1. Coal reaches its largest share of the global energy market since 1970.

"Coal has reached its highest market share of global energy consumption for more than 40 years, figures reveal, despite fears that its high carbon emissions make it a prime cause of climate change. The use of coal for power generation and other purposes grew by 3% in 2013 – faster than any other fossil fuel – while its share of the market breached 30% for the first time since 1970, the BP Statistical Review reports."

+ If that surprises you, some people called coal's continuing surge years ago.

2. Bandit, the playable virtual dolphin. 

"Later this summer, in a series of clinical trials, post-stroke patients will get a chance to 'be' Bandit themselves. If the immersive, dynamic experience helps them recover lost motor function faster than the repetitive exercises of conventional treatment, it could signal a paradigm shift in rehabilitative therapy. Bandit's back story is just as novel. The virtual dolphin is the result of an unlikely consortium—of scientists and animators, software engineers and animal-intelligence experts—finding common cause in the science of movement."

3. I really wish GPS was still called Timation for Time-Navigation.

"A problem with synchronizing the timing of the tracking stations led Easton to the idea of putting highly accurate clocks in multiple satellites which could also be used to determine the precise location of someone on the ground. He called this system Timation for Time-Navigation. Following the origin and development of the NRL time-based navigation system, select features were adopted by the Department of Defense (DoD) in the early 1970s and the system renamed the Global Positioning System, or GPS."

4. When men competed with plows.

"I do not know of any other contest in our Dominion that will stamp with truer integrity a man’s real worth and ability. Picture the spirit of sportsmanship that prompts 300 of our young men to travel from all over the province to meet their unknown brother in art. How eagerly they groom their outfits, and whet their coulters, and their every movement during the battle royal demonstrates to the world that their ideals are as straight and true as their furrows, … which even the follies and dissipation of the town cannot easily pervert."

5. To advertise pens, Bic has gotten thousands of people to contribute their handwriting to create a "universal typeface."

"So if there's a universal pen, how would a universal handwriting look like? We are trying to find out. On this microsite people are entering their handwriting and a specially developed algorithm calculates the average and merges them into one ever-changing, always evolving font."

Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip

brave in the sense fine or showy is an ARCHAISM, & in the sense worthy a GALLICISM; make a brave show, however, is fully current.

I'd always caught a whiff of the now completely dissipated sense of showiness about brave. Fortitude put on for others, a brave face. 

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How Eagerly They Groom Their Outfits, and Whet Their Coulters