We are a scanning culture. We love to pick up our phones and breeze down a list of headlines or flip through a bunch of selfies, but rarely do we take the time to look deeper at what we're seeing. We scan.
And hey, I'm guilty of it too. I don't want to get too involved in my phone before bed, but I do want some kind of distraction. But when you look beyond the surface, you can see cool things, so it is worth slowing down just a bit, just enough to get the backstory.
Located on the top of the head — it's that tiny blue dot there — the parietal eye isn't as well developed as a proper eyeball, but it's a light-sensitive patch that lizards use to navigate by the sun.
They even have classic baseball stitch lines in them to make them easier to throw.
The blue carpenter bee sports a shock of blue hair on its thorax that's worthy of punk rock glory. These bees are native to Asia, and unlike the bees we're familiar with for making honey, they don't live in hives.
This is the interior of Barcelona's famous La Sagrada Familia at around 3:00 p.m., with the sun opposite the windows.
The reviews have not always been kind — one said "it tastes like Oreo with a side of body odour" — but they might appeal more to the Chinese palate.
"Raketen von Stern zu Stern" translates to "Rocketing from Star to Star" from the original German. You really have to admire those illustrations.
A zoo employee found the turtle with a broken shell in a nearby park, and the zoo's veterinary team came up with the idea to build a wheelchair out of Lego so the turtle could still move around while recovering.
Back in the early 1900s, it's hard to imagine any mothers playing with their kids on this.
The big red area is the brood of the hive, while the smaller red dot on the left shows where the bees are getting in and out.
Fittingly called night sky petunias, this cosmically gorgeous flower featuring star-like white dots on a deep, velvety petal, was developed in Germany.
It's not a rainbow for any other reason than to show the relative intensity of the air pressure around the car that creates the down force to keep it on the road.
The factory's assembly line worked in an upwards spiral, with finished cars emerging at roof level for their big test.
The steel girders under the building's skin must be affecting the way moisture collects on this wall.
What the poster described as "red bioluminescent algae" was created by placing a laser level on his lawn. Pretty neat effect, admittedly.
It might not be 100% appropriate to wear for every occasion, but it also might be.
Lake Hillier sits remarkably close to the Pacific Ocean, and scientists still aren't entirely sure why it's pink — the most likely culprit is a particular kind of algae, but it could also be due to bacteria, or a reaction between salt and sodium bicarbonate in the water.
This scene from Roman Holiday was created in a rice paddy by planting different varieties of rice.
There is a plan to clean some of that up, however, with a satellite designed to net space junk, called RemoveDebris, in testing right now.
The brown cans are for Dr. Pepper, the silver for Coors, and the green ones in the back are for Sprite.
The scratches in the paint are all on the left side, the same hand wedding rings are worn on — so probably a lot of mothers joining their kids, or possibly adults who just want to have fun.
Which begs the question: Is this actually good for the tree? Or for the building, for that matter?
He said it only took him a morning to do, and that he carved the face in half an hour.
This is outside the former town hall in Derby, U.K., and it's been there since the 1800s, so apparently wood bricks are durable.
It can't be easy to switch this over to LED when it's part of a brick fence!
