Новости за 08.02.2016

How novelists name their characters. “Cratylic” names define the character. Dickens was the master here: Think Murdstone, Stryver, Slyme. In the 20C novel, two strategies have largely displaced the cratylic: “Realistic” names, such as John Carter, Theodore Decker; and Pynchonesque absurdonyms — Pig Bodine, Perkus Tooth. “Both court a kind of arbitrariness that makes it easier for readers to make up their own minds about what kind of a character they’re dealing with”

If you want to discover a new species, go first to the American Museum of Natural History, where advances in DNA extraction are producing floods of new information from previously unregarded specimens. The Nile crocodile turns out to comprise two separate species; the Nile monitor lizard at least three. “I predict that we probably have 100 unrecognized species in these collections, just sitting on the shelves”

Breakfast in Rwanda. “Just say the word maracuja, which is what they call passion fruit, and I can picture the long raking light of daybreak. Say mango, and I’m pulling on my shirt in a cacophony of birdsong. Say avocado, and I’m tucking a fresh notebook in my back pocket and stepping out to meet the morning. Show me a bunch of those little, creamy bananas, and I can smell the coffee”

Seemingly yes, at least for the top clubs. Prices are higher in the secondary market. Why leave money on the table? Four possible reasons. A full house every time is good for morale and for home team advantage. The clubs value lifelong local customers over fickle tourists. Fans spend the savings on merchandise. And higher prices would raise expectations, making life harder for owners and managers. Good comments thread, too

Perceptive review of Julian Barnes’s novel about Shostakovich, The Noise Of Time. Barnes manages a “highly readable marriage of suave execution and chilly, grown-up subject matter”. But the theme is a tired one — the pains of a great artist living under a tyrant. And strangely absent is the element which might have given the book true originality: Music. “I found this Shostakovich to be more of a writer than a composer”

How the young live. What you can learn by watching a child use social media. “I would watch in awe as she flipped through her snaps, opening and responding to each one in less than a second with a quick selfie face. She answered all 40 of her friends’ snaps in under a minute. How was this even possible? Is she a freak of nature, or is this just how things are done when you’re young? What do these ‘teens’ know that I don’t?”

Devastating survey of American government failure to invest in infrastructure. “We’re a backward country”. The average bridge is 42 years old, and many have structural problems. One-third of all roads are in “poor or mediocre condition”. There is no high-speed rail system. Half the locks on waterways are more than fifty years old. “The water pipes underneath the White House are said to still be made of wood”