VABALOG

Huvitavaid artikleid: disain, kibutsid, koerad, alkohol, majandusteadlased ja kosmos

The Perfect Prescription – New York Magazine’is ilmunud artikkel uuest (2005. aastal vähemalt) retseptiravimite pakendist, kus kõige olulisem roll oli ühel disainialasel magistritööl:

For her SVA thesis project, called Safe Rx, Adler revamped the familiar canister, then approached the FDA—but one of Target’s creative directors saw her work last summer, snapped up the patent, and rolled it out in record time. It’s already approaching design-classic status: ClearRx will be included in a MoMA exhibit this October. Your medicine cabinet is next.

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Moscow’s stray dogs – vahel suudab Financial Times enda artiklitega tõsiselt üllatada. Kütkestav lugu Moskva metsikutest koertest ja nendest vähestest, kes on õppinud iseseisvalt metrood kasutama. Ühtlasi tuleb juttu ka sellest, et koerad on linna bioloogilise tasakaalu jaoks oluliseks muutunud:

Even though the city budget allocated more than $30m to build 15 animal shelters last year, that is not nearly enough to accommodate the strays. Still, there is pressure from some quarters to return to the practice of catching and culling them. Poyarkov believes this would be dangerous. While the goal, he acknowledges, “is to do away with dogs who carry rabies, tapeworms, toxoplasmosis and other infections, what actually happens is that infected dogs and other animals outside Moscow will come into the city because the biological barrier maintained by the population of strays in Moscow is turned upside down. The environment becomes chaotic and unpredictable and the epidemiological situation worsens.”

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Brewing Up a Civilization – Spiegel pühendas hiljuti artikli ühele üllatavale ent üpriski veenvale hüpoteesile, nimelt hakkasid inimesed paikse põllumajandusega tegelema eelkõige selleks, et tagada pidev juurdepääs alkoholile:

Archaeologists have long pondered the question of which came first, bread or beer. McGovern surmises that these prehistoric humans didn’t initially have the ability to master the very complicated process of brewing beer. However, they were even more incapable of baking bread, for which wild grains are extremely unsuitable. They would have had first to separate the tiny grains from the chaff, with a yield hardly worth the great effort. If anything, the earliest bakers probably made nothing more than a barely palatable type of rough bread, containing the unwanted addition of the grain’s many husks.

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The rise of the capitalist kibbutz – vaatamata sellele, et kibuts on jätkuvalt mitmete eestlaste jaoks atraktiivne kogukondluse ja võrdluse etalone, siis kibutsid ise on järk-järgult loobunud enda sotsialistlikumast poolest ja orienteerunud turumajandusele ning individualismile:

Omer Moav, a former kibbutznik who now teaches economics at London’s Royal Holloway University and advises the Israeli finance minister, argues that the kibbutz movement was always destined to fail. It worked, he says, only as long as kibbutzniks enjoyed a standard of living broadly comparable to, if not better than, the Israeli average. “People respond to incentives. We are happy to work hard for our own quality of life, we like our independence,” he says. “It is all about human nature – and a socialist system like the kibbutz does not fit human nature.”

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NASA’s Next Space Suit – ma ei saa sinna midagi parata, et kosmoseruum ja inimese roll selles vaenulikus keskkonnas on minu jaoks teemad, mis alati pälvivad tähelepanu. Igal juhul tundub, et NASA on valinud välja järgmise põlvkonna skafandri:

The new design will eliminate many of the hard elements that add weight to current space suits and can injure the crew in the event of a rough landing. Instead, engineers are using lightweight composite structures. Furthermore, astronauts will be able to get in and out of the suit more quickly through a rear zippered entrance, or, for the lunar suit, a rear entry hatch. The current suits are made of two pieces that take three hours and a helping hand to put together.

Barry says that a single modular suit will be cheaper to manufacture and will reduce launch mass and logistical complexity. David Clark Company has built an early prototype that will undergo testing next week at NASA with the new crew exploration vehicle, called Orion, which is also being developed for the Constellation program.

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Invasion of the European Economists – City Journal uurib, miks Euroopa parimad majandusteadlased USA’sse kipuvad ja miks nad sealt tagasi ei kiirusta. Artikli lõpus pakuvad mitmed artikli jaoks kommentaare jaganud majandusteadlased, et Euroopa ülikoolidest võib veel asja saada, kuid pigem tuleks puhtalt lehelt alustada:

Obsolete and disproved Marxist and socialist thinking also remained strong within European universities, including in economics departments. Many young economists, scientifically oriented and so recognizing the superiority of free markets, found the climate intellectually stultifying. It remains the case that most French and Italian universities teach economics as a philosophical subject—with opinions mattering as much as facts—not a scientific subject. A Keynesian, statist perspective still dominates most European curricula: free-market professors are an embattled minority.

Tagged with: alkohol, city journal, disain, financial times, kibbutzimid, koerad, kosmos, majandusteadlased, skafander, spiegel

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