Things Get Super Intense in This Week’s Best Trailers

The funny thing about this trailer is that it’s probably the one no one is talking about, but since it’s an Aaron Sorkin production, it’s the most important thing happening on television all year—or at least it is to Dan Rather. So, consider this trailer The One That Everyone Named Dan Rather Is Talking About. And bless you, Sorkin. Only you could get away with a promo that posits the end of The Newsroom as the emotional equivalent to the finale of M*A*S*H after only two seasons on air that most people spent hate-watching. (Full disclosure: Our hearts are breaking over the premature cancellation of Newsroom and we’ll be right there will you every Sunday, Rather.)

Pause at: 0:09, 0:11, 0:14, 0:17, 0:21, and 0:23 for snippets of provocative dialogue.

The One You Wish Everyone Would Talk About: Whiplash

How can a dimly-lit movie about a kid studying jazz look so intense and compelling?! We’re digging Miles Teller more and more all the time, and here we see him as Andrew Neyman, a young man attending a top music school who is set on becoming one of the greatest jazz drummers of all time. But he’s not going to reach his goal without the very tough love tutelage of his bandleader and teacher, Terence Fletcher, played by the ever unsung hero J.K. Simmons. No explosions, no graphic novel source material, no superheroes and no potential franchising—just a couple stand-out actors pushing themselves to the emotional brink.

Pause at: 0:07 and 0:45 for Very Ominous J.K. Simmons. At 0:38 we see Neyman getting a symbol tossed at his head for keeping poor time on drums. (This is not fun band camp.) 0:57, 1:09, 1:10, 1:19, and 1:24 show us the bloodsport side of Jazz.

Essential Quote: “See? This to me is the beauty of Studio Band. You walk in here an alternate and who knows when you can be the new core?”—Terence Fletcher, letting his students know they need to always be closing to keep their spots

The French One: The Connection

American audiences don’t get enough Jean Dujardin. Most folks probably know him from his expertly over-the-top Academy Award-winning role in The Artist, where he played a silent picture star tormented by the arrival of talkies. Or maybe they’ve seen him as a satirical Bond figure playing the cocksure Agent OSS 117. In either case, we know Dujardin can do comedy, but he’s clearly a diversely gifted performer, so it’s exciting to see a crime thriller pop up on the radar wherein he’s chasing down the principles of a French drug ring. It looks violent and compelling and conducive to Dujardin’s talents as a physical on-screen presence. Hopefully we get a trailer with subtitles soon!

Pause at: 0:04, 0:24, 0:30, 0:34, 0:36, 0:40, and 1:05 for French places and French people being beautifully French even in the face of cartel-related violence.

Song: Sheila, “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)”

The Science Fiction One: Autómata

In this Asimovian foray into the future, Earth is experiencing a gradual creep of desertification. Obviously, as humanity declines, a corporate entity rises—in this case a robotics intelligence company called ROC—to address society’s new woes with synthetic beings and assert its quiet vice grip over what remains of life on our planet. And our hero comes in the form of Jacq Vaucan, a ROC insurance agent played by Antonio Banderas. Vaucan is dispatched to investigate complaints regarding defective androids (silly future machines!), but when he starts uncovering widespread manipulations of ROC’s flagship Automata Pilgrim 7000 things go south quickly. This movie actually looks pretty sweet—kind of like if you mashed together I, Robot and District 9 and inserted Antonio Banderas as a scary-future insurance agent to carry the picture. We’re in!

Pause at: 0:26, 0:31, 0:58, 1:13, 1:23, 1:38, 1:43, 1:46, 2:12, and 2:16 for all kinds of crazy future coolness. Melanie Griffith at 0:56!

Essential Quote: “A machine altering itself is a very complex concept. Self-repairing implies some idea of a conscience.”—Dra. Dupre played by Melanie Griffith, addressing the theoretical constraints of our roboticized future

The Ambient Indie: White Bird in a Blizzard

Shailene Woodley co-stars with Eva Green. Is there something else you need here?

Pause at: 0:19, 0:48, and 1:45 for haunting art direction (we suspect there will be a lot more where that came from). Stop at 0:24 for Gabourey Sidibe, who’s always welcome. And obviously all your necessary Eva Green moments are at 0:25, 0:27, 0:28, 0:33, 0:38, 0:41, 0:59, 1:27, 1:29, 1:32, 1:33, 1:42, and 1:51.

Essential Quote: “I was 17 when my mother disappeared. One day she was there, cleaning, making dinner, and the next—she was gone.”—Shailene Woodley as Kat Connor

The Small Screen Standout: Girls Season 4

Like all things Girls, this teaser is insufferable and strangely perfect. Damn it, Lena Dunham! Fine. We’ll watch.

Pause at: 0:12 for claaaassic Hannah.

Essential Quote: “Ahhhhh!”—Hannah Horvath, falling off her bike because of nothing and tumbling to the ground (obviously)

The Scary One: Annabelle

You remember Annabelle, right? The scary doll from the beginning of last year’s fantastic screamfest The Conjuring? Like the really scary one? Yeah, her. Well, she’s got her very own movie now, which means the terror you felt from her presence for mere minutes at the start of Conjuring can now be stretched across 90 minutes in a big dark room. We could describe what goes on in this trailer, but explanation seems rote compared to an actual real-time reaction transcript between two people simultaneously watching it.

Unsuspecting Friend: THE LAST SCENE WHERE IT’S THE LITTLE GIRL

Unsuspecting Friend: OMG

Me: Oh my GOD GOD GOD

Me: The walk run little girl becomes a TALL GIRL

Me: NOPE NOPE NOPE

Unsuspecting Friend: ALLLLL OF MY NOPES

Enjoy!

Pause at: 0:16, 0:21, 0:24, 0:26, 0:48, 0:55, 1:05, 1:13, 1:19, 1:32, 1:51, 2:03 for all the times you can change your pants. At 0:39—why would you keep that doll?! Ahhhhh! Too close at 1:21! 2:06 is a major “Nope!” Hey, what’s going on at 2:09? Stop what you’re doing at 2:16!

Song: The Flamingos, “I Only Have Eyes For You”

Essential Quote: “What is there left to be scared of?”—Stupid priest

The Feel Bad One: Nightcrawler

Once you compartmentalize how distressingly gaunt Jake Gyllenhaal got for this role, this becomes a pretty interesting trailer. Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a scum-of-the-Earth type who seems accustomed to hustling for his income. Bloom’s moral compass looks shaky at best, so when he falls ass backwards into the super-seedy world of quick response crime reporting in Los Angeles, he sees an opportunity and fashions himself into the Harvey Levin of “If it bleeds, it leads” style journalism. Gross. But Gyllenhaal excels when wide-eyed, psychotic levels of intensity are in order, and we’re betting his Lou Bloom will be a disgusting and fascinating character to follow.

Pause at: 0:30. We weren’t kidding about the gaunt thing. At 0:51, observe Lou in his night crawling habitat, and at 1:12 watch him start smudging those ethical lines real hard. At 1:17 for Renee Russo! At 1:46 Lou starts treading in dangerous waters. At 2:11—whoa! At 2:13, Jake’s just doing what he does best.

Essential Quote: “Think of our newscast as a screaming woman running down the street with her throat cut.”—Renee Russo as a TV news producer, explaining how the business works

WTF Just Happened: How Do They Pull Off the Vertigo Effect in Movies?

You probably arrived at this page after pressing pause on Vertigo or Jaws or Raging Bull or Poltergeist or Goodfellas or The Wire . A certain camera trick used in each of them might have broken your brain. While objects in the foreground appear the same size throughout a shot, objects in the background appear to morph in size.

What kind of crazy lens or digital trickery creates this disorienting, hallucinatory effect? Are they using a green screen? A moving platform that carries both the actors and the camera away from the background? Or a special telescoping set that expands and contracts like an accordion?

Nope, It’s All Done In-Camera With a Normal Zoom Lens

That amazing effect is accomplished with a combination of a wide-angle zoom lens, a steady zoom, and a dolly. It is known by many names, including the “dolly zoom,” a “push-pull,” a “reverse-tracking shot,” but is often referred to as “the Vertigo effect.”

That last nickname comes from the first time the trick was used in a mainstream motion picture: Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958) used the perspective trick a few times to convey the effects going on in John ‘Scottie’ Ferguson’s (Jimmy Stewart) head. The technique itself is widely credited to Irmin Roberts, the second-unit director of photography for Vertigo. Irmin didn’t even receive an on-screen credit for the film.

To understand the perspective distortion you see in these shots, all you need is a camera with an optical zoom lens, a still-life subject, a nice deep background scene, and, ideally, a grid-pattern overlay for shot composition. First, take a picture of the still-life subject with the lens at its widest-angle setting, and make note of how big the still life looks on the grid-pattern overlay. Next, back up about 5 to 10 steps, zoom in so that the still-life subject has the same size and placement in the frame as the first shot, and take another picture.

Now review those two photos. You’ll notice that the background in the first scene is expansive, with the objects behind your subject appearing smaller and farther away from the camera. In the second photo, those same background objects will look larger and closer to the camera. When the “dolly zoom” is employed in movies, the camera crew is creating a smooth transition between these two extremes. The camera is zooming in or out, and at the same time, it is being physically moved in the opposite direction.

The effect works both ways. You zoom in while moving backward to make the background look like it’s “closing in” on foreground objects—that’s what’s happening in the Goodfellas scene and this clip from La Haine . You zoom out while moving towards the scene to make the background look like it’s telescoping away from the camera—that’s what’s happening in the seminal Vertigo shot, the scene from Jaws, and the expanding-hallway scene in Poltergeist.

DIY Vertigo Effects

You may not have a full camera crew or a bunch of rigs at your disposal, but you can (sort of) pull this effect off in your own videos. Your smartphone isn’t going to cut it because you’re going to need an optical-zoom lens. The lens doesn’t need to have a whopping zoom range, but it has to be able to zoom. For the most dramatic effect, it should have a wide-angle field of view when it’s zoomed all the way out. Your standard DSLR kit lens might work fine.

That said, both manually controlled zoom lenses and powered zoom lenses present their own challenges for a dolly-zoom shot. You’re best off with a manually controlled zoom lens rather than a powered version, as it gives you more precise control over speed and framing. But to eliminate shake and keep the motion smooth, many pros use a lens rig to keep their hands off the barrel. You don’t need one, but you shouldn’t expect Hollywood looks if you don’t use one.

A couple of in-camera settings are key. Autofocus is a bad fit for this shot. You’re going to want to set focus to infinity, or at least deep enough to keep your foreground subjects sharp when you’re farthest from them. You should also use a narrow aperture to keep the depth of field deep.

Obviously, some dolly-like device is going to help keep the motion smooth; you can use a skateboard or a tripod mounted on a cart to keep the physical push-in or pull-back silky. Coordination comes into play when you’re moving and zooming simultaneously, but you want to keep those foreground objects the same size in your viewfinder. That part just takes practice.

A touching story: Ancient conversation between plants, fungi and bacteria

The mechanical force that a single fungal cell or bacterial colony exerts on a plant cell may seem vanishingly small, but it plays a heavy role in setting up some of the most fundamental symbiotic relationships in biology. In fact, it may not be too much of a stretch to say that plants may have never moved onto land without the ability to respond to the touch of beneficial fungi, according to a new study led by Jean-Michel Ané, a professor of agronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Many people have studied how roots progress through the soil, when fairly strong stimuli are applied to the entire growing root," says Ané, who just published a review of touch in the interaction between plants and microbes in the journal Current Opinion in Plant Biology. "We are looking at much more localized, tiny stimuli on a single cell that is applied by microbes."

Specifically, Ané, Dhileepkumar Jayaraman, a postdoctoral researcher in agronomy, and Simon Gilroy, a professor of botany, studied how such a slight mechanical stimulus starts round one of a symbiotic relationship -- that is, a win-win relationship between two organisms.

It's known that disease-causing fungi build a structure to break through the plant cell wall, "but there is growing evidence that fungi and also bacteria in symbiotic associations use a mechanical stimulation to indicate their presence," says Ané. "They are knocking on the door, but not breaking it down."

After the fungus announces its arrival, the plant builds a tube in which the fungus can grow. "There is clearly a mutual exchange of signals between the plant and the fungus," says Ané. "It's only when the path is completed that the fungus starts to penetrate."

Mycorrhizae are the beneficial fungi that help virtually all land plants absorb the essential nutrients -- phosphorus and nitrogen -- from the soil. Biologists believe this ubiquitous mechanism began about 450 million years ago, when plants first moved onto land.

Mechanical signaling is only part of the story -- microbes and plants also communicate with chemicals, says Ané. "So this is comparable not to breaking the door or even just knocking on the door, but to knocking on the door while wearing cologne. Clearly the plant is much more active than we thought; it can process signals, prepare the path and accept the symbiont."

Beyond fungi, some plants engage in symbiosis with bacteria called rhizobia that "fix" nitrogen from the atmosphere, making it available to the plant.

Rhizobia enable legumes like soybeans and alfalfa to grow without nitrogen fertilizer.

When Ané and his colleagues looked closer, they found that rhizobium symbiosis also employs mechanical stimulation. When the bacterium first contacts a root hair, the hair curls around the bacterium, trapping it.

The phenomenon of curling has been known for almost 100 years. "But why would nature develop such a complicated mechanism to entrap a bacterial colony?" Ané asks. "We propose the purpose is to apply mechanical stimulation" so the plant will start building a home for the rhizobium -- for mutual benefit. "We have preliminary evidence that when the entrapment is not complete, the process of colonization does not happen," he says.

Again, the two-step communication system is at work, Ané adds. "The curling process itself can only begin when the plant gets a chemical signal from the bacterium -- but the growing tube inside the root hair that accepts the bacteria requires something else, and nobody knew what. We propose it's a mechanical stimulation created by entrapping, which gives the bacterial colony a way to push against the root."

In many respects, this symbiosis parallels the older one between plants and beneficial fungi, Ané says. Indeed, he says legumes have "hijacked" the mycorrhizae system. "Plants used the symbiosis toolkit to develop this relationship with mycorrhizae, and then used it again for bacteria. This dual requirement for chemical and mechanical signals is present in both associations, even though the association between rhizobia and legumes is only 60 million years old."

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Wisconsin-Madison . The original article was written by David Tenenbaum. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Breakthrough antibacterial approach could resolve serious skin infections

Like a protective tent over a colony of harmful bacteria, biofilms make the treatment of skin infections especially difficult. Microorganisms protected in a biofilm pose a significant health risk due to their antibiotic resistance and recalcitrance to treatment, and biofilm-protected bacteria account for some 80 percent of total bacterial infections in humans and are 50 to 1,000 times more resistant to antibiotics than simpler bacterial infections.

"In essence, we may have stumbled onto a magic bullet," said David Fox, a Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher on the project. "Through a robust screening strategy, our research team has identified a unique class of materials, known as ionic liquids, which both neutralize biofilm-forming pathogens and deliver drugs through the skin," he said.

"We extended our current capability in antimicrobial platforms with ionic liquids to new heights by partnering with Dr. Mitragotri at UCSB, who is an expert in transdermal drug delivery platforms. The merger made perfect sense," stated Fox.

"In several cases, we found the ionic liquid was more efficacious on a biofilm than a standard bleach treatment and exhibited minimal cytotoxicity effects on human cell lines (unlike bleach). This has excellent prospects for aiding antibiotic delivery to the pathogen through biofilm disruption but, most interestingly, the ionic liquids themselves are quite effective for pathogen neutralization," Fox said.

This work could have especially useful applications for military medical treatments, he noted, where soldiers in the field can be exposed to bacterial infections that are particularly difficult to treat.

Biofilms often persist in the periphery of an actual wound, beneath an intact, healthy skin layer and the difficulty of their treatment is largely due to the outermost layer of the skin, the stratum corneum, being a natural barrier for drug delivery.

"If the bacterial biofilm can be disrupted, delivery of antibiotics is greatly enhanced, and any dispersed pathogens are generally restored to normal antibiotic susceptibility," said Fox. "Further, many bacterial infestations in wounds penetrate under the outer skin layer, the stratum corneum, and deep into the tissue (epidermis and dermis). These materials are able to penetrate through the skin and effectively carry antibiotics to the deepest layers."

"Clearly, the ionic liquids would be of special benefit to our warfighters where exposure to biological agents in hostile environments is likely. Topical application as a prophylaxis or direct treatment to an open wound could buy enough time to reach the proper medical facilities when in an austere environment," he said. Importantly, ionic liquids can be derived from very cheap starting materials that are FDA approved and are extremely stable to high temperatures and pressures, which are necessary traits for commercialization in real-world applications.

In a groundbreaking manuscript appearing this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, as part of a multi-institutional effort between Los Alamos, University of California Santa Barbara, Dixie State University and Northern Arizona University, researchers explored exploiting ionic liquids both in a concerted effort to combat antibiotic-resistant bacterial biofilms in skin, as well as for topical transdermal drug delivery. The comprehensive strategy resulted in the identification of ionic liquids that are effective at disrupting biofilms, neutralizing pathogens, and enhancing delivery of antibiotic into skin.

Biofilms are a major cause of chronic wounds and wound degeneration. Wounds from infected surgical incisions result in 1 million additional hospital days. Additional causes of bacterial infected wounds include traumatic injuries, as well as diabetic foot ulcers, venous leg ulcers, and pressure ulcers.

The total economic burden of skin disease was estimated to be approximately $96 billion in 2004, and the prevalence and healthcare costs for skin disease have been increasing over the last three decades. Bacterial infections in the skin are among the most common diagnoses in hospital patients, accounting for some 10% of all hospital visits. Staphylococcus aureus infections acquired in hospitals, which account for only 16% of nosocomial infections, are estimated to result in $9.5 billion in extra patient costs and 12,000 deaths annually.

The comprehensive approach is unique in that the team examined a panel of in-house synthesized ionic liquids and enabled the discovery of one ionic liquid, choline-geranate, which showed excellent antimicrobial activity, minimal toxicity to epithelial cells as well as skin, and effective permeation enhancement for drug delivery. Specifically, choline-geranate was comparable with, or more effective than, bleach treatment against established biofilms of Salmonella enterica and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, respectively. In addition, choline-geranate increased delivery of cefadroxil, an antibiotic, by >16-fold into the deep tissue layers of the skin without inducing skin irritation.

Why Listeria bacterium is so hard to fight

Listeria is a dreaded bacterium that can be found in both unprocessed and processed foods. Over the last few weeks, 28 persons in Denmark have been infected with Listeria from processed food, sold in supermarkets. 13 have died.

The bacterium is notoriously difficult to fight because it has an almost uncanny ability to adapt to changes in its surroundings, says Associate Professor Birgitte Kallipolitis, University of Southern Denmark. Together with colleagues from the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, she has published a study, which in details reveals how this extreme ability to adapt takes place.

The researchers tested how Listeria reacts when it is exposed to a number of substances that can normally fight pathogenic bacteria. In the laboratory, Listeria was exposed to antibiotics, bile, salt, acid and ethanol, similar to what it often encounters in food, in the human body and during disinfection.

Listeria is constantly alert

"We knew that Listeria can resist these substances, but we did not quite know how," says Birgitte Kallipolitis.

The researchers discovered that Listeria used a variety of strategies that enabled them to withstand the substances.

"Generally speaking, Listeria must be described as extremely adaptable. It is constantly aware of its surroundings and if the environment changes around it. It reacts instantly and has a number of strategies to withstand threats," says Birgitte Kallipolitis.

The researchers also discovered that listeria is an expert at not attracting unwanted attention from the body's immune system.

"On the one hand, Listeria needs to produce some special proteins that enable it to infect the cells in our body. On the other hand, it must ensure that the body's immune system does not detect these proteins. It is vital for Listeria to keep a balance between producing enough of these proteins but not so many that they are detected by the immune system -- and it masters just that," explains Birgitte Kallipolitis.

When in the lab, the researchers looked at what happened at the microbiological level. It turned out that Listeria started producing some special RNA molecules, when they were exposed to antibiotics, bile, salt, acid and ethanol.

It is all about controlling protein production

"With these RNA molecules the bacteria can adjust how much or how little to produce of various proteins. For example it can downgrade the production of the protein LapB, which it uses to enter our cells. If this production is not downgraded, the bacterium will potentially be detected and fought by the immune system," says Birgitte Kallipolitis.

In other words: Listeria can fine-tune the production of the proteins needed to infect our cells to a point where there is exactly enough to sneak through the immune system's defense, but not so many that they are discovered.

The RNA molecules, produced when Listeria face dangerous environmental changes, also helps Listeria monitor its own cell wall. Antibiotics work by attacking the bacterial cell wall, and when exposed to antibiotics Listeria immediately detects that its cell wall is attacked. This enables it to quickly repair its cell wall -- and thus become ready for combat again.

"We see this production of RNA molecules only when Listeria is exposed to threatening substances in the lab. When there are no threats, Listeria does not produce them. This reveals part of the mechanism behind Listeria´s extreme adaptability," concludes Birgitte Kallipolitis.

The understanding of how Listeria is able to survive antibiotics, the immune system and disinfecting agents is necessary in order to develop effective means against the life-threatening bacteria.

"Only by looking at what the bacteria themselves do to survive, we can become better at fighting their pathogenicity," says Birgitte Kallipolitis.

She and her colleagues are now investigating whether Listeria can be changed into harmless bacteria by removing the RNA molecules.

Tall People Won’t Have to Endure Reclining Airline Seats in the Future

Getty

By 2100, New York was enduring an excruciating 70 days a year above 100 degrees (as predicted), so we abandoned it. The other coastal hells, too. Rising sea levels coupled with the inherent seismic instability of living near the boundaries of tectonic plates drove our people inland, leaving the coastlines and engineered seawalls an unpredictable frontier upon which the brave make a living and the destitute subsist, far away from the safety of the megacities. I’ve heard rumors that some six-footers live out there, gulping down great quantities of diseased fish to support the nutritional demands of growing to such an incredible height. They wouldn’t last long in the close confines that house so much of the world’s population.

Joe Brown

Joe Brown is WIRED’s Deputy Editor. He wrote this this morning.

Most of us moved late in the twenty-first century, after the famines and population growth made rural or even suburban life untenable, a trend sociologists began to observe late in the Twentieth. The scrubbers keep our air safe from the antibiotic-resistant bacteria and the massive fans stir up a cool breeze; you barely notice the combination of the outside temperature and the radiant heat of millions of densely packed bodies. You can choose air conditioning for half of the day—I can’t sleep without it at night—but there’s not enough juice for a full 24. Our towers, topped with solar cells and stacked stories of ultracapacitors, soar far above the clouds. It’s so much cooler up here.

The middle of America is still our Breadbasket. Breadbasket haha, only rich people get bread. It’s more like the Algae-and-Solar-Farmbasket. The robots live there, loading onto electrified rails great vats of nutrient-rich sludge harvested from stinking pools that used to have names like Iowa. Kansas. Ne-bras-ka. Fat cables stacked next to the tracks pump power from the photovoltaic arrays out to the walls, constantly pumping to keep the oceans at bay.

There used to be plush, padded chairs in airplanes, and everyone got one. Passengers used to lounge around, drinking free juice of tomato and watching TV.

Life here is predictable and safe. There is no crime and plenty of food from the faucet. Though our ancestors used to commute—actually leave their homes and work in completely different buildings!—we never have to leave our units. The companies who gave us telepresence once boasted that they could keep cars off the roads; now nobody owns cars, and few people use roads. There’s no need for such excess, and besides, working from home lets us consume fewer calories, the only currency we worry about anymore.

A very few people have to travel, and they take planes. It is supposed to be miserable: hundreds of poor souls crammed standing inside a metal tube for hours on end. There used to be plush, padded chairs in airplanes, and everyone got one. Passengers used to lounge around, drinking free juice of tomato and watching TV. And because that wasn’t luxurious enough, there was a whole other section devoted to being even more comfortable. Huge chairs, hot food, servants. Haha, their utensils were probably made of gold or petroleum-based plastic or something.

With such a plush experience, it’s no wonder that people used to spend much of their precious vacation time on planes, so accustomed to luxury that reclining seats were considered a right rather than a privilege.

At least we take up less room these days. In the mid-21st century parents started realizing that their children would have better lives if they were smaller. Small changes in diet from a young age had massive effects on a person expected to live efficiently. Height, once seen as an attractive quality became, like so many other vestiges of uncivilized life, superfluous, and we awakened to the beauty of miniaturization. Fashion websites started featuring sustainably sized people shown next to small objects for scale. A woman next to a fire hydrant. A man riding a dog.

Eventually the gene pool responded, and average heights dropped by six inches in 25 years: a mirror-like reflection of the 19th century’s planetary growth spurt. By taking up even just a little less space, we could fit more of our kind on our wilting planet. Nature.

The other day I was watching a historical internet feed where a group of six-footers complained about space on an airplane, one of the older ones that had seats. One tried to recline into the personal space of another—oh no, you’re close to me!—and then, when he stopped her chaise’s descent, she doused him with an entire container of fresh water. (This is an old custom that required he pay $100 to an Ebola patient.) What a waste! But imagine the life back then: free tomato juice and peanuts, so much water that you could just throw it around, and a freewheeling charitable spirit that stretched across the globe. With such excess, it’s no wonder we ended up where we are, but who can blame them? 2014 must truly have been the golden age of flying.

Vote for Eruptions in the 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize

I’m not usually great with self promotion, but my post “So You Think Yellowstone Is Going to Erupt” was nominated (with 85 science articles from all over the spectrum) for the 2014 3 Quarks Daily Science Prize. If you have a moment, head over a cast a vote for my post to move onto the final rounds. You have until Monday September 1 at 11:59 PM EDT to cast your vote. Thanks!