via 3 Quarks Daily: Kenan Malik in Pandaemonium
Imagine a runaway train. If it carries on down its present course it will kill five people. You cannot stop the train, but you can pull a switch and move the train on to another track, down which it will kill not five people but just one person. Should you pull the switch? This is the famous ‘trolley’ problem, a thought experiment first suggested by Philippa Foot in 1967, and which since has become since become one of the most important tools in contemporary moral philosophy. (In Foot’s original, the dilemma featured a runaway trolley, hence the common name of the problem.)
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‘Munitions, more munitions, always more munitions’
via National Archives by Dr George Hay
One hundred years ago today [13 March], the Battle of Neuve Chapelle was in its closing stages. A small village in northern France between Béthune and Lille, it played host to the first major British offensive of the war. Those three days of fighting marked a significant point in the British war experience, something confirmed just eight weeks later when fighting over the same ground during the one day engagement at Aubers Ridge. Though neither operation was successful, within a month of the Battle of Aubers Ridge the way in which the British armed forces were supplied in the field changed dramatically.
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Why Killer Whales Go Through Menopause But Elephants Don’t
via 3 Quarks Daily: Ed Yong in Not Exactly Rocket Science
Last summer, I met Granny. I was on a whale-watching boat that had sailed south from Vancouver Island, in search of a famous and well-studied group of killer whales (orcas). Two hours after we set off, we started seeing black fins scything through the unusually calm and glassy water. We saw a dozen individuals in all, and our guide identified them by the shape of their fins and the white saddle patches on their backs. Granny, for example, has a distinctive half-moon notch in her dorsal fin.
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Get a Quick Workout Without Even Leaving Your Office
via MakeUseOf by Dave LeClair
Who says you have to leave your office and go to the gym to get a workout? It’s quite possible to get some exercise from your desk and the areas around it. Not only that, but you can target all the key parts of the body!
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Which is the poorest city in the world?
via The Guardian by Nick Compton
Ranking hardship is not a simple, or happy, task – but as the world urbanises, city poverty becomes ever more important.
For most of history, and despite the stereotype of urban squalour, it has been the countryside where poverty has particularly thrived. But as the world urbanises, poverty is moving with it. Over the past decade, the share of poverty in the developing world blighting cities rather than rural areas has jumped from 17% to 28%. In sub-Saharan Africa, almost a quarter of all poverty is urban. In east Asia, half.
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Ancient cities and power: the archaeology of urbanism in the Iron Age capitals of northern Mesopotamia
an article by James F. Osborne (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA) published in International Journal of Urban Sciences Volume 19 Issue 1 (2015)
Abstract
This paper explores the expression of power in the built environment of ancient cities, using two case studies from the middle Iron Age (early first millennium BCE) ancient Near East: the capital cities of the Syro-Anatolian city-states in southern Turkey and northern Syria, and those of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in northern Iraq. A functional approach to urbanism, which defines cities based on their influence in the surrounding region, leads to the conclusion that although the expression of power in these two cultures’ major cities is superficially similar (though different in scale), incorporating the surrounding landscape into the discussion reveals how empires are more comprehensive than city-states in creating entire landscapes that communicate power in their built environment.
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Infinite West: 1941
via Shorpy Historical Photo Archive – Vintage Fine Art Prints by Dave
September 1941
“Buena Vista, Colorado (vicinity). The Sawatch mountains.”
Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott
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Where Does Religion Come From?
via Big Think by Derek Beres
If we were to ask a priest where religion originated, his response would most likely be rooted in his theology. The same would hold true for a rabbi, imam, yogi and so forth. We believe that the roots of our personal faith provide an answer to questions of creation.
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Lolita’s Loathsome Brilliance
via 3 Quarks Daily: Robert Macfarlane in More Intelligent Life
Humbert Humbert, literature’s best-known paedophile, calls it his “joy-ride”. For a year he tours the back-roads of rural America, with Lolita, who is 12, as his coerced companion and his regular victim. Together they cover thousands of miles in Humbert’s sedan, gliding down the “glossy” black-top from New England to the Rockies via the Midwestern corn prairies. They become connoisseurs of motel America – “the stucco court”, “the adobe unit”, “the log cabin” – always checking in as father and daughter, and never staying longer than a couple of nights. Milk bars and diners are their mealtime haunts; tiny tourist traps (“a lighthouse in Virginia…a granite obelisk commemorating the Battle of Blue Licks”) their daylight destinations.
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From vinyl records to toys: the return of analogue products in our digital lives
via the Guardian by Emmanuel Tsekleves
There is something unique and magical about interacting with physical objects. From toddlers discovering the world around them to the texture and pungent scent of a book. We live in the digital era but the latest trends in digitally-dominated markets, such as the entertainment industry, indicate strong sales for analogue products.
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