A brief history of trees in Korea. The Japanese planted lots of them during their otherwise condemnable occupation — but cut them down to fuel the 1930s war effort in China. Kim Il-Sung reforested North Korea because he liked trees. Kim Jong-Il razed his father's forests for timber and farmland. Kim Jong-Un is putting the forests back again to mark his differences with Kim Jong-Il (4,600 words)
Andy Warhol's Shot Sage Blue Marilyn set an auction record for a 20th-century artwork when it sold for $195 million at Christie's in May. Why do Warhol's works fetch such prices when they are so plentiful and copies so commonplace? Perhaps because Warhol anticipated the economics of art in an age of digital reproduction: The more ubiquitous the image, the more valuable the original (835 words)
From artwork to trees in Korea, There's so much to know! Never fear, We'll help guide your way With our five picks a day. Are you ready? Let's go up a gear...
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.
Puzzle Of The Week
An auditioning call for new cast members at theme park results in a room filled with 25 people, each of them costumed as a knight, a serf, or a damsel. It is agreed that each knight will always tell the truth, each serf will always tell lies, and each damsel will alternate between telling the truth and lying. When each of them is asked in turn, "Are you a knight?", 17 say "Yes". When each of them is asked in turn, "Are you a damsel?", 12 say "Yes". When each of them is asked in turn, "Are you a serf?", 8 say "Yes".
The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has acquired the taxidermied remains of Cumulina (pictured above), the world’s first successfully cloned mouse, who was created in a laboratory at the University of Hawaii in 1997 and who died in her sleep in 2000 at the advanced age of two years and seven months — the equivalent of 95 in human years. The museum has also acquired a set of Cumulina’s footprints made on her second birthday.
Puzzle Solution
Solution: Five. Suppose there are k knights and s serfs altogether, and suppose there are d damsels who lied to the first question. In answer to the first question, the people who answered Yes were the knights (truthfully), the serfs (untruthfully) and the damsels who lied to the first question they were asked. This gives the equation k + s + d = 17. In answer to the second question, the people who answered Yes were the serfs (untruthfully) and the damsels who lied to the first question they were asked but who then answered truthfully. This gives the equation s + d = 12. Subtract the second equation from the second to give k = 5. Hence the number of knights in the group is 5.
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:
Sarah Constantin | Rough Diamonds | 16th June 2022
When and why did Homo Sapiens become so smart? This is part one of a three-part series, so we will have to await the final answer, but it all kicks off promisingly with an overview of life on Earth, and scenarios showing how a modest early uptick in the human skill-set might have triggered positive feedback loops which briskly (by geological time) elevated humans into a league of their own (1,200 words)
Scott Alexander | Astral Codex Ten | 15th June 2022
Scott Alexander, a psychiatrist in offline life, shares for comment a draft article on treating nightmares. Nightmares happen "when the process of dream generation is biased by ambient stress" — so anything that reduces stress may help. Therapies include Image Rehearsal, Systematic Desensitization, and Lucid Dreaming. The "standard anti-nightmare drug" is Prazosin. Many good comments (2,100 words)
We might have evolved to be smart But interestingness is an art. Our full Browser choices Of interesting voices Will give you a mighty head start...
Maddeningly formatted so as to be almost unreadable, and yet worth reading; just keep scrolling. Journalists muddled through the Covid pandemic by parroting ill-digested statistics and ill-informed theories. But what can you do when all around you are floundering, and yet your job is to say something? A certain humility is a good starting place — it finally pokes though in this retrospective (3,070 words)
In memory of Paula Rego, who died on 8th June at 86. Rego left Portugal as a student and settled in London, but memories of the Salazar dictatorship cast a long shadow over her life and work. "Most of Rego’s greatest paintings play around in the territory between obedience and defiance. It is a body of work that says Yes to life in all its tortured complexity. But this Yes is uttered as a growl" (2,600 words)
There are various ways to say "Yes": You can growl, squeak, pronounce with finesse... So grunt, snort or shout "Yes!", so you don't miss out When our full daily picks go to press.
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
On Growth And Form D'Arcy Thompson | Canto | first published 1917; abridged edition 1961
Recommended by Stephen Jay Gould: "D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson was perhaps the greatest polymath of our century. P.B. Medawar has called On Growth And Form 'beyond comparison the finest work of literature in all the annals of science recorded in the English tongue'. D’Arcy Thompson’s prose is like a Wagnerian opera. It flows on and on in waves of sumptuous sound, with occasional cadences at climactic moments."
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:
Liana Fix and Michael Kimmage | Foreign Affairs | 6th June 2022
"Winning big" for Ukraine would be a complete Russian retreat. "Winning small" would be a return to the status quo before February's invasion, leaving Russia in Donbass and Crimea. In either case there will be a “day after”. A Ukrainian victory will "spur more Russian intransigence in its wake". It will require, "not a relaxation of Western support for Ukraine but an even stronger commitment" (2,200 words)
Advice to futurists: Study the past and the present. Most of what will happen tomorrow is already happening today. Most of the things we will have in the future are things that we have today — wooden tables, concrete blocks, water pipes etc. Perhaps only 10% of our material world will change radically. Focus on that 10%. Imagine things that seem implausible now, but not impossible (1,100 words)
Tomorrow's a bigger today. Today we've sent two reads your way - So short! Feel no sorrow Come, enter tomorrow! Five reads, vid and podcast. Hurray!
Notes on a state dinner given by Czar Vasili III of Muscovy in 1526, drawn from the diaries of a Habsburg diplomat, Sigismund von Herberstein. The main course was swans served on plates of solid gold. The Czar offered bread to all, but salt only to a favoured few. After dinner each ambassador was taken back to his hostelry by a courtier whose job it was to get the ambassador thoroughly drunk (1,900 words)
How a glitch in tournament rules left Barbados and Grenada competing to score own-goals in a Caribbean Football Cup tie. No match could end in a draw; goals scored in extra time counted double; Barbados had to win by at least two goals to go through to the next round, otherwise Grenada would go through. As full-time approached, Barbados was one goal ahead. Now do the game theory (660 words)
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Our next London Amble Tour is coming up on Saturday, 18th June at 10.30am: a stroll around Aldgate, looking at everything from a rare sixteenth century church to London's smallest sculpture, and ending in a pub that Chaucer (supposedly) stayed in. We'll also saunter through Leadenhall Market and past the famous Lloyd's building. As always, tickets include an expert guide, excellent company and a Browser tote bag. Book one ticket for £18, or two or more for £14 each.
If you're keen to score an own goal Then spend time in a dull-reading hole. But if you like vict'ry Sign up for the picks we Send out, to enliven the soul...
Short fiction presented as philosophy exam paper. The unnamed narrator unravels the tale of a doomed affair by categorising it, naming every recognisable strand, from sunk-cost fallacy to optimism bias. The style is reminiscent of early 20C novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner. The contrast of the sterile form with the strong emotional currents present in the story is powerful and effective (2,250 words)
Elizabeth Johnson | Bitter Southerner | 7th June 2022
Gentle, reflective account of a month spent living alone as a volunteer caretaker in a remote firewatcher's cabin built in the forests of West Virginia in 1935. The writer observes bears, learns how to cook squirrel, and eventually stops sleeping indoors as a treatment for loneliness. "Sleeping outside made me feel like I was missing less, somehow. Sleeping outside made me feel less alone" (3,126 words)
If lonely, then first, sleep outdoors;* Then read, greeting new minds with yours.** With all our top choices You'll be spoiled for voices To keep you from solitude's claws. . *Not always advisable ** Always, always advisable
Brief but moving letter offering encouragement to the scientists who must watch birds nest, lay eggs, and then fall victim to predators before their chicks can fledge. Feeling conflicted and even guilty is to be expected, but the observer cannot intervene. Science does not decide which creatures deserve to eat. "Death is essential. Predation is the transfer of life and that life is a gift" (580 words)
Olga Tokarczuk | Words Without Borders | 6th June 2022
The Polish novelist considers the differences in how humans of this generation live as compared to their grandparents. Easy travel has shrunk the world while digitisation has swelled the available resources for study to proportions so vast that they cannot be grasped. A worthwhile future requires us to admit how little we know, and to be willing to "create a library of new terms", she says (6,290 words)
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