The Sunday Supplement: Hiking Son
From The Browser 9 years ago:
Hiking The Appalachian Trail
Robert Moor | Buzzfeed | 2nd August 2016
The Appalachian Trail runs 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. Hiking the length of it — a five or six month adventure — changes the mind and the body. Not always for the better. “Naturally, most hiking injuries center around the feet. Blisters bubble up. Toenails blacken and fall off. Joints swell. During the course of my hike, my feet grew a half shoe size. The easiest way to spot a thru-hiker is to catch them barefoot. Without boots, the super-hiker is reduced to a limping old crone” (3,040 words)
From The Browser 7 Years Ago:
My Son, Osama
Martin Chulov | Guardian | 3rd August 2018
A conversation with Osama bin Laden’s mother, Alia Ghanem, who lives in Jeddah with her second husband and two sons; they remain one of Saudi Arabia’s richest families thanks to Saudi Binladin, their “dynastic construction empire”. Ghanem says Osama was “brainwashed” at university by radicals who wanted his money, and that at least some of his wives and children have been allowed back from Abbottabad: “I speak to his harem most weeks. They live nearby” (3,300 words)
Question Of The Week
August rolls around, and it's time to round up our reading for the July edition of the Browser Book Club. What did you read last month, and what did you make of it?
Last week’s question
We shared Jack Maden’s Should Parenting Require a License?, in which he considers philosopher Hugh LaFollette’s idea that we should introduce a license for raising (not creating) children, “to screen out people who’d make very bad, abusive parents”. Were Browser readers persuaded?
(i) Yes, I would support some form of parental licensing 53%
(ii) No, I object to any form of parental licensing 47 %
For a while it seemed we might be reporting the first draw in QOTW history, but the ayes just about won out with the final votes. The nays, however, are more numerous in the mailbag — and they are fervent nays. A rich crop of arguments this week, considering prejudicial enforcement, failures of existing licenses, failures of existing care systems — and the possible need to license philosophers, too.
Performance Of The Week
La Cenerentola - II: “Non più mesta” | Cecilia Bartoli | comp. Gioachino Rossini
Astonishing vocal acrobatics. Watch in awe. Intimately shot, too; there’s a lot to be enjoyed in the performers’ delight, and the twitches of Bartoli’s hand as she guides herself through the treacherous passages.
Book Of The Week
The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East | Fawaz A. Gerges
Recommended by Sophie Roell at Five Books:
“The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East is by Fawaz Gerges, a professor at LSE, and represents more than a decade of work “trying to answer a recurring question posed by my students: Why has the Middle East reached this seeming low point after a century of state- and nation-building?” The book covers the region from the end of the Ottoman Empire to the Arab Spring and highlights the interaction of foreign intervention and domestic authoritarianism as the root cause of the problems.”
Image Of The Week
Dancer | Paolo Troubetzkoy | 1912
Wonderfully vivid sculpture in bronze. The sitter was Russian dancer and pianist Countess Thamara Swirskaya. Troubetzkoy, born in Italy with an American mother and a Russian prince for his father, was internationally renowned: he also created the St Petersburg Equestrian Statue of Tsar Alexander III, and the monument to General Harrison Grey Otis in MacArthur Park, Los Angeles.
Poem Of The Week
Leaves | Sara Teasdale
On what is gained when our certainties are lost.
One by one, like leaves from a tree
All my faiths have forsaken me...
Read Leaves and more by Sara Teasdale at Poetry Foundation
Quiz Of The Week
These statements pertain to one major geographical landmark: the first letters of the missing words spell out its name. Can you piece together the name and fill in the blanks?
(i) It begins in the ______
(ii) The largest city alongside it is ______
(iii) It ends where it meets the ______
(iv) It is spanned by ______ bridges
(v) Its name is popularly attributed to the female resistance encountered by the expedition of Francisco de ______
(vi) It crosses ______ countries
Answers below, after the crossword
Click here to print this week’s puzzle
Click here to load this week’s puzzle in Across Lite
Click here for past puzzles and solutions
Another debut cryptic this week! Setter Danish Abdi is a freelance game designer and musician in Bangalore, India, filling up what's left of his time with poetry, triathlons, open water swimming, rock climbing, and calisthenics –Dan Feyer
Quiz Answers
The landmark is the River Amazon
(i) It begins in the ANDES
(ii) The largest city alongside it is MANAUS
(iii) It ends where it meets the ATLANTIC
(iv) It is spanned by ZERO bridges
(v) Its name is popularly attributed to the female resistance encountered by the expedition of Francisco de ORELLANA*
(vi) It crosses NINE countries
*This idea has been present since 1609 but is by no means firmly established. An alternative theory comes from the native term 'amassona', or 'boat destroyer'. An interesting etymological detour.
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