Animal Theology, British Universities, Apple Watch, Library Of Babel, Financial Times, Michael Moorc
To Bury A Goldfish
Robert Chalmers | Newsweek | 11th July 2015
Can a prawn sin? Should we pray for a dead goldfish? The "world's leading animal theologian", Reverend Andrew Linzey of Oxford University, replies to these and other questions with deftness and grace. "From God's perspective, every creature is loved or is no creature at all. I'm not saying we have a duty to pick up every dead animal and conduct a complete funeral service for them" (820 words)
British Universities Spread Misery Around The World
James Bartholomew | Spectator | 23rd July 2015
Yanis Varoufakis, Jawaharlal Nehru, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta — all went to British universities, all wreaked economic havoc at home. "The dishonour of distributing economic failure around the world is spread around British universities but the London School of Economics can claim more than its share". The new Greek finance minister is an Oxford graduate: "The British contribution to human misery may not be over yet" (1,030 words)
Apple Watch: A Symposium
Steven Levy et al | Backchannel | 24th July 2015
Twenty-five writers pool their thoughts on the Apple Watch. And the conclusion: Meh. It will be great, but it isn't yet. You have to shake your wrist to see the time. The apps are slow to load. And the world just isn't wired for it. "Restaurants aren’t ready to receive an order from your watch. Cars aren’t ready to unlock with a wave of your wrist. Lights aren’t ready to switch on when you get home. This is a 1.0 product. But I love it" (3,250 words)
The Library Of Babel Seen From Within
Jonathan Basile | Paris Review | 23rd July 2015
What you can learn from using a computer to generate the digital equivalent of Borges's Library Of Babel — a near-infinity of books containing every possible combination of every alphabetic character. "The librarians in the story encounter far more rational text than would ever be possible in a truly random universal library. After endless days searching through random books the longest legible title I’ve encountered by chance is dog" (1,360 words)
Pearson Sells Financial Times To Nikkei
Kana Inagaki & Leo Lewis | Financial Times | 23rd July 2015 | | Read with 1Pass
The Financial Times reports on the sale of itself. Nikkei will pay £844 million for the newspaper. Pearson will keep the FT building and the FT's half-share in The Economist. Nikkei is paying what seems to be a high price for the FT, apparently in the hope of solving two major shortcomings in its existing business: It has struggled to build markets overseas, and it has been late into digital publishing (1,340 words)
Tolkien Was A Crypto-Fascist
Andrew Harrison | New Statesman | 24th July 2015
Interview with Michael Moorcock about fantasy, science-fiction, life, London, and his latest novel, The Whispering Storm. "We live in a Philip K Dick world. The technology-led, military-led big names like Asimov, Robert Heinlein and Arthur got it wrong. They were all strong on the military, on space wars, on rational futures, and none of these things really matters. Look at Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Google. These are Philip K Dick phenomena.” (2,815 words)
Video of the day: Why Humans Run The World
What to expect: TED talk by Yuval Noah Harari. There's nothing special about humans as individuals. What makes us special is our ability to work together (17'08")
Thought for the day
A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say
Italo Calvino