Sound Shadow

John Cotter | Guernica | 13th March 2023

On the many and varied frustrations of going deaf. "As time passes, as the hearing aids become insepara­ble from my sense of self, I’m coming to view the hearing world with not resentment but confusion. How can it be so easy? Hearing people laugh at a joke when I didn’t know words were spoken. They adjust themselves in space without looking. It’s exotic to watch them" (3,285 words)

Mystified by cryptic crosswords? We at The Browser are here to help. Pick up the ultimate guide, by Dan Feyer and Uri Bram, and let us guide you through the meaning of those clues - so you can get on with puzzling.

On Taste

Thomas Kaminski | Claremont Review Of Books | 24th May 2021

The concept of taste in art originates in an individual's unique, physical sense of taste. Yet we still mediate the idea of "good taste" through collective filters: what is in vogue, what received opinion dictates, and what experts say. To escape this we must admit that some encounters with art are more meaningful than others. "Either you have experienced the power of art or you haven’t" (4,046 words)

Stacked

The Editors | Harvard Law Review | 10th March 2023

If your herd of 170 goats commits a trespass, is that one offence or 170 offences? In America, the prosecutor decides. Crimes often comprise a number of offences that could be itemised separately, i.e., "stacked". Plea-bargaining prosecutors may threaten to stack charges, since stacked charges tend to attract higher sentences. Is this fair? Can the sum of the parts be greater than the whole crime? (8,100 words)

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Strippers, JFK, Stalin

Ellen Jovin | Delancey Place | 9th March 2023

When you write a book about grammar, and you go on a book tour, Jovin reports, people will always ask you about the Oxford comma. In one classic example which she cites, and which has not aged well, the Oxford comma distinguishes "We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin" from "We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin". Even with the comma, in that case, I think one would read on (990 words)

Where Has All The Chartreuse Gone?

Jason Wilson | Everyday Drinking | 24th February 2023

The Carthusian monks who make this French herbal liqueur have decided to scale back their production. Being a global drinks conglomerate is not compatible with the values of a religious order that requires a vow of silence and a mode of living that has barely changed since the Middle Ages, they feel. But if you can get your hands on a bottle, it pairs well with citrus peel and vermouth (2,750 words)

Video: The Hole | John & Faith Hubley | YouTube | 15m 37s

Dizzy Gillespie and George Mathews improvise the dialogue of this 1962 Oscar-winning classic. "It’s a mix of everyday small-talk and, as time passes, the ever-present fear of nuclear war. Mathews’s character is convinced that the weapons won’t be used — true accidents don’t happen. Gillespie’s character sees the danger. There’s a real naturalism to the dialogue, and it’s packed with highlights"
— Animation Obsessive

Riding The Goddamn Elephant

A.S. Hamrah | Baffler | 9th March 2023

I admit to a weakness for A.S. Hamrah's film criticism much as I do for Jay Nordlinger's music criticism and Pete Wells's restaurant criticism. In each case the writing is distinctive, confident, and enjoyable in itself, whatever one's degree of enthusiasm for the underlying art. This overview of Oscar contenders reads more like a hit-list than a hit-parade, but Fire Of Love comes off well (4,400 words)

A Lot With A Little

Simon Sarris | Mostly Water | 10th March 2023

An appropriately brief note on the power of suggestion in poetry and photography. I knew of the haiku, which tends to dwell on nature and the seasons; but the senryu, which tends to dwell on human nature, was new to me. This one I relished: "the grumbler / finally stands up to leave / then grumbles for an hour". As for Fan Ho's photographs, reproduced here, they are black-and-white magic (680 words)

Yasheng Huang On The Chinese State

Tyler Cowen | Conversations | 8th March 2023

Interesting throughout. One of Tyler Cowen's best conversations to date. MIT professor Yasheng Huang discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the Chinese state, how the imperial examination system conditioned Chinese society for centuries, why the Communist Party dictatorship worked relatively well under Deng Xiaoping, and why the Covid crisis has so shaken Xi Jinping (7,500 words)

Mystified by cryptic crosswords? We at The Browser are here to help. Pick up the ultimate guide, by Dan Feyer and Uri Bram, and let us guide you through the meaning of those clues - so you can get on with puzzling.

The Art Of Computational Narrative

Samuel Arbesman | Cabinet Of Wonders | 8th March 2023

To call a limited set of computing commands a "language" used to feel like a metaphor. But as coding has become a popular skill, so programming languages have acquired the characteristics of natural languages. "Python, with its emphasis on white space, is more decorous in its diction and appearance than Javascript. The pointers of C programs have the telegraphic feel of Hemingway" (890 words)

The Invention Of The Polygraph

Amit Katwala | CrimeReads | 8th March 2023

Extract from a new book about the lie detector. Gus Vollmer, 1920s police chief in Berkeley, California, sought to prove Daniel Defoe's idea that "there is a tremor in the blood of a thief". Vollmer had a subordinate create "a Frankenstein device" that measured a subject's blood pressure and breathing rate. Then he tested it on the officer that built it — who had been slacking off on duty (3,284 words)

What Plants Are Saying About Us

Amanda Gefter | Nautilus | 7th March 2023

Are plants intelligent? They can distinguish between the self and others, communicate with those around them, and interact with their environment in a way that can seem "cognitive". And yet they have nothing we could identify as a brain. The researcher interviewed here argues that accepting plant intelligence requires a new conception of human intelligence, too (5,069 words)

Interview: Kevin Kelly

Noah Smith | Noahpinion | 7th March 2023

Conversation with the "prophet of the tech world". Interesting throughout. It covers: the benefits of optimism, why it's always best to delete the first page of anything you write, the pitfalls of evaluating a technology based on its use in just one culture, why futurism fails all the time, and the concept of "the technium" — all of human-made technology as one interconnected system (7,618 words)

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In For A Pound

Hugh Morris | VAN | 2nd March 2023

Review of the Royal Opera House's £1 ticket, which allows young people to stand at the back of the top tier for selected performances. The cheap entry means that "everything else gets a price tag, with fluorescent exclamation marks, flashing constantly". Nothing in the bar is as affordable as the ticket. The music is clearly not optimised for those standing so far back. Should it be? (2,336 words)

On Novocain

Michael Clune | Paris Review | 6th March 2023

Recovering addict, having been clean for 17 years, is prescribed opiates for a dental procedure. The presence of drugs in his life puts him into the grip of what he terms the "Pain Medication Paradox". Should addicts be denied pain relief, because it increases the chance of relapse and, ultimately, death, even though to make people suffer when an easy solution exists seems horribly inhumane? (2,634 words)

Mystified by cryptic crosswords? We at The Browser are here to help. Pick up the ultimate guide, by Dan Feyer and Uri Bram, and let us guide you through the meaning of those clues - so you can get on with puzzling.

Sainsbury's Packaged A Nation’s Dreams

Ruby Tandoh | Vittles | 6th March 2023

When the British grocery chain Sainsbury's switched in 1950 from old-fashioned counter service to the "less theatrically deferential way of selling food" that persists today, design suddenly became a crucial part of shopping. It was no longer enough for food to be packed safely, it needed to be packaged cleverly to feed the consumer's aspirations of fresh food and a fresh start after WW2 (2,580 words)

Interview With Colonel Oleh Shevchuk

Olha Kyrylenko & Dmytro Larin | War Translated | 1st March 2023

Jaw-dropping throughout. How Ukraine's army leveraged social media against Russia's invasion. "We called civilians and asked: 'Do you see this section of road? If a shell hits in a minute and a half, can you tell us roughly where it exploded?' The person would describe the place of the explosion, we would open a Google map and see: Yes, there is such a place behind the vegetable garden" (5,700 words)

When Ian Fleming Finally Started Writing

John Higgs | CrimeReads | 8th February 2023

It took Fleming five years to start work on the first James Bond novel. It was his misery at impending marriage to his long-time paramour Ann that finally did it. A BDSM-based affair was all to the good, but commitment demanded "a level of emotional maturity which he did not possess". He escaped into 007, a man whose girlfriends rarely survived the novel in which he seduced them (2,673 words)

A Claxonomy Of Mexico City

Lachlan Summers | Allegra Lab | 2nd March 2023

Just when I was starting to think there was nothing new that was true, and nothing true that was new, here out of blue sky comes a wonderful piece of writing on a subject that had only a genius would have recognised as a possible subject in the first place, namely, a taxonomy of car-honking in Mexico City. The mere existence of this piece is a marvel, the reading of it sheer pleasure (2,600 words)

Mystified by cryptic crosswords? We at The Browser are here to help. Pick up the ultimate guide, by Dan Feyer and Uri Bram, and let us guide you through the meaning of those clues - so you can get on with puzzling.

The End Of Gravity’s Rainbow

Ted Gioia | Honest Broker | 1st March 2023

The fifty years between Ulysses and Gravity's Rainbow were The Age Of Difficulty in fiction. Critics and readers demanded "a certain degree of hardship" from great works. Gravity's Rainbow was the ultimate test: "Once you entered, there were no guarantees you would ever emerge". You never quite knew what the book was even about. The explanation was always "just around the corner" (1,400 words)

Loneliness Reshapes the Brain

Marta Zaraska | Quanta | 28th February 2023

The feeling of loneliness may well be "an evolved adaptation, similar to hunger". Brain scans support this similarity, and suggest that if loneliness persists too long parts of the brain may actually shrink from lack of use. Research suggests that loneliness is "unpleasant but not necessarily negative" — unless it becomes a constant state. Magic mushrooms are one possible treatment (2,378 words)

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Can We Make Bicycles Sustainable Again?

Kris De Decker | Low-Tech Magazine | 28th February 2023

Cycling is environmentally friendly, but the modern manufacture of bicycles is far from sustainable. The US only makes 60,000 bikes a year; the vast majority are manufactured in Asia and shipped around the world. Bikes are also not necessarily made to last or to be easily repairable. A locally-made bicycle that lasts a lifetime with repairs should be the norm, but isn't (4,895 words)

Oberammergau’s Broken Vow

Joy Clarkson | Plough | 23rd February 2023

Theologian reviews the famous Passionsspiele Oberammergau, which has been performed roughly once a decade since 1634. The script was finally rewritten in 1990, in part to expunge some "anti-Semitic overtones". It remains "astonishing", but its emotional impact has been blunted. "What seemed strange to me was an unwillingness to call the story what it is: deeply depressing" (2,849 words)

Black Swans

Harmony Holiday | Black Music And Black Muses | 27th February 2023

Lyrical tribute to Nina Simone, "who wanted to be a concert pianist and ended up a diva". "She was obstinate and delicate at the same time and seemed to always and never get her way. She mastered devastations’s hymn and devastation’s exuberance. Her singing ranged from limber flutter to the blunted acridity of moaning to gain momentum for a scream that never comes" (1,286 words)