Every terraced landscape is an enormous piece of engineering built by hand over generations, and every element of it answers a specific problem with a slope. Here are seventeen.
1.…
Maya Linton
There is a contradiction at the centre of making charcoal that explains everything about how it was done.
The wood has to be heated to a high temperature, and the…
There is an idea about sailing that seems obviously true and is only half the story.
The idea is that a sail is a bag that catches the wind and…
There is a small category of materials that are not assembled from anything, and felt is the oldest of them.
Almost every fabric is made of threads. Spinning turns loose…
There is a class of object that has to work with nobody supervising it, in public, permanently, and postboxes are among the clearest examples.
Before they existed, a letter had…
There is a strong temptation to explain organised-looking animal behaviour by assuming somebody is organising it.
An ant trail invites exactly that. A line of insects moving purposefully between a…