The Economist Magazine (September 23, 2023): The latest issue features ‘Ukraine faces a long war’ – A change of course is needed; Its backers should pray for a speedy victory—but plan for a long struggle.
Its backers should pray for a speedy victory—but plan for a long struggle
The war in Ukraine has repeatedly confounded expectations. It is now doing so again. The counter-offensive that began in June was based on the hope that Ukrainian soldiers, equipped with modern Western weapons and after training in Germany, would recapture enough territory to put their leaders in a strong position at any subsequent negotiations.
Western countries have for too long acquiesced to the Indian government’s abuses
For years, India objected to Western strategists lumping it together with its violent and chaotic neighbour in the phrase “Indo-Pakistan”. Now recognised as a fast-growing giant and potential bulwark against China, India claims to have been “de-hyphenated”. Yet the explosive charge aired this week by Justin Trudeau suggests that diplomatic recalibration may have gone too far. Canada’s prime minister alleges that Indian agents were involved in the murder in Vancouver of a Canadian citizen sympathetic to India’s Sikh separatist movement.
nature Magazine – September 21, 2023: In this week’s issue, an estimate of global human exposure to air pollution from landscape fires (dominated by wildfires, but also including planned or controlled open land fires) between 2000 and 2019.
As many countries head into autumn, they are targeting vaccinations at people in high-risk categories, leaving those at lower risk uncertain about what to do.
Climate change, civil war and international sanctions all contributed to the devastation caused by some of Libya’s worst flooding ever, researchers say.
Two separate natural disasters in north Africa have dominated the news recently. But Moroccan emergency responses to an earthquake that killed about 3,000 people seemed rapid and efficient in contrast to the chaos at the deluged Libyan port of Derna, where many thousands more lost their lives after the town was deluged following a double dam burst caused by Storm Daniel.
While logistical and administrative challenges have made access to Derna incredibly difficult, Observer reporter Kaamil Ahmed has gathered the testimonies of several local Libyan journalists who witnessed scenes they are still struggling to process. Diplomatic editor Patrick Wintour explains why the disaster can be seen as a culmination of the climate crisis descending upon a failed state, while Rupert Neate and Peter Beaumont discuss the differing responses to the two situations.
From Europe, Jon Henley previews three upcoming electionsthat could have profound consequences for the region’s political future. Indeed, as the Guardian launches a new Europe-focused digital edition, editor-in-chief Katharine Viner outlines why now is the right time for us to expand our reporting across the continent.
Scientific American – October 2023: The issue features ‘Will Humans ever Live in Space – Here’s what it will take to leave planet Earth’; AI could help us to talk to animals; New origins of wine, and more…
Global warming is so rampant that some scientists say we should begin altering the stratosphere to block incoming sunlight, even if it jeopardizes rain and crops
Today’s conservative dilemma by James Piereson Can conservatives still win by Victor Davis Hanson Conservatism reconfigured by Daniel McCarthy The promise of populism by Margot Cleveland
New poems by Daniel Brown, Sophie Cabot Black & W. S. Di Piero
Harper’s Magazine – OCTOBER 2023: This issue features ‘Craving A Choice’ – Insurgency and its Threat to the Democratic Party; The Spy – An Essay On seeing without being seen, and more…
For decades, New Hampshire has generated brisk and gratifying drama with its first-in-the-nation presidential primary. The Granite State momentously destroyed a presidency in 1968, when the Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy ran against President Lyndon Johnson on an antiwar platform.
Not long ago our mother died, or at least her body did—the rest of her remained obstinately alive. She took a considerable time to die and outlasted the nurses’ predictions by many days, so that those of us who had been summoned to her bedside had to depart and return to our lives.
The Times and The Sunday Times (September 18, 2023) – They used to call it La Belle Endormie: a sleeping beauty choked with traffic and blackened with soot. But now Bordeaux has woken up. Its long parades of 18th-century architecture have been sandblasted clean and its streets equipped with trams, cycle lanes and pedestrianized zones. Navigation is quick, the atmosphere unhurried and the food uncommonly good. And if you fancy following in the footsteps of King Charles, who will visit Bordeaux during this week’s short French state visit, you can even get there by train — take the Eurostar and a high-speed TGV; the total journey time from London is six hours.
What to do
The Chartrons quarter
● First, a little history. See that modest cathedral by the Hôtel de Ville? It’s where Eleanor of Aquitaine married King Louis VII of France. Later, in 1152, this feisty daughter of the southwest married again, in Poitiers, to the man who became King Henry II. In doing so she began a Bordelais involvement with England that didn’t end until 1453, when the French captured the city. Sure, a lot of water has flowed under the city’s bridges since then, but to be reminded of the connection is like discovering an unexpected cousin.
● Bordeaux profited handsomely from this attachment thanks to the English thirst for its wines. So continue this 650-year tradition with a riveting, self-guided audio tour of La Cité du Vin. The decanter-shaped landmark explores every aspect of global winemaking and wine culture, with one amusing omission: intoxication. The best bit is a display that wafts key wine flavours up your nose (£19; laciteduvin.com).
Coolest neighborhood
The northern district of Chartrons starts with palatial mansions and merchant warehouses, but shrinks to more modest proportions the further you wander from the city centre. Along the Rue Notre Dame it finds its mojo. Here, half a mile of browsable tiny shops sell must-have crockery, hand-made brushes and £2.50 fruit-crumble tartlets. Clambering vines deepen the sense that you’ve found the perfect French provincial street.
The New Yorker – September 25, 2023 issue: The new issue features the Fall Style & Design issue which showcases the work of Diana Ejaita, an artist who has herself dabbled in the world of fashion.
The bohemian English circle that included Virginia Woolf, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa Bell revolted against Victorian formality—and their casually ornamental style is inspiring designers today.
In July, 1918, Virginia Woolf spent a weekend at Garsington—a country home, outside Oxford, owned by Lady Ottoline Morrell, a celebrated hostess of the era, and her husband, Philip Morrell, a Member of Parliament. The house, a ramshackle Jacobean mansion that the Morrells had acquired five years earlier, had been vividly redecorated by Ottoline into what one guest called a “fluttering parrot-house of greens, reds and yellows.” One sitting room was painted with a translucent seafoam wash; another was covered in deep Venetian red, and early visitors were invited to apply thin lines of gold paint to the edges of wooden panels. The entrance hall was laid with Persian carpets and, as Morrell’s biographer Miranda Seymour has written, the pearly gray paint on the walls was streaked with pink, “to create the effect of a winter sunset.” Woolf, in her diary, noted that the Italianate garden fashioned by Morrell—with paved terraces, brilliantly colored flower beds, and a pond surrounded by yew-tree hedges clipped with niches for statuary—was “almost melodramatically perfect.”
At the end of his first year at the architecture school of the Royal Danish Academy, Pavels Hedström went on a class trip to Japan. Hedström, a twenty-five-year-old undergraduate, revered Japanese culture and aesthetics, even though he had never visited the country. As a teen-ager growing up in rural Sweden, Hedström had been introduced to Zen meditation by his mother, Daina, and devoured manga and anime. In architecture school, Hedström was drawn to Japanese principles of design and how they applied to a world—and a profession—increasingly troubled by the climate crisis. Hedström was particularly influenced by Metabolism, a postwar Japanese architectural movement that imagined cities of the future as natural organisms: ephemeral, self-regulating, and subject to biological rhythms of growth, death, and decay. In 1977, Kisho Kurokawa, one of Metabolism’s founders, wrote, “Human society must be regarded as one part of a continuous natural entity that includes all animals and plants.”
MGM (September 16, 2023) – Enjoy some of Jack Lemmon’s most iconic scenes in this crafted compilation:
Irma La Douce (1963) – Produced and Directed By: Billy Wilder Screenplay By: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond
Some Like It Hot (1959) – Directed By: Billy Wilder Screenplay By: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond Cast: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon, George Raft, Pat O’Brien, Joe E. Brown
The Apartment (1960) – Directed By: Billy Wilder Written By: Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond Cast: Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Ray Walston, Jack Kruschen, David Lewis, Joan Shawlee, Naomi Stevens, Hope Holiday, and Edie Adams
Avanti! (1972) – Produced and Directed By: Billy Wilder Screenplay By: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond Based on the Play By: Samuel Taylor Cast: Jack Lemmon, Juliet Mills, Clive Revill, Edward Andrews
The Fortune Cookie (1966) – Produced and Directed By: Billy Wilder Written By: Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond Cast: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, with Ron Rich, Cliff Osmond, and Judi West
THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (September 17, 2023): The 9.17.23 Issue features Emily Bazelon on abortion rights being won through state ballots after the Dobbs decision; Audra D.S. Burch on the death of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado and the city’s deep divide over policing; Teju Cole on Greek tragedies; Dan Brooks on the Italian rock band Måneskin; and more.
One by one, the five men — three police officers and two paramedics — walked up before the judge one afternoon this January. Their lawyers stood beside them, and the wooden benches of the Colorado courtroom were filled with family, friends and fellow police officers and paramedics.
News, Views and Reviews For The Intellectually Curious
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