Deforestation is the single biggest factor in greenhouse gas emissions, nearly twice as big as either road transportation or residential buildings.

Plant With Purpose is a great organization working to replant trees in damaged areas. Here’s their compelling intro video.

No thanks, I’ll just stay on the beach. I’d only seen a few of these before.

Apparently film editors have gravitated toward a consistent pattern for shot length in major films over the years, repeating shots of a few given lengths much more often than in the past.

“According to the new report, the basic shot structure of the movies, the way film segments of different lengths are bundled together from scene to scene, act to act, has evolved over the years to resemble a rough but recognizably wave-like pattern called 1/f, or one over frequency.”

This power law formula is observed many places in nature, and corresponds to the natural human attention span pattern. This is also the formula for generating pink noise; to me, the pink noise sample at that link is more soothing than either the white or brown noise (more on the colors of noise). Is it the same for you?

Apparently viruses and virus-like components make up almost half our DNA. Viruses and humans have coevolved for millenia, and viruses introduce new genetic material to our species, aiding evolution. Harmful viruses have repeatedly killed off those unsuited to them, leaving us, the product of countless epidemics, with their defenses written in our DNA.