Новости за 05.07.2016

Should Nazi loot be returned to the families of its original owners? Of course. Should the Elgin Marbles be returned to the Greeks? There’s a bit of an argument about that. But what about the Benin Bronzes? Or the priceless porcelains looted from the Chinese Emperor’s Summer Palace? Why does their presence in the British Museum provoke so little controversy? “The farther we get from Western Europe, the less morally compelling we seem to find the claims of those whose art Europeans looted”

Almost, because they weren’t quite right. But Feynman’s belief that it should be possible to represent particle physics with a pencil and paper and some wavy and straight lines set everybody else thinking too, and helped win Wilczek his Nobel prize. Even in this engaging and highly simplified re-telling, the science gets a bit abstract, but at the back of it is the distinction between a vacuum and a void. When Aristotle said, ‘Nature abhors a vacuum’, he probably meant, ‘Nature abhors a void’

Discussion of Ben Ratliff’s book, Every Song Ever, about streaming music sites such as Spotify which offer listeners immediate access to almost every piece of music commercially recorded in recent years. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Good, for the obvious reason that we can enjoy whatever music we want. Bad, to the extent that we respond to this plenty by inviting Spotify’s algorithms to choose our music for us. Our listening habits become less, not more, adventurous

The strange tale of Mary Toft, a Londoner expecting her fourth child in 1726. “It seemed that she was going into premature labour. But her midwife, John Howard, observed that Mary gave birth not to a baby but to dead, dismembered animals — first something that looked like a pig’s bladder, then a cat’s paw and head, and afterward rabbits, one after the other. By the time Howard reported the case to the distinguished medical men of London, he had delivered eleven rabbits from Mary”

An astonishing piece of writing by one of Australia’s most respected indigenous leaders. Reflections in old age on history and politics and culture. “Let us be who we are – Aboriginal people in a modern world – and be proud of us. Acknowledge that we have survived the worst that the past had thrown at us, and we are here with our songs, our ceremonies, our land, our language and our people – our full identity. What a gift this is that we can give you, if you choose to accept us”

William Shawn made his mark at the New Yorker directing the mgazine’s coverage of World War Two. He was “quiet, subtle, secretive and elliptical”; Harold Ross found him “indispensable”, and ensured his succession as editor in 1951. The magazine was soon prospering so mightily that Shawn “found it necessary to limit the pages in a weekly issue to 248 — as fat as a phone book in some towns.” Whatever the story, whatever the cost, he “did not consult the ledger books; he sent a writer”

Jaw-dropping tick-tock. The kingdom was lost for the sake of a nail, more or less. The campaign to keep Britain in the European Union had all of the arguments and most of the administrative resources on its side. Yet it lost. How? Because Conservative prime minister David Cameron, having called the referendum to quash the separatists in his party, vetoed aggressive campaigning for fear of upsetting them. The assumption was that “the experts would be heeded”