Writing for the Guardian, former environment editor John Vidal extols the very welcome global shift in attitude towards the practical and effective campaign to reforest areas previously cleared of trees. Beforehand we’ve mentioned efforts underway in England and Iceland to bring back the woodlands for their own sake but we failed to recognise how pervasive the movement is and the ulterior incentives, which include mitigating climate change and soil erosion and cites some success stories fostered by intensive planting of trees.
Tuesday 13 February 2018
7x7
shuffleboard: some interesting facts about the sport of curling
wait, wait—don’t tell me: a public television programme or something Liam Neeson would say to a burrito right before eating it
official portraits: artists Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald commissioned by the Smithsonian to create paintings of the Obamas
nocturlabe: an instrument to determine local time at night based on the relative position of the stars
suffragetto: a century’s old board game that pits equal-rights activists against the police
hermetically open: Amsterdam’s private Ritman Library brings over sixteen hundred occult manuscripts on-line with the help of Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown
how u hot: a neural network generates phrases for chalky candy hearts
sandbox
Having himself matriculated through the patent offices in Bern, Albert Einstein surely saw some proposals with potential though perhaps not commercially viable, so we enjoyed—via Miss Cellania—learning about some of the genius’ forgotten inventions, as documented through his intellectual property filings.
After articulating the General Theory of Relativity, awarded the Nobel Prize or discovering the photoelectric effect and discovering a new phase of matter, Einstein invented, among other things, a refrigerator designed to operate without electricity and only required a heat-source, making it suited for developing countries, and interestingly a tunic, a waistcoat that’s scalable and can expand to accommodate added dimensions.
Monday 12 February 2018
flat-pack
Though probably better remembered for his later career as an industrial designer and architect for his contributions to the Walt Disney Studios compound in Burbank, California and a few neighbourhoods of surrounding Hollywoodland, Kem Weber helped to inform the stylistic sleek and iconic “Streamline” look. Moreover, though not a commercial success despite inclusion in the 1928 International Exposition of Art in Industry due to the Great Depression and outbreak of war, Weber introduced the idea of furniture to be assembled by the consumer, rather than transporting a finished piece from the showroom floor a decade before IKEA grew from a workshop into a single outlet and then going on to become a global brand. Weber’s Airline Chair of 1934 was shipped in a cardboard box that was easily toted away, to be put together (with confidence) at home.
Years ahead of the mid-century whose style he defined, Weber was a pioneer but with the infusion of the talent of fellow creative individuals fleeing totalitarian regimes in Europe (of Berlin-extraction, his adopted first name was composed of the initial letters of Karl Emmanuel Martin, wanting to make a less Germanic new persona for himself) and materials and designs derivative of the war-effort, he was not considered on the cutting edge for very long, supplanted by subsequent generations, indebted to his vision.
catagories: ๐, ๐, architecture, ⓦ