1. The latest IPCC report on climate change takes a new approach to talking about its forecasts.
"The 2007 report was almost all about the impacts of climate change. Most of this report, and in particular most of the summary for policymakers, is about resilience and adaptation to inevitable climate change. Central to that new tack is setting climate change in a context of other risks, uncertainties and mega-trends such as poverty and social inequality, urbanization, and the globalization of food systems. What some call "climate exceptionalism" — the idea that climate change is something of an entirely different order to other threats faced by the world — has been rooted out. Here climate change is painted as pervasive, since nobody can avoid it wholly, but as usually only one among many pressures, especially on the poor."
3. A double hand transplant patient speaks.
"The first thing Lindsay Ess remembers after waking up from nearly 12 hours of surgery was being afraid to look at her hands. 'I called them the new hands,' she says, 'because they were still foreign, something new. I remember looking down and seeing purple nail polish on the thumb,' she says, 'and I was suddenly even more aware of the fact that these belong to somebody who just passed away.' Now, two-and-a-half years later, the hands are very much her own. But it hasn’t been easy."
3. The work life of a frozen food taster.
"Mike: Does this mean you were eating many different versions of the same curly fry?
"Matthew: Yes, there’d be slight variations in spices, in cooking time, in the kind of potato. We’d test them at different intervals to see how the taste changed once they were taken out of the fryer, or how microwaving them would affect their texture. One aromatic that was fun to pick out was 'cardboard'—an actual aromatic on the ballot—and to compare we had cups of water with brown paper towels in them."
"The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Photographic Archive is a living archive, as well as a visual history of the city’s public transportation history dating back to the early 20th Century. Our mission is to preserve and digitize this vast collection of photographs taken by Muni and Market Street Railway photographers and includes a wide assortment of glass plate, nitrate and acetate negatives, as well as one-of-a-kind prints. These amazing images tell the story of San Francisco, its transition from a stretch of sand dunes to an internationally acclaimed city, it's rise from the rubble of the devastating earthquake of 1906 and the vital role public transportation played and continues to play in revitalizing the city. We look forward to sharing these compelling images with you and hope that you enjoy them as much as we do."
5. What the latest Pritzker Prize winner, Shigeru Ban, might mean for architecture.
"Ban's selection distills the current moment, in which the pendulum is swinging away from flashy 'icon' buildings toward socially conscious projects. Idealistic architecture students should take heart from it. But many students are equally intrigued by the sculptural forms made possible by the computer. If history and the roster of previous Pritzker winners offer any guide, the pendulum invariably will swing back toward a greater emphasis on aesthetics."
Today's 1957 American English Usage Tip:
backlog. orig. US (the large log placed in the hearth fire as a reserve), in its fig. use as reserve, support, is established in US commercial language, & is widely used elsewhere. Other est. Americanisms are backtrack, backwoods, &c.
Yes, the original backlog was a log.
From the Apologies, All Department: My link to the Smithsonian exhibit on black aviators didn't work for some reason. Here's a good link.
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An Actual Aromatic on the Ballot
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