America suffers $4.4 billion in losses due to earthquakes every year. While that's a drop in the bucket for our $16 trillion plus GDP, it's still a substantial amount of money, and some people are working to lessen those losses. One group is Earthquake Protection Systems (EPS), a company that is designing bearings to better protect buildings from earthquake damage.

New things are invented for theater lighting all the time and they’re usually big, expensive technology-driven devices. It’s the simple things that make you wonder, “Why didn’t I think of that?” according to Ken Billington, lighting designer. The RSC Lightlock is a great example of this.

Here’s what we know about Tremont, Illinois: It’s a small village in Tazewell County, (population 2,400+), holds an annual summer turkey festival (quite popular) and the courthouse is a famous historic site where politician James Shields challenged an “up-and-coming” lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to a duel with cavalry broad swords (they showed up, but the duel never materialized). In 2016, you can add FIRST Robotics Competition World Champion to the village’s rather eccentric list of accomplishments.

She was born Phoebe Sarah Marks April 28, 1854 in Portsea, Portsmouth, Hampshire, UK — the third child of a Polish-Jewish watchmaker named Levi Marks and Alice Theresa Moss, a seamstress. Her father died in 1861, leaving Sarah’s mother with seven children — and another on the way — and Sarah with shared responsibility for caring for the children.

Although David Korins had an impressive resume of Broadway, film, television and music credits, the New York-based production designer had something to prove when interviewing for the pop culture phenomenon Hamilton. “I prepped for the interview like crazy, sketching out my ideas, presenting a scene breakdown, basically doing everything I could short of begging for the job,” Korins said. “Lin Manuel Miranda (the show’s creator and star) had developed an incredibly effective blueprint. I just wanted the opportunity to help tell his story.”

The world is full-on automated. From our factories to our vehicles to our leisurely activities, the future is now and it’s nothing but algorithms, robotics and hands-free operation. It comes as no surprise that a 2016 Google search brings a fair amount of technology gone awry. The following examples don’t scare us (they’re actually quite fascinating) but they probably should worry us a little bit…

Even for a toddlin town famous for making “no small plans” — such as, for example, reversing in 1900 the Chicago River to secure clean drinking water, or rebuilding itself seemingly overnight after the devastating “Great Chicago Fire” (1871) — to physically — and successfully — elevate itself as much as 14 feet above its original ground level defies not only description but credulity.

Moving around in open space is a cautious endeavor. Without the luxury of gravity, the slightest push can send you twirling in circles or, worse, tumbling off into the unknown. Every motion must be thought out and deliberate, all the more so because our bodies take that luxury into account.

There are few things in this world that elicit such a gleeful, childlike sense of wonder as does the word “hoverboard”.

Power Play patrons may recall last month’s drop-in at the Museum of Unworkable Devices — a virtual and pretty damn funny (www.lhup.edu) “celebration of fascinating devices that don’t work.”