Tag Archives: Reviews
Previews: The Economist Magazine – Oct 29, 2022
Rishi Sunak’s promise of stability is a low bar for Britain
Reasons to be cheerful are scant
Will Iran’s women win?
Their uprising could be the beginning of the end of Iran’s theocracy
India’s next green revolution
The country’s clean-energy push shows a way to escape the coal addiction
Research Preview: Nature Magazine – Oct 27, 2022
Research Highlights
- This dinosaur looked like an ostrich but was as big as an elephant – Beasts with small heads and long legs roved an ancient supercontinent that included North America and most of Asia
- Women physicists miss out on ‘first-mover advantage’ – A study of more than a century’s worth of papers helps to explain why women physicists get fewer citations.
- How to smuggle a drug into cells: add a lipid ‘tail = ’Molecules equipped with a lipid streamer of just the right length can wriggle through a cell’s defensive membrane.
- Cyclones’ inner lives revealed by invisible particlesMeasurements of elementary particles called muons provide insight into the structure of swirling storms.
Politics: The Guardian Weekly – October 28, 2022
Britain’s political fever dream continued apace this week as Rishi Sunak became prime minister without anyone even voting for him. The former chancellor, the country’s third prime minister in less than two months and the fifth in six years, is also the UK’s first leader of colour and the first Hindu to take the office.
Jonathan Freedland considers how big a blow Truss’s ill-judged stint in power has delivered to the school of neoliberal economic thought.
Brazil also faces a judgment day this weekend, as Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva square up in a presidential runoff of deep significance for the country and the planet, with the protection of the Amazon at stake. The outcome is on such a knife-edge that not even the nation’s gangsters can decide who to vote for, as our Latin America correspondent Tom Phillips reports.
On the subject of the environment, don’t miss Naomi Klein’s long read about how Egypt’s government has used the coming Cop27 conference to greenwash its own oppressive political activities.
Then, there’s a revealing interview with Chelsea Manning, who opens up to Emma Brockes on what really happened when she leaked thousands of classified US military documents.
Books: TLS/Times Literary Supplement – Oct 28, 2022
WORLD JOURNALISM: NEW INTERNATIONALIST – NOV ’22
TAKE BACK THE LAND
The land beneath our feet is what sustains us – from it we can produce food, construct shelter and build livelihoods. But, it’s also a cultural marker and a source of identity. Its control has been a long-favoured tool of colonizers, wealth hoarders and polluters, while its fiercest protectors – often Indigenous peoples – are criminalized, violated and dispossessed. This edition hears from struggles to take back the land in Brazil, Bangladesh, Kenya and North America. We also launch our new series ‘Decolonize how?’ which will explore what people are doing to dismantle the impacts – and current realities – of British-linked colonialism.
Preview: Tufts Health & Nutrition, November 2022
Inside the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter – November 2022:
- Give Thanks for Good Health
- Newsbites: Vitamin D; red meat and CVD risk; psyllium and constipation
- Grain Products: Don’t be Fooled by Healthy-Sounding Labels!
- Special Report: Top 3 Reasons to Avoid “Top Foods” Lists
- Diet and Hemorrhoids
- Featured Recipe: Fresh Cranberry Orange Relish
- Ask Tufts Experts: Processed foods; calcium intake
Preview: London Review Of Books – Nov 3, 2022
Kissinger’s Duplicity
Charles Glass – Although World War Three had come perilously close, Martin Indyk absolves Henry Kissinger: Soviet actions were ‘yet again characterised by an ultimate timidity in the face of American resolve’. ‘Resolve’ is one way of describing the risk of nuclear Armageddon. Another is ‘recklessness’.
Wartime Objectors
Susan Pedersen – The problem with individual conscientious objection is that we are mutually dependent whether we acknowledge it or not. You may refuse to get vaccinated on grounds of conscience but will benefit from herd immunity if others do; you may refuse to pay taxes but will still get your rubbish collected; you may refuse to take up arms in war but will be protected from harm if others serve.
Droning Things
James Meek – If an innocuous merchant ship passing through the Baltic or the North Sea had a handful of ordinary, secretly armed trucks lashed to its deck, would any Nato country notice? Would the drones be detected or intercepted? If they were launched and hit their targets, could it ever be proven where they originated? As a threat to Europe, this is creative licence. But using swarms of Shahed-136s and other forms of missile to destroy a country’s energy system, on the eve of winter, is exactly what Russia is doing to Ukraine.
Review: Abbott’s Discrete New Glucose Monitor
Abbott Laboratories newest continuous glucose monitor is now available at participating retail pharmacies and through durable medical equipment suppliers. The Freestyle Libre 3 was approved by the FDA in June and is a step up from previous Abbott systems.
Abbott Laboratories and Dexcom are the leaders in the CGM market, which hit $5.1 billion in revenue in 2021 and is expected to reach $13.2 billion by 2028, according to Vantage Market Research. Abbott’s CGM systems, called FreeStyle Libre, generated $3.7 billion in revenue last year, with 4 million users globally.
CNBC’s Erin Black, a type 1 diabetic, tested out the Libre 3 for over a month. Here is her review.
Previews: The New Yorker Magazine – Oct 31, 2022
Will Sanctions Against Russia End the War in Ukraine?
D.C. bureaucrats have worked stealthily with allies to open a financial front against Putin.
How Samuel Adams Helped Ferment a Revolution
A virtuoso of the eighteenth-century version of viral memes and fake news, he had a sense of political theatre that helped create a radical new reality.
Sergio García Sánchez’s “Old Haunts”
The artist discussed Día de todos los santos and taking inspiration from the Old Masters.
By Françoise Mouly, Art by Sergio García Sánchez
Boomers Daily 