Cool Al

Al Fritz qualifies to be in two departments, the "You Meet the Most Interesting People in the Obits" Department and the "Don't Listen to Your Critics" Department. Following the lead of cool California (where else?, she humbly asks) teens, the first-generation American who started out on the Schwinn factory floor developed what became known as the Sting-Ray bike.
   "The people who looked at his prototype thought it was a stupid idea," recalls his son Mike, "but he pushed it on through." Between 1963 and 1968, the company sold almost 2 million of them, and decades later, in about 1999, my 9-year-old son saw one in a store window in Venice and had to have it. (Fortunately, his birthday was not far off.) Glittery silver banana seat, high handle bars, and all, it still occupies a place of prominence in our garage: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-al-fritz-20130510,0,7472254.story

Arctic Jungle

A 1,034-foot core sample of an Arctic lake shows that, about 3 million years ago, the Arctic was about 14 degrees warmer than it is now, rainier, and covered with Douglas fir and hemlock, which in turn shows that our current models of how much the Earth may heat up may be underestimating the change: http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2013/0509/Ancient-Arctic-was-warm-wet-and-green.-What-that-says-about-the-future

For Moms Everywhere

Kabul, Afghanistan, October 2003   Melanie Stetson Freeman/CS Monitor Staff

A slideshow of moms everywhere: http://www.csmonitor.com/Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Mothers-of-the-world#667793
   (OK, I've got to say this: Do you remember, as a very young thing, grabbing onto a shirttail or pant leg or hand and looking up and realizing you had the wrong mom? How would that work in a country like Afghanistan?)

Top Marks

The list of the world's best universities of 2012 according to British-based Quacquarelli Symonds is dominated by the U.S. and the U.K. ~ but may not be for long: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2013/0510/The-world-s-top-universities-in-2012/10.-California-Institute-of-Technology-Caltech

Tweet Happy

A platform developed by researchers at the University of Vermont uses a sampling of Tweets to quantify people's overall level of happiness: http://www.gizmag.com/hedonometer-happiness-index/27394/
   A 2009 story about the Hedonometer points out that, up to that point, the day of Michael Jackson's death was one of the saddest and Election Day was the happiest: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/07/29/us-happiness-blogs-idUSTRE56S0TQ20090729

Stroke of Luck

Untitled (acrylic on canvas)                    Tommy McHugh

Tommy McHugh was by all accounts a minor criminal until the day he suffered a double stroke, at age 51. Then things changed. "I could taste the femininity inside of myself," he explains. "My head was full of rhymes and images and pictures." Also of the numbers 3, 6, and 9: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23523-mindscapes-stroke-turned-excon-into-rhyming-painter.html

   (P.S., What I don't quite understand is that Tommy McHugh died, as noted at the end of the article, in September. That's quite a lead time!)

Fooood Fiiiiight!!

one lunch ~ as advertised and the reality (note the Styrofoam)                               Zachary Maxwell

New York fourth-grader Zachary Maxwell's parents didn't believe his free public-school lunches were really as pathetic as he kept saying they were, so he became a guerrilla documentarian, shooting six months' worth of footage that eventually became the crux of his Yuck: A 4th Grader's Short Documentary About School Lunch. One result? He now brings his own lunch from home (thanks to Tom for finding this gem) (story, slideshow, video): http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-michael-moore-of-the-grade-school-lunchroom/?hp

Islands in the South

There is a little county in eastern Kentucky that, for almost a century and a half now, has bucked the general Southern trend of conservatism. Welcome to Elliott County, "where Nature and the arts meet in harmony," according to the official website ~ a place of winding two-lane roads and almost as many churches as there are barns. The older residents remember the day electricity came to town.
   Rocky Adkins, the area's political representative, explains: "Our Democratic principles and how we're registered to vote was handed down from generation to generation." Although the residents are socially conservative, they also are aware of how unions and government programs like the works programs of the New Deal once saved their families ~ and still do: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/solid-south-democratic-party-kentucky_n_3151539.html

From the Archives: Amazing Arachnid

Most of my posts are not time-sensitive, and most of them link to very wonderful things. Because I don't want anyone to miss out on them, I will occasionally re-post some of my favorites, like this one:

Darwin's bark spider has the toughest silk of all and is therefore capable of creating the biggest webs in the world, including some that span rivers (story and video): http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21124-zoologger-the-biggest-spider-web-in-the-world.html

The Best of the Closest

Two handy-dandy locators to help you find

• the stores close to you that offer humane-certified products: http://www.certifiedhumane.org/index.php?page=where-to-buy 

• the hospitals close to you and the grade they received in the most recent Leapfrog Group analysis: http://www.hospitalsafetyscore.org/

Exciting Summer Opportunity!

REX

If you like the cold and you love adventure with just a hint of danger, the summer job of your dreams is waiting for you. The governor's office on the Norwegian island of Svalbard is looking to hire someone with a loud voice who can warn researchers when one or more of the 3,000 polar bears in the area is approaching: http://news.yahoo.com/wanted-polar-bear-spotter-norwegian-islands-141318515.html

China Syndrome

beating the smog on an air filtration bike                     Reuters/Petar Kujundzic

It seems the Chinese are all into DIY these days. Maybe they always were (viz., fireworks, paper, you know ~ walls). The point is, they're really, really good at it (slideshow): http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/05/chinese-diy-inventions/100511/

Costa Rica's Heart of Darkness

the moat John Bender had built around their home courtesy of the Patton family

CAUTION: This one isn't for the kids.
   Why wasn't this story all over the news? It has it all ~ love, wealth, manic depression, diamonds, weapons, the beauty of Costa Rica ... and murder ... or suicide (story, slideshow): http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/Love-and-Madness-in-the-Jungle.html?page=1

Sartorial Style

Designer: Dawoon Chong

The sheer talent and ingenuity of some people never cease to amaze me. Whether you could ever see yourself wearing these creations, it's hard to ignore the inventiveness, the beauty of the textures and lines. Meet nine of the finalists in the Empowering Imagination competition for the BFA graduates of Parsons The New School for Design (slideshows of their collections): http://www.style.com/trendsshopping/stylenotes/Parsons_Kering_Style/?mbid=sn

Catching Up With Eggleston

Untitled, 1970, from Guide                         Eggleston Artistic Trust, courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

William Faulkner, Bill Beckwith, Flannery O'Connor, Harper Lee, the quilters of Gee's Bend ... so many of our best and most colorful artists have sprung up from the intricate, convoluted heritage of the American South. Among the most talented of these is the photographer William Eggleston, whose works are currently on exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Here, the British writer Michael Glover makes the case for his being the world's greatest photographer. He wasn't always thought of that way (story, slideshow, and a revealing Q&A): http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/genius-in-colour-why-william-eggleston-is-the-worlds-greatest-photographer-8577202.html

The U(achoo)nited (achoo) St(achoo)ates (achoo)

Analysis of pediatric data finds that children born outside the U.S. have much lower rates of allergy and asthma even once they move here. However, this advantage disappears after a few years of living here: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/350112/description/Allergy_asthma_less_frequent_in_foreign-born_kids_in_US

Just Do It

A useful collection of inspirational quotes meant for entrepreneurs but, really, beneficial for everyone ~ probably worth printing out and hanging on the fridge: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaprive/2013/05/02/top-32-quotes-every-entrepreneur-should-live-by/

Oh, the Things You Can Make UPDATE

From jewelry to guns, the possibilities are endless now that 3D technology is available to us, the masses.
   First, the guns. The first one made in a 3D printer was successfully fired, and the (Texas, but no judgment ... ) group that created it is making the blueprints available online. "I recognize that the tool might be used to harm other people," says its maker. "That's what it is, it's a gun. But, umm, again, I don't think that's a reason to not do it or a reason to not put it out there" (video): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22424315
   UPDATE: The news on May 10 is that the U.S. government ordered that the gun designs be taken off-line, which they were ~ but by that point, they'd already been downloaded more than 100,000 times: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22478310

Convolution Bangle, by nervoussystem

And now, the jewelry. If you can't afford the printer yourself, you can send your design to a company that will "print" it out for you (company website with video): http://www.shapeways.com/blog/categories/14-jewelry

RoboDoc

"You see each other's faces, and it feels like you're actually talking to the doctor," says a former patient at UCLA Medical Center's neurological intensive care unit. He's talking about EVA (executive virtual attending physician), a robot that drives on auto-pilot around the hospital halls to wherever the doctor wants it to go. Once in a patient's room, EVA allows the doctor and patient to see and talk to each other via its two-way video monitor: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/wall-e-meet-eva-robo-doc-navigates-245794.aspx

Cross and Crescent

Dunant Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

International Red Cross and Red Crescent Day on May 8 honors the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. It was a young Swiss businessman named Jean-Henri Dunant who, in 1859, came up with the idea of a national relief organization and, beyond that, international treaties to guarantee the safety of neutral medical staff in times of war: http://www.ifrc.org/en/who-we-are/history/