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Elizabeth Claire | MIT Press Reader | 6th December 2021
In the aftermath of the French Revolution, a "culture of dancing madness" gripped Paris. The early 19C saw the German fashion for waltzing spreading to France, a moral panic trailing in its wake. This new kind of "closed couple" dancing, in which man and woman embraced as they revolved, threatened established notions of purity, hygiene and social class. The urge to waltz was contagious (1,621 words)
Sylvia Bishop talks to legendary railway writer and traveller Mark Smith, alias the Man In Seat 61, about the shortage of trains in Antarctica, missed connections in South America, Burmese numerals, the bliss of sleeping-cars, orange juice in Transylvania, and the Best Train Journey In The World â clue: it comes with "haggis, tatties and neeps and a wee dram before you retire" (3,200 words)
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Thousands of curious minds trust the WeeklyFilet for food for thought. Every Friday, a careful selection of links that help you understand complex, important issues; that foster empathy by making you see the world through othersâ eyes; that inspire self-reflection.
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Michael Glover | Hyperallergic | 9th December 2021
This is well said. Braque is grossly undervalued. Outside a relatively small circle of largely academic admirers he is dismissed as a quietist, a dullard. A London show this year draws few visitors and little notice. Yet, in life, Braque was Picasso's rival and equal. With Picasso, Braque invented cubism. "If this were a Picasso show, half the world would have been made to sit up and notice" (1,070 words)
First in a new series where The Browser republishes classic essays that are worth your time. For artifacts, "monuments, languages, and arts which descend to us out of the past," we can "all concede their importance" even if their full merit is intelligible only to experts in that field. In fact, "all teaching is merely a way of acquainting the learner with the body of existing tradition" (7,758 words)
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Hear what youâve been missing with Hark. Hark editors curate amazing podcast moments into playlists around your interests. Explore topics from The Dancing Plague of 1619 to Utopian Communities or Crash Course on Fermentation and Celebrating Prince.
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Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Interview about the intersection of folklore and cartography, with a particular focus on the mythical creatures of Lithuania and the Baltic region. These beings have distinct topographical habitats that can be mapped across Europe. Legends about imps are most likely to come from places with bogs and swamps, fairies from lakes, giants from mountains and rocky terrain, and so on (4,542 words)
Comprehensive list, from worst to best. Each song receives only the briefest of reviews, but the phrases add up to a portrait of an oeuvre, from "unnecessary arpeggiation" to "lukewarm melody" to "infinitely average". Of the very best piece, the writer lyrically says: "Sometimes I think if this was the only music that ever existed, things would still somehow be OK" (4,241 words)
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Personal history told via moments of connection with the railway. This insomniac writer's great-grandfather was a Pullman porter after the Civil War, ferrying his upwardly mobile son's laundry from university along the track to be washed at the place he had left behind. Now, she dreams of riding the train all the way up the USA's western coast and sleeping peacefully, at last (2,610 words)
Applied Divinity | The Browser | 8th December 2021 | U
Co-CEO of Open Philanthropy on different kinds of altruism. Having and raising kids "seems like an awesome, and very normal, altruistic thing to do." Donating money and kidneys are "relatively rare big decisions that reward thought and diligence," where "you donât have to get it right in the moment, or the first time, or change a deeply ingrained habit (all of which are things I struggle more with)." (5,235 words)
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Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Martin Bailey | Art Newspaper | 3rd December 2021 | U
Biographical vignette from December 1888, when Van Gogh mutilated his own ear at the home he shared with Paul Gauguin in Arles, the Yellow House. The gendarmes who attended the incident unwittingly inspired Van Gogh's next still life, Two Herrings, and a pair of Gauguin caricatures. The French for smoked herring, hareng saur, is also a slang term for police officers (1,108 words)
A thriller-paced offering from the New York Times' cybersecurity reporter to wake the world up to the dangers of the cyberarms race, in particular the booming global market in âzero dayâ exploits or critical vulnerabilities. The book is intended to terrify, and the author herself is no exception: âOne too many times I caught myself staring suspiciously at anything with a plug, worried it was a Chinese spyâ (528 pages)
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If reading business news has you counting sheep, The Daily Upside is the espresso shot youâve been looking for. An unbiased, no-nonsense daily newsletter bringing insights and stories you wonât find anywhere else. And the best part? The Browser readers can sign up for free.
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Short and pleasingly subtle discussion of why we should read the original works of great thinkers rather than relying on selective and secondary accounts. Reading the canonic texts is the surest way to discover the failings and weaknesses of even the noblest minds, the questions they could not resolve, the outmoded and repugnant elements downplayed by sympathetic followers and editors (735 words)
Do you know your whodunnits from your howdunnits? Your locked rooms from your impossible crimes? Go deep on all aspects of the classic murder mystery with Shedunnit, the podcast from Browser editor Caroline Crampton. Listen to Shedunnit now at shedunnitshow.com or in your podcast app of choice.
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
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Clinical studies suggest that the placebo effect has become stronger over time in the United States: People are responding more positively to the idea of medical treatment, relative to treatment as such. In 1996 pain-relief drugs beat placebos by 27.3% in clinical trials. In 2013 the margin was down to 8.9%. It may get harder for new drugs to win FDA approval if placebos work almost as well (1,020 words)
The entire history of opium, and the many different ways it was consumed â as morphine, heroin, OxyContin â from Neolithic times to the current opioid epidemic. The earliest evidence of its use as a narcotic or for pain relief was in Spain around seven millennia ago. The Mughal emperor Jahangir, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker were all shaped by it (480 pages)
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Hear what youâve been missing with Hark. Hark editors curate amazing podcast moments into playlists around your interests. Explore topics from The Dancing Plague of 1619 to Utopian Communities or Crash Course on Fermentation and Celebrating Prince.
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Raghuveer Parthasarathy | The Eighteenth Elephant | 29th November 2021
Building upon the astronomical work of early 20C French mathematician Ămile Borel, this piece explores the idea that the answer to the question "Does X affect Y?" is always yes, and is thus useless. Better questions for scientists to be asking include "how much?" and "do I care about the magnitude of the effect?". Borel is verbose and vague, but this writer is neither (2,321 words)
Edmond Smith | Lapham's Quarterly | 29th November 2021
Communication failure could spell disaster for the merchant adventurer in the 16C, wiping out an entire voyage's profit. Linguistic skill was highly prized, as was knowledge of local customs and etiquette. Handwriting mattered too: in 1636, a factor omitted the "r" from the phrase "2 or 3 apes", meaning that over 200 primates were shipped to London instead of the desired two or three (1,971 words)
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Read a no-nonsense roundup of the most impactful global environmental stories and studies of the week. Plus jobs, events, resources, happy headlines and our bullshit radar.
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Interview with a hotel housekeeper who estimates that she has cleaned over 60,000 rooms. She is on her feet for eight hours a day and the goal is to be indispensable but invisible. The anonymity of the job appeals to her; she loves a perfectly arranged room. She aims to leave rooms "as untouched as when she last cleaned them, as if she had never even been there at all" (2,556 words)
Uri Bram and Applied Divinity | The Browser | 1st December 2021
A professor of philosophy and and a professor of economics discuss their new podcast, and the lessons it holds for communication and expertise. "It is actually pretty amazing that we can communicate at all. We are hardly ever clear, so our listeners have to work to figure out what we could be saying. Spending half our time checking if we understand each other isnât at all implausible" (5,296 words)
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Brief but information-packed review of Skin,an essay on psoriasis bySergio del Molino, who suffers from the condition, as, apparently, did Josef Stalin, John Updike, Pablo Escobar and Vladimir Nabokov. Del Molino "slowly guides us into his world of intense physical discomfort; most treatments of psoriasis only deal with its symptoms, rather than healing its immunological causes" (670 words)
via The Viewer | Carter Dishman | YouTube | 23rd November 2021
A story that would make a great movie: Wearing hand-me-down male uniforms, an all-female squad of Soviet soldiers flew plywood planes ("certified death traps") into Germany, without instruments to guide them through the darkness. "The sound of the wind on their canvas wings supposedly sounded like a broomstick flying through the air"âhence the moniker, the Night Witches (8m 18s)
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On Sundays, Browser subscribers receive a special edition filled with quizzes, images, archive picks and other excellent goodies. A taste of yesterday's supplement is included below; if you'd like to receive the full supplement every Sunday, please do Join The Browser.
Prize Quiz Of The Week
If you have a five-goal handicap in polo, are you a good player or a bad player?
What happened at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on 22nd June 1986?
What is Deobandism?
In 1920 the Czechoslovak writer Karel Äapek coined a word which has since passed into many languages to describe a field of technology and its products. What is the word?
Where might you encounter a nekomata, a bakeneko, a kasha and a maneki?
Answers at the foot of the page
From The Browser Four Years Ago
Raising A Teenage Daughter Elizabeth Weil & Hannah Duane | California Sunday | 30th November 2017 | U A mother writes about her teenage daughter; the daughter annotates the article. The effect is one of eavesdropping on a conversation between the inner voices of mother and daughter. Both have precision, plausibility, and charm. Hard to say which is more compelling â the honesty of the dialogue, or the love so clearly present. Would an angry dialogue make such good reading? (1,600 words)
From The Browser Six Years Ago
Observations On Donald Trump Ward Baker | NRSC | 22nd September 2015 | PDF Prescient advice from a Republican strategist on the implications for GOP Senators were Donald Trump to win the party's 2016 presidential nomination. "Trump is a Misguided Missile. Letâs face facts. Trump says whatâs on his mind and thatâs a problem. Our candidates will have to spend full time defending or condemning him if that continues. And, thatâs a place we never, ever want to be" (1,750 words)
Sam & Dave perform Soul Man in 1967 for the German television show Beat-Club. Sam Moore (born 1935) is the tenor; Dave Prater (1937â1988) was the baritone. They performed together from 1961 until 1981.
Image Of The Week
Traffic Management In Amsterdam
The Damrak main street in Amsterdam, before and after the city government gave pedestrians, cyclists and public transport priority over motor-cars. source:The One-Handed Economist
Quiz Answers
If you have a five-goal handicap in polo, are you a good player or a bad player? A very good player. Probably a professional. The polo handicapping scale runs from -2 (for a novice) to +10. Two-thirds of all handicapped players are rated at +2 goals or less; fewer than two dozen living players are handicapped at +10. The handicap describes "the player's worth to his or her team". It is an overall rating of a player's horsemanship, team play, knowledge of the game, strategy, and horses.
What happened at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on 22nd June 1986? Diego Maradona scored two of the most-discussed goals in football history, ensuring a 2-1 victory for Argentina over England in a quarter-final of the soccer World Cup. While scoring his first goal Maradona touched the ball with his hand but the referee lacked a clear line of sight and the foul went unpenalised. Maradona said later that the goal was scored "a little with his head, and a little with the hand of God". Maradona then managed a 60-yard dash, bamboozling four English outfielders and a goalkeeper, to score a second goal, often cited as "the goal of the century" and perhaps the greatest individual goal of all time.
Who are the Deobandis? Deobandis are a sect of Sunni Muslims concentrated in South Asia. After the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947, the spiritual home of the Deobandi movement remained in India but its political centre moved to Pakistan. The Taliban in Afghanistan identify as Deobandis, although not all Deobandis welcome them as such. Â Â
In 1920 the Czechoslovak writer Karel Äapek coined a word which has since passed into many languages to describe a field of technology and its products. What is the word? The word is "robot". It first appears in Äapek's stage-play R.U.R, depicting a company called Rossumovi UniverzĂĄlnĂ Roboti which manufactures artificial people called roboti. Initially happy to work as servants and slaves, the robots eventually revolt and exterminate humanity. Roboti echoes the Czech word robota, meaning forced labour, which derives from rab, meaning "slave".
Where might you encounter a "nekomata", a "bakeneko", a "kasha" or a "maneki neko"? In Japan; or, at least, in Japanese folkore. These are types of cats that possess magical powers or are themselves possessed by demons. The nekomata is a "massive, man-eating, two-tailed cat" believed to stalk the woods of Nara prefecture. The bakeneko is a shape-shifting cat liable to kill and replace its owner.The kasha, having once smelt a corpse, turns into a demon from hell. The maneki neko, by happy contrast, is the âLucky Catâ whose smiling image â typically sitting up and extending its front paws â brings happiness and prosperity.
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Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
Cecily Giraffe is fond of cats, especially the mystical ones. She is fonder still of Browser subscribers. (Or equally fond, both are magical in their own special ways).
Many animals have magical attributes in Japanese folklore, but cats are "somewhat unique in the myriad powers they can manifest". In the Edo period, old cats were thought liable to become bakeneko â shapeshifters that killed their owners and took their place. A scarcely lesser fate awaited unwary owners of a kasha, a cat which, having once smelled a corpse, became a "demon from hell" (2,300 words)
"Fat Leonard" made billions as a contractor for the US Navy. "He was paying for prostitutes and orgies for navy officers, all the way up to admirals." Though "gifts for their wives, Chanel handbags, Cohiba Cigars, $30,000 dinners," he secured inflated contracts and the redirection of US ships to ports under his control. Now Leonard awaits trial, but senior admirals remain uncharged (3,862 words)
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Hear what youâve been missing with Hark. Hark editors curate amazing podcast moments into playlists around your interests. Explore topics from The Dancing Plague of 1619 to Utopian Communities or Crash Course on Fermentation and Celebrating Prince.
Caroline Crampton, Editor-In-Chief; Robert Cottrell, Founding Editor; Jodi Ettenberg, Associate Editor; Raymond Douglas, Associate Editor; Uri Bram, CEO & Publisher; Al Breach, Founding Director
