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Know why the air is dirty? Mel Pruitt isn't finished. (Read more.)
When it isn’t being used to determine exact yardage
to the green or to trace the tracks of philandering partners, the most popular recreational use of consumer GPS (Global
Positioning System) is geocaching. (Read more.)
Microbiologist Kathy Lavoie wriggled forward in the narrow sluice,
inching along on her stomach like a larva, squirming through the close, low, water-crawl deep inside a cave beneath Bloomington,
Indiana, following the light tossed from the carbide lamp strapped to a battered hard hat. A canvas backpack trailed behind,
like shed skin, tied to her ankle by a short strap. The cramped passage prevented her from raising herself on her elbows.
Head low, arms extended in front, shoulders, back and belly scraping the crude limestone gut, she advanced slowly, like a
soldier under live fire. A stream of cool, chin-deep water funneled steadily toward her, soaking her t-shirt and cargo shorts,
splattering her face. Then the unimaginable happened. (Read more.)
If Daniel Hillis is right, 100 years from now crowds will
begin assembling at the Resort of the Far Tomorrows well before December 31, 02099, in anticipation of a singular centennial
event - the chiming of his 10,000 Year Clock. This Stonehenge-size
oracle of time, engineered with pyramid durability to operate and survive 10,000 years, is his creation. He intends it to
last, in fact, as long as Stonehenge and the pyramids combined. Its purpose is to remind us we are not just living in the
now, we are living in what muscian Brian Eno calls the "long now". (Read more.)
Everyone wonders what the bathroom of the future will
be like. Okay, maybe they don't, but it hasn't stopped engineers in the division of Non-Burning Issues from designing what
can euphemistically be called the bathroom of tomorrow—an oasis of comfort, elegance, rest, and meditation essential
to contemporary living. (Read more.)
It's not so much that the tiny central Oregon town of Prineville
has a municipal golf course, although few hamlets of less than 7,000 people do. After all, Prineville sits on the tee box
of the Great Basin, the largest sand trap in North America - a desert stretching from the middle of Oregon to the Mexican
border and beyond, a wasteland known to the locals as the Great Sandy Desert. Los Angeles gets more rain than this part of
Oregon. What's unlikely about the arid community of Prineville is that its golf course has more water hazards than a nautical
theme park. Meadow Lakes Golf Course doubles as Prineville's wastewater treatment plant. (Read more.)
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