This enormous kauri tree towered for a thousand years over prehistoric New Zealand before it fell into a swamp, where the lack of oxygen and fungus preserved it for 45,000 years. Workers snapped two 90-ton-capacity winch cables trying to extract it in October 1994; finally they cut it into two sections of 110 and 30 tons and hauled them out separately.

Then David Stewart built a concrete pad 20 inches thick, placed a 50-ton section of log atop it, and spent 300 hours carving it with a chainsaw and 200 hours finishing it. At 12 feet in diameter and 17 feet tall, the result is the world’s largest (and certainly oldest) single-piece circular stairway … built inside the log.

(From Spike Carlsen, A Splintered History of Wood, 2008.)

In talking about superheroes, these sentences seem natural and right:

(la) Clark Kent went into the phone booth and Superman came out.
(2a) Superman leapt over tall buildings.
(3a) Superman is more successful with women than Clark Kent.
(4a) Batman wears a mask.

But these seem inappropriate or wrong:

(lb) Clark Kent went into the phone booth and Clark Kent came out.
(2b) Clark Kent leapt over tall buildings.
(3b) Clark Kent is more successful with women than Clark Kent.
(4b) Bruce Wayne wears a mask.

Why is this? If we know that Superman is Clark Kent, then those terms should be interchangeable — a statement about Superman is a statement about Clark Kent; they’re the same person.

“At least in some conversational scenarios, utterances of (la)-(4a) strike us as true, and utterances of (lb) (4b) appear to be false,” writes University of Nottingham philosopher Stefano Predelli. “(3a), for instance, seems just the right thing to say when discussing women’s fascination with men in blue leotard; utterances of (3b), on the other hand, seem trivially false. Similarly, during a discussion of why the famed superhero never engages in extraordinary feats when playing the part of the timid journalist, utterances of (2a) seem unobjectionable, but utterances of (2b) will not do.” Why?

(Stefano Predelli, “Superheroes and Their Names,” American Philosophical Quarterly 41:2 [April 2004], 107-123.)

Photographer Michael S. Nolan took this photo in 2009 at the Austfonna ice cap in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago. He writes:

When I took the image early in the morning on July 16, 2009 from the bow of the National Geographic Explorer I was struck by the unmistakable likeness of the face of a woman crying. In fact once my mind locked onto the face it was hard to see any other pattern in the ice cap. I was moved to photograph this particular waterfall several different ways with a couple of different lenses. It was one of the best examples of a human likeness I have ever witnessed in nature.

“The icescape changes every year I visit,” he told the Telegraph. “Every summer the route has less ice as the polar cap retreats.”

(Via Brad Honeycutt, The Art of Deception, 2014.)

Pliny the Elder wrote of an alarming creature of ancient legend:

There are reports of a wild animal in Paeonia called the bonasus, which has the mane of a horse, but in all other respects resembles a bull; its horns are curved back in such a manner as to be of no use for fighting, and it is said that because of this it saves itself by running away, meanwhile emitting a trail of dung that sometimes covers a distance of as much as three furlongs, contact with which scorches pursuers like a sort of fire.

By the Middle Ages this had evolved into the bonnacon, and if anything had gotten worse — from the 12th-century Cambridge Bestiary:

However much his front end does not defend this monster, his belly end is fully sufficient. For when he turns to run away he emits a fart with the contents of his large intestine which covers three acres. And any tree that it reaches catches fire. Thus he drives away his pursuers with noxious excrement.

It seems vaguely to have lived in southern Asia. Let’s hope it stays there.

Jules Verne’s 1895 novel Propeller Island imagines an immense ship in the Pacific Ocean that’s inhabited entirely by millionaires. In 1999 an organization calling itself Freedom Ship International proposed the real thing, a ship four times as long as the Queen Mary and 25 stories tall. Altogether the ship would boast 18,000 living units, 3,000 commercial units, 2,400 time-share units and 10,000 hotel units, and like Verne’s ship it would circle the world continuously.

“The proposed vessel’s superstructure, rising twenty-five stories above its broad main deck, would house residential space, a library, schools, and a first-class hospital in addition to retail and wholesale shops, banks, hotels, restaurants, entertainment facilities, casinos, offices, warehouses, and light manufacturing and assembly enterprises.”

Cost estimates started at $6 billion but soon nearly doubled, and construction still hasn’t begun, though the company was actively pursuing its plans as recently as November 2013. While you’re waiting, you can stay on this giant yacht.