New Florence. New Renaissance.

Tropical Tundra

This definitely qualifies as innovation in a place where you least expect it

I have written before about the Ice and Snow World in Harbin, China. This year the Gaylord Palms in Orlando imported 40 of the ice carvers from the city to create a winter wonderland called ICE!. It made for a nice diversion as we drove to see Cirque’s La Nouba nearby.

Aimed at kids with Frosty the Snowman and 4 slides leading the attractions, the precision ice sculpting and coloring ( I kept admiring the structure of a bright red engine with black coal ) draws adult admiration as well. You also had to marvel at the recreation of 9 degree temperature which required us all to borrow the facility’s parkas (from Spiewak, which has been making them for over a century) having just come in from 70 degree weather

Oh and btw, the Gaylord with its 63 acre campus, 4.5-acre glass-enclosed atrium (and a giant Christmas tree) , 25 sq ft spa, countless pools and restaurants is worth a visit all by itself. This one mirrors similar giant Gaylord properties in Nashville and Dallas.

New Scientist : 2013 Breakthroughs in Physical Science

From time-travel movies (in graph) to wormhole entanglement, 2013 delivered a load of mind-boggling ideas.

It was also the year that several big experiments delivered the goods we were hoping for: the Planck telescope provided the most accurate map of the big bang's afterglow; the discovery of the Higgs boson was confirmed, winning those who first predicted it the Nobel prize; and neutrinos from outer space were finally glimpsed.

But as attempts to solve a knotty problem known as the black hole paradox reveal, we're in no danger of running out of mysteries quite yet.

New Scientist

Monument Men

Bloomberg Pursuits

In the 1970s, a trio of artists went into the wilds of the southwestern U.S. to erect structures to rival the Seven Wonders.

They’re still at it.

Star Axis by Charles Ross

Roden Crater by James Turrell

City by Michael Heizer

Rolling Stone Best Albums 2013

Its 50 best of the year, including 2 to 4 below

Moby’s “Open Source” album

innocents is the 11th studio album from the electronic music iconoclast: a lo-fi, melodic meditation on vulnerability and humanity. What you make of it is up to you. Download new music from innocents. Then, enter your email to unlock 3 bonus tracks, 3 short films, art, and the album’s entire stem library. A song is only a starting point. You decide how the world will hear it.

BitTorrent

NY Times Book Review - Best of 2013

Includes in fiction, Americanah, about race relations as seen from eyes of a young Nigerian immigrant and in non-fiction, Wave about post tsunami emotions in Sri Lanka.

The full list is here

ZDNet Tech Turkeys of 2013

“the worst products and services that have graced the pages of ZDNet over the past year.

This year, our Turkeys come in two flavors: Those that truly displayed their Gobble-Gobble from a purely technical perspective (Type 1) and those that failed to realize revenue or garner significant industry adoption (Type 2).”

The new minimalist iOS7 without the skeumorphism so common in today’s software UI is one ZDNet calls a dud

Wine Spectator’s 2013 Top 100 Wines

This year marks the 25th anniversary of our Top 100 list, where Wine Spectator’s editors select and highlight the most exciting wines from the thousands we reviewed during the course of the year.

Back in 1988, the wine world was much smaller. We reviewed about 3,000 newly released wines in our blind tastings, and the Top 100 skewed to France, Italy and California. In 2013, our editors reviewed more than 20,000 new releases, and the Top 100 includes wines from 13 foreign countries and four states.

(No. 1 in photo on left)

Fortune’s Best Things of 2013

An eclectic collection

Airport checkpoint of the future

From Qylur which says its name is derived from the “Condylura Cristata, or the star-nosed mole, a functionally blind animal that uses its fleshy snout, embedded with 25,000 sensory receptors, to detect and hunt prey.”

“Visually, the checkpoints would not look out of place in a Dr Who studio: a series of white, plastic honeycomb cells cocoon a sensor that automatically scans users for dangerous items, chemicals and nuclear materials.

The idea is that you go to one side of the machine, insert your bag into a small cabin, and scan your boarding pass whereupon the machine compares the characteristics of the contents to every item it has ever scanned. Consequently, the machine builds up not just a database, but a knowledge of all the different harmful items a person can attempt to smuggle on an aircraft, thus improving its decision making skills over time.

Qylur claims that this system is more thorough than traditional human - or even holographic - security officials, lowering the rate of false positives at a reduced cost for airport bosses. Apparently, a single machine with five cells could replace five security lines, moving through the same amount of people in one-quarter of the space, with only five employees as opposed to 15.”

ITProPortal