Relentless

On 25th May, 1961, John F Kennedy gave a speech to Congress that contained the following words: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Of course, two years later he was tragically killed — but his dream lived on.

OK, so it's not a farmyard animal suspended in formaldehyde, and nor is it someone's dirty linen, but it is beautiful — like art used to be. It's a picture, of course, of the volcano in Iceland. It comes courtesy of Nasa, and it takes the breath away.

Why did the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland create so much ash? Although the large ash plume was not unparalleled in its abundance, its location was particularly noticeable because it drifted across such well populated areas. The Eyjafjallajökull volcano in southern Iceland began erupting on March 20, with a second eruption starting under the center of small glacier on April 14. Neither eruption was unusually powerful. The second eruption, however, melted a large amount of glacial ice which then cooled and fragmented lava into gritty glass particles that were carried up with the rising volcanic plume. Pictured above two days ago, lightning bolts illuminate ash pouring out of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano.

Award-winning designer Yves Behar knows that good things come to those who strive.

Talk about setting yourself goals in life. At some point Yves Behar must have told himself that he’d see to it that every child in the world could have a laptop. Some would have called him a fool, but the ‘One Laptop Per Child’ project, created by the Fuse Project, Behar’s innovation lab based in San Francisco, shut the cynics up. Now he’s at it again for PUMA.