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• Up On a Pedestal
• 35,000 Years Before iPods
• From Endangered to Pest
• No Car? No Problem.
• Organic Internships
Democracy, TV-Style
Winning on American Idol takes more than a great set of pipes: It may depend on the ability to inspire fans to spend hours sending in blocks of votes. Just how big block voting can get was demonstrated by 23-year-old Erika McMahan of Conway, Arkansas, and two of her friends, who texted 11,700 votes on the final night of this year's Idol. And there's circumstantial evidence that viewers are sending in ever-larger blocks of votes: Idol's ratings have declined in recent years, but the number of votes this season was 25 percent higher than four years ago. Idol's producers don't reveal many details on the voting, but they say power texting and power toll-free voting in this year's finale were a small percentage of the votes separating Kris Allen and Adam Lambert. McMahan sees nothing wrong with casting thousands of votes each week. "They say it is America's vote that decides the winner," she says, "so whoever's fans take the most time to vote should win." Maybe we should check the Constitution on that?
Up On a Pedestal
Trafalgar Square in London is home to statues of kings and generals on enormous pedestals called plinths. But now anyone can be put on a pedestal. A project called "One & Other" is letting 2,400 people occupy a plinth for an hour. More than 28,000 people have applied to be "plinthers" before the project ends in October, with winners—who must be over 16 and living in Britain—selected by computer. After being hoisted onto the 26-foot-high plinth in a cherry picker, they can do whatever they like (within reason, of course). Plinthers are webcast live at oneandother.co.uk. So far, they've included a 22-year-old disc jockey in a panda suit, a woman releasing green helium balloons, and a pub owner dressed as a town crier. "This is not about privilege, not about power, not about war or honoring the dead," says Antony Gormley, the British sculptor heading the project. "It's about celebrating the living."
35,000 Years Before iPods
About 35,000 years ago, music filled a cave in southwestern Germany when one of our Stone Age ancestors took a hollow bone from a griffon vulture, carved finger holes, and made one of the first flutes. Part of that flute was recently found in a cave near Ulm, Germany. Along with fragments of ivory flutes from the same area, archaeologists say, it represents the earliest known evidence of music-making in the Stone Age. Around the same time and in the same area, early Homo sapiens also carved the oldest known examples of sculpture. These people probably arrived in Europe 40,000 years ago, 10,000 years before the native Neanderthals became extinct. The Neanderthals, close human relatives, apparently left no evidence of having been musical.
From Endangered to Pest
The humans in Lexington, Massachusetts, are stumped: Beaver dams are causing water to flood the town's sewer system. Trapping the beavers does no good: Others move in. Destroying the dams doesn't work: The animals rebuild them, sometimes within a day. Beavers were nearly extinct in 1900, thanks to 300 years of demand for beaver-felt hats. But decades of conservation efforts have brought many species back from the brink—and beavers, alligators, and other once-endangered animals have become so numerous that they can become expensive pests. States like Mississippi, North Carolina, and Wisconsin have lost millions of dollars each year from beaver damage to buildings. There may be as many as 15 million beavers in North America, up from 100,000 a century ago.
No Car? No Problem.
The pioneers of Vauban, Germany, are going where few suburbanites have gone before: They're giving up their cars. In Vauban, a new suburb of the city of Freiburg, 70 percent of families don't own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move there. The only places to park in Vauban are two garages where spaces sell for $40,000. It's part of a trend in Europe and the United States in which planners are designing suburbs that are less reliant on cars, with greater access to public transit and more stores within walking distance. One motivation is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: Passenger cars produce 12 percent of greenhouse emissions in Europe and up to 50 percent in the U.S.
