind that Ambrose has a full-time job on top of filling his growing list of ice orders, which requires him to drive 45 minutes to Germantown, Md., daily to make and cut ice.

"It's lucrative, but we're not getting rich off it," says Ambrose, who co-founded the company with Owen Thomson, a bartender at Bar Pilar and Rose's Luxury.

Artisanal ice is pretty, but the real selling point is that the super-sized cubes melt more slowly, which gives you more time to enjoy the flavors in your fancy drink.

"The problem with lots of small ice cubes is that in 10 to 15 minutes, your drink tastes like watered-down booze — it doesn't taste how it's supposed to taste anymore," he says.

This flaw in regular ice is apparently not lost upon a growing number of drinkers who've experienced artisanal ice.

"I have managers who are telling me that when they run out of our ice, customers are getting upset," says Ambrose. "I'm like, 'It's just ice, bro.' "

Correction Oct. 22, 2014

An earlier version of this story stated that Owen Thomson helped Joe Ambrose cut the ice. In fact, Thomson co-founded the company but employee Caleb Marindin cuts the ice with Ambrose.

cocktails

cocktail culture

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If you're midflight and the movie is terrible and the airline magazine crossword puzzle has already been done by someone else, the SkyMall catalog is the time-killer of last resort for the bored, boxed-in passenger.

Our Best-Selling Hot Dog Clock!

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"What time is it it's hot dog time! Each of these all-beef hot dogs contains a digital clock, accurate down to the minute. Tick-tock it's hot dog time." St. Martin's Press hide caption

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"What time is it it's hot dog time! Each of these all-beef hot dogs contains a digital clock, accurate down to the minute. Tick-tock it's hot dog time."

St. Martin's Press

SkyMall sells items that, under normal circumstances, you might never consider — like say, adult-size, unisex, one-piece Superman pajamas. But somehow, midflight, you find yourself wondering: Do I need a dog bed designed to look like an NCAA stadium?

Eight years ago, the San Francisco-based comedy group Kasper Hauser published Sky Maul: Happy Crap You Can Buy From The Plane, a catalog full of products like the "Pepper Self Spray" and the "Da Vinci Code Decoder Ring." And now comes Sky Maul 2: Where America Buys His Stuff. Kasper Hauser members Rob Baedeker and James and John Reichmuth join NPR's Robert Siegel to discuss some products that you can almost certainly live without.

Noise-Free Wind Chimes

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"One of the main drawbacks of wind chimes is the irritating sound that they make. ... Our patented quiet wind chimes use noise-canceling technology to take the 'chime' out of wind chime ... giving you peace of mind." St. Martin's Press hide caption

itoggle caption St. Martin's Press

"One of the main drawbacks of wind chimes is the irritating sound that they make. ... Our patented quiet wind chimes use noise-canceling technology to take the 'chime' out of wind chime ... giving you peace of mind."

St. Martin's Press

Interview Highlights

On their home improvement products, like the Cave Repainting Set and the Condo Pony

James Reichmuth: You may know what a terrible graffiti problem they had in the Pleistocene Era. And many of Europe's best caves have been defaced by stick figures. ... We have come up with a cave repainting set which just allows you, very handily and easily, to paint over these old caves and get them baby, room, or man-cave-ready. Folks, those horses are just doodles — lighten up.

Rob Baedeker: Designer pets are all the rage these days. Ours is called the Condo Pony. It's a little horse that just kind of clomps around the condo. The motto is: Condo doesn't have to mean no pony no more.

The Forever Diaper

"Never needs changing. Not once. ... Put this on when they're born, sit back, and watch the joy that every baby gives off." St. Martin's Press hide caption

itoggle caption St. Martin's Press

On the Forever Diaper

James Reichmuth: One of the things we're most excited about right now for new parents — and we worked with Russian scientists here, using blimp technology — is a — what we call — Forever Diaper. And that's a diaper that you put on at birth and it, technically, can stay on until early adolescence. We say: Let's take diapers off the table.

On the Personality Alert Bracelet

Baedeker: Most of us get into relationships of many types and it takes a long time to figure out the other person's character flaws. So we've designed a personality alert bracelet. It lets first responders or first dates really know about your issues. Whether you are a narcissist ... a martyr ... a baby ... it just cuts to the chase and just makes things much more efficient.

James Reichmuth: I wear one of these. I'm wearing one now. It just says: Tuna makes me sleepy. ... It's just something that you want people that are close to you to know. So I wouldn't eat tuna before an interview, for example, and I did not.

On SkyMall sometimes being funnier than SkyMaul

James Reichmuth: It is hard to out-SkyMall SkyMall.

Baedeker: Reality is a little bit ahead of us. ... It's that American tradition of giving you things you never knew you needed.

St. Martin's Press

The first time I meet Lynn Good, she's tucked behind a set of doors with her bags, calmly waiting for the hotel's fire alarms to stop bleating.

She's at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in California to speak, even though, she says, "I don't think of myself as a powerful woman."

It occurs to me later that the unexpected run-in is a fitting introduction to a woman whose corporate ascent has been marked by some emergency detours.

"There's nothing about Lynn Good at age 30 or age 35 that would have said, 'I am setting my sights on being a CEO,' " she says.

But at age 55, she is — at Duke Energy, the nation's largest utility, based on market value. Good's now a leader in a sector where female executives are still a rarity. And she's become the face of the company while it's grappling with some very public challenges.

'I Don't Even Think About It'

Good, the daughter of two educators, grew up in Ohio. It was her father, a math teacher, who encouraged her to take an unconventional path for women, she says.

"He actually sat with me on the college catalog and helped me pick something that was the equivalent of computer science," she says. "I had never programmed anything. I had never seen a computer when I went to college."

Good is used to being the lone woman. She was one of the first women in the Midwest to make partner at accounting firm Arthur Andersen.

"I've had plenty of mentors, but not many women [mentors]. So I'm generationally probably on the early part of the ascent of women into leadership roles," she says.

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Her two-decade career at Andersen came to an abrupt end after an obstruction-of-justice charge against the firm effectively shut it down in 2002.

Good found her footing, eventually becoming chief financial officer at Duke in 2009. Then, 15 months ago, her predecessor left as part of a settlement with regulators over the company's handling of a merger.

Now, as CEO, Good is surrounded by male peers.

"It doesn't make me uncomfortable. I don't even think about it, to be honest with you," she says.

But, she says she thinks women tend to focus on communication, relationships and connecting — and that that is proving an asset, because the spotlight is on her. "I become the face of the company, and that's a responsibility," Good says.

Tested By A Toxic Spill

Especially now, as Good deals with her latest challenge: a toxic spill of pollutants that happened just months after she took office. A burst pipe in North Carolina sent tens of thousands of tons of toxic coal ash waste into the Dan River — a source of drinking water for more than 50,000 people in southern Virginia.

The spill is Good's toughest test yet. The company faces a federal grand jury investigation and lawsuits seeking further pollution cleanup.

"I don't think Duke has ever had its reputation in North Carolina so damaged," says Frank Holleman, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which is suing Duke Energy.

Holleman says Duke plays an outsized role in his community, providing power to almost all of North and South Carolina. He says Good — who is relatively unknown to the public — could make a name for herself and restore Duke's reputation.

"If she could get out front of this issue, make a definitive, clear decision, she could create an identity for herself and for her company very quickly," Holleman says.

But so far, he says, that hasn't happened. Last month, Duke Energy announced a $10 million fund that will be used to promote clean water across five states. Holleman calls the move both deeply underfunded and hypocritical.

"It was almost like, 'Physician, heal thyself.' It was an embarrassing public relations effort," he says.

Duke says it is cooperating with the ongoing federal grand jury investigation. And for her part, Good denies she's prioritized image — hers or Duke's — over dealing with the damage.

"My focus has been ensuring that Duke is doing the right thing, we have the right resources, we're making the right adjustments, we're addressing the issue," she says.

Good says her worst days on the job so far have come when she's felt Duke has been accused of wrongdoing.

"I think about trust and confidence as something that you earn every day, and we will keep at it, earning it every day," she says.

"And I hope that a year from now or two years from now, we're not talking at all about Dan River, but we're talking about the great service that Duke delivers to its customers and the commitment we have to the communities."

dan river

Duke Energy

CEOs

toxic chemicals

drinking water

water pollution

women CEOs

energy

pollution

business

Israel's Defense Minister Moshe Ya'alon is known for his blunt manner, and in an interview with NPR, he says that a future map of the Middle East will look very different that the one that exists today.

The borders of many Arab states were drawn up by Westerners a century ago and wars in recent years show that a number of them are doomed to break apart, according to Ya'alon, a career soldier who became Israel's defense minister last year.

"We have to distinguish between countries like Egypt, with their history. Egypt will stay Egypt," Ya'alon, who is on a visit to Washington, tells Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep.

In contrast, Ya'alon says, "Libya was a new creation, a Western creation as a result of World War I. Syria, Iraq, the same — artificial nation-states — and what we see now is a collapse of this Western idea."

Asked if Middle Eastern borders are likely to change in the coming years, Ya'alon says: "Yes, absolutely. It has been changed already. Can you unify Syria? [President] Bashar al-Assad is controlling only 25 percent of the Syrian territory. We have to deal with it."

On another key question facing the region, Ya'alon says he is deeply skeptical of a proposed deal between the international community and Iran on its nuclear program. He says that even if an agreement is reached, he thinks Iran is likely to break it.

"No deal is better than a bad deal," Ya'alon says.

Ya'alon spoke with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep about the realignment of the Middle East post-Arab spring and the spread of ISIS, on Iran nuclear negotiations, the recent war in Gaza and Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Interview Highlights

STEVE INSKEEP: Your government's broad skepticism about U.S and other nations negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program is well known, but I wonder if you have a concern on an even deeper level. Do you believe that any worthwhile agreement with this Iranian government can be made?

MOSHE YA'ALON: Depends which agreement. With our experience, agreements which are not backed by interests are not surviving.

You're saying if countries' interests do not mesh, any agreement they make is worthless.

Yeah, because they can sign agreements and violate it. Fatah violated the Oslo Accord on the day, the first day of the implementation, but let's leave it alone. I have many examples.

Nevertheless, what is a mistake now is regarding the negotiations with the Iranian regime. Let's leave alone the military nuclear project. What about terror activities? What about their activities to undermine moderate regimes? This is not discussed at all.

What is discussed now the number of the centrifuges that they should have. Why should they have the indigenous capability to enrich uranium, which is a core element in their military nuclear project? So what we claim regarding the current negotiations is that no deal is better than a bad deal.

...

Many people around the world criticized (the recent war in Gaza) for going too far. But I know there was also another side of the debate within Israel that your government was criticized for not going deeper into Gaza, sending more troops, taking sharper measures. Did you go as far as you wanted to go?

Absolutely. We knew exactly what we wanted to achieve, and we understood that if we go too far, a part forms a dilemma of cost and benefit. No one was going to replace us. Neither the Egyptians, nor Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas), NATO, whatever.

Meaning if you wiped out Hamas, say, or knocked them out of control, no one would take charge.

Yes, and so probably we were stuck. So we prefer to reach cease-fire according to our terms.

...

Israel, of course, has been criticized because Israelis have settled in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when visiting the United States earlier this year, cast that as a question not of national or states' rights, but individual rights. Why shouldn't Jews have the right to live where they want to live? Why should they be barred, he was asking, from living in different places? That it was an individual question. If individual Jews, Israelis, have a right to move where they like on the West Bank, should individual Palestinians, including refugees, have the right to choose to move back to Israel

The issue of refugees is very different. We can't allow refugees to come back ...

But could they just say, "We're individuals. We're coming back"?

... Otherwise it will keep the conflict forever. Forever. But when we talk about the right to live, we do not deny the right of Arabs to live everywhere in the land of Israel. They enjoy political independence. They have their own government. They have their own parliament, municipalities.

And if we are talking about co-existence, what is better than to live together? Enjoying, you know, our prosperity. That was the case even in the Gaza Strip, when the Gazans enjoyed working in the Erez industrial zone or in the settlements, for their benefit.

Their insistence to clear the area from Jews, might call it ethnic cleansing. We don't call to do it with Arabs, we don't want to uproot or transfer Arabs, why is it so acceptable regarding the Jews?

Well, I've heard that argument. It's compelling. You're arguing that Israelis move across into the West Bank, they bring money with them, they build, they may improve the economy. My question is what if a group of Palestinians, from whatever direction, whether they claim refugee status or not, simply showed up at the Tel Aviv airport, showed up a border crossing, and said, "We want to claim that same individual right, and we're ready to move into Israel"?

They can go. They can go to live in Nablus, they can go to live in Ramallah.

That's in the West Bank, but what if they want to live in Israel proper?

No. No. In Israel. No way. Otherwise, we are not going to solve the conflict, we are going to keep it to the end of the days.

Israel