Trees of Life / Where Discovery Sparks Imagination

Issue No. 86

TREES OF LIFE – THE MOST UNUSUAL AND BEAUTIFUL EVOLUTIONARY TREE MAPS FROM THE LAST 200 YEARS

Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution
by Theodore W. Pietsch
Johns Hopkins University Press
2013, 376 pages, 8 x 10 x 1.1 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

The primary metaphor for visualizing evolution is as a tree. The trunk is the oldest ancestor species which branch off newer species, which branch further leaves of the newest species. Ever since Darwin, biologists have been drawing trees to attempt to capture the complexity of evolution in various domains. These evolutionary trees are not only scientifically useful, but works of art. Over the years, many approaches to the trees have been tried – some minimal, some ornate, some abstract. This tome collects the finest, most unusual, most beautiful evolutionary tree maps produced in the last 200 years. They not only inform biology, they are fantastic examples of great design. – Kevin Kelly

---

WHERE DISCOVERY SPARKS IMAGINATION: A PICTORIAL HISTORY OF RADIO AND ELECTRICITY

Where Discovery Sparks Imagination: A Pictorial History of Radio and Electricity
by John D. Jenkins
American Museum of Radio and Electricity
2009, 224 pages, 8.2 x 10 x 1 inches

Buy on Amazon

If you’re ever up near the Canadian border in the little college town of Bellingham, WA make time to check out a gem of a museum there: The SPARK Museum of Electrical Invention. It’s fully charged up and literally crackling with excitement (and a 4-million volt Tesla coil!). SPARK showcases all manner of fascinating artifacts all about the history of electricity from early static electricity generators to advanced vacuum tubes that went to the moon. Can’t make the trip? Then get this wonderful book!

And even if you do go to SPARK in person, you’ll also want to read Where Discovery Sparks Imagination. It features lavish color photographs of hundreds of the items on display together with the interesting stories of the people and places that go along with the things. I learned even more about Alessandro Volta and volts, Andre-Marie Ampere and amps, and Georg Ohm and ohms. See the recreation of the Titanic’s radio room. Learn how an undertaker in Kansas City invented the first dial phone to short circuit his competitor’s switchboard shenanigans. Anyone who has used a phone, listened to a recording, or turned on a lamp will enjoy seeing the primitive but clever inventions that predate today’s smart phones, PCs and LED lights. Fans of steampunkery will geek out at the endless array of 19th-century wonders like Wimhurst generators, telegraphs, “electro-magnetic motive machines,” as well as a forest of vacuum-tube devices, handsome wood-burl radio cabinetry and brassy mechanical sound players.

I was delighted to see included whimsical touches, too, like the mascot characters that put a friendly face on electrical consumer products: sure, they have a “Nipper” (the RCA mascot dog), but also the very cool 1920s Maxfield Parrish designed “Selling Fool” point of purchase display doll (with wooden jointed, posable limbs with slits for holding ad cards – and a radio tube for a helmet!). Until I can go back to SPARK (Science Powered Adventures for Real Kids) in person, I’m digging this book! – Bob Knetzger

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

09/30/25

Visual Reference

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 157

I go to books when I need to stimulate my imagination. Books never fail. I am a visual thinker, even when I write words, so I especially respond to visual books full of images, graphs, and pictures. Over the years I’ve accumulated a pretty good library of visual source books. Today, used books are cheap. You can build a good library of inspiration rather easily and inexpensively. These reference books will be the last to be replaced by digital screens, and they will still work perfectly well in the next century — no obsolescence. If you can find space to keep them, a good reference library is a working treasure. I probably have several hundred visual reference books, so I will list only the two dozen or so that I would truly hate to lose. I am mostly omitting single-artist retrospective books, including my favorites, since these are easier to find than the ones I include here, which are not obvious and less well-known. Oh, the possibilities! – KK

---

Secret Museum of Mankind

This hefty softcover is a facsimile collection of thousands of exotic and sensational photographs dating from around the turn of the century when news of any sort from far away lands was rare. It’s sort of a combination of early uncensored National Geographic and Ripley’s Believe It or Not. Reproduced without a known author, or copyright, or even authentication of the captions, it was for many years a “secret” underground publication. And for pure gawking pleasures it still can’t be beat. Cannibals, executioners, and fakirs, oh my! Toolwise, it serves as a mighty sourcebook of amazing costumes, body modifications and hairdos, architectural novelties, and extinct strange rituals. (I’m convinced science fiction film directors mine this for alien worlds.) I like to think of this book as the best one volume catalog of cultural diversity on Earth. For the most part these societies are long gone, and remain only in rare books like this one. —KK

---

Fantastic Illustrations of Grandville

Surreal and whimsical did not start with hipsters. These book of 266 pen and ink illustrations by the Parisian Jean Grandville in the early 1800s depicts fantastical chimera, and phantasmagorical visions. It’s old-timey hallucinogenic scenes, often switching animals for people. Always guaranteed to wake you up. —KK

---

Art Cars

Why are cars so boring, uniform in color, undecorated, unpersonalized when they could be…. covered in pennies, painted in polka dots, or traced in iron? You’ve probably seen an art car on the road and smiled. This is one of several albums of homemade art car culture by Harrod Blank. If you can improve cars this way, you can do it with toasters and the rest of the stuff in Walmart.

---

Fantasy Worlds

Sometimes, despite all pressures toward normalcy, people are compelled to construct their own worlds. The old lady who over the years arranges broken bottles into a house, or the man down the road covering his barn with tiny quotes from a channeling spirit–each glues raw symbols into a whole that makes sense for them. This happens all over the world. I’ve collected an entire stack of books about self-made worlds, and this one is the best for sheer exuberance, geographic inclusion, and variety.

---

Street Art San Francisco

A deep and wide collection of the best of San Francisco’s murals. A bit of hippy style, plus Mexican, plus punk, plus hipster. Great mix, hundreds of examples. —KK

---

1000 Steampunk Creations

Steampunk is a contrarian reaction to the sleek minimalism of modernity and the “nothingness” of an iPod. It takes inspiration from the visible workings of brass pipes, rivets, and gears of Victorian technology and transfers that maximalism — how many doo-dads, filigree, extra decorations can one add? — to artifacts and clothing today. While this extreme counter-style is dated (by definition), it holds many potential ideas. This one volume compendium contains a thousand vibrant examples of excessive transparency. —KK

---

Street Graphics India

This book inspired me to begin recording street graphics as I traveled so now I have my own collection, but this modest book will give anyone a good representation of the graphic landscape in India — from Bollywood billboards, to painted rickshaw covers, matchbox covers, wall advertisements, signage, and household symbols. —KK

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

09/29/25

World of Interiors/Elemental videos/Anxiety Toolkit

Recomendo - issue #481

Look inside people’s houses.

World of Interiors is a website featuring photos of rooms in people’s homes and shops. It’s exciting and inspirational. Look at these: dining chairs painted like the game pick-up sticks; a pop-art office with a cartoon tiger rug, overflowing books lining walls and staircases, and a collection of Zulu hats on an attic wall. — MF

Elemental videos

I have a thing for the elements – the diverse atoms that make up the world. I think more of them should be better known. I’ve previously recommended Elements ($10), the best book on this realm, but the second best resource is Periodic Videos, a channel of 118 videos arranged in the form of a periodic table of the elements. Click on each box in the grid to get a free, brief, informative lesson on what is special about this unique element. — KK

Anxiety Toolkit

This website offers a helpful collection of tools for managing anxiety, including breathing exercises, sensory techniques, calming visualizations, and sound therapy. Each exercise is just a few minutes long and requires no special equipment. I appreciate that the site also explains the science behind each technique, along with advice on when to use them and what you might notice. — CD

Magnetic necklace clasps

I’ve been replacing some of my necklace clasps with these magnetic closures, and they’re such a time- and hassle-saver. The magnets are strong enough to hold the weight of my heaviest pendant. — CD

Solar trail cam

I installed my first trail cameras in the early 1990s hoping to capture the elusive mountain lion in the hills behind our house. Back then trail cams were cumbersome film cameras with only 36 shots before you had to change rolls. It was expensive to develop and a chore to constantly replenish and keep the film and batteries replaced. Today you can get solar powered digital trail cams that have cell connections and display the images from remote locations instantly on your phone. (These are outlawed for hunting purposes in some states.) There is a whole range of intermediate, inexpensive digital trail cams that will pair with your nearby phone. I use a solar powered Vidvis 4K trail cam ($49) in my pursuit of wild animals passing through our neighborhood. It also works at night with invisible infrared flash. Every once in a while I walk up to it and wirelessly download its stored images. It’s always charged, and I can fit a year of still photos on one card. I’ve caught lots of critters passing through, but alas, still no mountain lion. — KK

Kitchen timer with silent mode

The timer app on a phone is not helpful in the kitchen. You have to prop it up to see the time, the screen goes dark after a few minutes, and if your hands are wet, it makes the app unresponsive to your finger. I use a battery-powered 60-minute Searon Kitchen Timer. The visual analog display is easy to read from a distance. It can be set on the counter, attached to the refrigerator, or mounted on the wall. It also has a mute button — when the time is up, an LED blinks until you tap the top of the timer. — MF

Sign up here to get Recomendo a week early in your inbox.

09/28/25

Guaranteed for Life/Ideal Booking Windows/Overthrow in Nepal

Nomadico Issue #172

Travel Gear and Clothing With a Lifetime Warranty

When I mentioned two weeks ago that I was trashing my worn-out socks that had served me on 100+ hikes, a few readers said, “Return them; Darn Tough Vermont has a lifetime warranty!” They do indeed, making them a rare breed in today’s fast fashion environment. They’re part of an elite club that fully stands behind what they make forever, without pages of legalese wiggle room. There are more luggage companies than clothing ones in that club, but here are 14 brands that make travel products guaranteed for life, plus a few honorable mentions that guarantee some, but not all items they sell.

Real Data on Holiday Flight Bookings

There’s a lot of b.s. info out there on the ideal time to book a flight when most of the time the answer is simpler: be flexible and you’ll find a good deal. Google Flights crunched the numbers though to provide data you can bank on for holiday period deals. Apparently 39 to 51 days out is best, depending on the destination, so you’ve still got time to work out those Christmas plans. The day you book doesn’t matter much, but the lowest fares are usually on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.

Airbnb Ban in NYC Achieves… Almost Nothing

It has been two years now since NYC made Airbnb rentals so restrictive that the move was essentially a ban. The only people popping Champagne over the results now are hotel owners and that neighbor down the hall who doesn’t have to yell, “Turn down that infernal racket!” Rent prices have gone up at the same clip as before, hitting new records, and vacancy levels are still in the low single digits. Hotels have taken advantage of the lower competition and have raised room rates 7% though. “The average rate for a New York City hotel room rose to $283 a night in July.” Average! See the details here.

A Rough Week in the Himalayas

The important news often gets buried, so in case you missed it, terrible floods are ravaging northern India. But that’s not the main story. Nepal has a new government now after anti-corruption protesters violently brought down the former one, with 72 people killed and scores of buildings burned, including Parliament, former prime ministers’ homes, and a year-old Hilton hotel. There’s a new interim prime minister in place that the protestors approved of though, so at least it is ending peacefully and a cleaner government will enter. What sparked it all? The government shut down social media to suppress dissent and that lit up a powder keg.

---

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

09/25/25

What’s in my NOW? — Dave Royhab

issue #223

I’m in my 28th year in public education, and have been a high school administrator for 20+ years, currently the director of counseling at a nontraditional learning center. I love my job, I love the kids, and I love my coworkers! I also have a hobby turned side hustle called LOCO Cigar Box Guitars (@lococigarboxguitars on FB and IG) where I make modern versions of traditional cigar box guitars. — Dave Royhab

---

PHYSICAL

• Lochby Mini Field Journal – keeps four 3.5×5.5 inch field notes journals organized and in good shape. I have one journal for general notes, and the three others each specific to my important subjects/projects. It includes slots for business cards and notes and a handy pen holder. It has a durable clasp and really takes a beating. My thoughts flow with much more creativity than using a notes app on my phone!
• The Big Class Planner – I’m a high school administrator. Like many, my schedule is dictated by Outlook invitations, meetings, and reminders but this huge school-year (July to June) planner helps me see the big picture both monthly and annually, as I plan and problem solve the school year. When it folds open, it is almost as large as a desktop calendar. It’s wonderful and simply fun to use!
• GoRuck Bullet Backpack – at 16L it’s not a big bag but it’s my everyday carry. It’s just big enough for what I need, but not so big that I end up carrying junk I don’t need. It also has an incredibly secure and padded laptop compartment. The entire front zips open from top to bottom, not just the top, so it’s really easy and fun to organize my gear in a most efficient manner (think Tetris!). It’s not cheap but it has a legit LIFETIME guarantee.

---

DIGITAL

• Remember the Milk task planner – I am well aware there are much more sophisticated task planners available, but IMO this one is perfect. It’s like they put in exactly what you need, and then they simply stopped adding unneeded bells and whistles.
• Pocket Casts – I read somewhere that the perfect podcast player does not exist. But this one is the closest I’ve found. Super easy and intuitive to use.

---

INVISIBLE

“The No S Diet” invented by Reinhard Engels. Here it is:

No Sweets, no Seconds, and no Snacks; except Sometimes on days that start with “S” (the weekend) or other Special days (like birthdays and holidays).

When I follow it, it works great. When I don’t… well, I gain weight and feel like crap. Super simple. Super effective. Super easy to follow.

---

Sign up here to get What’s in my NOW? a week early in your inbox.

09/24/25

Heart and Brain / Formica Forever

Issue No. 85

HEART AND BRAIN HAVE EXTREMELY DIFFERENT VIEW POINTS BUT ALWAYS REMAIN BEST BUDS

Heart and Brain: An Awkward Yeti Collection
by Nick Seluk
Andrews McMeel Publishing
2015, 144 pages, 6.5 x 8 x 0.4 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

Heart and Brain is a wonderful collection of the lovable characters from Nick Seluk’s The Awkward Yeti webcomic. This special print edition features over 75 exclusive comics, as well as dozens of previously published fan favorites. The exclusive comics are the real draw, since they’ll be totally new to you even if you’ve read every single comic online.

If you’re new to Heart and Brain, the title says all you need to know about the characters. Brain is the rational one, always looking out for the logical, safe thing to do, while Heart is all about passion and seeking out the things he loves. Seluk creatively captures the constant push-and-pull between these forces in us all and externalizes them in some of the most endearing characters in comics. It’s hard to not fall in love with Brain’s neurotic over-worrying, and Heart’s blissful aloofness. They’re a perfectly matched odd couple because they come from such extremely differing viewpoints, but they always manage to meet in the middle.

The comics themselves are hilarious. I don’t think a single joke misses the mark in the entire book, which is pretty incredible. Seluk understands his characters on such a fundamental level that everything they do and say feels authentic. They’re just as endearing as other comic duos like Calvin and Hobbes, and their stories have the every day simplicity of Peanuts. The Awkward Yeti is an extremely modern comic, constantly addressing technology and common modern life issues. It can do the office humor of Dilbert, the slice-of-life ease of Peanuts, and the simple punchlines of Garfield. The main appeal to the comic is thinking “I know that feeling!” after seeing Brain humorously stress about past regrets just before going to sleep, or Heart being overly excited about something silly. Seluk’s ability to poke fun at his hang-ups on just about everything makes it easy for the reader to relate their own idiosyncrasies. Seluk will be releasing another collection in October and you can be sure I’ll be picking up a copy. – Alex Strine

---

FORMICA FOREVER CELEBRATES THE SLEEK CENTURY-OLD MATERIAL AND ITS INDESTRUCTIBLE BEAUTY

Formica Forever
by Formica Corporation
Metropolis Books/Formica Corporation
2013, 408 pages, 6.5 x 9.4 x 1.2 inches (softcover)

Buy on Amazon

This handsome book on Formica is really a love letter written to itself. Formica Forever celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Formica Group with interesting histories, rich visuals, a little chemistry lesson, and cleverly excerpted quotes from literature all in a witty format designed by Pentagram. You’ll learn of Formica’s origins as an industrial material developed as a synthetic electrical insulator (substituting “for mica”), its evolution to a durable and decorative finish material in ships, trains, and, most famously, its use in post-war American homes. That’s when and where the “wipe-clean world” reached its pinnacle, with Formica saving mankind from eons of grime, crud, germs and smells – and looking great, too, due to its indestructible beauty. The spectrum of colors, foils, wood grains, patterns and finishes are well represented in these gorgeous graphics. As a bit of an inside joke, the images of ads, ladies magazine photo spreads, pattern sample chips and endless uses of Formica are printed on pages that have been perforated, just like a tear-out catalog or sample book.

I’ll leave it to you to pick your favorite of all the images of Formica in action. I loved Lee Payne’s giant Neapolitan ice cream and Frank Gehry’s illuminated fish sculpture. Sprinkled throughout are short quotes (printed on the back of Formica “sample chip” cartouches) from famous authors who have used Formica in their writing: John Updike, Sue Grafton, Ian Flemming, Harlin Ellison, and Margaret Atwood. Formica is everywhere!

America’s taste in kitchen countertops has largely moved on to marble, but these classic Formica ads and colorful swatches are still a treat for any fan of mid-century modern design or Americana. – Robert Knetzger

---

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

09/23/25

What’s in my NOW? — Dave Royhab