Tag Archives: Reviews

Previews: The Economist Magazine – May 27, 2023

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The Economist Magazine– May 27, 2023 issue: The race to become the Republican nominee for the presidential election in America next year is properly under way. And Donald Trump has a huge, perhaps insurmountable, lead. 

Ron DeSantis has little chance of beating Donald Trump

Hopes of depriving the former president of the Republican nomination are fading

Belatedly and nervously, the would-be assassins have been lining up. On May 22nd Tim Scott, a senator from South Carolina, became the latest Republican to announce a run for president. Greater fanfare accompanied the official declaration (on Twitter) on May 24th that Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is joining the race for the Republican nomination. He has been widely heralded as the candidate with the best chance of defeating the favourite, Donald Trump. But even as more plotters step forward, the chances of a successful coup to overthrow Mr Trump are growing slimmer by the day.

What would humans do in a world of super-AI?

A thought experiment based on economic principles

In “wall-e”, a film released in 2008, humans live in what could be described as a world of fully automated luxury communism. Artificially intelligent robots, which take wonderfully diverse forms, are responsible for all productive labour. People get fat, hover in armchairs and watch television. 

Hungary is becoming more important to China

Viktor Orban and Xi Jinping bond over their anti-Americanism

To ears accustomed to a swelling chorus of China-scepticism in the European Union, the language of Hungarian diplomats is striking. Not for them the common talk of European officials about the need to “de-risk” relations with China and to treat it as a “systemic rival”. Co-operation between Hungary and China presents “opportunities rather than risks”, said Hungary’s foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, in Beijing on May 15th. Wang Yi, China’s foreign-affairs overlord, told him that relations between the countries had entered their “best period in history”.

Research Preview: Nature Magazine – May 25, 2023

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nature Magazine – May 25, 2023 issue:  In this week’s issue, Wenzhu Liu and colleagues present a way to make foldable silicon wafers that can be used in flexible solar cells. The secret to success was to blunt the edges of the silicon wafers, thereby stopping them from undergoing brittle fracturing. As a result, the researchers were able to make 15-centimetre solar cells with a bending angle of more  than 360°.

Oldest known ‘blueprints’ aided human hunters 9,000 years ago

Prehistoric engravings depict vast hunting traps with extraordinary precision.

Photograph of a stone engraved with zig-zag lines.

The oldest blueprints ever found might have been used to prepare for large-scale hunts1.

Engraved lines on a stone in Jordan might depict landscape features near a large-scale hunting structure.

Arts/Books: Times Literary Supplement – May 26, 2023

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Times Literary Supplement (May 26, 2023) – Alan Jenkins on Martin Amis, Young Russian fascists, The Rossettis at Tate Britain, Writers at the Hay Festival, Seamus Perry on ‘Byron’s Voice’.

Taking life sentence by sentence

Martin Amis, a talent for our time By Alan Jenkins

Martin Amis, 1995

In the Foreword to The War Against Cliché: Essays and reviews 1971-2000, a career-spanning collection of his journalism (literary and other), Martin Amis recalled how, when they started out in the early 1970s, he and his friends and colleagues touchingly assumed that literary criticism was as essential to civilization as literature itself was. Furthermore, “the most fantastic thing about this cultural moment” was that, in the debate between the Two Cultures, Art vs Science, “Art seemed to be winning”.

Politics: The Guardian Weekly – May 26, 2023

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The Guardian Weekly (May 26, 2023) – Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s surprise turn at last weekend’s G7 meeting in Hiroshima was the climax of a round of shuttle diplomacy in which the Ukrainian president secured yet more funds and equipment from western nations. 

Patrick Wintour ponders the complex wider issues at stake for western leaders who realise that more constructive relations with the global south could also be the key to containing an increasingly belligerent China.

E-cigarettes have been seen as useful and less health-damaging devices for weaning smokers off tobacco. But there are growing international fears at the rise of disposable e-cigarettes, which are fuelling a boom in vaping among children. Michael Safi looks at how different countries are responding, from sales curbs to outright bans.

War Scenarios: Ukraine’s Four Counteroffensives

Wall Street Journal (May 23, 2023) – Ukraine is on the brink of launching its counteroffensive against Russia. Russia now occupies 17% of Ukrainian territory, a stretch of landmass roughly equivalent to the size of Iceland with 900 miles of frontline.

Video timeline: 0:00 The stakes for the counteroffensive 0:53 The current Russia-Ukraine War situation 4:09 Ukraine’s counteroffensive scenarios 6:42 Potential results from the counteroffensive

Ukrainian troops’ current offensives have been limited to the Donbas region. WSJ spoke to retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, who breaks down four likely scenarios that the Ukrainian forces might attempt to kick off their counteroffensive.

Politics: The Independent Review – Spring 2023

The Independent Review - Spring 2023 https://scientificmagazines.top/the -independent-review-spring-2023 | VK


Independent Institute (May 22, 2023) – In this issue: A tongue-in-cheek playbook for the national-security elite on how to run wars; monetary policy during the Great Depression and Great Recession; a critical review of child support enforcement; the history of labor rights in Brazil; and more.

Crisis and Credit Allocation: The Effect of Ideology on Monetary Policy during the Great Depression and the Great Recession

By James L. Caton

The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy

By Christopher Leonard

The Economic Weapon: The Rise of Sanctions as a Tool of Modern War

By Nicholas Mulder

Preview: London Review Of Books — June 1, 2023

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London Review of Books (LRB) – June 1, 2023 issue: Rethinking 1848; Parfit’s Trolley Problem; Epictetus say ‘relax’ and reports from Istanbul.

At NatCon London

Peter Geoghegan

The British and American right differ in the weight they place on ideological purity. With a limited cast of characters – and an even smaller pool of funders – British conservatives can ill afford to divide their world into neoliberals and traditionalists. At NatCon London, the tirades about woke universities and pronouns often obscured political differences, but they can’t conceal them completely. 

Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – May 29, 2023

Marcellus Hall's “Open House” | The New Yorker

The New Yorker – May 29, 2023 issue:

Stephen Satterfield Puts Black Cuisine at the Center of U.S. History

A portrait of Stephen Satterfield.

The host of Netflix’s “High on the Hog” draws seductive stories from a bittersweet legacy.

By Dorothy Wickenden

Stephen Satterfield, the host of the Netflix food-history series “High on the Hog,” was bent over the stove in his parents’ kitchen, near Atlanta. It was one o’clock on a February afternoon, and he was preparing Sunday dinner for the family. Most of the meal was canonical Black Southern food: turnip greens simmered for hours, cheese grits, biscuits baked in a cast-iron skillet. 

What We Owe Our Trees

A black and white photograph of a dense forest.

Forests fed us, housed us, and made our way of life possible. But they can’t save us if we can’t save them.


By Jill Lepore

The woods I know best, love best, are made of Northern hardwoods, sugar maple and white ash, timber-tall; black and yellow birch, tiger-skinned; seedlings and saplings of blighted beech and striped maple creeping up, knock-kneed, from a forest floor of princess pine and Christmas fern, shag-rugged. White-tailed deer dart through softwood stands of pine and hemlock, bucks and does, the last leaping fawn, leaving tracks that look like tiny human lungs, trails that people can only ever see in the snow, even though, long after snowmelt, dogs can smell them, tracking, snuffling, shuddering with the thrill of the hunt and noshing on deer scat for dog treats. 

Two Weeks at the Front in Ukraine

A Ukrainian sniper positioned in a trench aims a rifle.

In the trenches in the Donbas, infantrymen face unrelenting horrors, from missiles to grenades to helicopter fire.

By Luke Mogelson

A twenty-two-year-old Ukrainian sniper, code-named Student, stuffed candy wrappers into his ears before firing a rifle at the Russians’ tree line. He’d been discharged from the hospital two weeks earlier, after being shot in the thigh.Photographs by Maxim Dondyuk for The New Yorker

Reviews: The Best Burt Lancaster Movies (MGM)

MGM STUDIOS (May 20, 2023) – A compilation showcasing some of Burt Lancaster’s best on-screen moments including:

  • Valdez is Coming (1971)
  • Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
  • Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
  • Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
  • Separate Tables (1958)
  • Run Silent, Run Deep (1958)

Burton Stephen Lancaster was an American actor and producer. Initially known for playing tough guys with a tender heart, he went on to achieve success with more complex, and challenging roles over a 45-year career in films and television series.

Fast Food: What’s Behind The Success Of Chick-Fil-A

Wall Street Journal (May 20, 2023) – What are some of the strategies of the most successful businesses around the world? From ChicK-Fil-A and Starbucks, to Ikea and Target, WSJ talked to CEOs and business leaders about their unique approach leading these major brands.

#WSJ #ChickFilA #CostCo