On Fridays I tuck some worthwhile weekend reading in your book bag. It’s an optional assignment but if you opt in it’ll make you a better person. First, see if you can guess the city in our third photo challenge. Nobody said these would be easy. Answer at the bottom:
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I don’t know if I haven’t been paying attention or if the last year or so has been exceptional for books about animals, but there is such a wealth of new titles that they’re stacking up faster than I can get through them. I’ll share a short book list, but first I must tell you a completely fabulous story about Sara from Cincinnati, as related by Jackie Higgins in Sentient:
At the Berlin Olympics in 2009, Usain Bolt crossed the finish line of the 100-meter sprint in a breathtaking 9.58 seconds to become the fastest human in history. Three years later, on a sunny summer’s day, a cheetah called Sarah, from the Cincinnati Zoo made it into the Guinness World Records by shaving seconds off the Lightning Bolt’s performance. She blazed the 100 meters on a USA Track & Field-certified course in 5.95 seconds. One onlooker described her as “a polka-dotted missile.” “Nobody can run like Sara,” added her keeper.” “I always knew she could run under six seconds, but to see it happen like this is wonderful.” Light, with a small head and slender body, the cheetah, Acinonyx jubatus, is built like an arrow and, at full throttle, essentially airborne.
That’s an excerpt from Ms. Higgins’s book, so I’d better stop there. She might be upset if I continue too long, but it gives a sense of what a fun book Sentient is. In it, Ms. Higgins devotes a chapter at a time to various human abilities, like our senses of hearing and touch, time and direction and balance.
Try also these books: the completely fabulous An Immense World by Ed Yong, which explores capabilities of other animals we (at least I) have never even dreamt of. The Mind of a Bee by Lars Chittka could be a science text. It might be. Along those lines, have a look too at The Parrot in the Mirror, subtitled How evolving to be like birds made us human. Peter Godfrey-Smith has a series of books. Try Other Minds, The octopus, the sea, and the deep origins of consciousness.
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One more thing on books before we get to this weekend’s online reading, the Chicago Tribune’s Biblioracle columnist John Warner has a fun idea. You send him a list of five books you’ve recently read, he recommends your next read. Here’s what happened when I sent him a list of books I read starting back in December:
1. “Beyond the Sea” by Paul Lynch
2. “The Man Who Died” by Antti Tuomainen
3. “Afterlives” by Abdulrazak Gurnah
4. “Sugar Street” by Jonathan Dee
5. “Weapons of Mass Delusion” by Robert Draper
— Bill M., Atlanta, Georgia
For Bill, I’m going to suggest a pairing that I experienced by reading “Sugar Street” and Lydia Millet’s “Dinosaurs” back-to-back, two novels with a similar premise — a main character who walks away from a previous life — with very different trajectories after those acts.
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On to this weekend’s online reading:
I’m writing a little bit tomorrow on a flareup in Rwanda-Congo tension. Here is remarkable photojournalism in a look at logging, and life along the Congo River: Raft by Raft, a River Loses Its Trees
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On animal agency, Réné Descartes “held that only humans are conscious, have minds and souls, can learn and have language and therefore only humans are deserving of compassion.” Bah. Here, a study of bears’ communication casts doubt on human supremacy over animals.
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Here is some technology that, if this article is true, cosmonauts really used in early spaceflight. It reminds me of an old story about how the Americans spent massively to solve the problem of getting ink to work in zero gravity, so that astronauts could write upside down, while the Soviets just used a pencil. Still, on this early Soviet navigation aid, I’d have rather aligned with the Americans. Don’t try this over the mid-Pacific: Inside the Globus INK: a mechanical navigation computer for Soviet spaceflight
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Long rail travel: There Is No Reason to Cross the U.S. by Train. But I Did It Anyway
Shorter rail travel: Brexit, and train travel through Europe
Figurative rail travel: The Underground Railroad of North Korea
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On being eastern European: The East in you never leaves.
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I always thought I wouldn’t have wanted to be whoever they first tested eye drops on. In brotherly spirit, this article wonders how many people had to die before the relative toxicity of wild mushrooms became widely known. And just as you suspected, the connection between cashews and varnish is all too real: the cashew.
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This is one of those ‘we’d be better governed by 100 random people from the phone book than politicans’ stories:
There’s a thought experiment I find illuminating: Imagine that Lyft announced tomorrow that it was going to shut down its app and lay off most of its staff. Then it was going to open a bunch of call centers and hire people to book taxi rides over the phone instead....Would it be more or less expensive to operate than the company that actually exists?
What Shocked Me Most When I Became a Lyft Driver for a Week
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Answer to the photo quiz: it’s the Mediterranean island of Malta. Here’s the main city of Valetta.
There are a few more photos in the Malta Gallery at EarthPhotos.com.
See you tomorrow for a look back at the week to figure out what just happened.
Also I’ve always wanted to see Malta. I did not recognize it although somehow I recognize the Armenia picture from the last quiz.
I enjoyed this post!! That is an incredible idea about the Oracle I’m going to send him the last five books I read and I’ll report back what he says later! I actually love his idea everything those two books back to back. I bought the parrot book but I haven’t started reading it yet but I am a huge huge fan of Peter Godfrey-Smith. I wrote a 3QD essay about his octopus book. This is a great post!