The Sunday Supplement
From The Browser 8 years ago:
Curtains For Us All
Martin Rees | Edge | 31st May 2017
Astronomer Sir Martin Rees talks about space travel, extraterrestrials, multiverses, AI, pandemics. “We can observe many galaxies, out to 13 billion light-years from us; however, there’s no reason to think that that’s all of physical reality. We want to know how much further reality extends beyond the domain we can see. It may go so far that all combinatorial options are fulfilled, that there are avatars of us far away making the right decision where we might make the wrong one” (7,200 words)
From The Browser 12 Years Ago:
Bret, Unbroken
Steve Friedman | Runner's World | 1st June 2013
His brain and body shattered in a horrible accident as a young boy, Bret Dunlap thought just being able to hold down a job, keep an apartment, and survive on his own added up to a good enough life. Then he discovered running, which gave his life an upside. “You don’t like to talk about your brain injury, or recovery, or what was, or what might have been. But you want people — especially people who are going through what you went through — to know that things can get better, that if things are getting a little better for you, they might get a little better for them” (9,500 words)
Question Of The Week
With alarming alacrity, the May edition of the Browser Book Club is upon us. What did you read, and what did you think of it?
Last week’s question
We shared Housel’s Being A Little Underemployed from the Browser archives, in which he suggests that there is no obvious reason to suppose the eight hour maximum day is ideal for anything other than the kind of labour it was first conceived for.
For your own work, past or present, what have you found to be your maximum number of productive hours in a day?
A fascinating range of responses from a whole host of professions in this week’s mailbag. Maximums range from 3 to 20; type of task, neurodiversity, age and deadlines all influence your widely varied approaches.
Performance Of The Week
Batter My Heart | comp. Joanna Marsh | I Fagiolini
A 2023 composition, commissioned by Lincoln’s Inn, and performed here by the wonderful Il Faglioni. Beautiful throughout, but the piece really lifts into something special from around the three minute mark.
Book Of The Week
Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth| Andrew H. Knoll
Recommended by Chris Impey at Five Books:
“It’s very well written and has a broad sweep of 3 billion years of history. He’s a very preeminent geologist and paleontologist and his expertise covers a number of fields. He’s at the top of his game and he lays out the subject beautifully... It also addresses the issue of how inevitable life is, if you have all the ingredients. How does it progress? Again, with a sample of one, you can’t generalize. You can’t inductively draw a conclusion. But he raises all the issues.”
Image Of The Week
A Gorge in the Mountains (Kauterskill Clove) | Sanford Robinson Gifford
“Gifford was the only major Hudson River School painter to have actually grown up in the Catskills region of New York made famous by Thomas Cole, the school’s founding figure... From 1845 until his death in 1880, Gifford chose Kauterskill Clove in the Catskill Mountains as one of his favorite subjects.” – On view at The Met Museum
Poem Of The Week
Night | Petr Hruška (trans. Jonathan Bolton)
A reflection on aging, elegantly summarised at only three lines long, with a provocative opening:
True darkness is in a child’s bedroom.
Read Night at Poetry Foundation
Quiz Of The Week
Each of these lines from a well-known poet is missing a word. The missing words all belong to a single category. What is that category?
(i) Rough winds do shake the darling buds of _____
(ii) God has a _____ voice,/As soft and full as beer
(iii) If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath/ I’d live with scarlet _____s at the Base,/And speed glum heroes up the line to death.
(iv) The evening _____ opes anew/Its delicate blossoms to the dew;/And, hermit-like, shunning the light,/Wastes its fair bloom upon the night
(v) The world was all before them, where to choose/ Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:/ They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,/ Through _____ took their solitary way.
Answers below, after the crossword
Click here to print this week’s puzzle
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Click here for past puzzles and solutions
There’s always a wide range of cultural references in a Bob Weisz cryptic, and today’s is no exception: Vivaldi and Mozart, Daniel Radcliffe and Mr. Rogers, Peron and Reagan, "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" and "Hot Hot Hot" –Dan Feyer
Quiz Answers
The category is British Prime Ministers.
(i) Rough winds do shake the darling buds of MAY (Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?, William Shakespeare)
(ii) God has a BROWN voice,/As soft and full as beer (For Eleanor Boylan Talking With God, Anne Sexton)
(iii) If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath/ I’d live with scarlet MAJORs at the Base,/And speed glum heroes up the line to death. (Base Details, Siegfried Sassoon)
(iv) The evening PRIMROSE opes anew/Its delicate blossoms to the dew;/And, hermit-like, shunning the light,/Wastes its fair bloom upon the night (Evening Primrose, John Clare)
(v) The world was all before them, where to choose/ Their place of rest, and Providence their guide:/ They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,/ Through EDEN took their solitary way. (Paradise Lost, John Milton)
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