Arts & Culture: The New Criterion — Dec 2023
Tag Archives: Magazines
Covers: Science Magazine November 10, 2023 Preview
AI’s challenge of understanding the world
In thinking about the challenge of getting artificial intelligence (AI) to understand our complex world, I recalled a Twitter post from a user of Tesla’s self-driving system. The user tweeted that his car kept stopping abruptly at a particular location for no apparent reason. Then he noticed a billboard advertisement on the side of the road, featuring a sheriff holding up a stop sign. The car’s vision system had interpreted this as an actual stop sign, and slammed on the brakes.
The Scottish wildcat has been wiped out by breeding with domestic cats
After 2000 years of isolation, a few decades of interbreeding have rendered the animal “genomically extinct”
BY DAVID GRIMM
Though it lies in ruins on the northeast coast of England, Kilton Castle was once an imposing stone fortress, home to several noble families, and—it appears—at least eight cats. Archaeological excavations in the 1960s uncovered a well, at the bottom of which lay the bones of several felines dating back to the 14th century. The animals were an odd mix: Some were domestic cats, but other, larger specimens appeared to be European wildcats, a fierce, burly species that has inhabited the continent for hundreds of thousands of years.
Discover Britain Magazine – October/November 2023
DISCOVER BRITAIN MAGAZINE (OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2023 – The latest issue features Eastern delights – From punting in Cambridge to crabbing in Norfolk; Bloody Mary – Where England’s first Queen was proclaimed; London pubs – Perfectly pulled pints; Holkham Hall – Behind the scenes on the vast estate, and more…
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Nov 11, 2023
How artificial intelligence will transform fame
The omnistar is born – Those complaining the loudest about the new technology stand to benefit the most
How scary is China?
Superpower politics – America must understand China’s weaknesses as well as its strengths
Giorgia Meloni’s “mother of all reforms” is a power grab
Constitutional chicanery – Italians should reject their prime minister’s demagogic proposal
The New York Times Style Magazine – Nov 12, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES STYLE MAGAZINE (November 12, 2023) – T’S TRAVEL ISSUE features the writer Aatish Taseer embarked on an epic 40,000-mile journey through Bolivia, Mongolia and Iraq. What he learned was less a life-altering revelation and more a lesson in curiosity itself.
The Enduring, Transformational Power of Pilgrimage
The writer Aatish Taseer embarked on a journey through Bolivia, Mongolia and Iraq. What he learned was less a life-altering revelation and more a lesson in curiosity itself.
Travel, the movement of people from one place to another, has always existed. But long before we thought to travel for pleasure, we traveled for purpose: for commerce, and for faith.
Even the most casual student of the Silk Road, that fearsome, wondrous network of routes that people began plying in the second century B.C. (and did so for approximately the next 1,600 years) knows that the two — business and God, whoever or whatever your god was — often intermingled. Merchants and adventurers returned with new kinds of goods, but also with new kinds of ideas: of art, of architecture, of ideology, of faith. The Silk Road brought Islam to India, and Buddhism to Japan. It’s why travel has always been both thrilling and dangerous. You never know how a new land is going to change you; it never knows how you’re going to change it.
Behind the Story: How a Writer Prepared for a 40,000-Mile Trip
The dozens of books that T writer Aatish Taseer read before his journey through Bolivia, Mongolia and Iraq, and what he learned from each pilgrimage.
Eighteen months ago, when the New York-based T writer at large Aatish Taseer began planning his reporting trips for this month’s three-part feature story — an exploration of religious travel in Bolivia, Mongolia and Iraq — he was already well acquainted with the idea of pilgrimage. His first book, the 2009 memoir “Stranger to History,” opens with what is arguably the world’s best-known faith-motivated journey, the hajj to Mecca, and ends with what he describes as a personal pilgrimage to meet his estranged father in Pakistan. In Delhi, India, where Taseer grew up, quick trips for the purpose of worship were commonplace. “People would do a pilgrimage on an ordinary Sunday,” he says, “instead of going to an amusement park.”
Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – Nov 10, 2023
Times Literary Supplement (November 10, 2023): The new issue features The day everything changed – The war in Israel and Gaza; Russia at war; Animal liberation revisited; Publisher to the world; Maison Gainsbourg in Paris; and more…
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Nov 13, 2023
Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” Complex
Does the director of “Alien,” “Blade Runner,” and “Gladiator” see himself in the hero of his epic new film?
On the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was full of catastrophic confidence. His seventy-three thousand troops were camped on a ridge near a tavern called La Belle Alliance. His nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, occupied a slope across the fields, with a mere sixty-seven thousand troops. Over breakfast, Napoleon predicted, “If my orders are well executed, we will sleep in Brussels this evening.” When his chief of staff offered a word of caution, Napoleon snapped, “Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops. The whole affair will not be more serious than swallowing one’s breakfast.”
How Can Determinists Believe in Free Will?
Some people think that we can’t be held responsible for what we do, given that our actions are the inevitable consequence of the laws of nature. They’re only half right.
Eclipsed in his Era, Bayard Rustin Gets to Shine in Ours
The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?
By Adam Gopnik
Reinventing the Dinosaur“
Life on Our Planet,” a new Netflix nature documentary, renews our fascination with our most feared and loved precursors.
National Geographic Traveller – December 2023
Also inside this issue:
Uganda: The wildlife of Queen Elizabeth National Park.
Melbourne: In Victoria’s state capital, local innovators are breathing new life into forgotten spaces.
Amman: Culture, cuisine and craft in Jordan’s kaleidoscopic, mountain-fringed capital.
Tunisia: From laid-back coastal towns and diving spots to mountain trails in the county’s northern reaches.
Warsaw: Traditional Polish flavours have found a new home in fine-dining establishments.
Central London: Hotels to escape the crowds at, from budget boutiques to spruced-up luxury boltholes.
Plus, saddling up inGeorgia’s Tusheti region; the salt workers of India’s Habra city; Barcelona’s La Sagrada Família nears completion; Europe’s new UNESCO World Heritage Sites; the flavours of Sierra Leone;a pedal-powered tour of Malmö; design-led stays in Siem Reap; a Christmas break in Lapland; beach views and seafood in Aberdeen; a staycation in Arnside and Silverdale; great illustrated travel books and photography collections; and overnight essentials.
The New York Times Magazine – Nov 5, 2023
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (November 3, 2023): The latest issue features Bariatric Surgery at 16 – If childhood obesity is an ‘epidemic,’ how far should doctors go to treat it?; Some Ukrainians Helped the Russians. Their Neighbors Sought Revenge; The Eternal Life of the ’90s Supermodel -How did a small group of models manage to stay on top for so long?, and more…
Bariatric Surgery at 16
If childhood obesity is an ‘epidemic,’ how far should doctors go to treat it?
By Helen Ouyang
Last fall, Alexandra Duarte, who is now 16, went to see her endocrinologist at Texas Children’s Hospital, outside Houston. From age 10, she had been living with polycystic ovary syndrome and, more recently, prediabetes. After Alexandra described her recent quinceañera, the doctor brought up an operation that might benefit her, one that might help her lose weight and, as a result, improve these obesity-related problems.
Some Ukrainians Helped the Russians. Their Neighbors Sought Revenge.
For people in Bilozerka, the invasion began a cat-and-mouse game of collaboration and resistance.
By James Verini
Andriy Koshelev steered his car into the driveway of his home on Pushkin Street in Bilozerka, a lakeside town in Ukraine’s Kherson region. Leaving the car on, Koshelev got out and walked to the entrance gate. He reached down to loosen the latch. When he pulled it, the gate exploded. Koshelev’s parents, who lived on the same property, rushed outside as acrid smoke filled their driveway and the street. The explosion resounded across town.
Science Magazine – November 3, 2023 Issue
No easy way to explain cosmic expansion mystery
“Hubble tension” could be a signal of new physics. But deciphering it may not be simple
Ancient fish reveal the origin of the shoulder in vertebrates
Cleft in fossil skull suggests solution to a long-standing mystery: shoulder tissue evolved from gill arches
To “feel” better, sleep on it!
Emotional memories are consolidated during REM sleep
Boomers Daily 