Derek Lindner sent me a link to this study on “the Rise of the Supercommuter” by Mitchell Moss and Carson Qing over at NYU’s Rudin Center for Transportation. See also this Atlantic article, “The World is Spiky” and this article on supercommuters in Bloomberg Businessweek. Wonder if supercommuters will join the OED in the next year or two? 

In a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect, scores on standardized IQ tests have steadily risen in developed countries over the decades. That is, until recently. See wikipedia.

In a phenomenon known as the Flynn Effect, scores on standardized IQ tests have steadily risen in developed countries over the decades. That is, until recently. See wikipedia.

jessicaanncats:

Space Cats, in zero gravity. 

Attn: @crookedindifference 

itsfullofstars:

Japanese Construction Company Plans Space Elevator By 2050

Obayashi Corp. plans to build a space elevator by 2050. The company is days away from completing this structure, the Tokyo Sky Tree, which will be Japan’s tallest building at 2,080 feet high. tsushima2011 via Flickr

Space elevators have been our shared dream for years, but like other promising technologies of the future, they’re just concepts on a distant horizon. Now a Japanese construction firm that specializes in the very tall could make them a reality. By 2050, so still pretty far on that horizon, but hey, it’s a start.

Obayashi Corp., which is almost done building the giant structure above, the Tokyo Sky Tree, wants to build a space elevator that would reach 22,370 miles (36,000 km) above the Earth — that’s above the altitude where geosynchronous satellites orbit. It would take a week to ride up the elevator, traveling on some type of vessel tethered to carbon nanotube cables.

Keep reading.

Escaping the radio smog:

What do you do if you’re one of those people whose health is affected by all those radio waves buzzing around our heads from mobile phone masts, Wi-Fi and even microwave ovens?

The answer, if you live in the US, is move to West Virginia.

For here exists the world’s only National Radio Quiet Zone (NRQZ), set up to protect the sensitive telescopes of the country’s biggest star gazing radio observatory.

http://archinect.com/news/article/38096182/the-forgotten-space

http://archinect.com/news/article/38096182/the-forgotten-space

The Forgotten Space

The Forgotten Space