Links Between Smell And Memory

Roxanne Khamsi | Nature | 22nd June 2022

Notes towards a scientific explanation of why smells can trigger distant memories and the emotions associated with them. It may go back to the womb. One theory holds that the chemical signatures of the amniotic fluid surrounding an unborn baby may be echoed in the mother's body-scent — which is why the newborn baby will instinctively favour its mother's smell over any other smell (2,600 words)

Forer Statements

Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 26th July 2022

Explaining the Forer Effect, a technique used by astrologers, psychics and interrogators to win a person's trust by making assertions about the person's character which appear to be deeply insightful but which could, in fact, apply to almost anyone. For example: "You have a great need for other people to like and admire you"; "Security is one of your major goals in life" (1,400 words)

Hispaniola's Great Divergence

Craig Palsson | Fitzwilliam | 24th July 2022

Why is Haiti the poorest country in the Western hemisphere? Comparison with Haiti's neighbour, the Dominican Republic, suggests that the causes go back to the closing of the Haitian economy to foreigners after independence in 1804, and soil exhaustion on small family farms created by land redistribution. These encouraged political instability, which deterred tourism and investment (3,020 words)

The Giraffe, A Supposedly Composite Creature

Victor Mair | Language Log | 24th July 2022

The English word "giraffe" comes from the Arabic zarāfah, meaning "fast walker", which derives in turn from the ancient Persian zurnāpā, a portmanteau of "flute" and "leg". Until the late 16th century the giraffe was known in England as the "camelopard", echoing its ancient Greek name, kamēlopárdalis, and the middle-Persian equivalent, šotorgâvpalang, or “camel-ox-leopard” (2,066 words)

Browser Bites explores a new idea each day, in under a minute. Join Uri Bram, Sebastian Park (@SebPark), and guests as they blitz through an idea in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

Browser Bites

Browser Bites explores a new idea each day, in under a minute. Join Uri Bram (Publisher of The Browser), Sebastian Park (@SebPark), and guests as they blitz through an idea in less time than it takes to brush your teeth.

How To Be Influenced

Ian Leslie | The Ruffian | 23rd July 2022

In a world of online influencers we are all going to be influenced. "For almost every decision we have to take, bidders line up to take the contract". The trick lies in turning this to your advantage. "Be impervious to social influence and you get closed off from the best that your fellow humans have to offer. Be defenceless against it and you become manipulable, boring, and unhappy" (2,800 words)

A Midsummer On Ice

Fridtjof Nansen | Lapham's Quarterly | 22nd July 2022

Extracts from the diary of Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, written in June 1894 while Nansen was waiting for ice floes to carry his ship towards the North Pole. "Life is one incessant hurrying from one task to another. Life’s peace is said to be found by holy men in the desert. Here there is desert enough; but peace — of that I know nothing. I suppose it is the holiness that is lacking" (1,990 words)

The Maintenance Race

Stewart Brand | Works In Progress | 22nd July 2022

Lessons learned from the 1968 Sunday Times round-the-word solo yacht race in which Donald Crowhurst went mad and vanished; Bernard Moitessier abandoned the course within sight of an easy victory; the winner was the only finisher, Robin Knox-Johnson. Moitessier's advice: "Choose what is simple without hesitation; sooner or later, what is complicated will always lead to problems" (7,300 words)

Raphael Between Heaven And Earth

Michael Glover | Hyperallergic | 6th July 2022

I could wish this piece were ten times as long. A eulogy to Raphael and to the exhibition of Raphael's masterworks which has opened in London after years of delay. "He was boundlessly ambitious and intimidatingly energetic, charming, good-looking, diplomatic, and utterly opportunistic ... His industriousness, and the consistent quality of his output, were superhuman" (1,100 words)

Why We Don’t Remember Pandemics

Mark Honigsbaum | Engelsberg Ideas | 19th July 2022

The millions who died in World War One are remembered in countless memorials. The millions who died afterwards of Spanish Flu are remembered almost nowhere. There is some logic in this: The war-dead are being offered as role models. But in memorialising the war-dead we also remind ourselves of the terrors and costs of war. We should memorialise our pandemic-dead in that same spirit (1,150 words)

from The Browser five years ago

Is Productivity Growth Becoming Irrelevant?

Adair Turner | INET | 21st July 2017

Yes. As a limit-case imagine that a hundred years from now solar-powered robots deliver most goods and services. The cost of this will be trivial — and so, therefore, will be the contribution to measurable GDP. Almost all measurable GDP will come from impossible-to-automate domains such as rent and royalties. “Productivity growth will be close to nil, but also irrelevant to human welfare” (1,009 words)

E. E. Cummings And Krazy Kat

Amber Medland | Paris Review | 20th July 2022

On Krazy Kat, a cartoon strip by George Herriman that ran between 1913 and 1944 and which had "a cult following among the modernists". E.E. Cummings was a fan, as were Pablo Picasso and James Joyce. Herriman's formal experimentation was a big attraction. His panels are uneven, their borders reflecting the action within, with eccentric intermission sections to control the narrative pace (1,922 words)

Meal Planning In Remote Alaska

Bree Kessler | Eater | 13th July 2022

How to feed yourself in a rural Arctic community. Other than in the dead of winter, when it is possible to drive on the frozen river, all food must be grown at home or imported by air. People eat well by planning ahead. The freezer is everything — generally filled with precious moose meat. And yes, in extremis, Amazon Prime will still deliver items like coconut milk with free shipping (2,477 words)

The Lasting Anguish Of Moral Injury

Constance Sommer | Knowable | 18th July 2022

On the evolving idea of "moral injury". This is a new concept in psychology referring to the "psychic wounds" created by situations in which one must violate one's moral code. In a severe case, the sufferer can lose all trust in themselves. Initially seen in military personnel, the definition is now being expanded to cover other roles, such as that of a medical worker during a pandemic (2,679 words)

Promised Land

Eve Fairbanks | Guardian | 5th July 2022

Extract from a book about post-1994 South Africa, focusing on the impossible task handed to black farmers. The apartheid regime "managed to sell a used car on the verge of a breakdown to a family that only realised, when they got in to drive it, that it was a piece of crap. But the family had no other options, so it was necessary that they convince themselves they’d got something of great value" (4,892 words)

The Transgender Heir

Browne Lewis | Jotwell | 15th July 2022

If a parent has left money in their will to a child who is specified as a son, and if the child has transitioned to a daughter by the time of the parent's death, does the daughter get the money? A court would have to decide. Worst-case scenario: "If the gender mentioned in the will no longer exists, arguably, the heir could be treated as having predeceased the testator, and the gift would lapse" (1,340 words)

Written on the D rod Droid X

Tom Scocca | Slate | 20th July 2010

Once upon a time all smartphones were like this. Review of a 2010 Motorola Droid X mobile phone, dictated using the speech-to-text software built into the phone's Android 2.1 operating system. "I tried to write the title of this Using the voice recognition on the Deoid X but it didn,’t go very well. I tries the voice recognition. Wcause because the virtual keyboard ia pretty a.nohing annoying too" (808 words)

– from The Browser twelve years ago

On Sundays, Browser readers receive a special edition with puzzles, poems, books, charts, music and more - plus selections from our decade-plus archive of the finest writing on the internet. Here's a taste of this week's edition.

Performance Of The Week

When The Levee Breaks

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss perform When The Levee Breaks at the 2022 Glastonbury Festival. Elsewhere on YouTube you can find Robert Plant performing the song with Jimmy Page. The song was originally written and recorded by Memphis Minnie and  Kansas Joe McCoy in 1929.

Death And The Afterlife
Samuel Scheffler | Oxford University Press | 2013

Recommended by John Cottingham at Notre Dame Philosophical Review:
"Scheffler has produced a superb essay, entirely free from obfuscating jargon yet meticulously argued and demanding in exactly the right way, forcing us to think about hitherto unexamined implications of our existing beliefs. It is rich in psychological and ethical insight, and restores philosophy to its proper role of tackling the big structural concerns inseparable from the human condition"

The Browser Sunday edition is a smorgasbord of delights. If you enjoyed this taster, subscribe for puzzles, crosswords, art, charts, articles and more each Sunday - plus five articles daily, in your inbox:

When Coal Arrived In America

Clive Thompson | Smithsonian | 12th July 2022

Much as Americans are now being urged to shift from fossil fuels to renewables, so they were being urged two centuries ago to shift from wood-burning to coal-burning stoves. Trees were disappearing and coal was abundant. But most people resisted the new fuel and everything to do with it. "Coal merchants were all over the place in the late 19th century — and everybody hated them” (1,800 words)

Audio: South Pole Race | Cautionary Tales. The year is 1910. Two teams are racing to the South Pole. Captain Robert Falcon Scott heads a well-financed, technologically-advanced expedition. Roald Amundsen uses cheap sled dogs. Yet Scott is doomed to failure. Tim Harford explains why. (48m 08s)

Video: Change The Week | Ian Pons Jewell | Vimeo | 3m 43s  

Advocacy video from 4 Day Week, narrated by Stephen Fry, arguing that the world would be a happier and even a more productive place with a shorter working week