【推荐1】Never before had a Kitchen so much of a History

It tells of Freedom, Success, and of the Architecture of big American cities. Because that is where it started: in the second half of the 19th century!

Welcome to a new Era of Kitchen Interior Design

Back then, a Generation of successful American Entrepreneurs dreamt of a new style of Architecture to express their personal wealth. This dream was realized by young architects such as Daniel Burnham and Stanford White. They all had studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. And they created a new style for Architecture and Interior Design, named after the famous French Art Institute: Beaux-Arts.

SieMatic BeauxArts Breaks and Creates

In fact, it was not a new style at all, but a composition of styles from different periods and cultures. Many world-famous structures such as the Chicago Art Institute and the Statue of Liberty account for it. But what does that have to do with your kitchen? Just as much as you want it to. Because in the same way that the anti-conventional architects back then took the freedom to combine elements from different historical eras, today, you too can break the conventional rules of style and create something new: your own personal composition of your kitchen. For that, SieMatic BeauxArts offers unique opportunities: A broad range of seemingly conflicting features that you combine to a harmonious design of your own. You can choose from menu of various forms, appealing colors, and precious materials, to create an environment that is much more than just a kitchen: a reflection of your personality.

【推荐3】Tayka Hotel De Sal

Where: Tahua, Bolivia

How much: About $95 a night

Why it’s cool: You’ve stayed at hotels made of brick or wood, but salt? That’s something few can claim. Tayka Hotel de Sal is made totally of salt—including the beds (though you’ll sleep on regular mattresses (床垫) and blankets).The hotel sits on the Salar de Uyuni, a prehistoric dried-up lake that’s the world’s biggest salt flat. Builders use the salt from the 4,633-square-mile flat to make the bricks, and glue them together with a paste of wet salt that hardens when it dries. When rain starts to dissolve the hotel, the owners just mix up more salt paste to strengthen the bricks.

Green Magic Nature Resort

Where: Vythiri, India

How much: About $240 a night

Why it’s cool: Riding a pulley(滑轮)-operated lift 86 feet to your treetop room is just the start of your adventure. As you look out of your open window—there is no glass!—you watch monkeys and birds in the rain forest canopy. Later you might test your fear of heights by crossing the handmade rope bridge to the main part of the hotel, or just sit on your bamboo bed and read. You don’t even have to come down for breakfast—the hotel will send it up on the pulley-drawn “elevator”.

Dog Bark Park Inn B&B

Where: Cottonwood, Idaho

How much: $92 a night

Why it’s cool: This doghouse isn’t just for the family pet. Sweet Willy is a 30-foot-tall dog with guest rooms in his belly. Climb the wooden stairs beside his hind leg to enter the door in his side. You can relax in the main bedroom, go up a few steps of the loft in Willy’s head, or hang out inside his nose. Although you have a full private bathroom in your quarters, there is also a toilet in the 12-foot-tall fire hydrant outside.

Gamirasu Cave Hotel

Where: Ayvali, Turkey

How much: Between $130 and $475 a night.

Why it’s cool: This is caveman cool! Experience what it was like 5,000 years ago, when people lived in these mountain caves formed by volcanic ash. But your stay will be much more modern. Bathrooms and electricity provide what you expect from a modern hotel, and the white volcanic ash, called tufa, keeps the rooms cool, about 65℉in summer.(Don’t worry—there is heat in winter.)

【推荐1】You are just waking up in the spring of 2030. Your Internet of Things bedroom opens solar powered e-windows and plays gentle music while your smart lighting displays a montage (剪辑的)of beachfront sunrises from your recent vacation.

Your shower uses very little water or soap. It recycles your grey water and puts the extra heat back into your home's operating system. While you dress, your artificial intelligence (Al) assistant shares your schedule for the day and plays your favorite tunes.

You still start your day with a coffee but it comes from your lot refrigerator which is capable of providing a coffeehouse experience in your home. A hot breakfast tailored to your specific nutritional needs (based on chemical analysis from your trips to the “smart toilet” is waiting for you in the kitchen.

When it's time to leave, an on-demand transport system has three cars waiting for you, your wife (or husband) and your kids. On the road, driverless cars and trucks move with mathematical accuracy, without traffic jams, routine maintenance or road rage. Accident rates are near zero.

On the way, you call your R&D team, who are enveloping a day's work in Shanghai. Your life-sized image is projected (投射)into the China Innovation Centre and your colleagues see you as if you were sitting in the room. It’s a bit surreal for them to see you in the morning light given that it's dark on the Bund, Shanghai's waterfront, though the novelty disappears after a few uses.

You review the day's cloud-based data from your Shenzhen manufacturing center, your pilot project in San Diego, and your QA team in Melbourne. The large amounts of datasets were collected in real-time from every piece of equipment and have been beautifully summarized by your company's AL All these facilities are closely maintained and operated through a advanced predictive analytics platform.

Pleased with the team's progress, you end the call and ease into a good book.

This is the future and it will be here sooner than you think.

【推荐2】It’s always exciting to think about the future and what kind of technology might exist in years to come. But what if that future is closer than you think?

The name Magic Leap is starting to spread across the Internet, and for a good reason. The Magic Leap technology company in the US has been working on something new and exciting, keeping it so secret that even the people working on the project have been hidden from the media. But recently they have started to release more information, and it seems that the future of computing is about to change dramatically.

Magic Leap’s preview shows the possibility of a classroom where you can interact with a miniature 3-D man and watch animals floating in front of your eyes. You could come face to face with fierce creatures like tigers and sharks, and more might be possible very soon.

The company hopes to create new technology that mixes reality and virtual reality computing. This means that the way we interact with computers could change completely, and so could the gaming industry.

Imagine a game in which you can not only look after a dragon on a screen, but also see it walking around your home, feed it and play with it. This is a world where movies will make you jump as things come, flying at you. Rio Caraeff, the company’s chief content officer, said that instead of staring at a phone screen, “the world becomes your screen”.

All of this could be the next step for Magic Leap, and their newly-released video suggests so. The video shows a small elephant floating in the hands of its user, a virtual reality pet that the user can interact with. Exciting to think about, no?

It seems that the excitement has inspired other companies who are lining up to join in on this new project. The technology, called Cinematic Reality, is attracting the attention of large companies like Google, who are already investing large sums of money in the project hoping to see it become a reality.

【推荐1】Peter Wohlleben, a forester from Germany who spent a lot of time observing and studying trees, became a star right off with a book that challenges ideas many of us hold about trees. The Hidden Life of Trees by him gives us lessons that can be useful for humans and inspires us to have a deep understanding of our lives.

In the book Peter mentions he learned young trees grow more quickly than old ones while in forestry school. The idea has been rejected by a group of researchers that published a study of 700,000 trees across every continent, and discovered older trees grow more quickly and healthily. As Peter says in his book, “being old doesn’t mean being weak and bowed.” How would humans understand this? Should we reframe old age from being weak and bowed to just being stronger in a different way?

When Peter realized “parent” trees force small trees to grow slowly, he was surprised. Two-hundred-year-old “mother beech trees,” for example, shade the young ones to allow very little light to get through, thus slowing their growth. In fact, scientists have learned that as they grow more slowly, they remain flexible to stand up to storms. This makes me wonder if humans grow “too fast,” especially as life expectancy increases. Do we need a better way to “pace” ourselves to be stronger in the long run?

Most trees grow strongly when they grow close together, contrary again to what Peter learned early in his career. Peter says that rather than separating trees, the better way is to make them live together. Even more interesting is that one study found that a group of beech trees shared nutrition so that all trees could do well and help weaker trees stay strong as well.

Trees communicate with and care for each other, share food, provide places for insects and animals to live, and can help humans stay healthy, so why shouldn’t we care for each other, share resources and live in peaceful communities?

【推荐1】The police in Canada had to deal with the escape of 12 million bees on Monday. The bees flew off after the truck that was carrying them turned over. Most of the insects stayed close by, but enough were loose to cause a possible danger to the public. Police told people to stay indoors and keep their windows closed. Bee expert Chris Maund said it was lucky that the accident happened in the countryside. “Fortunately it happened in an area where there are no restaurants or houses around. If it happened in an area like a city center, all the bees would have been killed right away.” Mr. Maund said that people are not in danger as long as they keep their distance.

The bees were on their way back to their main beehives (蜂房) after being used to pollinate (授粉) blueberries. Bees and the traveling pollination service are an important part of Canada’s fruit industry. Maund said the truck and broken hives were being left on the highway overnight. He believes the bees will return naturally. The bees probably did not go very far because of the rainy weather. Bees breathe through their skin and can drown(溺死) in the rain. Firefighters wearing full protective clothes were at the scene making the bees wet to keep them from flying around. They also sprayed (喷) the bees with smoke to make them feel sleepy. The smoke can also make them think there is a fire, causing them to return to save their honey.

【推荐2】A long layover(滞留)can be absolutely annoying. What are you supposed to do if you've got six, eight, or 12 hours to kill before your next flight? Most of the time, your options are to eat an overpriced meal, or to browse an overpriced bookstore. Well, you might have more choices than you think. These are the airports with the world's coolest activities you'd never expect.

Where else but in Germany would you find not only a lively beer garden at an airport but also the actual brewery that supplies it? Airbräu is home to an award-winning lineup of cold ones and even offers brewery tours if you've got the time.

You're already anxious enough at the airport, and a long layover is bound to make it worse. Sounds like you need to take advantage of the therapy dogs at the Pets Unstressing Passengers program (PUP for short).

There's tons of stuff to do at Incheon International, including catching a movie or checking out a cultural museum. But what really sets it apart is the free ice-skating rink and ice forest, which opens seasonally. Don't worry: inline skating(直排轮滑) is available year-round.

Hong Kong Airport used to be home to a real nine-hole golf course, but it was closed in 2015 due to an expansion of the airport hotel. Still, while you're waiting for your flight, you can borrow some clubs and hit the Golfzon simulator located in Terminal 2. It's probably better for air traffic control this way.

【推荐3】Many years ago, when we were a young couple with two small children, aged 2 and 4, we were practically impecunious. My in-laws lived from hand to mouth, so we didn't expect any help from them. My parents lived a great distance away, and I was too ashamed to let them know about our situation.

My husband was trying to earn a living with an old pick-up truck, carrying groceries for local shopkeepers, but it was constantly breaking down. It took almost all the money we had to have it fixed. The truck was also the only means of transportation for us.

We lived in the countryside, and we always used the back door because the driveway led to it. One winter evening, I stepped outside to take a bag of trash to the barrel and almost tripped over something. It was nearly dark, and I had to bend down to see what it was. I could hardly believe my eyes. There sat a large basket loaded with food.

It was heavy, so I called my husband to carry it into the house. Once inside, we discovered two loaves of bread, some butter, several cans of vegetables, a can of orange sauce, and a large turkey. There was so much that I can't remember it all, but it was everything we needed to fix a wonderful dinner—everything except potatoes.

A little while later I remembered that I hadn't taken the trash to the barrel. By now it was dark, so I had to turn on the yard light —and that's when I spotted a small bag of potatoes sitting on the porch.

That dinner was the best I can remember.

We weren't able to thank our donators, though, because we never found out who had been so generous in helping a struggling young family. Whoever it was, we are forever grateful.