Новости за 22.12.2016

A look back at fifty years of life and work in The Economist building on St James’s Street in London — which the paper will vacate this year in favour of slightly more affordable space off the Strand. The tower block, a distinctive product of Britain’s brief infatuation with brutalism, was more of a pleasure to work in than to look upon — even though, in this case, the brutalism was tempered; the architects used Portland stone rather than bare concrete for the cladding

The avocado is a single-seeded berry with 82% fat, rivalling the olive as the fattiest fruit in the world. It matures on the tree but ripens only when picked, and can then take from a few days to two weeks to ripen naturally at room temperature. Once ripened, an avocado will keep in the refrigerator for seven to ten days. Americans eat four billion avocados a year. There are more than a thousand varieties of avocado, but the Hass, first grown in California in 1926, accounts for 95% of the US market

The two-pronged wooden clothes peg looks so ancient and suggestive, “like a forked mandrake root”, that you might expect its origins to lie in Sumer or Phoenicia. Far from it. The history of the clothes peg begins in the early 19C with a patent application from one Jérémie Victor Opdebec, of whom nothing else is known. Until then wet clothes were hung unpegged or spread out on grass. The sprung peg was patented in the US in 1853 as a “new and useful spring clamp for clothes lines”

Bats spend most of their time arguing, according to a computer which learned to speak bat-language by analysing 15,000 bat-calls. “The algorithm correctly identified the bat making the call around 71% of the time, and what the animals were squabbling about around 61% of the time. The system was also able to identify with less accuracy who the call was aimed at, and the fallout of the disagree­ment, revealing whether the bats would part, and if so, which bat would leave”

In two or three years Britain will be out of the European Union. Great change is coming. Whatever you thought before the referendum, no sense in prolonging the remorse and recrimination. Politicians should be seeking out and seizing the new possibilities arising for defence, for trade, for economic policy, for everything. “For all of us who believe in British democratic culture, there can be exciting times ahead. The winds of change can be invigorating, not simply bloody cold”

On the collapse of the sherry market in Britain as a model of the real business cycle. “The genius of Harvey and Showering was to sell alcoholic drinks whose sweetness was palatable to people unfamiliar with alcoholic drinks, and who would gain confidence in their choice from the scale of the promotional activity. These products were of their time: the market for sherry in Britain declined because its consumers passed away, the market for Babycham declined because its consumers grew up”

Plausible argument that Putin’s majority is real but fissile. “When you break it down, this ‘Putin majority’ consists of many different unrepresented minorities. If one or two of them are activated, then the anonymous majority will evaporate, and a much more diverse Russia will emerge in its place … Poor Putin, what a joke history is playing on him! He is a dreamy conservative who is getting old, and now he is heading for a fateful encounter with a Russia that is still of working age”

Digest of the main points and best quotes from five big books about Britain’s EU referendum. “We weren’t meant to win. That line, ‘you were only meant to blow the bloody doors off’, it’s true. The plan was to run the remain side close enough to scare the EU into bigger concessions. None of us thought we were ever going to win. With the possible exception of Dominic Cummings, who just wanted to drive a car into the Camerons’ living room. It’s all such a mess. I want a second referendum now”

Once we were overwhelmed by claims on our time. Now we are overwhelmed by apps and systems purporting to manage and reduce claims on our time. “There are thousands of apps in the ‘productivity’ category of the Apple app store, including software to simulate the ambient noise of working in a coffee shop (shown, in psychology experiments, to help people focus on work), and a text editor that deletes the words you have written if you don’t keep typing fast enough”