inkbluesky

 Manned Airplane Powered by the Sun

The Solar Impulse is an experimental solar-powered airplane project under development. Ultimately, the team hopes to be able to fly around the world powered only by solar power.

There is a photo at the link. Looks like a big elegant blue bird. Solar powered flight almost sounds like some Utopian vision of the future from a 1950’s sci-fi writer. Gliding almost silently though the air, no exhaust and very little noise just enjoying the journey.

The little red wagon on the other hand is powered by kids with a sugar buzz. I’m not sure about the energy efficiency of this form of transportation versus fuel costs, but as I remember there was a high fun factor.

little red wagon larger

 Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) was a pioneer of photography and photo-journalism. She and some colleagues had this crazy idea of putting out a magazine that told stores mostly through photographs. It was known as Life Magazine.

 In 1936, Bourke-white toured the south with the writer Erskine Caldwell to supply the pictures for the book ‘You Have Seen Their Faces’. The book was a photo documentary of the poor, rural people of the south. Later in 1936, Henry Luce decided to launch a picture magazine, spurred on by the success of European picture tabloids. In this magazine, pictures wouldn’t be subservient to the text; the pictures would tell the story. The magazine was called Life and Bourke-White was one of the four original photographers hired. She covered everything from the New Deal towns springing up in the Midwest to the growing conflict in Europe. In early 1941, tensions were running high in Europe, and Life asked her to return to Russia, to make a comparison between the current Russia and the one that she saw ten years before. Bourke-White and Caldwell entered Russia though China. On July 22nd, the first bombs fell on Moscow and Bourke-White was the only foreign photographer present. The resulting pictures were a major scoop for Bourke-White and Life. She spent the next four years covering the European theater of war, it’s leaders, and the aftermath of the Nazi death camps. She also flew in American bombers on their bombing raids, taking pictures of the destruction.