Sophie McBain at The New Statesman: The data gap is particularly dangerous, and maddening, in medical research. Women are severely under-represented in clinical trials, which means we could be missing out on drugs that work for us and are regularly prescribed inappropriate drugs, … | Continue reading
Portrait in Nightshade and Delayed Translation In Saint Petersburg, on an autumn morning, having been allowed an early entry to the Hermitage, my family and I wandered the empty hallways and corridors, virtually every space adorned with famous paintings and artwork. There must be … | Continue reading
Michael Schulman in The New Yorker: They come to New York City every week, in buses and trains and cars, carrying bags, carrying ambitions, carrying the fabulous clothes on their backs. They’re the fashion kids, the art kids, the theatre kids, the who-knows-what kids—creative ren … | Continue reading
From Phys.Org: Researchers may have found a way to improve a common treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by changing how the brain learns to respond less severely to fearful conditions, according to research published in Journal of Neuroscience. The study by resear … | Continue reading
by Pranab Bardhan In the next couple of months two of the largest democracies in the world—India and Indonesia—will have their national elections. At a time when democracy is under considerable pressure everywhere, the electoral and general democratic outcome in these two countri … | Continue reading
I’m Listening to Something I’m listening to something. I don’t know what it’s called but it’s Chopin. It’s a tune Alexa pulled from the high-capacity byte magazine of her small black canister which sits under a lamp upon a table against the wall (where most of us have spent at le … | Continue reading
by Ashutosh Jogalekar There is a sense in certain quarters that both experimental and theoretical fundamental physics are at an impasse. Other branches of physics like condensed matter physics and fluid dynamics are thriving, but since the composition and existence of the fundame … | Continue reading
Prabhakar Kolte. Untitled, 2005. Acrylic on canvas. More here, and here. | Continue reading
by Thomas O’Dwyer On April 1, one hundred years ago, Walter Gropius established the Bauhaus school of design in Weimar, central Germany. It lasted a mere 14 years — exactly the same time as the Weimar Republic. In 1933, the Nazis destroyed both. Short life or not, Bauhaus opened … | Continue reading
by Mary Hrovat I was struck by a sentence in Susan Orlean’s The Library Book: “If nothing lasts, nothing matters.” This line was part of a discussion of memory, the fear of being forgotten, and the value of passing things on to future generations. I share a passion for the idea o … | Continue reading
by Gabrielle C. Durham I teach two kinds of group exercise classes, and part of the certification processes for both disciplines devoted no small amount of attention to how to speak to your minions, uh, students. Negative forecasting is a no no. (Example: “Don’t think about the s … | Continue reading
Spring in Kashmir by Rahman Rahi And there’s a love-torn couple In the lap of a shikara on Dal And there’s a vermilion cloud In a sapphire sky flirting a peak And there’s a deodar With kohl-rimmed eyes And there’s a tulip With parched lips And there’s a wine goblet Bubbling with … | Continue reading
by Jeroen Bouterse “…And now to introduce our second panelist: Martha. Martha does believe that academic philosophy is worth pursuing, and she has – of course – written a book about it. Martha, can you briefly summarize your argument?” M: “Thank you. Yes, well, you can imagine th … | Continue reading
by Joshua Wilbur I wake up just before sunrise. For weeks, I’ve gone to bed at exactly 10 PM because—as Shawn Stevenson shows in Sleep Smarter—a consistent bedtime is the single most important factor in waking up well-rested. Before getting out of bed, I perform a series of stret … | Continue reading
by Carol A Westbrook What song did you have in your head when you woke up today? Was it, “Oh Danny Boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling” as you recalled your St. Patrick’s Day celebration from the previous weekend? Probably not. Chances are, the song in your head was not a slow, … | Continue reading
by Christopher Bacas My answering machine whirrs. From an echoing room, the chainsaw-voice shouts into a speaker phone: THIS IS GOD. ANSWER THE PHONE… SON….OF….A….BITCH PICK… UP… THE… GODDAMPHONE…… CALL ME…GOD ‘click’ Creator of the universe overloads a magnetic comb-and-wax-pape … | Continue reading
Nadya Chishty-Mujahid in Dawn: Abdullah, the delightful septuagenarian protagonist of Hussain M. Naqvi’s latest novel The Selected Works of Abdullah the Cossack, might be a ‘Cossack’ (having successfully imbibed his way to earning that name), but Naqvi himself is nothing short of … | Continue reading
Corinne Segal in Literary Hub: As a student at Princeton, Merwin studied under John Berryman and R. P. Blackmur. After graduating in 1948, his travels would take him through Europe before he landed in the south of France. Michael Wiegers described the beginning of his time there … | Continue reading
Naina Bajekal in Time: When Laila Lalami’s 2014 novel The Moor’s Account was short-listed for a Pulitzer Prize, jurors called its tale of a 16th century Spanish expedition to Florida “compassionately imagined out of the gaps and silences of history.” Five years on, Lalami turns t … | Continue reading
Ed Yong in The Atlantic: In 1995, if you had told Toby Spribille that he’d eventually overthrow a scientific idea that’s been the stuff of textbooks for 150 years, he would have laughed at you. Back then, his life seemed constrained to a very different path. He was raised in a Mo … | Continue reading
Kenan Malik in Pandaemonium: Identity politics is one of the defining – and one of the most divisive – issues of our age. And no identity is more contested or fought over than white identity. For some it is a means of giving voice to a group whose identity has previously been den … | Continue reading
Wolfgang Streeck in Inference Review: WHAT A STRANGE book—strange but indispensable nevertheless. From January to July 2015, Yanis Varoufakis served as the Greek government’s finance minister. Adults in the Room is an account of his battle with what he calls Europe’s deep establi … | Continue reading
Peter Wilson in MIL: As a general rule it is true that if you eat vastly fewer calories than you burn, you’ll get slimmer (and if you consume far more, you’ll get fatter). But the myriad faddy diets flogged to us each year belie the simplicity of the formula that Camacho was giv … | Continue reading
Brian Gallagher in Nautilus: Last April, in the famous Faraday Theatre at the Royal Institution in London, Carlo Rovelli gave an hour-long lecture on the nature of time. A red thread spanned the stage, a metaphor for the Italian theoretical physicist’s subject. “Time is a long li … | Continue reading
A Refugee in Paris What do I know of this city A migrant, a refugee Carrying a storehouse of fears Its splendor faded In the falling light Its step sprouting Tense, sinister shadows Shrouded in suspicions What do I know of this city A stranger skirting light and shadows Seeking a … | Continue reading
Sarah Baxter in Literary Hub: The pub is warm and beery. Grog glasses—drained, foam stained—scatter sticky veneer. Red-wine lips, hoppy breath, a slurry of slurring; laughter like gunfire, craic-ing off the wood panels, mirror walls and ranks of whiskey bottles. Bar talk is of th … | Continue reading
Leah Burrows at the website of the Harvard School of Engineering: One of the key misconceptions about solar geoengineering — putting aerosols into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce global warming — is that it could be used as a fix-all to reverse global warming trends … | Continue reading
Samir Chopra in Aeon: The United States and India, two of the world’s largest and oldest democracies, are both governed on the basis of written constitutions. One of the inspirations for the Constitution of India, drafted between 1947 and 1950, was the US Constitution. Both India … | Continue reading
Simon Callow at The Guardian: To review certain books seems like an impertinence. This is one of them. It speaks for itself with such clarity, certainty and wisdom that only one thing needs to be said: read it. And then read it again. It is a short book, divided into brief chapte … | Continue reading
Stephanie Sy-Quia at the LARB: Homeland is essentially a road trip novel, but its road trip doesn’t work. Contra to the willful American model of making off into the great vistas of the West, Jonathan and his feckless companions (a racing driver and a sexist caricature of a press … | Continue reading
Natalia Holtzman at The Quarterly Conversation: Andrić is particularly remarkable for his psychological acuity. Consider the knot of complexity that is Omer Pasha: born Mićo Latas, he’d been a brilliant boy in a village too small to contain his ambitions. He was bored by his pare … | Continue reading
Evan Osnos in The New Yorker: The New Zealand killer takes his place in the cracked pantheon of violent, Trump-admiring extremists: beside the gunman at the Tree of Life synagogue, in Pittsburgh, who blamed Jews for resettling refugees and immigrants, whom Trump vilifies as the c … | Continue reading
Namwali Serpell in The New York Times: Maybe because we’re living in a dystopia, it feels as if we’ve become obsessed with prophecy of late. Protest signs at the 2017 Women’s March read “Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again!” and “Octavia Warned Us.” News headlines about abortion b … | Continue reading
Robert B. Talisse in 3:AM Magazine: To be sure, the bipartisan civic ethos is an indispensable ingredient of a flourishing democracy. But it cannot be cultivated under conditions where everything we do is plausibly regarded an expression of our political loyalties. When politic … | Continue reading
Scott Alexander in Slate Star Codex: Let’s review how the pharmaceutical industry works: a company discovers and patents a potentially exciting new drug. They spend tens of millions of dollars proving safety and efficacy to the FDA. The FDA rewards them with a 10ish year monopoly … | Continue reading
Dimi Reider in Newsweek: The very fact terrorists exploit people’s interest in dramatic events should caution you against typing in that search string, and certainly against sharing it with others. Firstly, by doing so you’d be playing up to the narcissism of someone who couldn’t … | Continue reading
To Alexander Fu on His Beginning and 13th Birthday Cut from your mother, there was a first heartache, a loneliness before your first peek at the world, your mother’s hand was a comb for your proud hair, fresh from the womb— born at night, you and moonlight tipped the scale a 6lb … | Continue reading
Phil Baker at the TLS: With its somewhat whimsical skulls and bats, Gorey’s more accessible work has all the trimmings of Gothic Lite, part of the same cultural wave that has made H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu into a popular plush toy. It tends to be set in a waveringly Victorian-Edw … | Continue reading
Hua Hsu at The New Yorker: In June, 2015, Roberto Carlos Lange, who records as Helado Negro, released a single titled “Young, Latin and Proud.” Despite the bold title, the song sounded more like a flicker than like a flame. It was tranquil and soothing, with Lange singing gently, … | Continue reading
Lavinia Greenlaw at the LRB: Sex is Johnson’s true subject. She respects its power and repeatedly enacts a woman’s right to sexual realisation. Physical contact is something so fraught and regulated as to be inherently violent. Violence can come out of detachment too: ‘He dragged … | Continue reading
Hillel Italie in The Christian Science Monitor: Three Saudi women’s rights activists whose arrests last year have been condemned worldwide are being honored by PEN America. Nouf Abdulaziz, Loujain al-Hathloul, and Eman al-Nafjan have won the PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write Award, the … | Continue reading