February 2015 – A Word In Your Ear

Hubble at 25: the cosmos at its most breathtaking

The Hubble telescope was launched in April 1990. Ever since, it has been providing astronomers with breathtaking images of the cosmos Read the full story here

Odd sculpture I found in Berlin

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Silicon valley is more Flintstones than Jetsons when it comes to women

Silicon Valley elites like to think they’re miles ahead of the rest of the world. But when it comes to openness toward women, they are as behind as everyone else. “We are going backwards in a field that is meant to be all about moving forward”, Hillary Clinton told Silicon Valley in a speech this […]

Wolf Hall

I’d like to write a review of the BBC’s adaptation of Wolf Hall that is as masterly as the series itself, but I don’t think it’s possible. So I’ll just say this: if you haven’t seen it, order the DVD now. It is one of the best things I’ve ever seen on TV. There was […]

A brief history of user experience design

A good primer on user experience design here by Ali Rushdan Tariq: Think about the last time you ate at a restaurant. What cuisine did it serve? What made you to choose that particular restaurant? What was your first impression as you walked in? Were you asked to wait till you were ushered to an available […]

Kanye West on design

“I believe that the world can only be saved through design. Art is to be free. Design is to fix.” Kanye West Sounds similar to my line, “if you want to describe the world, be an artist. If you want to change the world, be a designer” Me and Kanye West… Who’d have thought? Read […]

3D-printed cities: is this the future?

The words “we print architecture’s future” adorn the wall of a showroom on the outskirts of Suzhou, a rapidly urbanising city in eastern China. Arranged around the room are samples of odd-looking concrete wall of varying thickness. Outside, across the car park of this otherwise unremarkable industrial estate, is a grand, neoclassical mansion that recently […]

First full body transplant is two years away, surgeon claims

I think I’d want to approve the body first. The one I’ve got was no prize draw. A surgeon says full-body transplants could become a reality in just two years. Sergio Canavero, a doctor in Turin, Italy, has drawn up plans to graft a living person’s head on to a donor body and claims the […]

Apple adds racially diverse emoji, and they come in five skin shades

Complaints about the lack of racial diversity in the emoji characters impelled the Unicode Consortium, an industry body devoted to developing software standards, to add skin tone options. The tones are modelled on the Fitzpatrick scale, a recognised standard used by dermatologists. Read the full story here

Copycats: why street food vendors are fighting among themselves

Ownership of ideas is difficult to prove. Two hot dog sellers around Manchester are still rowing — venomously — over who first created the peanut butter with bacon jam hot dog topping. Read the full story here