Times Literary Supplement (June 16, 2023): E.M. Forester’s last romance; Freudian foreign policy; Richard Ford runs out of gas; What it is to be human and Wars of succession…
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – June 16, 2023
Category Archives: Reviews
Climate Change: A Review Of High-Tech Solutions
Attempts are being made to reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere with technical solutions. For example, new carbon capture technology that can extract CO2 from air and water, even if the amount currently captured is minimal and not enough to prevent the climate crisis and its consequences. Still, there is no shortage of ideas. Adding basalt rock dust to agricultural fields not only binds carbon dioxide but keeps the soil fertile.
Biochar, made from organic waste, has a similar effect. Some ideas are bolder: A protective screen of particles in the upper layers of the atmosphere could filter sunlight, as seen with the eruption of the Pinatubo volcano in the Philippines in 1991. The millions of tons of sulfur dioxide spewed into the stratosphere cooled the earth significantly.
Theoretically, aircraft could be used to deliver the particles. But experts warn that the consequences for humans and the weather would be felt worldwide and could never be fully controlled.
Science Review: Scientific American – July 2023 Issue
Parrots Are Taking Over the World
At Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery the living get as much attention as the dead. Groundskeepers maintain the 478-acre historic landmark as an arboretum and habitat for more than 200 breeding and migratory bird species. But many visiting wildlife lovers aren’t interested in those native birds. They’re at the entryway, their binoculars trained on the spire atop its Gothic Revival arches. They’ve come to see the parrots.
Extreme Heat Is Deadlier Than Hurricanes, Floods and Tornadoes Combined
When dangerous heat waves hit cities, better risk communication could save lives
Exposure to extreme heat can damage the central nervous system, the brain and other vital organs, and the effects can set in with terrifying speed, resulting in heat exhaustion, heat cramps or heatstroke. It also exacerbates existing medical conditions such as hypertension and heart disease and is especially perilous for people who suffer from chronic diseases. The older population is at high risk, and children, who may not be able to regulate their body temperatures as effectively as adults in extreme conditions, are also vulnerable.
Brain Waves Synchronize when People Interact
The minds of social species are strikingly resonant
Art & Architecture Tour: Château La Coste, France
Château La Coste is a unique mix of contemporary art, architecture, and wine culture. A succulent cocktail for the eyes and the tastebuds.
Across 200 hectares (130 of which are full of grape vines), vineyards, chestnut forests, and olive tree fields spread as far as the eye can see into the Provençal horizon. It’s an invitation to take a walk for a veritable symphony of the senses, magnificent enough to have its own name – the Promande Art & Architecture.
The path – about a two-hour walk – will take you through a series of artworks and installations from contemporary artists invited to work on site. Just off the path, sitting atop a vast lake, admire the immense spider created by Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois. Sitting at the top of the hill, next to the chapel created by Tadao Ando, raise your eyes and take in the great red Murano glass cross, imagined by Jean Michel Othonel.
The jaw-dropping surprises will lead you to the center of a forest, where you’ll find yourself face-to-face with foxes – but don’t worry! The creatures are cast in bronze, borne of the talent of American artist Michael Stipe.
Harvard Business Review – July/August 2023 Issue
How Generative AI Can Augment Human Creativity
Use it to promote divergent thinking.
There is tremendous apprehension about the potential of generative AI—technologies that can create new content such as audio, text, images, and video—to replace people in many jobs. But one of the biggest opportunities generative AI offers to businesses and governments is to augment human creativity and overcome the challenges of democratizing innovation.
The TV You Watch When You’re Young Can Make You More Entrepreneurial
Having studied TV signals in East Germany from the 1960s to 1989 and rates of entrepreneurship there after German reunification, the researchers found that people in households with access to West German broadcasts were more likely than other East Germans to launch companies later in life.
Opinion: Ukraine Strikes Back, Apple’s Vision Pro, The Global Cities Index
‘Editor’s Picks’ Podcast (June 12, 2023) – A selection of three essential articles read aloud from the latest issue of The Economist – Ukraine strikes back, why Apple’s new Vision Pro gadget matters (9:00) and the results of our new global cities index (13:35).
Ukraine strikes back
The counter-offensive is getting under way. The next few weeks will be critical
Trailed ten days early with a blood-stirring video in which Ukrainian troops asked God to bless their “sacred revenge”, Ukraine’s counter-offensive is under way. For weeks its armed forces have conducted probing and shaping operations along the 1,000km front line, looking for weaknesses and confusing the Russians.
Apple’s Vision Pro is an incredible machine. Now to find out what it is for
The meaning of “spatial computing”
Apple’s message is clear: after desktop and mobile computing, the next big tech era will be spatial computing—also known as augmented reality—in which computer graphics are overlaid on the world around the user.
Amoral cities are flourishing in a turbulent geopolitical era
Our index ranks economic performance over the past three years
In order to assess which are thriving in this new era, The Economist has compiled a rough-and-ready index. It scrutinises a sample of ten locations, looking at changes in four measures—population, economic growth, office vacancies and house prices—over the past three years.
Tech Products: Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Video timeline: 0:00 A sound wave and its inverse 0:32 Destructive interference 1:30 Noise-canceling headphones’ origins 3:17 What background noise to remove 4:46 Transparency modes or aware modes
What kind of audio processing is necessary to eliminate background noise when listening to music or watching a movie? WSJ dives into how noise canceling works, how the technology has changed and where things are headed.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – June 19, 2023
How Dowries Are Fueling a Femicide Epidemic
Every year in India, many thousands are killed in marriage-payment disputes. Why does this war on women persist?
By Manvir Singh
In September 21, 2021, my mother sent a message to my extended family’s WhatsApp group: “Neeti had a heart attack and suddenly passed away—too tragic!” Neeti was a daughter of her sister, and someone I’d known all my life. But my cousin and I inhabited different worlds. I was born and raised in suburban New Jersey; she was a lifelong Delhiite. To me, Neeti and her identical twin, Preeti, exuded an urban glamour. At weddings, they sported chic, oversized sunglasses and matching, pastel-colored Punjabi-style outfits. Their faces looked a lot like my mom’s: long, with prominent cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes.
Biden’s Dilemma at the Border
America’s broken immigration system has spawned a national fight, but Congress lacks the political will to fix it.
Earlier this year, in a helicopter above the Mexican border, a team of Texas state troopers searched for people crossing into the United States. As they flew over a neighborhood west of El Paso, the radio crackled with the voices of Border Patrol agents on the ground below, calling out migrants who were evading them.
Book Reviews: ‘What An Owl Knows’ By Jennifer Ackerman (June 2023)
With their unnerving stare and eerie ways, it is small wonder that owls provoke superstition—and flights of fancy, as in the owl who sails with the pussycat in Edward Lear’s poem. In myths, stories and art, “owls speak of wisdom and luck, of misfortune and malevolence”, the author writes. They were associated with Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom.
Ms Ackerman is a natural-history writer who specialises in the avian world. In “What an Owl Knows” she offers an absorbing ear-tuft-to-tail appreciation of the raptor that Mary Oliver, a poet, called a “god of plunge and blood”. Owls, it seems, know a lot. Ms Ackerman draws on recent research to explain what and how.
To begin with, she stresses, there is no generic owl, but rather a diversity of some 260 species found on every continent bar Antarctica. They stretch from the fire-hydrant-sized Blakiston’s Fish Owl to the Elf Owl, which could fit in your palm. Most, but not all, are nocturnal.
Jennifer Ackerman has been writing about science and nature for almost three decades. Her most recent book, What an Owl Knows: The New Science of the World’s Most Enigmatic Birds, explores recent findings on the biology, behavior, and conservation of owls. Her previous book, The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think, was a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. Her New York Times bestselling book, The Genius of Birds, has been translated into twenty-five languages and was named one of the best nonfiction books of 2016 by The Wall Street Journal, a Best Science Book by NPR’s Science Friday, and a Nature Book of the Year by The Sunday Times.
Technology: ‘The Frost’ – AI-Generated Film (2023)
The Frost is a 12-minute movie in which every shot is generated by an image-making AI. It’s one of the most impressive—and bizarre—examples yet of this strange new genre. You can watch the film below in an exclusive reveal from MIT Technology Review.
“Pass me the tail,” someone says. Cut to a close-up of a man by the fire gnawing on a pink piece of jerky. It’s grotesque. The way his lips are moving isn’t quite right. For a beat it looks as if he’s chewing on his own frozen tongue.
Welcome to the unsettling world of AI moviemaking. “We kind of hit a point where we just stopped fighting the desire for photographic accuracy and started leaning into the weirdness that is DALL-E,” says Stephen Parker at Waymark, the Detroit-based video creation company behind The Frost.
Boomers Daily 