Nature Magazine – November 16, 2023: The latest issue cover features how echinoderms such as starfish and sea urchins have evolved five-fold symmetry, with five limbs radiating from a central mouth.
The Atlantic Magazine – December 2023 issue: For the first time since the publication of our first series of stories on Reconstruction, in 1901, The Atlantic is examining “the enduring consequences of Reconstruction’s tragic fall at a moment—yet another moment—when the cause of racial progress faces sustained pressure”…
Times Literary Supplement (November 17, 2023): The new issue #TheTLS features Revenge of the grown-ups – The downfall of Sam Bankman-Fried; 2023 Books of the Year; the elusive Shakespeare; Simone Weil; Philosophers and public affairs – and more…
Scientific American – November 2023: The issue features The New Nuclear Age – Inside America’s plan to remake its atomic arsenal; The Most Shocking Discovery in Astrophysics Is 25 Years Old – Scientists are still trying to figure out dark energy; Behind the Scenes at a U.S. Factory Building New Nuclear Bombs – The U.S. is ramping up construction of new “plutonium pits” for nuclear weapons….
One afternoon in early 1994 a couple of astronomers sitting in an air-conditioned computer room at an observatory headquarters in the coastal town of La Serena, Chile, got to talking. Nicholas Suntzeff, an associate astronomer at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, and Brian Schmidt, who had recently completed his doctoral thesis at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, were specialists in supernovae—exploding stars. Suntzeff and Schmidt decided that the time had finally come to use their expertise to tackle one of the fundamental questions in cosmology: What is the fate of the universe?
The point of the thing was to forever change our concept of power. When the U.S. military assembled a team of scientists, led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, to build a nuclear bomb during World War II with the hope of beating the Nazis to such a terrible creation, many of those involved saw their efforts as a strange kind of civic destiny. The Manhattan Project, wrote Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, was “compelled from the beginning not by malice or hatred but by hope for a better world.” Oppenheimer himself once said, “The atomic bomb was the turn of the screw. It made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.”
Country Life Magazine – November 15, 2023:The latest issue features the annual Georgian Group Architecture Awards; Horns of plenty – The Bull, monarch of the meadow has been a key mythological figure since ancient times; the sensitive restoration of Somerton Castle in Lincolnshire, a once-neglected medieval stronghold; the great thatching renaissance, and more…
Here’s to the Georgians
Imaginative restoration, from Stowe House to Stroud canal, is lauded in the annual Georgian Group Architectural Awards
No, you’re not going batty
Jane Wheatley investigates the development pitfalls of finding a pipistrelle on your property
Back to the strawing board
The art of thatching is enjoying a renaissance as architects are drawn to its eco credentials, as Sarah Langford discovers
Horns of plenty
The monarch of the meadow has been a key mythological figure since ancient times. Ian Morton takes the bull by the horns
The toast of the town
Jonathan Self finds comfort in every crunchy, buttery mouthful and asks: how do you like yours?
Buried treasures
Christopher Stocks goes under-ground to examine the centuries-long allure of glittering grottos
The great country-house revival
Director-general Ben Cowell celebrates Historic Houses and half a century of achievement
Sir David Hempleman-Adams’s favourite painting
The explorer chooses a work that demonstrates the beauty and colour of the natural world
Hebridean overtures
Jamie Blackett runs the gauntlet of the ‘Grand National’ in pursuit of ever-elusive South Uist snipe
From ruin to rebirth
Nicholas Cooper marvels at the sensitive restoration of Somerton Castle in Lincolnshire, a once-neglected medieval stronghold
Native breeds
Kate Green meets the docile and floppy-eared British Lop
The good stuff
Need a sparkling conversation starter? Hetty Lintell picks out a fistful of fabulous cocktail rings
Dressed to impress
The sartorial centre of Savile Row provided the perfect setting for our Gentleman’s Life party
Interiors
Painting a floor is a fun way to add colour and pattern to a room, finds Amelia Thorpe
A touch of glass
Victorian glasshouses are feats of engineering that deserve a new lease of life, says Lucy Denton
Big apple
Charles Quest-Ritson is wowed by the display of trained apples in the 18th-century walled garden at The Newt in Somerset
Kitchen garden cook
Melanie Johnson savours the sweet earthiness of a chestnut
Shakespeare, but not as we know it
Sir Kenneth Branagh’s Lear may be off beam, but Michael Billington is buoyed by a stirring portrayal of the Bard’s wife
WIRED (November 13, 2023) – Dr. Jeffrey Laitman joins WIRED to break down how our organs and body parts age from head to toe. From hearing and hair loss to sagging skin and deteriorating joints, Dr. Laitman highlights the impact of aging on the human body—and what we can do about it.
Director: Lisandro Perez-Rey; Director of Photography: Francis Bernal
Eater Films (November 13, 2023) – Nels Leader is the CEO of Bread Alone, an upstate New York bakery founded by his father in 1983. Today, the bakery is committed to the idea that everyone should have access to good bread — a goal it tries to achieve by baking 150,000 loaves every week.
The New Yorker – November 20, 2023 issue: The new issue features The A.I. Issue – Joshua Rothman on the godfather of A.I., Eyal Press on facial-recognition technology, Anna Wiener on Holly Herndon, and more…
In your brain, neurons are arranged in networks big and small. With every action, with every thought, the networks change: neurons are included or excluded, and the connections between them strengthen or fade. This process goes on all the time—it’s happening now, as you read these words—and its scale is beyond imagining. You have some eighty billion neurons sharing a hundred trillion connections or more. Your skull contains a galaxy’s worth of constellations, always shifting.
On March 26, 2022, at around 8:20 a.m., a man in light-blue Nike sweatpants boarded a bus near a shopping plaza in Timonium, outside Baltimore. After the bus driver ordered him to observe a rule requiring passengers to wear face masks, he approached the fare box and began arguing with her. “I hit bitches,” he said, leaning over a plastic shield that the driver was sitting behind. When she pulled out her iPhone to call the police, he reached around the shield, snatched the device, and raced off. The bus driver followed the man outside, where he punched her in the face repeatedly. He then stood by the curb, laughing, as his victim wiped blood from her nose.
At 60 years old, Doctor Who, the BBC show following the adventures of the regenerating Time Lord, continues to be highly enjoyable fiction. But it’s science fiction. The Gallifreyan takes science seriously… so we take a closer look at some of the science of Doctor Who, from time travel and the TARDIS to invading Cybermen and rogue planets.
How to make the Moon on Earth
The expense and prestige involved in sending landers and rovers to the Moon means you can’t afford for them not to work when they get there. But the lunar landscape is like nothing here on Earth. So how, and where do you test equipment that’s bound for the Moon?
WIRED
Eater
Boomers Daily 