Memorial Day Delights: Strawberries
At Madison’s Farmer’s Market.
The Tragic Race to be First to the South Pole
In 1910, two men set out to be the first to reach the South Pole in a race that would be both heroic and tragic. The men had different reasons for their journeys, took different routes and made different decisions that would ultimately seal their respective fates, and those of their teams.
The American Museum of Natural History delves into this storied event to bring visitors as close as possible to this historic event and the people involved in their new exhibit, “Race to the End of the Earth,” starting May 29. Artifacts, photographs, replicas and models give life to the two rivals and their treacherous 1,800-mile marches to the center of Antarctica.
Robert Falcon Scott set off from Wales on July 15, 1910 on what was originally intended to be a primarily scientific expedition, but which quickly morphed into a quest to make history on behalf of the British Empire.
Meanwhile, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, whose plan to reach the North Pole first had been thwarted by both Frederik Cook and Robert Peary, had secretly turned his sights on the South Pole. He left Oslo in June 3, 1910 with the intent of beating Scott to his goal.
Identity cards scheme will be axed ‘within 100 days’
The National Identity Card scheme will be abolished within 100 days with all cards becoming invalid, Home Secretary Theresa May has said.
Legislation to axe the scheme will be the first put before parliament by the new government – with a target of it becoming law by August.
The 15,000 people who voluntarily paid £30 for a card since the 2009 roll out in Manchester will not get a refund.
“Stinky Cheese” New York City
The fate of a generation of workers: Foxconn undercover fully translated
Richard Lai: I know of two groups of young people.
One group consists of university students like myself, who live in ivory towers and kept company by libraries and lake views. The other group works alongside steel machineries and large containers, all inside a factory of high-precision manufacturing environment. These guys always address their seniors as “laoban” (boss), and call their own colleagues — regardless of familiarity — the rude “diaomao” (pubic hair) in loud.
After going undercover in Foxconn for 28 days, I came back out. I’ve been trying to tie the two pictures together. But it’s very difficult. Even with people living in these two places sharing the same age, the same youth dream.
My undercover was part of Southern Weekend’s investigation on the then six Foxconn suicides. We soon found out that most of Southern Weekend’s reporters were rejected due to age — Foxconn only recruits people around the age of 20. In comparison, being just under 23 years old, I was quickly brought into Foxconn.
The 28-day undercover work made a strong impact on me. It wasn’t about finding out what they died for, but rather to learn how they lived.
Flowers
Iceland, Eyjafjallajokull Time Lapse HD Video
A Mothers Day Walk @ The Arboretum
Bill Gates Backs Geoengineering Cloud Project
Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (and one of our 25 Who Ditched Infotech for Greentech) has been dabbling in greentech investments, backing nuclear tech, and Vinod Khosla’s greentech venture fund. But the world’s most famous computer geek has also been funding some more risky greentech projects recently, including giving $4.5 million for controversial research to use artificial clouds to cool the atmosphere, reports the Ottawa Citizen.
Specifically Gates gave funding to David Keith from the University of Calgary, and Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution for Science, for projects that looked at planet-cooling technologies, says the Citizen. Those researchers in turn gave $300,000 to Armand Neukermanns, a researcher involved with the San Francisco-based Silver Lining Project, a program which studies how tiny droplets of seawater sprayed over the ocean could “brighten” clouds and reflect sunlight back into space.