In the second decade of the 20th Century, American society was steeped in the opulence and hedonism of the ‘Roaring 20s’. The Great War was over and economic progress had returned big time to the United States. The zeitgeist was the closest Americans came to the French joie de vivre. According to some sociologists, the generation during that time (the Crisis stage) was the artist group. The 1920s gave birth to bohemians and flappers, so it would indeed appear that the authors were right.

All throughout the 20th century, one of the signature features of the future that Americans looked forward to was the possibility of flying cars. Getting in your car and, just like George Jetson, blasting off to work and then home again. Well, it looks like the future is not that far off. The world may be on the cusp of the skies being filled with flying taxis. The European company, Airbus, who produces civilian and military aircraft, has released video of tests of its ‘Vahana’ vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) drone taxi.

Donald Olson is an amateur sleuth, but the mysteries he solves don’t put killers behind bars or reveal the identities of murderers in some sort of overly dramatic third act. No, Olson tackles the mysteries that artists and great figures in history have left for the rest of us to figure out. The Art Detective From Atlas Obscura: An astrophysicist and forensic astronomer, Olson uses quantitative methods to answer questions raised by artwork, literature, and historical accounts—not the heady ones, but the basic, surprisingly slippery who, what, when, and where.

没有想到我的第一次出国会以这样的方式。没有护照，没有边境通行证，就这样走出中缅边境的国门散了个步。对面就是缅甸的国门，但是我们无法过去。远处是缅甸的村庄，难免会产生好奇，国门那边的人生活是怎样的呢？他们是否会中文？他们使用的生活用品是 “made in china” 吗？没机会接触。

写在前面： 这篇怒江游记是我最近刚从草稿中翻出来的。此次怒江之行是在2017年的9月，而文稿的完成时间是在10月份。当时文稿整理完成后，觉得自己的文字实在对不起这个美丽的地方，再加之一大部分照片的丢失（丢失的原因实在是自己太大意），心情有点儿沮丧，也就没有再发布到网上。幸好我没有把这些文字稿删除，重新翻阅当时的记录，对我个人而言，也算是美好的回忆吧。 ——2018.04

Today, people tend to think of sloths as cute harmless creatures. Their images are all over the internet and videos of them on YouTube garner thousands – and even millions of views. Their prehistoric ancestors, however, were a little different. Over 10,000 years ago in what is now the New Mexico White Sands National Monument at least one pre-historic hunter followed the trail of a large beast. At some point, the hunter caught up to the animal causing the beast to rear up on its hind legs in an attempt to scare away the hunter or, if that failed, defend itself.

In the waning days of its civilization, a gathering of Chimú priests oversaw a religious ritual they hoped would stem the endless days of rain and the rising sea levels that threatened their 15th Century society located along the Pacific Ocean in modern day Peru. Prior rituals involving the sacrifice of adults in order to appease the gods had failed. Desperate times called for desperate measures. An Unexpected Recourse For five years an interdisciplinary team, funded by National Geographic, headed up by Gabriel Prieto of the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo and John Verano of Tulane University have been slowly peeling back the layers of a mass grave located in the Chimú town of Huanchaquito-Las Llamas, but now known as the Peruvian district of Huanchaco.

The Pleistocene Epoch is the term scientists use to describe the last ice age that ended about 11,700 years ago. It was at about this time, almost 12,000 years ago that a group of people in Siberia (the land where the ice age never really ended), carved a tree into a human like wooden idol almost 5 meters long. Fast forward to 1894, when gold prospectors discovered the idol while digging up a peat bog near the Russian city Yekaterinburg.

It looks and sounds like something out of a sci-fi horror flick. With eyes that glow a menacing red, white fangs and inhuman howls, a new creature is stalking the rice paddies and agricultural fields of Japan. It is called the Super Monster Wolf and stands 20 inches tall and is around 25 ½ inches long. Oh and it costs about $4,800 to buy. The creature is a solar powered robot wolf designed to scare away scavengers and other animals from farms and rice paddies throughout Japan, writes The Sun.

Remember the Rubik’s Cube? Those old enough to can probably appreciate this author’s level of frustration with the 3D puzzle. My frustration got to the point that I even peeled off (poorly) the stickers on the segments so I could pretend I successfully finished it. Not my proudest moment. I was certainly nowhere close to current Guinness World Records holder Patrick Ponce from the USA, who completed a 3x3x3 cube in just 4.