Polishing the crystal ball
The intelligence community often fails to make accurate predictions. Amy Zegart, an expert brought in to improve analysis in the United States, sets out what can be done to overcome our cognitive biases.
Improving analysis to prevent nuclear catastrophe isn’t just a matter of history. Great power competition is back. Russia and China are trying to rewrite the international order along authoritarian lines.
Can a brain implant treat drug addiction?
On a bright summer day in July 2021, James Fisher rested nervously, with a newly shaved head, in a hospital bed surrounded by blinding white lights and surgeons shuffling about in blue scrubs. He was being prepped for an experimental brain surgery at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, a hulking research facility that overlooks the rolling peaks and cliffs of coal country around Morgantown. The hours-long procedure required impeccable precision, “down to the millimeter,” Fisher’s neurosurgeon, Ali Rezai, told me.
A small island off the coast of Newfoundland is redefining itself with the help of a local businesswoman who combined deep pockets with a deep appreciation for the island’s past.
Fogo Island is the largest of the offshore islands of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. The Town of Fogo Island encompasses Fogo, Joe Batt’s Arm-Barr’d Islands-Shoal Bay, Seldom-Little Seldom and Tilting, with the unincorporated areas of Fogo Island.
Viewers can explore the interiors of the newly-opened Taipei Performing Arts Center by Dutch studio OMA in this drone video, produced by Shephotoerd Co. Photography.
Opened to the public on 7 August, the Taipei Performing Arts Center is a 59,000-square-metre cultural venue in Taiwan that incorporates three unique theatres.
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/?p=1829625
Each year in the wide open spaces of Mongolia, the Mongol Derby takes place, extending over 650 miles, is known to be the world’s longest and most difficult horse race, lasting two weeks. The course shifts slightly each year but is a recreation of the horse messenger system created hundreds of years ago by Genghis Khan.
There’s something about the Lake District – something that sparks the imagination and soothes the soul. A picture-perfect expanse of rugged peaks, placid waters and rolling farmland, neatly divided by dry-stone walls and dotted with stone-built villages, northwest England’s Lake District has the double accolade of being both a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a National Park.
After barring girls from high school — and harboring an Al-Qaeda leader — the regime now risks jeopardizing the billions of dollars of global aid that still keeps Afghans alive.
Read more: https://nyti.ms/3BPMloE
Bavaria is the German state most popular among tourists. No wonder. Here you can find fairytale castles like Neuschwanstein, huge mountains, clear lakes, baroque churches, and timber-framed villages. Plus… fantastic beer! We will show you what you shouldn’t miss in Bavaria: the three most popular regions and the three most visited Bavarian cities and their highlights. Spoiler alert! Munich is one of them. But what are the other two cities in the ranking?
France-Amérique Magazine, August 2022 – This month, we celebrate French education in all its diversity. Read our investigation on how to become a professeur de français in the United States (Spoiler: It’s difficult, but not impossible); meet the French couple behind the first franchise for bilingual education in North America; and discover the latest edition of our French Education Guide, a comprehensive state-by-state directory of French dual-language programs in the United States. And because summer is not over yet, visit the Hôtel Les Roches Blanches, a hotspot for Art Deco enthusiasts on the Mediterranean coast; read all about les espadrilles; and meet American pastry chef Amanda Bankert, the donut queen of Paris!
Wind is the defining element of the thousands of islands that encircle the British Isles. Wet and salted, it sculpts every branch and bush, burns palm fronds (yes, our islands do have palm trees — albeit bedraggled), shifts shorelines and leaves surfaces rimed and rusted, skin tanned. Incessantly, it buffets the seabirds and whines at windows; often, it sends the ferry back to port, marooning islanders on their anvil of rock and sand.
Ours are not the great city islands of Venice and Stockholm or the blue-lagooned atolls of the tropics, but kelp-fringed outposts of tough survival for generations of farmers and fishermen and places of insular retreat. They encapsulate extremes — of weather, architecture, landscape and emotion — preserve faith and tradition, offer refuge or redemption, feed dreams and intensify dramas.
Life on the islands of Britain: ‘Mesmerising in its beauty and deeply cruel in equal measure’ https://ift.tt/P5iFot9
Boomers Daily 