How did we get where we are, we human freaks of nature? Language, rational thought, art, science and technology set us apart from other species. Add to that list (more curse than accomplishment) an acute awareness of our own mortality. Other animals show faint glimmerings of innovation – crude tool use, for example – but no other species has
I remember my summer of ‘Perfect Skin’. It was 1985 and, home from university, I was working shifts in a canning factory. Lloyd Cole and the Commotions’ debut album played on permanent repeat during the daily drive. I was lucky: I had escaped the traumas of teenage acne. But I still longed for the ‘cheekbones […]
We live in interesting times. The global rise in populist politics has led to a growth in overt racism. Despite the fact that the last US president was a black man, violence against black people in the USA continues, often perpetrated by the police, surprising those of us lucky enough to be unaffected by racial […]
Cast your mind back to 1910. That was when the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși met Hungarian art student Margit Pogany in Paris. Years later Brâncuși carved her portrait in marble from memory. He refined Pogany’s features down to their simplest form – hardly more than arching brows and a long, straight nose – until it […]
The fact that Homo sapiens was preceded by multiple now-extinct hominid species tells us that evolution has experimented with a number of different ways of being human. One of the most ancient and best characterised of these prior forms of human existence, Ardipithecus ramidus, is a case in point. It lived roughly 4.4 million years ago. Extracted from the reddish-brown sediment
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Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm