For some people, old age is like a mirage: always on the horizon but never reached – by themselves at any rate. When my father was in his early eighties, he referred somewhat disdainfully to his neighbour, eight years younger than he, as ‘the old man’, but he never applied the epithet to himself. And […]
In the ancient world, happiness was a gift of the gods that could be withdrawn at any moment. No one imagined it to be a state of mind that could be deliberately pursued and permanently achieved. When philosophers advocated the pursuit of happiness, they had in mind something quite different from the life of continuous […]
At the time of writing this review, one of the hot films was The Social Network, a dramatisation of the founding of Facebook by the Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg. Jesse Eisenberg plays Zuckerberg as a borderline sociopath who lacks human empathy, yet is colossally endowed with the sort of genius that made the invention of […]
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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