5 Intriguing Things
1. A drone aerial photo contest! (When will the novelty of these angles wear off?)
"I think it is a new visual language, a new way of discovering things and landscapes. People can now buy cheap drones starting at $50 and take pictures and videos with it. Of course, for really high-quality pictures, they'll have to spend more, between $500 and $1,000, but if they want to learn and start, it is cheap and spectacular. Drone photography depicts a new vision of the world, adding a layer between traditional aerial pictures and ground pictures."
2. What are blood types? And why do we have them?
"In 1900 the Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner first discovered blood types, winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his research in 1930. Since then scientists have developed ever more powerful tools for probing the biology of blood types. They’ve found some intriguing clues about them – tracing their deep ancestry, for example, and detecting influences of blood types on our health. And yet I found that in many ways blood types remain strangely mysterious. Scientists have yet to come up with a good explanation for their very existence."
3. Why "cards" are dominating mobile.
"The easiest form of cards to understand today are the cards by Tinder, Jelly, Spotify and others, where the card is a design metaphor for how to deliver information that is easy to read and act on, particularly for mobile. The rise of mobile created user interface and user experience pressures on many mobile websites and mobile apps, and the information and interaction design of cards emerged as a solution and an opportunity. When we rewire how we access the web, we rewire how we use it."
4. A physicist's eye-witness sketch of Trinity, the first atomic bomb test.
"In this eyewitness account of the Trinity test, carried out at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, physicist Luis W. Alvarez documented the explosion from his perch between the pilot and co-pilot in a B-29 flying near the blast. Alvarez, who worked on the bomb's detonators, was also a observer on a B-29 that flew in formation with the Enola Gay when it bombed Hiroshima in August, 1945."
5. 2014: mark it down, it may be the year we hit peak baby.
"The UN's Population Division now expects the global number of births to hit a record 139 million in 2014 — and then start falling slightly thereafter. In other words, there's a real possibility that we could hit peak births as soon as this year (albeit with another bump in the 2040s). Now, even if this does happen, the total number of people on the planet would still keep growing, so long as births outnumber deaths. In its most recent forecast, the UN predicted that the world's population would keep rising throughout this century, reaching 10.9 billion people by 2100."
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
carousal=drinking bout &c, so spelled. The Hist. cavalry tournament and the modern merry-go-round carrousel (var. carousel).
A Good Explanation for Their Very Existence