Category Archives: Previews

Culture/Politics: Harper’s Magazine – February 2024

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HARPER’S MAGAZINE – FEBRUARY 2024: This issue features ‘Israel’s War Within’ – The battle for a country’s soul; The Trials of Trucking School; Marilynne Robinson Reads Genesis…

Israel’s War Within

An Israeli paratrooper at the Western Wall, 1967 © Micha Bar-Am/Magnum Photos

On the ruinous history of Religious Zionism

by Bernard Avishai

In August 1975, I stood outside the Knesset, in Jerusalem, witnessing a fevered demonstration against Henry Kissinger, then the American secretary of state. Thousands of young men in knitted kippahs chanted and danced in circles, their arms wrapped around one another, their voices echoing off the stone building. They were mainly West Bank settlers, I was informed, part of a fledgling movement called Gush Emunim—in effect, the Young Guard of the National Religious Party (NRP).

Lost Highway

The trials of trucking school

by Emily Gogolak

“If you have to change friends, that’s what you gotta do,” our instructor, Johnny, told the twelve of us sitting in a makeshift classroom in a strip mall outside Austin. “They’re gonna be so jealous, because you’re gonna be bringing home so much money. Encourage them to get their CDL, too.”

A CDL is a commercial driver’s license, and if you pay attention, you’ll find variations on the phrase cdl drivers wanted everywhere: across interstate billboards, in small-town newspapers, on diner bulletin boards, on TV, and, most often, on the backs of semitrucks. Each of us had come to the Changing Lanes CDL School to answer that call.

Scientific American – February 2024 Preview

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Scientific American (January 16, 2024): The February 2024 issue features ‘The Milky Way’s Secret History’ – New star maps reveal our galaxy’s turbulent past; Why Aren’t We Made of Antimatter? – To understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, physicists are looking for a tiny signal in the electron…

The New Story of the Milky Way’s Surprisingly Turbulent Past

The latest star maps are rewriting the story of our Milky Way, revealing a much more tumultuous history than astronomers suspected

Why Aren’t We Made of Antimatter?

To understand why the universe is made of matter and not antimatter, physicists are looking for a tiny signal in the electron

Tiny Fossils Reveal Dinosaurs’ Lost Worlds

Special assemblages of minuscule fossils bring dinosaur ecosystems to life

Finance Preview: Barron’s Magazine- January 15, 2024

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BARRON’S MAGAZINE – JANUARY 15, 2024 ISSUE:

The Market’s Gains Won’t Come Easy From Here, Barron’s Roundtable Pros Say

The Market’s Gains Won’t Come Easy From Here, Barron’s Roundtable Pros Say

Interest rates will come down, but our panelists don’t see another magnificent year for stocks. Eight picks to beat the odds.

So Long, Apple and Tesla. We Built a Better Magnificent 7.

So Long, Apple and Tesla. We Built a Better Magnificent 7.

Too much tech and communication services. Not enough finance and healthcare. We make some changes.Long read

Bitcoin ETFs Mark a Milestone for Crypto. Now the Real Test Begins.

Bitcoin ETFs Mark a Milestone for Crypto. Now the Real Test Begins.

The industry’s big win could bring a flood of new money to Bitcoin, but it still faces hurdles to going mainstream.Long read

The New York Times Book Review – January 14, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (January 12, 2024): The latest issue features ‘What Happens When Writers Embrace Artificial Intelligence as Their Muse? by A.O. Scott…

Literature Under the Spell of A.I.

This image shows the nine female muses of Greek myth as miniature figures in shades of blue against a pale blue background. The muses are holding hands and encircling an enlarged return key of the sort that appears on a laptop keyboard.

What happens when writers embrace artificial intelligence as their muse?

By A.O. Scott

The robots of literature and movies usually present either an existential danger or an erotic frisson. Those who don’t follow in the melancholy footsteps of Frankenstein’s misunderstood monster march in line with the murderous HAL 9000 from “2001: A Space Odyssey,” unless they echo the siren songs of sexualized androids like the ones played by Sean Young in “Blade Runner” and Alicia Vikander in “Ex Machina.”

We fantasize that A.I. programs will seduce us or wipe us out, enslave us or make us feel unsure of our own humanity. Trained by such narratives, whether we find them in “Terminator” movies or in novels by Nobel laureates, we brace ourselves for a future populated by all kinds of smart, possibly sentient machines that will disrupt our most cherished notions of what it means to be human.

A Clash of Civilizations Brought to Life

In this close-up, black-and-white portrait, Álvaro Enrigue’s hair is windblown and he is holding his jacket’s collar up, obscuring part of his face.

For Álvaro Enrigue, a novelist fascinated with historical detail, the first meeting of the Aztecs and Spanish conquistadors is the obsession of a lifetime. He brings it to life in “You Dreamed of Empires.”

By Benjamin P. Russell

The Aug. 13, 2021 edition of The New York Times failed to mention the 500th anniversary of the fall of Tenochtitlan, the erstwhile Aztec capital out of which Mexico City was born. Álvaro Enrigue noticed. Of course.

The 54-year-old Enrigue, who grew up in Mexico City, believes that early meeting between Europe and the Americas changed the trajectory of global commerce, urbanism, industry and much else besides. Modernity itself, he argues, was born in the moment the Aztec emperor Moctezuma and Hernan Cortés, the Spanish conquistador, first looked each other in the eye in 1519, a clash of empires that set in motion the city’s capture two years later.

The Economist Magazine – January 13, 2024 Preview

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The Economist Magazine (January 12, 2024): The latest issue features ‘China’s EV Onslaught’ – An influx of Chinese cars is terrifying the West; Europe’s Silicon Valley; ‘America Fights Back’ The new contest for sea power; Why Olaf Scholz is no Angela Merkel – Germany is unable and unwilling to lead Europe; What science says about old leaders…

An influx of Chinese cars is terrifying the West

But it should keep its markets open to cheap, clean vehicles

America fights back

The war against the Houthis is part of an escalating struggle for the seas

Why Olaf Scholz is no Angela Merkel

Germany is unable and unwilling to lead Europe

The New York Times Magazine- January 14, 2024

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THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (January 12, 2024): The new issue features ‘Why Are American Drivers So Deadly’ – After decades of declining fatality, dangerous driving has surged again….

Why Are American Drivers So Deadly?

A photo illustration of a skeleton in a suit driving a car.

After decades of declining fatality rates, dangerous driving has surged again.

By Matthew Shaer

In the summer of 1999, a few years after graduating from medical school, Deborah Kuhls moved from New York to Maryland, where she had been accepted as a surgical fellow at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. Founded by a pioneer in emergency medicine, Shock Trauma is one of the busiest critical-care facilities in the country — in an average year, doctors there see approximately 8,000 patients, many of them close to death.

The All-Time-Great Coach Who Makes Football Fun

Andy Reid with Mahomes and other Chiefs players.

Andy Reid’s diligence and sense of mischief have made him one of the game’s best-ever coaches. Can he get his struggling Chiefs back to the Super Bowl?

By Michael Sokolove

Andy Reid, the coach of the Kansas City Chiefs, has won more than 250 games in his career, fourth all-time, which puts him high on any list of the N.F.L.’s greatest coaches. Most of the others in that pantheon are men who personify the sport’s militaristic soul — Vince Lombardi, for example, the fabled coach of the 1960s-era Green Bay Packers, or Reid’s contemporary, the grim Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots. But Reid is no Lombardi or Belichick; he’s Steve Jobs. He’s a designer, a tinkerer, a product engineer who imbues his football with creativity and even an occasional touch of whimsy.

Research Preview: Science Magazine -January 12, 2024

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Science Magazine – January 11, 2024: The new issue features ‘Lost City’ – Ancient development in the Upper Amazon; What SARS-CoV-2’s mild cousins reveal about Covid-19; Specifying laws of friction and a Continued decline in sharks despite regulation…

The hottest year was even hotter than expected

Greenhouse gases, El Niño, and cleaner air fueled record heat in 2023

Tectonic plate under Tibet may be splitting in two

Peeled-apart Indian Plate could be affecting earthquake hazards

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – January 11, 2024

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The Guardian Weekly (January 10, 2024) – The new issue features ‘Middle East on the brink’ – The threat of a regional war. Also, Inside the Post Office Horizon IT scandal…

The assassination of a Hamas chief in Lebanon. A terror attack on mourners of an Iranian former general. Commercial shipping in the Red Sea targeted by Yemeni rebels, and a US airstrike in Iraq. All were separate events in the Middle East last week but all were linked, in one way or another, to the presence of autonomous but Iranian-backed militia forces in the region.

When asked to visualise the threat of war engulfing the Middle East, for this week’s cover, illustrator Carl Godfrey took a literal approach. “I wanted to convey the tense and unpredictable situation,” says Carl, “and there’s nothing more tense than looking down the barrel of a gun. Especially when those barrels are pointing in all directions, and the risk of war is expanding in all directions.”

Research Preview: Nature Magazine January 11, 2024

Volume 625 Issue 7994

Nature Magazine – January 10, 2024: The latest issue cover features Steppe Change’ – Migration and lifestyle shifts in prehistoric Eurasia linked to raised genetic risk of multiple sclerosis.

Cancer-fighting CAR T cells could be made inside body with viral injection

Scientists are devising ways to edit the genomes of immune cells without having to extract them from the people being treated.

Japan earthquakes: the science behind the deadly tremors

A massive quake that triggered tsunamis, fires and multiple aftershocks was the largest on the country’s west coast in more than a century.

Boosting microbiome science worldwide could save millions of children’s lives

Studies of the microbes living on and in our bodies are conducted mainly in a few rich countries, squandering opportunities to improve the health of people globally.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Jan 12, 2024

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Times Literary Supplement (January 10, 2024): The latest issue features ‘Have a good trip’ – On the uses of psychedelic drugs; Hisham Matar’s novel of London exile; A West Bank tragedy; Puzzled by crosswords; French Band Aid, and more…