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
Tag Archives: Reviews
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.
Reviews: The ‘African And Oceanic Art’ Collection Of France’s Hélène Leloup
Now aged 96, Hélène is regarded as France’s most important and passionate dealer of sub-Saharan and Oceanic art, an adventurer and explorer, ground-breaking gallerist and collector, and eminent specialist in Mbembe and Dogon art, ever since her first foray to Dakar in 1952.
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.
Reviews: “The West – A New History In Fourteen Lives” By Naoíse Mac Sweeney
The American Scholar (June 9, 2023): The idea of “Western civilization” looms large in the popular imagination, but it’s no longer taken seriously in academia.
In her new book, The West: A New History in Fourteen Lives, historian Naoíse Mac Sweeney examines why the West won’t die and, in the process, dismantles ahistorical concepts like the “clash of civilizations” and the notion of a linear progression from Greek and Roman ideals to those of our present day—“from Plato to NATO.”
Through biographical portraits of figures both well-known and forgotten—Herodotus and Francis Bacon, Livilla and Phyllis Wheatley, Tullia d’Aragona and Abu Yusuf Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi—Mac Sweeney assembles a history that resembles less of a grand narrative than a spiderweb of influence. Successive empires (whether Ottoman, Holy Roman, British, or American) built up self-mythologies in the service of their expansionist, patriarchal, or, later, racist ideologies.
Mac Sweeney joins the podcast to talk about why the West has been such a dominant idea and on what values we might base a new vision of contemporary “western” identity.Go beyond the episode:Naoíse Mac Sweeney’s The West: A New History in Fourteen LivesWe have covered Greece and Rome in previous episodes, as well as Njinga of AngolaIn our Summer 2023 issue, Sarah Ruden considers how modern biographers distort VergilTune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books.
Business Analysis: Electric Vehicle Conversions Rise
Chapters: 00:00 — Introduction 02:40 — EV conversions 04:12 — Conversion shops 06:45 — DIY community 11:16 — Challenges
Both the shops and aftermarket community are growing substantially to meet the new demand. CNBC explores what it takes to convert a gas-powered car to an electric vehicle and whether it could go mainstream.
Boomers Daily 