"Mobile is eating the world."
"The institution with the most to gain is the Internal Revenue Service."
"David Milarch of the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, the group cloning the trees, says the clones are living links to Muir's life."
4. A reflection on the Rube Goldbergian engineering of Los Angeles' Owens Valley aqueduct.
"The Jawbone Canyon siphon, pictured above in a photograph from the California Historical Society Collection at the USC Libraries, is among the aqueduct’s most impressive features. Workers assembled the massive steel pipe (measuring 8,095 feet in length and up to ten feet in diameter) in 36-foot, 25-ton segments, each hauled to the work site by a team of 52 mules. Water falls through the tube, 850 feet to the canyon floor, generating hydraulic pressure that then forces it up and over the opposite ridge without the aid of a pump."
* Thanks to Sonal Chokshi, Nathan Masters, Matt Schlicht.