Panic At The Library

Brian Michael Murphy | Lapham's Quarterly | 24th August 2022

The creation of public libraries in the US occurred alongside the so-called "social hygiene movement", which aimed — among other things — to encourage spiritual purity via bodily cleanliness. Books that were shared with the "great unwashed" must thus be cleansed. Sterilisation via gas chamber for books became the norm in the early 20C, as fears over disease and pests ramped up (2,337 words)

In Praise Of Bewilderment

Alan Levinovitz | Hedgehog Review | 24th August 2022

To cultivate a more flexible mindset, it is necessary to abandon certainty for bewilderment. Seeking out questions that are "above our pay grade" is difficult but rewarding. "There is, I admit, an initial shock to the system, like when you jump into a frigid lake. But the shock doesn’t last. It quickly gives way to relief, even comfort." This is a worldview that better reflects reality, it is argued (1,746 words)

Email Innovation Timeline

Elizabeth Feinler & John Vittal | Computer History Museum | February 2022

Comprehensive timeline of email's invention and development. The earliest entries, from the mid 19C, deal with the emergence of the ability to communicate codes or images via wires — a vital precursor to what would become "electronic mail". The fax machine comes along in 1924, then the first civilian computer modem in 1962. Arguably, it was all downhill from there (43,063 words)

Ode To The Library Museum

Erica X Eisen | Paris Review | 24th July 2018

On the untouchable physicality of precious texts. "There are books made entirely of jade. There are picture scrolls featuring calligraphy by the brother of the Japanese emperor. There are papyrus codices that constitute some of the few surviving texts of Manichaeism... There are Armenian hymnals, Renaissance catalogues of war machines, and monographs on native Australian fauna" (1,699 words)

Deep Time Sickness

Lachlan Summers | Noema | 14th July 2022

Earthquake victims in Mexico City experience time differently. Cracks in buildings progress slowly, hard to track unless lines are drawn on walls. Movement is at geological speed, but the earth threatens sudden upset any moment. Residents live fixated by fear of this happening. "She was not doing the approaching. It was the day the building would fall that was doing the approaching" (3,847 words)

Milman Parry

Robert Kanigel | Harvard Magazine | 20th August 2022

Parry was a student of Greek who died in 1935 at the age of 33, but he was consumed by an idea that would long outlive him: that it was an oral, not written, culture that had produced the Odyssey and the Iliad. By recording the songs of Serbia's surviving guslars — wandering singers who performed poems — Parry was able to argue for the existence of a similar Homeric process (901 words)

Fair Judgement

John Porter | The Garden Professors | 13th August 2022

A horticultural judge explains what he looks for in a prizewinning vegetable. General health is a must, as is uniformity (if the rules ask for a dozen tomatoes, present a dozen of equal size, shape and colour). Most competitors fall down in the preparation: each vegetable requires a different harvesting technique, and specimens must be kept hydrated until the moment of judgment (1,615 words)

How Bird Collecting Became Birdwatching

Tim Birkhead | Smithsonian Magazine | 8th August 2022

Until the early 20th century, the relatively few people who wanted to study birds tended to catch and kill birds in order to do so. The arrival of decent binoculars in the early 1900s was a step change: Now anybody could study birds on the wing. Only after the Second World War did bird-watching become a mass pursuit — perhaps because so much of the world then longed for tranquility (1,600 words)

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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.

Book Of The Week

What We Owe The Future
William MacAskill | Basic Books | August 2022

Recommended by Kieran Setiya at Boston Review
"It is an urgent question how what we do today will affect the further future. This is the question MacAskill takes up in his new book, What We Owe the Future, a densely researched but surprisingly light read that ranges from omnicidal pandemics to our new AI overlords without ever becoming bleak. It has a lot to teach us about history and the future, about neglected risks and moral myopia"

Poem Of The Week

All The Members Of My Tribe Are Liars
John Fuller | Poetry Foundation | 1996

The world is everything that is the case.
You cannot see it if you are inside it.
That’s why the tortoise always wins the race:
the very terms decide it.

I cannot help it if I am contented
With being discontented that I falter:
That’s why psychology was first invented
So that we needn’t alter.

continue reading at Poetry Foundation

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:

The Rise And Fall Of Chimerica

Jacob Dreyer | Noema | 18th August 2022

Discursive essay about Chinese views of America, arguing that reformist China was infatuated for decades by a utopian vision of America as a benevolent superpower, but that, as China has begun to approach American levels of power and prosperity, so China's respect for America has collapsed. "They cannot believe that a society can keep rolling along as chaotically as America seems to do" (5,600 words)

The Physics Of Nothing

Charlie Wood | Quanta Magazine | 9th August 2022

Physicists struggling to arrive at a unified theory of everything are bumping up against "a growing multitude of types of nothing". It is not the things which cause the conceptual problems, so much as the spaces between the things. The Universe is mostly made up of vacuums. "The key to understanding the Universe may be a careful accounting of these proliferating varieties of absence" (1,800 words)

How To Milk

Emily Ogden | Granta | 17th August 2022

Lactation in cows and in humans, compared. Feeding other beings with your body sounds like a dystopian nightmare, but it is "also a thing that women and other female mammals do every day". Milk flows more easily from a cow than from a human, because cows stand on all fours: "The dangling of the teat, the direction of milk flow and the direction of gravity’s pull are all the same" (2,400 words)

New Moral Mathematics

Kieran Setiya | Boston Review | 15th August 2022 | U

William MacAskill's new book, What We Owe The Future, is being discussed and reviewed in every major publication this week. This is the most comprehensive and intelligent review that I have seen, and a fair substitute for reading the book. Setiya balances MacAskill's idealism against his naivety. In brief: Fantasising about the future is all very well, but not if it distracts us from present realities (5,010 words)

The Afterlife Of A Brain Trauma Survivor

Mike Mariani | Wired | 16th August 2022 | U

After a traumatic brain injury, "a quiet, easygoing young woman fell into a weeklong slumber and woke up talkative, tempestuous, and inscrutable". Her executive function and inhibition control were utterly changed. After years of trying to regain her former self, she came to reject the notion of innate identity and embrace the idea of a self formed by external circumstance (4,315 words)

The Evolutionary Mystery Of Menopause

David P. Barash | Nautilus | 9th August 2022 | U

The "how" of the menopause has long been understood, but why it is that the endocrine system ends the fertility of women with several decades of good life remaining has long been elusive. Evidence is now gathering for "the grandmother hypothesis", which posits that there is an evolutionary advantage to having non breeding, experienced females available to nurture young (2,461 words)

How It Feels To Chase A Tornado

Matthew Cappucci | LitHub | 15th August 2022

A self described "storm-chasing weather nerd" narrates a day driving across the southern US in search of tornados. "I unconsciously slowed to ten miles per hour, then five, then four, then two. With the wind blowing straight at me and leaves and debris rocketing past the windows, I thought I was still driving rapidly; in reality, I was stationary. That’s when the edge of the tornado arrived" (3,680 words)

Care Tactics

Laura Mauldin | Baffler | 26th July 2022

Our tech-obsessed society constantly produces glossy "dongles" designed to "fix" the world for disabled people, while mostly ignoring the needs expressed by this very group. Meanwhile, disabled people have always repurposed objects to make the world more accessible. Rubber bands, silicon trivets, the perfect tongs: all of these and more are constantly put to ingenious use (3,285 words)

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The Discovery Of The World

Clarice Lispector | Paris Review | 1st August 2022

For years, the editors of ‌Jornal do Brasil allowed novelist Clarice Lispector to write weekly about any subject she chose. The result was a genre-less series that hovered between commentary and stream of consciousness. Her frankness is piercing: "I was so happy that I huddled fearfully in one corner of the taxi because happiness hurts too. And all because I had seen a handsome man" (2,197 words)

The World’s Oldest Pot Plant

Brie Langley | Guardian | 29th July 2022

This giant cycad was brought to the UK in 1775 and resides in the Palm House at Kew Gardens. As the horticulturalist in charge explains, he is definitely a he, a "grumpy grandfather" who wants to be left in peace to grow. There is a philosophy of life here to absorb: "Plants will decide whether or not they want to grow. And there’s nothing we can do about it. We just have to get over it" (838 words)

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.

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.

French Monarchy Overthrown

W.S. Bourne | Guardian | 10th August 2022

From The Observer of August 1792. How the climactic events of the French Revolution were reported at the time, by mail from Paris. "The King, and his family, are now in close custody in the Temple of the Palace, formerly belonging to the Duke of Orleans, and their keepers are the mob. Whether the King, at this moment, lives, is a circumstance of great and agonising dubiety" (718 words)

How Birds Happen

Tim Birkhead | Lapham's Quarterly | 10th August 2022 | U

The birds and the bees, without the bees; which is to say, a brief history of what natural scientists down the ages have believed, rightly and wrongly, to be the reproductive habits of birds. Aristotle studied birds keenly, but not keenly enough: "He thought that birds’ eggs were laid with a soft shell, to ease their passage, that hardened on exposure to the air. A touching idea, but not true" (2,100 words)

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