Ripped from the Headlines: December 2019: This Week In Culture: December 7–13, 2019

Fossilized resin or tree sap is known as amber. It's often polished and made into jewelry, and frequently contains bits of prehistoric plant and animal matter — sometimes whole insects. A piece discovered recently contains the entire feathered tail of a sparrow-sized dinosaur. The discovery sheds a lot of light on how feathers evolved and changed between dinosaurs and today's birds.

With the 2010s drawing to a close, we're reflecting on some of the defining gadgets of the decade when tech became dominant in most people's lives. This list of the hundred most important, influential, or disastrous devices from the last ten years is bound to spark some debate. What's your favorite? Do you agree with the rankings?

Salesforce Park, which opened recently in San Francisco, sits on top of a large building designed to house transit like local and regional bus lines and planned high speed rail in the future. Elegant and expensive, it's also under heavy surveillance and staffed by monitors who enforce the rules and prevent homeless people from moving in: a possible preview of public spaces in the future.

Artist Maurizio Cattelan caused a global sensation when he exhibited a banana taped to the wall at Art Basel Miami with a sale price of $120,000. All three editions of the piece sold — the work includes a certificate of authenticity and allows for frequent replacement of the fruit. A Georgian artist named David Datuna made himself instantly famous by eating the banana on camera; his appealing video went viral.

The Golden Globe nominees were announced, and as always there's a lot of talk about who got left out. Joker got four nominations, including Best Director, which surprised people who thought Greta Gerwig deserved one for Little Women. In Latin, praecursor means "forerunner" or "vanguard." It was a term used for military scouts in the Roman army.

The preview for the film version of the Broadway hit Cats occasioned a great deal of mockery online, especially for the so-called "digital fur" that was added to the actors to make them look feline. Director Tom Hooper says those scenes weren't finished and that the final result is much better. The film opens December 20, the same date as the new Star Wars movie. Maybe they could get some grooming tips from Chewbacca?

Several people were killed and others badly burned in an eruption of New Zealand's White Island volcano. Scientists say that because the volcano is mostly underwater — it's an island in the ocean — that the visible part is basically the crater. And since it's been active for 150,000 years, it can erupt at any time, making it inherently unsafe to visit.

In college basketball, number two-ranked Kansas beat Wisconsin-Milwaukee 95-68 in an impressive display of individual skill and selfless teamwork. Kansas have now won 26 straight at home and have 300 wins this decade, a Division I record exceeded only by Gonzaga. Torrid refers to something that's passionate, heated, or intense — like an alley-oop finishing with a 180˚ dunk.

Scholars have wondered for ages about the exact function of small cones worn on the heads of ancient Egyptians depicted in painted tombs. Recently, archaeologists have discovered two of the actual cones in a cemetery from about 3,300 years ago. Made of beeswax and about the size of small coffee cups, the two cones don't offer a lot of clues as to their use. Maybe it was an ancient version of "a candle, but make it fashion."

U.S. soccer superstar Megan Rapinoe was named Sports Illustrated's Sportsperson of the Year, only the fourth woman to receive the honor solo. Besides winning scoring the World Cup-winning goal, she also led her team in suing the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay and refused to visit the White House after winning. Rapinoe, 34, says that any decision about her retirement will wait until after the 2020 Olympics.