Only America can pull the Middle East back from the brink
How the GOP could yet, inadvertently, further the national interest
A victory for the rule of law in the heart of Europe
The test 30 years ago of what remote sensing could tell us about our own planet shows the value of looking with unbiased eyes at what we think we already know.
Analysis of carved inscriptions more than 1,000 years old suggests the prominence of the Viking queen Thyra.
Samples of asteroid Bennu delivered by the OSIRIS-REx mission contain carbon, water and other ingredients from the primordial Solar System.
The Guardian Weekly (October 20, 2023) – The new issue features escalating events in Israel and Gaza that continue to cause deep distress and alarm, with several thousand people known to be dead or wounded on either side of the border. US president Joe Biden was expected to visit Israel this week, amid growing expectations of a ground invasion of Gaza and fears of a wider regional escalation.
Also, a primer on the historical background to events by Chris McGreal, while on the opinion pages the Israeli author and historian Yuval Noah Harari and Guardian US columnist Naomi Klein provide thoughtful and grounded perspectives.
There was sadness for many Aboriginal Australians after a move to recognise Indigenous people in the country’s constitution was rejected in a referendum, as Sarah Collard and Elias Visontay report. Also from Oceania, Henry Cooke examines what aspects of Jacinda Ardern’s political legacy might survive after New Zealand elected a new conservative government.
From Egypt to Hong Kong, the 2010s were a decade when mass protest movements looked set to change the world. But in most cases, the hope embodied by many massive street demonstrations was soon crushed by authoritarian regimes. Vincent Bevins asks organisers and others who were there where it all went wrong.
Times Literary Supplement (October20, 2023): The new issue features ‘Rocket Man’ – North Korea’s dictator is no joke; A snapshot of Teju Cole; Daniel Dennett’s evolution; Monet’s muses; John le Carré undercover, and more…
Scary play lets people—and other animals—rehearse coping skills for disturbing challenges in the real world
By Coltan Scrivner and Athena Aktipis
The Endangered Species Act requires that every U.S. plant and animal be saved from extinction, but after 50 years, we have to do much more to prevent a biodiversity crisis
Advances are increasing the supply of organs. But this isn’t enough. Enter the genetically modified donor pig
By Tanya Lewis
Increasingly, companies are reselling their own products. Should you get into the game?
Summary: The average U.S. household contains a trove of potentially reusable goods worth roughly $4,500. That’s a lot of trapped value, and companies are at last getting serious about accessing it—by developing new resale capabilities. Resale has been with us for a very long time, of course—at yard sales, on used-car lots, in classified ads.
An advanced AI model considers much more than what competitors are charging.
Summary: In today’s fast-paced world of digital retailing, the ability to revise prices swiftly and on a large scale has emerged as a decisive differentiator for companies. Many retailers now track competitors’ prices via systems that scrape rivals’ websites and use this information as an input to set their own prices manually or automatically. A common strategy is to charge X dollars or X percent less than a target competitor. However, retailers that use such simple heuristics miss significant opportunities to fine-tune pricing.
Country Life Magazine – October18, 2023: The latest issue features Norfolks – Little pockets of fun; The real Macnab – great adventures in the field; Britain’s loneliest trees; Beethoven’s Austria and Amsterdam’s canal life, and more…
In memory of the Sycamore Gap tree, so callously cut down, we salute its fellow arboreal sentinels of Britain
The Editor and The Judge set off across the Tulchan estate in pursuit of a stag, a brace of grouse and a salmon, in the spirit of John Buchan’s hero
The author picks a scene full of the thrill of the racecourse
The rural people of Scotland are reeling under a prejudiced new law on hunting. Jamie Blackett despairs for the fox
What makes a building English? Steven Brindle considers the answer, from soaring cathedral vaults to austere Palladian villas and rambling country piles
Kate Green luxuriates in the luscious locks of the Leicestershire Longwool
Few creatures face as difficult a journey as the salmon does to and from its spawning grounds. Simon Lester follows in its wake
A dramatic kitchen and why it’s time to cuddle up in British wool
Charles Quest-Ritson takes the well-worn path to the famed nursery of Larch Cottage in Cumbria
Behind hounds or on the marsh, casting for a salmon or stalking a stag, nothing stirs Adrian Dangar’s heart as fieldsports do
Melanie Johnson finds the perfect pairing for hazelnuts
HARVARD MAGAZINE November-December 2023 :
Diet, cooking, and the human microbiome
IN THE LATE 2000s, Rachel Carmody was spending a lot of time counting calories. An anthropology graduate student at Harvard, she was studying whether cooking changed the number of calories the gut can extract from food. When humans invented cooking thousands of years ago, she and her advisor Richard Wrangham wondered, had they opened the door to a new source of energy?
DURING THE past two decades, the number of annual cancer deaths in the United States has fallen by 27 percent, a remarkable improvement driven by new precision diagnoses and treatments tailored to individual patients. Today, oncologists can detect cancer in its earliest stages and deliver drugs that enlist the patient’s own immune system to improve their odds of survival. Yet cancer remains the second deadliest disease in the United States, claiming more than 600,000 lives every year. Its persistence underscores the urgent need for a deeper understanding of how cancer interacts with the body. Assistant professor of neurology Humsa Venkatesh believes she may have found a promising new pathway for highly effective cancer treatments in the most unexpected of places: the human brain.
In the summer of 2016, a fifty-seven-year-old Texan named Stephen McRae drove east out of the rainforests of Oregon and into the vast expanse of the Great Basin. His plan was to commit sabotage. First up was a coal-burning power plant near Carlin, Nevada, a 242-megawatt facility owned by the Newmont Corporation that existed to service two nearby gold mines, also owned by Newmont.
The anti-avocado militias of Michoacán
Phone service was down—a fuse had blown in the cell tower during a recent storm—and even though my arrival had been cleared with the government of Cherán in advance, the armed guard manning the highway checkpoint, decked out in full fatigues, the wrong shade to pass for Mexican military, refused to wave me through. My guide, Uli Escamilla, assured him that we had an appointment, and that we could prove it if only we could call or text our envoy. The officer gripped his rifle with both hands and peered into the windows of our rental car.
Literary Review of Canada – November 2023: The latest issue features Who Keeps Killing Canadian History; The Influencers – A dual biography from Charlotte Gray, and more…
Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt by Charlotte Gray
They were born the same year. Their families left Paris the same year. Their sons entered institutions that would shape their lives the same year. If Stephen Sondheim had written Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons instead of Charlotte Gray, he might have employed one of the timeless lines from his Broadway show Company to depict the lives and loves of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt: “Parallel lines who meet.”
Anthony Rota stepped down as Canada’s thirty-seventh Speaker of the House of Commons on September 27, for reasons pretty much the entire world knows. Between his unprecedented resignation and the election of Greg Fergus to take up that fancy oak and velvet chair, the electorate was treated to some familiar headlines. “Who Can Bring Back Commons Decency?” the Toronto Star asked on its front page. “Being Speaker Isn’t Easy,” the CBC reminded us. “And It Just Got a Lot Harder.”
Boomers Daily 