From beanbags to ballpit, a constellation of seating options greeted attendees at the TED conference in Vancouver last month. Though TED’s custom-built theater offered comfortable seats for most attendees, simulcast lounges with whimsical beach chairs and grassy knolls were often too tempting to resist.
After 340 days subsisting on freeze dried powders from “on-orbit” space pouches, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s first sight of earthly prepared food was a Kazakh traditional offering of bread and salt.
On Saturday night (Feb. 27), Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry made a stunning shot. With 0.6 seconds left in overtime and his team tied with Oklahoma City Thunder, 118-118, Curry aimed for the basketball hoop 38 feet away and actually made the shot, winning the game by three points.
The Swiss have sided with immigrants. In an historic referendum held today, 59% of Swiss voters rejected the proposal to efficiently expel foreigners who commit crimes—major or minor—without appeal or due process. The “expulsion initiative” proposal called for foreigners who commit any two crimes within a 10-year period—be it grave crime like murder or a lesser infraction like arguing with a police officer—to be expelled from Switzerland immediately.
If you want to travel the world, it pays to be German. This comes courtesy of a new survey that ranks countries around the world on the amount of “travel freedom” accorded to their citizens. Travel freedom is defined as the number of countries where citizens can travel to without needing a visa, or where they will receive a visa upon arrival.
One of the most visited museums in the world is about to become even more accessible. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City announced on Friday (Feb. 26) that it will settle a three-year-old class action lawsuit challenging its vague “pay-as you wish” admission policy.
As elder members of Hollywood’s elite parade down the red carpet for the Academy Awards this Sunday, inevitably comments will turn to their age. For women in particular, those comments can be quite nasty: Sixty-nine-year-old Susan Sarandon, for example received a hailstorm of criticism for wearing a cleavage-baring outfit to the Screen Actor’s Guild awards last month.
Foiling dirty minds everywhere, Apple has updated the letter spacing in a tagline promoting its newest operating system, El Capitan. The tagline reads: “There’s more to love with every click.”
In the role of the charismatic and cunning US president Frank J. Underwood in the critically acclaimed Netflix series House of Cards, Kevin Spacey has sat through plenty of formal ceremonies. This week, the 56-year-old actor was honored with a life-size portrait at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, hanging alongside real US presidents.
Thirty years ago today, a peaceful revolution brought an end to the most violent and oppressive presidency in Philippine history. But over the years, some Filipino millennials have come to believe that life under Ferdinand Marcos represented a ”golden age.” One thirty-two year Manila resident even calls the dictator the ”best president” ever. “That was when the Philippines was the leader of Asia. We were respected,” Richard Negre told the New York Times.
A chocolate wrapper is an instrument of seduction. Be it beautiful papers for artisanal chocolates or the familiar graphics of favorite drugstore candy, the package’s job is to tempt and trigger an impulse buy.
With more than 100 speakers over five days, attending TED conferences can be an emotional roller coaster ride, as attendees flit from talks on virtual reality to racial prejudice, climate change to Google art, incarceration to drones. TED uses brief videos in between talks to reset the mood and help attendees battle mental fatigue.
Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver
The sheep are back in Switzerland. Campaigning for an immigration initiative in a Feb. 28 referendum, the country’s largest political party, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), has plastered public spaces with posters, flyers, animated billboards, and newsletters showing a white sheep kicking a black sheep over the border.
Riding a wave of popular interest in space travel, NASA has unveiled a treat for its fans. In an online gallery called “Visions of the Future,” the US space agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab has released a collection of colorful retro posters.
Fonts are used by all of us, yet understood by very few. Where do fonts come from? Who makes them? How do we know which one to use? And why are there so many?
Since the 1990s, several designers have attempted to re-think the seated figure on the internationally recognizable symbol for disability access. Now, efforts to imbue the utilitarian signage motif with a political message appear to be gaining traction.
In a few weeks, more than 40,000 Berkshire Hathaway shareholders will receive the 2015 annual report in their mailbox. They’d be wise not to throw it out.
While working as Apple’s first creative director in the 1980s, Tom Suiter embarked on an unusual errand. For a marketing campaign, he travelled to Kurt Vonnegut’s Manhattan apartment toting a Macintosh computer and taught the famous novelist how to use the strange, beige box.
With the current barrage of political grandstanding in the US, it can be refreshing to see politicians looking unguarded, once in a while. It’s not by accident that US Republican presidential contender Donald Trump opened his gilded Manhattan triplex and lavish upstate New York estate for the current US Weekly (Feb. 8) issue. The Clintons have hosted Oprah in their Chappaqua residence, while George W. Bush and John Kerry have graced the covers of Ladies Home Journal.
